But he said, “You are lazy, very lazy; therefore you say, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to the LORD.’”
— Exodus 5:17
Here we find Pharaoh’s response when Moses and Aaron brought him God’s instruction — that the children of Israel were to go into the wilderness to worship and sacrifice to the Lord. And his response is telling. Rather than acknowledging the legitimacy of their request, he dismissed it entirely: you are lazy, very lazy.
What Pharaoh’s Response Reveals
This response says as much about Pharaoh as it does about the Israelites. It exposes his total irreverence for God and his complete inability to understand why any people would want to set aside time and resources to honour their Creator. In his view, worship was nothing more than an excuse — a way to avoid work and responsibility.
And it is true that worship can be misused as a cover for laziness. But there is something far more significant happening here. Pharaoh represents a posture that is deeply hostile to the very idea that a people might genuinely revere their God, fear Him, and desire to honour Him with their time and devotion.
The Same Dismissal Today
This posture has not disappeared. In the world we live in today, there are many people who will look at believers and conclude that our motivations are self-serving — that we go to church on Sunday to be seen, that we give to the poor for recognition, that our faith is a kind of social performance or, at best, a psychological crutch. Some will go further and suggest that our devotion to God is simply a way to escape responsibility.
Because of this, many believers have been quietly discouraged — and even ashamed. There are people who profess faith in Christ and yet go to considerable lengths to make sure no one around them knows about it. They hide their faith to avoid the discomfort of being misunderstood or dismissed the way Pharaoh dismissed the Israelites.
But Paul, writing to the Romans at a time when declaring yourself a Christian could result in genuine persecution, refused to operate from that shame:
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
— Romans 1:16
We are not called to hide what we have been given. The gospel is meant to be placed on a lampstand and allowed to shine:
And He was saying to them, “A lamp is not brought to be put under a basket, is it, or under a bed? Is it not brought to be put on the lampstand?”
— Mark 4:21
Expect the Tactic — and Resist It
As believers, we should expect this kind of dismissal. The world, the flesh, and the devil will use precisely this tactic — labelling the worship of God as lazy, wasteful, irrelevant, or foolish — in order to discourage us and cause us to shrink back. The psalmist records the voice of the wicked:
They say, “How does God know? And is there knowledge with the Most High?”
— Psalm 73:11
This is the spirit of Pharaoh alive in every age — the dismissal of God’s claim on our lives and time.
But we must not be moved by it. The worship of God is not a waste of time. It is not laziness. It is the most important thing we can do with our lives — because the very purpose of our existence is to glorify God and enjoy His presence. Everything else flows from this.
May we not be ashamed. May we not be discouraged. Our God is worthy, and He is glorified when His people gather to worship Him with gladness.
Shout joyfully to the LORD, all the earth. Serve the LORD with gladness; come before Him with joyful singing. Know that the LORD Himself is God; it is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; we are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him, bless His name. For the LORD is good; His lovingkindness is everlasting and His faithfulness to all generations.
— Psalm 100:1-5
Amen.
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