God is opposed to slavery in all its manifestations, and even Paul wrote extensively about the difference between spiritual and physical slavery in the New Testament, asserting that we are all free in God and that the body is just flesh, and that sometimes even after we have been freed physically, we continue to enslave ourselves in our minds and are therefore self-condemned. He said that we are slaves unto our oppressors only if we believe ourselves to be. Since God is life-giving, we can never be slaves unto Him, but willing servants. However, in the day of Moses, people were suffering great physical torture and abuse at the hands of the Egyptians and were becoming exhausted from their plight, and so God heard their cries and gave them a Savior. By giving the Jews to Moses' care, God first took care of their physical freedom and then later dealt with the Jews' spiritual and emotional emancipation, which took much longer. As anyone who is in an abusive situation knows, the physical scars heal quickly but the mental scars can take a lifetime to go away, and sometimes they never go away enough for us to inherit the Promised Land, and this happened in the Old Testament to that generation who followed Moses out of the Egypt. In order for the Jews as a people to inherit the Promised Land, God had to cause that generation to wander in the desert for 40 years, until everyone who had been an Egyptian slave died off. In short, they got stuck. They couldn't go back and they couldn't go forward, so their descendants went into the Promised Land instead. Is this the kind of future we want for ourselves?

Before the Pharaoh Rameses would free the Jews, God had to manifest Himself in such a way that His greatness over the gods of Egypt could not be denied. The Pharaoh was warned many times by God through Moses about what would happen if he didn't set the slaves free, but the Pharaoh, his priests, and his ministers mocked the Lord and refused to believe, and so God had to eventually hit the Egyptians below the belt. (This is knows that the Ten Plagues of Egypt, finally ending with the Slaying of the First-Born, in which the Pharaoh's own son died while the Jews painted lamb's blood over their doorways so that the Angel of Death would "pass over" them, thus giving rise to the name of the holiday, "Passover." It wasn't until the Pharaoh's young son was killed that he finally let the Jews go.)

Just as Jesus performed "miracles" in order for people to see and believe, so did Moses, culminating in the parting of the Red Sea when the Pharaoh decided to pursue the Jews in anger after letting them go. The Book of Exodus in the Old Testament tells the story of Passover. When Moses realizes he was born a Jew and was adopted into the Egyptian Royal House, God puts it upon Moses' heart to save His people. (His birth mother Jochebel put him in the water to save him from an edict that all male Jewish babies should be put to death, which parallels Herod's edict when Jesus was born, because of the prophecies surrounding the Messianic birth, and why it is written that Joseph, Mary and Jesus had to flee to Egypt after the Messiah was born.) Blood is thicker than water, and this turned Moses and Rameses, who were raised as brothers, into mortal enemies. But as Jesus said, "Do not think I came to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother-in-law, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, AND A MAN'S ENEMIES WILL BE THOSE FROM HIS OWN HOUSEHOLD. He who loves his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. As he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.'" (Matthew 10:34-38)

"Then Peter answered and said to Him, 'See, we have left all and followed You. Therefore what shall we receive?' So Jesus said to them, 'Assuredly I say to you, that in the regeneration, when the Son of Man sits on the throne of His glory, you who have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging in the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.'" (Matthew 19:27-30)

And so it was in the place where Moses grew up happily, safe, secure and privileged until one day God opened Moses' eyes to the Truth. Once Moses, who was truly the Chosen One and the Messiah of his generation in that part of the world, saw the plight of his brethren, there was no going back, even though his decision to free the Jews was an open declaration of war against his foster-brother, the Pharaoh of Egypt.

What Moses lost was replaced with something infinitely better, even though it meant tremendous sacrifice and suffering. Whereas before, Moses had been a Prince of Egypt, now he was a son of the One True God of Israel. Another word of Jesus is fulfilled here (through the Alpha and Omega nature of the Lord: "If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you. It is better for you to enter into life lame or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet, to be cast into everlasting fire." (Matthew 18:8)

Did Moses have a choice? Did Jesus have a choice? Of course they did. If we learn anything from their work, we learn about free will. There are always choices. Even toward the end, in the Garden at Gethsemane, Jesus asked God to take that very cup from His hand that Jesus told the two apostles they would be drinking from if they followed him...the cup of sacrifice for mankind. Even though the Lord's reply is not written in the New Testament, I suspect it went something like this, "Take the cup from your own hand, My Son." What Jesus did with that response is well-known, but first He said, "O My Father, if this cup cannot pass away from Me unless I drink it, Your will be done." And here we see another part of the Messianic concept: serving God above all else, even if it means physical torture and death, for as Paul said, they can kill the body but they cannot kill the spirit nor the soul.

When Moses brought the Israelites out of Egypt, it sparked a form of Judaism which exists to this day. When Jesus went to the cross, it sparked a form of Christianity which exists to this day. Unfortunately, most Jews and Christians still deny the interconnectivity of their faiths, each claiming to have the corner on God, and they are missing the main point. Wherever we see the Messianic concept being played out, that is where we find the one true God, Eloheinu, King of the Universe, Amen.