Brought Out, Rescued, and Redeemed

The instructions provided in Exodus 12 say that for seven days, we are to eat unleavened bread, as Mr. Hobb went through with the sermonette. During these seven days, no leaven should be in our homes, nor should it be eaten, else we would be breaking the intent of these days. Exodus 13, verse 3 says, "'And Moses said to the people, Remember this day in which you went out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

For by strength of the hand of the Lord brought you out of this place.'" It says, "'No leavened bread shall be eaten.'" And then in verse 8 of Exodus 13, it says, "'And you shall tell your son in that day, saying, This is done, because what the Lord did for me when I came up from Egypt.'" God was taking his people out of a nation that had its grips on Israel.

They were under complete control, and were under the sinful influence of a nation that was not following God. We know that God has called each of us out of our own Egypts of sin. God has called us out of our sinful past and out of the influence of our own human nature. When God promised deliverance to his people from slavery of the Egyptians, God said this, and we're going to look at this actually in Exodus chapter 6.

Exodus chapter 6, we'll be coming back to a lot today. There's one verse in particular we'll be coming back and referencing multiple times. But here in Exodus 6, we find God's people enslaved in Egypt. We find them burdened with the tasks the Egyptians had caused them to take on, the difficulties they were enduring, the lack of freedoms that they were under. And here in verse 6, God saw his people. He saw everything that was going on. And he sent Moses to share these words with his people.

Exodus 6, verse 1, Then the Lord said to Moses, Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh. It's a powerful statement God makes here. Notice that. What I will do to Pharaoh. We know that Pharaoh in Egypt, again, held the Israelites in bondage, and thus we have been ourselves held in the bondage of sin in our lives.

So for us today, we could reread this passage. We could personalize this passage in a way, if you'll give me a little bit of liberty to do that. We could reread this passage and say, Now you shall see what I will do to sin. Right? What God has done to sin. Going on with the remainder of that verse, he says, For with a strong hand he will let them go, and with a strong hand he will drive them out of his land.

And verse 5, And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians kept in bondage, and I have remembered my covenant. God does not break his promises, and he would provide a way of escape for his holy set-apart people, the Israelites. And today, as we are under the new covenant made possible through the blood of our Lord and Savior, God has held true to his promise of delivering each of us from the bondage of sin that we have been completely ensnared by.

And now, notice verse 6. This will be the heart of what we will spend and the remainder of our time examining in today's message. Notice the action words here in Exodus 6 and verse 6. He says, Therefore, say to the children of Israel, I am the Lord. I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will rescue you from their bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments.

He goes on to say, I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. So, in this sermon on the first day of Unleavened Bread, we will explore the concepts of being brought out, rescued, and redeemed.

So, if you like titles, some of you do. Title this one, Brought Out, Rescued, and Redeemed. One of the greatest lessons that we can take from the account of God freeing his people from Egypt is a very personal one for each of us right now. None of us have lived under the bondage of Egypt, yet this account can touch each of us very deeply. For most of us, there have been times when we have gone through great distress or times of severe challenge. In those moments, we are overwhelmed with all sorts of emotions, all types of fears, a full range of feelings, and many times left with decisions and choices that eventually do have to be made.

In these moments, the weight of our physical life can feel like a ton of bricks placed on our shoulders, a burden heavy to bear. We feel crushed, exhausted, broken, and overwhelmed. The Exodus account stands as a reminder of God's faithfulness in his promises. Remembering God's promises, mercy, and protection during the first Exodus should encourage us that God will deliver us, too, from whatever it is before us that has us burdened.

Every single time we read through this Exodus account for our kids all the way up to our older years, it should take us back and show us that God is faithful, that he doesn't forget where his people are at, that he knows exactly what they're going through, the challenges they face, and then we should walk away encouraged by this account every single time we read through it, knowing that if God did this for his people here, he 100% will continue to do it for us. There's a prayer recorded when King David was told that God would make his covenant with him. King David shared this. He said, O Lord, there is none like you, nor is there any God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears.

