Exodus 6:5-6 “And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage; and I have remembered my covenant. Wherefore say unto the children of Israel, I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm, and with great judgments”
Genesis 1:27 “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
It is said that conviction from Exodus 6 provided the compelling moral justification that prompted President Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Like the nation’s Founders a century before, Lincoln may have seen the escape of the Israelites from the bonds of Egyptian slavery as an analogy to America’s journey towards the Promised Land of liberty. It is a journey we are still on today as we enter the year of our nation’s 250th birthday and as we collectively strive toward the loftiest of goals – to “form a more perfect union.”
The Emancipation Proclamation, in part, stated the following:
“That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.”
In an instant as the calendar turned to 1863, up to four million image-bearers of the Lord our God, who had been denied the liberty that they had deserved as a part of God’s creation, were declared permanently and forever free. It was a freedom to be maintained by the full power of the federal government. Yet, the ultimate moral justification for such a claim comes from a power far greater than that – a God who declares that we are all created in His image (Genesis 1:27).
Such a claim is amplified through another powerful, revolutionary, and righteous proclamation in His Word and through His Son. At the moment we accept Christ as our Saviour, we are reconciled to Him and made permanently and forever free. Once we embrace that freedom, it is recognized and maintained by the full power of an amazing Lord.
PLEASE PRAY THAT IN THIS YEAR OF CELEBRATION FOR OUR GREAT NATION, THAT AMERICAN CHRISTIANS WOULD AMPLIFY THE TRUTHS OF THE ULTIMATE EMANCIPATION. We are redeemed and made forever free by the power of his stretched-out arm and great judgment.
