Taskmasters

The title of the sermon is Taskmasters. You may find that a bit odd to hear a sermon about this in Taskmasters. I'd like you to go with me, if you will. The very first time that Taskmasters is mentioned in the Bible is Exodus. If you will turn to Exodus 1. Exodus 1, verse 11. Well, you can actually see in verse 9, as we know that in Egypt at the time there was a new Pharaoh, and so he did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, look at the people of the children of Israel more and mightier than we. Come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply. And if it happened in the event of war, that they may also join our enemies and fight against us, and so go up out of the land, because they had free labor, and they were doing a lot of building, and they were a very prosperous nation, Egypt at the time. Therefore, they set Taskmasters, Taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens. And they built the cities that the Pharaoh supplied, but they, but the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were in dread of the children of Israel. So the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with rigor. Or you might see in your margin, harshness. So the labor they were performing was now slave labor. It was not something they had a choice to do. The Taskmasters, the overseers, the slave drivers were very harsh. And they, in verse 14, and they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, in brick, and in all manner of service, all their service, which they served them with, it says, rigor or harshness. So it was a hard life for the children of Israel. There in Egypt, it was not always that way. Of course, when Joseph was alive, I think you will remember that after the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness after the children of Israel came out, as they were about to be prepared the next generation to go into the Promised Land. Deuteronomy 15, 15, it says, Remember, you were slaves in Egypt till the Lord redeemed you or rescued you.

So this was something that God wanted them to remember. Now follow me in Exodus, as we go to Exodus 5, and we see this incredible story here. And it is Moses' first encounter with the Pharaoh, as he's about to tell the Pharaoh to let God's people go. He said, Afterward, Moses and Aaron, in verse 1, went in and told Pharaoh, Thus says the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness. And Pharaoh said, Who's the Lord? Who's the Lord that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, nor will I let the people go. Why? Because the Pharaoh himself was considered a god. They had over 350 different gods. Some even said over 600 gods there in Egypt. And so he was one of them. And he's going, Well, who's this god that I should listen to him? So they said, The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Please, let us go three days journey into the desert and sacrifice to the Lord our God. Lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword. So here we see pretty crystal clear that if the Pharaoh was going to let them go, and the people did not go, God was going to bring pestilence or possibly even the sword on them. This was serious. Then the king of Egypt said to them, Moses and Aaron, why do you take the people away from their work? Get back to work! Get back to your labor! Man, how do you see what a kingdom I'm building here? Look at these things. They're beautiful. We've got 600,000 men. That's quite a workforce. You need to get to work. What are you doing, standing around here talking? Kind of a different way to look at it.

Pharaoh said, look, the people of this land are many, and you make them rest from their labor. So the same day Pharaoh called the taskmasters of the people and their officers, saying, you shall no longer give the people straw to make brick as before. Let them go and gather the straw for themselves, and you shall lay on them the quota of brick which they made before. You shall not diminish it, for they are idle.

Therefore, they cry out, saying, let us go and sacrifice to our gods. So he's looking at this and going, hmm, I guess we've just been too light on them. I guess it's not been enough harshness. There's not been enough rigor. Why, these people, I guess they have all kinds of time to want to go out and play in the desert and have a feast to this so-called god.

Well, we'll show them. So let more labor be laid on them, that they may labor and let them not regard false words. The task and the taskmasters of the people and their officers went out and spoke to the people. Thus says Pharaoh, I will not give you the straw. Go get yourself straw where you can find it, yet none of your work will be diminished. So the people were scattered abroad throughout all the land. Of Egypt, together, stubble instead of straw. It was even thought at that time because they had to go find stuff and they had to have the men work, that all of a sudden even the children and the women had to go and try to find some straw because they couldn't stop making the amount of brick and it was all they could do.

And verse 13, And the taskmasters forced them to hurry, saying, fulfill your work, your daily quota, as when there was straw. Also, the officers of the children of Israel, whom Pharaoh's taskmasters had set over them, were beaten. They were beaten and were asked, why have you not fulfilled your task?