And who is like your people Israel, the one nation on the earth whom God went to redeem for himself as a people, to make for yourself a name by great and awesome deeds, by driving out nations from before your people whom you redeemed from Egypt.

For you have made your people Israel, your very own people forever, and you, Lord, have become their God. That's from 1 Chronicles 17, verses 20-22. It's an awesome prayer of David having made a covenant with God, God making a covenant with him, actually. And then he praises God, knowing that God was the one who delivered his people, and he's the one that is true to his promises.

This is a prayer I think any one of us could reflect on, and pray in a similar way ourselves, because all that God has done for us to free us from sin and our own personal Egypts, our deliverance from the bondage of sin, was not by our strength or our ability or our hand. It was not by any of those things. It was through the love of God and his desire to have a relationship with us, just like we are looking at today, brought out, rescued, redeemed. As your pastor, you guys know how much I love action words in Scriptures. So, let's take some time to break out each of these statements that we see here in Exodus 6, verse 6, and consider the depth recorded in this passage.

The first aspect that we see here in verse 6 is, therefore, say to the children of Israel, I am the Lord. I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.

The meaning of the Hebrew word here for bring out is pretty much exactly as it means in our English language. It simply means to go out or to come out. There's nothing too different in it. There's not a lot of depth to explore there. The word burdens is referring to the burden, or the forced labor, or the mandatory service, or the burdens that the Egyptians were bearing themselves.

The actual work, the hardness, the weight that was on their shoulders of the work that they were tasked with. I'll just read through a few verses where that same use of burden is the same type of use is used. One is, and you can just put these in your notes. We're not going to turn there, but one is in Exodus 1, verse 11, where it says, Therefore, they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens, and they built for Pharaoh, supply cities, Pithom, and Ramses.

So this was the work that they were burdened with. Exodus 2, verse 11, it's the same context. It says, Now it came to pass in those days when Moses was grown that he went out to his brethren and looked at their burdens. And he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brethren. And again, it's the same here in Exodus 5, verse 4, where it says, Then the king of Egypt, so this is Pharaoh, said to them, Moses and Aaron, why do you take the people from their work?

Get back to your labor. So get back to your work, Pharaoh says. And Pharaoh said, look, the people of the land are many now, and you make them rest from their labor. So Pharaoh was criticizing Moses and Aaron, saying, stop distracting them. They need to get the job done.

They need to get this work done. This was the burdens that the Egyptians bore. We see this all through the Exodus account. This was the work. And so God says, I will bring you out from the burdens of the Egyptians. So obviously, we're talking here about forced labor and mandatory service. In a spiritual sense, we have been burdened by the sins of our lives. We have been burdened by those acts of disobedience. We've been burdened by our selfishness. We've been burdened by our own thoughts at times.

We've even entertained. We've been involved with sin at times. We've spent time. We may have spent money. You can go all through the different aspects of your own personal sins of your past. The works of our hands, sadly, has been at the cost of sin in our lives at times. There's no way to escape it. And so we have been burdened ourselves by this work that we've entertained, sadly, at different times in our lives. And as we've grown in this relationship with God, hopefully these burdens have become less and less.

The amount of time maybe we spent in our past doing things have now gone to zero, hopefully. And the things that we have battled in our lives, we have overcome through God's help and his ability to transform us. So the spiritual lesson is we have also been brought out from that sin, which we personally, previously, labored in. The second phase that the Lord uses here in Exodus 6 and verse 6 is, I will rescue you from their bondage.

Let's consider the word bondage first. This is referencing the aspect of the Israelites' captivity or slavery that they were under in Egypt. They were not free people. They did not have the opportunity to switch jobs or to move to another country if they wanted. They couldn't come and they couldn't go as they pleased.

