Exodus: Here I Am, Send Someone Else
Part 8
“Between the Devil and the Deep Red Sea”
Exodus 13-15
If you have got your Bible I would like you to open it to the book of Exodus and Chapter 12. I am not going to read a section of Scripture in advance this morning but I am going to read several parts if you have your Bible there with you.
In recent weeks we have been looking into these early chapters of the book of Exodus. We saw the way God prepared and then called Moses at the burning bush and sent him back into Egypt in order to lead the people out of Egypt to the land of Canaan, the land God had promised Abraham centuries before.
We looked at the plagues that God sent against Egypt, plagues that were not simply vindictive acts. In fact they weren’t vindictive acts against Egypt at all; they were strategically targeting the gods of Egypt, the Scripture tells us, culminating in the final plague which brought about the death of the firstborn son in every family from Pharaoh at the top down to the maid at the mill at the bottom and the firstborn of the Egyptian animals as well.
But the Israelites, the night the angel of death came to Egypt, took a lamb, killed the lamb, put the blood on the doorpost and the sides of the doors of their homes. They roasted the meat of the lamb and ate it, ready to run in the strength of the lamb when the word came that you are free, because that night the angel of death passed over every home on which the blood of the lamb had been displayed.
We looked at that in recent weeks and now we come to the actual departure of the Israelites from Egypt.
And I am going to read a few verses scattered around a bit to get the picture and the important lessons I believe there are here for us to learn today.
Let me read you in Chapter 12 Verse 31 and 32. It says there,
“During the night” (this is the night of death when the firstborn sons died throughout Egypt)
“During the night Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, ‘Up! Leave my people, you and the Israelites! Go, worship the LORD as you have requested. Take your flocks and herds, as you have said, and go. And also, bless me.’”
Down to Verse 37:
“The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Succoth. There were about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children.”
Later it says there were six hundred thousand men over the age of twenty, plus women; let’s assume a ratio of one man to one woman - that’s 1.2 million to start with. Then the children; that gives a very conservative total of 2 or 3 million, which is a figure you often hear, though probably more realistically, 4 or 5 million people altogether.
They were then given various instructions about what they should take in terms of the livestock and the goods that they would carry with them from Egypt. And Verse 50 of Chapter 12 says,
“All the Israelites did just what the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron. And on that very day the LORD brought the Israelites out of Egypt by their divisions.”
Let me remind you just at this point that all of this in Scripture portrays and foreshadows the Christian life and Christian experience. We have talked about that but I need to remind you of that.
The picture of being brought out of Egypt is a picture of being brought out of our bondage to sin. The blood of the lamb foreshadows Christ our Passover Lamb who was sacrificed for us, as Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians.
And the way the New Testament retells this story is as a picture of coming out of the life of sin and bondage and through and into the life of Canaan, which portrays resting in the sufficiency and strength of God.
And now that they are on their way, on their journey, I want to look at events in just the first few days of the journey that teach us some important truths about God’s dealings with us.
And there are three things I want to talk about. The first thing is I want to point out to you that God led them by unpredictable roads.
Let me explain what I mean by that. No doubt when the Israelites left Egypt they expected a straightforward journey through to Canaan. Three times God had affirmed, “I will bring you out of Egypt to bring you into Canaan.” In the same sentence or certainly in the same paragraph He puts coming out and coming in together, a land He describes poetically as flowing with milk and honey. And this was their expectation.
In Chapter 14 and Verse 8 describes the Israelites as “marching out boldly”, marching out with confidence, probably saying, as they marched away from their slavery behind them, “Canaan here we come, back to the home of our forefathers.” And they probably made up all kinds of patriotic songs and chants to keep them going. “We’re heading for Canaan. We’re going home.” This was their expectancy.
So that raises the question, how are they going to get there? Are they going to pick up a compass on the way out? Are they going to stop and buy an atlas? Are they going to install a GPS on the front camel? I mean how are they going to get from here to there?
Well let me read to you Chapter 13 and Verse 21. It says,
“By day the LORD went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people.”
God didn’t give them a road map; He gave them a pillar of cloud, which was His own presence. The Lord went ahead of them in the pillar of cloud and as the cloud moved, they moved. And at night, if they were to travel at all at night, a pillar of fire - as the pillar of fire moved, they moved.
Now we live in a map quest age. You punch in where you are; you type in where you are going and you get up on the screen a nice detailed map that says you are here, you want to go there, so go down this road for two miles, turn right at the traffic lights, go for six miles, you reach a T-junction, turn left, and so on. And it even tells you exactly how long it is going to take you to get there. “This will take you twenty-six minutes.” And that’s how we live. That’s what we expect. It makes life very predictable. We know exactly where we are.
But that isn’t what happened here. And leaving this arrangement to God (“I am going to be here in front of you in this pillar of cloud or this pillar of fire”) has two implications to it.
Number one, it is much more reliable if you trust in God, but number two, it is much less predictable. It is more reliable because God knows what He is doing; it is less predictable because His ways are not our ways.
And on a much later occasion, God spoke to Isaiah about that in Isaiah 55:8-9. He said,
“My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.”
In other words, “make an assumption that your best thinking, your smartest wisdom, your greatest insights are probably not the same as Mine. Your ways are not My ways. Your thoughts are not My thoughts.”
And here’s the difference:
“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
“And therefore, though they are less predictable, they are much more reliable because My ways, though different, are higher, My thoughts, though different, are higher than yours.”
Now, if you don’t really know God, it’s very likely there are going to come times in your life when you get thoroughly confused by what is happening. We walk by faith, Paul says in the New Testament, and not by sight. Most of us would prefer to walk by sight. We would like to be able to give the explanation as to why we are where we are at this particular point.
Let me give you an example of what it means for God to be leading them in ways that are unpredictable. In Chapter 14 and Verse 1 it says,
“Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Tell the Israelites to turn back and encamp near Pi Hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea. They are to encamp by the sea, directly opposite Baal Zephon.’”
Now look at this: “Tell the Israelites to turn back.” Turning back is not what you would expect at this stage in the journey.
And I spent a little bit of time earlier this week trying to locate Pi Hahiroth. And you look at one map and they have tried to put it in one place; you look at another map and it’s moved about fifty miles; you look at another map and it is a slightly different other place, which means we don’t really know where it is. But we do know this: that the way from Egypt to Canaan would be to go due east initially and then to turn north and go northeast and you find yourself in the land of Canaan.
I suppose the quickest way would have been along the coast. We know why they didn’t go along the coast because Chapter 13 Verse 17 says,
“God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, ‘If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.’
The Philippines – the Philistines (let’s get this right – apology to any Filipinos here this morning) – the Philistines had migrated across from Phoenicia and had settled right on that bend on the southern part of Canaan where it comes around and joins into Egypt. They were further along, just south of what today we know as Gaza, which they went up to and settled in later in Scripture.
But that is not the main factor here. And wherever Pi Hahiroth is, we know it was neither east nor north, but in actual fact it was south.
If you look at the map – and it is difficult to reconstruct accurately the journey that the Israelites took to get from Egypt to Canaan, but we know roughly, and there are variations depending on who’s plotting the map, but it is certainly not the way the crow would go.
And when they leave the Nile Delta, which is where Goshen was, where the Israelites lived, the most direct thing would have been to have gone due east straight away. And instead they start heading south. When you look at the map, it looks in the wrong direction and it ends up putting them on the wrong side of the Red Sea, which creates another problem for them in due course.
