So for 400 years - now you can imagine, that's generation after generation after generation after generation, your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents, your great-great-grandparents, so it went on 400 years. That's a lot of history and so Israel at that point felt abandoned by God. They were living in slavery, living as though God had abandoned them, as though they were orphaned and had no God to watch over them or care for them or provide for them. That's what it looked like. That was their experience for hundreds of years - terrible, terrible experience and notice what God says to them.
He says you'll go to Pharaoh and you'll say Thus says the Lord: "Israel is My son. Israel is My firstborn." So I'm telling you let My son go that he may serve Me. What an amazing revelation. There's a lot just in that one verse. This is what Moses was commanded to go to the Pharaoh and stand before him and he was called to declare something; this people that you treat like slaves, this people who have been in bondage for years, I'm telling you who they really are. They are the Son of God, a corporate son, a body of people that God says this is My Son. Jesus is revealed as the Son of God, the literal Son of God, but God wants to raise up a corporate Son. He said He's My Son, My firstborn.
When the Bible refers to the word firstborn, the firstborn was the one first born but the firstborn was entitled to a number of privileges. So the firstborn - and Israel would understand this - the moment they heard the word Son and firstborn they would understand that meant a double portion of inheritance. It meant priesthood in the family. It meant responsibility to be a blessing for the extended family, so he's bringing a revelation of who they are to the taskmasters. Israel is My Son, it's not your slaves. He's My Son. You may still be in bondage, but God sees you as His son. He sees you according to destiny. He sees you according to His call on your life. You may be struggling and have all kinds of problems, pressures; you may not even be saved, but God sees you through the eyes of His destiny, says My Son and He calls you to move out of slavery and into sonship.
Coming into sonship meant physically they were removed from Egypt and they physically were put into another land which became a land of inheritance, full of gold and silver, buildings, dwellings, prosperity, an inheritance. So God speaks to them but here's the problem. Let's have a look in Exodus, Chapter 1, read the verses there. It says - Verses 13 and 14 - the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve in hard bondage. They made their lives bitter with hard bondage and mortar and brick, all manner of service in the field and everything they made them serve was very hard. They had a hard life. It's a very good picture of what life is like when we're without Christ, it's very hard. It's very bitter. We serve many things, alcohol, work, all kinds of addictions and problems. Very, very hard.
So Israel truly were victims. They were powerless to remove themselves out of that situation. they were powerless to save themselves, just like you and I are powerless to save ourselves from sin. We need a saviour. They could not resist the taskmasters. They were subject to them. When people are without Christ they're subject to demonic powers, to sin, to bondages of all kinds and they'd like to live a better life but they just can't. They're victims. They're held in slavery, so a person who is a slave most times is a victim. They cannot escape out of what they're caught in.
But during that period of 400 years they developed a victim mentality or a slave mentality. Now victim mentality is not the same as being a victim. A victim mentality is when a person has a way of thinking. It's very prevalent in New Zealand and I'll tell you what's at the root of it and I'll tell you how it manifests itself. We're going to look at it particularly in the church how it manifests itself - so a victim mentality is when a person has an outlook or a way of looking at their life. You cannot live as a king and a Son of God and live with a victim mentality. You can't. You have to shift from victim thinking into sonship and kingly thinking. You have to change and we want to talk in another session how to make that change.