Everyone has skeletons in the closet. No matter where you come from, where you’ve been, how right you are with God now, all of us have a past that we can’t outrun.
Israel had a past too—one that was inextricably linked to that of Egypt.
This past ran deep, before even Joseph’s time as famine administrator at the end of Genesis. Abram’s journey to Egypt in Genesis 12 marks Egypt’s first appearance in the Biblical narrative, but it would be far from the last. For the next several hundred years, Egypt would represent home, enslavement, deliverance, and temptation.
When Moses first arrived in Egypt to tell Pharaoh to let the people go, Pharaoh originally refuses and increases the labor of the Israelites. This makes the Israelite foremen angry, who then blame Moses, who, in turn, blames God.
God’s response is more reassurance. He tells Moses that He’s going to send plagues and “redeem” them out of Egypt. Once they’re out, God will make them His nation.
But there’s another little note in Exodus 6:7 that foreshadows the relationship of Egypt and Israel. When they think about their relationship with God, He wants them to remember that it was God who brought them out from under the “burdens of the Egyptians.”
At least, that’s what they were supposed to remember. We know from looking into the future of the Exodus, that that’s not the way they thought about Egypt. On more than one occasion, the Israelites balked at moving further towards Canaan because they remembered (incorrectly) how good they had it in Egypt.
Isn’t that the nature of temptation, though? When God tells us today to think on our relationship with Him as one of deliverance, we sometimes think fondly about our past life. We remember how “great” our past life was; as such, we diminish any “deliverance” that God has given us.
Temptation muddies our perception of the past—those very skeletons that we’re trying to run away from. For those who are obedient to God, that deliverance is already there, and we should be so incredibly thankful to God for it.
But when we think about our past with rose-colored glasses, as the Israelites did, and forget about the burden of sin but rather the highlights, we begin to resent God. In our minds, He’s not a deliverer of hope as much as He is a deliverer of pain.
When we think back to the Egypts in our own lives, focus on the deliverance. Focus on the power of God that enabled you to be free from a life of sin and move towards Him. That’s the way that propels us forward towards Him.
