When our children were young, I used to dream of taking all of them to the Holy Land together. I wanted them to experience first-hand the places we read and talked about from their Bibles.
I thought of this trip as an integral part of their discipleship .
My hope was that this would separate the Bible from the novels and short-stories they read and help them understand that the people and places in the Bible were history, not just stories. My view was that this would galvanize their resolve to follow Christ.
In 2019, we got that opportunity and even though it stretched our finances to take all 6 of our family, it was so worth it. My oldest was 19 and headed back to college in the Fall, and my youngest was 13.
Imagine the Israelites trekking across from Egypt to Northern Saudi Arabia and around to the Jordan River. They did this for decades, and it was hard. However, even with the heat which they were probably used to, God was teaching them and nurturing a belief in him.
The Exodus is the story of God’s chosen people going from slavery in Egypt to freedom. God was preparing them to enter Canaan and fulfill the calling He had for them.
When Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and across the Red Sea, he led them to Mt. Sinai. God called Moses up to Him so that He could give Moses and the Israelites the Ten Commandments.
Then in Exodus 32, God tells Moses to go back down the hill because the people had fallen into idolatry. They had taken the gold given to them in Egypt and forced Aaron to make a statue to worship. They fell right back into slavery because quite frankly it is what they knew.
As Moses was coming down the mountain, the Bible narrative tells us that Moses was holding in his hand the two tablets “engraved” (Ex. 32:16) with the law of the Lord. The word in ancient Hebrew used here for engraved is ChaRut (anglicized spelling). This is the only place this word is used in the Bible. The root word for this Hebrew word is shared with another Hebrew word for freedom, CheRut (anglicized spelling). Exchanging the “a” in ChaRut for an “e”.
So, what the Scripture is basically saying here in Exodus is that the Israelites pathway from slavery to freedom was with the law engraved on these tablets. And later, it will be the Law engraved on their hearts.
By this one little word, God is communicating to us that this Law is the pathway to friendship with God and with freedom.
“I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” (Jer. 31: 33)
Slavery for the Israelites was away from the Law. Freedom and friendship with God was represented in the routines and structure of the Law. The dos and don’ts and celebrations and tradition of the Law. That was to be the source of freedom.
This is the same Law that we are to teach to our children when we “rise up and when we lay down” and we are to put as “frontlets before their eyes” and put it on our doors and walls (Dt. 6: 5-7). We are to surround our kids with the Law of the Lord which leads to the freedom that God wanted for His people.
In many cases, people who mean well will fill their lives with all kinds of stuff.
Homeschool families will do this at the end of the summer as they are headed back to school. We will establish resolutions and go out and buy new stuff to help us with these resolutions, but so often these tools and things just gather dust. Rather than fulfilling the promise of the new resolutions, they become weights on our life.
Or we put rules and routines in place because we hope they will lead us closer to fulfilling what God has for us. But instead, they just become a weight. The Israelites had this experience during the time of the Maccabees. They added all kinds of additional tradition and rules on top of God’s Law with the idea that the new rules would make it easier to fulfill God’s Law. By the time Jesus came, there were all kinds of extraneous rules that really had no meaning and had become oppressive to the people. In many cases, these rules had greater influence than the actual law God gave Moses. Specifically, the Sabbath laws that Jesus was violating in healing people in need.
ChaRut reminds us that we should not bind ourselves to anything that does not give us freedom somewhere else.
The Law of the Lord is freedom, but not all rules and routines lead to freedom and peace. As humans, we add a lot of extraneous stuff into our lives that lead to slavery and not freedom. This is a big problem.
- We take a job that promises more financial rewards and more responsibility but in the end it becomes a weight that carries us away from fulfilling the calling God has for us. Our corner office becomes a prison.
- We homeschool but we fill our day with so much extraneous stuff that it crowds out the heart instruction.
- We become enamored with keeping up with our planner or schedule in our homeschool day which crowds out enjoyment of the time with our kids. We get caught in all kinds of co-op activities which really don’t benefit our family or our homeschool.
- We become selfish in our marriage which adds in all kinds of selfish concerns rather than focusing on why the Lord brought you together.
It might be time to clean house, so to speak, and rid yourself of all the things that aren’t leading to the freedom you desire to serve God where He has you.
Our Lord Jesus Christ cleared out the Temple, quite violently I might add, and it might be time for us to clear out our heads of all the extraneous concerns that do not lead to the calling God has for us.
Anything that does not lead to freedom—in Christ—needs to be removed. This is what we mean by thriving through subtraction.
If you are a child of God, you have a calling. Freedom is in pursuit of that calling.
To fulfill that calling, you will need to install routine, standards, and structure into your day, but often we get carried away with rules, expectations, jobs, and all kinds of other things that really do not serve the calling God has for us. Everything that does not lead you toward the calling God has for you will lead to idolatry. Biblically, this is slavery.
Do not ever bind yourself to anything that does not lead to freedom somewhere else.
Freedom comes in pursuing the calling the Lord has for you, and the structure and routines you have in your life are serving to bring you closer to God and give you traction in your calling.
