Moving On

Moving On

Exodus 14: 5 – 18

Introduction

Do you wonder why we worship on Sundays? In the Old Testament, we read God’s commandment to remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy. This commandment is based on the story of creation. God spent six days creating the universe, then rested on the seventh day. In our Western calendar, that points to Saturday as the seventh day and the day we should keep holy. There are some churches which continue to honor the seventh day by holding their worship services on Saturday.

Jewish people mark time differently than we do in the Western world. We think of a day beginning at midnight. They think of a day beginning at sunset. Therefore, the Sabbath Day begins on Friday night at sunset and ends on Saturday at sunset. So, Jewish synagogues hold Sabbath worship on Friday nights, after dark.

This raises the question of why we have worship services on Sundays. The best answer I have ever found is that Sunday is the day of the resurrection. When Jesus died on the cross as sacrifice for our sins and rose again as our hope of eternal life, it changed the world and changed the way we worship.

We worship on Sundays, because the resurrection is the single most important event in our history. We worship on Sundays to remember the resurrection. AND, we celebrate Easter as our most important holy day. The resurrection is the most important event for us, because this is how God has saved us. The resurrection changed the world. It changed our lives. It changed the way we worship and relate to God. It changed everything.

Jewish people continue to worship on Friday nights, because they do not acknowledge the resurrection. For the Jews, the single most important event in their history is the Exodus. The Hebrew people were slaves in Egypt. They cried out to God for help. God answered their prayers and sent Moses to be their redeemer. God saved his people from slavery and established them as a nation in their own land.

However, the Exodus did not happen exactly the way the Hebrew people expected it to happen. In their minds, God was supposed to do two things for them. (Their expectations sound a whole lot like our expectations.) They expected God to save them and give them an easy life of luxury and continual blessings. They expected all their sufferings to be behind them…But that is not exactly how things worked out.

Exodus 14: 5 – 18.

5 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!"

6 So he had his chariot made ready and took his army with him.

7 He took six hundred of the best chariots, along with all the other chariots of Egypt, with officers over all of them.

8 The LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, so that he pursued the Israelites, who were marching out boldly.

9 The Egyptians-- all Pharaoh's horses and chariots, horsemen and troops-- pursued the Israelites and overtook them as they camped by the sea near Pi Hahiroth, opposite Baal Zephon.

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.

11 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?

12 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!"

13 Moses answered the people, "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.

14 The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still."

15 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on.

16 Raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water so that the Israelites can go through the sea on dry ground.

17 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.

18 The Egyptians will know that I am the LORD when I gain glory through Pharaoh, his chariots and his horsemen."

(NIV)

Since this is not the first time for us to hear this story, we knew how it was going to end. We knew that God led his people to the Red Sea. We knew that God completed his salvation by miraculously parting the waters. The Hebrews walked across the sea on dry ground. Pharaoh and the Egyptian army were drowned in the sea.

We knew this was going to happen. The Hebrews didn’t know the end of the story. They had to live it out one moment at a time.

It seems there were two ways out of Egypt. The short way and the long way…The smart way and God’s way. God did not lead the Hebrews on the short or the smart way out of Egypt. In fact, that is one of the reasons why Pharaoh chased after them. He thought they were confused and it would be easy to recapture them.

For the Hebrews, this was an unexpected twist in the story. They thought God had saved them to live a comfortable and happy life. But, that’s not what they experienced. They expected to be free from slavery and free from suffering. In reality, they were trapped.

A Third Way

Do you know what it feels like to be trapped? To be trapped means that you only have two choices…and you don’t like either choice.

Exodus 14: 11, “(The people) said to Moses, ‘Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die?’”

The Hebrews thought death was certain. If they turned around, Pharaoh would either kill them or return them to slavery. If they pressed forward, they would drown in the Red Sea. These were the only choices.

The Hebrews were making a very common human mistake. We all tend to look at our circumstances through a human perspective instead of God’s perspectives.

Humanly speaking, there were only two choices—death by Pharaoh or death by the Red Sea.

From God’s perspective, there was a third way. God told Moses to hold out his staff over the water. God sent a strong east wind that blew all night long and parted the waters. The people walked across the Red Sea on dry ground. The Egyptians were drowned when the waters closed over them.

When God’s people faced a hopeless situation, God did the unexpected. When God’s people had only two options, God created a third way. The Hebrew people didn’t expect this third option, because the third option was IMPOSSIBLE. And, God did the impossible.

We don’t need to be so critical about the way the Hebrew people thought about their circumstances. They were only able to think through the possibilities. They didn’t expect the impossible. Yet, that is the way God works. He doesn’t always give us what we expect. He gives us what is best for us.

The Nature of Salvation

God did the impossible when his people had nothing. They didn’t have an army to fight against Pharaoh. They didn’t have a boat or a bridge to cross the Sea. All they had was the power and presence of the God who had led them to the Sea.

Notice how Moses answers the objections of the people…

Exodus 14: 14, “The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

This is a story of salvation. It is the single most important salvation event in the history of the Jews. Just as we have ordered our weekly worship and Christian calendar around the resurrection of Jesus, the Jews have ordered their worship and calendar around the Exodus. God stepped into their story and saved them.

