"...say to the Israelites, I am the Lord and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.  I will free you from being slaves to them and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm...I will take you as My own people and I will be your God."

Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and cruel bondage."  (Exodus 6:6-9)

Perhaps one of the saddest verses in the book of Exodus..."they did not listen to him (Moses) because of their discouragement and cruel bondage."

Amazing promises of rescue and redemption from God to His people so bitterly enslaved in Egypt!  Yet when Moses carried this message to them, we are told they did not listen because of their discouragement and cruel bondage.  The original language says they could not hear because of their 'shortness of breath'.  The bondage they were experiencing under Pharaoh was so great it felt as if it was crushing them physically.  They could barely breathe; they could not hear.   So God sent Moses into His great redemption story to take them by the hand, to lead them out of bondage, to show them the way to freedom.

Sometimes life is like that.

Look around and you will see people bitterly enslaved to sin, to circumstances, to the painful issues of life in a fallen world.  People experiencing crushing hopelessness; people living under such discouragement, such 'shortness of breath'.  People, perhaps, just waiting for someone to take them by the hand, to lead them out of bondage, to show them the way to freedom.  Someone like Moses.  

Someone like you...someone like me.

Consider the shortest verse in the bible, "Jesus wept."  (John 11:35).  The occasion for His tears is at the tomb of His dear friend Lazarus.  Jesus looked around, saw the weeping and mourning of family and friends gathered there and He wept.  Was it sorrow for those who had lost a loved one? Was it the fact of death itself that moved Jesus?  All we know is what scripture tells us:  when Jesus saw the suffering of the people He was deeply moved and He wept.

Then Jesus told those gathered there to roll away the tombstone.  He prayed to His Father, calling out in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!"  Lazarus came out, alive, but with his hands and feet bound with strips of linen and a burial cloth around his face.  Jesus told those standing by, "Take off the grave clothes and let him go."

Do you understand what just happened?

Jesus called Lazarus from death to life.  It is always God's call to bring life.  But then He told those who were standing by to go to Lazarus, now alive but still wrapped in grave clothes.  He called them to remove the clothes, to set Lazarus free from what bound him.  Jesus called them to enter into His story of redemption.

...Just as God had called Moses to enter into His story of redemption.

...Just as God calls you and me to enter into His story.

Do you know someone like that?  Someone like Lazarus? Someone alive in Christ but still walking around in grave clothes?  Someone so discouraged, they need friends like Lazarus had?  Someone to take them by the hand, lead them out of the bondage they still live in?  Someone to show God's way to freedom, to help remove the grave clothes?

God is still calling people from bondage to freedom, from death to life.  He still redeems with an outstretched arm - only this time stretched out on a Cross at Calvary.  Life is a gift only He can offer. 

But then He calls us to enter into His story of redemption, to lead others out of bondage, to help remove the garb of death and destruction, to minister to those who are so discouraged and oppressed they cannot hear His voice.

As He called Moses...
     ...as He called those at Lazarus' tomb...
          ...He stills calls you and me.

Perhaps someone right next to you cannot hear God's promise of rescue because of their 'shortness of breath', because of their grave clothes.  Enter into God's story of redemption.  Soneone's waiting for you.

The Relentless Pursuit of the LORD God

Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the LORD God had made.  He said to the woman,  "Did God really say, 'You cannot eat from any tree in the garden'?" 

(Genesis 3:1)

The first deception by the enemy in the Garden was not distorting God's Word - it was distorting God's identity.  Consider this...

Throughout Genesis 1 God has chosen to identify Himself as Elohim (the Hebrew word translated "God" in our bibles).  This is the intensely powerful Creator of the Universe; the One Who merely spoke, "Let there be..." and it was so.  He is the holy, transcendent, all powerful, unknowable God.

Yet...

In perhaps the greatest paradox of all time this unknown and unknowable God seeks to be known by His creation, seeks to reveal Himself to us.  Throughout Genesis 2 He does that by revealing Himself as Yahweh Elohim (the Hebrew words translated "the LORD God" in our bibles).  This is the intensely personal and immanent God; this is the One Who desires intimate relationship with His creation.

This is the God Adam and Eve knew.  They never knew God as just "Elohim", transcendent, powerful, unknowable.   In fact that title for God is never used in the account of God's interaction with them in the Garden.  He had always and only revealed Himself to them as "the LORD  God".

This personal, intimate LORD  God picked up dust from the ground...

     ...formed the man Adam...
          ...breathed the breath of life into his nostrils...
               ...caused a deep sleep to come over the man, took a bone from his side
                   and closed the flesh at that place...
                    ...fashioned the bone He had taken from the man into the woman Eve...

This was Yahweh Elohim...the LORD  God...intensely, intimately in relationship with His people.

Then one day the serpent, the deceiver, said to the woman,

"Did Elohim really say..."

"Did God really say..."

And the woman, who had only ever known her Creator as the LORD God, the intimate and personal One who sought relationship with her and the man, fell for the lie of the original identity thief.

She listened to the thief strip away that very special part of God's identity; she listened to the enemy refer to her LORD God as the all powerful and unknowable God who isn't intimately involved in relationship with her. 

Eve responded in kind to the enemy's deception, 

"...God did say..."

She fell.  When she and Adam ate the forbidden fruit, rather than run to the LORD  God, they ran from God.

Yet who pursued them in their shame?  in their fear?  

Yahweh Elohim!  The LORD God!

He asks them, "Who told you that you were naked?  Who told you that you were shameful?  Who told you to hide from Me?  Who told you...?

This is our LORD God, Who pursues us relentlessly in our sin just as He pursued Adam and Eve in theirs.  He pursues because He is an intimately personal God who desires relationship with all of His creation.  He pursues to restore our perception of His identity - to restore what the enemy has stolen.

He pursues to provide proof that He is who He says He is.  He pursues because He knows that if  I have a distorted view of His identity - of Who He says He is - I will never have a true view of my identity, of who He says I am in Him.

Oh Lord, you prove Yourself over and over again that You are who You say you are!  You don't have to.  You are, after all, Elohim - the immensely powerful Creator.  You are the Potter and You don't have to prove Yourself but You do, You do!  Praise you LORD God!  You are the great I AM!  Always the Pursuer and Rescuer of Your people.  Oh take off your shoes - this is holy ground!