July 3 - Exodus 3:7-10

The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers and I am concerned about their suffering.  So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey – the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Ammorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharoah to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”

If you remember the passage from yesterday, God sent Abraham to Canaan, promising him that it would be there his descendants would become a great nation.  The Israelites had come down to Egypt during the time of Joseph (Abraham – Isaac – Jacob – Joseph) because of a famine in the land.  Rather than return to their home, they got comfortable and decided to stay.  Then, just as God had promised Abraham, the Israelites (Jacob was named Israel and his twelve sons were to be the foundational tribes of the nation) began to grow in number, to the point that the Egyptian Pharaohs feared them.  Any small amount of organization on their part and they could have taken over the country.  For many years, they lived in relative peace and obscurity, but their growing numbers forced the issue and they were enslaved.

For many, it was easier to live as a slave than to leave the home they were used to.  They’d lived in Egypt for four hundred years before Moses came along.  If this was what they were supposed to live with – then it was what they did.  They’d long since forgotten Canaan, the home God had promised to Abraham, and the home of their forefathers – Isaac, Jacob and Joseph.

In other words, they were used to the pain of slavery. They simply accepted it as part of their lot in life.

Moses saw the other side of life.  God had him placed in the Pharaoh’s home.  He realized that there was more to life than making bricks for the Pharaoh’s building projects.  God prepared him to become a leader.  The time had come for the Israelites to return to their home, but they were going to need a strong man to lead them.  He would have to be strong enough to not only go up against the Pharaoh, but when the people began to panic, he would have to lead them through their own fears.

God had come to remove the Israelites from the slavery.  The time had come. The Exodus from Egypt was about to begin.

God calls us out of our slavery.  We don’t have Moses to lead us or to stand between us and the one who has enslaved us, we have Jesus Christ.  The time has come.