But the point I want to make to you at this moment is that this leads to the accusation on the part of Pharaoh, “the Israelites do not know where they are going and do not know what they are doing”, because in Chapter 14 Verse 3 it says,
“Pharaoh will think, ‘The Israelites are wandering around the land in confusion, hemmed in by the desert.’”
So Pharaoh can draw these logical conclusions from their movements, “These folks don’t even know where they are going, they don’t even know what they are doing. They have no sense of direction, have no clear route map to get them to their destination.”
And it is true that sometimes to the onlooker it is not always obvious what God is doing. Sometimes in fact it seems that there is confusion; God does give vision; we do need to know the end result, and God often gives us this sense of the end result, but in the meantime, having given us vision, the Scripture tells us He then directs our steps.
There is the macro-picture, the vision – that’s where we are going, that’s the ultimate objective. And then there is the micro picture – He directs our steps, as Proverbs 16:9 says,
“In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD directs his steps.”
In Chapter 20 and Verse 4 [24] of Proverbs it says,
“A man’s steps are directed by the LORD. How then can anyone understand his own way?”
The implication there is that when you let the Lord direct your steps, there are many times when you simply do not understand why you are where you are, why you are in the situation you are in, because He, who knows the big picture also knows the little picture, the details, and has put you in the right place at the right time for the right purpose even though you don’t understand it.
Now sometimes God does give you the big picture. You know when Saul of Tarsus was converted on the Damascus Road he was told certain things. One thing was that he would preach the gospel to the Gentiles, he would stand before kings and leaders and he would suffer greatly for the cause of the gospel.
And he probably, when he heard that, tucked it away in the back of his mind (“I am not quite sure what that is about”). He went down to Arabia, spent three years there in the desert probably, spending time, it seems, alone there with God.
He then went back to Tarsus, which is up in Turkey, and it is difficult to reconstruct the chronology exactly but he probably spent nine or ten years there until Barnabas went to find him and brought him back to a place called Antioch where Barnabas was leading the church. (Antioch and Syria needed some help.)
And then Saul came, spent a year with him; eventually went down to Jerusalem. And he tells us he hadn’t gone back to Jerusalem for twelve years (that’s how we can sort of reconstruct that there was a twelve year gap between him coming back to Jerusalem and his first visit soon after his conversion.)
And then he goes back to Antioch, and then the Holy Spirit says to the leaders of the church, “Set aside Paul and Barnabas to the work which I have called them.” He went off to Cyprus and from Cyprus, went up into southern Turkey and got into trouble and got beaten up and flogged and stoned.
And Paul thought, “Aha, thirteen years ago (whenever it was) I saw this. Now it is all coming together.” But having had that glimpse into the future, he waited for God to direct his steps. And when these things came to pass, he could see the hand of God.
Let me share, if I may, a personal experience – I hesitate to do this in this case, but I will in the trust that it may be helpful to somebody. When I was a boy we used to have a swing behind our house next to a stream, which ran around two sides of our garden. And there was a little waterfall and it had some big trees by this waterfall. And on one of the big trees we had a swing that went up a long ways, so it was quite a big swing.
And I often would sit on that swing and just sit there, swinging back and forth, thinking. It was my favourite place to go and just think. And I did that often because of the beautiful setting with the water trickling by. And I often used to think about, what I am going to do with my life?
And when I was about, I don’t know, thirteen maybe fourteen maybe, I remember sitting there out on the swing thinking and for some reason, I saw myself in a place I knew almost nothing about, but I knew it was Toronto. I saw myself with a wife and three children. And my memory of what I saw is so distinct I can tell you what we were wearing and I can tell you the ages of my children at the time, in my mind.
And it was quite strong and then I got off the swing and went away; I went into the house and I got out an atlas and I looked up the United States of America, thinking Toronto was in the United States.
And I couldn’t find Toronto so I went to the index and I found it was in Canada. So I found the Canada page and there it was and I thought, “Wow, I have no idea why in the world anybody would want to go to Toronto.”
A while later I was in a second hand book store, used book store, and I saw a paperback, magazine sized book on the city of Toronto published in about 1925 with pictures of the previous sort of century. (When was Toronto founded? 1930 something I think it was.) Anyway, whatever the dates are – I’ve still got that book somewhere – and I bought it and I didn’t know why because I looked at the pictures; so what?
And it just went on to the back burner of my mind. I never consciously thought about it very much at all. When I, many years ago, came to Toronto the first time, I had been invited to come over to the United States - I was in my mid-twenties – to come and preach in Chicago, Missouri, Toronto and then to New York City.
I came to Toronto, was up at Bay View Glen before they had the building they now have; they were then building that, meeting in a school, and I spoke there a few days.
I was free on a Wednesday night and I came down to Peoples Church because I had read some books by Oswald Smith and one book by Paul Smith. And I came down on a Wednesday night and it was a Wednesday night service – not many people here – Paul Smith gave a message on the first part of Romans Chapter 6; I remember that quite clearly. I only came here because I had heard about this church.
But I didn’t attach any great significance to that. It was only in fact after we had already agreed to come here back in 2001 that I suddenly remembered, remembered sitting on that swing. And God, for some reason, just put a picture into my mind. And I have had it happen on several occasions about things that have come to pass.
And as Jesus said about the Second Coming, “When these things come to pass (don’t try to work them out in advance) – when they come to pass, look up.”
And the Israelites had a picture of where they were going. They knew, if you stop any Israelite on the journey, any one of the two, three, four, five million people and say, “Hey, where are you going?”
“We’re going to Canaan.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, that’s where Abraham was. God gave it to him. We’re going to Canaan.”
They knew the ultimate objective. But having the big picture is not enough; you then let God direct your steps, something He has undertaken to do. “I will be a pillar of cloud in the day. Just follow. I will be a pillar of fire at night.”
I have said this before that when Jesus invited His disciples to join Him, we have the record of Him calling six of His twelve disciples and to those six He said the same two words. He said, “Follow Me.”
Now, to two of them He said, “ And I will make you fishers of men” – or to four of them actually He said that. Two others – He just said, “Follow Me.”
There’s something missing from that if you were to say to me at the end of the service, “Follow me”, I would probably say, “Where are you going?”
Nobody said that to Jesus. You know why? Because that is not the issue; the issue was who they were going with.
“I, in a pillar of cloud will be before you in the day and a pillar of fire at night. Don’t ask Me why or where we are going; just trust Me because your security is not in your destination, your security is not in the events you are going through; your security is in Christ.
We sang these words:
My faith has found a resting place
Not in device or creed
But in the ever-living One
That’s where my faith has found its resting place. And so these Israelites, following the cloud by day, instead of going east, turned back and went south.
And seeing their apparent confusion, Pharaoh changed his mind. And in Chapter 14 and Verse 5 it says,
“When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, Pharaoh and his officials changed their minds about them and said, ‘What have we done? We have let the Israelites go and have lost their services!’
“So he had his chariot made ready and took his army with him. He took six hundred of the best chariots along with all the other chariots of Egypt, with officers over all of them.”
It is interesting it specifies he took six hundred of the best chariots. Remember it has just told us there were six hundred thousand fighting men. So they took one chariot per thousand men. That’s pretty confident don’t you think?
Well of course they were confident. Not only that – now they are out in the desert; these folks are meandering around the place; they are obviously lost and confused.
