5 Locations:
Egypt • Sinai • Jerusalem • Babylon • Jerusalem
Common Theme:
Egyptian • Assyrian • Babylonian •Persian
Greek • Roman Oppression
Egypt is metaphor for any system
that keeps people in bondage.
1. Individual liberation
2. Systemic liberation
3. Cosmic liberation
The first step toward liberation
is honesty about our slavery.
You cannot heal what you do
not acknowledge.
23 During
that long period, the king of Egypt died.
The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried
out, and their cry for help because of their slavery
went up to God. 24 God heard their groaning and he
remembered his covenant with Abraham, with
Isaac and with Jacob. 25 So God looked on the
Israelites and was concerned about them.
Exodus 2:23-25
7 The
Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of
my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out
because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned
8
about their suffering. So I have come down to
rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to
bring them up out of that land into a good and
spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey
—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites,
Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry
of the Israelites has reached me, and I have
Exodus 3:7-10
seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them.
10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to
bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”
Exodus 3:7-10
The second step to liberation
always begins with a cry.
Liberation begins with a public
expression that things are not right.
There’s roughly 2,103 verses in
the scriptures about the poor and
oppressed crying out.
12 Step
STEP 2:
Came to believe that a power greater
than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
God always hears the
cry of the oppressed.
This God has a special
interest in the universal
flourishing of His people.
4 terms give voice to Israel suffering:
groaning, cried out, cry for help, moaning
4 verbs express God’s response:
heard, remembered, looked up, took notice
12 Step
STEP 3:
Made a decision to turn our will
and our lives over to the care of
God as we understood him.
God always responds to
the cry of the oppressed.
In this story God doesn’t just hear the cry.
God does something about it. These slaves
in Egypt cry out and God hears and
something new happens. Things aren’t how
they were. Things change. These slaves are
rescued from the oppression of Egypt.
Don’t settle for Egypt when
you were made for Canaan.
Exodus in theology reveals God as
liberator, Moses as organizer, and
the freedom march as the biblical
pattern of redemptive history.
What is oppressing us?
What has you trapped?
What are the bricks in your life?
What owns you?
What is the Pharaoh in your life?
What are you enslaved to?