Crossing the Red Sea

This morning, we're continuing our look at Exodus. If you haven't been here before, we've been doing a series on the story of Exodus and the God who rescues. We see God's mighty provision for Israel and the formation of a people for himself. And it's an amazing story, and we're really just getting to the heart of it at the moment. So this morning, we're going to be looking at that famous scene, and some of you may have watched the recent Exodus movie, and they just did an amazing job with computer graphics and stuff.

But we're looking at the crossing of the Red Sea this morning. And it's something that whether you are a Christian or not, it's an image that everyone knows about in the Bible, the crossing of the Red Sea. My dad, one time when I had made a mistake or another, some something, I can't even remember when. I've made so many of them. But after I had made a mistake, my dad looked at me and he laughed.

And he said to me, KJ, if you can't be a good example, at least make sure you are a terrifying warning to the rest of us of what not to do. This morning we're going to be looking at a terrible example of how to be faithful to God. And we see the example of Israel and just the way that they were so unfaithful to God. And what a terrible example of faithfulness they are, but what a great illustration of God's character we see this morning. We see so often in the Old Testament how Israel fails to love God, to be obedient to God, but over and over again in Israel's weakness, we see God's strength and His character and His love and His grace being made complete.

In their weakness, God and His grace is complete. In their brokenness and imperfection, God is shown to be faithful and perfect. This morning, we're going to look at Exodus 14, the time where Israel had left Egypt. They had escaped after the plagues, and where they were just, they were at the Red Sea just before this amazing miracle happened. They had only been gone a few days, we see, and Pharaoh had a change of heart again.

And he decided to round up some 600 chariots. It says the best chariots in the land, and he was going to hunt them down. He could not be seen to be weak. Let's have a look at that moment, that terrifying moment in Exodus 14, where Pharaoh and all the king's horses came after them. Exodus 14.

We're going to look specifically from verse 10 to 31. Exodus 14, verse 10. As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians marching after them. They were terrified and 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. Moses answered the people, do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring to you today.

The Egyptians you see today, you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you. You need only to be still. Then the Lord said to Moses, why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on.

Raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water so the Israelites can go through the sea on dry ground. I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them. And I will gain glory through Pharaoh and all his army, through his chariots and his horsemen. The Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I gain glory through Pharaoh, His chariots, and His horsemen. Then the angel of God, who had been travelling in front of Israel's army, withdrew and went behind them. The pillar of cloud also moved from in front and stood behind them, coming between the armies of Egypt and Israel.

Throughout the night, the cloud brought darkness to one side and light to the other side, so neither went near the other all night long. Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night, the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided, and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground with a wall of water on their right and on their left. The Egyptians pursued them, and all Pharaoh's horses and chariots and horsemen followed them into the sea. During the last watch of the night, the Lord looked down, sorry.

The Lord looked down from the pillar of fire and cloud at the Egyptian army and threw it into confusion. He made the wheels of their chariots come off so that they had difficulty driving. And the Egyptians said, let's get away from the Israelites. The Lord is fighting for them and against Egypt. Then 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 towards it, and the Lord swept them into the sea. The water flowed back and covered the horses, the chariots and horsemen, the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed the Israelites into the sea. Not one of them survived. But the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground with a wall of water on their right and on their left.

That day, the Lord saved Israel from the hands of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore. And when the Israelites saw the great power of the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in Him and in Moses, His servant. So far, our reading. What we see, when we get to this account is that the Israelites are camping near a place called Pi Hahiroth, close to the Red Sea. And most scholars believe that this was at the Gulf of Suez.

If you know the shape of the Red Sea, it's got these two little antennae going up. And the first one is called the Gulf of Suez, and this is where they believe they were camping. It's also called the Sea of Reeds. Now while they were camping here, they looked up and they see this little cloud of dust on the horizon. And they wait a few minutes and they see that this cloud of dust is getting bigger and bigger, and they realise there's an army coming and it can only be Pharaoh.

Immediately, they start panicking. Who wouldn't? Right? Immediately, they start panicking. They cry out, the Bible says, to God.

And after they've cried out, they take on the next best thing, and that's to attack the preacher. They say, Moses, was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us out here to die? Now I can't help but smile when I read this because of the sarcasm in this. If you remember the context, are there no graves in Egypt? Of course there are graves in Egypt.

