Exodus 20 v 1 I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
I said yesterday there were two ways to look at God’s rescue of the Israelites from Egypt. The second way is to see it as an act of great might and power.
Egypt was not a good place to live in from the point of view of worshipping the one and only true God. The place was infested with idolatry and all sorts of enticements away from the true God. This may be one of the reasons why in later years the people of Israel were so quickly led into idolatry.
Now to be delivered from a world view that embraces all forms of idolatry, a culture that seeks its spiritual fulfilment in something other than God, requires great power. First there has to be a desire to escape, so God allowed the misery of slavery to encircle his people. Then He has to be more powerful than the false gods and shows himself to be so in the matter of the plagues. After that God has to make the frightened people obedient in the matter of the blood on the doorposts of the houses. He has to keep His people safe in a time of Divine Judgement. Then He must overcome the hardness of pharaoh’s soldiers and then He must part the sea for them to escape. Sheer might and power for He is the God of the Universe.
On the Cross God reveals His power also. For there He overcomes the slavery of our sins, the power of the devil, and the reality of His own just anger against our sin. But the difference is that on the Cross this power is cloaked in the Human weakness of the battered and bloodied body of Jesus. But in that broken body lay all the power that would be needed to forgive us, redeem us, change us from rebels to sons and daughters of the Mighty God.
Prayer: O God. That such a mighty salvation should be worked on our behalf is beyond our understanding. We bow the knee and worship and say “thank you”. Amen