Thursday, February 20, 2020

The Brutality of SLAVERY

Title Image:  Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
Thursday, February 20, 2020

And God said to Moses, “I am Yahweh—‘the Lord.’  I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El-Shaddai—‘God Almighty’—but I did not reveal my name, Yahweh, to them.  And I reaffirmed my covenant with them.  Under its terms, I promised to give them the land of Canaan, where they were living as foreigners.  You can be sure that I have heard the groans of the people of Israel, who are now slaves to the Egyptians.  And I am well aware of my covenant with them.  “Therefore, say to the people of Israel:  ‘I am the Lord.    I will free you from your oppression and will rescue you from your slavery in Egypt.  I will redeem you with a powerful arm and great acts of judgment.  I will claim you as my own people, and I will be your God.  Then you will know that I am the Lord your God who has freed you from your oppression in Egypt.  I will bring you into the land I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  I will give it to you as your very own possession.  I am the Lord!’”  So Moses told the people of Israel what the Lord had said, but they refused to listen anymore.  They had become too discouraged by the brutality of their slavery.  Exodus 6:2-9[1]

The brutality of any kind of slavery is a powerfully discouraging kind of image; it’s also enraging to the heart of anyone with even a mild sense and desire for the decency of affording human dignity which freedom conveys to all people. 
In the context of Israel’s conscription into a slave nation at the hands of Egyptian power in 1700 B.C., my mind’s eye conjures mud and straw images, making primitive bricks to build monuments to domination of one people by another.
While the odiousness of slavery in American culture most often evokes the shameful history of plantation life in the 16th – 19th centuries (as well it should), there are other slave owners fully empowered and operational today.  And these are as brutal as any Pharaoh building a pyramid. 
The list of so-called Seven Deadly Sins serves as a prime example of the kind of brutal slave holding done long before Egypt; it started in the Garden of Eden.  The Apostle Paul uses “slave” as a metaphor to help us understand how powerful sin can be in our lives to hold us captive, away from God:

We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin.  Romans 6:6

The personal (and also powerful) choice of trusting the slave-busting act of sacrifice on the cross by Jesus – his blood cleansing us from the guilt of our sins – liberates us from being slaves to the baser nature.  It doesn’t make us perfect in the sense that we are above it all, better than others, but it means we’ve been given the power to depend on God fully for His power in our lives to keep us free.
I had a seminary professor who expressed it this way:  when God saved my soul I became free to sin all I want…and I do, you see, because when God saved my soul He also changed my ‘wanter’.
For You Today
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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[1] For another post on Exodus 6:9 see Discouraged 

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