Hey, friends, thanks for being with us.
Thanks for joining us as we turn midweek here and
as we continue through the book of Exodus,
getting to close to the midpoint as well.
And we are in the 14th chapter.
We’re in the 15th verse.
If you remember, if you happened to be with us yesterday,
you might remember, if not, that’s okay.
The Israelites have escaped
Egypt, Egypt at the Pharaoh’s insistence,
as his heart was hardened again by the Lord,
is in pursuit with all of their army,
all of their chariot.
The people have had a many
rebellion in their fear.
They’ve accused Moses of poor leadership.
Remember, they said to him,
“Why’d you bring us out here to die?
What’s wrong with the graves in Egypt?
We just wish we were
there.
We told you leave us alone.” And Moses has tried to encourage them.
We left with the
words, “The Lord will fight for you.” Now we get kind of,
we’ve heard the conversation between Moses and people.
Now we get to listen in on the conversation between Moses and God.
And this is fairly typical of the way this part of the story is told,
but let’s jump in here, verse 15.
The Lord then said to Moses,
“Why do you cry out to me?
Tell the Israelites to go forward,
but you lift up your staff,
stretch out your hand over the sea,
and divide it,
that the Israelites may go into the sea on dry ground.
Then I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians.
They will go in after them,
and I will gain glory for myself over the Pharaoh and his army, his chariots,
and his drivers.
And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord,
when I have gained glory for
myself over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his drivers.” The angel of God was going before the Israelite army,
moved and went behind them,
and the pillar of cloud moved in front of them and took its place
behind them.
It came between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel.
And so the cloud was there with the darkness,
and it lit up the night.
One did not come near the other all evening.
So
one thing that is interesting as we go through this
narrative of Exodus, I think one of the
things that makes me
kind of smile is the way which God often talks to Moses.
God seems to have very little
sympathy.
I won’t say compassion,
but God has a fairly short patience with the people.
That gets increasingly shorter as they get increasingly,
as they struggle increasingly to be faithful.
But so God says to Moses,
“Why do you cry out to me?
Tell them to go forward.”
And I can imagine Moses thinking,
“Well, oh, why didn’t I think of that?
I wish it was,
you know, I wish it was that easy.” But there is a kind of crispness and brevity to God’s
comments in regard to Moses telling Egypt what to do.
And I don’t mean to say that he’s
he’s short with Moses.
I don’t mean to say that he’s impatient with Moses.
I think God just fundamentally struggles to understand in the context of the story.
I don’t mean that in the big sense,
but in the context of the story,
God just can’t accept the reluctance of the people.
And so it’s always kind of like this.
And I don’t know,
Michael, maybe that’s just me reading into it,
but I think that gives it
a humorous flavor.
As I read this through the
eyes of a person who is tasked sometimes with leadership,
I think, “Well,
you know,
why do you cry out to me?
Tell them to go forward.” Wouldn’t sound like very satisfying advice.
Yeah, it
is personable.
It is easy to make this story interpretively make sense in our lives
when we can we can share that frustration of being between a rock and a hard place.
In this case,
it’s a life and death kind of situation.
And when God says something as simple
as tell them to go forward,
it surely does fire within us a kind of at least smile to reflect on
Moses’s at this point extreme frustration, maybe personal fear.
And now,
as God makes this point
to go forward, he calls upon this thing that we’ve seen before the staff.
And I think it’s
important, Clint, to note how this narratively connects us back to the very beginning of Moses’s
adult story with God,
because you remember that the staff is used from the very beginning by God
to prove to Moses,
number one, who God is, and then ultimately becomes a tool in that first kind
of proving to Pharaoh to show that this is indeed God.
And we remember that there you’ve got the
magicians and you’ve got this trickery happening and each thing that Moses does with the staff,
the magicians are able to replicate in some way.
At this point in the story now,
chapters later,
far, far down the road,
Clint, what we have is
the staff being used again,
this time stretching it out over the sea that the Israelites may walk on dry,
dry ground.
It becomes the instrument
of the people’s ultimate salvation connecting all the way back to that initial revealing.
It will be the final revealing of God’s victory in this case over the Egyptians.
And I think that’s the
counterpoint, Michael, and I think very interestingly,
God clearly doesn’t need Moses
to do this.
The power is not in the staff,
the power is not in Moses.
But I think,
on the other hand,
we see here another theme that is,
I think, fairly common in the book of Exodus.
God is honoring Moses’s place and God is lifting up Moses in the eyes of the people.
So, when God tells Moses, “Hold up the staff,” again,
there’s no magic here.
It’s not some power of the staff
that is making this happen.
In fact,
we’re going to read that it’s a wind from God that does the actual action.