And making brick both yesterday and today, as the day before. Then the officers of the children of Israel came and cried to Pharaoh, saying, why are you dealing thus with your servants? So before it was bad, now it's really bad because the taskmasters, these overseers, if the leaders of all the men don't do their job, they're going to be beaten. And obviously, from what we read, they were going to be beaten every day.

Even if it caused the death, what would it matter? They'll get somebody else to replace them. So these taskmasters were Egyptian, but the leaders who were trying to oversee the work and make sure he got done were from Israel, from the children of Israel. So we come down to verse 15, then the officers of the children came and cried out, why are you dealing thus with your servants? There is no straw given to your servants, and they say to us, make brick. And indeed, your servants are beaten, but the fault is in your own people. But he said, you are idle. You are idle. Said it twice. Therefore, you say, let us go and sacrifice to the Lord.

Therefore, go now, work. For no straw shall be given. You shall deliver the quota of bricks. And the officers of the children of Israel saw that they were in trouble after it, saying, you shall not diminish any bricks from your daily quota. Then they came out from Pharaoh, and they met Moses and Aaron, and stood there to meet them. And they said, let the Lord look on you and judge because you have made us abhorrent in the sight of Pharaoh and in the sight of the servants, to put a sword in their hands to kill us.

And they actually said, it's going to go even worse for us, unless we can do this. We're going to get killed, or perhaps the way this is phrased, one or two already had. But of course, Moses appealed to God, and God said, well, I'm going to make the Pharaoh. This is all for my purpose. Don't worry, it's going to work out. And yeah, it's so interesting because we read in chapter 10, where the ninth plague that is brought upon them is dark, darkness.

So here Pharaoh wanted all this work done, and then all these plagues show up, and all of a sudden, guess who's not doing any work? He can't! But by the time darkness comes around, and your scripture is actually Exodus 10, verse 21 through 27, you can read it later, actually bring out that it was so thick you could touch the darkness. Now, I've been in somewhere that's dark. I've been in a dark room, but I don't think I've ever been in somewhere where it's so dark that you could feel the darkness. Yeah, you can't see your hand, you can't see this, but that's the way it was. And it just happened to be darkness, as you read, just over Egypt, over where the Pharaoh was.

Now, where Israel was in Goshen, up around there, guess what? There was light. So you can imagine, he said that for three days that darkness stayed. I guess no brick were made then, were there? No brick was being made. Pharaoh wanted all this work done. Well, guess what? God was saying, let me give you guys a rest. Couldn't be any work done. God is an incredible way of doing this. And so even with this much darkness, when it is so dark you can't see in front of you, day or night, taskmasters aren't going to be able to get any tasks done.

No beating is going to go on.

So there was quite a reprieve there, as we began to see that the children of Israel were children of light and not darkness as at night when King. But I'd like to explain about these taskmasters. Taskmasters in Egypt were men of renown. They were usually made from military men who were getting a little older and couldn't fight like they used to or be part of the army, and they weren't leaders. But they were still strong men and men to be feared. Brutal men. And they were actually put over the leaders of Israel, and they were to get the work done. And they did not care because these were slaves, and they were treated as slaves. You might recall in the earlier chapters of Exodus, even Moses, when he was actually a general, came across one of these taskmasters, and he was beating one of the Israelites to the point that even historical sources say he was going to beat the guy to death. And Moses stepped in and actually killed him. This was a taskmaster. So there is a history there, and 40 years had gone by from the time of Moses leaving to the time that he's coming back now. And the children of Israel, the men had gone to 600,000 men. That's what left. With women and children, you're looking at two, two and a half million people, maybe even three. So there was a lot of labor, and it was going to be free. There was going to be food to be grown. I mean, the Egyptians were living the life of luxury because of this. So these taskmasters, it was a job. Actually, the Hebrew word for this is nagas, n-a-g-a-s, nagas. And nagas means to press or to oppress. They had a job to do. They were to drive, drive people to get something done. They were actually known as the chief of burdens because they did not mind putting burdens on people. And these were put on the children of Israel.

