Tony Campolo tells the story of a town where all the residents are ducks. Every Sunday the ducks waddle out of their houses and waddle down Main Street to their church. They waddle into the sanctuary and squat in their proper pews. The duck choir waddles in and takes its place, and then the duck minister comes forward and opens the duck Bible. He reads to them: “Ducks! God has given you wings! With wings you can fly! With wings you can mount up and soar like eagles. No walls can confine you! No fences can hold you! You have wings. God has given you wings, and you can fly like birds!”
All the ducks shout, “Amen!” AND THEN THEY ALL WADDLE HOME. (Tony Campolo, Let Me Tell You a Story, Word, 2000; www.PreachingToday.com)
They don’t really believe they can fly! Oh, they enjoy hearing sermons about their freedom, but somehow they’re not all that convinced.
It seems to me that a lot of God’s people live the same way. They listen to sermons about their salvation and freedom in Christ, but they live like they’re still in bondage to things like bitterness, lust, or fear. The say “amen” when the preacher says they can fly, but they continue to waddle around in a complacent mediocrity, accepting their own sinful attitudes and actions as the norm.
My dear friends, why do so many continue to live this way? Do you want to be truly free? Then I invite you to turn with me to Exodus 11, Exodus 11, where we see how God set his ancient people free after they had been slaves for 430 years in Egypt.
Exodus 11:1 Now the Lord had said to Moses, “I will bring one more plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt. After that, he will let you go from here, and when he does, he will drive you out completely. (NIV)
But they won’t go away empty-handed.
Exodus 11:2-3 Tell the people that men and women alike are to ask their neighbors for articles of silver and gold.” (The Lord made the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the people, and Moses himself was highly regarded in Egypt by Pharaoh’s officials and by the people.) (NIV)
God will take care of his people, providing them with everything they need when the Egyptians lose just about everything they have. With that assurance, Moses goes to Pharaoh one more time.
Exodus 11:4-7 So Moses said [to Pharaoh], “This is what the Lord says: ‘About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the slave girl, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt—worse than there has ever been or ever will be again. But among the Israelites not a dog will bark at any man or animal.’ Then you will know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. (NIV)
Israel’s God will protect His people, but the Egyptian gods will be impotent to protect the Egyptians. The goddess Isis, wife and sister of Osiris, supposedly protected children, but this last plague will demonstrate her total incompetence. The Egyptians will see that the god they trusted to protect their children is a total fraud. Then…
Exodus 11:8 All these officials of yours will come to me, bowing down before me and saying, ‘Go, you and all the people who follow you!’ After that I will leave.” Then Moses, hot with anger, left Pharaoh. (NIV)
Even though Pharaoh has stubbornly refused to let God’s people go, his own officials will beg them to leave!
Exodus 11:9-10 The Lord had said to Moses, “Pharaoh will refuse to listen to you—so that my wonders may be multiplied in Egypt.” Moses and Aaron performed all these wonders before Pharaoh, but the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go out of his country. (NIV)
That’s so God could demonstrate His power over all the Egyptian gods who were nothing but worthless idols. So…
DON’T TRUST IN IDOLS.
Don’t depend on worthless trinkets. Don’t rely on impotent icons. The Egyptians trusted in their gods, and those gods failed to save them. And so it is when any of us trust in anyone or anything else but YHWH, the Lord of the Bible. Those things will fail us as well.
In his book, The Names of God, Ken Hemphill tells the story of a woman who made a frantic 911 call, bringing police to her home. She had only been able to communicate that she needed help and was being killed. When police arrived, they found a bloody knife beside her lifeless body on the kitchen floor. Blood was spattered across the room, yet police found not even a single cut or puncture wound on her body. Then they noticed a trail of blood leading into the next room and followed it. There, they found a large dying boa constrictor.
Apparently the snake had been raised as a pet, but that day the snake wrapped itself around the woman as she was cooking in the kitchen. For whatever reason, she allowed the snake to wrap itself around her body; but when it began to squeeze its muscular body around her, she knew she was in danger. In a panic, she grabbed a knife and began to slash away at the snake. She managed to mortally wound it, but was herself killed in the process. (Ken Hemphill, The Names of God, B&H Books, 2001, p. 111; www.PreachingToday.com)
That’s what happens when we make pets of the idols in our lives. A first, it seems like harmless fun, but eventually it chokes the life right out of us. Now, we don’t rely on Isis, Osiris, or any of the other Egyptian gods today, but there are a lot of other things we rely on that are just as worthless if not downright dangerous.
In his book, The Reason for God, Tim Keller talks about the idols that drive us and enslave us today. For example, Keller says:
“If you center your life and identity on your spouse or partner, you will be emotionally dependent, jealous, and controlling. The other person's problems will be overwhelming to you.
“If you center your life and identity on your family and children, you will try to live your life through your children until they resent you or have no self of their own. At worst, you may abuse them when they displease you.
