Stay Free

The power of words never ceases to amaze. A friend of mine wrote a comment on one of my blogs. It was insightful and honest. He ended it with two words: Stay Free. Since then I cannot leave these two words alone. They are working me over. I realized that these are the words that we should say to all followers of the way every day.

So pick up the narrative in Exodus. The people of Abraham, who had made a covenant with God find themselves enslaved by an impressive, oppressive, self indulgent regime. The Egyptians were breaking their backs to build massive stone monuments to honor their Gods and their kings. The labor and the treatment was severe and they cried out to the God who had promised them hope and prosperity. Then the Bible says four sweet words, "He heard their cries." Awesome! God set in motion a plan to bring His people out from this oppression and fulfill his part of the covenant. We all know the story. God brought Moses from the desert to lead the children of Abraham out of Egypt and eventually they would end up in the promised land. A kingdom is established and a time of prosperity occurs.

However, the people did not uphold their end of the bargain and they slowly invited themselves back into slavery. They forgot where they had come from. They forgot what God had done for them. They had forgotten the exodus. So they found themselves in Slavery. First it was enslavement to decadence and failure to show mercy and take care of the poor. Next it was actual enslavement as the Babylonians swept through and destroyed Jerusalem and the temple and took away the best and brightest of them into exile and into forced labor. Slavery, again. God brought up prophets from among the people who came to make sense of all that had happened and to turn their hearts back to God. Eventually God heard their cry and allowed them back into their land and they returned again. Free.

While in exile in Babylon, the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah prophesied that among them a new Moses would come and lead them into a new Exodus. What they said though is that this would be a new Exodus an ultimate exodus for all people and for all things and that it would not be freedom from physical oppression but freedom from the ultimate oppression. The oppression of sin. The oppression that we inflicted upon ourselves from the beginning.

430 years later that vision was realized in the birth, life and death of a Jewish Rabbi named Jesus. He has provided for us a new Exodus, an ultimate exodus a universal exodus. An Exodus that leads us out of chaos and into the promised land of restoration.

And that is where we are. But, if it was true then, than it is true now and although we find ourselves basking in our freedom we are always somehow inching back toward slavery.

Why do we do this? Why do we forget? Why do we have wait for painful circumstances to put us on our knees before we remember? Why do we have to wait until the Babylonians show up at the door, destroy our homes and cart away our children to decide that it is time to remember?

Our encouragement to each other therefore should be, hey don't go back to the old way. Don't forget. Don't be saddled by legalism, don't be enslaved by your sin. Don't go back to chaos run to the freedom of redemption. Whatever you do, wherever it takes you and whatever the cost....STAY FREE!!

God help me not invite disaster into my life by forgetting my past. Remind me of those moments of pain that pushed me back to freedom. Let me not forget and may we all stay free.