The Divine Rescue: Crossing the Red Sea - Saved for the Glory of God | Studies in the book of Exodus

This morning, I'm guessing that we all have a favorite film

that we enjoy to watch.

And I've made that assumption before, and I do think that each

of us have a favorite.

And that favorite will depend on what genre it is, as well as maybe

the actors or the actresses that are in it.

Our favorite film is one that we will happily watch again and again

because of the story or because of how it's filmed.

And our favorite films are those that we can also quote because

we've watched them so much that we know the lines and who says

what, and we bring them into our normal conversation.

Well, I grew up knowing that my father's favorite film was the

Great Escape.

Anybody favorites?

Anybody's favorite?

I need to look at the young people because they won't know, have

a clue what the Great Escape is.

But the Great Escape starred the great Steve McQueen, Richard

Attenborough, and James Coburn is a film based on the true story

of the mass escape by British Commonwealth prisoners of war from

the German prisoner of war camp Stalag Luft 3 in World War II.

And my father liked it because he enjoyed films about World War

II, and he was familiar with the world of Steve McQueen and James

Coburn and the other movies that they were in.

Now, he never quoted any lines that either actor said.

Well, not that I know of.

But he enjoyed seeing the whole story of the prisoners escaping,

standing up to their German captors and getting a good way out.

Quite literally, these men carving their way out of the prison

camp.

And so the Great Escape was known in our house as a movie that

you had to watch because the head of the house loved it so much

that you had no choice but to be indoctrinated by it.

Well, as we come To Exodus chapter 14, we see the Great escape

Exodus 14 · chapter mention

of the children of Israel.

But this escape is so different.

It is as much could be made into a movie.

It has been made into movies.

But there's no spoons to dig tunnels.

In fact, there's no work on the part of humanity at all.

They simply have to trust in the Lord and he will bring them through

the waters onto salvation.

So far, these people, the children of Israel, have made it

from Rameses to Succoth and are now making their way to the Red

Sea.

But as we saw last week, things didn't work out as we perhaps

may have thought.

First of all, they didn't take the road through the desert or the

road of the Philistines through the desert of Shur, which

would have taken them to the Promised Land.

In about two weeks.

Instead, God was leading them through the wilderness road so that

they wouldn't have to face the militarized borders of northern Egypt

by the Egyptians and then getting through them, face the Philistines,

and then getting past the Philistines and facing the Canaanites,

as we thought last week.

God knew better than the people and they had to trust him.

But secondly, as they got further and further away from the

Egyptians heading southeast, the Lord told them to turn back and

to go back on themselves, to go back towards Egypt.

But what he did tell them was to stop at a place that we don't

exactly know where, but we believe it was to a narrow channel

at the north of the Red Sea.

And this was a move that the people couldn't understand.

In fact, they couldn't even tolerate it.

Because not only do they cry out to the Lord for help, but then

in the next breath they lash out at Moses as God's mediator between

the people and himself, and accuse him of all sorts of things.

Were there no graves in Egypt?

Of course there were.

They saw the pyramids, they built the pyramids which were the

graves of the Egyptians.

This is laughable if it wasn't so serious of what these people were

doing.

Even before they left Egypt, they were rebelling against God.

But as they see the Egyptians coming, we know they cried out to

God.

We know that in the same breath they criticized Moses.

But it's in verse 13 that Moses assures the people, as we go

into verse 14, that the Lord would fight for them.

All they needed to do was to be still.

The question is, will the people do this or will they once

again rebel against God?

And so as we now come to verse 15 in the start of our section for

today, we see that the Lord speaks to Moses.

He's the people's representative before God and to

them.

And this is what God says.

The Lord said to Moses, why are you crying out to me?

The Lord's challenging the people unto their cries out to him.

Why are they not trusting him?

What does God say?

He says, tell the Israelites to move on.

God's giving a clear instruction here that the people

are not to worry.

They're not to look at the face of the enemy, but to move on.

Now here's the problem.

The Egyptians are behind them and the Red Sea is in front of them.

How are they going to get across?

And so the Lord is demanding that the people simply trust him,

just as Moses has already instructed them to do.

And the people are challenged here to believe that the Lord will

be true to his word and that he will fully rescue them.

Not half rescue them, get them to the Red Sea and then let them

fend for themselves, but fully rescue them.

