The road out of Egypt is not a pleasant drive. It boggles my mind to think about walking it with a million refugees. I set out one morning in a borrowed Volkswagen to drive from Cairo to the Suez Canal. My wife was with me, as was a lady we intended to baptize in, of all places, the Red Sea. It is a desolate wilderness across there. Once you leave the Nile Valley, there is, well, nothing. The only thing we passed on the road was a downed Russian aircraft in the desert.

According to the book of Exodus, 600,000 men (plus women and children) set out across that desert to freedom led by Charlton Hes…excuse me…I mean, led by Moses. You don’t have to be very perceptive to realize that this gaggle of refugees, under the best of conditions, would be nothing but trouble. And these were not the best of conditions. But they were free, and it is hard for us to imagine what that meant to them. It is just that they had no idea yet what it was going to mean.

At any point in history, men have to make decisions about what freedom is worth. Again and again in history, men have given up freedom for safety and comfort. And the road to slavery is not always seen for what it is. The road from slavery has its own share of difficulties, as well. We begin following the children of Israel along that road in Exodus, chapter 12.