And this led to the second issue. If the first issue is that God led them by unpredictable roads, and if that isn’t bad enough for them, they went off south in the wrong direction.
Secondly He led them into unanticipated battles, because having gone south instead of east, they now find that when they come to turn east, there is a Red Sea in the way.
Now where they actually cross the Red Sea is a matter of dispute and debate and we don’t need to enter into it. We just need to know that at some point, having gone down the west side of the Red Sea, they realize the direction they now have to go, as the pillar of cloud leads them, is right onto the bank of the Red Sea, which is too deep for them for them to wade through, too wide for them to bridge over, too long for them to go around, and they are stuck.
And here they face their first big crisis, which very quickly grows by the hour into three big crises. The first is that they cannot cross the Red Sea and they stand on the banks of the Red Sea and begin to grumble and mumble wondering how they are going to cross. And they began to say to Moses, “Moses, how in the world did we end up here? Do you know what you are doing?”
And while they are grumbling to Moses, they look over their shoulder and there behind them they see a cloud of dust way back in the desert, and in the cloud of dust, they pick up the silhouette of the Egyptian army and there are six hundred chariots coming to round them up and take them back again. And this becomes the second crisis.
“Not only is there a Red Sea in front we cannot cross, there is an army coming up behind us so we cannot possibly defend ourselves against,” and that precipitated the third crisis, which was the people themselves began to panic.
And in Chapter 14 and Verse 10, it says,
“As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and they cried out to the LORD.
“They said to Moses, ‘Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, “Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians?” It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!’”
Now that’s panic for you. They are saying to Moses, “Moses, what are your motives here? Are you really working for the Egyptians? Did you bring us here to die in the desert? Is this a mass suicide you are engaging in by bringing us out here, a mass homicide – all gonna die. Didn’t we say to you we were better off in Egypt?”
I doubt they ever said that. But now they started saying that. The moment you face a crisis you say, “Oh we were better off before.”
And here they are caught between the devil and the deep Red Sea – that’s the title I have given this message – “Caught Between the Devil and the Deep Red Sea.”
This is where they are. You see being in the will of God, allowing Him to direct your paths does not exempt us from problems; in fact, it is likely to lead us right into them. Do you know why? Because problems never frighten God - they only frighten us.
And I love the way Moses responds to this. In Verse 13 and Verse 14; let me read these two; with the people panicking – these two verses – with the people panicking behind them. It says,
“Moses answered the people, ‘Do not be afraid.’”
(Well they have got lots of reason to be afraid.)
“Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again.”
Listen to this:
“The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.”
That’s one of my favourite verses in the Bible.
“The LORD will fight for you and you need only to be still.”
I have often given that verse to people. I gave it to one of our missionaries this week in e-mail correspondence who is in a crisis where they do not know what the outcome is going to be and I sent this verse by e-mail.
And I got an e-mail back saying, “That verse you quoted has special meaning for me. It’s one,” she says, “you gave me before.”
(Well I forgot about that.) And she describes the incident in which it was the exact word that she needed in that incident. She said, “This verse took on a special significance at that time.” (I’m just quoting from her e-mail.) So she says, “It is no coincidence I should be reminded of this verse at a time like this that the battle is not mine.”
“The Lord will fight for you and you only need to be still.”
But let’s be practical for a moment. How can Moses speak like this? I mean here are the people in a panic with a Red Sea they can’t cross and an Egyptian army they can’t defend themselves against. The people are panicking. They cry out to their leader, Moses, “What are we going to do?”
And Moses says, “Hey, relax, don’t be afraid. The LORD will fight for you; you only have to be still.”
And I imagine there were people who said, “Moses, don’t be so spiritual man. You have got to be practical about these situations.”
People say that now. I have heard it; I tell you I have heard that.
“Don’t talk about leaving it to God; do something.”
So they probably talked about it then. And I imagine Moses must have prayed very quickly. I don’t know but I imagine he probably prayed and said, “God, we have to a problem. In fact, we have two. We have got a Red Sea we can’t cross; I don’t know how we are going to cross this Red Sea. We have got an Egyptian army coming up behind us and they are far better equipped than we are; we have no equipment at all. And everybody is in a panic about this, but Father, I want to remind You of something: it wasn’t my idea to come. It was Yours. You called me at the burning bush - in Exodus Chapter 3 (I am sure he didn’t say that; I’m just telling you that). You called me at the burning bush and I said, “Who am I?”
“And You said, ‘I will be with you.’”
“And I said, ‘Well what is Your name? Who are You’”
“And You said, ‘I Am Who I Am’ in the present tense.”
“You told me You are totally sufficient. You didn’t introduce Yourself to me as ‘I Was’ at the burning bush, ‘so remember your call and get the people off to Canaan as best you can.’”
“You didn’t say in the future tense, ‘I will be in Canaan, so keep going with the motivation that one day you will arrive and I will slap you on the back and say, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant and that’s your motivation to keep you going.’”
“No, no, You didn’t say that.”
“You said, ‘I AM’ present tense; totally sufficient. So Father, I have no idea in the first place why we are on the wrong side of the Red Sea anyway, but we just followed the cloud so that’s okay. It’s not mine; it’s Your plan. I don’t know how we are going to get through but it’s not my business anyway; it’s Yours. So Father, thank You very much. It’s over to You. Amen.”
Isn’t it great to know you can talk to God like that? because you actually can. And he could turn to the people and say, “Don’t be afraid. The LORD will fight for you and you only have to be still.”
That doesn’t mean of course that Moses said, “Hey, let’s just relax and let’s go down to the beach and have a barbecue on the beach.”
No, he had learned something which I have pointed out many times and I will point out many times more, that there are two ingredients that are essential if we are going to effectively live together with God.
We obey what He says and we trust who He is. We act in obedience and we act in dependence.
So Moses says in effect, “What do I do now?”
And God said, “Move on.”
You will find that in Verse 15:
“Move on.”
“I beg Your pardon?”
“Move on.”
“But there’s a Red Sea.”
“Move on.”
“Okay. I will go as far as I can – put my toe in the water. Now what?”
“Take your staff – the staff, you remember, that you threw to the ground and became a snake and I gave it to you back by the tail and you took it back in your hand again and it had a different name after that. It became the staff of God, the staff with which you struck the Nile and the water turned to blood, the staff with which you kicked up dust and every part of the dust became a gnat and the plague of gnats flowed out of that. The staff you held in the air; there was thundering and lightening and hailstones. Take your staff, Moses, the staff of God, and hold it over the sea.”
“Okay. Now what?”
“Well, just keep holding it.”
And it says he held it there all night. That’s a long time. I imagine all kinds of rumours went around the Israelite camp. I mean God caused a mist to descend to slow down the Egyptian army coming up behind. And I imagine the Israelites were saying, “Where’s Moses? Where’s our leader?”
“He’s standing right there with his staff.”
“What’s the matter with him?”
“I don’t know. He’s flipped maybe.”
I am sure one rumour that went around was that there was a piece of string on the end of that staff with a hook on it and a worm. “He’s gone fishing.”
But Moses knew this: you obey what God says and you trust what God is. You don’t have to explain to anybody. Sometimes it’s probably sensible to, but you don’t have to.
Obey what He says; trust who He is.
And when the sun broke on the eastern sky – remember they were looking east – when the sun broke on the eastern sky the next morning, there was a path through the water. And God said, “Go on, move on.”
