Chaplains Chat

In Chapel this Term, we are looking at the book of Exodus. This amazing book deals with God’s rescue of his people Israel from slavery in Egypt. For most of us we perhaps hear the word slavery and think of events hundreds or thousands of years ago. Surely this was all to do with the past? This week we heard from a Shore Old boy, Mike Newton-Brown (’79) who works to free people from modern day slavery. Upwards of 60 million people currently live in various forms of slavery around the world. As remarkable as this seems, there are many organisations doing wonderful work around the world to free some of these people from this oppression.  

And yet as Mike so helpfully reminded us, in the book of Exodus, God was in the business of freeing his people from their physical slavery. God is the great rescuer in the Bible. This wonderful story points to the need that we all have to be rescued. For most, not a physical slavery like the Israelites experienced, but a slavery we have to sin. As Jesus says in John 8:34: “I tell you the truth everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” It is a condition that all of us experience. Our human condition just so often thinks of self and not others, and even less following God. No matter what we do or how hard we try, we just can’t shake the condition we are in. But the great rescue of the Israelites points to the greater and better rescue that God has enabled with Jesus and his death on the Cross for us. We can be forgiven and in a loving relationship with God.
What great news indeed.  

Rev. Anthony Benn 
Chaplain