The King's Church in Ilford
The following is the text of the talk given on 10th August by Robin Hawkins
Reading: Exodus 13:17 to 15:2
An 8 yr old boy was telling his Mum & Dad what he'd learnt in Kid's Club. "Boy, was it exciting!" he exclaimed, "Moses oganised the Hebrews into a resistance group. They planned really carefully, and finally they broke loose from their Egyptian slave-masters. They moved as fast as they could towards Canaan. They drove every kind of vehicle they could get hold of - jeeps, half-tracks, 16-wheelers - everything. But Pharaoh's army wouldn't quit. They tracked down the Israelites with colour radar. They exlpoded missiles all around them, and shot at them from jet planes in the sky. When Moses and his people reached the Red Sea, they thought they were finished. There was this raging water in front of them and the Egyptians behind. Suddenly the corps of Engineers came to the rescue, and built a pontoon bridge over the Red Sea, and all the fugitives crossed over to freedom. Then just as Pharaoh's forces were about to follow them over, the Hebrews blew it up with dynamite and saved all the people. Then they lived happily ever after. What a great story!" The youngster's Mum & Dad were just a touch concerned about their child's understanding of what had happened. "Is that really what they told you in Kid's Club this morning?" they enquired. "Well, no, not exactly," their son replied, "but if I told you what they told me, you'd never believe it!"
When I'm preparing people for baptism, I remind them of the crossing the Red Sea, and that the Israelites were free at this point - like us having been born again. But what was still needed was a decisive break from Egypt. As the Hebrews crossed the Red Sea, Paul tells us "They were all baptised into Moses.." That must have been the largest baptism service of all time - 2.5million of them! But after they had crossed the Red Sea, the threat of the Egyptians was removed. They could never be forced back to Egypt. They could have chosen to go back, and some of them soon wanted to - but they didn't have to. It's often said it was one thing to get the Israelites out of Egypt, it was going to take much longer to get Egypt out of the Israelites.
So let's look at the route they took out of Egypt. This map I've sketched shows where it all happened. The Israelites lived in Goshen, which was in the most fertile part of Egypt. That was a legacy from Joseph's day. In the middle we have the Bitter Lake which, 3500 yrs ago, was joined to the Red Sea, and had a more east-west shape than it does now. Look at this aerial picture. You can see the outline of the lake as it was then, and the channel that joined it to the Red Sea.
This picture shows the possible routes the Israelites could have taken. The quickest route would have been by the coast road, and it would have taken about two weeks to get to this point at the southern end of the Dead Sea. The question is, why did they go South? Well, we don't have to speculate. It tells us in v. 17: God didn't want them to have to fight too soon in case they became discouraged. Now the shortest route would have taken them through Philistine country, but it wasn't the Philistines they would have had to fight. The way it's put in v. 17 just calls it the Philistia Road - like going up the Romford Rd takes you to Romford. What we know now is that the Egyptians had a line of fortresses going up from the Bitter Lake to the coast. These were placed to keep people out, but their garrisons would have been just as good at keeping people in. So if the Israelites had gone by the coast road, or even directly across the desert, they would have had to fight Egyptian garrisons.
This illustrates the goodness of God. He protects us when we first start out as Christians. We're full of His joy. It seems like we have this hot-line to God, and our prayers get answered very easily. It's the honeymoon period of our walk with God. We feel invincible and ready to take on the world.
However, Israel needed a decisive break with Egypt. If they'd gone north, the Egyptian army could have chased them, and God wanted to free them from this threat forever. So God took them south.
There's another principle here. God doesn't always lead us by the most direct or obvious route to reach our goal. This can be frustrating for us, because we can't always see what God has in mind. We have to learn to trust Him, and sometimes that's very difficult. For the Israelites, it wasn't too difficult to start with. God led them with a miraculous sign - a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night. It was hot in that desert, and sometimes easier to travel by night.
Anyway, God led them in a seemingly confused pattern, but it had a purpose. God wanted to lure the Egyptians after them, by getting them to think the Israelites were lost. Finally God told them to camp by the sea - in a certain place. But that certain place was a cul-de-sac. They were trapped. They had the Bitter Lake to the north and the sea to the east of them; mountains to the south, and the Egyptian army to the west. Suddenly their confidence evaporated - and their faith with it. They were like the Georgian army facing the might of the Russians, and all they could see was catastrophe coming. Now although they cried out to the Lord, it was a cry of terror; and they complained bitterly to Moses: "Why have you brought us here?"
