Let's Go Back to the Bible

God Rescues His People (Part 2)

Jesus set us free from the shadows.   “For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His Son” (Col. 1:13).  We have escaped into the kingdom, but a “domain of darkness” waits for those who want to go back.

It isn’t that people want to be slaves. Most will deceive themselves into thinking they’re returning to some kind of freedom. What they want is comfort at any price. They want someone to handle their problems but without telling them what to do. They want life to be what they want it to be. Faced with the monotonous manna of a righteous life, they are willing to slip back into a lesser life.

The wilderness is hard. It takes focus to fight the pull of Egypt, but what makes it even more difficult is when we make decisions as if we still lived in Egypt. Some of the shadows from the domain of darkness have remained in our head. This often results in bad decisions and strangely enough, this is the very kind of thing that can urge us to make the even worse decision of giving up and going back.

You can see it in how we handle trials. There are troubles in this wilderness. Some of them are allowed by God to test our heart. “You shall remember all the way which the LORD your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not” (Deut. 8:2). Others are simply bad decisions caused by the kind of thinking we did back in Egypt. When troubles kick down the door, our first urge is to look to the world for answers. God spoke about those “who execute a plan, but not Mine, and make an alliance, but not of My Spirit, in order to add sin to sin” (Isa. 30:1). Praying is often a last resort. We try to fix things ourselves. Instead of going to God, instead of looking to other Christians for encouragement, we gaze back at the comforting shadows of Egypt, little by little luring ourselves away from the light. We try to walk toward God but with our eyes on Egypt.  One of the main reasons is that deep down we know that if we face forward and walk right behind Jesus, we will have to make some changes.  Just about anyone is up for the message from the edges of Scripture. Even an actual verse or two that makes the day seem more bearable is good, but usually not if it conflicts with our own world views.

That was another reason the people of God wanted to go back to Egypt. When God sent prophets to help the people with their problems, the people didn’t want to hear it. The people wanted help from God, but only if they got to keep doing what they wanted to do. We must be those that are obedient.