So in a scene that we're all familiar with because it's been portrayed

time and time again on film and television screens, the Lord

tells Moses to raise his staff and stretch out his hand over the

sea.

The Lord then assures Moses that when he does, the waters will

divide and God's promise to the people that they will walk through

on dry ground will come true.

So the Lord promises in verses 17 to 19 as he continues this, I

will harden then 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.

What the Lord is telling Moses here to do will be a demonstration

of his authority.

Authority and his complete victory over Israel's enemies.

He hasn't finished with Pharaoh just yet.

And this will be the Lord's victory over those who rejected him.

And this is what is played out in front of us in the words of Scripture.

Now, there have been many ways of scientifically trying to prove

how the children of Israel crossed the Red Sea.

And I don't have time to go into each and every one of how scientists

believe the waters parted or what was it like?

There's even the story told of a liberal minister in America preaching

in an old Bible believing African American church.

At a certain point in his sermon, the minister referred to

the crossing of the Red Sea.

Praise the Lord.

Someone shouted, taking all them children through the deep waters.

What a mighty miracle.

But remember, this minister was a liberal minister and did not

believe in miracles.

So he said rather condescendingly, it was not a miracle.

They were in marshland, the tide was ebbing and the children

of Israel picked their way across six inches of water.

Praise the Lord.

The man shouted again, drowning all those Egyptians in six

inches of water.

What a mighty miracle.

No scientist nor anyone else can give a reason for why this happened.

But by the divine act of God, this is not a fairy story.

This is not make believe.

This is not constructed.

This is biblical truth of what God does, the extents to which he

goes.

And by the way, remember what he did in Creation.

He separated the water from the dry land.

What's he doing now?

He's rolling back the waters.

He's almost going back on Creation's order, God will go to

great lengths to rescue his people.

And that's what we must be mindful of as we read this, looking

through Jesus to know the great lengths that God went to to

rescue humanity.

Verse 21 makes it very clear for us how all of this happened.

We know that Moses plays his part because we're told here on number

of occasions what Moses has to do.

And he stretched out his hand over the sea.

And all that night, who the Lord drove the sea back with a strong

east wind and turned it into dry land.

The waters were divided.

What brought Israel out of Egypt was the power of God.

The whole chapter is full of divine activity in God working for

his people so that they might be saved, and they would be saved

for his glory, because we jumped over the verses.

But we go back to verse 19 and we're told of the angel of God at

work now for the great escape of the children of Israel to happen.

The Lord moves to create an obstacle between his people and the

Egyptians, the Egyptian army, one, to protect his people, and two,

to not allow the Egyptians to advance as confidently as they might.

And so the angel of God now, we're told, has been leading the

Israelites through that pillar of cloud.

And that fire now moves from the camp's front to the rear.

And this is the first mention of the angel since chapter three

and verse two, at the burning bush, where it was noted that the

angel speaks and acts on the Lord's behalf like a king's messenger.

In this case, the text tells us, and it seems to assume that just

as the angel appeared on the Lord's behalf at the burning bush,

he's now appearing on the Lord's behalf in the pillar of cloud,

which moves with the angel and forms a protective barrier between

the Israelites and the Egyptians.

And so with this barrier in place, Moses carries out the Lord's

command to stretch out his hand, lifting his staff over the

sea.

And as before, this is like an enacted prayer, which the Lord answers

by sending an east wind to drive the sea back, dividing it in

two and making the sea floor dry.

This allows the Israelites to walk right through the sea during

the night, the water standing like a wall on either side.

And it must have been truly quite a sight to see these two walls

of water either side of you.

Would you have been looking either way to see what you could

see, to see if there was a drop or an inch coming closer?

Here were people who once again had to trust that the Lord

God Almighty, who created this world, had the strength to hold the

water back so that they can walk safely.

But getting to the other side was only half of their escape.

The army of Egypt was still coming behind them, still pursuing

them, because, remember, as we saw earlier in this chapter, Pharaoh

changed his mind.

He wasn't happy.

He realized he'd let his whole workforce go.

And there's an arrogance or a continued arrogance here to the Egyptians.

And also another demonstration of Pharaoh's rash actions.

Verse 23 tells us that they simply pursued the Israelites into

the Red Sea.

