“Remember”

 Deuteronomy 15:15

            Has God saved you by his almighty grace? Are you now numbered among his saints? If so, this is God’s word to you: “Thou shalt remember that thou was a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God redeemed thee.” The Bondage Of Sin from which we have been redeemed was typified by the bondage that the Jews experienced in Egypt. We were all “children of wrath” by nature. We were all the servants, the slaves, of our lusts and of satan by nature. Paul states it plainly, “Ye were the servants of sin” (Rom. 6:17, 20). Before God saved us by his grace, we were enslaved by a power against which we were without strength. I do not suggest that we all behaved as wickedly as we could. I am simply declaring that we all walked in the path of sin and rebellion against God. Some were highhanded, openly profligate rebels. Others were sneaky, hypocritical rebels. Some were very immoral. Others were very moral, after the judgment of men. But all were the servants of sin. We had no will to righteousness. Yet, even if we had had the will to escape the power of satan and the slavery of our lusts, we were without strength to do so. Have you forgotten that time “when we were yet without strength?” We were without strength to keep God’s law, resist satan’s temptations, or obey the gospel. And we were perfectly content in our bondage. Our bondage was such that we had no heart, desire, or even inclination to escape it. I am a Southerner. I am so much a Southerner, that if I were not a Southerner, I would be ashamed. But the greatest blight upon our Southern heritage is that terrible inhumanity that many still try to defend - Slavery. It is one of those things I wish had never happened, or could somehow be erased from memory. But that cannot be. Slavery is one huge, ugly, oozing sore on the side of the South that will forever mar the beauty of the South. One of the worst aspects of slavery is the fact that it so degraded men that they frequently became content to be slaves. Such contentment is a moral castration of manhood. He is not truly a man who is content to be a slave. Yet, such was our spiritual condition by nature that we were content to be in bondage and slavery to sin and satan. We hugged our chains and kissed our manacles, as if they were ornaments of beauty! The Redemption Of Our Souls by Christ was pictured in the Jews deliverance out of Egypt. As the Jews were redeemed from Egypt by the blood of the paschal lamb and by the blood of the Egyptians themselves, so too we have been redeemed by blood, by the price of Christ’s precious, sin-atoning blood. Having sacrificed his darling Son to save us, the Lord God will not hesitate to sacrifice anything or anyone, even as he did the firstborn in Egypt, Pharaoh, and his armies, to save his elect (Isa. 43:1-4). At God’s set time we were redeemed by the power of his irresistible grace in effectual calling. In Bible terms “redemption” means deliverance as well as ransom. The word “redemption” implies far more than merely the paying of a ransom price. All for whom the ransom price of blood was paid shall be delivered by grace!

Don Fortner