Exodus 23

(March 7, 2014)
Israel’s escape from captivity and bondage is a good metaphor for our individual escapes from the captivity of sin.  Like Israel, we need miraculous intervention in order to make even the first steps.  And like Israel, we need to learn and adapt to our new lives in our new promise land of righteous living.  And, like Israel, we must move into our land in stages, line upon line.

But we cannot make treaties with evil and those remnants of our unrighteousness that remain in our hearts.  From time to time, I have tried to do that.  When I was fighting a particular vice or weakness, I would draw lines and create treaties – I would go this far in my sins and no further.  I thought that what I was doing was valuable and worthwhile, since it limited the things that I was doing wrong.  But I was fooling myself.  I have since learned that the only way out of sin is to trust in the Lord to not only fight our battles for us but to trust Him to win our battles.  There is no need for drawn lines, and no need for treaties.  You draft treaties when victory is not inevitable.  With faith in Christ, our victory over even our stubbornest sins are within our reach.  To draft a treaty with the evil in our hearts – regardless of where we draw that line – is to deny this Gospel truth.