That's what they did. They just built graves. The pyramids, tombs, the king, the Valley of the Kings, tombs. These Israelite slaves were building tombs day in, day out. Are there no graves in Egypt that you brought us out here to die?

Of course, there's graves in Egypt. It's like saying, are there no AFL supporters in Victoria? On and on their whinging goes until Moses says to them, do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance God will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today, you will never see again.

Verse 14, the Lord will fight for you. You need only to be still. You can just imagine the Israelites, Moses, what a crazy thing to say. You want us not to be afraid in the face of 600 plus chariots hurtling towards us.

But Moses isn't finished. He says, stand firm, watch, and be quiet. Moses uses four imperatives here, four commands. Don't be afraid, stand firm, watch and be quiet. In other words, sit down, shut up, and watch the show.

They don't have to do anything except that. And God proceeds to do something so incredible that nations would be talking about it for hundreds of years to come. But first, before that amazing scene happened, He needed, God needed Israel to be desperate enough. Isn't that amazing? God had to wait and wait and wait until the situation was just dire.

It was extreme. This leads us to observe a few things this morning that I think are applicable to our lives. Firstly, it often takes desperate, tight places to break lifetime habits. It often takes tight places to break lifetime habits. Why does God allow painful, uncomfortable things to happen to us?

Well, the answer is sometimes He needs the discomfort in our life to finally free us from the thought and the behaviour patterns that may have been holding us hostage for years. Remember, the Israelites grew up Egyptian. They grew up Egyptian. They rubbed shoulders with the Egyptians. They worked with the Egyptians.

They think like Egyptians. They read the Egyptian newspaper. They follow Egyptian celebrities on Twitter. They listen to Egyptian music. And when push came to shove and the Israelites stood there at the cul de sac between Pharaoh and the sea, when it came down to it, the Israelites were willing to go back to the old ways, the Egyptian ways.

And you could argue, well, they didn't know any better. They'd been in the country four hundred years. They had forgotten. We clearly see they had forgotten who Yahweh was, the God of their ancestors. They didn't know who He was. All they knew was Egyptian.

They didn't really know any better, but I think they did. Because they wrestled, the Bible says. They groaned under the weight of Egypt's masters and slave drivers. They hated being under the Egyptian masters, and they cried out under the heavy burden in Egypt. And yet here they are accusing Moses of doing something that sounds to be against their will.

Verses eleven and twelve says, 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 them than to die in the desert. Now I don't know if you've been reading this story, but I couldn't find any place that they said this.

They were all too willing to accept the freedom that God was wanting to give them. They make it sound as if Moses forced them into escape from Egypt. This freedom's a real pain. They never said leave us alone. They were all too willing to escape.

And yet here, their fragile courage is wavering and they long for the days of making bricks in the hot sun and scraping out the chamber pots of the nobility. Why? Because that's what they were used to. And before we get too self righteous here, let's make a bit of time to reflect on this. Why did God put them in this corner?

Why did He provide no way out? Because God wanted to break the habits of the Egyptian way of thinking. God painted His people into an impossible corner to break them from their old ties. Our human hearts naturally are happy to maintain the status quo. Our human hearts are happy to maintain the status quo.

We are creatures of habit, creatures of comfort. And as long as something isn't horribly broken, then we can make it work, sort of. The Egyptian masters were terrible masters. They weren't good. But for us, we have terrible masters in our lives that are just terrible, and we'll go back to them over and over and over again, and then later regret doing it and thinking, why?

Why would I go back to that? So much of God's discipline in our lives, and we have to use that word. So much of God's disciplining in our lives comes from lessons that are etched into our hearts, burnt into our hearts from situations where there was no escape. And we realised those old vicious cycles are fatal. In this situation, those habits, the fact that we were great servants for Egypt for so long did not mean that they were going to be spared.

Egypt was going to annihilate those guys. They were terrible masters. Often, it seems to be the case, it's only when there is no escape route that we learn God's lessons. And we might be in a predicament right now. You might be in a predicament right now, perhaps one that is so tight that you realise that it needs a divine move of God, a miracle of God to change the life pattern that you have.

And God sometimes puts us in these cul de sacs for us to experience real desperation before the Red Sea is opened. This leads us to our next point. When hemmed in on all sides, often the only place to look is up. When hemmed in on all sides, the only place to look is up. When there was no escape, forwards into the sea, backwards towards the Egyptians and the chariots, left or right, we are forced to look towards God.