And they walked through the path and as they came out the other side and looked back, they realized that the Egyptian army had now gotten to the other end of the Red Sea and they too began to pass through the same path.
And it says in Verse 26 of Chapter 14, when Moses had said to God, “Well what do I do now? I mean we are through on dry ground – that’s fantastic – but what are we going to do now? The Egyptians are coming behind us.”
And Verse 26,
“The LORD said to Moses, ‘Stretch out your hand over the sea so that the waters may flow back over the Egyptians and their chariots and horsemen.
“Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at daybreak the sea went back to its place. The Egyptians were fleeing toward it, and the LORD swept them into the sea. The water flowed back and covered the chariots and horsemen – the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed the Israelites into the sea. Not one of them survived.”
And here’s the interesting thing: they had three crises before – the Red Sea in front, the Egyptian army behind and then the people in a panic. God used the first problem (the Red Sea), to destroy the second problem (the Egyptian army), which solved the third problem (the peoples’ panic).
Very interesting how when you let God in, sometimes your problems cannibalize each other and they mutually destroy each other.
But who was it that opened the Red Sea? Was it Moses?
Of course it wasn’t; it was God.
And this leads me to the last and the third point, that if He had led them by unpredictable roads and He had led them into unanticipated battles, the third point is He led them with unlimited resources.
You see if you look at Chapter 15, having crossed over the Red Sea, Moses begins to sing. Later Miriam joins with the tambourine and all the ladies joined in with their tambourines, it tells us later on, and they began to sing a song, which occupies much of Chapter 15.
And I am going to read parts of it to you and I want you to listen very carefully as I read these parts to see if you can see something that is missing.
Let me read them to you. I will begin at Verse 1 where it says they sang,
“I will sing to the LORD, for he is highly exalted.
The horse and its rider he has hurled into the sea.
The LORD is my strength and my song;
He had become my salvation.
He is my God; and I will praise him
My father’s God, and I will exalt him.
The LORD is a warrior; the LORD is his name.”
Down to Verse 6:
“Your right hand, O LORD, was majestic in power.
Your right hand, O LORD, shattered the enemy.
In the greatness of your majesty
“You threw down those who opposed you.”
Down to Verse 11:
“Who among the gods is like you, O LORD?
Who is like you – majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?
You stretched out your right hand
And the earth swallowed them.
“In your unfailing love you will lead the people you have redeemed.
In your strength you will guide them to your holy dwelling.”
Etc. etc, etc. etc…do you notice something that was missing out of all of that?
Moses - absolutely nothing about Moses. They didn’t get across to the other side and stick him on their shoulders and start to say,
“Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate?
Give me an M!
M!
Give me an O!
O!
Give me an S!
S!
Give me an E!
E!
Give me another S!
S!
What does that spell?
Moses!
Who’s our champion?
Moses!
Who led us out of Egypt?
Moses!
Who crossed the Red Sea?
Moses!
Hip, Hip Hooray!”
They never actually even mentioned Moses.
They even said at one stage, “You stretched out Your Right hand.”
And I can imagine Moses might have said, “Excuse me everybody. I stretched out my right hand all night.”
So why do they say to God, “You stretched out Your right hand?”
Because they have got it at this point. This is God in Moses’ shoes. Do you remember in Exodus Chapter 3 at the burning bush, “Take off your shoes”?
“I have heard the cry of my people, I have seen them I have come down. I will deliver them. I will rescue them. I will take them to the land flowing with milk and honey. I will do this, Moses. So now go. I am sending you.”
“I thought You said You were doing it?”
“Well I am. Why do you think I said take off your shoes? I am doing it, Moses, in your shoes.”
The only explanation what will happen will be that God does it, but God does it through human agents. God works through people. But it’s not the people who are the explanation for what happens.
You know in our day and in our culture, which is a celebrity culture, we get so focused on personalities, even in the Christian church. And it is tedious and it is tiring. Men and women, young people, are to present their bodies as a living sacrifice to God but this is not about Moses, it’s not about people; it’s about God in and through His people.
That’s why Jesus said, “They will see your good works – you let your light shine before men; they will see your good works and praise your Father that is in heaven.”
That is actually the mark of authenticity, by the way, that people see your good works and they talk about God.
If they see your good works and talk about you, maybe something is wrong with them; maybe there is something wrong with you. Because the mark of authenticity is that people, in the company of men and women and young people who are living in dependence on God and obedience to God will become conscious of God.
And this is what happens here. Most of the Israelites quickly forgot Exodus Chapter 15. If you read later in the story of the wilderness journeys you feel like saying to them, “Hey, go back and read Exodus15 again. Moses, get that song out again and remind them it’s not about people,” because it’s so easy to lose sight of God Himself.
And then you either congratulate the people and you applaud the people and you end up virtually deifying the people or you turn nasty towards the people and you do your best to pull them down (and that happens to Moses on both counts) because you have lost the plot.
This is God’s business; this is God’s agenda; this is God’s battle. “The LORD will fight for you.”
The explanation for crossing the Red Sea is not if you go and stand all night with a staff in your hand in the air, water will open. No. This is God doing something in response, as He always works through human agents, is to Moses’ obedience and trust.
But it is not a method. We don’t trust device or even creed, as that hymn says, “My faith has found a resting place, not in device” - not in technique, not in models, not in programs, nor even in creeds. Creeds are important, but truth can become detached from life. And it becomes true, but dead truth. “But in the ever-living One,” as that beautiful hymn says.
Does this apply to you this morning? The answer is of course it does, because this is a picture of what the Christian life is intended to be - a life of dependence and a life of obedience where we don’t worry about our own battles, although we will have them, but we don’t take the governance and put it on our own shoulders; we put, as Scripture says, the governance on His shoulders.
And the question to ask sometimes is, one whose shoulders is the governance? And if it’s on yours, that’s exactly why you are worrying. If it’s on His, you are not relieved from the tensions of the situation you might be in – there are real tensions in situations in life, but there is an under girding peace and you will rest in Him.
And this is not just an Old Testament story to provide material for Sunday school classes. That isn’t why we were given the Old Testament. But that we, men and women, who have been reconciled to God, are brought into relationship with God, might learn what experience of God is going to be like, if we really trust Him. But the issue is where you put your dependence.
The Israelites, in their panic, put their dependence on Moses. That’s why they say to Moses, “Why didn’t you leave us alone?” They blame Moses. “We were better off in Egypt. Why did you even bring us out in the first place?” Their dependence is Moses and “Moses, you can’t fix it.” And no human being can fix it.
But when your dependence is on God, as Moses’ was, you say, “This is God’s business. The Lord will fight for you. Stand still and see the deliverance.”
Some translations say,
“Stand still and see the salvation that the LORD will work amongst you.”
And I ask you as I close, what is it in your life that you need to place your dependence on God in? It’s the area, if you are not sure how to answer that question, it’s the area where you are worrying; it’s the area where you are afraid. There are things bigger than you – of course there are – things bigger than me – of course there are, but are they bigger than God?
That’s the measurement that gives us the ability to be at peace and to trust Him. Sometimes you would think that the Christian life is offering a diversion round all the problems. No it isn’t. That wouldn’t be fair. The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. What happens to the world at large happens to us. We get sick like they get sick. We have accidents like they have accidents. We die early like they die early. But in the midst of it, we have a security and a trust and a confidence that is not in the circumstance. It is not in ourselves, it is not in people; it is in God and He will fight for you.
