Word of Salvation – Vol.47 No.46 – December 2002
God’s Commitment To Our Freedom
Advent Sermon by Rev. P. Abetz on Exodus 1:5
Scripture Readings: Exodus 1; 2Peter 1:3-11
Suggested Hymns: BoW: 449; 407; Rej: 288
Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
At the time when the Taliban regime in Afghanistan had collapsed, I saw a bit on television about how in Kabul, girls’ schools were re-opening, and classes recommencing. A lady teacher, who had continued to provide education for girls in her home wept for joy that now she had the freedom again to provide education for girls.
Other women were enjoying their new-found freedom to move about in public without having to be accompanied by a male, and not having to have their whole head covered. These people were beginning to savour the freedom that came with the ousting of the Taliban.
Some of the older members of this church who lived in Europe at the end of World War 2, can probably still remember the sense of joy and excitement when the Allies liberated their city. These older members well remember the joy of being free again!
But what is freedom? Is freedom, simply the absence of oppression? Is it the opportunity to do whatever we please?
The Old Testament speaks of the fact that slaves are to be set free after a certain time. Jesus speaks of freedom in Luke 4:18 where he says, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed.” Paul writes to the Galatians (5:1,13) reminding them that it is for freedom that Christ has set us free: “…You, my brothers, were called to be free.” So we see that freedom is a recurring theme in the Bible.
In the opening chapter of Exodus, our attention is drawn to God’s persistent and consistent commitment to the freedom of His people. First let me give a little of…
- The Historical Background
The Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, relates the beginning of everything. It also records the beginning of faith. It records God revealing himself to Abraham (12:1), and the beginnings of faith.
In Genesis 17:7-8, God promised Abraham to “be your God and the God of your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God, and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you, and to your descendants after you; and I will be their God.”
The Book of Exodus is an account of some of the actions of God to fulfil his promise to Abraham. If you are familiar with the book of Genesis and Exodus, you will know the story of Joseph, how he was given the coat of many colours by his father, which made his brothers despise him even more, and one day when they had the opportunity they sold him into slavery. He was sold as a slave to a high official in Egypt and, to cut a long story short, Joseph, through his ability to interpret dreams, had risen to be the second in charge in the whole land of Egypt. When Jacob, Joseph’s father discovered that his son Joseph was in Egypt, he and his whole extended family moved to Egypt in order to escape the famine that was sweeping the Middle East at that time. Jacob ended his days in Egypt, but he had made his sons swear that they would eventually carry his bones back to the land of Canaan, the land God had promised to give to his descendants.
To make sense of that story, we need to know that Joseph was a descendant of Abraham. The opening verses of Exodus link us immediately to the story of Joseph, and so link us to the story of Abraham, his great grandfather.
We are told here that the family multiplied greatly while in Egypt. From just being a family group of seventy people, they had continued to multiply and became exceedingly numerous.
Then hundreds of years later, a king comes to power who had no knowledge of how Joseph had saved the land of Egypt from the ravages of that drought by buying up and storing grain. This king began to be concerned about the number of Hebrews in Egypt. He feared they may turn on the Egyptians in time of war, and so the king decides to enslave the people, in the hope of curbing their birth rate.
Despite the horrendous oppression by the Egyptians, the Israelites continued to multiply. And so the king then takes the step of ordering the midwives to kill the baby boys at birth. When that did not achieve the desired results, the King of Egypt ordered that all baby boys had to be thrown into the river Nile.
Now that was horrific oppression. Imagine the heartache and anger, the grief and heart break in our own church community if every male child born in our congregation had to be thrown into the (name your local river or lake). The sense of loss would be excruciating for the whole community.
So here we have the people of Israel, horribly oppressed. Yet God had earlier promised Abraham that He would be his God and the God of his descendants after him for the generations to come. He promised them the land of Canaan. But here they were languishing in Egypt under the evil rule of Pharaoh.
If the descendants of Abraham now living in Egypt had any knowledge of the promises that God made to Abraham, they could well have asked: Where is God? Doesn’t God care? It’s all idle promises. God claims to hate oppression, but look at what He is allowing to happen to us! Why doesn’t God act?
Perhaps we have experienced similar kinds of thoughts and struggles in our own lives? When a close friend gets killed in a motor vehicle accident. When you have lost a child in death. Or people longing to have a child, but suffering repeated miscarriages. When your best plans for the future were shattered by circumstances beyond your control. When family issues became more painful than you ever thought possible. Perhaps at times you have wanted to cry out: God what are you doing?
If you have ever experienced these kinds of thoughts, then take courage from what we learn here of…
- God’s Response to Their Oppression
Notice how we are told that when Jacob and his descendants went down to Egypt, there were seventy of them, with Joseph already in Egypt. God had used the evil actions of Joseph’s brothers to prepare a safe haven for the descendants of Abraham.
Egypt, even though it was so far from the land of Canaan, which God had promised to give to Abraham’s descendants, had acted like a protective womb in which Jacob’s family could multiply rapidly.
If the famine in Palestine had not come about, Jacob’s family would have continued living in Palestine, and not increased in numbers so much, because of the harsher climatic conditions, and having to be nomads in a land that was not theirs.
