November 20, 2000

Get more information about Bible Study for Texas here.

December 17 Lesson

God still releasing captives from slavery ___Exodus 14:21-15:2, 20-21 ___14:21Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided, 22and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left. ___23The Egyptians pursued them, and all Pharoah's horses and chariots and horsemen followed them into the sea. 24During the last watch of the night the Lord looked down from a pillar of fire and cloud at the Egyptian army and threw it into confusion. 25He made the wheels of their chariots come off so that they had difficulty driving. And the Egyptians said, "Let's get away from the Israelites! The Lord is fighting for them against Egypt." ___26Then the Lord said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand over the sea so that the waters may flow back over the Egyptians and their chariots and horsemen." 27Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at daybreak the sea went back to its place. The Egyptians were fleeing toward it, and the Lord swept them into the sea. 28The water flowed back and covered the chariots and horsemen--the entire army of Pharoah that had followed the Israelites into the sea. Not one of them survived. ___29But the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of wall of water on their right and on their left. 30That day the Lord saved Israel from the hands of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore. 31And when the Israelites saw the great power the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant. ___15:1Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord: I will sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted. The horse and its rider he has hurled into the sea. 2The Lord is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise him, my father's God, and I will exalt him. ... ___20Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron's sister, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women followed her, with tambourines and dancing. 21Miriam sang to them, "Sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted. The horse and the rider he has hurled into the sea."

