Released To Worship Series

Released to worship

In this Chapter we study the Bible further, to understand God’s divine plan that He purposed in order to free us from every form of bondage and enslavement in our lives.

In Exodus 2:23, we read, “Years passed, and the king of Egypt died. But the Israelites continued to groan under their burden of slavery. They cried out for help, and their cry rose up to God.” (NLT)

The people of Israel were in slavery and bondage to the Egyptians. Pharaoh, the King of Egypt, was not only a hard man, but one who ruled the people with an iron hand. Anyone who was captured by the Egyptians had almost no hope of escape from Pharaoh’s cruel reign, as his heavy hand made them his bond servants.

A person who was in bondage functions like a machine with absolutely no will of their own. They have no direction, no way they could fulfil any of their desires and are subjected to a life of routine and drudgery.

Pharaoh was using the people of Israel as slaves to build and establish his own Kingdom. The spirit of Pharaoh didn’t care about the feelings or desires of those whom he had subjected. The people of Israel were in deep distress and as they struggled with their lives day in and day out, they called out to the Lord to have mercy on them and deliver them. The rule of Pharaoh was such that he gave the people of Israel no freedom or the time to seek God or worship Him.

For those of us who are so caught up in this rat race, where work and earnings becomes our top priority, so that we have no time for God, His word, prayer or fellowship with other believers, it’s time we realized that we too are in bondage. If we continue this way, we will come to a stage in our lives when we will look back to realize and be saddened by the fact that we have only grown older but have not accomplished anything substantial in our lives.

The people of Israel were crying out to the Lord so they could be brought out of their bondage, and be set free to worship the Lord once again.

If we sincerely seek the Lord to deliver us from our bondage, He will come to set us free. However, we must always keep in mind that the freedom and deliverance God brings us, is so we will worship the Lord and fulfill His purposes for our lives. Sometimes we are so overwhelmed with our cares, worries and difficulties that we hardly have time to seek after God. In the midst of our problems we must call on the Lord, and He will do things way beyond our thinking and understanding. There is absolutely no situation or problem that is too hard for the Lord to handle.

The cry of the people of Israel reached the ears of the Lord and He sends Moses to deliver them from the hands of Pharaoh. God’s ways are strange and mysterious. Moses whom the Lord called to liberate the people of Israel, was raised in the very Palace of Pharaoh, the King of Egypt as his own son.

Pharaoh did not realize that the child he was rearing in his Palace, would one day come back as a leader of Israel, to break the power of his iron hands and free the people of Israel. If Pharaoh had an inkling that this Moses would one day come against him, he might have tried to kill him but the Lord had a purpose and protected Moses all through the time he was growing up in Pharaoh’s Palace.

In Exodus 7:16, the Lord said to Moses, “Say to him (Pharaoh), ‘The Lord God of the Hebrews sent me to tell you, “Let my people go to worship me in the desert.” So far you have not listened.” (GW)

When Moses went and requested Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go so they could worship the Lord in the desert, Pharaoh’s retort was that they could very well worship their God right where they are. The Egyptians were an idolatrous people. They worshiped the Nile River and the Sun because they believed that they were two main sources of their sustenance.

In a place where people worship the creation instead of the Creator the land gets defiled. Pharaoh was a hard man and would not agree to allow the people to be set free to go and worship the Lord. There was no way the people of Israel would have the freedom to worship the Lord in a place like Egypt.

We will study briefly from the history of the people of Israel and try to understand and correlate significance of what Jesus did to bring about freedom from our captivity. This will help us realize that, the solution for our problems does not come from man but only from the Lord Jesus. Whatever be our enslavement, it is the Lord alone who can free us from every form of bondage.