There's no sense in the original language of any awe or wonderment

of what was before them.

They just simply drove in.

But it's in verse 24 that tells us their real reaction here.

And so we read that during the last watch of the night, which is

just before sunrise, the Lord looked down from the pillar of fire

and cloud at the Egyptian army and threw it into confusion.

Now, this confusion caused them to become aware of where they

were.

The ground was no longer dry for them as their most advanced war

machines, the chariots.

And by the way, that's why the chariots are mentioned, because Egypt

was ruling the world based on chariot warfare.

Well, these chariots that were the creme de la creme of their war

tactics got stuck in the mud and the wheels came off, quite literally.

But it is their response in verse 25 that's very telling.

What did they say to one another as they realized things are

not going their way?

Let's get away from the Israelites.

And here they quote exactly what God said to them or to the Israelites.

The Lord is fighting for them.

The Lord's fighting for them.

Moses told them all, you need to be still.

The Lord's going to fight for you.

And now God proves it.

And it's by the word of the pagans who are his enemies, who recognize

the work of the Lord, that he is fighting against the Egyptians

so that he can rescue his people.

This is exactly what the Lord said he would do.

And this is what he does.

It's what Moses assured the people, that the Lord would fight

for them.

And this is just what he's doing.

And so once his enemies had fallen into his trap and were stuck

in the quagmire, God made the sea return and swept the Egyptians

to their watery grave.

And he planned and executed the whole entire Exodus, as Isaiah

tells us in chapter 51:10.

Was it not you who dried up the sea and the waters of the great

deep?

Who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over

you see, this wasn't so much a great escape on the part of the Israelites.

It actually was the great rescue by God.

And this is seen by Moses.

Following what the Lord Commands in verse 26, he once again

stretches out his hand over the sea, and the waters that are

divided came together.

Creation is restored.

And as the Egyptians flee, we read in verse 28, the water flowed

back and covered the chariots and horsemen.

The entire army of Pharaoh that had followed the Israelites

into the sea, not one of them survived.

See, the victory over the enemies of Israel was the Lord's,

and it was decisive.

It will be over 500 years before we hear of the Egyptians coming

up against the children of Israel again.

And that is after the death of King Solomon.

And as verse 29 recounts what has just happened by way of summary,

so verse 30 tells us that day the Lord saved Israel from the hands

of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the

shore.

Everything from chapter three of Exodus through to now, the Lord

has been working to rescue his people because he heard their cry

and.

And he answered, the Lord has done all that he said he would do.

The people are now in the region of Sinai.

They are away from Egypt and they're away from slavery.

They are free to live as his people, and they have been saved

for his glory.

And so, as this chapter closes, we get to see the response

of the people in their witnessing of this great work of

God.

Verse 31 tells us.

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.

The people who were questioning God while crying out

to him, now turn to him in fear, or that is, in trust to Him.

They've witnessed his mighty work and know fully that their salvation

through the water was only by the hand of the Lord.

And we will see this expressed in chapter 15 as we come to the song

of Moses and of Miriam.

But that's next week.

We need to finish for this morning.

And we think, as we conclude, of the great rescue that God brought

for his people.

See, as we read this account in chapters 13 and 14, there's no

doubt that the Lord was at work to accomplish all that he said

he would.

He promised to be the God of their salvation, and he demonstrated

just that.

But humanity has always needed a rescuer, right from the very beginning

of human history.

The girls and boys are looking at Genesis 1 and 2 this morning.

But next week they'll look at Genesis 3 and they will Come to the

Fall where sin comes into the world.

But even then, in Genesis 3, we are told of one who would come

to be our rescuer.

The girls and boys will learn of him, yes, as Jesus, but he will

be called the snake crusher because of what's said there in Genesis.

We know him as the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, God's one

and only son who came into the world to rescue us.

And we are in need of a great escape from sin.

We need to be brought out of the dark night of the soul.

We need to be brought out of the lies, the dishonesty, the addictions

we have and the sin we so enjoy.

Yet it is the rotten our very souls.

And it is only in Jesus can we know this rescue.

Moses is a foreshadowing of Jesus.

For as Moses led God's people through redemption in the waters

of the Red Sea, so Christ leads us through redemption by his

blood shed on the cross.

So that with the writer of Hebrews we can say, and by that will

we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus

Christ once for all.

