I preached in the English congregation last Sunday. I hope they were motivated. Likewise, I believe the stories in the Exodus and Numbers are really good ones in which many spiritual principles God have prepared for his people. Therefore, I like to share this same sermon to you all. Hope that the word of God may once more stirs us up in one way or another.
A Vision and What It Takes:
To Leave Egypt and Into the Promised Land
A Vision and What It Takes:
To Leave Egypt and Into the Promised Land
Out of Egypt, a visionary idea. People who have been slaves for their whole life being abused not knowing themselves being abused. Studies show that children grown up in an abusive family don’t normally acknowledge their situation. They have learn to accept it, accommodate it, rationalize it, and maybe think that this is the right and normal and only way. Children growing up with abusive background tend to fall into another abusive relationship or form an abusive family of their own, creating a bedrock for next generation of abused children.
Out of Egypt, a visionary idea that cannot comes from Israelites themselves unless they are pushed to the edge of collapse, of destruction. They might cry in suffer, crying for help. Israelites cried out for God’s delivery. Their cry didn’t form any vision to leave Egypt for a new land, a promised land, although their did reach their faithful God of hesed to send Moses to their rescue. But how far the Israelites being later brought out of Egypt did in fact follow the vision God had given to Moses: Let my people Go. Out of Egypt and into the Promised Land.
You shall gradually see as I unveil the story to you, that they, the Israelites hadn’t grasped the vision which God had given to them through Moses, even after they had gone out of Egypt. The Vision for what? For the new land according to God’s promise. They have followed Moses, leaving Egypt physically and crossed the Red Sea. Their heart, however, still stayed in Egypt, the environment and comfort zone they are familiar with, no matter how abusive it is, regardless of their freedom being robbed away from them. They didn’t know that. They don’t have the insight to acknowledge it, the true reality which is beyond their experience.
Two Steps of a Vision
- Out of Egypt
- To the New Land
We all know that they didn’t enter Canaan, the promised land. Moses sent twelve spies to Jericho. Their investigation was meant to bring useful information for the Israelites’ attack. However, totally unprepared, the brief encounter with the Canaanites brought a disaster to them.
Unpreparedness, What does it imply?
Have you ever joined a competition of something? Did you prepare for it? Whether it is a competition or it is a task or a ministry like leading worship, it takes preparation. The better you prepare, the more confidence you will reap; the more unprepared you are, the more you will reap defeat. The sense of defeatedness you collect and through years accumulate will form the character that tells other people who you are. That will be how you perceive yourself. That becomes your self-image--a defeated self, a mediocre self.
I am not saying everyone has to excel others and be the best; but one has to be the best out of him or herself.
If you haven’t prepared and didn’t put make the best effort and end up doing something which is way below what you might have been made to be, that’s the price unpreparedness will pay.
There is another story (Judges 7) which can well depict another aspect of preparedness. Remember once the Israelites had to fight the Midian people. He summoned the people for the fighting. 32,000 responded. God asked Moses to announce to them, “Anyone who trembles with fear may turn back and leave.” Twenty-two thousand left.
But God said, “There are still too many men.” God asked Gideon to lead the people to the water, probably a stream. He instructed Gideon to separate “those who lap the water with their tongues like a dog from those who kneel down to drink.” The latter, those who kneel down to drink, which were only 300, were chose for the fight.
Although the purpose of that is that God wanted the Israelites know that it is he himself who rescues them that they don’t boast on themselves, the fact is that these 300 people were better prepared. There is a sense of readiness. The position of those kneeling down is easier for them to stand up to move.
