Exodus 14:26-31

Hey, welcome back.
Thanks for closing out the week with us in the Book of Exodus.
We are in the
14th chapter.
We’re verse 26.
Just a little bit of a footnote on the story here.
I think you all
knew this was coming unless this story is new to you or it’s been a long time since you’ve been
through this part of Exodus.
I think there’s no surprise where we’re headed.
The people of Israel
have crossed the Red Sea or in the midst of crossing the Red Sea.
Pharaoh’s army has pursued them.
Late in yesterday’s reading,
we saw that God kind of intervenes,
clogs up the wheels of
the chariots for the Egyptians.
And now we get the last part of the story here.
Verse 26,
“The Lord said to Moses,
‘Stretch out your hand over the sea so that the water may come back upon the Egyptians,
upon their chariots and drivers.’ So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea,
and at dawn the sea returned to its normal depth.
And the Egyptians fled before it.
The Lord tossed the Egyptians into the sea.
The waters returned and covered the chariots and the drivers,
the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea.
Not one of them remained,
but the Israelites walked on dry ground through the sea,
the waters forming a wall for them on
their right and left.
Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians,
and Israel saw the
Egyptians dead on the seashore.
Israel saw the great work the Lord had done against the Egyptians,
so the people
feared the Lord and believed in the Lord and his servant Moses.”
So Michael, I think part of the story that most people are aware of,
most people are familiar with,
kind of the culmination of the story.
The Egyptians have been essentially led into a trap.
Interestingly enough, I think most of us,
the picture in our mind is that the water comes back.
There is,
to make it even more a case that God does it,
there is this interesting phrase here, “They fled,” and
what’s it say here?
“And the Lord tossed the Egyptians into the sea.”
There in verse 27,
at the end of 27.
So even this gives the idea that it’s not just happenstance.
It is God working against them.
It is God attacking them.
It is God at war.
We’ve said this number of times, but even the language here helps us get that idea that this isn’t just
circumstances that get them.
This is the active work of God against the Egyptians. A couple of things that stick out right from the start here is some of the language that we
see repeated, if you’ve been with us now for our study for the last,
I’d say probably two or three
studies, maybe the last week or so.
We’ve talked about some things like yesterday.
We spent a lot
of time talking about this idea of the wall of the water,
that exact language, and here we see
that exact language coming up again.
An interesting reminder that there may be different accounts
that are joined together in the midst of the telling of this story.
You had two family tellers
write down their telling of the story.
Both of them were good,
and so those who collected
this and worked to make it all into one,
found ways to connect it, to pair it.
There’s some interesting textual things happening there,
but it turns out that the army that these trained
soldiers who had attributed just yesterday that they were fighting against God now meet the end.
They meet their fate in that fight against God.
Of course, we the reader know as they came to know at the end.
We’ve known all along that there was no one who would win that conflict, but God,
it’s a simple story,
Clint.
I don’t know what to say.
We’re not going to
unearth something that you’ve never thought of before.
We’re unlikely to shock you or surprise you.
Probably the danger in that,
Clint, is that we might read this story thinking it’s a Sunday
school story.
I mean, we might read this story thinking that it’s kind of a kid’s thing,
and it’s nice that it’s in the Bible, and it’s imaginative.
We may miss the people-defining,
history-changing,
Bible-making story that this is.
When I say that,
I just mean that
God rescuing the people,
the waters being parted,
passing through God winning this fight against the
Egyptians.
This is going to appear in the history of the Old Testament.
It’s going to appear in the
prophets in the Old Testament.
It’s going to appear in the Gospels in Jesus’ own teaching.
It’s going to appear in the epistles and letters in teaching and spiritual lessons that Paul and others are going to give.
Clint,
it’s tough to read this story and overemphasize,
or it’s tough to read
this story and make the case strong enough of how important this is to the entire Scriptures.
Yeah, we’ve
said that
in some ways Exodus is a foundational story,
and I think that is true.
Throughout the Old Testament,
there will be moments when God is speaking through a prophet,
or you’ll see it in the Psalms,
the retelling of this story.
You’ll see over and over again,
the Lord your God,
who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
This is in some ways the anchor
that holds the story of the rest of the Old Testament in place,
this idea that God intervenes, that God
fights for the people of Israel against anything and anyone that would do them harm.
And I think there is that part.
As we transition, though,
there is less mention of things like the
plagues and even the Red Sea,
though it’s there, it’s in the backdrop.
