Liberating Hands Series

Theme:   Out Stretched Arm

Text: Exodus 3:7-20

Greetings: The Lord is good and His love Endures forever! Peace be unto you!!

Introduction: “Is the Lord's hand waxed short?” (Numbers 11:23) is our Annual Theme. We have seen the creative hands of God, the reigning hands of God. This month, we are thinking about the “Liberating Hands of God”, based on “With a mighty hand and outstretched arm; His love endures forever.” – Psalm 136:12.

The out stretched Arm of God refers to delivering act of God, the power of God, the sovereignty, and the Omnipotent of God. It shows God’s absolute authority over every kingdom on the earth.

This Exodus 3:7-20 reveals that God is involved in the History of the World. The Narrative of Exodus can be divided as:

Chapters 1 to 16 deal with the slavery of the Israelites in Egypt and their departure.

Chapters 17 to 24 tell of the revelation of God at Sinai to all, the giving of the law and formation of a nation.

Chapters 25 to 40 are about the “tent of meeting”, the tabernacle, the dwelling of God.

Text:

Exodus 3:7-8 “I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey…”.

Exodus 3:17 ‘I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt unto the land of the Canaanites…’

We see three important actions of God from the perspectives of Liberation. He Listens, He liberates out, and he leads up. God’s identification in our pains is to exhibit his intervention and establish freedom in our identity.

1. God listens to the cries (Exodus 3:7,9).

God listens to the cries of the Israelites. The Lord has come down after he heard their cries rather than organised Prayers. Most of the times, It’s true that many of our organised prayers go in vain. We are tired of a tight program schedule, and having fixed a time limit. We are wearied and God also unhappy with our routine, lifeless worships.

Of course, OT is concerned about an appointed time to sacrifice in the morning, and in the evening of every day but are they offered with a sincere prayer is the real concern.

The Lord says that Most of the organised worship services, prayer meetings had become abhor to the Lord. He detests them. He hates them and disinterested in them. (Read: Isaiah 1:11-15, Matthew 9:13, Romans 12:1). Do our worships, services, and celebrations lead us to Christ for hollow experience or shallow experience?

Here, Torah brings an astonishing flurry of verbs in the Exodus events: “the Israelites groaned under their slavery, and cried out. Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God. God heard their moaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And God saw the Israelites, and God knew” (Exodus 2:23-25).  According to Torah, knowing is making the relationships intimate, engaged, and compelling. Knowing is the acquaintance of empathy and justice.

Hagar and Ismail cried and wept, God heard their cries. He answered them (Genesis 21:13-15).

When we read the sentence that ‘God remembered’, naturally we have a question. When Did God forget? Can God forget?

There is no such thing as forgetfulness before God’s throne. For God to remember is for God to respond, “I am here, to the people’s cries”. I am with them in their present afflictions and I will be with them in their future afflictions. So, “I am that I am.”

God heard the cries of the senior citizens, the young couples, the unmarried youth, and the infants of the Israelites in Egypt. He heard the cries of women, widows, weak and oppressed. God listens to our cries irrespective of problems and age. Some of our longings are for years, but some are very recent. But, God hears our cries. So, he liberates.

2. God liberates from the bondage (Exodus 3:8a, 10-12)

Zodhiates comments that their bondage in Egypt was certainly a part of God’s overall plan.

God made a covenant with Abraham. Your offspring shall be aliens, shall be selves, and shall be oppressed for 400 years (Genesis 15:13, Acts 7:6, EXODUS 1:1-14).

Whether it was 400 years or 430 years? The exact duration of the sojourn in Egypt was 430 years as per the records of Exodus 12:40-42. St. Paul affirms that the period from the confirming of the Abrahamic Covenant until the giving of the Law was 430 years (Galatians 3:17).

The calculation goes as it is: Isaac was sixty years of age when Jacob was born, and he went down into Egypt and lived as alien (Genesis 26:3), and Jacob lived alien for one hundred and thirty years (Genesis 47:8-9; Psalm 105:23), together makes it to one hundred and ninety; and then Israelites were in Egypt (Psalm 105:24-25) for two hundred and ten years, which completes the sum of four hundred years. (Hebrews 11:13)