"God Heard Their Groaning"

Well, this morning we hope to complete chapter 2 together in Exodus and as we make our way out of Exodus 2 into Exodus 3, it's hard for me to relay to you just the significance of where we're going in Exodus 3, not just in terms of the unfolding of the book of Exodus, but really one of the great mountaintops of the Old Testament.

From the time we began Genesis 1 all the way up until the revelation of God to Moses, it's so significant that God reveals to Moses his name, the divine name, something that we've been perhaps waiting for and seeking after, unbeknownst to us ever since we began reading the book of Genesis.

And that's all where we're going, so it may just be another week in passing, but try to have some sense of expectation or anticipation for where we're going next week. And chapter 2, as we come to the end, really is the segue to that in chapter 3.

This is sort of the narratival segue to take us away from Moses' upbringing and the circumstances where we left him in Midian to catch us up to speed to what God is doing as he's working out his arm of redemption in the land of Egypt according to his great promise.

And so we're going to be looking intently at God's revelation to Moses, but here at the end of chapter 2 we get a little window into why God at this particular time is revealing himself to Moses. It's in relation to exactly what we've read in verses 23 through 25.

Genesis, Exodus, and the Road to God's Name

Now of course Moses writing these first five books, when we come out of Genesis we're seeing a lot of the same themes and images that we saw in Genesis here in Exodus 1 through 2. We saw when we began in Exodus 1 that just like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Israel in the barren land of Egypt as it were, were nevertheless made fruitful and they multiplied greatly under the abundance of God's blessing.

And this is deliberately connecting the beginning of Exodus to the beginning of Genesis. Another connection we see between the beginning of Exodus and the beginning of Genesis is the bondage of sin. The result of sin in Genesis 3 we have here essentially in Exodus 1 and 2.

The bondage, the result of the fall, the bondage of course physically of the Israelites made captive by brutal taskmasters, chained and beaten and humiliated. But of course we're meant to see the larger ramifications of the fall, not only physical bondage but more importantly spiritual bondage.

From the fall the mind of man of course being darkened, blinded, the affections of man being disordered and therefore the relationship of man to his own will, to that which he knows is true and right, man's relationship to God as his creator and as his king, man's relationship to his spouse, to his household, to his neighbor, all of that completely disordered by the effects of the fall, leaving man in utter bondage.

So we're keeping in mind the larger view we're giving and the connection between the fall of Genesis 3 and the bondage of God's people as we begin Exodus. This is all according to the outworking of God's promised redemption.

We're going to look at that, the text before us really in two parts and then we'll have an application with three points. So the first point, the first emphasis is in verse 23, the groaning of God's people.

The second part, verses 24 and 25 is God's response, God's fourfold response and then third we'll consider application with three points. So first, the groaning of God's people. Now it happened in the process of time that the king of Egypt died.

Then the children of Israel groaned because of the bondage and they cried out and their cry came up to God because of the bondage. So we begin with this pharaoh, the king of Egypt has died. I don't know if the announcement went over the BBC airwaves like they did when Queen Elizabeth II died.

We have a hard time garnering the significance of the passing of a monarch. Perhaps we were interested that the legacy of Queen Elizabeth II had in some ways come to a close and maybe we were, I don't know, nostalgic.

We were once under the monarch as well some centuries ago. But there seems to be some nostalgia for the United Kingdom here even among Americans or some who are very interested in the royals for some bizarre reason.

I don't know why they have such a pull on the American public's imagination but ultimately the passing of a queen who's simply a queen on paper, a paper monarch, it really didn't.

Affect us at all.

You can tell from the text that there was a lot of hope bound up when this pharaoh died. When this pharaoh who is aged, when he dies perhaps then the new regime will grant some level of tolerance, some pull back of the brutality of the tyranny.

We're reminded, first and foremost, we're reminded that though the tyrant has a power that seems limitless, that tyrant will have the same end as every man. I came across this poem, I'll just read an excerpt from it by Francis Beaumont called On the Tombs in Westminster Abbey.

Listen to this, so fantastic. Think how many royal bones sleep within these heaps of stones. Here they lie, had realms and lands who now lack strength to stir their hands. Where from their pulpits sealed with dust, the coffin being the pulpit, where from their pulpits sealed with dust they preach in greatness is no trust.

Here the bones of birth have cried, though gods they were as men they died. The king of Egypt is dead. The people are now groaning, groaning because though this king had died, the bondage has.

Remained.