So I bring this up because the children of Israel were slaves. They were slaves for at least 110 to 150 years. As they were actually in there for 215, but they... Because Joseph had actually lived another 70 years after they came in, they weren't slaves then. But you can imagine for a hundred or more years you were slaves. You developed a slave mentality. And the taskmasters developed you're like an animal. You're good to us as long as you can produce. If you can't do something like then you're of no use to us. So this went on for a hundred and something odd years. They were slaves. And that's why God reminded them. Remember you were slaves in Egypt because now they were free. Do we realize, brethren, that these words were for us? Because we were once slaves to sin. But we were redeemed. We were bought. We were given our freedom by Jesus Christ. The penalty no longer do we have that harsh taskmaster that requires us to die because of sin. But we are under grace. I'd like to look at that today as I give this message. And like you, turn with me to Romans 6. Romans 6. Romans 6, one verse. Because talking to the Romans here, Paul knows they know something about slavery. Being in the city of Rome at the time of Paul, three-fourths of all the people living in Rome at that time were slaves. Three-fourths. Some even said it as much as 80-90% were slaves. They'd conquered. And so the people of Rome lived good because they had all these slaves. So you could actually, slaves are common, you could trade one male slave for 20. You could actually trade 20 male slaves for one horse. So that's how that's what it became. But in Romans 6 and verse 16, he said, Do you not know to whom you present yourself slaves to obey? You are that one slave whom you obey, whether of sin to death or of obedience to righteousness.

But some can still be slaves. And that's what we deal with. And that's why we come to this time of the year as we talk about the days of Unleavened Bread. Because it's to remind the people, it was to remind the children of Israel, that they came out of sin, as Egypt was actually called that in various places. And that they were called out of that, and now they are to remember that. As Paul, as Chris reminded us in Corinthians, that Paul actually brought out that we are to come out of this world and out of sin. And that bread is to remind us the unleavened bread of putting Christ in and the leavened bread of putting sin out, as we surely understand that. Now, why do I go through this? Are you, and only you can answer this question, are you a slave to sin? Are there some sins that are your taskmaster?

Is it? We all sin. But is it a way of life? Do you feel like a slave to some of your sins? Because you know, even Paul said that, that I know I shouldn't do that, I do, and that I don't do. He dealt with this in some ways, as we do. And I want to make it crystal clear, because we'll read a scripture later as we close, there is a difference between sin, having to sin, and sin being a part of our life, our way of life. Constantly sinning. When we have a sin and we say, why did I say that? Why did I do that? Ah! And we all do that. But then there is another type of sin that these days are for, that these sins stay with us, and they seem to rear their ugly head every so often, and they begin to become a burden to us, and all of us have dealt with that. And hopefully we are working and dealing with this issue during this week. Because we're never going to be sinless till we have our change. But are we working to take that burden off of us so we can say, we have no taskmaster? We do not have sins that are driving us.

You carry chains, chains of sin. You know, slaves were often put in chains, and they were usually heavy chains, but not so heavy that they couldn't get the work done. But they usually bound them to where they could only walk so far. I remember as a kid back in the 1960s in Tennessee, they would have, we lived on a country road, they would have chain gangs from the jail that would come out, and I remember being a kid and I was just amazed at this. They wore the old striped, like pajama things, and they would be out there, and there were about 15 or 20 of them chained together with a old slinging blade, and they would be clearing the road. And so they were chained so they could just, they all had to walk together, or occasionally there'd be another one here. He couldn't do much, but he had to work with that chain, and then he had to move over here. That was a burden, and I remember that sight, seeing it for the first time when I was about seven or eight years old, and then I would see it again a few more times. What would it be like? Have you ever thought about it? To have a chain around you? That burden, that weight? Brethren, that's what sin is. It's a burden. It's a weight. And we cannot clear ourselves of it without Jesus Christ, and without the Holy Spirit, so that it does not become a way of life for us. So who or what are your taskmasters? Is sin your taskmaster in so many ways? Or have you broken the chains of bondage of certain sins? A lot of times we do. We overcome these things, but then it's amazing how, just like Whac-a-mole, a game, it pops up. Some other sin pops up, and you have to deal with that, right? Does sin control you? Are there certain sins that control you, control your way of life? You remember some old taskmasters from days gone by?