Let’s pray together and let’s thank Him for that.
Part 8
“Between the Devil and the Deep Red Sea”
Exodus 13-15
If you have got your Bible I would like you to open it to the book of Exodus and Chapter 12. I am not going to read a section of Scripture in advance this morning but I am going to read several parts if you have your Bible there with you.
In recent weeks we have been looking into these early chapters of the book of Exodus. We saw the way God prepared and then called Moses at the burning bush and sent him back into Egypt in order to lead the people out of Egypt to the land of Canaan, the land God had promised Abraham centuries before.
We looked at the plagues that God sent against Egypt, plagues that were not simply vindictive acts. In fact they weren’t vindictive acts against Egypt at all; they were strategically targeting the gods of Egypt, the Scripture tells us, culminating in the final plague which brought about the death of the firstborn son in every family from Pharaoh at the top down to the maid at the mill at the bottom and the firstborn of the Egyptian animals as well.
But the Israelites, the night the angel of death came to Egypt, took a lamb, killed the lamb, put the blood on the doorpost and the sides of the doors of their homes. They roasted the meat of the lamb and ate it, ready to run in the strength of the lamb when the word came that you are free, because that night the angel of death passed over every home on which the blood of the lamb had been displayed.
We looked at that in recent weeks and now we come to the actual departure of the Israelites from Egypt.
And I am going to read a few verses scattered around a bit to get the picture and the important lessons I believe there are here for us to learn today.
Let me read you in Chapter 12 Verse 31 and 32. It says there,
“During the night” (this is the night of death when the firstborn sons died throughout Egypt)
“During the night Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, ‘Up! Leave my people, you and the Israelites! Go, worship the LORD as you have requested. Take your flocks and herds, as you have said, and go. And also, bless me.’”
Down to Verse 37:
“The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Succoth. There were about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children.”
Later it says there were six hundred thousand men over the age of twenty, plus women; let’s assume a ratio of one man to one woman - that’s 1.2 million to start with. Then the children; that gives a very conservative total of 2 or 3 million, which is a figure you often hear, though probably more realistically, 4 or 5 million people altogether.
They were then given various instructions about what they should take in terms of the livestock and the goods that they would carry with them from Egypt. And Verse 50 of Chapter 12 says,
“All the Israelites did just what the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron. And on that very day the LORD brought the Israelites out of Egypt by their divisions.”
Let me remind you just at this point that all of this in Scripture portrays and foreshadows the Christian life and Christian experience. We have talked about that but I need to remind you of that.
The picture of being brought out of Egypt is a picture of being brought out of our bondage to sin. The blood of the lamb foreshadows Christ our Passover Lamb who was sacrificed for us, as Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians.
And the way the New Testament retells this story is as a picture of coming out of the life of sin and bondage and through and into the life of Canaan, which portrays resting in the sufficiency and strength of God.
And now that they are on their way, on their journey, I want to look at events in just the first few days of the journey that teach us some important truths about God’s dealings with us.
And there are three things I want to talk about. The first thing is I want to point out to you that God led them by unpredictable roads.
Let me explain what I mean by that. No doubt when the Israelites left Egypt they expected a straightforward journey through to Canaan. Three times God had affirmed, “I will bring you out of Egypt to bring you into Canaan.” In the same sentence or certainly in the same paragraph He puts coming out and coming in together, a land He describes poetically as flowing with milk and honey. And this was their expectation.
In Chapter 14 and Verse 8 describes the Israelites as “marching out boldly”, marching out with confidence, probably saying, as they marched away from their slavery behind them, “Canaan here we come, back to the home of our forefathers.” And they probably made up all kinds of patriotic songs and chants to keep them going. “We’re heading for Canaan. We’re going home.” This was their expectancy.
So that raises the question, how are they going to get there? Are they going to pick up a compass on the way out? Are they going to stop and buy an atlas? Are they going to install a GPS on the front camel? I mean how are they going to get from here to there?
Well let me read to you Chapter 13 and Verse 21. It says,
“By day the LORD went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people.”
God didn’t give them a road map; He gave them a pillar of cloud, which was His own presence. The Lord went ahead of them in the pillar of cloud and as the cloud moved, they moved. And at night, if they were to travel at all at night, a pillar of fire - as the pillar of fire moved, they moved.
Now we live in a map quest age. You punch in where you are; you type in where you are going and you get up on the screen a nice detailed map that says you are here, you want to go there, so go down this road for two miles, turn right at the traffic lights, go for six miles, you reach a T-junction, turn left, and so on. And it even tells you exactly how long it is going to take you to get there. “This will take you twenty-six minutes.” And that’s how we live. That’s what we expect. It makes life very predictable. We know exactly where we are.
But that isn’t what happened here. And leaving this arrangement to God (“I am going to be here in front of you in this pillar of cloud or this pillar of fire”) has two implications to it.
Number one, it is much more reliable if you trust in God, but number two, it is much less predictable. It is more reliable because God knows what He is doing; it is less predictable because His ways are not our ways.
And on a much later occasion, God spoke to Isaiah about that in Isaiah 55:8-9. He said,
“My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.”
In other words, “make an assumption that your best thinking, your smartest wisdom, your greatest insights are probably not the same as Mine. Your ways are not My ways. Your thoughts are not My thoughts.”
And here’s the difference:
“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
“And therefore, though they are less predictable, they are much more reliable because My ways, though different, are higher, My thoughts, though different, are higher than yours.”
Now, if you don’t really know God, it’s very likely there are going to come times in your life when you get thoroughly confused by what is happening. We walk by faith, Paul says in the New Testament, and not by sight. Most of us would prefer to walk by sight. We would like to be able to give the explanation as to why we are where we are at this particular point.
Let me give you an example of what it means for God to be leading them in ways that are unpredictable. In Chapter 14 and Verse 1 it says,
“Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Tell the Israelites to turn back and encamp near Pi Hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea. They are to encamp by the sea, directly opposite Baal Zephon.’”
Now look at this: “Tell the Israelites to turn back.” Turning back is not what you would expect at this stage in the journey.
And I spent a little bit of time earlier this week trying to locate Pi Hahiroth. And you look at one map and they have tried to put it in one place; you look at another map and it’s moved about fifty miles; you look at another map and it is a slightly different other place, which means we don’t really know where it is. But we do know this: that the way from Egypt to Canaan would be to go due east initially and then to turn north and go northeast and you find yourself in the land of Canaan.
I suppose the quickest way would have been along the coast. We know why they didn’t go along the coast because Chapter 13 Verse 17 says,
“God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, ‘If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.’
The Philippines – the Philistines (let’s get this right – apology to any Filipinos here this morning) – the Philistines had migrated across from Phoenicia and had settled right on that bend on the southern part of Canaan where it comes around and joins into Egypt. They were further along, just south of what today we know as Gaza, which they went up to and settled in later in Scripture.
But that is not the main factor here. And wherever Pi Hahiroth is, we know it was neither east nor north, but in actual fact it was south.
If you look at the map – and it is difficult to reconstruct accurately the journey that the Israelites took to get from Egypt to Canaan, but we know roughly, and there are variations depending on who’s plotting the map, but it is certainly not the way the crow would go.
And when they leave the Nile Delta, which is where Goshen was, where the Israelites lived, the most direct thing would have been to have gone due east straight away. And instead they start heading south. When you look at the map, it looks in the wrong direction and it ends up putting them on the wrong side of the Red Sea, which creates another problem for them in due course.
