Slavery (part 2 of 2)

This turn of events was not going to go well for Israel.  This was a blatant violation of the terms of their covenant.  Forgetting and forsaking their tradition that celebrated the deliverance from slavery, many went right back to being oppressors.  With this, there was a failure to remember Egypt and their God’s saving action.  Thus, the Creator God’s response to this is to grant His people freedom.  Yes, in the midst of this continued rebellious forsaking of covenant, together with the refusal to rightly bear the image of their God, God says “Therefore, I will grant you freedom, the freedom to die in war, or by starvation or disease.  I, the Lord, affirm it.  I will make all the kingdoms of the earth horrified at what happens to you” (34:17b).  Not only is this a summary of the Levitical and Deuteronomic curses, but this is also an effective summary of what was experienced by the Egyptians at the hands of the Creator God of Israel. 

Since Jeremiah has been speaking of Egypt, we should not then be surprised to find ourselves being reminded of Egypt and Moses and the dealings with Pharaoh as we hear these words from the Lord.  What happened in those dealings?  As we know, and as Israel would be more than aware, Pharaoh would agree to release the slaves, in essence granting them freedom in expectation; but then, he would have a “change of heart,” and turn right around, taking back the people that had been given a proclamation of freedom, forcing them to be slaves again.  Ultimately, what was Pharaoh able to earn through this?  As was just indicated, Israel’s God granted Pharaoh and Egypt the “freedom to die in war,” which we see when they attempt to re-take a freed people back into bondage.  We see that along with the freedom to experience “starvation and disease,” as they most certainly did because of the plagues that God brought upon the land, in which locusts ate up the crops, and in which the peoples were afflicted with painful boils.

Is there an application for Jesus believers in all of this?  It would certainly seem that there is, as each believer can consider himself or herself to have been a slave, earning nothing more than death, with no hope for liberation.  However, through the hearing of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Lord, along with the subsequent believing and ordering of life according to the Gospel’s proclamation (Jesus is Lord of all), “He delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of the Son He loves, in Whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13-14).  For the covenant people of the Creator God, throughout the Bible, the state of non-forgiveness of sins is equated with the state of exile (enslaved by oppressors).  As was done for Israel, that same God reaches into that state of exile and removes a people that are purposed to reflect His glory into the world and to have a hand in establishing His kingdom on earth. 

Before God exercises His saving power towards us, by grace, we share that state of exile from Him and from the blessings of His covenant, with every other person.  Now obviously, we know that some of us are delivered from exile before others.  For some reason, there is a tendency on the part of those that have already experienced their liberation, when they see others experience their deliverance from exile and slavery---when their fellow countrymen are granted freedom and enter into a covenant to that effect---to turn right around and attempt to enslave those that have been newly liberated, to traditions, creeds, subjective requirements, and supposed standards of Christian performance that somehow reflect true holiness. 

Analogously, it would seem that the Creator God’s response to this, and to those that attempt to re-enslave their fellow countrymen, to re-enslave those with whom they shared exile (just as all Israel had been slaves), is to say “I will grant you freedom, the freedom to die in war, or by starvation or disease.  I, the Lord, affirm it” (34:17b).  Let us cease and desist from playing God and becoming Pharaohs to His chosen ones.  Let us really and truly believe, perhaps for the first time, that there is a God, that there is a Holy Spirit, that the Gospel message that we purport to believe truly is the power of God unto salvation, and that “the One Who began a good work” (Philippians 1:6b) is also capable of completing the work by the same power that raised Christ from the dead, empowers His image-bearers via the preaching of the Gospel, and effects transformation into the image of the God in Christ through faith.