The most important negotiation in history

Is this the most important negotiation in history?

I would like to speak to you about one of the greatest negotiations in history. I am talking about Moses and pharaoh. What can we learn from pharaoh? And Moses, first, it starts by God appearing in front of Moses. And God tells Moses. I have chosen you to go to pharaoh and say “let my people go”. What does Moses say to God ? Is he ecstatic? Is he happy that he got the job? No, he is like each and every one of us. In every negotiation he first says, “no”, I think you made a mistake. I’m not the right person for the job. Does God make a mistake? Does he not know everything that there is to know about Moses? Of course he does. 

So when Moses says to God, God asks Why are you worried? And Moses? Says, well. I’m a terrible speaker. I’m hard on my tongue. I don’t know how to speak. So, well, and God says, no problem. I know this and I will send Aaron(your brother with you). 

We get a job when we think we can do something when we challenge ourselves. Our first reaction is disbelief in ourselves. It is normal we don’t want to make a change. We want to stop smoking. You won’t be bigger. We want to prepare for something. We are scared, and that’s a natural reaction. And God prepares Moses. He says you will go and Pharaoh will say, “No”. I will harden his heart. I will make him say no to you and in every negotiation. There is a certain element of disbelief. There is a certain element of power. 

Pharaoh wants slaves, and he’s not paying a price for the slaves and then comes Moses and says you will. You’re going to pay a price and you’re going to have to choose. How much can you suffer? How much can you take? Cause I’m going to give you a lot of pain. I’m talking about plagues. 

As we know, Moses and God inflict pain over pharaoh and the pain grows each time. And then several plagues until God kills all the firstborns and everybody tells Pharaoh let them go…. And he thinks “why do I need this headache”, The rivers are full of blood. This pain that comes to Egypt. And he can’t take it anymore. 

And that’s life. That’s a story that teaches us about pain because if we suffer and we take, pain grows bigger and bigger on to a certain point we say to ourselves. Okay, let’s change this to something. Let’s behave differently. 

Let’s take a different route. Let’s try to cooperate and then we get to see the other side. We get to understand. We can’t use people forever and you can’t. Because at a certain point, your body will fall. Our patients will disappear. 

And we see if we start on the path of pain. We in a certain point we can’t take much more. We need to become stronger. We want to become bigger. We become more educated and then we can take more and then we can do it without inflicting pain on ourselves. 

We can stop smoking, we can start dieting, we can make a change, we can go running each day. We can grow our knowledge in life and we can do that. If we believe that, we can.

And Pharaoh SENDS the Israelite, get out of here. You know, I can’t take it anymore. Take your people and go and they don’t even have time to pack. They just go

And then pharaoh says, oh God, what did I do? starts chasing the Israelites since he changed his opinion. And that’s life, we go, two steps forward, One step backward, two steps forward, one step back. 

And then he pays the ultimate price, right? Sea opens. The Israelites Go inside the sea kills Pharaoh.

This is how negotiation is done? The entire process we need to go through the steps  

We need to show what we can give pain and understand the benefits of working together and we get to a place where, if you don’t do that, destruction comes upon you at the end because there is a certain amount of pain that you can’t tolerate.

So learn from this story and I will see you in the next bible story.