Sermon Central
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The Path To Freedom
Contributed by Thomas Showalter on Jul 3, 2008 (message contributor)
Summary: Moses, our forefathers, and us have a lot in common. The starting point was bondage and we are heading toward the Promised Land. (This sermon is a draft, but wanted to get it on for others to consider)
The Path to Freedom
Exodus 3: 1-11
America is a crazy place. Here’s what somebody wrote … “Only In America”:
• Only in America are there handicap parking places in front of a skating rink.
• Only in America do drug stores make the sick walk all the way in the back to get their prescriptions … while healthy people can buy cigarettes up front.
• Only in America do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway, and fill our garages with junk.
• Only in America do we use answering machines to screen calls, and have call waiting, so we won’t miss a call from someone we didn’t want to talk to in the first place.
• Only in America do we have Braille on drive up ATM machines.
Most of us know the story of Moses and what he was called by God to do.
Ex 3:1 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.
Ex 3:2 There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up.
Ex 3:3 So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”
Ex 3:4 When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”
And Moses said, “Here I am.”
Ex 3:5 “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”
Ex 3:6 Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.
Ex 3:7 The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering.
Ex 3:8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites.
Ex 3:9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them.
Ex 3:10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”
Ex 3:11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
God says to Moses that he has seen the misery of the people…I have heard them crying out…and I am concerned about their suffering…
He says to Moses first that “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham and the God of Jacob.”
"Moses, in light of all that I see, the misery, their crying and their suffering, I am getting ready to do something about it…I have come down to rescue them from their oppressors and bring them to a good land spacious land flowing with milk and honey."
Isn’t that the same thing that Moses saw, he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew and killed the Egyptian.
He saw the misery of the one being beat, possibly the cries of the one being beaten and was concerned about the suffering.
So he took matters into his own hands and killed the oppressor.
The next day he saw two Hebrews fighting and asked the one in the wrong “why?” (2:13)
Answer: Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian? (2: 14)
Pharaoh heard of it, too and tried to kill Moses (2:15)
So Moses fled and he still took matters into his own hands when shepherds drove away the daughters of the priest of Midian. (2: 17)
“Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock” (2: 17)
Moses: married and said, “I have become an alien in a foreign land”
Moses was raised in prominence in Pharaoh’s home and when he took matters into own hands he became an alien in a foreign land.
Fast forward several thousand years.
(The following history was from another Sermon Central contributor)
Our country’s forefathers sought after freedom and came to this country seeking that freedom.
We enjoy our freedom today, because of what our founding fathers, our fathers, our brothers & sisters, our sons & daughters, have done to get and preserve this freedom.