They were stuck with no way of escape. So keep this aspect of the word bondage in our mind as we explore the action word of this passage right here, rescue. The meaning of the Hebrew word for rescue, and this is from Brown Drivers and Briggs Hebrew Dictionary, it means it's a little bit different than I thought in one sense in my mind. It means to snatch away, to save or to strip, to be torn out or to be torn away, and of course to deliver from enemies or troubles or problems, can also mean to be plucked out.

The complete word study dictionary says it's a verb meaning to deliver. Deliverance often indicates a power of one entity overcoming the power of another. The power of one entity overcoming the power of another. This is not the idea that one would come alongside someone, put their arm around them and say, well, let's walk a better way of life. Let me show you a better path. Let me point out why this would be a better way to go.

This isn't coming alongside and just helping someone, putting your arm around them, walking alongside of them. The imagery that we could use, which is kind of intense, it can be intense, would be that of a fireman, firewoman, fire professional running into a burning house to save a life.

We can visualize this in our head. We've seen it in movies. I don't know if anybody has ever had this happen in your own life, but we can envision a fire truck pulling up in front of the home, flames shooting out from the windows or from underneath the edges of the roof, and somebody saying someone's trapped inside. The firemen puts on their helmets and the oxygen tanks and they go up with their axe and they punch in the front door.

The door blows open, smoke starts billowing out, and they go in. They disappear in the darkness of the smoke and the flames. They find someone in a back room, unconscious, unable to help themselves. That fireman picks them up, bears their full weight, and then carries them out of the flames. They re-emerge out of the front of the house through the smoke with a life in their hands. That's rescued. Be similar to a car accident, where someone has to be cut out of the car in order to be removed and to be freed.

Or even a rescue worker saving someone from a collapsed cave or from a mine that has collapsed. The people inside have no way of helping themselves. Time is running out. Oxygen is disappearing. It's complete darkness. Those on the outside are using their hands, the tools, and doing everything they can to intervene and save a life. That's the concept of rescued that we see here in Scripture. To be snatched away, torn away, unraveled from the mess, ropes, and difficulty they're entangled by. That they can't help themselves. This is the type of rescue that we see God did for His people.

From Brown's Drivers and Briggs Dictionary, again, additional meanings can be to deliver from sin and guilt. And from the Complete Word Study Dictionary, this word also refers to taking of objects from another's power and thus translated to recover.

It's a powerful spiritual analogy for us again as we consider that we have been entangled in the sins of life. That we had no hope of ever overcoming them, getting out of them, and yet God began working with us and showed us a way out and started changing this heart from the inside out. You can put in your notes one additional psalm of praise from David. This is in Psalm 39, verse 7 and 8. But here's another psalm of David. He says, And now, gourd, what do I wait for? He says, My hope is in you. Deliver me from all my transgressions. He could have said, Rescue me from all my transgressions. And for us during this time of the year, our focus has to be on the deliverer, has to be on the Savior who came into the world, Jesus Christ. Let's turn to Romans 6, verse 15. And you can put a marker here if you want to. In Exodus 6, we'll be coming back. But Romans 6, verse 15.

