Get Real November 16 Devotional
November 16, 2024
EXODUS 14:30-31 | 30 Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. 31 Israel saw the great work that the Lord did against the Egyptians. So the people feared the Lord and believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses.
EXODUS 15:1-3 | 1Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord: “I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed
gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea. 2 The Lord is my strength and my might, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him; my father’s God, and I will exalt him. 3 The Lord is a warrior; the Lord is his name.
There are two forms of freedom: freedom from and freedom for. At the Red Sea, the Hebrews were freed from oppression and servitude. They were freed from a life dictated by Egyptian overlords, where their time and labor were under the control of the regime. But negative and positive freedoms are very different.
Freedom for is more complex than freedom from. Once outside of Pharaoh’s control, the Israelites were free to live anywhere, to worship in any way, to build a new nation from their tribal roots, and to construct a new self-sustaining society in all its dimensions. Notice how difficult it is to accomplish all these things. And it was easier to get Israel out of Egypt than it was to get the attitudes of Egyptian slavery out of the Israelites. Freedom for life is an ongoing project with many pitfalls, because choices and independence in our broken world, with our limited vision, will lead to complications. Ideas and possibilities for life together conflict, evil must be resisted, and new norms established. Liberation is only the start of responsible freedom.
Do you need freedom from something or someone?
What do you use your freedom for?
