Word for the Week: Locking God Out of Our Worldview
I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you...
Exodus 6:6
How often do we lock God out of our thinking? I began to think about this again when reading about the Israelites in Egypt. They were enslaved, afflicted, persecuted, worn down – making bricks without straw, literally. Then God sent Moses, an earthly leader, someone to fight their cause, to speak up for them and to get them outta this place! The LORD said to Moses: ‘because of my mighty hand he [Pharaoh] will let them go... he will drive them out of his country’ (Exodus 6:1).
What followed was a painful succession of plagues by which the Israelites slowly gained their deliverance, each worse than the last. And it was slow for a reason: Pharaoh was devious. One minute, conceding and conciliatory (‘Pray to your Lord for we have had enough... I will let you go’), the next hard-hearted, two-faced and wilful. And so it moved fro frogs, gnats and flies to human life itself, with the plague on the firstborn. Would this be enough to get Pharaoh to drive them out?
It was. So they ‘asked the Egyptians for articles of silver and gold and for clothing. The LORD had made the Egyptians favourably disposed towards the people and they gave them what they asked for’ (Exodus 12:35-36). How strange. Imagine being one of those Egyptians. The Israelites’ God had brought plagues on your livestock, your crops, your water supply, your body had been covered in boils and you’d been left in darkness for three days. And then, like all your compatriots, your household was visited by death during the plague on the firstborn. Would you have given them your jewels and robes?
But God had made them favourably disposed towards the people. He had. They gave them their valuables. God can shape a nation. God can change regimes. Do you believe that? Really? Or do you actually think of society as a closed system – one where God cannot or will not intervene? It’s easy to see how we can fall into that way of thinking – most of our friends and colleagues think that way, as do our journalists and writers. But why hold to a faith that confesses God as Saviour and Lord of the world, while living by the rules of a worldview that denudes him of supernatural power and influence over rulers and their people?
Julie Hoey
Comments
Thank you. I am trying to change a particular aspect of "the system" in my workplace, and this is inspiring and encouraging.
Well said. Truly a timely word. We need Prophets (and Prophetesses) like above. Many thanks.
Date:
2010-10-27 10:04:20
Author:
S John Dixon