The problem was that these guys were still slaves at heart. They were institutionalised. Somebody I once knew served some time in prison, but when she came out, she felt suddenly very insecure, and had this urge to get back inside as quick as she could! Being a slave wasn't anybody's idea of fun, but they knew where they were in it, and there was a security in it. Now at the first hint of serious trouble, they want to go back there. Three things had happened:
1. They had forgotten their past. They had forgotten what it was really like in Egypt, under the lash of their slave-drivers, with an impossible workload, and having their children drowned in the river Nile. They had forgotten God's mighty miracles and acts of deliverance.
2. They were fearful of the present. Even during the Passover, their lives had never actually come under threat as they were now. Suddenly their trust in God's love and control was seriously undermined. that's always satan's first line of attack. Get us to doubt that God cares enough to get involved, or that He could do anything about it if He did.
3. They were faithless for the future. Slaves don't have a future. There was no purpose in their existence other than serving their masters until they died. They no longer believed the promises that God had given Moses to deliver them from the hands of their Egyptian slavemasters.
Praise God Moses hadn't become infected by their loss of faith. He says to them firstly, "Stand still." - and watch God fight for you. Don't run back to the Egyptians - stand still! There's a time to stand still before God, especially when we're tempted to panic. We feel we ought to do something, but actually we should do nothing, but simply wait for God. Wait until He speaks.
Then we get this classic verse: "Quit praying and get the people moving." (LB) There's a time to pray, and there's a time to stop praying, and act. Prayer isn't the answer to every problem. Sometimes we have to do something as well!
Now let's look at the miracles that God did here. Firstly, the pillar of cloud moved round from in front of the Israelites to behind them. God doesn't just lead us. He protects us as well. He is light to those following Him, and the Israelites could see everything that was going on. But the Egyptians were kept in total darkness, which summed up their spiritual state. They couldn't even see each other!
The second miracle was that all night a strong east blew across the sea, and God used nature to achieve his purpose here. Now I don't want to take anything away from this miracle. Nor am I trying to explain it away, but the text states clearly that God used the wind in some way to separate the sea. So let me explain what may have happened here, and why God was totally in charge. The first thing to point out that in ch 13:18, where it says "Red Sea", it should really be translated "Reed Sea". Reeds grew there. It was shallower than other parts.
Now there was a very rare phenomenon that is recorded as happening two or three times in ancient Egypt where a strong East wind combined with an ebb tide in the Red Sea caused the waters to separate. The East wind blew across the waters of the Bitter Lake, and caused the water to pile up at this end. Whilst at the same time, the ebb tide pulled the waters back into the Red Sea, thus creating dry ground in the middle.
The miracle was in the timing of it, but not only in the separation of the waters, but in their coming together again. They had to be separated long enough to allow 2.5m people to cross, and long enough to tempt the Egyptians to come after them. Then they had to close up and drown the Egyptians. If the Egyptians hadn't been destroyed, all they would have had to do would have been to ride their chariots round the top of the lake, and come down on them from the other side. God's timing was immaculate. He was neither too soon, nor too late.
Moses describes God as a Warrior in chapter 15. He fights for us, and he destroys those who would destroy us. This is the cause of much praise among God's people in the Bible. We like to sing about God's deliverance, but it's hard to find a song of praise that doesn't speak also of God destroying our enemies. Ch 15 rejoices as much in the destruction of God's enemies as it does in the deliverance of His people. I was taught a version of this song years ago, but the words had been changed. It went: I will sing unto the Lord for He has triumphed gloriously, the grave is empty won't come and see? Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus" is taken from Revelation but is rejoicing at the destruction of Babylon.
God's not playing patta-cake with us. He is awesome and not to be trifled with. His deliverance is mighty of those who want to follow Him; but His destruction of those who resist Him is total - totally just, and totally final. The way is still open to get right with Him today. Don't put it off. Let me urge you to do it now.
And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Psalm 19:1