The Scriptures teach us to hope in the Lord and they repeatedly demonstrate why the Lord is worthy of such trust. All things are possible with Him (Matt. 19:26), and the one who hopes in the Lord will not be put to shame (Isa. 49:23). He is all-powerful and able to do far above all that we think or ask (Eph. 3:20). We have every reason to trust the Lord, and yet we know that trust is not easy. Often the trials and sufferings of life raise doubts and make it difficult to believe that God is still at work for our good. The Bible actually acknowledges this reality. Scripture teaches that God is patient when our circumstances make it hard to hear hope.
There are numerous places we could turn to support this conclusion. The Psalms of Lament regularly demonstrate God’s compassion towards doubting. The Psalmist feels that God is distant and does not hear his cries (Ps. 22:1). He knows God to be a rock and yet feels that God is not trustworthy, He has been forgotten by God (Ps. 42:9). Why would the Lord include these complaints and doubts within Holy Scripture? He does it because He is compassionate and wants to meet us even in those moments where we are questioning Him. God cares about our feelings of instability. God has compassion on us when we struggle to trust Him.
An interesting passage to explore on this point is found in Exodus chapter 6. Moses has gone to the people to give them hope. The Lord has paid attention to their cries and has remembered His promise to their forefathers and He will come to rescue Israel from Egyptian slavery. Initially, the people are so overwhelmed with joy and hope that they worship: The people believed, and when they heard that the Lord had paid attention to them and that he had seen their misery, they knelt low and worshipped (4:31). But that faith is tested because Pharaoh doesn’t know Yahweh and isn’t about to listen to some unknown foreign God (5:2), he doubles the work on the Israelites and makes their life even more miserable (5:6-9). The Israelites blame Moses (5:21), and even the man himself questions God outright: Lord, why have you caused trouble for this people? And why did you ever send me (5:22)? But it is precisely in this place of seeming hopelessness that God intends to show up.
In the opening of chapter 6 God promises freedom and He encourages Moses to trust Him and believe. God reveals His character and says that He will keep His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and He will deliver Israel from bondage. It all sounds very moving and inspiring, but verse 9 reminds us that the Bible is not naive about the hardships of life. The promises of God are not sentimental and idealistic; they are grounded in the brokenness of this world and they can meet us in the places where hope is hardest to hear. Verse 9 reads:
Moses told this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their broken spirit and hard labor.
This isn’t stubbornness or rebelliousness. That will certainly come in time, but in this moment we are given an explanation for their disbelief that is rooted in suffering. “They did not listen…because of their broken spirit and hard labor.” These two details give us tremendous insight into what makes hope hard to hear and they demonstrate the compassion of our God.
Hope is hard to hear because of broken spirits. Hope is naturally future-oriented. It looks beyond the hardships of the present circumstance and believes that the sun will rise, that growth will happen, that joy is around the corner. When your spirit is broken the future seems intangible. All that you can affirm is that the present suffering is intense and it feels like it will never end. Hope requires energy it requires effort to believe that the future can be different. But when your spirit is broken so is your motivation. You have no energy to put towards hoping, all your energy is dried up from surviving.
When your spirit is broken you can hear all the same words of hope but they just don’t resonate. They don’t connect with your soul because of the weariness of prolonged heartache. Suffering wears us down and it makes it hard to hear hope. It’s not, of course, that suffering automatically robs us of hope; nor is it the case that prolonged suffering means we have an excuse not to hope in the Lord. But the Lord is compassionate. He knows that temporal causes can create buffers between the voice of hope and our own hearts.
Hope is hard to hear because of hard labor. The emphasis of the text is on that word “hard”. This is the kind of labor that feels unproductive. It is the kind of labor that feels like you are treading water, making no progress, and building towards nothing. The Israelites have to meet the same quota of bricks but now they have to get the straw to make those bricks in addition to their normal workload. It added such a tremendous amount of work to them that the possibility of accomplishing the task was hopeless. No matter how fast and hard they worked they would never reach their goal.
When our effort feels pointless, when it feels futile, we will find it hard to hope. Even Moses, when told to go speak to Pharaoh, struggles with hope. If the people won’t believe him then why would Pharaoh (6:12). It feels pointless to even try. Hope may hold out the possibilities of a different future but we feel we will never be able to get there. Our circumstances suggest that we will be stuck forever. God knows that we feel that way. He knows that when our work feels like “striving against the wind” we will find hope to be unrealistic.
God has compassion for such hopelessness. Exodus 6 acknowledges that life circumstances can make it hard to hear the voice of hope. God knows this. The Scriptures tell us that “He remembers that we are dust” (Ps. 103:14). God knows we are finite and weak creatures. He knows that our circumstances can create pressure and that our fickle minds and hearts will struggle with faith. Hope can feel intangible and impossible when the pressures of life weigh on us. God cares about that and shows us grace. He will rebuke Israel for their stubbornness, their lack of faith, their hard-heartedness. But here, His Holy Word simply acknowledges that their circumstances are so hard that it makes it hard to hear the voice of hope. They aren’t disbelieving because of idolatry, stubbornness, or selfishness. No, the Word simply says that they didn’t listen because they had broken spirits and hard labor that wore them down. God has compassion on them because life has been so hard.
To be sure, God does command our faith and trust and never excuses rebellion and sin, but He is not so cold and calculating as to ignore our context. He knows that in our humanity we are weak. Jesus knows what it is to be human and He can sympathize with our weakness (Heb. 4:15). When hope feels out of reach, when its voice feels hard to hear, know that your God sees and cares about that difficulty. He knows that you will struggle to believe because your spirit is broken and your labor is hard, and He will meet you in just such places to help carry your forward. Friends, keep looking to the Lord, even when it feels hopeless. Even when it feels pointless, keep crying out to Him. The Lord is paying attention to you. He sees your hardship, and He loves you even when your faith is weak.
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