Let My People Go

Our text is Exodus 9:1:

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, says: “Let my people go, so that they may worship me.”

In 1901, Dr. Girdner coined the term “Newyorkitis” to describe an illness whose symptoms included edginess, quick movements, and impulsiveness. It was a condition of the mind, body, and soul affecting many New Yorkers. That was a world without the internet, high-speed cars, or computers. Our world has only sped up. I wonder what he would say about us.

Speed has become a god. Our culture generates in us an endless pursuit of greater security and greater happiness; a pursuit always unsatisfied because we have never gotten or done enough. This god is accompanied by the god of the market that summons us to endless desires and needs that are never met but always require more effort. The advertising god in service to the market god always offers one more product for purchase, one more car, one more deodorant, one more prescription drug, one more cell phone, one more beer.

We are harassed by many Pharaohs who kept reminding us of the inadequacy of our lives. Constantly, we see signs that we do not measure up yet, haven’t quite arrived, haven’t yet reached our potential, haven’t been recognized by quite the right people. Weariness, being heavy-laden, carrying an ill-fitting weighty yoke are all ways of speaking of those serving these gods of endless productivity. We have become worshippers of a system of gods that leaves us permanently restless.

Into that system God says, “Let my people go, so that they may worship me.” The God of the Bible is a Sabbath-keeping God, ensuring that restfulness and not restlessness is at the center of life. Sabbath becomes a decisive, concrete, visible way of opting for and aligning with the God of rest. We must choose the gods of restlessness or the God of restfulness.

Jesus declares to his disciples, “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money” (Matthew 6:24). The way of money is the way of endless desire, endless productivity, and endless restlessness without any Sabbath. Jesus taught his disciples that they could not have it both ways.

God called Israel to depart from the Egyptian system to dance and sing in freedom (cf. Exodus 15). He calls us to do the same. Sabbath is not an idea but a practical art. We are conditioned to run at brick-making speed. God offers freedom. To cease, even for a time, the anxious striving for more bricks is to find ourselves with a “light burden” and an “easy yoke.” It is now, as then, enough to permit dancing and singing into an alternative life. Which will we choose?

As you journey on, go with this blessing:

Go to Jesus and he will give you rest and an easy yoke (Matthew 11:30). May the presence of God go with you and give you rest (Exodus 33:14).