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.
In Exodus 12:3 we read, “Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month, each man is to take a lamb for his family one lamb for the household.” (TLV)
In Exodus 12:5 – “a male, one year, unblemished”
In Exodus 12:6, says, “Then, on the evening of the fourteenth day of the month, the whole community of Israel will kill the animals.”(GNB)
In Exodus 12:7-8, we read, “They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.” (NRSVA)
The people of Israel were in a crisis, they were in gruesome slavery and the Lord was planning to deliver them from the cruel hands of the Egyptians. In order for the Lord to do this, the people of Israel had to listen and obey all that the Lord instructed them to do.
So also in our lives, if we seek to be freed from every bondage we must first and foremost choose to listen and obey all that the Lord commands us to do. For instance when we go to a Doctor for an ailment, if we want to recover, we must do exactly as the Physician instructs us or else our going to him or her would be pointless.
The command of the Lord to the people of Israel was to take a male lamb, a year old without any blemish to their house, on the tenth day of the first month. The lamb became a part of the family for four days and on the fourteenth day in the evening the lamb was to be killed. Their hearts must have been broken as they killed the lamb, but they did not question but obeyed because they were wanting their freedom from their life of slavery and bondage.
The Israelites were then to take some of the blood of the lamb and smear it on the two doorposts and lintels of their houses. That night they were to eat the meat roasted on the fire along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. The people of Israel did not understand why the Lord was instructing them to do all of this, but they only knew that the Lord had a solution to their slavery and all they had to do for their freedom was to simply obey His words.
When we go to the Lord with our problems and He gives His word of instruction, we must be willing to obey Him no matter what He says. When the Lord is giving us a solution to be freed from our bondage, we must give heed and not try to reason it out with our finite minds. Only then will be set free from every enslavement.
The people of Israel obeyed and now were waiting to see what would happen. Before the night began there was the sound of the death of the lamb in the Israelite homes, but as the night proceeded this was replaced by the sound of death of the first born son in every Egyptian home. The protection of the blood of the lamb on the door posts and lintels was available to all, but only to those who accepted it and actualized it did the Lord give His divine grace and protection.
In Exodus 12:23 we read “For the LORD will pass through to strike down the Egyptians; when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the LORD will pass over that door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you down.”
Wherever the blood of the lamb was not smeared, the angel of death struck the firstborn in that house but the angel of death passed over all those who had the blood on their doorposts and lintels. Pharaoh and all of Egypt was so filled with fear and sorrow that they begged the people of Israel to leave. The Lord did not wage a war with the Egyptians to save his people from bondage and slavery, but all that He instructed them to do was slay a lamb. The blood of the lamb saved them from death and also freed them from the life of enslavement and captivity.
This was being commemorated by all the Jews, year after year, as the Passover Festival, to remember their great redemption from slavery. But the best was yet to come.
In Luke 22:7-8 we read, “The Day of Unleavened Bread came. This was the day when the Jews always killed the lambs for the Passover. Jesus said to Peter and John, "Go and prepare the Passover meal for us to eat." (ERV)
Jesus being a Jew Himself, asked His disciples to prepare to celebrate the Passover Feast.
In Luke 22:19, we read, “And He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me." (EMTV)
In Luke 22:20 we read, “Likewise He also took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you.” (EMTV)
As Jesus broke the break He was now giving it a new symbolism and telling His disciples, the bread represents ‘My Body’. In the same way He explained to them that the cup they were participating in was ‘My Blood’ representing the New Covenant through His blood which was going to be shed for the sins of the world. This was now a new covenant the Lord Jesus was establishing with His disciples, which extends to all who believe in Lord Jesus.
All of us who live in this world are in bondage to sin, wickedness and to Satan and his schemes. None of us can come out and break free from any of these bondage with our own effort. But just like the lamb without blemish was slaughtered by the Israelites on the evening of the Passover, Jesus Christ the sinless Lamb was crucified for all of our sins, our curses, our sicknesses and our bondage. The reason Jesus died on the cross and shed His blood was so that, we too may pass from death unto eternal life.
That is the reason why we celebrate communion in Church. The bread is the representation of the body of Christ and the cup is the representation of the blood of Christ that was shed on the cross.
In 1 Corinthians 5:7 reads, “Take away, then, the old leaven, so that you may be a new mass, even as you are without leaven. For Christ has been put to death as our Passover.” (BBE)
Paul refers to Jesus Christ as the Passover Lamb who was slain on our behalf and it is indeed His death that brought us victory. If we are covered with the blood of the Lord Jesus, Satan will have no power over us. We must believe and accept this fact that Jesus died on the cross for each one of us and when we make this personal decision to follow Jesus, He comes to break every bondage and frees us from everything that enslaves us. It’s only when the Lord lives and reigns inside of us that we can defeat Satan.
As the Israelites fled from Egypt towards their freedom the Egyptian army pursued them and tried to overcome them but God made the very sea that parted and brought deliverance to the Israelites, a death trap for the entire Egyptian army. In I Corinthians 10:2 Paul refers to the Israelites passing through the Red Sea as an imagery of a person who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ, repents and is passed through the waters of baptism.
It is important therefore that for one to come into this New Covenant with the Lord Jesus that they not only believe and accept Him as their King and Master but must also be baptized. Baptism is that act of faith whereby we identify with what Jesus did for us on the cross. Just as Jesus died and rose again so we too confess by being baptized, that we are dead to our old self and rise again to a new life and that just like Jesus rose again we too will rise again in the last day. That is why Jesus said, ‘unless a man is born of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter the Kingdom of heaven.’
Regardless of the kind of bondage we are in, we must sincerely desire to be set free so we can truly worship and serve the Lord. As we worship and praise the Lord, He breaks all those things that bind us. Paul and Silas were thrown in prison, but they praised the Lord in spite of all their chains, and the result was all their chains and fetters fell apart and they were freed. As we continue to walk in obedience to the Lord and worship Him, the Lord will set us free from everything that enslaves us and we be transformed to be those who fulfill the purposes of God in our lives.
Pastor F. Andrew Dixon
www.goodnewsfriends.net
Transcribed by : Ms. Esther Collins