But the point I want to make to you at this moment is that this leads to the accusation on the part of Pharaoh, “the Israelites do not know where they are going and do not know what they are doing”, because in Chapter 14 Verse 3 it says,
“Pharaoh will think, ‘The Israelites are wandering around the land in confusion, hemmed in by the desert.’”
So Pharaoh can draw these logical conclusions from their movements, “These folks don’t even know where they are going, they don’t even know what they are doing. They have no sense of direction, have no clear route map to get them to their destination.”
And it is true that sometimes to the onlooker it is not always obvious what God is doing. Sometimes in fact it seems that there is confusion; God does give vision; we do need to know the end result, and God often gives us this sense of the end result, but in the meantime, having given us vision, the Scripture tells us He then directs our steps.
There is the macro-picture, the vision – that’s where we are going, that’s the ultimate objective. And then there is the micro picture – He directs our steps, as Proverbs 16:9 says,
“In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD directs his steps.”
In Chapter 20 and Verse 4 [24] of Proverbs it says,
“A man’s steps are directed by the LORD. How then can anyone understand his own way?”
The implication there is that when you let the Lord direct your steps, there are many times when you simply do not understand why you are where you are, why you are in the situation you are in, because He, who knows the big picture also knows the little picture, the details, and has put you in the right place at the right time for the right purpose even though you don’t understand it.
Now sometimes God does give you the big picture. You know when Saul of Tarsus was converted on the Damascus Road he was told certain things. One thing was that he would preach the gospel to the Gentiles, he would stand before kings and leaders and he would suffer greatly for the cause of the gospel.
And he probably, when he heard that, tucked it away in the back of his mind (“I am not quite sure what that is about”). He went down to Arabia, spent three years there in the desert probably, spending time, it seems, alone there with God.
He then went back to Tarsus, which is up in Turkey, and it is difficult to reconstruct the chronology exactly but he probably spent nine or ten years there until Barnabas went to find him and brought him back to a place called Antioch where Barnabas was leading the church. (Antioch and Syria needed some help.)
And then Saul came, spent a year with him; eventually went down to Jerusalem. And he tells us he hadn’t gone back to Jerusalem for twelve years (that’s how we can sort of reconstruct that there was a twelve year gap between him coming back to Jerusalem and his first visit soon after his conversion.)
And then he goes back to Antioch, and then the Holy Spirit says to the leaders of the church, “Set aside Paul and Barnabas to the work which I have called them.” He went off to Cyprus and from Cyprus, went up into southern Turkey and got into trouble and got beaten up and flogged and stoned.
And Paul thought, “Aha, thirteen years ago (whenever it was) I saw this. Now it is all coming together.” But having had that glimpse into the future, he waited for God to direct his steps. And when these things came to pass, he could see the hand of God.
Let me share, if I may, a personal experience – I hesitate to do this in this case, but I will in the trust that it may be helpful to somebody. When I was a boy we used to have a swing behind our house next to a stream, which ran around two sides of our garden. And there was a little waterfall and it had some big trees by this waterfall. And on one of the big trees we had a swing that went up a long ways, so it was quite a big swing.
And I often would sit on that swing and just sit there, swinging back and forth, thinking. It was my favourite place to go and just think. And I did that often because of the beautiful setting with the water trickling by. And I often used to think about, what I am going to do with my life?
And when I was about, I don’t know, thirteen maybe fourteen maybe, I remember sitting there out on the swing thinking and for some reason, I saw myself in a place I knew almost nothing about, but I knew it was Toronto. I saw myself with a wife and three children. And my memory of what I saw is so distinct I can tell you what we were wearing and I can tell you the ages of my children at the time, in my mind.
And it was quite strong and then I got off the swing and went away; I went into the house and I got out an atlas and I looked up the United States of America, thinking Toronto was in the United States.
And I couldn’t find Toronto so I went to the index and I found it was in Canada. So I found the Canada page and there it was and I thought, “Wow, I have no idea why in the world anybody would want to go to Toronto.”
A while later I was in a second hand book store, used book store, and I saw a paperback, magazine sized book on the city of Toronto published in about 1925 with pictures of the previous sort of century. (When was Toronto founded? 1930 something I think it was.) Anyway, whatever the dates are – I’ve still got that book somewhere – and I bought it and I didn’t know why because I looked at the pictures; so what?
And it just went on to the back burner of my mind. I never consciously thought about it very much at all. When I, many years ago, came to Toronto the first time, I had been invited to come over to the United States - I was in my mid-twenties – to come and preach in Chicago, Missouri, Toronto and then to New York City.
I came to Toronto, was up at Bay View Glen before they had the building they now have; they were then building that, meeting in a school, and I spoke there a few days.
I was free on a Wednesday night and I came down to Peoples Church because I had read some books by Oswald Smith and one book by Paul Smith. And I came down on a Wednesday night and it was a Wednesday night service – not many people here – Paul Smith gave a message on the first part of Romans Chapter 6; I remember that quite clearly. I only came here because I had heard about this church.
But I didn’t attach any great significance to that. It was only in fact after we had already agreed to come here back in 2001 that I suddenly remembered, remembered sitting on that swing. And God, for some reason, just put a picture into my mind. And I have had it happen on several occasions about things that have come to pass.
And as Jesus said about the Second Coming, “When these things come to pass (don’t try to work them out in advance) – when they come to pass, look up.”
And the Israelites had a picture of where they were going. They knew, if you stop any Israelite on the journey, any one of the two, three, four, five million people and say, “Hey, where are you going?”
“We’re going to Canaan.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, that’s where Abraham was. God gave it to him. We’re going to Canaan.”
They knew the ultimate objective. But having the big picture is not enough; you then let God direct your steps, something He has undertaken to do. “I will be a pillar of cloud in the day. Just follow. I will be a pillar of fire at night.”
I have said this before that when Jesus invited His disciples to join Him, we have the record of Him calling six of His twelve disciples and to those six He said the same two words. He said, “Follow Me.”
Now, to two of them He said, “ And I will make you fishers of men” – or to four of them actually He said that. Two others – He just said, “Follow Me.”
There’s something missing from that if you were to say to me at the end of the service, “Follow me”, I would probably say, “Where are you going?”
Nobody said that to Jesus. You know why? Because that is not the issue; the issue was who they were going with.
“I, in a pillar of cloud will be before you in the day and a pillar of fire at night. Don’t ask Me why or where we are going; just trust Me because your security is not in your destination, your security is not in the events you are going through; your security is in Christ.
We sang these words:
My faith has found a resting place
Not in device or creed
But in the ever-living One
That’s where my faith has found its resting place. And so these Israelites, following the cloud by day, instead of going east, turned back and went south.
And seeing their apparent confusion, Pharaoh changed his mind. And in Chapter 14 and Verse 5 it says,
“When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, Pharaoh and his officials changed their minds about them and said, ‘What have we done? We have let the Israelites go and have lost their services!’
“So he had his chariot made ready and took his army with him. He took six hundred of the best chariots along with all the other chariots of Egypt, with officers over all of them.”
It is interesting it specifies he took six hundred of the best chariots. Remember it has just told us there were six hundred thousand fighting men. So they took one chariot per thousand men. That’s pretty confident don’t you think?
Well of course they were confident. Not only that – now they are out in the desert; these folks are meandering around the place; they are obviously lost and confused.
