From now until Easter, we will join the Hebrews on their forty year journey from Egypt, through the wilderness and into the Promised Land. It was a journey that is not unlike our own as we walk with God. I invite you along on this pilgrimage for the next weeks as we discover our own pilgrimage to the place of blessing. Theirs was a journey from slavery to freedom, from fear to trust, and from despair to hope. All who wish to follow Jesus will journey that way too.

Prayer - O God, do what we are afraid to do for ourselves. Pull us into freedom where we prefer slavery. Bring us to places where we have no choice but to walk with You, that we may discover the joy of being fully alive and fully in Your presence. In the Name of Christ who goes before us, Amen.

We are all on a journey somewhere between leaving slavery and fully entering the promises of God. There was a day when some of us were enslaved to anger, hurt or guilt. Others of us were making the bricks of work, money, and collecting trophies that came to burden us and break our backs. Still others were enslaved to alcohol, victimization, or a destructive promiscuity. We all are enslaved to something. But God will not settle for anything that binds your heart and prevents you from being all you were created to be. God has always worked to remove your sin or the sin of others that keeps you enslaved to something other than who you were intended to be. That is why the Gospel is always a story about freedom.

This freedom has been understood, and misunderstood, in many ways. Some believe that God guarantees all of us a good life of prosperity and happiness, and freedom is to be understood as liberation from all pain, suffering and grief. That would be nice, but that is not the kind of freedom I find in the Scripture. This week President Bush will give his inaugural address, and he is going to speak on the promise of freedom. This freedom is a kind of freedom that results from the practice of democratic government and respect for the basic rights of all people. While that is a laudable vision that we appreciate as Americans, that also is not the kind of freedom brought by the Gospel. Others understand this Gospel freedom as a freedom to do and be what one wants to do with no limitations or accountability to others for one’s actions. But that also is not Gospel liberty. The freedom bought for us by the death and resurrection of Christ is not a liberation to be ourselves but to be liberated from ourselves to become all God wants us to be.

But let’s be clear: The Gospel message is one of liberation. Jesus did not die and God did not raise Him to lead you further into slavery. The liberating promise of the Gospel is that Jesus rose from the dead that you too may be raised to a new life with Him (Romans 6). The resurrection is not merely God’s promise to give you life after death. The resurrection throws open the door of the tomb where you were enslaved and invites you to enter the places of freedom, change and healing, community, vocation and mission in this life. That is what Paul meant when he called us to leave the old creature behind and become a new creation in Christ. But that kind of change does not happen overnight. It takes some growing and maturing. It takes a journey.

No one ever goes from being a runaway slave to prancing into the Promised Land. No, you have to spend a long time on the wilderness journey to learn to walk like a woman or man who is free. We would prefer overnight and miraculous change so that we could enjoy all of God’s promises now. But you can only enter the Promised Land when you are no longer acting like a slave. And it takes a while to realize that your identity is no longer slave but Beloved.

Along the journey to this Promised Land, we question and struggle to understand what God is doing. We wonder if we are lost. We wonder who we were kidding – there is no escaping our past. We battle some powerful giants along the way. And we grow very impatient with this wilderness journey.

In the thirteenth chapter of Exodus, we are told that there were two possible routes to get from Egypt, where the Hebrews had been enslaved, to the Promised Land. One way was to take the road called “The Way of the Philistines.” That was a highway that ran along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. It was a heavily traveled trade route with lots of water, rest areas, and Denny’s along the way. But God led the people south, “by the roundabout way of the wilderness” where there was no road, bridge, nor water to drink. On the southern route all the Hebrews saw was the expansive Red Sea, and a whole lot of lonely desert after that. It was like choosing to go the road 5 to San Francisco instead of the road 101. It was going to be a long hard journey. It was not the way they would have chosen had they been choosing.

The roundabout way. God always seems to take us down the roundabout way, doesn’t He? Why doesn’t God ever lead us down Easy Street? Because the purpose of the journey is not to get where you are going. The purpose of the journey, the purpose of your life, is to learn how to walk with God. You are not going to learn that way by walking on the Way of the Philistines. The Philistines will tell you all that you need is a law degree, or a medical degree, or a MBA. Or a case of beer or a lot of great sex. Or all you need is to get married, get a divorce, have kids or own a home. The Philistines offer one well-worn path to success after another. But has any of that led to freedom for you? No, because freedom doesn’t come by getting to your dreams too early. It isn’t just handed to you. Freedom is won for you from the inside out.

This means that freedom is won on the hard road, where you lose all your other dreams and realize the only dream left is to know this God who walks with you. Freedom is found not by getting your life into the right place, but by seeing the presence of God. When you can finally see God, then you can see that anything is possible and nothing is impossible wherever He is. Only then are you free. So the right place is not in the Promised Land. The right place for you is wherever you are in the desert that you discover the Presence of God.