But the picture,
the sight of Moses there with the staff
holding back the waters is,
I think, designed to comfort the Israelite people,
to build their assurance in Moses’s leadership,
in Moses’s connection with God,
in Moses’s status as God’s mediator to the people.
And so,
I don’t want to jump ahead,
but I just think there are so many fascinating instances
in the triangle here of God,
the people, and Moses,
and the way those relationships play themselves
out amidst success and failure,
amidst faith and faithfulness and faithlessness.
I just think it’s a really interesting aspect of the story,
and we’ll try to point out when we get to those places.
Clint, I think it is true today,
though maybe we don’t think of it in these terms,
but in the ancient world,
the sea is a wild, dangerous place.
It is the definition of the thing that is untamed.
And so, here, this language, “Stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it.” The idea
that there could be a natural force that would literally take the wildness,
uncontrollableness of the sea
and tame it, would make it safe.
It is as miraculous,
not that we should ever rank
miracles, but it’s as miraculous as the firstborn dying.
It is this sort of thing that only could be
conceived of as God doing it,
this great force.
And, of course, somebody might come on to this
video interested in about how this happened,
and there’s been lots of speculation.
Some people have tried to think scientifically how this kind of thing might happen,
where it might have happened.
The text does not
point out the name of the bank or the exact spot,
though that would have likely
been known to the author.
The point here is less about the mechanics of
how nature was manipulated
for this to happen.
The point of the story is to say that there is one whose ability extends to the
fullest ability to control the sea,
to take this thing that no human can even contain,
and to divide it on dry ground so that the people can pass through it safely.
And there’s a kind of bookend here.
We won’t
get into it in the Book of Exodus,
but the Book of Joshua begins early on with the people entering the Promised Land
in the parted waters of the Jordan River.
So the parting of the Red Sea,
the parting of the river
entering the Promised Land,
one is escape, one is entering, one is leaving, one is getting to,
one is fleeing, one is establishing.
You know, you see a balance to this.
So this language, this imagery gets picked up later on in Israel’s story.
Let me read the last part of it here,
and we finish the conversation.
“Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea.
The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and turned the sea to dry land,
and the waters were divided.
The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground,
the waters forming a wall for
them on the right and on the left.
The Egyptians pursued, went into the sea after them,
all of Pharaoh’s horses,
chariots, and drivers.
At the morning watch,
the Lord in the pillar of fire and
cloud looked down upon the Egyptian army and threw the army into panic.
He clogged their chariot
wheels so that they turned with difficulty.
The Egyptians said,
‘Let us flee from the Israelites,
for the Lord is fighting for them against Egypt.’” So we see a couple of interventions here.
The first we saw in the early part of the reading,
the pillar of cloud and fire moves behind Israel,
kind of keeping them out of Egypt’s view,
confusing Egypt, standing between them so
that we’re told they didn’t come close together.
“Then with the staff stretched out in his hand,
the Lord acts for Moses as he dries the land,
as he divides the water.” Michael,
just to your point earlier,
I don’t know how many explanations I have read on this through the years,
earthquakes or droughts or winds or this thing or that thing.
But we saw this a lot in the book of Genesis.
The book as it is,
just it has a reason why this happened,
because God did it.
For the narrative,
that’s all the reason it needs.
It doesn’t need further explanation.
It doesn’t need further investigation.
Now, if we want to speculate,
“Could it have been this?
Could it have been that?” I don’t know that there’s anything necessarily wrong with that,
although ultimately I don’t find it very profitable.
The story tells us what the story wants us to know, that God intervened
on the part of the people.
If this is hard to imagine,
that’s because it is
designed to be an encounter with the Holy One.
It is designed as a miraculous intervention
that the Creator does on behalf of His people,
and that is not
commonplace, and it is not easy to
accept, and it is not easy to understand.
The story is just completely disinterested
in our evaluation of it.
It’s just not a thing,
and so it is interesting how much thought people
have put in through the centuries to questions that I think the Bible is altogether uninterested in.
It’s an odd line to claim as a favorite line here,
but my favorite sentence here in this
narrative clip comes from verse 22 when it says that the waters form a wall for them on their
right and their left.
I think it’s a beautiful example of the biblical narrative.
It doesn’t need a lot of words to paint a picture.
It doesn’t need a lot of time to fire our imagination.
I don’t know how you can read a sentence like that just dropped into the story and not in a moment imagine
yourself standing on the dry ground of a body of water and see those walls on either side of you.
On one hand,
it is a portal,
a rescue, a escape route that didn’t exist before,
so it’s a great
gift.
It’s a grace.
On the other hand,
can you imagine walls of water being held there and the
smallness,
maybe even the anxiety and fear?
Like is this going to come back down on me?
There’s an other majesty.
There’s an other providence.
There’s a God who is all-powerfulness
to this story, and it’s a simple sentence,
Clint, but I think it is an incredible word picture.
