I have seen, I have seen the affliction of My people which is in Egypt, and I have heard their groaning, and am come down to deliver them. And now come, I will send thee into Egypt. Acts 7:34
A young woman – we’ll call her Rachel – worked for a large company and found herself harrassed by several other workers who were jealous of her outstanding abilities. She felt she had nobody to complain to, and endured their abuse for several years, doing the best she could at her job. Then one day, the company president called Rachel and her fellow workers – the abusive ones – into his office. He told the abusive workers that he had been observing their harrassment of Rachel for several years, and that their services would no longer be required. He then turned to Rachel and complimented her for the admirable way in which she had handled the situation for so long, and announced that she was being promoted to the position of vice-president. Unknown to Rachel, the president had been aware of her suffering all the time, just as God was aware all of the time the Israelites were under the Egyptian taskmasters.
It was some 400 years since the Israelites first arrived in Egypt. During that time, no prophet or leader had shown up to remind them and prepare them for their coming deliverance. As the years and decades rolled by, they must have felt forgotten by God. As the work became harder and their burdens greater, they must have wondered if the promise of deliverance was actually real. Some of them might have seen in Moses the possibility of someone who could have helped them, but that hope was dashed when Moses fled into exile. They felt totally abandoned. But they weren’t. All that time, God was watching and listening, and with a wonderful plan of deliverance all ready to implement. In our text, which is part of Stephen’s defence, the expression ‘I have seen’ is repeated. In the Exodus account, the expression is ‘I have surely seen’. That is comfort to us today, because if God was watching the suffering of the Israelites in Egypt, He is surely watching the suffering of His saints today.
Sicknesses and heartaches are well known to many of the Christians, and sometimes there seems to be no end to them. It can be easy to get discouraged and wonder if we are abandoned to our suffering with no recourse or hope of relief. But if God has given to us a promise, we can be certain that He will keep that promise. And until the promise is fulfilled, God is watching, and He sees what we are enduring, and He understands. -Jim MacIntosh