Slavery and Freedom

Piecing it All Together: Slavery and Freedom

Connect

Hopefully your groups are enjoying getting to know one another and finding a rhythm in meeting together.  As your group settles in, discuss this prompt together:

Describe a time when you felt the most free.

Pray

Remember to encourage your group in the prayer practices that you have set up together.  Whether that means you’re praying aloud in the group together, or praying for specific people through the week.  Also, encourage your group to really answer the measures questions and follow up with them.

Passionate: Where did I see God today?

Accepting: How am I building diverse relationships?

Invitational: Who am I connecting with God’s family?

Trusting: Where does God rank?

Active: How am I engaged with God’s work? 

Reflect

This week we will be focused on the first half of Exodus, specifically Israel’s slavery in Egypt and their freedom through the Red Sea.  Invite your group to share their thoughts and insights from this past Sunday’s sermon.

After some reflection, here’s the link to this week’s video from The Bible Project: 

 How do you reconcile these plagues and violent acts done by God against the Egyptians in these stories?

Read Exodus 14:21-31 in your groups.

Share this Martin Luther King, Jr. quote from his sermon Death Upon the Seashore:

“This story symbolizes something basic about the universe. Its meaning is not found in the drowning of a few men, for no one should rejoice at the death or defeat of a human being. This story, at bottom, symbolizes the death of evil. It was the death of inhuman oppression and unjust exploitation.

The death of the Egyptians upon the seashore is a glaring symbol of the ultimate doom of evil in its struggle with good. There is something in the very nature of the universe which is on the side of Israel in its struggle with every Egypt. There is something in the very nature of the universe which ultimately comes to the aid of goodness in its perennial struggle with evil.”

Martin Luther King was fond of saying: “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

-Does it?  In light of injustices in the world today and our capability of destroying one another, is the arc of the moral universe progressing toward justice?

How do you see hope in Israel’s story of freedom from slavery?