But as the story now changes
and shifts to the relationship between God and the people,
that is probably the part of Exodus
that gets carried ahead into the narrative more so,
I would say, Michael, the idea of the struggle
of the people to be faithful,
the idea of the kind of,
I don’t want to say adversarial,
but the sort of
tension-filled relationship between God and the people.
We’re going to see that in the judges.
We’re going to see that in the kings.
We’re going to hear that through the prophets.
This
part of the story where God acts to liberate His people is the foundation,
but the themes that
I think come next and become more prevalent from here on out,
in some ways ring deeper,
I think, in the
larger scope of the Scripture.
It is an incredible thing to try to imagine this cataclysmic kind of event,
the idea that the waters have parted,
the people are not just walking across the
bottom of this sea.
It’s dry.
It’s a road.
It’s a path that’s been made.
The idea that the chariots are tossed,
as you’ve fighting this battle against the Egyptians,
then the idea that we’re told exactly what
we are to understand this to mean.
Israel saw the great work that the Lord did and the people feared.
There’s the thing that happens and the result of it.
They fear the Lord and believe in
the Lord and in His servant Moses.
I can’t help but chuckle.
If only we could look at that as if it
is the shining jewel put in the crown that will be forevermore.
Wouldn’t it be great if this was
the end of the story?
If this was something kind of like Mark,
where the gospel ends really abruptly
and the question that hangs over it is,
“So what?
What will the disciples do now?
What will we do
now?” If only the book of Acts ended at the end of chapter 14 and we were left with this question,
you know, how will the people remember and will we remember?
Will we fear the Lord?
But there’s a lot of exodus to come and I think what that part of the book is going to help reveal is part of
what’s happening in this moment.
There’s a salvific
turning point.
For the people of Israel, this is a
and there is,
for no generation that follows,
is there any question of God’s work?
This is the idea of Passover, passing on this historical memory of the people and yet faith is a difficult task.
I mean faith requires attention and mending and it requires humility and it’s not
always a graph that goes up and to the right.
I think what we see here is that in one of the
pivotal moments of God showing faithfulness,
the people see in fear,
but one of the questions that
I think is going to linger with us in the book of Exodus is the “So what?
What does that mean as
the story goes on?” and it’s going to be complicated.
The people will trust God,
they will, and they will also not trust God and it all in some ways comes back and hovers around this moment where
God has delivered the people.
It’s a good moment in the story.
Next week as we move into the 15th
chapter, there’s a song of Moses,
there’s a song of Miriam.
The Bible does take a little bit of time
to really celebrate this victory.
As we’ve mentioned in the Jewish tradition,
this continues to be a formative story.
The Passover liturgy begins when we were slaves in
Pharaoh’s Egypt.
You repeat that as you celebrate the Passover and as you begin the Passover meal.
There is a heritage and a history tied to this story,
but there is a lot ahead.
In the Bible, the idea of remembering is tied to the idea of going forward.
So looking backwards is always
designed to help one move forward and so the people,
the struggle that they’re going to have
is to connect their future behavior to this past work of God and to lean into the confidence and
faith that God has demonstrated God can have and deserves and they’re going to struggle to do that,
as do we all.
And I think that will be characteristic of really the rest of this book.
I don’t know, Michael, in some ways this is chapter 14 to 15,
I would argue, is really a dividing
line of the book.
The story has been about the people,
but really the story has been up till now.
We started with some focus on Moses,
but for many, many chapters now, the
clear theme has been God versus Pharaoh.
Now, with that kind of in the background,
it turns to the focus of God and the people.
Moses becomes much more prominent,
but there is this
triangle or at least this balance beam that Moses finds himself in the middle of God and the people
trying to work out their relationship,
God calling the people to faith,
God calling Moses to leadership,
the people sometimes failing.
Moses, occasionally,
possibly failing.
We’ll let you make
some decisions about that as we go on.
But I
think really now, as we enter the 15th chapter next week,
we have kind of shifted and in some ways put Egypt,
at least the focus of the story on Egypt,
behind as we really now travel with the people.
This has all been a journey,
Clint, and it’s going to be cast as a journey in a way that maybe we’ve not seen yet.
I think that we have the wandering,
we have the wilderness,
we have the tents,
we have the need for food and water.
That journey, even though they hadn’t physically moved,
God was working through Moses to inch by inch
take back from Pharaoh the power that he had been holding over the people.
I can’t help but remember
just a few days ago we were going through and God was talking about how the intention of not
showing the Israelites the Philistines because they might not trust.
And here on the other side
of the Egyptian army being bested by the water,
by God winning the military conflict,
not just besting Pharaoh by taking his firstborn and the firstborn of all of the Egyptians,
but here God in a decisive military victory.