Look at the connection. It happened in the process of time, the king of Egypt died, then the children of Israel groaned because of the bondage. There seemed to be some level of hope that this is only a passing tyranny and surely when this pharaoh and his penchant for hatred against the Israelites, when he dies, surely then we'll find some measure of relief, but they find no relief.

And so they begin to groan because of the bondage and they begin to cry out. That which they had put their hope in has fallen short. We're reminded, first and foremost, we're reminded that though tyrants may live, tyrants.

Will die.

Only the Lord reigns forever. God reigns. Though tyrants live, tyrants die and the rule of tyrants dies with them. And so there's wisdom here in God's people learning to trust only in the Lord and in the power of his might.

And we shouldn't be scathing toward the Israelites for pinning their hope on a regime change. If I've seen anything saturating the evangelical mind in the political realm for the past decade or so, I've seen Exodus 2, 23.

We pin our hopes to the regime change. Surely this will bring about all that we need and all that we're seeking. So we learn, no, God reigns. We trust only in the Lord. Put not your trust in princes is the lesson we learn when we pin our ultimate hope to the changing tides of politics.

The second thing that we see connecting verse 23 to 24 and 25 is God reigns even while his people suffer. It's not as though there's this seesaw when God's people are blessed. That must mean God is in some active way reigning.

And when God's people suffer, that must mean in some mysterious way, God is not actively reigning. Well, that's clearly not the case.

The Lord reigns.

That's the refrain.

That's the chorus for the psalmist. Psalm 98 is a is a perhaps the greatest example.

The Lord reigns.

And of course, I've been sharing with some brethren yesterday. I've been I've been looking more intently at the book of Revelation. It's amazing to see the significance of that through line, the God who reigns over all the the conquering king who often conquers as a king over his people and through his people who are simultaneously being conquered.

It's the cruciform way of understanding the advance of the kingdom. The kingdom is advanced, not despite suffering, but often through suffering. So God reigns, though his people suffer. God reigns while his people suffer.

God reigns. In some ways, he exercises reign through the suffering of his people. The testimony of his word. Look at the groaning. All right, here's this king that has died, the new king is come. It brings absolutely no comfort, no relief from the bondage that they were experiencing.

And so they groan. When Stephen and Acts chapter seven summarizes Exodus two through six, Exodus one through six, he he summarizes it in this way, the Lord and responding really to Moses from Exodus six, I've surely seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt.

I have heard their groaning and I have come down to deliver them. The groaning. He hears the groaning. I love what Walt Kaiser in his commentary said, Misery finally found a voice. They've been miserable for centuries, but here what's highlighted is the groaning, the churning within them.

They groan and they cry out to God. Egypt is an illustration of what the church will often encounter in the world. Egypt was the world of the day. We talk about John's condemnation of the world in his gospel that could stand in for Rome or for Babylon or for Egypt here in the book of Exodus.

It is the pinnacle of what we mean by the hostility of the world, the the pomp and the luxury and the the pride of the world, the the deceptive, seductive bondage of the world. All of that is bound together with the land of Egypt.

William Landells, in drawing out this analogy, says the church sees in her an illustration of what the intellect and muscle of man can accomplish when man's heart is alienated from God. Remember reading Genesis and we saw the Canaanite civilization begin to prosper and flourish, the makers of art and engineering and technology.

Meanwhile, those living under the shadows are the ones that are calling upon the name of the Lord. So there seems to be something to what man is capable of when he alienates his life from God and the good gifts and the good ingenuity that God has given man as an image bearer.

Man's going to take dominion one way or the other. The problem is man's either going to take dominion as unto the Lord or he's going to.

Take dominion against the Lord.

And that really is the division between Abraham, let's say, and Abraham's progeny, as opposed to Egypt's or the Canaanites or Babylon or what have you. The Israelites were thus, this is Landells again, brought in contact to a world in its best and most attractive form and had to be taught by bitter experience what to expect from it.

Here's the might, here's the power, here's the luxury. Here's the security of the world. And if you want to stand apart from it, you're going to suffer. That's the lesson. And so they're brought to groaning, they begin to cry out for deliverance, and that leads secondly to God's response.

Exodus 2, beginning in verse 24. God heard their groaning. And God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob, and God looked upon the children of Israel and God acknowledged them.

So notice that God's response is a fourfold response. There's four activities and four times God is mentioned. God heard, God remembered, God looked, God acknowledged. This is in response. It doesn't appear that way on the face of the English text, but the fourfold response of God is in essence a response to the fourfold cry of the Israelites.