Let’s go back to the story of Jericho and Israelites spies. Having spotted how big the people of Jericho are, they are defeated right away. They lost every confidence. Just like an athlete spots athletes far better than him before the race begins, and his heart sinks right away; similarly, these spies have lost faith and hope right away. No, I should say: they have lost their fantasy about this dream of entering the new land. Yes. It was a fantasy all along. They never really had a true faith. Right from the beginning, they never quite get the idea of why leave Egypt. Right from the beginning, it was Moses himself (the most with Aaron) who performed the miracles and confronted the Pharaoh. They thought, if you Moses really say so and insist, who are we to object, or what matters? who cares. These Israelites, they were never really with him. They might have witnessed the result, saw the miracles, and wondered God’s mighty works. But they have never truly experienced and worked side by side with Moses.
What is behind the motivation to go out of Egypt?
First: Awareness and Loathe your present situation
- Awareness--we don’t be to stay the same--don’t need be abused anymore; that there is new possibility; that you can’t leave this place that abuses you, leave the voice that says: you are useless.
- Fight the Pharaoh--what is your Pharaoh? Things that bind you to comfort zone, that rob your creativity, that take away your sparkling insight, that stop you from dreaming, and instead give you fear, excuses, all kinds of “impossible”, voices that shrink you than you really are or that curse you, which include that voice as if from you own inner self.
- This kind of awareness and loathing of your present situation create an urge. This is the first step.
But that is not enough. You have to have a vision to sustain the onward journey. Simply hating the present bondage is going to bring you too far. It takes a vision for you to persevere through all obstacles and hardships that will finally bring fruition of and a consummation of your vision.
Building on a Vision
- To have a vision, you need a calling.
- What is a calling? And how does it form?
Therefore, a calling has to be deeper and greater. It might have started from personal feeling. For example, Moses senses an anger (which is a feeling) seeing an Egyptian bullying an Israelite. This feeling is also born out of his own identity crisis. Who am I? Why am being where I am? Why do I stay in palace be a prince which I am actually not and let my own people suffer under oppression and unrighteousness? But it has to grow into something bigger than a feeling.
In Moses’ case, we see that his feeling was later rekindled but this time it is linked with the destiny of his people. It is the community; it is his group. It is the English group, not only your personal unhappiness in your past (whether what you experienced at home and in school). It is beyond the English group--it is the young people who grow up with similar background. You have to feel, you have to ask more deeply--what do you, what do these people really experienced that have hindered them from becoming what are made to be, what God intended them and you to be.
To have this calling. There is something called faith. Faith as told in the bible carries different implication. I only want to emphasize one aspect today: that which is found in Moses, in Jacob even a later form of faith--faithfulness is evident. In early Moses, a sprout of faith is seen when he wants something more. In Jacob also one finds a yearning for more blessing. This disposition from one’s being is what attracts God.
This initial state of faith, how immature it is, is a starting point, a window, an entering opening where God’s calling can come in. There is a potential for change, a potential for challenge. A place where God sees suitable to sow his seed that prepares one to receive his call.
Then when God calls, everything comes together and is making sense in every way.
A calling for what?
A calling that is based on a vision. The vision comes with a promise. This is two parts of one thing, two sides of a coin. A vision that does not come with a promise will lose hope.
That’s how a calling is forming. But a calling that reaches a leader (like Moses) is not enough for a whole group to enter into the promise land.
This vision has to be shared and infuse into the whole group. Not to say everyone, but at least the vision needs to be shared and implanted to as many members of the group as possible. Not all people have the capacity to understand the vision. As I said, it takes faith to have a calling. It takes an awareness. It takes a feeling to want to see things change.
Moses did not bring all Israelites into Canaan. And no one Israelite except for Caleb and Joshua entered Canaan.
Brothers and sisters, do you want to go out of Egypt without really knowing why you do that? Do you want to leave Egypt and then lingering in the desert and always experience a feeling of defeatedness and blame all the defeats to others, and carry the nostalgia to go back to the old Egypt, the days of slavery but a comfort pampered place, no responsibility to bay and no need to face a life full of hazard and uncertainties that come with a vision. Is that what you want? Listen to what Paul has to say: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith (2 Tim 4:7).” Will you be able to say the same thing at the day you see Jesus face to face?