And here Paul references the concept of slavery, of being intertwined, of not having freedoms, of not being able to escape something that we would want to escape, like the Egyptians wanted to escape Egypt. But he's referencing our slavery to sin, and yet the freedom that we have received. Romans 6, verse 15, he says, What then shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? Certainly not. Do you not know that whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness? So there's two directions to go. We are either going to be slaves to ourselves and to death, slaves of sin, or we'll be slaves of God, slaves of righteousness. Paul is getting at here. He goes on to say, verse 17, But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. And then, considering each of our previous lives, he goes on to say in verse 21, and notice the words he uses again, what fruit? So we know fruit is an after effect of something that is being nourished, grown, fed, strengthened, right? Whether it's a grapevine or a fruit tree, you give it the water, the nutrients, you take care of it, the flower develops, and then fruit follows. So he's talking about fruit. But notice what kind? There's two types of fruit. What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. So he's saying we had fruit, bad fruit, right? Rotten fruit. Fruit that was never going to nourish us or nourish anyone around us. It was damaging, harmful. We could go on and on with the descriptions, right? That was part of the fruit that we had in our past lives. Verse 22, but now having been set free from sin, being provided a way of escape, being unsnarled or snared, having the ropes taken off of us, like the fire person coming in and saving us when we couldn't do anything ourselves. He says, but now having been set free from sin and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness in the end everlasting life. So this is that counter fruit. This is that good fruit that we know that comes from God's Spirit being in us and from taking in, as we do this week, taking in the unleavened bread of Christ and letting him transform us from the inside out, taking in the nourishment of that bread of life. Again, that Mr. Hobb reference in the sermonette, that is unlike anything else we could ever take in in our lives, that bread of Jesus Christ. Verse 23 says, for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life and Christ Jesus, our Lord. So our loving Father has snatched us out of the entanglement of sin. There was no way again that we could save or rescue ourselves. And so we have been rescued from sin. This brings us to the third action word in Exodus 6 and verse 6, which is redeem. He says, I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments. This word redeem holds a different meaning from both brought out and rescued. Remember, it was brought out, rescued, and redeemed. Redeemed stands alone in a completely different meaning. Redeemed means to redeem or buy back. Notice that buy back from bondage. That's from the complete word study dictionary. From the Life Application Study Bible, it says to buy back or to save from captivity by paying a ransom.

So the emphasis here is that a cost is paid. This word focuses on the depth that God went to both free the Israelites from Egypt and us from our sin. God did bring great judgments on Egypt. Through all ten plagues that came upon that nation, his judgment was seen and was cast. Yet God does not bring judgment on us as he has redeemed us through Jesus Christ. Let's look at these scriptures that support this and we know it's true. Let's first look at Galatians 4 and verse 3.

Galatians 4, starting in verse 3. Again, the Apostle Paul here in Galatians 4 and verse 3 shares this. Even so, we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world. But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has set forth the spirit of his son into your hearts, crying out, Abba, Father. Therefore, you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. We just went through the Passover two evenings ago. I hear all three areas had a wonderful evening. It was very uplifting. We were in Detroit, but I heard Ann Arbor was wonderful. Flint was wonderful. What a blessing that God gives us this special feast day of Passover that we come together as a family, united under the blood of Jesus Christ, to honor him and to reflect on the death that he willingly gave for all of us.

There was a ransom paid and a price paid for you and for me. That's what we talked about. That's what we explored. That's what we've considered as these days approached. We all did self-evaluation. We weighed out and remembered back to that original commitment, that covenant we made with God when we were placed under that water. Well, first when we believed and had faith, then we repented of our sins, placed under that water, and then had hands weighed on us for the Holy Spirit to be received. This whole time of the year is so meaningful and so important to each of us because when we really get down to the base of everything that we've gone through, a price was paid for you and for me. Through that sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we have been set free from the judgment that sin brought into our lives. Let's turn next to Romans 8 and continuing this thought, this mindset. Romans 8 and verse 1.

I feel like I'm really serious right now. I need to smile more because this subject really is encouraging. That's the heart behind it. But I feel like I'm just driving a truck through something crazy. I'm going to try to smile more because I am excited about this subject. This should give us hope and energy to continue forward, not only through these days of Unleavened Bread, but through the next year as we continue to let God work in our lives powerfully. The Exodus 6 and verse 6 is one of the most encouraging scriptures as we look at the Exodus story. God said, by His hand, He would do this. Wait to see what I will do, He says. Then that brought out, rescued, and redeemed. It's just so encouraging.