So it was through the circumstances of the famine that God brought about the fulfilment of the promise that Abraham’s descendants would be as numerous as the grains of sand on the seashore, and that his descendants would become a great nation
The words, Joseph already in Egypt, tell us that God was involved in all of this. God’s mighty hand was at work, long before the famine. And now, several generations after Joseph died, the Egyptians were exploiting the people of Israel. The protective womb of Egypt had now become a hot bed of oppression.
Would the God who had made sure that Joseph was already in Egypt, also make sure something was already in place? The God, who fiercely hates oppression, who cares, guides and delivers. How is he going to react?
Read with me 2:23-25… “During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked at the Israelites and was concerned about them.”
Did you notice those words: God… heard, He remembered His covenant,… God looked… and was concerned about them. As the title ‘Exodus’ suggests, this book is about what God did to set His people free from their slavery. Free to live in their own land; the land He promised them through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
God raised up a leader in the person of Moses to lead the people out of Egypt. Moses wanted to liberate the Israelites in his own way (Chapter 2), but that was a disaster. He flees to Midian and tries to forget about the Israelites and their troubles. But that put Moses on a collision course with God, for God is not prepared to forget about the slavery of the Israelites. He is deeply committed to their freedom.
And so God points Moses back to his task at the burning bush. Moses came up with his excuses, and when God answered each one, he still basically said, I don’t want to go, (4:13) I am free, I am comfortable here in Midian. But God insisted, because He was and is committed to the freedom of His people.
In this season of advent, as we celebrate the fact that Jesus came into the world to give us freedom from slavery to sin, we do well to check our hearts and minds, and ask ourselves: Have we adopted the same attitude as Moses?
We enjoy the freedom of living in relationship with God through Jesus. Are we so comfortable that we find all kinds of excuses for ourselves as to why we can’t do anything to bring the gospel to others? Are we so comfortable in ‘Midian’, that we don’t care too much about those who are still enslaved to sin? Are we going to be so reluctant to be messengers of freedom that God will need to pick us up by the scruff of the neck and give us a burning bush experience before we commit to being part of God’s plan to bring freedom to those enslaved to sin?
How precious is our freedom in Christ? Is it not something that is worth declaring to others? Is that not the calling God has given to all who would call themselves disciples of Jesus?
But, what is…
- Genuine Freedom
I began by citing a few examples of freedom. Freedom is a wonderful thing. But just what is it? What is the freedom that God is so committed to for His people?
So many people think that freedom is to do as they please – to break all the rules. But that is not freedom. That is simply trading one slavery for another. True freedom is to be able to do what we ought. The freedom that God is committed to for us is the freedom to once again be in relationship with Him, and live the way He designed us to live.
The Garden of Eden story tells us that God created people so that they could be in fellowship with God, and enjoy living in His presence. God’s desire was that we be free agents. Not free in the sense of being accountable to no one, but free to obey Him, and so receive the benefits of being in fellowship with Him.
Had God wanted people that He could control, He could have created robots. But instead He created people who were free to serve Him. That also meant they were free to disobey Him. And that is what Adam and Eve did. They used their freedom to disobey God and so enslaved themselves to sin.
But as we know, God committed himself in Genesis 3:15 to our renewed freedom. He promised the coming of a Saviour who would set us free from slavery to sin.
The Old Testament sets before us many historic scenarios where God acted in a way that prefigured, or pointed forward to the final liberation that He would bring for His people.
Dear friends, God was so committed to our freedom, that He came down into this world Himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, and He paid the ransom to buy us back. We were enslaved to Satan himself. We had no ability to free ourselves from that slavery. But God so graciously, mercifully, lovingly liberates all who turn to Jesus Christ in faith.
We can be enslaved to many different things in life: tobacco, alcohol, drugs, sex, material possessions, our work, and more. There are many treatment programmes and counsellors and facilities available to help such people. But only those who know Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour have the goods needed to bring people the treatment programme needed to liberate people from slavery to sin.
In conclusion, as we move towards Christmas, let’s remember that Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. God coming into the world in the person of His son, so that He could win back our freedom. The freedom to live for God and with God, both and now and for eternity.
If the Afghan people can get excited about their new-found freedom, or the Dutch could dance in the streets on their liberation from NAZI occupation, how much more have we to celebrate?!
Let the world know that we have been set free! Set free to live for God and with God for eternity. Praise Him. Declare the Good News!
Amen.
Prayer:
Father God, we thank and praise you that even though we had enslaved ourselves to Satan himself, you were committed to bringing us into the glorious freedom of being your children. We marvel that you did that by coming into the world in the person of Jesus. We thank you that because of His saving work, we already now can walk in freedom – the freedom of taking delight in your laws, and taking delight in living by your commandments. We thank you that in Jesus you have given us everything we need for life and godliness.
Make us bold to speak of the freedom that we have in Jesus. May our Christmas celebrations reflect that freedom, and grant us courage to speak of the freedom that is ours in Jesus in a way that honours you, and brings people face to face with the claims of Jesus Christ.
In His Name we pray.
Amen.