“Is not this the word that we did tell thee in
Egypt, saying, Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians?” Ex 14:12.
“Why
came we forth out of Egypt?” Nu 11:20
In the narratives of the Master and Slave genre the
Exodus of the Bible is the most grand and epochal in the history of man’s
redemption. Yet that offer when it has come, it has not always been taken up
willingly by the “slaves” themselves, but it has come through feats and jerks,
through blandishments and outright persuasion. Finally it has come through
tears and through death.
Men have even come up with cynical proverbs to
justify why they should remain in servitude. “Zimwi likujualo halikuli
ukakwisha.” Roughly translated it says “It is better the devil you know than
the one you don’t.” Thus much later the children of Israel in the wilderness
began to miss Pharaoh, as if they would say: Though he had doubled their tasks
and killed their children, at least they knew him. They knew his Egypt. They
had known it for 430 years. But as for this new
thing Moses had brought up to kill them in the wilderness, they did not know
it. They did not know how it would end.
It is no wonder Moses was reluctant to take the
offer of leading that group. He clearly foresaw the questions those people
would bombard him with, and he became afraid. Then he recalled that these same
people had been hostile to him, in that earlier incident in Egypt, when he had
only felt pity at them, and had killed an Egyptian who was harassing them, in
his effort to try to alleviate their misery. But what did they do? They had threatened to give him away. And now
God was asking him to go and lead these same people out of Egypt!
The prospect of leading people and not sheep can be
daunting to anyone, let alone Moses.
Keeping sheep seemed the easier way out. God was daring him to try
something bigger. Search your own conscience, and decide if there isn’t
something bigger that you can do than “keep sheep.” God was offering Moses
something bigger, a huge task, but like all of us, Moses was reluctant to take
it up.
Who is a Slave, Who is a Master?
A slave is somebody dominated by another, literary
owned or controlled by another. That another is the master. Sin, as master, enslaves.
Hence Christians are warned not to let it have dominion over them. Christ
declaimed “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the
servant of sin” (John 8:34).
Instead, a born-again Christian becomes a servant or
slave to a positive Master, which is Christ. That which now has control over us
is Christ and the Holy Spirit, which both sanctifies us, teaches us, and leads
us. We are therefore glad to be called slaves to these positive controlling
forces, than the negative ones concerning sin and its shame. It is not in vain
that Paul says “We are fools for Christ’s sake” (1 Co 4:10). Christ, and not sin, now has dominion over
our lives. “Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of
righteousness.” (Rom 6:18).
A master leads and others follow. The master is the
boss. Thus Christians follow Christ. When sin is the master then its victims
follow it. They pay obeisance to it. They obey it and respect it. The sin is
their boss. But if one can overturn it, renounce it, then it is said one has
mastered it. Unfortunately humanly speaking we are not capable of overturning
sin by our own strength except through the grace of Jesus Christ. We are sinful
by nature, and therefore more willing to do evil than good. That is why Christ came.
To set us the captives free. Search your conscience. Do you need help? Do you need to learn the truth about your
present circumstances? Will you accept the offer of freedom or will you fight
it?
Accepting that is itself a mountain. Admitting that
you are a slave is a tall order. Satan will work overtime to convince you that
you are not, that God wants to take away your freedom. Satan hides the truth
from you, blinds you. God offers you the truth. Without mincing words. That it
might set you free, and “ye [may] be free indeed” (John 8:32-36). Satan’s freedom is slavery in disguise. First he
hides the hideousness of your sin by giving it colorful names. Like gay for
homosexuality. “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put
darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and
sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in
their own sight!” (Isa 5:20-21).
Satan’s freedom degrades one. It lowers one. Makes one
dirty. One wallows in own vomit. The bed is transformed into a scatological
slimepit. That is Satan’s freedom. Dirty. Smells bad. Are you ready to accept
that hard bare knuckled truth and light which Christ is shining in your soul?
Can you smell the putrescence in those sins? (All sins smell bad before God,
all sins without distinction. The opposite are Righteous acts, called sweet savours
before God). Will you accept His free offer of true freedom or will you fight
it to death like the children of Israel did? Incidentally that is Satan’s chief
goal. To bring you so low to the ground level, that then he can easily kick you
into the hole and bury you. Next he will move on to his next victim, “seeking
whom he may devour” (1 Pe 5:8). Forget about words like bigot. Those are tools
of Satan’s distractions. The scales he pumps into our eyes.