Remember way back in Exodus chapter two, the Israelites were in a situation where they were just being crushed by their slavery. And the Bible says they groaned under this yoke and they cried out. It doesn't say they cried out to God. It says they cried out to someone, to anyone to hear and to help. And it was God who heard, but they had forgotten who Yahweh was.

They had forgotten the God of their ancestors. But here in chapter 14, notice it. Here in chapter 14, verse 10, it says that the Israelites were terrified and they cried out. But this time they cried out to the Lord. This time they knew that there was someone who was going to listen.

Isn't that interesting? They cried out to the Lord. And we see that even in this situation, there's a growing understanding of who Yahweh was. But before we see that you know, they've learned their lesson, after crying out to God, they snap back and they have a good old whinge to Moses. So as they are developing in their faith and their understanding, we see that there is a little bit of growth, but we also see that God is not the only rescuer, that there is perhaps some more rescuers and that they're doing the human thing and looking at who else may be around.

And so they cry out to God and then start yelling at Moses. Even if, and this is a funny thing. You know, as if Moses is going to be able to do anything about this situation, he's just as stuck as the rest of these guys are. But God knew what He was doing. He had told Moses before all this happened in verse four of chapter 14, I will harden Pharaoh's heart and he will pursue them, the Israelites.

But I will gain glory for myself through Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord. But it goes wider than this. Because we see at the end of the chapter that it's the Israelites as well that put their trust in God. So not only will it be the Egyptians that will know that I am the Lord, you Israelites will know that I am the Lord. One of my mom's closest friends in Australia is a recovering alcoholic who became a Christian through my mom's witness.

And she will tell you that she found God at the bottom of a whiskey bottle. But she would tell you how in Alcoholics Anonymous, people would often say to one another, I wish you desperation. Alcoholics would say to one another, I wish you desperation. I wish you to hit rock bottom. And that sounds like a really terrible thing to say, doesn't it?

But they know, they know that when those people hit rock bottom, it is the best news ever. Because until you're in that position, you'll keep going in that cycle of self destruction. When you hit rock bottom, there is nowhere else to look but up. And that's often where God is seen. And that is why God allowed Israel to be hemmed in on all sides, be in that desperate position, because the only place to look was up.

And so it draws their attention to God, and it builds the scene for what God was going to do. And this is what God's point was, our third point for this morning. If the Lord is to get the glory, He must do the fighting. If the Lord is to get the glory, He must do the fighting. And I love this part in the story.

Verse 15. The Lord said to Moses, why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to get ready. How blunt is God here? Guys, stop praying.

Stop praying. Get on with it. Israel had begun their slow descent down the dignity scale. They were just losing it. But God nips it in the bud.

Unfortunately, as we read the story, this is not the last time that Israel had a communal whinging session, but God simply tells them, stop praying, guys. Pack up your tents. I'm going to get you out of this predicament. I love it. Sometimes we should be praying.

Sometimes we should be seeking God. And sometimes we should just shut up and be obedient. There's an ocean in front of you, Moses. God says, I want you to start marching towards it. Now thankfully, Moses and Israel complied.

And what happened? Well, a miracle which ranks as one of the most spectacular events in all of human history happened. The whole sea was dried up and over a million people walked through on a dry seabed. Isn't it remarkable what God can do without our help? Sometimes we think, well, you know, my company needs me.

I'm an invaluable part of this system. Sometimes we think, well, my church needs me. If Ben doesn't play the drums, there's no good rhythm. Sorry, Jason. My family needs me.

Maybe God needs me too then. He doesn't. He can manage quite fine without you. Very much thank you. In fact, sometimes He prefers us to step aside and leave the fighting to Him.

Moses says to them, he knows what's coming. He says to them, the Lord will fight for you. You need only to be still. And verse 17 repeats what God had said earlier in the chapter. I will gain the glory through Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord.

If the Lord is to get the glory, He will do the fighting. We must remember that in the impossible moments in life, we must simply let God be God and wait for His salvation. There are moments like that in life. There are times where we need to grab ahold of something and be involved in being part of the solution. There are moments where we will need to be involved, but I'm not referring to those moments because usually they're not the desperate moments.