___By Joe Blair
___I wanted very much to hear in his own words what life was like before and after he became a Christian. He put the contrast very plainly: "I was in a hole," he said of the time before he accepted Christ as Savior.
___As I think about his words, I think about Joseph's brothers first throwing him into a pit and later taking him out of the pit and selling him into slavery. Joseph overcame his slavery with God's help and later had his family--Israel, his father, and the 12 families of his brothers--join him in Egypt in order to escape famine conditions (see Genesis 37-50). They thrived in Egypt, and grew in population. Things went well for the people of Israel in Egypt for a long time. God delivered Joseph from slavery and by the means of Joseph establishing himself in Egypt, God delivered Israel and his family to Egypt to save them from desperate economic conditions. God delivers from slavery to life, just as he delivered my friend from "the hole," slavery, to freedom and life.
___"Moses stretched out his hand ..."
___Some slavery is imposed on people. The people of Israel lived as relatively free people in the land of Egypt for a long time. But a Pharaoh not friendly toward the Hebrews took power, and he saw the Israelites as a threat and a people whom he could exploit. He enslaved them. They cried out for deliverance and God delivered.
___Pharaoh, by the providence of God, said Israel could go; they could leave their slavery and journey to their freedom. However, they soon found themselves stymied. Pharaoh changed his mind about letting them go, and sent his army after them. Moses and Israel came to the Red Sea, which blocked their path, so they stood between the Egyptian army closing in on them from behind and the sea in front of them. The situation was impossible--they could not turn back and could not go forward. They needed a deliverer greater than Moses. Moses' act of stretching forth his hand was an act of trust in God who could deliver out of impossible situations. God delivers from imposed slavery. ?
___Some slavery is self-imposed. Paul's ringing proclamation in Galatians 3:1, "For freedom Christ has set us free," is a warning as well as an affirmation. We can be free or we can be the other way--in slavery. Since we are not gods, we are not complete. Consequently, we must bind ourselves to something or someone in order to complete ourselves. We seek deliverance from our incompleteness. We are not self-sufficient, we are weak and vulnerable, and we cannot save ourselves. We bind ourselves to that which we choose for a deliverer. Therefore, we are a people who will be in bondage to something.
___Each bondage we choose, except one--and we must choose one since we are not complete--is a bondage that takes life from us. Each bondage we chose except one could not exist unless we kept it alive in our own efforts. This is idolatry, and we know that while an idol does not live and is not a deliverer, we convince ourselves that the idol does. Is it materialism, or power or security at all costs that is our idol? Is it comfort or pleasure? All those ultimately take life from us. That is slavery, and we need a real deliverer to free us so that we may live.
___Out of all the bondage relationships we may choose, only one is a bondage of freedom. Remarkably, bondage to Jesus means freedom. Jesus does not take life from us, but gives it back, and that more abundantly (John 20:21). No one likes to be a slave, but the Apostle Paul gladly called himself a slave (Romans 1:1) of Jesus Christ. Jesus is self-sufficient. Jesus does not exist by our life. Jesus is God, and we are not gods. Jesus offers us relationship with him, a benevolent bondage, in which he gives us life. God delivers us from our self-imposed slavery.
___"The Lord drove the sea back ... and turned the sea into dry land."
___God rescues us sometimes in small steps and sometimes in dramatic fashion. The rescue of Israel was, to say the least, very dramatic. The sea, a barrier to Israel moving forward and away from the Egyptian army closing in on them, opened up and a way through the sea on dry land was before them. Scholars have tried to determine the exact site of the crossing, but not enough detail is present in the account. The point of the account is the miraculous deliverance of Israel from an impossible situation. If no way forward was open to them, the harsh treatment of the Egyptian army and a return to slavery was their lot.
___How often the recounting of this event became a call to Israel and others to place their faith in God in trying and threatening times. So it is for us today. Some people may say they have never had anything much dramatic happen in their Christian pilgrimage, especially so dramatic as a sudden and spectacular altering of circumstances when in a crisis situation. In a way, that is true for many of us, although we will claim it is only because of God's strength and redemptive presence that we made it through some crises. However, if a person has been traveling in the Christian pilgrimage for any length of time, the whole package of that experience considered at once, if we have eyes to see, is a dramatic deliverance. Also, is there anything more remarkable, more miraculous, than Jesus Christ dying upon the cross in order to free us from the slavery of sin and give us eternal life? We stood between sin and eternal death. We could not go back and correct the sin ourselves, and there was no way of escape we could devise before us. God provided the way in Christ. Christ takes upon himself our sins, absorbing them, and delivers us forward into eternal relationship with God.___
___"The waters ... covered ... the entire army of Pharaoh ..."
___The Egyptian army saw the deliverance of the Lord. They did not have to follow; they could have responded to God's testimony to himself at this point and become worshipers of him. They really chose to throw themselves against God; they chose their destiny. The same waters are involved, but what is deliverance for one is destruction for another. Deliverance rejected looks like judgment to the one rejecting. The absence of deliverance is destruction. For the Egyptian army to stay and not pursue Israel was deliverance for them; so God provided deliverance, but they did not put their trust in God at this crucial point.
___Suppose the physician tells the patient that his diagnosis is a terminal illness. However, the physician says he has a vaccine that will save the patient from those consequences. If the patient refuses, the pronouncement of deliverance becomes to the patient, because of his refusal, a pronouncement of destruction. How the pronouncement is acted on determines whether it is deliverance or judgment.
___God provides the way of deliverance for all, but we have the freedom to reject his deliverance. Freedom to choose is a wonderful and weighty responsibility. We act like spoiled children at times, thinking that our choices are of no consequence because we believe we should be treated better than our choices. Strangely and wonderfully, God does that, offering ways out and deliverance from bad choices. Ultimately, however, he gives us over to what we choose. Deliverance or judgment for us lies in our turning to or away from God's deliverance in Christ.
___"Israel saw the great works that the Lord did ..."
___Israel, to their credit, recognized at this point that deliverance was with God and by God. Of course, we may think, they should be able to see that. I wonder, however, how many times my eyes are closed to great work of God. Perhaps, unlike Moses, we walk by our "burning bushes" of experience. Jesus was always trying to get people to see. See that "sower," see that "mustard seed," see that "good Samaritan," see that father and his younger and elder sons, and the list could go on. Jesus could see in and through so many things the testimony and presence of God's great work, and he tries to get us to see.
___"Moses and the Israelites sang this song ..."
___Moses and the Israelites responded to the great work of deliverance with worship of God. Look at the wonderful words to express their worship. God is "strength," "might" and "salvation" (Exodus 15:2). They claim in this song of worship that "this is my God" (15:2). They "praise him" and "exalt him." Worship flows from appreciation and thankfulness for who God is. Israel, as a gathered congregation, sang this song again and again even years after this event.
___Worship is the most important thing we do. What or whom we worship determines to what or whom we really belong. If we look deep into our lives to determine what is most important to us at the foundation on which our existence stands, we will find that to which we belong. What we appreciate we worship. From our worship flows the action in our lives. Do we appreciate God? Has God acted in our lives and found us responsible to the degree that we are a thankful people? If so, we should need no motivation to worship God when we gather as church to worship him. Also, from our sincere worship flow actions of worship--stewardship, evangelism, missions, social ministries, etc.
___We have a song of worship to sing about God. The song, however stated and arranged, is about God's deliverance, and indeed ongoing deliverance from the slavery of sin and death to life in Jesus Christ.

For thought and discussion
___ What is your before and after description of your salvation? Perhaps, too, you can think of some crisis moment in your life where no way out or no answer seemed possible, and then matters worked themselves out. Was that the deliverance of the Lord? Do we give God proper credit for the ways he works in our lives?
___ Describe Israel's slavery by reviewing Chapter 1 of Exodus. What kinds of slavery exist today? Refer to those places where economic and political slavery reside and what we can do and what we want to ask God to do about it. Also, think of the more subtle forms of slavery that exist in our prosperous cultures. What can be done about that slavery? How does God want to deliver?
___ Take a moment for introspection. What is really important to you in your life? What is it that you really build your life around?
___What is it that you truly worship?
___ Are there slaveries in your life keeping you from celebrating the freedom God offers in Christ? Describe to yourself or someone you trust the deliverance you long for. In what ways does God offer deliverance for you? Are you willing to risk it, to go forward even if the going is hard?

Get printer-friendly version of this story


Send this story to a friend

---

Contents/ Masthead / Why We're Here / Links / Archive / E-mail us/ SUBSCRIBE!