This is the truth and the freedom which Christ is
offering. It is truth and just because it is truth, it hurts. Sometimes it
takes a hammer and fire to pierce through that welding. To separate one from
that sin and death. Hence Jude wrote, “And others save with fire, pulling them
out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.”
For a patient sometimes to heal, one has to take a
very bitter medicine. Only Christ can give you that desire and strength to take
that medicine. Ask him. “And him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out”
(John 6:37). Again it is written, “he satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth
the hungry soul with goodness” (Ps 107:9). Can you feel that longing or desire
to be completely set free? May God grant you the grace to feel so!
Let My People Go!
“And
afterward Moses and Aaron went in, and told Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD God of
Israel, Let my people go…” (Ex 5:1).
The children of Israel were in trouble. The new
Pharaoh who came after Joseph’s death was a monster. He saw that the children
of Israel were increasing in the land, and that worried him. Therefore he
devised what might as well be the very first beginning of the holocaust against
the Jews. First he did “set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their
burdens.” Next, “they made their lives bitter with hard bondage.” Next he
“charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river…”
It was at this time that the cry of the children of
Israel reached God. And He heard. And He came down to deliver them. And then
trouble began. Hardly had they crossed the Red Sea than they began to fight:
“Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the
wilderness?” (Ex 14:11). Such was the lot of Israel in Egypt. 430 years of
doing tasks they did not like, superintended by taskmasters they did not love,
in a country which wasn’t their home. Yet when the call for freedom came they
were reluctant to take it. They fought it to death. You are in bondage. Your
cry for help has come up before God. He has heard you. He has come down to
deliver you. Are you ready to go?
The Reasons People Give
Many reasons attend to this. Like bread. Others are
fears of the unknown. Others are afraid of grasshoppers and huge men. “The
land, through which we have gone to search it, is
a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw
in it are men of a great stature. And
there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which
come of the giants: and we were in our
own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight” (Nu 13:32-33).
Others are afraid they may never get another job if
they quit this one, though it is sheer drudgery. Superstitions and irrational
fears superimpose themselves on it. A pay slip can become an object of slavery,
refusing to let go.
Onions and Garlic
In short God had come down to offer His people
freedom, in answer to their own cry.
But when finally the bit where the rubber meets the tarmac came, they were
reluctant to engage the gear, and let the car go. It began with Moses, as the
reluctant driver. Next the captives themselves. When they got on the back of
that van, it was to begin one hell of a ride for both Moses and his passengers.
At every stage his passengers cried that it had been better if they had not
taken this ride. They fought the old man
until the van overturned. Moses died. And all the passengers who had left Egypt
alive died too. Except Joshua and Caleb.
Perhaps people can be addicted to oppression?
Culture and tribalism can make a peoples’ vision very short indeed. It is
slavery. Refusal to expand one’s world-view. The Israelites were adamant. They
refused to see beyond Egypt. They forgot that God was there with them, that He
“went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by
night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night” (Ex
13:21). They forgot their own cry, forgot their former tasks and their former
taskmasters. They forgot God’s miracles and promises.
Instead they became weighted down by such minor
things as food. “We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the
cucumbers, and melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick. But now
our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our
eyes” (Nu 11:5-6).
Some people fail to see far. They see only onions
and garlic. These became matters of life and death to the children of Israel.
Their vision became scandalously short. They refused to see the larger picture
of their own salvation. Their logic became inverted. Now Moses (and God by
extension) became their cruel master, not Pharaoh. God became not their
solution but their problem. They forgot and began their malevolent tantrums.
“Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man
that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him”
(Ex 32:1). What they were saying in effect was this: “for as for this God that
brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.”
People suffer bondage. Then they cry “Where is God?”
Yet He was constantly there with them. The people saw this and believed. But
their belief lasted only until the time of the next meal. Pharaoh now seemed
like he had been their erstwhile savior. The end was that the majority died in
the wilderness because of their unbelief. Not for want of freedom but for want
of onions and garlic.
You recognize you are in bondage. You have asked God
for help. Help has come. Search your conscience. What more are you missing? May
God grant you His grace. May it aid you in your search for Him. May you, one
day, stand high on His Mountain and shout to the whole world below that, “Free
at last! Thank God I am free at last!”
In Jesus Mighty Name! Amen!
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