The Commandment of the Month (Shvat- 1/16/10-2/15/10)

[skywalker]

I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt and out of the house of Bondage

This isn't a commandment.  This is an acknowledgment.  But the truth is, you can't even get to the commandment if you don't recognize who it is that is commanding you.

Who is it that expects you to obey his command?  It is the one who took you out of the place in which you were enslaved.  It is the one who took you out of the place where you were limited.  It is the one who was and is a better master to you than you are to yourself.

God pitches himself to his people differently than other masters.  God appeals to his people with a yearning.  He says, "Remember when you were hopeless?  Remember when you were weak?  Remember when you had no options?  I am the one who changed all of that for you."

It is important to recognize that God loves us, that he is tender with us, and that he wants what is best for us.  It is important for us to recognize that first, BEFORE we hear what he requires from us.  It is important because we must first trust the source before we can disarm ourselves enough to believe that his requirements are for our good.

[skywalker]

It's funny, my daughter said to me this morning, "why does God always remind us of who he is by pointing back to Egypt?".  What a great question.

Why do we remind our children who we are?  When we say to our children, "Don't speak to me like that, I am your mother/father.  I brought you into this world and I can take you out!"  What are we really saying?  We are reminding them that there is a little bit more to their existence than the freedom they seemingly think they have.  We are reminding them that they still belong to us and that we still have the power to alter their lives.

We are also convicting them of who they were before we delivered them.  They were "no one".

[skywalker]

Remember who I am when you forget who you are!

There was a time when you lived in a land of limitations.  It had width, and breadth, and depth, but it was limited.  You could only go so far.  There was a glass ceiling.  It wasn't your imagination.  It existed.

There was a time when you lived in a house of bondage.  It had restrictions, and weight, and burdens designed to keep you from realizing that there was a world outside of its parameters.

There was a time when you were trapped.  But God says, right from the beginning of the onset of the nation, "remember that I am the one who brought you out". 

Israel doesn't even know what he has been brought out of yet.  He doesn't even know the depths of the hell that should have been his life.  But God tells his parents who know.  He tells them so that they will tell their children; so that they will remind their children that there was a time when they almost didn't have the ability to have the thing they have...freedom;  The freedom to serve God without fear of losing that right-- ever.

[skywalker]

The Identity Crisis of the Forgotten Nation

We often hear the term:  God-forsaken, but how often do we ponder on what that truly means?

Being God-forsaken means that God has literally turned his back upon that place, that people, and they have been left on their own.  Everyone agrees that when something has been forsaken by God, there is nothing left there at all.  The place is in utter ruin.

Israel, therefore, is reminded, right from the beginning of her identity crisis that she is not forgotten.  She is reminded that she is a nation whom God himself came looking for; whom God himself tends and cares for.  Israel is told at the beginning of her divorce from Egypt, that this Lord, her God, is the one who freed her, and he is the one who will not ever forsake her... not ever.