And this led to the second issue. If the first issue is that God led them by unpredictable roads, and if that isn’t bad enough for them, they went off south in the wrong direction.
Secondly He led them into unanticipated battles, because having gone south instead of east, they now find that when they come to turn east, there is a Red Sea in the way.
Now where they actually cross the Red Sea is a matter of dispute and debate and we don’t need to enter into it. We just need to know that at some point, having gone down the west side of the Red Sea, they realize the direction they now have to go, as the pillar of cloud leads them, is right onto the bank of the Red Sea, which is too deep for them for them to wade through, too wide for them to bridge over, too long for them to go around, and they are stuck.
And here they face their first big crisis, which very quickly grows by the hour into three big crises. The first is that they cannot cross the Red Sea and they stand on the banks of the Red Sea and begin to grumble and mumble wondering how they are going to cross. And they began to say to Moses, “Moses, how in the world did we end up here? Do you know what you are doing?”
And while they are grumbling to Moses, they look over their shoulder and there behind them they see a cloud of dust way back in the desert, and in the cloud of dust, they pick up the silhouette of the Egyptian army and there are six hundred chariots coming to round them up and take them back again. And this becomes the second crisis.
“Not only is there a Red Sea in front we cannot cross, there is an army coming up behind us so we cannot possibly defend ourselves against,” and that precipitated the third crisis, which was the people themselves began to panic.
And in Chapter 14 and Verse 10, it says,
“As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and they cried out to the LORD.
“They said to Moses, ‘Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, “Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians?” It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!’”
Now that’s panic for you. They are saying to Moses, “Moses, what are your motives here? Are you really working for the Egyptians? Did you bring us here to die in the desert? Is this a mass suicide you are engaging in by bringing us out here, a mass homicide – all gonna die. Didn’t we say to you we were better off in Egypt?”
I doubt they ever said that. But now they started saying that. The moment you face a crisis you say, “Oh we were better off before.”
And here they are caught between the devil and the deep Red Sea – that’s the title I have given this message – “Caught Between the Devil and the Deep Red Sea.”
This is where they are. You see being in the will of God, allowing Him to direct your paths does not exempt us from problems; in fact, it is likely to lead us right into them. Do you know why? Because problems never frighten God - they only frighten us.
And I love the way Moses responds to this. In Verse 13 and Verse 14; let me read these two; with the people panicking – these two verses – with the people panicking behind them. It says,
“Moses answered the people, ‘Do not be afraid.’”
(Well they have got lots of reason to be afraid.)
“Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again.”
Listen to this:
“The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.”
That’s one of my favourite verses in the Bible.
“The LORD will fight for you and you need only to be still.”
I have often given that verse to people. I gave it to one of our missionaries this week in e-mail correspondence who is in a crisis where they do not know what the outcome is going to be and I sent this verse by e-mail.
And I got an e-mail back saying, “That verse you quoted has special meaning for me. It’s one,” she says, “you gave me before.”
(Well I forgot about that.) And she describes the incident in which it was the exact word that she needed in that incident. She said, “This verse took on a special significance at that time.” (I’m just quoting from her e-mail.) So she says, “It is no coincidence I should be reminded of this verse at a time like this that the battle is not mine.”
“The Lord will fight for you and you only need to be still.”
But let’s be practical for a moment. How can Moses speak like this? I mean here are the people in a panic with a Red Sea they can’t cross and an Egyptian army they can’t defend themselves against. The people are panicking. They cry out to their leader, Moses, “What are we going to do?”
And Moses says, “Hey, relax, don’t be afraid. The LORD will fight for you; you only have to be still.”
And I imagine there were people who said, “Moses, don’t be so spiritual man. You have got to be practical about these situations.”
People say that now. I have heard it; I tell you I have heard that.
“Don’t talk about leaving it to God; do something.”
So they probably talked about it then. And I imagine Moses must have prayed very quickly. I don’t know but I imagine he probably prayed and said, “God, we have to a problem. In fact, we have two. We have got a Red Sea we can’t cross; I don’t know how we are going to cross this Red Sea. We have got an Egyptian army coming up behind us and they are far better equipped than we are; we have no equipment at all. And everybody is in a panic about this, but Father, I want to remind You of something: it wasn’t my idea to come. It was Yours. You called me at the burning bush - in Exodus Chapter 3 (I am sure he didn’t say that; I’m just telling you that). You called me at the burning bush and I said, “Who am I?”
“And You said, ‘I will be with you.’”
“And I said, ‘Well what is Your name? Who are You’”
“And You said, ‘I Am Who I Am’ in the present tense.”
“You told me You are totally sufficient. You didn’t introduce Yourself to me as ‘I Was’ at the burning bush, ‘so remember your call and get the people off to Canaan as best you can.’”
“You didn’t say in the future tense, ‘I will be in Canaan, so keep going with the motivation that one day you will arrive and I will slap you on the back and say, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant and that’s your motivation to keep you going.’”
“No, no, You didn’t say that.”
“You said, ‘I AM’ present tense; totally sufficient. So Father, I have no idea in the first place why we are on the wrong side of the Red Sea anyway, but we just followed the cloud so that’s okay. It’s not mine; it’s Your plan. I don’t know how we are going to get through but it’s not my business anyway; it’s Yours. So Father, thank You very much. It’s over to You. Amen.”
Isn’t it great to know you can talk to God like that? because you actually can. And he could turn to the people and say, “Don’t be afraid. The LORD will fight for you and you only have to be still.”
That doesn’t mean of course that Moses said, “Hey, let’s just relax and let’s go down to the beach and have a barbecue on the beach.”
No, he had learned something which I have pointed out many times and I will point out many times more, that there are two ingredients that are essential if we are going to effectively live together with God.
We obey what He says and we trust who He is. We act in obedience and we act in dependence.
So Moses says in effect, “What do I do now?”
And God said, “Move on.”
You will find that in Verse 15:
“Move on.”
“I beg Your pardon?”
“Move on.”
“But there’s a Red Sea.”
“Move on.”
“Okay. I will go as far as I can – put my toe in the water. Now what?”
“Take your staff – the staff, you remember, that you threw to the ground and became a snake and I gave it to you back by the tail and you took it back in your hand again and it had a different name after that. It became the staff of God, the staff with which you struck the Nile and the water turned to blood, the staff with which you kicked up dust and every part of the dust became a gnat and the plague of gnats flowed out of that. The staff you held in the air; there was thundering and lightening and hailstones. Take your staff, Moses, the staff of God, and hold it over the sea.”
“Okay. Now what?”
“Well, just keep holding it.”
And it says he held it there all night. That’s a long time. I imagine all kinds of rumours went around the Israelite camp. I mean God caused a mist to descend to slow down the Egyptian army coming up behind. And I imagine the Israelites were saying, “Where’s Moses? Where’s our leader?”
“He’s standing right there with his staff.”
“What’s the matter with him?”
“I don’t know. He’s flipped maybe.”
I am sure one rumour that went around was that there was a piece of string on the end of that staff with a hook on it and a worm. “He’s gone fishing.”
But Moses knew this: you obey what God says and you trust what God is. You don’t have to explain to anybody. Sometimes it’s probably sensible to, but you don’t have to.
Obey what He says; trust who He is.
And when the sun broke on the eastern sky – remember they were looking east – when the sun broke on the eastern sky the next morning, there was a path through the water. And God said, “Go on, move on.”
