Breaking Free


03/20/2011 - The God Who Liberates



This morning we begin a brand new series called Breaking Free: Leaving Behind the Old Self for the New. Broken chains are the image for this series that I think will be a great follow-up to The Healing Power of Love and also serve to prepare us for Easter Sunday and the resurrection of Jesus coming up in five weeks.

It's been a long time since we've done a teaching series to prepare us for Easter. We did one recently for Advent to prepare us for Christmas and Christ's birth, but not one recently for Easter and Christ's resurrection.

Advent comes from a Latin word that means "coming" and it's the season that prepares us for the first coming of Messiah. Advent begins in late November on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and ends on Christmas Eve.

And during those four weeks we focus on the themes of hope and peace and joy and love. And for centuries Christians all over the world have observed the sacred season of Advent and used it as a time to prepare themselves for the coming of Christ.

But we're in the midst of another sacred season right now that followers of Jesus everywhere have observed for almost 2,000 years. It's the season called Lent which also comes from a Latin word that means "spring." Lent occurs in the spring of the year, a time filled hope and expectation and new life.

And what Christians look forward to most in the spring is the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the new life that he offers to each one of us. And so like the changing of the seasons we want to put off the darkness and deadness of winter and embrace the freshness and newness of spring. And Lent prepares us to do that.

The Lenten season lasts for forty days to mirror the forty days that Jesus withdrew into the wilderness after his baptism before beginning his public ministry. During that time Jesus fasted and prayed and prepared himself mentally and emotionally, spiritually and physically for his confrontation with the evil one. And so fasting and reflection and repentance have been a vital part of Lent since the earliest days of the church. Lent is a time for soul searching and taking stock of our lives and fasting is part of it.

Lent begins every year on Ash Wednesday which took place this year on March 9. Ash Wednesday is meant to remind us of our mortality. It's meant to humble us and remind us that it was out of the ashes that we came and it's to the ashes that we'll return one day. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

And so Christ followers have ashes applied to their foreheads in the shape of a cross as a reminder that we are not immortal. We are not God. We are not self-made. We are creatures of the earth. We were formed out of the ground. We have a beginning and we have an end. And it's important that we all remember that because it's so easy to live life like we're never going to die. And if we live like that we just might miss the whole point of what life is all about.

But thinking about death and our own mortality can change our lives for the better. And so the ashes are meant to help us live more fully and live less lonely and to experience as much goodness and love and laughter as we can, to be better friends and better husbands and wives and mothers and fathers and sons and daughters, to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength and to love our neighbors as ourself. The ashes are meant to remind us that every single breath we take is a gift from the God who created us and who loves us and who wants to give us life and life to the full. It's a symbol of humility.

Lent begins with Ash Wednesday and ends with resurrection Sunday, the day when Jesus conquered sin and death and the grave.

In 1 Corinthians 15, that great chapter on resurrection the Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:55-57,"Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" 56The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Easter is about resurrection. Easter is about life because as far as we can tell the tomb is empty. Jesus is alive! Easter is about victory, liberation, deliverance, rescue, redemption, freedom, and exodus. It was the day that Jesus exited the grave and left behind the promise that all who believe in him will one day exit the grave as well.

But not only does Jesus want us to exit the grave some day like he did, he wants us to exit and leave behind other things right now. He wants us to break free and leave behind the old life. The life that was shaped by the warped mirrors of our past and that can enslave us and keep us in bondage. He wants us to leave that behind to embrace the new life that he came to give us. He wants the power of the resurrection to energize us and flow through us like it flowed through him.

And so I want to begin this series by seeing how that process starts. And to do that we need to look back at the very first Exodus that God performed because it serves as the back drop for the exodus that we all can experience through Christ.

The primal story of redemption and liberation that runs throughout all of Scripture is the Exodus of God's people out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. It is God's signature event up until the resurrection. And that story begins in the second book of the Bible, the book called Exodus. If you have a Bible open to Exodus 1.

When the story of the Exodus opens we see that the people of God are oppressed and in bondage to the empire of Egypt, the superpower of its day. In fact, in my Bible the first subtitle says "The Israelites Oppressed."

Fifteen hundred years before Jesus was born, Egypt was ruled by the mighty Pharaoh. But Pharaoh was so threatened by the growing number of Israelites in his country that he responded the way every paranoid, insecure dictator does.

Look at Exodus 1:11-14 , So he put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. 12But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites 13and worked them ruthlessly. 14They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians used them ruthlessly.

The first way that Pharaoh tried to control the Israelites was by putting them in chains, by enslaving them. And so he forced them to work hard every day, making bricks to build cities for his kingdom. Seven days a week. No weekends. No Sabbaths. No breaks. Just work. Egyptwas an empire that was built on the backs of Israelite slave labor brick by brick by brick.

But the harder they worked the more babies they made. Go figure! And so Pharaoh went to Plan B. And Plan B was to kill every baby boy that was born to a Hebrew woman.

Look at Exodus 1:16, "When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy, kill him, but if it is a girl, let her live."

Slavery and genocide were Pharaoh's solutions to controlling God's people. Sound familiar. That's still the way paranoid, insecure dictators try to maintain control of their empires through slavery and genocide. Nothing's changed in 3,500 years.

And this went on for years until finally we read in Exodus 2:23 ,The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God.