God did not save the Hebrews because they deserved to be saved. God did not save them because they were better than any other people group. God saved them because of his Grace and the promises he had made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Moses’ words to the people tell us a couple of things about salvation.

First, salvation is a work of God. God is the only one who can save us. We don’t contribute anything to salvation. God does it on our behalf and extends it to us as a gift of his Grace. Our only role in salvation is to accept what God offers us. (If we have the opportunity to accept God’s Grace, then the opposite must also be true. We have the opportunity to reject God’s offer of salvation.)

Second, Moses’ words tell us that God doesn’t stop saving us. God planned salvation for his people, and God accomplished their salvation.

The Book of Exodus goes to great lengths to describe how God planned to save his people. In each of the ten plagues, God announced his intentions ahead of time. Even before the plagues, God told Moses that the first nine plagues would not bring about their salvation. It would take the death of the Egyptian firstborns to accomplish salvation.

After the death of the firstborns, Pharaoh expelled the Hebrew people. In many respects, this was the way God accomplished their salvation. Then, Pharaoh changed his mind and sent his best chariots, best horses and best soldiers to chase down God’s people and bring them back into slavery. Their salvation was now in jeopardy.

But, God never stops saving his people. God has a plan for salvation. God accomplishes salvation. And, God continues to keep his people safe.

When Pharaoh chased after the Hebrew people, he was trying to undo what God had done. This is the nature of evil. God saves his people from the clutches of evil. But evil does not give up easily. Evil continues to pursue those whom God has saved.

The same thing is true for us as Christians. Salvation is the work of God. God is the one who planned the way of salvation. God’s plan was to use the nation of Israel to bring about the birth of Jesus, the unique Son of God. Jesus lived as our example, died as our sacrifice and rose again as God’s promise that we would have eternal salvation. God accomplished our salvation through the cross and resurrection. We don’t have anything to contribute to this salvation. It offered to us as a gift of God’s Grace. All we can do is accept God’s Grace or reject God’s Grace.

When we accept God’s Grace, we have been set free from all kinds of slavery. We are no longer slaves to sin, death, evil, or even Satan himself. Yet, salvation is not the last time we have to deal with sin, death, evil and Satan. Sin, death, evil and Satan pursue us in the same way Pharaoh continued to pursue the Hebrew people. And like the Hebrew people, we feel trapped. We are not strong enough to fight. We are not good enough to resist. God saved us and will continue to save us when we are being pursued.

Compare Moses’ words to the words of Jesus…

Exodus 14: 14, “The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

John 10: 27 – 30, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the father are one.”

God plans our salvation. God accomplishes our salvation. God continues to keep his people safe.

Who has the right to claim the Hebrew people as his possession? Pharaoh thinks he has a right to claim them as his slaves. But that is no longer the case. God has saved them and claimed them as his own people. No one can snatch them out of God’s hand.

Who has a right to claim you as his possession? Satan is pursuing you, because he remembers a time when you were his slave. But if you have accepted God’s offer of Grace, God has claimed you as his possession…And no one can snatch you from God’s hand.

The Nature of Faith

If we believe that salvation is an act of God and that we make no contribution to our own salvation, then there is a temptation for us to “do nothing.” Of course, the Book of Exodus does not tell us to “do nothing.”

Notice the contrast between Exodus 14: 14 and 14: 15…

Exodus 14: 14, “The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

Exodus 14: 15, “Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on.’”

This seems like a contradiction. On one hand, God tells his people to stand still. On the other hand, God tells his people to move on. And to make matters more complicated, these two verses appear back to back. Do we have to make a choice between standing still and moving on?

Perhaps the answer can be found in the context. In the context, God parted the Red Sea, and the people had to walk through. God did all the hard work by doing the impossible. All the people had to do was to walk across on dry ground.

God planned salvation, accomplished salvation and continues to save. Yet, there was a task for God’s people to do. They had to walk. They had to move on. They had to follow where God was leading them to go.

This is the nature of faith. Once God has saved us, there is a task for us to do. We are not called to do nothing…to continue standing still…to stand as spectators of all the impossible things God has accomplished. We are to step out in faith.

Another way to describe this is to talk about salvation as both objective and subjective. To describe salvation as objective, we must describe it as an accomplished fact—something God has already done without any contribution from us. To describe salvation as subjective, we must describe it as something that happens inside of us—in our hearts, in our minds, in our bodies.

For the Hebrews, salvation was objective in that God had sent the plagues which led to their release from slavery and God had parted the waters of the Red Sea. However, salvation was subjective in that they still had to leave the nation of Egypt and to walk across the Sea on dry ground.

For Christians, salvation is objective in that God accomplished our salvation through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. God acted on our behalf. However, salvation is subjective in that every person must receive this salvation through faith, AND we must live out our faith.

The life of faith always involves risk. It is stepping into unknown territory. If we knew ahead of time what was going to happen, we wouldn’t need faith. We would be walking by sight or living by our own wisdom.

Conclusion

One of the truths about faith is the fact that there is no such thing as an untried faith. If you have faith, God will allow you to be in situations where your faith will be tested. It will look like there are only two possibilities. It will feel like you are trapped. And the only way out is faith…to trust God completely to do what we cannot do…to move on by stepping into the unknown.