“If you center your life and identity on your work and career, you will be a driven workaholic and a boring, shallow person. At worst you will lose family and friends and, if your career goes poorly, develop deep depression.
“If you center your life and identity on money and possessions, you'll be eaten up by worry or jealousy about money. You'll be willing to do unethical things to maintain your lifestyle, which will eventually blow up your life.
“If you center your life and identity on pleasure, gratification, and comfort, you will find yourself getting addicted to something. You will become chained to the “escape strategies” by which you avoid the hardness of life.
“If you center your life and identity on relationships and approval, you will be constantly overly hurt by criticism and thus always losing friends. You will fear confronting others and therefore will be a useless friend.
“If you center your life and identity on a “noble cause,” you will divide the world into “good” and “bad” and demonize your opponents. Ironically, you will be controlled by your enemies. Without them, you have no purpose.
“If you center your life and identity on religion and morality, you will, if you are living up to your moral standards, be proud, self-righteous, and cruel. If you don't live up to your moral standards, your guilt will be utterly devastating. (Tim Keller, The Reason for God, Dutton, 2008, pp. 275-276; www.PreachingToday.com)
That is the essence of idolatry – centering one’s life and identity on anyone or anything else but God, even if those things are good things. But they can only lead to bondage and pain. On the other hand, if we center our life and identity on God, and God alone, then we are set free! So if you want to be truly free, don’t trust in idols. Instead…
TRUST IN THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB.
Depend on the blood of God’s lamb shed for you. Rely on His sacrifice on your behalf. That’s what God told Israel to do. After 430 years of slavery in Egypt, God was finally going to set them free, but only after the blood of a lamb was shed.
Exodus 12:1-2 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, “This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. (NIV)
This was a new beginning for Israel! Even though it was the spring of the year, it was to become the first of the year for Israel.
Exodus 12:3-11 Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat. The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the people of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. Do not eat the meat raw or cooked in water, but roast it over the fire—head, legs and inner parts. Do not leave any of it till morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it. This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the Lord’s Passover. (NIV)
They are to eat roast lamb with their traveling clothes, because they will be forced to leave Egypt immediately. In fact, the Egyptians themselves will urge them to leave.
Exodus 12:12-13 “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn—both men and animals—and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt. (NIV)
The blood of the lamb will be their protection and their deliverance!
Dr. William Allen Dean, in his book also entitled The Names of God, says that “in every eastern country blood at the door is always the symbol of a welcome. Very often a wedding is sealed simply by the slaying of a sacrifice and by putting the blood on the door or the doorsill while the groom carries his bride across that bloody doorsill into his home.” By doing that, he is welcoming her into his home, promising to care for her the rest of her life. (Dr. William Allen Dean, The Names of God, p.34)
In the same way, blood on Israel’s doorways welcomed YHWH into their homes. God told them, “When I see the blood I will pass over you.” In other words, God will cross over the threshold, come into that home where He is welcomed, and keep the death angel from doing any harm there. In fact, according to Exodus 11:7, he will not even allow a dog to bark. Literally, “not a dog will sharpen its tongue” against any of them.
God told Israel to trust in the blood of the lamb, and that’s what God tells us. If you want my protection, and if you want to be set free from your bondage, then trust in “the blood of the Lamb.”
According to the New Testament, that Lamb is none other than Jesus Christ Himself. In John 1, John the Baptist saw Jesus and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). 1 Corinthians 5:7 calls Christ, “Our Passover lamb.” And 1 Peter 1:19 says we are redeemed, we are set free, “with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.”
Jesus is God’s Passover Lamb. He shed His blood on the cross for our sins. And when we by faith apply that blood to the door of our hearts, then God is welcomed there. When we trust in the blood Jesus shed for us on the cross, then the Deliverer, YHWH Himself, comes into our lives and prevents the destroyer from doing any more harm.
On November 26, 2008, a gang of terrorists stormed the Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai, India. After the carnage had left 200 people dead, a reporter interviewed a guest who had been at the hotel for dinner that night. The guest described how he and his friends were eating dinner when they heard gunshots. Someone grabbed him and pulled him under the table. The assassins came striding through the restaurant, shooting at will, until everyone (or so they thought) had been killed. Miraculously, this man survived. When the interviewer asked the guest how he lived when everyone else at his table had been killed, he replied, “I suppose because I was covered in someone else's blood, and they took me for dead.” (Ravi Zacharias, Has Christianity Failed You? (Zondervan, 2010), p. 42; www.PreachingToday.com)
This is what Christ did for us when He shed His blood on the cross. His blood covers every believer with the result that we not only live, we have eternal life! He died in our place for our sins, so we could live forever with Him the kind of life He designed us to live.
My dear friends, if you want to be truly free, don’t trust in your idols; trust in the blood of God’s Lamb shed for you. Then…
GET UP AND GET OUT OF YOUR BONDAGE.
Leave the life of captivity. Get away from the place of slavery and the things that enslave you. That’s what the Israelites had to do.