Now, this looks like the Israelites are only groaning and crying, but it's compound verbs in the Hebrew. So there's two activities, two sets or two pairs of activities. In other words, four ways the Israelites are groaning and crying.

And there's four responses of God to the groaning and crying of his people. He heard, he remembered, he looked, he knew. Probably a better translation. Acknowledged is great, but it's simply the verb to know, and the verb know is a Swiss army knife verb.

Hebrew has a lot of verbs that end up having all sorts of connotations, and so this has been translated elsewhere as save, to take pity, to become intimate with, to take responsibility for all of that.

We saw that in Genesis. Adam knew his wife. It's the same verb, yadah in Hebrew. It can mean all sorts, have all sorts of connotations. So it's not just a mere acknowledgement. It's something deeply intimate.

He knew them. Let's look at these responses of God. First, God heard. This is not just a passive hearing. It's not that God had not heard, and all of a sudden he begins to perk up his ears, if we can think of it in human terms, and what had not been heard is now being heard.

That's not the significance here. What means is God is now preparing, or God is now inclined to respond to what he is.

Hearing.

So he's always hearing. He's always seeing. He's everywhere, at all times, in all places. He's infinite. He's omnipresent. And the hearing here means then this is not something new, but rather something that indicates God's activity in response.

So God hears, meaning God hears in a way that he's now going to act. He's now going to respond to what he hears. It's what you wish for a two-year-old to do. They hear, they don't necessarily respond.

If they were to understand the significance here, it's because they hear that now they're going to respond. Secondly, God remembered. Again, the idea here is not that somehow God had forgotten, and then he goes, oh, yeah, well, I forgot.

In Egypt, I've got this whole thing going on. God, who has all knowledge, who is omniscient, of course, he is not capable of forgetting anything. He comprehends all things. So rather, it means that he brings to mind as a way of response.

He's now going to act on the basis of what he has remembered. In the same way, we often will find a psalmist praying or beseeching the Lord, remember me. And he's not implying you have somehow forgotten me and now just remember that I'm here.

He's saying, please respond to me. Don't forget me, meaning don't cast me off, but remember me, meaning draw me near. Remember me. Notice just the contrast. We're going to see this in the history of Israel as it unfolds.

God is the God who remembers the covenant he has made. Israel is a people who forgets the covenant that God has made. And so we see this tremendous contrast between the faithful God who remembers what he has promised and a faithless people who forgets what God has promised, forgets what God has commanded, forgets what God has done for them, for their sake.

And so they're filled with ingratitude and selfishness and every evil and vain thing. What a contrast between the Lord and the people of the Lord. And that's not them in the desert, that's us as the people of the Lord.

Short memories and therefore short thanksgiving and very little contentment in our lives, though we're surrounded by comfort and luxury at almost every turn. Isn't it sad that we can remember the most trivial things?

Doesn't that frustrate, frustrates me to no end. I pound into my memory paradigms, this is years ago, and I had to pass certain exams and that's forgotten almost as soon as I walk out of the room. But then things that some joke I heard when I was 13, I can remember.

What is it? I don't want to remember that. The things that I want to remember, I don't remember. And the things that I do want to remember, I forget. Oh, you know, who will deliver me from this mind of death?

What a contrast there is between the Lord and his people. So God remembering, he's now turning in response to that which he has remembered. And what is it that he has remembered? He remembers the covenant that he made with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob.

In other words, the Abrahamic covenant. He made it with Abraham and he confirmed it with Isaac and confirmed it with Jacob. Notice how grace comes to people in bondage. It comes to them by way of covenant.

Grace comes to people by way of covenant. God deals with all reality by way of covenant. There is nothing outside of the scope of covenantal interaction with God. If God interacts with anything that he has made, he does so by way of covenant.

God's covenant is the cause of his grace. It's not something as an afterthought. It doesn't come later on. It doesn't say, well, we should probably get a, you know, you ever make a deal? We should probably get this on a piece of paper or getting in writing.

Or could you email it to me so we have some record of it? This isn't God saying there should be a record. He's only acting because he made a covenant. All grace comes to us by virtue of the covenant that God has made.

God did not turn his attention to Israel because, you know, they seem to be learning their lesson in Egypt and they seem to really be mustering up some good character and integrity. And I think it's time for me to deliver them.