Wouldn't you hate to have these around you? On you? Where you're carrying that weight around? But we do. You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free, so that we're not burdened down, because some people, honestly, tell you they never get rid of the sin. They never get rid of the guilt that comes with sin. I've heard some cry out, some even commit suicide, because they can't get rid of it. That's why Jesus Christ came, to help us get rid of this. But during these days of Unleavened Bread, we hopefully realize that we're carrying a little more weight than we should. That we're carrying some dead weight. We're carrying some chains. You remember the old taskmasters from years gone by? I remember those, because they actually were. I didn't recognize they were taskmasters at the time. But here we had in school, when I was in school, you know some taskmasters were certain kids in school, because of the way they dressed. And so then, everybody began to, wow, you had to dress like this. You had to, you know, these were the popular kids, you know, and so they dressed that way. So, wow, how am I going to come? Or, it's tennis shoes. Oh, wait a minute, you got to have these shoes. You don't have the shoes. You're just kind of a loser. Next thing you know, what are you doing? I'm working extra hours trying to find some jobs so I can get some converse tennis shoes. They had to be the special ones. Then it was Jordans. You had to have Jordans, and kids in Chicago and various cities were killing each other for the shoes, shooting each other for shoes. Close.

Taskmasters. You're driven by that. When I got older in school, it was cars. Oh, what kind of car you got? Everybody, oh, I need another car. Oh, wait a minute, I need... Then you had to have, for a while... Now, maybe this was just the 70s, late 70s. You had to have certain rims, and they had to be this certain kind. Then you had to have this certain stereo. I had the ugliest, cheapest car you could ever imagine, but I had to have a good stereo in it. Why? The stereo was worth more than the car. Why? Taskmaster. Right? Because that's what everybody had. That's what they were telling you, and so I needed... I had a junky car. I couldn't afford one, but I could get a stereo.

And you had to know what woofers and tweeters and where they were all positioned in the car.

What about the in-crowd? Right? Every school had to have an in-crowd. Were you part of the in-crowd? I never was, but it didn't make me not covet because the in-crowd had all the good-looking girls in that crowd, and it wasn't until they got to be a senior. New seniors, we didn't even care.

But they were taskmasters, and when you graduate from school, or you graduate from college, and you get out and you have friends. You know, friends can be your taskmasters. I had friends that were taskmasters. Didn't realize they were friends, but if they did something, I'm kind of like, I need to do that too, or I really do not fit in. Right? It can even happen at church. How about your job? Well, we've all had bosses that we wanted to say were slave drivers, right? Because they just said, ah-ha, they're always honest. But then again, we have those friends who are working with us, and we begin to, oh, let's go out and have dinner together after work, and have drinks, or do this, or... And so next thing you know, am I seeing the right person in the job? Because, oh, now I've got a chance to move up, and so now I need to hang around and spend time with this boss, so I've got a chance to move up, and next thing you know, we have a taskmaster, even at our job. Entertainment could even become a taskmaster, as many of us seared our conscience by watching things and hearing things that we probably did not eat to do, and still drives us. Brethren, taskmasters, for many of us, are... is our human nature, and Satan is the Pharaoh, and we can see that. C.S. Lewis once wrote, "'No man knows how bad he is until he has tried to be good.'" We all face that with our Days of Unleavened Bread, and put him sent out. "'No man knows how bad he is until he's tried to be good.'" A writer once wrote, "'There is no existence in the world so sad as that of a slave, and there is no slavery so hard as that of sin.'" Yes, it is tough. Deuteronomy 15, 15. Remember it? It says, "'Remember you were slaves.'" Turn there. "'Remember you were slaves.'" Are you a slave? Can you relate to the children of Israel? Is it something that you realize that you are?

