Don't Run To Egypt

“Don’t Run to Egypt”

Introduction:

A worldly kind of person came to the preacher, defending her practice of attending worldly entertainments. She said, "But, preacher, I can take Jesus Christ with me wherever I go." The preacher after a few moments of thought quietly replied, "Indeed, is that so? I didn’t know that was the order of the Bible. Is it for you to lead Jesus to where you want to go or for Him to lead you where He wants you to be?"

All throughout the Scriptures Egypt is used as an analogy of the world or of the life apart from God and Zion is used to refer to the church or to a life with God. On many occasions the prophets had to call the people back out of a spiritual Egypt and back to spiritual Zion, and still today the same thing is going on.

I never have understood why people in the church would want to go back into the world. Perhaps through trials and times in the wilderness people start wanting to go back into the world. You may remember as Israel wandered in the wilderness things got tough for them at times, and without fail when things got tough the people began to murmur and wish they were back in Egypt. I wonder how badly they missed the point, i wonder if they had forgotten what Egypt was really like, I wonder if they forget the forced labor and the feel of the Egyptian whips on their backs. Sometimes through the wilderness and through trials we can start to get the notion and buy into the Devil’s lie that Egypt might be appealing. There were times in Israel’s history also when they didn’t like the standard that God had set, they thought they knew better how they should live their lives and instead of submitting they without fail would grumble and start talking again about Egypt. I wonder if they had forgotten what Egypt was really like. I wonder if they forgot the forced labor and the feel of the Egyptian whips on their backs. Sometimes when we want to live by our own standards we start to desire to go back into the world thinking we know what is best for us, but really we are the ones missing out.

Sometimes we forget what the world was really like. Have you forgotten what it was like to be in bondage. The Bible teaches us that apart from Christ we are really in slavery, and that to be without Christ is to be separate from Christ, without citizenship, without covenant of promise and without hope and without God in this world. Perhaps at times through our desire to sin the allure of the world of Egypt seems so great that we forget what it was really like to be apart from him. The point is that there was danger back in Egypt. Can you imagine as Israel was in the wilderness wandering around if the people would have gone back. How would they have been welcomed. I would assume it would not be to a welcoming party and a feast. They probably would have been executed, the may have been lucky and put back into slavery, but probably a harsher slavery. Do they forget the false idols that were there that may have been a temptation to drag them away from the living God. Where do you think Aaron and crew learned of crafting the golden calf, I would imagine it was through the corruption in Egypt.

C. S. Lewis, “Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

Text: Isaiah 30:1-7

I. We Don’t Need to Go To Egypt

On many occasions Israel wanted to go back into their slavery in Egypt. For example when they were getting tired of the Manna they received the grumbled against God ans said life would be better in Egypt. Had they forgotten that God was leading them to the Promised Land, which was described as a land flowing with milk and honey. They were willing to give up the Promised Land for a land of slavery and oppression just so they could get what they wanted right away. We live in a society that wants instant gratification. People want to please themselves and do it immediately, but they forget sometimes they need to delay gratification. I see people on a regular basis consciously choose to give up what God has to offer in this life and in eternal life in Heaven for the pleasure of their flesh right now. They want to go into Egypt, but I want to warn you, don’t go into Egypt, because they have nothing to offer you in reality. Whether we want to admit it it or not we are influenced by the things of this world. We are influenced by the things we watch, the things we see, and the culture in which we live in, we cannot escape that. Some of the ways we are influenced are not bad in and of themselves. For example, we can be influence by technology in ways that other cultures were not, but more often than not that influence is negative.