Here in Romans 8, we continue this thought of being brought back and being set free of the judgment that sin brought into our lives. Romans 8 and verse 1. Paul says, Now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, and that it was weak through the flesh, not the law was weak, but we were weak. It says, through the flesh. That's where the weakness dwelled. It said, In the lightness of sinful flesh, on account of sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law, because God's law is righteous, and there is a requirement of it. He says that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. From our UCG study guide, What Does the Bible Teach About Grace? It shares this about the passage we read. All Christians will struggle with temptation and sin throughout their physical lifetimes. Although God's Holy Spirit helps us to resist the pool of our selfish, oriented nature, that nature will continue to trend toward sin. We must always be vigilant and strive against the pools of our sinful, selfish desires. But Paul says here that when we sin, we need not fear that we are condemned by God, that there is no more justification or no more grace. His relationship with us is not broken unless or until we deliberately and irrevocably sever it. This means that if we have repented and come under grace and then slip up and sin, we are still under grace and do not immediately return to being under the penalty of the law. Through continuing to struggle with committing sin, as Paul did. That's a reference to Romans chapter 7, one prior to Romans 8 that we've been reading. In Romans 7, Paul talks about how he wars within himself, the sins that I don't want to do, the things I don't want to do I do, and the things I should be doing I don't do. That's what they're talking about here. Though continuing to struggle with committing sin, as Paul did, we are not condemned with each new sin. Rather, as Paul says, there remains no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. With every sin and subsequent repentance, a Christian does...

Let me reread that just to get the context right. With every sin and subsequent repentance, a Christian does not repeatedly drift back and forth between being under death and under grace. We remain under grace with no condemnation, as God still accepts Christ's sacrifice as our atonement. We know previously, and we've read this in Scripture before in Romans 6 and verse 1, Paul says, What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? He says, certainly not. How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? So, Paul's not saying that it's okay to just continue to sin so that grace may abound.

But what he's saying is we don't get caught in this back and forth of being under God's grace and then not under His grace, and then being yanked back and forth every single time sin enters in our lives. The same study guide, What Does God Teach About Grace, goes on to say, Yet Paul qualifies this in Romans 8 by explaining that this remains so only if we continue, and notices, in the process of living according to the Holy Spirit and following God's law.

That means continuing to repent, confessing our sins to God, seeking forgiveness and restoration, and striving with God's help to obey Him. Otherwise, through neglect, leading to willful sin and rejection of God, we would return to being under the law's penalty of death, spurning Christ's sacrifice and insulting the spirit of grace from which there is no return, to repentance. So this is the attitude that he's saying here. If we give ourselves over to this other attitude of just giving into sin and saying, Well, this is just who I am.

My father, my grandfather had an anger issue. My father had an anger issue. I have an anger issue. Runs in the family. There's nothing I can do about it. It's who I am. That's what Paul is saying in that second part is leading to death. Because you're no longer wanting to give into the spirit, but you're just accepting and saying, This is who I am, and I'm just going to continue in my sin because I'm okay with it.

That is dangerous. And so this is the attitude of just giving in and saying, Well, this is who I am and continuing to practice, right? This isn't just a one-off or a continued, like, you know what? I've messed up again. Help me, God. This is saying, I'm okay practicing this. This is like a basketball player or a football player that goes over the repetitions over and over and over again, shooting those free throws in practice so you can become an expert at it.

That's dangerous, extremely dangerous, when we allow sin to be practiced in our life. And that's what we have to fight against. Because, as I'm sharing, to continue to practice or behave in a way that we know is wrong, that is dangerous. This is that following away that is so dangerous when someone no longer wants to be under God's authority in their life and just live their life however they choose to live it. That's where there is no way back to repentance.

If that's the attitude we carry, that's the thoughts that we harbor, those are the things that we practice and continue to carry with us. That's not what Paul's talking about. That is where we are freed from condemnation. And so there is a difference. This isn't just grace abounds and that we can go on living our lives and do whatever we want.

Paul made that very quickly. Shall we continue and sin that grace may abound? Certainly not. And so we do have to go forward under doing the best we can continuing to ask God's spirit to fix us from the inside out. Right? Because we can't... none of us can fix ourselves. I can't even fix myself. I can't fix you. None of us can fix ourselves because I can't even do me.