And they walked through the path and as they came out the other side and looked back, they realized that the Egyptian army had now gotten to the other end of the Red Sea and they too began to pass through the same path.
And it says in Verse 26 of Chapter 14, when Moses had said to God, “Well what do I do now? I mean we are through on dry ground – that’s fantastic – but what are we going to do now? The Egyptians are coming behind us.”
And Verse 26,
“The LORD said to Moses, ‘Stretch out your hand over the sea so that the waters may flow back over the Egyptians and their chariots and horsemen.
“Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at daybreak the sea went back to its place. The Egyptians were fleeing toward it, and the LORD swept them into the sea. The water flowed back and covered the chariots and horsemen – the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed the Israelites into the sea. Not one of them survived.”
And here’s the interesting thing: they had three crises before – the Red Sea in front, the Egyptian army behind and then the people in a panic. God used the first problem (the Red Sea), to destroy the second problem (the Egyptian army), which solved the third problem (the peoples’ panic).
Very interesting how when you let God in, sometimes your problems cannibalize each other and they mutually destroy each other.
But who was it that opened the Red Sea? Was it Moses?
Of course it wasn’t; it was God.
And this leads me to the last and the third point, that if He had led them by unpredictable roads and He had led them into unanticipated battles, the third point is He led them with unlimited resources.
You see if you look at Chapter 15, having crossed over the Red Sea, Moses begins to sing. Later Miriam joins with the tambourine and all the ladies joined in with their tambourines, it tells us later on, and they began to sing a song, which occupies much of Chapter 15.
And I am going to read parts of it to you and I want you to listen very carefully as I read these parts to see if you can see something that is missing.
Let me read them to you. I will begin at Verse 1 where it says they sang,
“I will sing to the LORD, for he is highly exalted.
The horse and its rider he has hurled into the sea.
The LORD is my strength and my song;
He had become my salvation.
He is my God; and I will praise him
My father’s God, and I will exalt him.
The LORD is a warrior; the LORD is his name.”
Down to Verse 6:
“Your right hand, O LORD, was majestic in power.
Your right hand, O LORD, shattered the enemy.
In the greatness of your majesty
“You threw down those who opposed you.”
Down to Verse 11:
“Who among the gods is like you, O LORD?
Who is like you – majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?
You stretched out your right hand
And the earth swallowed them.
“In your unfailing love you will lead the people you have redeemed.
In your strength you will guide them to your holy dwelling.”
Etc. etc, etc. etc…do you notice something that was missing out of all of that?
Moses - absolutely nothing about Moses. They didn’t get across to the other side and stick him on their shoulders and start to say,
“Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate?
Give me an M!
M!
Give me an O!
O!
Give me an S!
S!
Give me an E!
E!
Give me another S!
S!
What does that spell?
Moses!
Who’s our champion?
Moses!
Who led us out of Egypt?
Moses!
Who crossed the Red Sea?
Moses!
Hip, Hip Hooray!”
They never actually even mentioned Moses.
They even said at one stage, “You stretched out Your Right hand.”
And I can imagine Moses might have said, “Excuse me everybody. I stretched out my right hand all night.”
So why do they say to God, “You stretched out Your right hand?”
Because they have got it at this point. This is God in Moses’ shoes. Do you remember in Exodus Chapter 3 at the burning bush, “Take off your shoes”?
“I have heard the cry of my people, I have seen them I have come down. I will deliver them. I will rescue them. I will take them to the land flowing with milk and honey. I will do this, Moses. So now go. I am sending you.”
“I thought You said You were doing it?”
“Well I am. Why do you think I said take off your shoes? I am doing it, Moses, in your shoes.”
The only explanation what will happen will be that God does it, but God does it through human agents. God works through people. But it’s not the people who are the explanation for what happens.
You know in our day and in our culture, which is a celebrity culture, we get so focused on personalities, even in the Christian church. And it is tedious and it is tiring. Men and women, young people, are to present their bodies as a living sacrifice to God but this is not about Moses, it’s not about people; it’s about God in and through His people.
That’s why Jesus said, “They will see your good works – you let your light shine before men; they will see your good works and praise your Father that is in heaven.”
That is actually the mark of authenticity, by the way, that people see your good works and they talk about God.
If they see your good works and talk about you, maybe something is wrong with them; maybe there is something wrong with you. Because the mark of authenticity is that people, in the company of men and women and young people who are living in dependence on God and obedience to God will become conscious of God.
And this is what happens here. Most of the Israelites quickly forgot Exodus Chapter 15. If you read later in the story of the wilderness journeys you feel like saying to them, “Hey, go back and read Exodus15 again. Moses, get that song out again and remind them it’s not about people,” because it’s so easy to lose sight of God Himself.
And then you either congratulate the people and you applaud the people and you end up virtually deifying the people or you turn nasty towards the people and you do your best to pull them down (and that happens to Moses on both counts) because you have lost the plot.
This is God’s business; this is God’s agenda; this is God’s battle. “The LORD will fight for you.”
The explanation for crossing the Red Sea is not if you go and stand all night with a staff in your hand in the air, water will open. No. This is God doing something in response, as He always works through human agents, is to Moses’ obedience and trust.
But it is not a method. We don’t trust device or even creed, as that hymn says, “My faith has found a resting place, not in device” - not in technique, not in models, not in programs, nor even in creeds. Creeds are important, but truth can become detached from life. And it becomes true, but dead truth. “But in the ever-living One,” as that beautiful hymn says.
Does this apply to you this morning? The answer is of course it does, because this is a picture of what the Christian life is intended to be - a life of dependence and a life of obedience where we don’t worry about our own battles, although we will have them, but we don’t take the governance and put it on our own shoulders; we put, as Scripture says, the governance on His shoulders.
And the question to ask sometimes is, one whose shoulders is the governance? And if it’s on yours, that’s exactly why you are worrying. If it’s on His, you are not relieved from the tensions of the situation you might be in – there are real tensions in situations in life, but there is an under girding peace and you will rest in Him.
And this is not just an Old Testament story to provide material for Sunday school classes. That isn’t why we were given the Old Testament. But that we, men and women, who have been reconciled to God, are brought into relationship with God, might learn what experience of God is going to be like, if we really trust Him. But the issue is where you put your dependence.
The Israelites, in their panic, put their dependence on Moses. That’s why they say to Moses, “Why didn’t you leave us alone?” They blame Moses. “We were better off in Egypt. Why did you even bring us out in the first place?” Their dependence is Moses and “Moses, you can’t fix it.” And no human being can fix it.
But when your dependence is on God, as Moses’ was, you say, “This is God’s business. The Lord will fight for you. Stand still and see the deliverance.”
Some translations say,
“Stand still and see the salvation that the LORD will work amongst you.”
And I ask you as I close, what is it in your life that you need to place your dependence on God in? It’s the area, if you are not sure how to answer that question, it’s the area where you are worrying; it’s the area where you are afraid. There are things bigger than you – of course there are – things bigger than me – of course there are, but are they bigger than God?
That’s the measurement that gives us the ability to be at peace and to trust Him. Sometimes you would think that the Christian life is offering a diversion round all the problems. No it isn’t. That wouldn’t be fair. The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. What happens to the world at large happens to us. We get sick like they get sick. We have accidents like they have accidents. We die early like they die early. But in the midst of it, we have a security and a trust and a confidence that is not in the circumstance. It is not in ourselves, it is not in people; it is in God and He will fight for you.
Let’s pray together and let’s thank Him for that.