Every freedom story has a beginning, and this one begins with the Hebrews running away from Pharaoh. They don’t get very far until they run right into the shores of the Red Sea. We are not sure which sea it was exactly, as the text literally says “the sea of reeds.” But which sea is not really important. About the time they arrive at this perilous and insurmountable sea, they look to see Pharaoh and all of his chariots coming after them. That is how it seems to go normally. Just about the time you think you have escaped that thing that is held you in slavery for so long, there it is again back on your doorsteps. Then we are told, “In great fear the Israelites cried out to The Lord. They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us bringing us out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, ‘Let us alone and let us serve the Egyptians?’” (Exodus 14:10-12)

Notice how many times the people mention Egypt in those verses. No one is talking about the Promised Land, freedom or The Lord. All they were talking about was what they had left behind. They still saw themselves as slaves and not as free and loved people. That is because they were scared, and people who are scared will always trade their freedom for their security. When we fear, we often will prefer the slavery we know to the freedom we don’t know.

But then God reaches down and opens up that sea for His fearful people to walk through to freedom. Let’s be clear: there was nothing about the faith of these people that opened up that sea. They have no faith. They will learn faith later in the desert. At that point, all they had was fear. And God in His great compassion split the sea and pulled them to freedom. Out of sheer grace God will insist on you leaving slavery because in Jesus Christ He has never settled for what you will. He will pull you into freedom even when you are afraid to want to begin that journey. If you are in slavery today, you are not going to be saved by your good choices. Sometimes you are incapable of making good choices. You keep doing what you do not want to do, and you do not do what you want to do. As Paul said in Romans 7, we are so helpless in our slavery that we wonder who can save us from this slavery. “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 7:25).

We all begin the journey to freedom, not because we choose it, but because God does. You were too addicted to slavery and too frightened to leave. But God reaches down, parts the waters, and pushes you through. Sometimes that grace has a severe edge. You may find that you wake up one day to be fired from the job that isn’t good for you. You may lose the money that never did make you happy anyway. You may lose the relationship that you thought you had to have in order to be happy. Those are severe acts of grace. You will think it is the end of your life. Then on another day you will wake up and realize it was the end of your slavery and your first step into freedom.

Moving out of our slavery, past the fear and into the freedom of God will mean that you are going to have to first risk walking ahead into the sea. You’re not going to be free by compromising with Pharaoh. Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that God will accomplish for you today.” The people could only see Pharaoh’s chariots. But there was something more happening that met the eye. There usually is. Moses told them to lift their eyes to see The Lord’s deliverance. Knowing that, they could walk ahead.

Centuries later, Paul would remind the Corinthian church of this great moment in the history of Israel, “I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and the sea.” (I Corinthians 10:1-2). What did Paul mean that the people were baptized into Moses in the cloud and sea? The cloud obviously was about God’s Presence. But the baptism in Moses was about God’s re-enacting creation at that moment. Separating the waters and the land – that was the third day of creation. Just as the plagues upon Egypt had been signs of uncreation, so the experience at the sea symbolized the re-creation of the community of God. Baptized into Moses in the sea and the cloud. That was where the identity of the people was formed just as much as in the Passover event. Passover led to their escape but crossing the sea gave them a song to sing.

When they had crossed the sea, Miriam led the people in the first worship service of the people of God. She sang out, “I will sing to The LORD, for He has triumphed gloriously, horse and rider He has thrown into the sea. The LORD is my strength and my might, and He has become my salvation.” (Exodus 15:1-2).

Our Christian baptism is that sea where God has reached down to provide for you a way out of the slavery. It too is an act of new creation, of defeating darkness, of freedom and new identity. It was the day that that the enemy was defeated. The rest of the journey will be about learning to live in the freedom of that reality. So we look up from the slavery that has overcome us, and just when we think there is no way out, the seas part and we behold the deliverance of God.

In your baptism you have passed through the waters. You have left slavery behind and you are on your way to the Promised Land. You may long for the familiar old life when you get afraid. But the overwhelming good news of the Gospel is that Jesus Christ already has led you to freedom. He insists on your freedom, and out in the desert He is going to teach you how to keep it.

Eugene Peterson paraphrases Romans 6 this way when he speaks of the deliverance God brought us at the cross and at resurrection. “Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That’s what Jesus did. That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don’t give it the time of day. Don’t even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves wholeheartedly into God’s way of doing things. Sin can’t tell you how to live. After all you’re not living under that old tyranny any longer. You are living in the freedom of God.” (Romans 6, The Message).

Perhaps you are where the Hebrews were. Behind you is the opportunity to return to the slavery you have known for so long. Behind you is a lot of loneliness, compromised dreams, hurt, compulsive living and confused identities. You hate that old life. In fact, it is sucking the life out of you. Ahead of you lie the parted waters of baptism where God is leading you toward an unknown freedom with Him. Which way will you choose?

You don’t really have a choice – not if you want to live. It’s time to start walking into the sea and watch the deliverance of God.


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