I need God to fix me from the inside out. And that's only able through the power of His Spirit residing in us and our willingness to let its mighty power, God's mighty power, to continue to transform us. And that's why we don't have an option to quit, right? We don't have an option to go a different way. As, again, Mr. Hobbs shared with Peter, was asked a question, the 12 disciples, are you going to leave me too? We don't have an option to leave God, do we?

But there's no greater commitment we can ever be to ever have in our lives to be tied to Jesus Christ. To serve Him, to walk alongside Him, to let Him drive our car and we sit in the passenger seat. There's no better person to show for us around life. Problem is, we try to drive, we try to grab the steering wheel, right? And tell Christ, He knows, we know better how to navigate this city. That's when we fall short. That's when sin enters in.

And then we can acknowledge, you know what? I reached out again and tried to grab the steering wheel and I'm sorry. I let myself get ahead of myself and I'm sorry. I'm going to let go of the steering wheel and put my hands back in my lap like a good boy and I'm sorry.

That's what Paul's talking about, where there's no condemnation. Because we acknowledge we are still driving in the car with Jesus Christ. We're still under the roof of that car. We're still under His grace, that umbrella of grace going forward. We just had a lapse in judgment. We made a mistake and we acknowledged it. We're sorry for it. It's a beautiful description that we have here from Paul and Romans. And it's so encouraging as we continue to think about how we have been redeemed by our Lord and Savior's life.

Through the blood that He shed, we have an opportunity to have our sins washed clean of us and to be under God's grace. Let's look at Titus chapter 2 in verse 11 with one additional thought on this part of the sermon. Titus Philharmon, Philemon, Hebrews, James. So it's towards the end right after Timothy, 1 and 2 Timothy. Titus 2 in verse 11.

So it's for the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts. So put that out. We've got to get that out of our lives. We've got to ask God to help us cleanse ourselves. It says, then we should live. So we get out the junk and then we live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us. Remember, that's that ransom, that price that was paid, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works.

There is this requirement that we go forward in faith and deed, striving to live by the light of Jesus Christ and word and inaction. We must walk forward in newness of life and according to the Spirit of God living in us. We must never lose sight that we have been redeemed from sin. We were bought for a price and we must live in the light of God.

As we near the end of this message, there's an important takeaway for you and for me today. This is kind of part two of the message. It is something that I hope, as we go through this next week and next year, that we will come back and think on from time to time. As we've looked at, the passage we have based today's message on in Exodus 6 was one of great encouragement and hope for the Israelites. I hope a few minutes ago, when I tried to bring that a little bit more out, you could feel it, because there is great encouragement in what we've looked at. If you put yourself in the Israelites shoes for a moment and you imagine what it would be like for Moses to stand before you and to say that you have been brought out, rescued, and redeemed, you would think that there would be great joy in the hearts of the Israelites. You would think that they would have been lifted up and ready to see God's hand deliver them. You would think that they would have went around and started telling their children what Moses had shared to get them even excited, the whole family. And you would have thought they were looking for God to next deliver them.

But let's go back to Exodus 6 for a moment, because sadly, verse 9 tells us something different. This is Exodus 6 again. We read verse 6. That's been our focus this whole day. Just three verses later, let's look at what was said in verse 9.