And what did God do about it? Look at Exodus 2:24-25, And God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. 25So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.

Look down at Exodus 3:7-8, 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. 8So 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."

God saw the misery of his people. God heard their cry for help. God was concerned about their suffering. And God came down to the rescue.

The Hebrew word for cry in verse 7 is the word sa'aq and it's found all through the Scriptures. It's an expression of pain, literally a shriek. It's the "ouch" we feel when we're wounded and hurt in some way. Sa' aq is the same word that's used in Genesis 4:10 when we read that Abel's blood cried out to God from the ground after he was unjustly murdered by his brother Cain.

God hears cries for help. He always has and he always will. I don't believe he misses a one of them because that's central to who God is God always hears the cries of the suffering and the shrieks of the oppressed.

Right now God hears the cries of the people of Japan. He's concerned about their suffering. He sees their misery and their struggle and even as we speak he's mobilizing people all over the world to bring help and hope and rescue and relief to a tragic situation. We have a God who is not untouched by human suffering and pain. Instead, our God who rolls up his sleeves and enters into the messes of this world.

In his email this week Rick Warren, Pastor of Saddleback Community Church in California wrote, "More than two billion people claim to be followers of Jesus Christ. That's one third of the world's population! Imagine all of us focusing our prayers, resources, and efforts on helping the people ofJapan."

Every time I've bowed my head this week to pray I've found myself thinking of the Japanese people and the images of the earthquake and the tsunami and the nuclear disaster. It's horrible, people screaming and cars and houses being thrown around like toys on a train platform.

So this week we sent a gift from Valley View to World Vision to help with the rescue efforts and I encourage you to do the same through your favorite charity. But like the situation in Haiti and in New Orleans a few years ago it's going to take years for this country to get back on its feet. And I believe that God weeps over what's happened in Japanbecause he loves the Japanese people.

Our God is the God who hears and responds to "ouch." This cry in Exodus ignites redemption history. It kicks things into gear. It shakes things up. It gets things going. The cry is the catalyst, the cause, the reason that a whole new story unfolds. But God doesn't just hear the cry and see the misery. He does something about it and the rest of the book of Exodus is about how God responds to liberate his people through a man named Moses.

Someone has observed that the Old Testament refers to God as liberator five times more often than it refers to God as creator. The center of gravity for the Jewish memory has less to do with the God who created them than it does with the God who liberated them. The Exodus is big.

That's why the Passover Meal is so important to the Jewish people even to this day. It's the way that God commanded them to remember that once they were slaves in Egypt then God heard their cry and saw their tears and delivered them.

The big story of Scripture is about liberation. God is out to liberate creation from the bondage of sin. He's out to reverse the curse and restore all things and in the process he's out to liberate you and me from what oppresses us, just like he liberated his people from the bondage of slavery in Egypt. And the process starts with "ouch!" A cry for help. That's how it started for the Jewish people and that's how it starts for you and for me.

Now, enough about Israelthink about your life. Think about the moments that have shaped you the most, the times of transformation when your eyes were opened and you saw things the way they really are. How many of them came when you reached the end of your rope and cried "ouch?" When everything fell apart? When you were confronted with your own mortality and lack of control? When you were finally ready to admit that your life had become unmanageable? When your problems were too big to solve? When there was nothing left but to cry sa'aq!

That's always been the catalyst for transformation. Liberation doesn't come when we're on top of our game and the system is working for us and life is cruising along just the way we want it. Who needs God then, right? But sooner or later we find ourselves in a situation that we can't control and we can't manage and we need help. And that's when God wants us to cry out to him.

Jesus put it this way in Matthew 5:4, Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

The Apostle Peter put it this way in 1 Peter 5:5-7,Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, "God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble and oppressed." 6Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

That's what this Lenten season is all about. It's about looking into our lives and humbling ourselves under God's mighty hand, and crying out to God for deliverance.

What needs to be cleaned up in your life? What's your Egypt? From what do you need to be delivered? Where do you feel oppressed and in bondage? A habit, an attitude, an addiction, a recurring sin, perfectionism, depression, a broken relationship, a bitter memory, a shattered dream, words that wound, a need to control everything and everybody? During this sacred season of Lent we want to leave behind the old self and take hold of the new.

And in this series we're going to explore how to do that. Next week we're going to look into the New Testament to see how Christ's resurrection impacts our lives right now and is meant to set us free. And then we're going to apply that power to addictions and to the words that come out of our mouth and to our need for control. We're going to talk about fasting because it's an important part of Lent. And we're going to give you an opportunity to fast. It's something that Jesus practiced regularly and so have his followers throughout the centuries.

But it all begins with a cry. "Sa'aq!" "Ouch!" When we humble ourselves and ask for God's deliverance. So this week I want you to take some time starting right now to reflect and look inward and see what it is that you need to be delivered from.


Questions of the Week

  • Have you ever participated in the celebration of Lent before? What does Lent mean to you? What do you think it could mean to us as a community?
  • How do you think the Exodus story relates to the Resurrection? Why do you think this event was so central to the life of Israel? How do you think it speaks to us today?
  • What does humility look like in the Christian life? How do you think that the practice of Lent helps us to focus on humility?
  • What are some things in our lives from which we might need deliverance? What might a cry of sa'aq look like in our lives? How can we be encouraged by the Exodus story?