The
entire nation who were enslaved peoples, untrained peoples,
now set free on the opposite side with nothing ahead but the journey to go.
I think we’re beginning to see that God has been leading them this entire time.
There has been a path,
even if that path didn’t always involve moving.
God has been at work and history has been moving in a direction.
And now that the journey is going to become far more physical,
it’s going to become
far more practical as the story goes on.
In some ways I think we’re going to be invited to look
at the people themselves.
The first thing we’re going to jump into next week,
Clint, is a song celebrating God’s victory, sort of a communal rejoicing.
But it offers some internal thoughts.
It offers us a little bit like in a comic,
a thought bubble of what the people are thinking.
And as they go,
we’re going to hear the criticism and the grumbling and the complaining,
the thoughts that are sometimes contained and the other times they spread like wildfire.
As it happens, I think there’s something deeply spiritual in a story like this for us as well,
because so often in our lives what we desperately yearn for
is that incisive, critical moment where everything changes, where God feels close and the victory happens and everything we’ve hoped
and prayed for is accomplished.
We all desire to have that other side of the Red Sea experience,
to see God and God’s might show up.
But I think what we discover in Exodus is it’s
not just the fact that God shows up.
It’s not just the fact that God has been leading you up to that point,
but that there’s likely many challenges far beyond that point and the promise that God will
remain with you even when things remain
hard or maybe even get harder.
I think there’s something
deeply pastoral.
There’s a lot of sermon in a text like this, though it’s short,
though we all learned it in Sunday school,
it’s not a surprise to us.
I think if we’re willing to
lean into it and to allow the stuff and the time that we’ve spent next to this thus far
to reflect upon this moment,
it might carry even more weight than what we would anticipate.
This could just be me.
It may not be other people’s experience, but I think
while the Exodus up till now,
Michael, has been interesting,
I think from here it gets more relatable.
We’ve had a lot of supernatural.
There will continue to be supernatural,
but we’ve had Egypt, we’ve had slavery, we’ve had these miraculous plagues, we’ve had the
death of the firstborn, the Passover, and now the Red Sea.
I think as we shift to this dominant
metaphor now becomes the journey and faithfulness on the journey,
the balance between fear and trust,
the battle between fear and trust.
I think, at least for me,
I find myself much
more able to relate to the parts of the story I think that are coming up.
I think they ask more,
they ask questions that I think are more translatable to a different experience.
I think
the idea of going before Pharaoh and threatening plagues is probably maybe not something we know
what to do with,
though ultimately it does say something to us of the power and faithfulness of God.
But I think now that we see the people struggling
when they’re afraid, when they’re hungry, when they’re tired, when they’re thirsty, when they don’t know where they’re going,
when we see God frustrated with the people,
when we see the people frustrated with Moses,
to me it just gets very
human from this point out.
Not all of it,
but I think there are so many moments coming
up in Exodus that perhaps are a little bit more devotional than some of the material we’ve covered
so far.
I don’t want to steal the thunder of what’s going to come later,
but Clint,
isn’t it interesting that at this moment God’s victory over Pharaoh is heralded as a victory,
as a celebration, as God winning outright.
But ironically,
interestingly,
the people are going
to struggle with Pharaoh’s demise.
Pharaoh has provided order,
Pharaoh’s provided food.
Even though they’ve been subject to Pharaoh,
Pharaoh has in some ways become a fixture in their lives,
and now God is the only one that the people have to trust.
They can’t rely upon the system of Egypt
to uphold them anymore.
Now it’s God who they will look to.
It’s Moses who will be called to lead them.
This is a moment of celebration,
but what the people don’t know yet is God’s victory
over Pharaoh leaves Pharaoh behind and requires of them faith in God,
and that’s going to change everything.
Yeah,
the people are going to struggle,
and again, I think this is a very human struggle.
They’re going to constantly struggle with looking back versus looking forward.
In fact, when they look back,
they think they see things that aren’t necessarily accurate,
and when they look forward,
they’re going to see danger around every turn,
even though God has
shown them repeatedly that they’re in no danger.
So, a very interesting story from here on out.
Friends, thank you for joining us.
If you’ve been with us this whole study,
thanks for coming along with us to this point in the book,
and like Clint said,
I think there’s wisdom in saying,
as we begin again next week,
we do in some ways open up a new chapter of this story,
and I think there’ll be something both to challenge us,
but also to encourage us as we travel.
So, I hope you have a great weekend.
Thanks, everybody.