No, God doesn't turn his attention to them because they're beginning to do some of the things that he had commanded that they had forgotten. They're beginning to clean up their act a little bit, take some steps of faith toward him.

No, God does not give them any response of grace because of anything on their part, but only because he remembers the covenant that he himself had made. And remember the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis 15.

It wasn't a covenant that Abraham made with God. Abraham didn't seek it, didn't ask for it, and he wasn't even allowed to participate in it. Remember, you sit over here and you watch me pass through the divided animal carcasses.

So it's a unilateral covenant that God made with Abraham. This is what I will do for you, Abraham. And I will face the curse of the blessing that I have promised. So God remembered. Third, God looked.

God heard. God remembered. God looked. Again, the idea, the eyes of the Lord are in every place. It was someone's prayer on Thursday night. The idea is here not that God does not see or that this is somehow a passive glance or some sort of external observation, but rather this is something intent, activity.

He's watching with pity and he's about to engage. He has an eye of compassion and now he's moved. He will not, he cannot look away. One of the great emphases that Stuart Elyot brought in the Bolton messages past year when he was in John 20 and he said, Jesus can't look away.

He can't be away from his people in need. Where there's doubt, where there's failure, he has to show up. And we see that even here, God cannot, will not look away. The eye of compassion. And then lastly, this Swiss Army verb, God knew, God acknowledged the NIV.

God was filled with concern for them. That's that's pretty good. Give credit where credit's due. That's not too bad for that. The idea is simply that God is looking with this personal, intimate knowledge or desire or regard for them.

In other places, it could be translated, it is translated, save. To know is to save. He's going to now engage himself with saving the people he has known. Now, altogether, this is all familiar from the book of Genesis.

This activity, it's all condensed for us here in verses 24 and 25. But we could expand it and see this is how God has been toward his people throughout the whole book of Genesis. This is who God is. This is how God acts to the people that he has made promises to.

He's not distant. He's not aloof. He's not unconcerned. He's not unconcerned even when we are unconcerned about our own estate, our own walk, our own falling short. He's not unconcerned. He's not unjust.

He faithfully chastises disciplines, those he calls his own. Proves their sonship. So he saw, for instance, God remembering Noah. God remembered Noah. God remembered Abraham. God remembered Rachel in the barrenness of her womb.

God saw God looked upon Jacob suffering under Laban's heavy hand. God looked upon the affliction of Leah. God heard Hagar weeping when she thought Ishmael was about to perish. God heard the cry of Leah, who felt no love from her husband and the bitterness of her sister.

So notice throughout Genesis, this is who God is presented as.

The God who hears, the God who remembers, the God who looks, the God who knows. But who is this God?

And that's Exodus three. You see, we've been climbing through Genesis to get to this revelation of the God that's always been been hearing and remembering and looking and knowing his people, but we still don't know who he is, what's your name?

And that's where we're going in Exodus three. The Lord is near to all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of those who fear him. What is the desire of those who fear him?

He will fulfill the desire of those who fear him. They will, yay, they will have three Lexuses in their driveway. What's the what's the desire of those who fear God? He hears their cry and he saves them.

He hears their cry and he saves them. It's what we open the service with Psalm 145, 18 and 19. That's the desire of those who fear God. Hear my cry and save me. So let's consider these three verses in application.

We see three things. First, we see the bondage of sin. Next, we'll see man's response to the bondage of sin. And the last, we'll see God's response to the bondage of sin. So first, the bondage of sin.

The whole plot line of Exodus began with God's people in bondage in the land of Egypt. And as we've said, this is all flowing out of Genesis three. This is a more clear. We've gone from VHS to Blu-ray now.

We're not quite at 8K, but we're getting there. This is a greater clarity of what redemption is and what it's going to entail. A promised deliverer who is bringing his people out of the house of bondage, making them his own, that they may worship him and that they would be constrained by his laws for the witness to the nations.

All of this is becoming more clear. It was in seed form in Genesis. We're taking a deeper step into the unfolding of the promises of redemption here in the book of Exodus. It needs to be said, when we talk about the bondage of sin.

This is elemental. Is it the rebuke, the constant chastisement against poor Watson from Sherlock Holmes? It's elementary. If you just knew the basics, if you knew the elementals and you weren't distracted by all the trappings and the packaging, you would be able to discern these clues or this evidence.

The bondage of sin is elemental. It's foundational. This is the ABCs of of Christian faith and Christian truth. And I only say that because it's so easy to assume this and then lose it entirely. I'm amazed at the kind of gymnastics that ministries and preachers and publishers and seminarians and writers will do to just avoid talking about sin as sin.