Exodus 6 verse 9, it says, So Moses spoke thus to the children of Israel. Everything we've looked at from Exodus 6, he spoke these things to the children of Israel, but they did not heed Moses. Because of anguish of spirit and cruel bondage. They didn't heed. The weights of everything that they were going through, this anguish of spirit and cruel bondage, crowded out the truth that was coming to them through Moses and from the Lord. Matthew's Henry commentary says this about it, verse 9, They were so taken up with their troubles that they did not heed him. They were so cast down with their late disappointment that they did not believe him. They had such dread of Pharaoh's power and wrath that they dare not themselves move in the least towards their deliverance. They felt captive still by Pharaoh. The weights of the Egyptian bondage seemed to so entirely crush their spirits that they refused to listen or believe anything else said to them. Here's the Lord's perfect words brought to his special people. Moses didn't goof it up, and yet they couldn't heed it because of the anguish of spirit and the cruel bondage they were under. Remember back towards the beginning of the message when Pharaoh said, Moses and Aaron, why do you take the people out from their work? Get back to your labor. He tells the Egyptians, look, the people of the land are many now, and you make them rest from their labor. Remember that because that's from Exodus 5, verse 4 and 5? That's all they could think about was the fact that Pharaoh still held his hand on them. They were captivated by his hand. That's all they could see was the strength of his captivity that he had over them. It was at this point in the story, right after he said those things to the Egyptians, that Pharaoh commanded them to go and gather their own straw to make the bricks. Previous to that, it sounds like fellow Egyptians would gather straw, drop it off. Egyptians were the ones in the mud making the bricks and putting it all together. But then he says, fine, your God's going to deliver you. I'm going to make it even harder for you now. Now you have to go and find your own straw, but the straw wasn't readily available. They tried to find things. They had to just grasp whatever they could get to make bricks. It wasn't going well for them. Not only that, but if you had a team of, let's say, 20 making bricks, right? Well, now 10 of them had to go out, which meant now less people were making bricks because your team is now divided. And then Pharaoh came back even and made it even harder. He says, and your quota cannot drop off. So you're making us short-handed, making us work harder. We didn't get more people, and we have to keep making the same quota of bricks.

This was the difficulty that they had. This was that anguish of spirit and cruel bondage that they could not break free of. There was a change of circumstances, and thus the reception of Moses and how they received his words changed. Previously, when Moses shared words that God would deliver his people, the Israelites believed, actually, and they actually went on further to bow their heads and to worship God. But because of this change in circumstance, right? How many times have we had changes of circumstance in our lives? Countless, right? Every single one of us can raise our hand right now of a change in circumstance that we've gone through in our life that distracted us, that moved our vision over here, way off of God or off of his kingdom. Some good, some bad. We've all been distracted. We've all had a change in our circumstance. But because of their change of circumstance, they went from believing and worshipping God to not believing or heating Moses' words. The word anguish can mean indicating despair or discouragement. The word literally means short or shortness, meaning shortness out of breath.

Have you ever had a trial so severe you could hardly breathe?

I think we could probably all raise our hand, right? That it affected us emotionally and physically, actually. I've not slept at nights. Thankfully, there haven't been too many. But I've woke up at 3 a.m. Something pops in my head. I can't get back to sleep now. The pressures, the weight, the sadness. My own sadness. We can feel out of breath at times in the struggle that we go through in life. Due to being absorbed by their new trial and misery that they were under, they were exhausted and they were out of breath. They were not able to see or hear through the fog of the trial or to retain the hope that deliverance would come. And again, this can easily happen to us, too. We are not immune from trials and difficulties in this life. But I want to end on a positive note, okay? Hang in there with me. It's going to get better, still. I've got a funny story that hopefully will illustrate the point a bit. Chippy the parakeet never saw it coming. One second, he was peacefully perched in his cage. The next, he was sucked in, washed up, and blown over. The problem began when Chippy's owner decided to clean Chippy's cage with a vacuum cleaner.

She removed the attachment from the end of the hose and stuck it in the cage. The phone rang, and she turned to pick it up. She barely said hello when, swoop! Chippy got sucked in. The bird owner gasped, put down the phone, turned off the vacuum, and opened the bag. There was Chippy, still alive, but stunned. Since a bird now was covered with dust and dirt, she grabbed him and raced to the bathroom, turned on the faucet, and held Chippy under the running water. Then, realizing that Chippy was soaked and shivering, she did what any compassionate bird owner would do. She reached for the hair dryer and blasted the pet with hot air.

Poor Chippy never knew what hit him.

I pause for a minute. Isn't that like our trial sometimes?

