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The Exodus Experience
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The people of Israel had spent a long time in Egypt, hundreds of years, so they had become culturally accustomed to that land and the customs, ideas, power of the Egyptians. So the Exodus meant a cultural shift. They had entered Egypt as an immigrant population of asylum seekers and had become slaves when the Egyptian regime changed. In the Exodus under Moses' leadership God gave them two new things, freedom, and an inheritance - the promised land. They needed to enter into these things. They had to learn how to be a people with a culture of freedom. They had to learn what it meant to be possessors of an inheritance instead of people with no rights and no property other than what they could carry. Freedom meant they could no longer sit back and wait to be told what to do. Someone had to lead, and the people had to choose to follow their leaders. They had to learn a new way of relying upon God, and how to relate to one another in freedom, respecting the freedom that each other had. Hence Jethro's suggestion of Moses delegating his authority in smaller matters to leaders who were appointed among the people. Hence the system of laws to guide their relationships. Their culture required to change, from that of slavery to that of liberty. As slaves they were bursting to be free, but they did not know how to handle the responsibilities and rigours of a free life (Ex.16.3). In liberty they needed to develop the mindset of enjoying their freedom and accepting its responsibilities. They needed to stop whingeing (Numbers 16.12). They needed to gain faith, not acting as slaves dependent on the will of their masters, but believing the promises of God. They expected defeat, as seen in the reports of the spies sent before them into Canaan (Numbers 13.26). They needed to expect victory, needing a Caleb mentality which did not assume they would always be defeated. They needed to change their focus from thinking first of their physical wants to thinking first of God's ability to provide. Doubtless filling their stomachs was a pressing need, but their thoughts were of the need rather than the the answer to it. Moses taught them to expect that God would provide, a culture of faith. They had to change from being grasping to being trusting. Some of them tried to keep the manna (Ex. 16.20), rather like an animal which bolts down its food as if there were no tomorrow. What they needed was to develop the trust that God would provide, even if they could not see how, to concentrate on the spiritual rather than the physical world. As God's people we too may need to consider what is our culture, how we are looking to the grace and effective kindness of God. It is a matter of how we live our lives - the way we do things, the words we use, the values we live by, the priorities we have, the things that unite us, what we believe, how we express ourselves, the attitudes which underlie all our behaviour. In all these things, we can mature into Christ, and therefore become more like Him (Eph.4.13, Col.1.28). Selected |
