There is a famous saying in western culture, “Time heals all wounds.” Anyone who has endured deep suffering knows that sentiment is incomplete. Yes, time may settle raw emotions. It can provide helpful perspective. Yet, time itself has no healing power. Left alone, time may even make wounds worse. Untreated pain often festers, deepening sorrow rather than relieving it. What we need is a healer far more powerful than time.
The Israelites suffered for generations in Egypt under Pharaoh’s cruelty—first suspicion, then slavery, then ruthless oppression, and finally the systematic murder of their sons. Time multiplied their pain. They cried out to God, but nothing seemed to change. No rescue came. Each passing year seemed to carry them further from the promises that God had made to Abraham to be a blessed people living in their own land. So desperate was their situation that their prayers became barely intelligible cries for rescue (Exod. 2:23). What remained were groans—raw, inarticulate expressions of pain from hearts crushed by suffering.
You could certainly sympathize with anyone who after centuries of slavery and oppression might start to doubt God’s promises. Yet, that is not what we see in the early chapters of Exodus. Instead, we see faithful Hebrew midwives risking their own lives to uphold the sanctity of human life because they feared God. We see a desperate mother not fearing the king’s edict but clinging to hope that God would rescue her son. We see the good providential care of God preserving Moses’ life through the river of death by the pity of none other than Pharaoh’s own daughter. We see the adopted Prince of Egypt choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin (Heb. 11:25). For 400 years, God’s people refused to assimilate, refused to worship the false gods of Egypt, and clung to the promises passed down from Abraham as they cried out to God for rescue from their long-suffering. No small miracle!
May the Lord grant his church the same long-suffering faith in our age! Yet, I fear that our instant gratification culture of comfort has not prepared us to suffer well or suffer long. We like results! Impatience hardens into compromised lifestyles and doubt about God’s goodness, power, and promises.
The people of God in the early chapters of Exodus show us a better way. They don’t minimize the pain. Instead, they fall on their knees and cry out to God. This is the posture of God’s people in a fallen world. Moses declared, “I have been a sojourner in a foreign land” (Exod. 2:22). If you are in Christ, so are you! This world is not your home (Heb. 11:13–16).
Maybe you are in a place of suffering with no end in sight. Perhaps all you can do is groan under the weight of grief, fear, or exhaustion. Into the dark night of suffering, Moses records the Lord’s response to his people’s cries, “God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant.… God saw the people … and God knew” (Exod. 2:24–25). Despite every appearance to the contrary, the people of Israel had not been abandoned.
God Heard
God heard not only the cries of his people in prayer, but even the inarticulate groans of hearts confused and hurt by suffering. If you are a parent or have worked with kids, you get this. If your child gets hurt, they just come running to you in their raw pain because you are safe, your presence brings comfort, and in their helpless state you are the one who can help. Our God is a perfectly compassionate Father who hears our cries and is attentive to our pleas. Long-suffering faith runs to his loving arms even when you don’t understand the providence behind your pain.
God Remembered His Covenant
Why did God let his people suffer so much and for so long? God never directly answers that question. It is enough to know that God always does what is good, right, and perfect. God always keeps his promises. So, we cling to his presence with us and his promises for us by faith. God wasn’t surprised by Israel’s suffering, and he isn’t surprised by your suffering either. He has a purpose in it (Gen. 15:13). Our suffering is never wasted in Christ (2 Cor. 4:17).
God Saw the People
The Lord wasn’t looking down upon the Israelites unaware of their hardships. He saw their tears. Likewise, God has seen every awful thing you have ever had to endure (Ps. 56:8–9). One day the Lord will restore all that the locusts have eaten (Joel 2:25). The suffering of God’s people does not go unnoticed, but “the eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous” (Ps. 34:15).
God Knew
God’s knowledge of his people is not a remote or merely objective acquaintance with facts. Instead, God knows us through an intimate relationship with his people. God knew, so God came down, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people … and have heard their cry.… I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them…” (Exod. 3:7–8).
Healing for the Long-Suffering
Exodus does not end with groaning, and neither does our story. The God who heard Israel’s cries, remembered his covenant, saw their affliction, and knew them fully is the same God who has acted decisively for us in Jesus Christ. In the fullness of time, the Son of God came down as Immanuel, God with us. Jesus entered our suffering, took on our weakness, and unleashed his healing power. At the cross, our oppressive chains were broken. Sin was forgiven. Death was disarmed. Evil was conquered. And in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, God declared that suffering will not have the final word.
So, when the days are long, when prayers feel unanswered, and when all you can offer God are the weak groans of faith, look to Jesus. We endure, not with shallow optimism, but with long-suffering faith in Jesus Christ and his promises to us in the gospel because the same God who brought Israel out of slavery will bring all his children home.
