Comfortable in Our Bondage

 By Henry Blackaby, Experiencing GOD Day-By-Day,

"And they said to them, "Let the Lord look on yu and judge, because you have made us abhorrent in the sight of Pharoah and in the sight of his servants, to put a sword in their hands to kill us." Exodus 5:21.

Background

The descendants of Abraham, father of the Israelite people, had lived in the land of Egypt for over 400 years. During that time that had become slaves and forced to serve Pharoah and the Egyptian Empire. Little by little their burden became greater and they cried out to God for relief. God sent raised up a man named Moses to lead them out of their bondage. Moses and his brother Aaron appealed to Pharoah to let the Israelite people go Palestine (then called Canaan but also know as The Promised Land). Pharoah refused to let the people go and made their workload even more burdensome. He called the other Israelite leaders in to his chambers and told them they must gather their own supplies but still produce the same quota as beforehand. Even though they had been under the heavy hand of Pharoah for many years, these other Israelite leaders were rather ticked off at Moses and Aaron for making their pathetic conditions even more difficult. They seemed to prefer their present bondage over death. To this Blackaby wrote:

It is possible for people to become so accustomed to their bondage that they resist efforts to free them. The Hebrews had been slaves in Egypt for four hundred years. Slavery meant that they were not free to do God's will or to go where they wanted. Moses had come to tell the Israelites how they could experience freedom, yet they were more concerned about the reaction of the taskmasters than they were about pleasing God. For them to be free would mean that the pharoah they were serving would be angry! It would mean that the Egyptians they had served all their lives might attack them. Freedom from their slavery did not seem to be worth the hardships they would inevitably endure.

When God sets out to free us, there will often be a price we will have to pay. Grief can be a terrible form of bondage, yet we can become comfortable with it. We can grow so comfortable with it. We can grow so comfortable with fear that we don't know how to live without it. As destructive as our sinful habits and lifestyle might be, we may prefer living with the familiar, rather than being freed to experience the unknown. We may recognize the harmful influence of a friend but choose to reject God's will rather than offend our friend.

As incredible as it seems, the Israelites were angry at Moses for disrupting the life of slavery to which they had grown accustomed. Have you been lulled into a comfortable relationship with your bondage? Do you fear change more than you fear God? Are you willing to allow God to do what is necessary in order to free you?