Get Free from Egypt

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. ~ Genesis 1:1

And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. ~ Exodus 3:9

These mid-week encouragements were originally intended to help us through the isolation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Now they are written amid the chaos of brutality, frustration, and uprisings. The brutal and general racism found consistently in some aspects of law enforcement has caused deep frustration among those who desire justice and dignity for all persons. The angst and anger caused by deep ideological divides within the political and moral composition of American and Western culture has resulted in riots and rebellion. Isolation, economic despair, and fear of the unknown have only served to heighten the anxiety we all feel.

It is important to remember that God created order where there was none. God spoke and nothing turned into something; chaos turned into order. Scripture repeatedly informs us that God fervently opposes oppression and regularly sets captives free. God even paid the highest price so that the humanity God created in God’s own image could be free from the oppression of sin and death. In the Bible, sin is depicted as using God-imaged self-determination to resist God and uplift self (aka the flesh) above God. In the Old Testament, the world of human will and self-worship is epitomized by the Egyptians who enslaved Israel.

Now, consider this prophecy of Isaiah:

Behold, the Lord is riding on a swift cloud and comes to Egypt; and the idols of Egypt will tremble at his presence, and the heart of the Egyptians will melt within them. And I will stir up Egyptians against Egyptians, and they will fight, each against another and each against his neighbor, city against city, kingdom against kingdom; and the spirit of the Egyptians within them will be emptied out, and I will confound[a] their counsel, and they will inquire of the idols and the sorcerers, and the mediums and the necromancers; and I will give over the Egyptians into the hand of a hard master, and a fierce king will rule over them, declares the Lord God of hosts. ~ Isaiah 19:1-4

Throughout this period of being forced out of the church building, I have been inspired to view our shared Christian/religious experience as a crisis and an opportunity. The crisis is obvious, but the opportunity may not seem so. My thoughts continually go back to the opportunity and crisis faced by the Israelites as they finally escaped from Egypt. It’s interesting to note that the Israelites saw the obvious opportunities but were not clear on their impending crisis. They had not known how deeply rooted they were in the culture of Egypt. After being set free they quickly despised the unknowns of the wilderness and desired to return to the predictable provision and routine of enslavement to Egypt. Despite witnessing the Lord’s systematic defeat of Egyptian sources of pride and its gods of the flesh, the Israelites feared discomfort more than the relative comfort of oppression.

I am convinced that we have been given a gift. We’ve been sent into the wilderness to lose our old Egyptian ways. We are now wandering amid chaos and oppression with only God’s holy fire and cloud to follow. When we follow the Lord, with Christ Jesus as our leader, we bring order to the chaos, mercy, and justice to the oppressed, and light in the darkness.