“Pharaoh said, “I will let you go to offer sacrifices to the LORD your God in the desert, but you must not go very far. Now pray for me.’”
Exodus 8:28
Let us once more meditate on the abiding lessons of our deliverer God, who, in the most ancient of days, in the most abiding of struggles, lifted high the children of Israel to remove from them the strangle of Pharaoh.
There were few scenarios where the mighty king of Egypt would let the children of Israel have their freedom. Even as the first of the plagues befell him and his people he remained defiant. The hand of God stretched over his lands he would still refuse to let the slaves go. Even as he prepared to bargain it wasn’t much of one. He would keep them close. Close enough to raise his hand against, close enough that he could send his army against them once more, close enough that once the destruction that was now overtaking Egypt had passed he could once more bind the people with that brutal yoke of oppression.
Yet, when the face of wickedness rises and iniquity robs people of their freedom, of that liberty that the Lord endows all of His creation with their is no compromise, there are no deals to be bargained for, all that is left is to listen to the deep, abiding voice of the Lord and to obey.
This is the love that God has for His people, this is the hope that He offers unto them, that even as captivity and bondage come so near at hand the Lord is never content to just stop half way and call it enough. He is never willing to live with just half of a solution or to let His people dwell in a land or a place or a time when trouble will so quickly befall them as soon as their oppressors believe that God’s back is turned, no longer looking at what they are doing. He does not stop, He is not finished until finally He has moved in such a way as to bring them to the resting place of promise and hope that He has assured them of through His transcending, encompassing word.
Unto us it also offers a deeper understanding and a wondrous lesson. It tells to us that to live in the love and the compassion that God has intended for His people we need to push forward and run the race with endurance, we should be unwilling to compromise with the lives of the slaves and the hostages, struggling, pushing forward, whatever the cost, whatever the pain until the race is run and the struggle is finally behind us. We should be unwilling to stop until the cause of freedom and liberty is moved throughout this world and the scourge of slavery is finally set to flight in the most significant of ways as the lost and the hurt, the pained and the sorrow filled are given a lasting hope in the integrity God has assigned to their lives.
If we truly wish to be imitators of God, if we truly wish to be followers of our deliverer Jesus Christ this should be the transcending, encompassing love that forever guides our hearts throughout this life and in this life until we finally reach the blessed end of the challenges of this age and move towards the places God has intended for us to take His people.
Let us pray:
Unto you O Lord, unto you do we place all our trust, unto you do we give all of our hope and our faith is made manifest in our hearts and in our souls the encompassing, transcending blessings that you give unto us in your word. As we meditate on your promises, we will look to the deliverance that you have given in the past, we look to the deliverance you have given unto the saints and apostles, to the prophets and the kings, unto those slaves who are bound in the most brutal of iniquity, as the sting of the whip cut through their backs, and forced them to cry out in such bitter anguish. We look for the places of promise and rest you took those children to. We pray for the same miracle, we pray that you hold true to your promises O Lord to be besides those who need deliverance, to offer yourself to those who need mercy. Guide, protect, and love your children as you have told us you will. And there, in your time, in your way, bring them to the blessed air of freedom, to the encompassing mercy of your hope, as you guide them to those places, those pastures, those green fields of your love, where finally hope shall be restored to those who believe that only hopelessness has come into their lives. Dear Lord, set iniquity to flight, rise up and swallow it whole, let no compromise come but only the full blessings of your mercy. In the name of your Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you in the Kingdom, one God, world without end. Amen.
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