"'To live with the chains of sin is to carry a burden, and an oppressive wait every hour of every day.'" Do we realize that? And that Christ wants to take us away from that burden so that we can have life and live it more abundantly. So we don't have a taskmaster that is, what, driving us to do something, and then we have a conscience that drives our mind, and we are constantly in a battle between good and evil. That's why God wants us to do good, and to try to eliminate these sins. And when we have them and we do it, we go, okay, I need help, because we all do. So it does not become a way of life. A consistent sin and repetitive sin is, brethren, that burden. A consistent and repetitive sin is that chain. Being a prisoner to sin is not God's plan for His people.

He does not want us to look like this. Do we understand? Do we see? He does not want us to be burdened and be a slave to sin. So no matter what, we know. Only go this far, because sin has got us. Go here, go here. It's all I can go. It's all I can do. I know it's going to show up. Brethren, sins start slow. One usually link at a time, doesn't it? And then another link, and then another sin. And then it goes back to that same link. And then we're going back to the same sins time and time again. Or maybe we can create a new one. More and more until, brethren, we are totally chained. We are totally chained with certain sins. And then we are. We are a slave, and we have taskmasters.

By the time we notice it's too late, that we are chained. And so many of those times we have addictions. So what happens? We have addictions. We have divorces. We have destructive lives. We have a destructive life pattern that has developed. Brethren, the days of Unleavened Bread are about getting out of these chains. It's a training process to help us break those chains, break that burden. See, Israel was in bondage to Pharaoh and his taskmasters, as sinners are in bondage to Satan and to sin. Sin is the taskmaster. Egypt, Babylon, they were used as metaphors for sin in Scripture. It pictures us coming out of the world so we do not live like the world. You turn on radio or television, they just look at it like, that's not really sin. Matter of fact, when's the last time you heard on news or anything else? The word sin. I don't know when I grew up. You know, it was like this. It was wrong, but it's like, now we can't tell between right and wrong. What is sin? Brethren, are we continuing to come out of Egypt during this week? Come out of sin? Are we breaking the chains, the bondage of our taskmaster, which is sin? By addressing it every single day. I took a longer walk on the beach yesterday as I was doing my prayer and just realized, as I tried to go through the various sins that I battle or that I need to fight or that I know are headed my way, they just keep coming. But you see, the next time I was here, I believe we were talking about putting on the armor of God. We're here to fight. We're here to battle so that we don't become like this. We don't need to be a slave, a slave to sin. Now, what little time I have left, I have about 10 minutes, I want to look at some taskmasters that you and I are going to confront. I only have one scripture left.

And I can tell you from being a minister, from counseling people, how these things affect us, and they affect you, they affect me. I'm one of the biggest taskmasters today.

Pornography. Pornography. It's believed over 50% of all men in the United States are addicted to pornography. Now, I just look at it addicted to it. Young men from the age of 16 to 32, about 90%, all the statistics. Don't believe me, go to Pew, go to some of these research. You'll find out. And I've dealt with them. I know. They're addicted. They're addicted to it. They have this chain around that they are slaves to pornography to where they use up all their money. They will go outside of anything to get it, to see it, because it's addictive. And now, that same age group of young people, or girls, never in the history of taking polls has it ever been that there's actually about 30% of girls from age 16 to 32 addicted to pornography. Chained. Chained.

Stealing. Realized stealing can be a taskmaster. I knew a guy. I worked with him. And he shocked me because we were a fairly small company that I worked for at the time. He was a few years older than I was. Spent time in the military. I kind of had a lot of respect for him. But then I noticed even at work in the office, he would pick up a pen, put it in his jacket. He would take paper. Then I saw him actually take toilet paper out of the thing, take whole rolls, and take one every night with him. Okay. And I thought, what's he doing? But then it went on to where he was finally fired because he was actually siphoning gas. We would get there 30 minutes before any of us. He was siphoning gas out of the truck tanks and putting it in his own car. And then we found out when that happened, when they fired him, that he had been stealing other stuff inside our company. Taking tools, taking all this stuff. It's a task. It may start small, but it's going to get bigger. Right? I had a girl steal from us at our company, and it started very small. It took a long time to find out. It took 18 months to where almost after she stole the first time. And it was only $50 to $100 the first month. And then the next thing you know, it became $200 a month and then $300 to where it was $600 or $700 a month. And then she got bold enough to charge $1,000 a month. It starts. She was chained. It can be our taskmaster to where you want more. You just can't settle it. Oh, well, that was free. You know sports can be a taskmaster? Or, gosh, just live for sports. I mean, Neil's going, yeah, I know, you know. And they're just people who just, they can't not get it out of their head. They just have to watch. They just are so involved. Nothing else matters. You've even had become such a taskmaster for some men, they would give up their wives, give up their family, because they're so addicted to sports and that feeling that they get.

