When Obedience Makes Life Harder

How to read Exodus 5–7 for the character of God, not just His power

There’s a truth running through Exodus that quietly dismantles one of our favorite assumptions: that obedience makes life easier. We expect that when we do what God says, the doors swing open, the business grows, the relationships heal. So what do we do when obedience seems to invite more difficulty, not less?

In this week’s episode, You Can Trust Him, we sat in Exodus 5–7 and watched Moses obey, and watched Pharaoh respond by making everything worse. The workload intensified. The beatings increased. The very people Moses came to rescue turned on him. We talked about why, for a believer, success is measured by obedience, not outcomes. Moses and Aaron were faithful the moment they delivered God’s message, no matter how Pharaoh responded.

But there was a deeper thread we didn’t have room to pull on the mic. And if you want to move from reading Exodus to actually studying it, this is where it gets soooo good.

Here’s the question if you want to go from a Bible reader to a Bible student: not “what happened?” but “what is God revealing about Himself here?”

First, zoom out: this was promised

Before you can understand the brick pits, you have to go back, way back. Centuries before Moses was born, God sat Abram down and told him exactly what was coming. His descendants would be strangers and slaves in a land not their own, afflicted for four hundred years, and afterward God would bring them out “with great possessions” (Genesis 15:13–14).

Read that again. The affliction was foretold. So was the deliverance.

The suffering the Israelites endured under Pharaoh was not a sign that the plan had failed. It was the plan unfolding exactly as God said it would, generations earlier. When you cross-reference Exodus back to Genesis 15, the brick pits stop looking like an accident and start looking like a promise being kept on schedule.

That is what serious study does: it connects the page in front of you to the rest of the story.

Then, zoom in: God reveals His name

Now look at a verse that’s easy to read right past. In the middle of Moses’ discouragement, God says something He has never said quite this way before: “I am the LORD.” He tells Moses that to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob He was known as God Almighty — but by His name the LORD He had not fully made Himself known to them (Exodus 6:2–3).

That word translated LORD, in all capitals, is the covenant name, YHWH. The patriarchs knew God as El Shaddai, God Almighty, the God of power. But here, on the edge of the Exodus, God reveals Himself by the name that means He keeps covenant. He is not only powerful. He is faithful.

And watch how often the purpose of everything that follows is stated. God acts so that His people “may know that I am the LORD” (Exodus 6:7). The plagues that are coming are not merely a display of raw power to crush Pharaoh. They are a revelation of God’s character to His people.

Power is the method. Character is the message.

Even the genealogy that interrupts the story in Exodus 6 is doing this work. It isn’t filler to skip, it’s actually the receipt. It anchors Moses and Aaron in a real lineage and reminds us that God’s covenant runs through real generations of real people. Genealogies in Scripture are evidence of God’s faithfulness across time.

The skill to carry into every passage

So here is the study habit that will change the way you read your Bible: don’t only track what people do, track how God moves.

Watch His responses. Mark His declarations. Underline His promises. Because how God acts is how God reveals who He is. You don’t get to know God by reading about Him in the abstract; you get to know Him by watching Him act, keep His word, and call Himself by name.

The psalmist already did this work for us. Looking back on this exact season, he writes that God “remembers his covenant forever” and “remembered his holy promise, and Abraham his servant” (Psalm 105:8–10, 42). In the psalmist’s eyes, the whole Exodus is one long proof of a single trait: God remembers. God keeps His word.

This is why you can trust Him

Not because the path is easy, because of who He is.

The same God who told Abraham the end before the beginning, who revealed His covenant name to a discouraged Moses, who turned slavery into a stage for His own faithfulness, is the God who sees you right now, in the middle of the obedience that made your life harder.

He is not surprised by your difficulty. He has not forgotten His promise. He never does.

Trust isn't hoping. Trust is active obedience: doing what God says when nothing makes sense, and continuing forward when the results don’t match your expectations, because you have come to know the One who made the promise.