Good morning, welcome to the 5MC and welcome to another beautiful week in the study of God’s Word. We continue in the book of Exodus and thus far we’ve seen quite the mess in getting any traction with God’s simple request to Moses..."go and tell Pharaoh to let my people go." As I read through chapter 6 several times this morning, I couldn’t help but chuckle and think to myself, “it was a simple request.” Yet it has been less than stellar so far for all involved. You have to think that God sits up in Heaven today just scratching His head as he looks into our lives and just mutters, “I told you exactly what to do, it was a simple request!” But you should never confuse simple with easy. Things in life often can be very simple to say, simple to understand and simple to grasp, but yet the opposite of easy to execute. Simple and easy are so very different.
So, God grabs the attention of Moses from a fiery shrub back in Exodus 3 and then proceeds to tell him exactly what to do, how to do it and even exactly what to say. He even allows him an assistant for the task in his older brother, Aaron. So far, a simple request with simple instructions. But from here on out, the simplicity vanishes, and you see people, the world, doubt, fear, pride and selfishness get into the mix and mess it all up. How? Moses wears a shroud of doubt about his shoulders the entire time God is instructing him. A man that just can't come to terms that he is worthy to be used by God. Pharaoh will not even listen to, much less consider the request to let the people go. In fact, we’ll see it will take all 10 plagues and their vicious death and destruction to finally move his rock hard heart. Moses then tells the people the message of God and the people won’t listen to him either. So, if we were studying this situation for effective communication, God gave it effectively and then it proceeded to fall apart immediately. It’s a pattern you see consistently in God’s Word, God’s plan is perfect until people get a hold of it.
But the lesson for today is from the message the Lord gives to Moses to then give to the Israelites. God’s heart is breaking for the Israelites as they are being treated so harshly and poorly by their captors, the Egyptians. But it’s not just compassion that is driving the Lord, it’s His promise. You see a promise from God is the most powerful force in the world. When God makes a promise, it is not in His character to even consider not fulfilling it. By now He had made a covenant (a promise) with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, promising them all that He would make Israel a great abundant nation in the promised land of Canaan. And folks, when God makes a promise, it will be done. But you know, God’s promises did not expire with the Israelites in Egypt 3500 years ago. God’s promises are eternal. The promises He makes to Moses in chapter 6 of Exodus, ring just as true today as they did when he first uttered them in the shadows of the pyramids.
You see, we in the US are not in slavery today to a people group. We are not rising each day to gather straw to make bricks at the end of a whip. Being beaten and cursed to push us along in our sweat-stained labor. Being worked for 14 hours a day in the burning Egyptian sun, watching our family and friends being abused alongside us. But folks, even though we are not in physical slavery today, countless are in bondage. There are no chains around our feet, but we are not free.
Bondage can be defined as “being under the forceful control of something or someone and being forced to do something, usually against one’s will.” Bondage today is as big a problem as in the day of Moses, maybe even bigger. Bondage today can come in many different shapes, forms and appearances. In fact, I’ve noticed that in 2019, satan is very good at packaging bondage in a nice shiny box with a big bow on top. We can be in bondage or even seek it out and be completely unaware. We think of bondage or slavery involving labor and historically, it usually does. Speaking of labor, do you love your work? Does it allow you to utilize your God given talents and gifts every day? Can you honestly say that you feel purpose in your job? If not, your job can be bondage. I can personally attest to this. For many years of my life I worked at jobs for one reason, money. I mean come on, it takes money to live and I needed to live so I should get as much money as I can, right? Wrong. I suffered self-induced bondage for years, as I did what I didn’t enjoy for a company I didn’t like, all to make the most money I possibly could. Folks, go back and look at the definition of bondage above, I was in bondage.
What about debt? Do you have more credit cards than socks? Is your car payment more than a small mortgage and financed for about as long? Are you buying things you don’t need, with money you don’t have to impress people you don’t know? Today, I see more people in bondage to debt than just about anything else, besides sexual sin. People openly engage in this pointless race with the world to prove through material items how worthy they are of love, respect and honor. It just doesn’t work that way. And speaking of sexual sin, what about pornography? Does this enslave you? Because of the internet and the availability of this to anyone that desires it, it has become a plague upon our society. A disease that is slowly decaying the flesh of the host.
What about alcohol or drugs? Bondage and slavery, in it’s purest form. What about internal anger, bitterness and hatred because you just can’t forgive wrongs done to you years ago? Absolute bondage that controls your daily thoughts and emotions much more than you know. What about food? Are you in bondage to your diet, good or bad? How about social media? There are few more addictive items in the world today than social media. I have in my own recent lifetime seen this epidemic sweep the world. People addicted to self-promotion. In bondage to what the world thinks of their lives. What about Netflix, Hulu, Prime, cable, satellite, and the hundreds of thousands of channels, movies and series at our fingertips? Did you know that the average American spends 35.5 hours a week in front of the TV? You might say this is entertainment and therefore its ok, but if you can’t control the habit, it’s bondage. I could go on and on with the ways satan packages bondage today, but the result of bondage is always the same, it separates us from God as it usurps our time that can be spent with Him and serving Him through serving others.
But we’re told in Exodus 6:6-8
“Say therefore to the people of Israel, ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. 7 I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. 8 I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord.’”
Don’t kid yourself and think that this passage only deals with being an Egyptian slave to a Pharaoh thousands of years ago. God’s Word is timeless and deals with timeless issues. What are you a slave to today? What holds you in bondage today? Squeezing you so tight that each breath is a desperate gasp to draw air into your lungs? Something that you feel you cannot escape no matter how far you run? Whatever it is, God can free you from it. He will “deliver you from your slavery” and “bring you out from the burdens” of what holds you in its relentless grip. Jesus Christ came to this planet to free us. To free us from the bondage of sin that will rob us of spending eternity with Him in Heaven. But He also came for so much more. He came and He left behind the precious Holy Spirit. A “helper” for us, so that we cannot just exist in this life and live it in a mundane fashion, but live it to the full. An abundant life, full of purpose, peace, reward, serving, loving and giving. And this abundant life starts through embracing Jesus Christ and allowing Him to deliver you from what holds you in bondage today.
The promise of God rings so true for each of us today, He came to deliver us from our slavery and bondage. Claim the promise of God today, claim the freedom of Jesus Christ.
Blessings upon each of you.
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