Freed For Fidelity Series

Students, what’s the best day of school? Well, definitely not Mondays since you have the whole week to get through. Fridays aren’t bad. Get through that school day and the weekend awaits. While weekends are nice, before you know it, Monday has rolled around again. Ugh. No, the best day of school is the day before summer vacation. I remember the sense of freedom I felt as I left school for summer break. Before I started working over the summers, those months off from school meant freedom to sleep in and the freedom to ride my bike pretty much wherever I wanted to any day of the week.

Isn’t that what freedom means—the right to do whatever we want and no one telling us that we can’t? As we continue our sermon series on Moses, we’ll see that Israel’s freedom from slavery in Egypt didn’t mean that they could now do whatever they wanted. God made that clear with the giving of the Ten Commandments. At Mt. Sinai, the Israelites would learn that they had also been freed for something—they had been freed for fidelity. That is, they had been freed by God to live faithfully for him as his treasured people. Like the Israelites, we too have been made for more—to use our freedom from sin, which Jesus won for us, to faithfully serve him and others. Let’s find out why this is a blessing and not a burden. (Read text.)

Exactly three months after leaving Egypt, the Israelites arrived at the foot of Mt. Sinai. In all, the Israelites would spend almost a year at Mt. Sinai. One big event that happened there was the giving of the Ten Commandments. If you were to make a comic strip of that event, how many frames would it have? A frame of the Israelites camping before Mt. Sinai? A frame of Moses climbing the mountain? Then a frame of him returning clutching the two tablets of stone inscribed with the Ten Commandments? If so, you’d be skipping 40 days’ worth of excitement! This is how events unfolded.

On his first trip up Mt. Sinai, Moses met with God and was directed to tell the Israelites: “You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Ex. 19:4-6)

Tell me, what’s the normal reaction if a parent calls home and says: “I expect the living room to be tidy and the dinner table set by the time I return. Why? Because I said so!” Wouldn’t the children who are expected to clean up do so with much grumbling? On the other hand, if the parent says: “Hey, I’m picking up pizza for supper and I also bought ice cream to eat while we watch a movie. Can you all tidy up the living room and set out plates and napkins before I get home?” Won’t the reaction be much more cheerful? After all, Mom or Dad is going through some trouble and expense for an enjoyable evening.

Likewise, the opening words God spoke to the Israelites at Mt. Sinai reminded them that he was their loving, Savior-God who had already done much for them and who was going to do more. Therefore the commandments that he was about to give them weren’t coming from a taskmaster who enjoyed bossing people around. No, God wanted the Israelites to retain an ongoing privileged relationship with him.

God said that the Israelites were his segula—treasured possession. Your segula might be the car you rebuilt and take to car shows—the car that you don’t let anyone else drive. Or your segula might be nothing more than a neat rock you found on a hike. No one else understands why you brought the thing home, but you do. It’s precious because you love it, not because you would get any money if you tried selling it. That was also true of the Israelites. They were precious because God loved them, not because there was anything about them that made them unique from the other peoples of the world.

But didn’t the Israelites first have to obey God to be treated as his segula? Isn’t that what God meant when he said: “…if you obey me fully…then…you will be my treasured possession”? But God had already demonstrated that the Israelites were precious to him when he called them his “firstborn” and rescued them from Egypt (Ex. 4:22). Therefore, the commands that he was about to give them were meant to keep the Israelites in this blessed relationship. It’s like your boss inviting you and your family to spend a month on his yacht sailing the Caribbean. As long as you remain on the yacht, you’ll enjoy the refreshing sea breeze and eat sumptuous meals prepared by the chef. But if you decide you don’t want to be on the yacht anymore and jump ship, well, you chose to turn your back on all the amenities the yacht offered and all the places it would have taken you. So it was with the Israelites. They were already cruising with God to the Promised Land. One purpose of God’s commandments was to outline how they could remain in the relationship, like how guardrails on a yacht keep passengers from falling overboard.