We’re continuing our series in Exodus this morning. Last week we saw the final plague that God brings upon the Egyptians in judgment.
Pharoah is looking at his utterly broken country. Cattle and crops are destroyed. People have been covered in boils. Rivers have been turned to blood.
The idols that Egypt held close and the power the Pharoah thought he had have been utterly decimated by the Lord.
Some of the Egyptian officials have started listening to the Lord, they’ve seen who he is and they bring their livestock in when the plague of hail is announced.
But Pharaoh has hardened his heart against it. Even as he looks around the destruction in his country and sees the Lord’s power.
He says “No!”
He hardens his heart, and the Lord lets him.
We came to the final plague, the death of the firstborn.
The Lord tells Moses he is going to bring one more plague against Egypt.
After the plague, Pharoah will let them go. In fact, he will drive them away.
But he won’t listen to the warnings.
Nevertheless, Moses goes to Pharoah and tells him of this final plague.
Every firstborn in the land will die.
But he does not listen.
Then the Lord tells Moses how the people will be saved.
Through the blood of a lamb, painted on the lintels and doorposts of their doors, the children of Israel will be delivered from this plague.
This is a day that they will remember after they have left the land and are living in their own.
The Israelites carry out the Lord’s command and that night the Lord passes through the land and kills the firstborn in every house, of every family; but passes over the houses with the blood on the door.
And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians. And there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where someone was not dead. 31 Then he summoned Moses and Aaron by night and said, “Up, go out from among my people, both you and the people of Israel; and go, serve the Lord, as you have said. 32 Take your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone, and bless me also!”
After 430 years the Israelites are released from their slavery.
They leave.
The Lord brings them out of Egypt and leads them as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.
Never leaving his people.
He leads them to the Red Sea.
One of my favourite TV shows is called ‘Arrested Development’ which is about the incredibly rich, narcissistic, and dysfunctional Bluth family in the US. The dad of the family gets arrested for fraud and corruption, they lose all their money, but the family just try and keep living these fabulous lifestyles despite no longer having the money to do it.
One of the brothers, Gob, is a failing magician and keeps getting himself into these totally nuts situations and he has this catchphrase for when he realises what he’s done.
He turns to the camera and says “I’ve made a huge mistake!”
He says it a lot.
That’s how Exodus 14 begins, on one hand we have Pharoah deciding that he’s made a huge mistake in letting the Israelites go.
On the other hand, we see the Israelites, who have made camp between the Egyptians and their army, and a body of water that they have no means of getting across.
We’ve made a huge mistake.
It’s like when Rohan flees to Helms Deep in the Two Towers. They think they’re going to safety but they’re actually now trapped between a mountain and 10,000 Uruk-hai. There’s nowhere for them to go and they panic.
But this is not a mistake, this is the Lord’s will.
The Lord tells Moses to turn back and camp by the sea. He knows what Pharoah will say and he knows what Pharoah will try to do.
Pharoah still does not know who he is.
When Pharoah hears the news, that the Israelites are trapped, he jumps at it.
“What is this we have done, that we have let Israel go from serving us?”
Our nation of salves is gone. Who will do all the work? Why did we let them go?
Isn’t it amazing how quickly people forget what they’ve seen.
How quickly we suppress the knowledge of God we have?
He’s seen all of these plagues.
He’s seen all the judgment poured out on Egypt by God and just as quickly he decides to mount up and chase after the Israelites.
He takes this big force, a huge display of power, and rides out after the Israelites.
That’s Pharoah’s response – he sins again and hardens his heart.
What about God’s people?
Well, they don’t do much better, do they?
They look up and see the chariots – they see the enormous force that the Egyptians have brought to recapture them and then what they’ve seen God do just leaves their minds.
“Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? 12 Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”
Almost immediately they turn on Moses. It’s all his fault. We didn’t even want to be here! We would have stayed in Egypt.
Slavery wasn’t so bad.
They’ve seen the same things that Pharoah has seen.
But they have seen something else.
They have seen the Lord’s salvation from judgment.
Where the Egyptians have lost livestock and people, they have been spared.
And we can see now it isn’t because they’re better than the Egyptians. They don’t have an unwavering, an unshakeable faith in the Lord as their saviour. They’ve fallen apart almost immediately.