I think it helps
us find ourself in the story,
which we say this often,
but it bears repeating
the story as transformative as this one.
We know that we’re supposed to see ourself in this story
to see God delivering us because we’ve already had all this narrative about the Passover,
about passing on from one generation to the next.
All of that served to prepare us for what would be a pivotal
faith-defining community-forming moment.
I just think the story is really
incredible of how it invites us into it.
Yeah, certainly a visual,
a really stunning, startling visual image, and there’s something true in that, I think, Michael.
You know, when God leads us,
when God leads people,
it would be nice if God simply
erased all the dangers.
But as they look at the water,
God doesn’t
somehow make all the possibility of harm go away.
What God does is invite them to be at
peace in the midst of it.
And I think,
you know,
this is kind of off the top of my head,
but I think you could find that theme throughout this book.
The path that God leads these people
on is a good path.
It is not an easy path,
nor is it a moment where there are no threats.
There will always be an Egypt.
There will always be the wall of water.
There will always be something
there that if they focus on that rather than God,
they will be afraid of, and rightly so.
But there will also always be God through Moses,
most of the time,
reminding them
again and again and again that if they keep their focus on God,
they need not be afraid
of those things.
I think that’s an interesting way to imagine the story,
and I think maybe this idea of
walking through a kind of tunnel of water or a corridor of water piled up,
whatever that phrase means,
is an interesting way to imagine it.
I think that connects here to the remaining
narrative,
Clanton, verse 24, this idea that the Lord is in the pillar of fire and cloud, looking down.
It’s this incredible, culminating moment.
We’ve talked more and more as this time
has gone on through Exodus,
and we’ve looked at the plagues about how God is ramping up the warfare
against Egypt, and here God
is like that general who
has the high ground, literally,
looking down upon the battlefield,
and just the Lord’s presence,
we’re told, is throwing the Egyptian army into
panic, and as they panic,
the wheels of their chariots are clogged,
and they’re not able to
move quickly.
By the way, that’s the greatest strategic strength of the chariot, is its speed.
So the thing that it was made by human hands to be good at,
the reason why it’s been brought to
bear in this situation,
is no longer valid.
God has invalidated the tool itself.
God stands above it,
strategically advantageous.
God makes this instrument of war useless on the battlefield,
and I won’t spoil it for tomorrow,
because when God wins the victory,
it will be decisive,
but already in the story,
I think the point is already,
we see that this is a conflict between God and Egypt,
and it is not metaphorical in this story.
God is taking on the army single-handedly,
and we’re already told that God’s winning.
There’s an interesting thing that happens in the Old Testament.
We saw it, maybe glimpses of it in
Genesis, we saw it early in the book of Exodus,
when some of the strongest moments of the Bible
are when characters who shouldn’t know about God discern that it is God at work.
And so, here you have the Egyptian army.
These are fighting men.
These are warriors.
These are soldiers.
These are members,
and some of them high-ranking chariot drivers.
That’s not your run-of-the-mill,
carry a spear and go out on the front.
These are the best of the best,
and they recognize instantly in the narrative,
“Let us flee.” So again,
not only are you getting
hardened soldiers who say,
“Let us flee,” more importantly,
they discern the Lord is fighting
for them against us.
The Lord is on their side against Egypt,
against us.
And I think
it’s a wonderful thing.
It’s a subtle thing,
but a powerful thing that the Bible does,
Michael, when it puts awareness into the mouths of people who you don’t expect to have that kind of awareness.
And so,
I think this is a really good example of it right here.
It’s a really helpful point.
Yes,
I say yes, and I’m not going to add to it.
I think
it’s important as we encounter a story like this to realize that it’s teaching on many levels.
A story this significant carries meaning both in the story,
the narrative.
It has something to say
about the identity of the people being saved.
It has something to say about the God who is able to save.
And it has something to say about what it means to be people who are called to trust that
God in our own lives.
And I think it’s wise when you read a text like this to slow down.
It’s easy to pass through things like,
“The Lord is in the pillar of fire and cloud,” and then to just keep
reading on.
But I would advise you that when you come to moments like this in the Scripture, slow down,
read carefully,
activate your imagination.
And when you do that,
you’re not making something up.
You’re participating in the story as it was intended,
as the intention of its writing.
And in doing so,
you too might have your own encounter with this God in your own way and
in this time and place.
Sometimes the hardest stories to hear are the ones we’ve heard the
most because we think we know what they say,
and sometimes we miss the other little handholds or
the other little nuances that when we revisit those stories,
we might find again.
Well, friends, that’s today.
Tomorrow’s text is decisive,
and it’s difficult.
I hope you’ll join us for this.
We continue on the study,
but until then, be blessed.
Thanks, everybody.