Yeah, right, right. Just holding on. While he's choosing TV or Bible study, who's going to be your taskmaster this week? Wait a minute. One more TV show. Well, no, I didn't get any Bible study, but I'll get it after the show. Right? Lying. Lying. Fair and false witness lying. You remember the first time you lied? You probably don't. Most of us would not remember the first time we lied. Might remember the first whipping we got when we got caught lying. But just think about it. You were probably like these, well, not Nicholas yet, but one of these younger kids. You might have been eight months, nine months, a year, and all of a sudden something happens. And so the mommy or daddy ask, did you do that? And all of a sudden you say no. And you know, and nothing happens. And then what happens in your mind? Wow! If I just say that, I'm not going to get in trouble. And then you learn later on, if you say it really well, you could get away with a lot of stuff. And then it starts this pattern to where lying becomes a part of what you do. It's a part of everyday life. And you think nothing, and you carry that into a marriage, and your mate just lies to you because it's a part of their life. And then it becomes a part of the other person's life, dealing with it. Coverting. Realize coveting. Oh, is that ever a taskmaster? When is enough? Enough. How many people can say when is enough? How about the internet? It is addictive. I never even got involved with the internet. Till what, 10 years ago? 12 years ago? She did, because that was part of her job. But I was like, I didn't want to waste my time on that. Of course, now it's all part of my job. And I have spent time on there. But you know, I look, and I say, well, I need to know what news is going on, right, Jeff? Right? Bruce, okay, look, and so you're checking this, and wow, that's a story. I need to keep up with that. And then, next thing you know, it's got me going over here, over there. Wait a minute. Oh, oh, over here. And I turn around and what? Two hours. What have I done? I don't remember what I originally went there to look at. Right? And then people on Facebook, they say they spend six to seven hours a day on Facebook. They're chained. They're chained.

Go with me now, the last scripture. Shall we wrap this up? Let's go to John, the Gospel of John. John, verse 8.

Jesus, verse 34, 8 and 34. I'm reading from the New King James. Most assuredly I say to you, Jesus said, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. Whoever commits sin is a slave to sin. Well, all of us are going to sin. So if you really ask a question, well, what does he expect us to do? If it's part of the human nature, part of the human design and life, sin, how am I not a slave to sin? And I knew that that didn't sound right. So I went to the Greek interlinear, linear, and I wanted to see what was originally said and how it was translated, because I knew that something didn't sound right. So in the original here, in case you want to look at it, it's here. The original Greek said, everyone doing sin a slave is. That's how it was actually written. Everyone doing sin a slave is, or as it was translated from the Greek, everyone practicing sin is a slave, which makes total sense because of the way that linguists actually looked and saw that it was talking about not just sin, but practicing sin. So you can see the difference. So rather than that's what it's about, are we practicing sin? Sin. This is what we need to be able to overcome is our practicing of sin. If there is a taskmaster and it is a sin, let's get out of it. Let's break those chains. Let's work on those. We need help because when you're a slave, you can't always free yourself. But Jesus Christ and God the Father made it possible that we are free because once you know the truth, the truth will set you free. And who is the truth? He says what? I am the way. I am the what? Life. I am the truth. Break those chains. Break those chains. It's about sin and our sinful nature, helping us to humbly see ourselves and our sins. Will we break free? But will the breaking free end Monday at about 7 30 when the days of Unleavened Bread are over? Let's hope not. Let's pray not. Let's work. And remember, no chains, no taskmaster. Because we answer to our God.