Freedom… for what?
“Let my people go” is the well-known refrain of the opening chapters of Exodus, which BiOY has reached early in February.
In Exodus 3:16-18 God tells Moses to assemble the elders of Israel, tell them about the promise of deliverance to a “land flowing with milk and honey”, and to go to Pharaoh to ask permission to go on a three journey to offer sacrifices to the Lord. These words seem to carry the implication that the Israelites will then return, and so are a bit misleading, but that’s what God said to do.
In Exodus 5:1 Moses and Aaron make their first request to Pharaoh: “Let my people go, so that they may hold a festival to me in the wilderness.”
This is a two faceted request. “Let my people go” – a call for a release from the oppression they are experiencing, from the demands of the slave drivers, and from the restriction to live only where the Egyptians permit.
But also: “…that they may hold a festival to me [the Lord]…” Their freedom was to have a purpose. It was not to be freedom simply to do anything, or to do nothing, but to do something specific.
In many places, including the UK, we have religious freedom to ‘hold festivals’ – to go to church on Sundays, and to go to summer festivals, for more than three days. What does Exodus have to say to us today?
By chapter 10, the demand has changed a little: “Let my people go, so that they may worship me.” There’s still the demand for release, but the purpose has shifted from an act of worship to a life of worship.
The purpose of the Israelites’ freedom was not simply to perform an act of worship, but to live in the place God had prepared, flowing with milk and honey – all that they needed, living a life of worship to God. The laws God would give as they travelled through the wilderness describe essentially what it would mean to live a whole life of worship to God.
Which raises the question: we may be free to perform acts of worship, but do we live in the freedom to live a life of worship to God? What prevents us, what prevents me? Fear of standing out from the crowd? Fear of looking odd? Fear of losing money, friends or status?
In Psalm 18:19 the psalmist declares: “He [God] brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.”
My prayer is that I (and you) will know that God has brought me out, has rescued me, because he delights in me, and that I (and you) will know freedom to worship God in the spacious place, in the land flowing with milk and honey, in the whole of my life.