It’s purely down to God’s mercy that they have been rescued.
They have been shown incredible kindness. God has listened to their cries, and he has saved them. He has been faithful to them through everything and he has left Egypt a ruin so that they could be rescued.
Moses turns to the people and says;
“Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. 14 The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.”
There are three things here for God’s people to do.
The Israelites are doubting and despairing at the situation they’re in.
They’re C3-PO, just running around saying “We’re doomed!”
Moses tells them to do three things.
- Don’t be afraid.
They’re staring at an army they cannot beat. They have no weapons. They’re slaves not soldiers. There’s nowhere to go.
- Stand firm
Suddenly slavery doesn’t seem so bad anymore. Maybe we could just go back to that. I’d much rather be a slave then be dead. Going back to our old life would be better.
- Be silent or be still
What would you do if you were facing down that army?
There’s a scene at the beginning of the Mummy when a group of soldiers who’ve gone out into the Egyptian desert are suddenly having to face down an army of riders who are coming to kill them. As they all take up positions you see a bunch of these soldiers looking at the charging army on horseback, shake their heads, and run off as quickly as they can.
They try to save themselves.
What would the Israelites do?
Run? Try and fight? Or just surrender?
How can they get themselves out of this situation, that’s what goes through our heads when we’re facing something we feel powerless against, isn’t it?
But what does the Lord promise through Moses as he asks them to do these three things?
You will see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. 14 The Lord will fight for you.
This is a call to trust God.
They’re right. There’s nothing they can do against the Egyptian army but God can.
God can rescue them from this hopeless situation.
The pillar of cloud moves to the back of the people, blocking them from view.
The Lord tells Moses to take the people forward to the water, raise his staff, and divide the sea.
Moses raises his staff and the sea divides.
The people begin to walk on the dry ground as two walls of water, on their left and their right, fence them in.
Destruction is just a few feet away on either side and yet they cross safely.
Talk about a narrow path!
Eventually the Egyptians follow them. Charging after them the wheels of the chariots become stuck, the horses and men are thrown into a panic as they try and get them out.
And here we get this short sentence from the Egyptians that shows that what God promises to them, happens.
God promises that the Egyptians will know that he is the Lord, through everything that he has done.
And as they’re stood on the seabed, trying to get the chariots wheels out of the mud, it seems to click.
“Let us flee from before Israel, for the Lord fights for them against the Egyptians.”
We have made a huge mistake.
The Lord is fighting for Israel.
What hope have we got?
What can men and chariots and swords do against the God of Israel.
Run!
And as the Israelites continue to walk through the water the Lord tells Moses to stretch out his hand and as the Israelites pass safely through, the Egyptians are thrown into it and the walls crash down on them.
When the Israelites see all this. The dead Egyptians, the miracle that God performs, the power of God, they respond.
The fear the Lord and they believe in him, and in his servant.
They see the power that God uses to save them, and they are amazed.
The people are delivered from slavery, they are free, and now they can live as God’s people in the land he will give them just as he promised all those years ago.
But this is not the end of the story.
The Israelites have been saved from physical slavery, but their hearts are still enslaved.
They will soon forget God again, suppressing what they know and turning to idolatry.
Their hearts still need to be unchained.
Which is why God speaks through Isaiah many years later, and says this,
Isaiah 43:16-19;
Thus says the Lord,
who makes a way in the sea,
a path in the mighty waters,
17 who brings forth chariot and horse,
army and warrior;
they lie down, they cannot rise,
they are extinguished, quenched like a wick:
18 “Remember not the former things,
nor consider the things of old.
19 Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.
The new thing is shown when Jesus begins his ministry and goes to John the Baptist to be baptised.
Jesus goes down into the water.
A symbol of judgment.
He immerses himself in judgment, Tim Chester says, because it’s a picture of the cross.
Just after Jesus predicts his death in Mark 10, James and John come to him and ask that they sit at his right and left hand and Jesus responds with this.
38 Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?”
Water is the symbol of judgment. The cross is the reality.
On the cross Jesus is crushed and killed by the waters of judgment, poured out on him by God, just as he poured them onto the Egyptians years before.
Jesus goes through the waters of judgment so that we can walk on the dry ground.