And so we don't even like using the language of sin, and we certainly don't like talking a lot about sin, we don't like talking about our own sin. Depending on where we are in our relationship with the Lord, we don't want to hear about sin, but the Bible refuses to let you ignore the reality of sin.

It's constantly and Jesus is constantly drawing our attention to the effects of sin and the danger of sin and the hopelessness of sin's misery and bondage. And we cannot understand who Jesus is or why he is king, we cannot understand any of Christian faith or life if we ignore, marginalize, transmogrify, somehow get sin to be something other than what sin is, make sin more palatable or approachable, talk about it as economic circumstances or other worldly structures, if we can make it something like an abstract philosophical concept.

Rather than my crimes and my offenses and my guilt. Which are aggravated and amplified because I've known the truth. And I've received the mercy of God. If we fail to speak clearly and forthrightly and consistently about the bondage of sin.

We will never be able to understand the first things about the Christian life or the Christian hope for the world. So that's the first thing to say. We'll circle back to that. But let me say something else about the bondage of sin.

The bondage of sin is the plight of fallen man. They are in bondage to sin. They are slaves to Pharaoh, God's desires that they would be slaves to him. Let my people go that they may serve me, not serve Pharaoh.

That they may show, pay homage to me, not pay homage to Pharaoh. What a different type of slavery it is to be a slave to Christ is a very different thing than to be a slave to Satan. And by the way, if you didn't know, there's no in between.

You are either one or the other. It was some weeks ago we spoke about the chains that are so illusory. Right, that it's so easy to put them on and you don't know how hard it is to get them off until you try to get them off.

Sort of like this is probably I can't imagine that you could look this up anymore because it's the most un-PC term for a product imaginal. But in my day, we call them Chinese finger traps. You ever see the Chinese finger trap?

I guarantee you they're not called Chinese finger traps anymore. You've seen these. And the idea is you put both fingers on either side of the opening, the sort of woven opening. And it's very easy. You can go and touch your fingers and it's great because it was so easy going in, you think it'll be very easy to pull your hands apart.

But all of a sudden, that tunnel begins to stretch and close, and the more and the harder and the faster you pull, the harder it is. That's a great illustration of sin. That's a great illustration of the bondage of sin.

It was this easy getting here. I know I should enough, but I still have control and I'll have the same control when I want to get out. And it's only when you try to get out, if you ever get to that point, that you realize just how tight those chains of bondage are.

And I say this because God. Is not just putting new chains around us and tightening us, and instead of being dragged brutally along by Pharaoh, we're now being dragged brutally along by the Lord. Is that the picture that Exodus gives us?

Is that our own experience as believers?

No.

God will not. God will not force his people into submission, but rather make them willing in the day of his power. Spurgeon and his great sermon on this text, it's worth reading. You should just go home and read Spurgeon this afternoon.

Look up Spurgeon on Exodus 2. He says, it's not God's way to make his men slaves except so far as they willingly yield to him. Never violates the human will. Spurgeon's a Calvinist. Let's be clear. It's what we say in our confession.

He doesn't do violence to the will. Right. We're not made robotic. We're not made, you know, cyborgs in our relationship with God. He works in and around and through our will. He doesn't override it. He rather makes us willing.

And so, again, it's not God's way to make his men slaves except so far as they willingly yield to him. He never violates the human will, but he constantly effectively influences it. Jehovah wants not slaves to grace his throne.

And therefore, God would not have the people dragged out of Egypt or driven out in fetters against their own consent. But rather, he brings them out in such a way that they're willing to come out and that they march out with joy and delight because they had been weary and sick of Egypt and they rejoice to be freed from it.

So the question is, in this first point, have you rightly understood the bondage of sin? Have you rightly understood the bondage of sin? The Puritans are very helpful and trustworthy guides when it comes to the doctrine of sin.

What's in systematic theology, this this issue is called Hamartiology, the doctrine of sin. And the Puritans spent a lot of time studying it in themselves, in their people, in the world, in the scriptures.

They studied it because they knew it's elemental.

It's basic.

And if you're wrong here, you'll be wrong everywhere else. Do you rightly understand the bondage of sin? Or do you find ways to package it and conceptualize it so that it never actually touches you, never touches your life, never touches your mind, your actions, your feelings toward God or toward other people?

