Out of Bondage.

 Egypt. When you think of the Bible and Egypt you almost automatically think of the Ten Commandments and Moses freeing the Hebrew slaves from Egypt by taking them through the Red Sea. Egypt, the place of the pyramids and sphinx, pharaohs and tombs.  Jesus came out of Egypt…

Mat 2:15  And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son.

Jesus went into Egypt as a baby for protection and stayed there until it was safe for Him to travel to Nazareth, taken there by His loving parents guided by God, led by the angels. 

God led the Hebrews into Egypt to protect and save them as well, when a famine overtook the land for seven years. Prior to the famine He'd set things up so that a Hebrew sold into slavery would become the second in command of all Egypt. Then those saved Hebrews over the years (400 years) went from being saved people into being slaves, captives of Egypt. God then saved those slaves from their subjugation by using a deliverer, Moses.  You know the very famous true story of Moses and the Ten Commandments. 

Jesus was a part of all these things, a very important part. 

1Co 10:2  And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; 

1Co 10:3  And did all eat the same spiritual meat; 

1Co 10:4  And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ. 

1Co 10:5  But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness. 

1Co 10:6  Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lust

The Spiritual Rock- was Christ.

Way before Jesus, as God with God took on the flesh of the Son of God,  He was there with the children of Israel as they were being led out of Egypt. Then as a babe He physically came out of Egypt.  There is an importance here we don't consider… read on…  and may  God enlighten us!

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February 5, 1901

“The Keeping of the Commandments” Advent Review and Sabbath Herald 78, 6, p. 88.

WHEN the Lord visited and redeemed His people, to take them into the land of promise, the land which He sware to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give to them: when He took them unto himself to serve Him only in the keeping of His holy law, He said, first of all: “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” etc. 

Israel missed God’s call; they believed Him not, and therefore could not enter into His rest. These fell in the wilderness. And the generation that went into the land of Canaan did not in that go into “the land” and the “rest” to which the Lord would have taken the people when they first left Egypt, had they only believed. They drifted further and further away from God until they actually rejected Him, that they might be like the nations. 

And they became like the nations. They failed exactly as had their fathers before them. For, in the days of David, the Lord said still: “To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness; when your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do always err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.” Hebrews 3:7-11; 4:7, 8. 

But still they hardened their hearts, and went further away from the Lord, until they got into such darkness that it was the very darkness of “the shadow of death,” which is “darkness, as darkness itself, and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness.” And there the people sat, when there shined unto them a “great light,” even the light of God, in which darkness itself is light. Isaiah 9:2; Job 10:21, 22; Matthew 4:16. 

Christ came. Again God visited to redeem His people, to make them not simply servants, but sons of God, that we “might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him, all the days of our life.” And at that time again God said: “Out of Egypt have I called my Son.” 

Why was it necessary that the infant Jesus should be taken into Egypt at the time of the slaughter of the innocents by Herod? It was not alone to escape the decree of Herod, that Jesus was taken into Egypt; for that decree could have been easily escaped by a much shorter journey. This was done to teach all people forever the deep spiritual lesson of the true deliverance from Egypt. 

Jesus came into the world to take the place of man, to be our substitute and surety. Mankind is overwhelmed in the darkness and bondage of sin—Egyptian darkness, a darkness that may be felt. He was made to be sin; upon Him was laid the iniquity of us all; He was numbered with the transgressors; He was made in all things like those whose substitute He became. 

Therefore He was taken into Egypt, and was brought out again, “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my Son;” and that by this object lesson there might be emphasized anew, and forever, the great lesson taught from of old to all people, the great truth that men become the sons of God only by their being called out of Egypt. 

The Ten Commandments express the whole duty of man. All that ever a man can do, in deed, word or thought, in righteousness, is covered by the Ten Commandments. All man’s service to God is in the keeping of this His Law. And when it was written of Christ, and it was fulfilled in Christ, as the Example of all mankind, that “out of Egypt have I called my Son,” this was simply speaking anew to all mankind the words which, that great day, God spoke from heaven, as the preamble to the whole Ten Commandments and their keeping: “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” 

This is the universal lesson: that no man can serve God, that no man can keep a single one of the Ten Commandments, except he is first delivered, by the power of God, from the darkness of Egypt, from the darkness of the shadow of death, from the realm and bondage of sin.

To be continued…. By the grace and will of God! All through Jesus Christ our Lord, now and forever! Amen!