There's no repeat.

Jesus has done enough for you now so that you can repent of the

sin.

That you can repent from the darkness of the night and seek brightness.

The lies, the dishonesty, the addictions.

Christ is enough because Jesus is our great rescue plan and our

great rescuer.

Just as the children of Israel couldn't save themselves from the

pursuit of the Egyptians, so we cannot save ourselves from sin.

And the devil who tempts us.

And boy, doesn't he tempt us.

For the believer.

He wants you to fall.

He wants you to discredit your testimony by going back into the

same old sins.

He might dress them up again and present them in a new way, but.

But they are still the same old sins.

And if you think he isn't trying to pull you down, then review

your conversations and your actions of the past 24 to 48 hours.

What you said and what you thought and what you did.

And I would guess very strongly that there will be something

there that is against God's best for you.

You may not have intentionally done these things, but the subtlety

of the devil means that you have sinned.

And you need a savior to assure you of the forgiveness of

sins as you confess them.

And that's what this table is about.

This table is about knowing the forgiveness of our sins.

This table is about Jesus Christ.

This table is about knowing that he is with you and not against

you, and that you can Stand against the attacks of the evil one

because he is cunning and he is coming after you and he will want

to devour you.

You see, we need to stand firm.

And the only way that we can is to know that we all need to escape

sin.

I need to escape sin.

You need to do likewise.

It holds us.

And if we remain in our sin, then it means we will face an eternity

where we will pay the punishment that those sins rightly

deserve.

We will be found in hell and there is no party there to be enjoyed.

Rather, we must trust in the rescue plan of God.

We must trust in his rescuer, the great snake crusher, the Messiah,

the risen Lord Jesus Christ, that we will be brought safely to

the shore of heaven because of our trust in Jesus.

So today, be honest.

Be honest with yourself about your sin and be honest before God.

Don't think that this is a message only for someone else in

this building.

God challenges each of us to pay attention to what is really killing

us.

And it is the sin of this world.

But he offers a rescuer who will save us, to live for him forever

and again, it is all for God's glory, so that we will place our

trust in him and not doubt.

What must you do?

You must stand firm.

The Lord will fight for you.

And what does the Lord demonstrate?

Stand firm because he has fought for you because of the sacrifice

and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

As Peter's sermon in Acts 4 and verse 12 tells us, salvation

is found in no one else.

You can't go anywhere else and you needn't try, for there's no other

name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.

He's the only one.

And it's not about something that was prayed 20, 30 years ago.

There must be active living faith today to demonstrate that you're

still trusting in Him.

It's about knowing this day and daily knowing him as the great

rescuer, as he will continue to rescue the people.

Because today, in this passage in Exodus, it's only the first of

three great rescues that the people will yet discover in this

Exodus.

And so we must continue to look to the Lord, for He is the only

one who can rescue us.

The Great Escape is a great war movie.

It's one that takes great liberties with the truth, but yet

it points us to what the ultimate outcome is for those men

who get to freedom.

Just that, freedom from slavery and confinement.

Isn't that what happened in the Exodus?

God's people saved through the waters of the Red Sea so they would

no more be subject to slavery of Egypt.

And isn't that what God does for us?

Through Jesus Christ, he rescues us from the slavery of sin

so that we can be free to live for him.

This is what it's about.

This is what he calls us to.

And each of us must respond this day and trust in him.

Let's pray.

Our Father, we do thank you for your word that challenges us.

It gets to our very hearts and that's what it must do.

Father, you're the God who corrects us and rebukes us, but you're

also the God who comforts us to know that there is a way.

And yes, at times we might need to hear hard things so that

we will be shaken out of our dullness and out of our slumber.

But Lord, how much greater is your mercy and your grace towards

us that not only did you part the waters going against the created

order to rescue your people, but you sent your son Jesus to rescue

us.

So Lord, may we think much of Jesus.

May we come to him for salvation.

May we know day and daily that forgiveness of sins.

And if we don't think we sin, Father, we're fooling ourselves and

trying to fool you.

So open our eyes to the truth of who we are.

And Lord, may we rest assured.

And may we love Jesus more as we look ever to him, the one who

died and rose again so that we could know this great rescue plan

that will lead us onto eternal life.

So hear us as we pray in Jesus name, Amen.