Do you rightly understand the bondage of sin? And then along with that, you may say, yes, yes, perhaps not as rightly as I should, but I've understood the importance of it and I've sought to understand it from the word.

And there's nothing that I've heard taught on it that I reject or disagree with. And I'm open to hearing more and more about it. You say, I rightly am understanding the bondage of sin. Well, have you often understood the bondage of sin?

The other problem I see is it's not it's not the intentional repackaging or re-approaching of sin, but rather it's just you have the right doctrine. You just never mention it. You never bring it up. So you might have the right doctrine, but if it's not out there and it's not being talked about and thought about and worked out in our lives and in our church, then what good is it?

What good is it as doctrines that never actually enter our mind or enter our worship? Have we often understood the bondage of sin? We need to think about the bondage of sin. If we would avoid the bondage of sin.

It was so freezing this past weekend, wasn't it? Some of us braved the weather yesterday morning to sit together for a little while. And it was bracing. I mean, just in the walk from the driveway to the car, from the car to where we met, you just felt like your hands were going to turn purple and fall off.

And it was amazing to me that when I step out into the freezing cold and then I would get into the warmth of the van had been running for a while. We got to our destination by time after the destination.

The van was, you know, 75 degrees. Everything was great. And then, of course, we turned it off, met for a little while. And when I went back to the van, even though it hadn't been that long, it was cold.

And it was this little parable to me of that. Isn't that just like my heart? Freezing cold toward the things of the Lord and to the people of the Lord. But then you force yourself to brave that cold and you go out and you're in fellowship and you pray for a while and you're talking about things of the word and the warmth is there, but it doesn't last long.

When you leave, it starts to get pretty cold and you forget that it ever was one. If we don't make a study of the bondage of sin, we are the most vulnerable to the bondage of sin. Constantly looking at this issue in our lives, in our homes, in our marriages.

So that's the topic, this bondage of sin. The question is, how do we respond to it? And then lastly, how does God respond to it? So the second, so the bondage of sin, let's consider now secondly, man's response to the bondage of sin, right?

Man's response to the bondage of sin. What did the Israelites do in response to their bondage? Let me ask this. What could the Israelites do in response to their bondage?

What could they do?

Could an Israelite groan and cry and just say, you know what? I've been patient, I have tried. That's it. Honey, what are you doing? No, no, I have to do this. And he marches up to the taster and he says, hey, I'm putting in my two weeks.

I've had enough. I quit. You can't quit. What would happen if you just get beaten?

You don't quit. Don't quit.

You're ours until you die. What could an Israelite do in response to the bondage? All they can do is groan.

That's all they can do.

What can they do in response to the toil and to the suffering? What can they do about it? Can they mitigate it? Can they remove it? All they can do is groan. All they can do is cry out. All they can do is cry out and up to the Lord to deliver.

That's all that they can do in the state of bondage. We are born in a world where everyone is in bondage. Speaking of those of the world, not of believers, we're born and we're born into the world as those who are in bondage in a world of bondage.

But let me point something out. We're born in a world where all are in bondage, but not all are groaning. Not all are groaning. I'm speaking now to unbelievers. I don't know why Christianity sometimes comes across in this way.

Because if you actually understand the message of Christianity at all, you could never conceive of it in this way. But unbelievers often think, oh, I'm standing at the fork of the road. Here I am neutral me.

If I go this way, I know it will lead to bondage and sin and away from the Lord. And if I go this way, it's so much harder and there's so much loss. But I know that this is the only way that I'll find life.

Alas, here I am, neutral me, objective me, free me having to make the decision between bondage or freedom, between death or life, between sin or salvation. You haven't heard anything about the gospel, if that's your conception of things.

You're not standing at a fork in the road. You've already embraced sin and death, you're in bondage. The issue is not whether you're going to choose bondage. You're in bondage. The issue is, are you going to groan about the bondage?

Because you see the effects of the bondage, the heaviness, the suffering, the misery, you can't escape it, and so all you can do is groan. We live in a world where all are in bondage, but not everyone is groaning.

I'm speaking to unbelievers. You can do nothing but groan. You yourself can do nothing but groan and you won't even do that. God makes his servants willing in the day of his power. You've made yourself a willing slave to sin.

You're willing to bear the toil and the yoke. It's easy for now. But let me not just speak to unbelievers. Let me speak to believers. God forbid we are willing slaves to sin. And so even as believers, we have to ask ourselves the question, where is the groaning over my sin?