I picture this bird sitting in the cage. It's a good day. It's sunny out. I've got my food here. I've got my water here. Oh, here comes Mom! She always brings me treats or something. I don't know what's in that big black thing that's in her hand, but I'm sure it's fine. She's never done anything wrong to me before, right? She's going on with its life, just like so many of us do. We go on with our daily life, thankful for the sunshine, thankful for the daffodils and the tulips that we have and that God's blessed us with. Then, out of nowhere, we get sucked up in some sort of vacuum cleaner.

Happened more times than I can count.

Poor Chippy never knew what hit him. A few days later, after the trauma, the reporter who initially written about the event contacted Chippy's owner to see how the bird was recovering. Well, she replied, Chippy doesn't sing much anymore.

He just sits and stares.

This is an illustration that came from a sermon by Max Lucado. He said, it's hard not to see why. Sucked in, washed up, and blown over. That's enough to steal the song from the stoutest heart. Isn't that the truth sometimes? Sucked in, washed up, and blown over.

And so, as we pivot towards the end of this message, we've looked at an amazing account there in Exodus 6. The Lord Himself, with His might, saying He was going to deliver His people. And spiritually, He has done that for you and for me. He's taken us out of the whirlwind of our sins, of our past, of the blackness, the darkness that we've been captured in. And He's delivered us forward into His light. We have been brought out, rescued, and redeemed. But yet, life still goes on. And that big vacuum cleaner of life sometimes sucks us in, spends us around, and leaves us a mess on the other side. Don't lose hope of everything that God has done for you and continues to do for you this next year. Because, sadly, we know trials and struggles will continue to come our way. It's just part of life. Don't let that take your vision off of what God has done already for you and everything He has planned for you in the future. Because, even though those vacuum cleaners will come, we have assurance that God will complete the work He has started in us and will see us to the end. Because He's already called us children of His. And that's the beauty of what we have in Scripture.

We must work to continually battle through whatever this world or sin itself will throw at us. We must continue to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and we must work to keep all things in the proper perspective, knowing that nothing can separate us from the love of God.

Let's, again, I'll just reference Exodus 6. We read it at the very beginning. It said Exodus 6 in verse 7. Actually, I think we turned back to Exodus 6, didn't we? Let's read verse 7 if you're still here with me in Exodus 6 verse 7.

Because God says, I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. This is a very personal statement He made to the Israelites and to us in turn. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. He is God who has brought us out of the burdens of our sin. Let's close in 1 Peter chapter 1.

I love that chippy the bird story.

I can just imagine both sides of that one from the mom vacuuming them up, but I can also just imagine chippy going through that vacuum cleaner.

Here in 1 Peter 1, Peter is emphasizing that through God the Father's love for all of humanity, you and I are being redeemed and rescued through this precious life of His Son. Through this act, God is in the process of delivering humanity from the penalty of their sin as well. This is why it is essential for those God is calling today to continue to place our faith and trust in Jesus Christ as our own personal Savior.

Here in 1 Peter 1, verse 3, notice what Peter writes. He said, So we're protected. We're in His hands. He's looking after us.

Verse 13, he says, We can't backtrack. We can't go back to our past. It's not an option. Christ asks His disciples, Do you want to leave me too? Where are we going to go? Peter says, right? It's not an option for us to go back to our former ignorance and lusts. Verse 15, But as He who has called you is holy, you also be holy in your conduct, because it is written, Be holy for I am holy. And if you call on the Father, who without partiality judges according to each one's work, conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay here in fear, like God we fear, knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold from your aimless conduct received by traditions of your Father, but with the precious blood of Christ as a Lamb without blemish and without spot. He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but it was manifest in these last times for you, who through Him believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory so that your faith and hope are in God. What a beautiful passage to remind ourselves with. May we keep this mindset in our hearts and our minds as we take in the unleavened bread of Jesus Christ this week, and may you all have a beautiful, wonderful, and just meaningful days of Unleavened Bread.