So that we can be saved from death and released from slavery to sin.
When they went into the water the Israelites were baptised into Moses.
Paul tells us this in 1 Corinthians 10;
For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea,.
They went down into the water as slaves and came up as free people.
And the same has happened for us, as Paul says in Romans 6;
3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
When we are baptised into Christ we are united with him in his death and we are then raised from the dead and so we walk in new life.
God displays his mighty power by holding back the water.
But he shows even greater power by humbling himself on a cross, dying to sin, and then raising to new life.
What the Israelites saw was amazing.
What we have seen in the gospel is greater.
We have seen the Lord’s salvation and because we’ve seen it we can do what Moses tells the Israelites to do.
- Don’t be afraid.
There is nothing in this world that can separate you from the love of God through Jesus Christ.
Whatever it might be that makes you afraid when you see it.
Whatever looks like it is bigger and more powerful than you and could drag you down forever.
We can remember that we have already died with Christ and now we are living with him.
God has used his power to save you.
The Lord will fight for you.
Through Christ he has already given you the victory. He has made us more than conquerors.
And there is nothing we can do to change that.
There is no sin you can commit that Christ doesn’t already know and has willingly gone to the cross to atone for.
There is nothing the enemy can use against you to get God to change his mind.
- Stand firm.
We are sinful people and when we see the enemy we can sometimes be tempted.
Maybe it was better to be a slave?
I’m sure I had more fun.
I’m sure life wasn’t as difficult.
I’m sure I didn’t stand out quite so much.
Maybe it would be better to go back.
Maybe there is happiness out there that God can’t give me?
We are constantly fighting against these thoughts.
But slavery isn’t better. Slavery only leads to death.
Look at the power God showed to win us back from that.
Look at the cost that he paid.
It is not better. It is a lie.
We must stand firm.
We must clothe ourselves in the gospel, the armour of God, so that we can stand.
- Be silent.
What kind of person are you when you’re faced with a big problem?
Are you the kind of person who tries to sort it out themselves – no matter how big the problem, no matter how complicated, I will fix it.
Or are you like me, no matter how small the problem, no matter how tiny, I will ignore it and hope it goes away with every fibre of my being. There are no distances I will not go to, to get away from the problem and hope it never bothers me again!
Do you come out fighting or run away?
God tells us to be still.
That means to trust that he is much better at being God than we are and that he is in control of what is going on in our lives.
When we try and control the things we can’t control or ignore them, we will either over work and over stress ourselves, or we’ll just become lazy and untrustworthy.
We are to trust that God is in charge.
That doesn’t mean we take our hands off and say “Jesus, take the wheel!”
We are still responsible for our lives and what we do, but the things outside of our control are for God to deal with and for us to trust him with.
Ultimately, we are not responsible for our own salvation, that can only be given by God in his grace, but how we respond to that grace is in our power.
We can ask God to help us not to be afraid, to stand firm, and be silent and trust him when the enemy looms large and makes God feel small.
When they saw the salvation that God provided the last thing God’s people did was sing, Moses leads the people in song as they stand as free people on the other side of the sea.
I’m going to pray for us and then we’re going to sing in the light of the salvation given to us by God.
(pray)
Let’s sing about the peace that we have with God because of Christ’s willingness to suffer the waters of judgment for us.
Welcome
Reading Ephesians 3v20, 21
Hymn To God be the glory
Hymn Give to our God immortal praise
Prayer
(Crèche)
Catechism Question 12
Q. What does God require in the ninth and tenth commandments?
A. Ninth, that we do not lie or deceive, but speak truth in love. Tenth, that we are content, not envying anyone or resenting what God has given them or us.
James 2v8
If you really fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself,” you are doing well.
Hymn Be thou my vision
Notices
Hymn O Lord my rock and my redeemer
Reading Exodus 14v1-31
Sermon
Hymn When peace like a river
Closing Prayer
Sermon Outline
Reading: Exodus 14v1-31
Theme: ‘Redemption and Glory’
1 Declaration of God’s Glory v1-9, 15-18
2 Demonstration of Great Redemption
-people are called to obedience v1-4, 21, 22
-people are called to trust v10-14, 21-25
-people are too called to praise v30-31, 15v1-18