I'm talking about those impossible impasses where you're between the proverbial rock and hard place. If God is to get the glory, He must do the fighting. There's a story of a missionary named Darlene Diebler Rose, who was captured during World War II by the Japanese. She was a missionary in Japan, and because she was a westerner, was immediately assumed to have been a spy. Reflecting on her experience, she wrote this.

On the door of the cell where I was being kept were written in chalk these words. This person must die. The guard unlocked the door, opened it, and shoved me inside the cell. The door closed upon me, and I dropped to my knees, eyes intent upon the keyhole. When I saw and heard the key make a complete revolution, I knew now I was on death row, imprisoned to face trial and the sentence of death.

I listened to the footsteps of the guard recede on the concrete walkway. When I could hear them no longer, I sat back onto my heels. My face and hands were wet with cold perspiration. Never had I known such terror. And suddenly, I found I was singing a song that I had learned as a little girl in Sunday school.

Fear not, little flock, whatever your lot. He enters all rooms, the doors being shut. He never forsakes. He never is gone. So count on His presence from darkness till dawn.

So tenderly, she says, my Lord wrapped His strong arms of quietness and calm about me that I knew they could lock me in, but they couldn't ever lock my wonderful Lord out. Jesus was there in the cell with me that day. For this missionary, the Lord's faithfulness shone through brilliantly in the most severe circumstances. And we might someday face some pretty severe circumstances in life too, but for us, God's faithfulness and miraculous salvation was eminently shown when Jesus Christ fought the battle for our souls. And the Bible, from this moment, through the Psalms, through to the New Testament, talks about this moment of the splitting of the Red Sea as the ultimate moment of God's salvation for His people.

It truly was when Jesus came for us, the war to end all wars. He fought for us and He won the victory over the Egyptian masters, which are the masters of sin and death. The Bible says that. Our backs were against the wall. We were caught between the devastation of a sin filled existence and the righteous judgement of God that would condemn us to death.

But a miracle which ranks as the most spectacular event in the history of mankind, far greater even than the crossing of the Red Sea happened. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, took upon Himself our brokenness, took upon Himself our suffering and the punishment which we deserved, and bore the full wrath of a just and righteous God on our behalf. Maybe we are at a point where we need to sit back and be still. Perhaps you are telling God of what He should be doing instead of waiting. Sometimes we pray because we fear the waiting.

Sometimes we pray because we fear the waiting. We pray and try to keep ourselves busy by asking God for deliverance instead of waiting for God to deliver us. Or maybe God is saying to you that you have prayed enough, and now it is time to get a move on. You've prayed enough. Now it's time to get a move on.

Maybe there's something in your life that you know is not God honouring, and you pray that God will remove it from your life. Perhaps now is the time to do something about it. To stop praying about it. To start being obedient. Perhaps it's time to listen to God when He says, why are you crying out to me?

I can't make this decision for you. It's time for you to start moving on. But in all of that, friends, know this, that the greatest rescue mission in history after the Red Sea happened for us in Jesus Christ. And that impossible impasse, the cul de sac between the gravity of our sin and the wrath of a just and holy God was and truly and completely was dealt with by Jesus Christ, who is faithful and who has won the biggest fights of our lives. We have crossed the Red Sea.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that as we sit here and as we hear from Your word, as we reflect, Lord, on broken human imperfect wills and minds, courage that is fleeting, faithfulness that is wishy washy at best. And Father, in all of this, we may realise that You are a God who can deliver, You are a God who can save, that sometimes You just need us to be silent and to watch on as You do amazing things around us. Help us to do that. Help us to wait patiently.

Help us to endure, Lord, and to have the courage to cling onto You. But Father, give us the perspective as well, which we also really badly need sometimes. That the worst, most impossible situation You have already won. And that, yes, Lord, our brokenness and our imperfection, which may cause us hurt even now, Lord, that was going to always cause a great divide between us. But Father, thank You for Your Son Jesus Christ.

Thank You, Lord, that He made a way. The great divide He healed. That though our hearts were far away, Your love went further still. Father, I pray for all of our hearts here that we may find peace and comfort in this fact. Lord, that we will find that in new and refreshing ways in the new year as we prepare ourselves for that.

And Father, that we will grow in the understanding of Your grace and the implications, the manifold implications for that in our lives. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.