Exodus 12:29-30 At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well. Pharaoh and all his officials and all the Egyptians got up during the night, and there was loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead. (NIV)
Last week, there was a lot of anguish when just 12 people died in Aurora, Colorado. Imagine the anguish if every household in that town lost a son. That’s what was going on in Egypt. Every Egyptian household lost a favored son. So…
Exodus 12:31-32 During the night Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Up! Leave my people, you and the Israelites! Go, worship the Lord as you have requested. Take your flocks and herds, as you have said, and go. And also bless me.” (NIV)
God humbled Pharaoh, who was worshipped as a god himself, to the point of begging Moses and Aaron to bless him. Finally, he came to fear Israel’s God and wanted YHWH’s blessing, not the curse of His plagues.
Exodus 12:33-37 The Egyptians urged the people to hurry and leave the country. “For otherwise,” they said, “we will all die!” So the people took their dough before the yeast was added, and carried it on their shoulders in kneading troughs wrapped in clothing. The Israelites did as Moses instructed and asked the Egyptians for articles of silver and gold and for clothing. The Lord had made the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the people, and they gave them what they asked for; so they plundered the Egyptians. The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Succoth. There were about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children. (NIV)
600,000 Israeli households were freed that day. When you add the wives and children, that means 2 to 3 million people!
Exodus 12:38-42 Many other people went up with them, as well as large droves of livestock, both flocks and herds. With the dough they had brought from Egypt, they baked cakes of unleavened bread. The dough was without yeast because they had been driven out of Egypt and did not have time to prepare food for themselves. Now the length of time the Israelite people lived in Egypt was 430 years. At the end of the 430 years, to the very day, all the Lord’s divisions left Egypt. Because the Lord kept vigil that night to bring them out of Egypt, on this night all the Israelites are to keep vigil to honor the Lord for the generations to come. (NIV)
After 430 years of being stuck in slavery, God set them free in an instant. God kept vigil to bring them out of Egypt, but they still had to leave Egypt if they were to be truly free.
Imagine the Israelite who said, “I’m not leaving; I like my life as a slave too much.” Even though he was free to go and even urged to go, he could never be free if he stayed in Egypt.
In the same way, if we want to be truly free, then we too must leave our place of slavery. God has set us free through the blood of His Son, so stop living in bondage! Get up and get out of your prison. You are free – free to love and not hate, free to give and not take, free to be good and not bad. so what’s holding you back? Get up and get out of those old habits that once bound you. Then start living the life God wants you to live.
God will help you as He helped Israel. He will “keep vigil” to bring you out of bondage, as well. Just take that first step of faith and trust Him to do it for you.
In his book Ghost Soldiers, Hampton Sides tells the story of a dramatic mission during World War II. On January 28th, 1945, 121 hand-selected Army Rangers slipped behind enemy lines in the Philippines in an attempt to rescue 513 American and British POW's who had spent three years in a hellish prison camp near the city of Cabanatuan.
Sides describes the first effects of liberation as chaos and fear. The prisoners were too mentally brittle to understand what was taking place. Some even scurried away from their liberators.
One particular prisoner, Bert Bank, refused to budge, even when a Ranger walked right up to him and tugged his arm.
“C'mon, we're here to save you,” he said. “Run for the gate.”
Bank still would not move. The Ranger looked into his eyes and saw they were vacant, registering nothing.
“What's wrong with you?” he asked. “Don't you want to be free?”
A smile formed on Bank's lips as the meaning of the words became clear, and he reached up to the outstretched hand of the Ranger.
The Rangers searched all the barracks for additional prisoners, then shouted, “The Americans are leaving. Is there anybody here?” Hearing no answer, they left.
But there was one more POW—Edwin Rose. Edwin had been on latrine duty and somehow missed all the shooting and explosions. When he wandered back to his barracks, he failed to notice the room was empty and lay down on his straw mat and fell asleep. Edwin had missed the liberation. But there was a reason. Edwin was deaf.
Four Americans died in the rescue; two Rangers in the firefight and two prisoners who perished for reasons of poor health. The freed prisoners marched 25 miles and boarded their ship home. With each step, their stunned disbelief gave way to soaring optimism. Even Edwin Rose made it. He finally woke up and realized liberation had come. (Hampton Sides, Ghost Soldiers Doubleday, 2001; www.PreachingToday.com)
When will we wake up and realize our liberation has come?
If you want to be truly free, don’t trust in your idols; instead, trust in the blood of the Lamb, and get up and get out of your bondage.
That’s the gospel, my friends – the Good News. It’s not just for the unbeliever. It’s for those of us who believe, even more so.
Eugene Peterson put it this way: The Gospel message says, “You don't live in a mechanistic world ruled by necessity; you don't live in a random world ruled by chance; you live in a world ruled by the God of Exodus and Easter. He will do things in you that neither you nor your friends would have supposed possible.” (Eugene H. Peterson, Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work, William B. Eerdmans, 1992, p.175; www.PreachingToday.com)
So quit waddling around and start flying!
