Exodus 14:10-31 - Between an Army and a Sea

 

God has done it, the Hebrew people are finally free!  IT took plague after plague to do it, but the Egyptians have loosened their oppressive grip on the Hebrew people.

It ended with the death of Pharaoh’s son, along with the eldest son’s of countless other families all across Egypt. Pharaoh, while mourning the death of his son, has told Moses to take his people and get out of here. That very night, the Israelites fled, in haste, just as God had told them to prepare for, into the wilderness. God lead them out across the barren lands, appearing as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.

Just as the Israelites are approaching the Sea, they look back, they are being pursued by a cloud of dust, kicked up by the chariots of an oncoming Egyptian army. The Egyptians are following them. Pharaoh’s despair in his grief has turn to anger.  again. Now, he has sent his armies out across the wilderness to bring back the Hebrew people. As the people approach the foreboding barrier of the sea, they look back and see the fast approaching Egyptian army. They are hemmed in. Before them is the un-crossable sea and behind them are the unstoppable forces of the Egyptian army.

They look around them, there arm of Egypt is behind them and the great Sea is before them and they cannot help but proclaim, “It’s a trap!” This is not good! There is nowhere to go. They will die here in the desert, far from their homes. Why did they trust Moses and this IAM God? Why did they leave in the first place? Life in Egypt wasn’t all that bad! Being oppressed and alive is better than dying here in the wilderness!

What do you do now?  You were following God. Things seemed new, exciting. The world was bright, full of hope and promise. You know you were doing was the good and right thing. You knew where you were going is so much better than anything you have left behind. There was a new song in your heart, a song of praise. But now you have look around and the place where you are is suddenly frightening. In your concern you have lost sight of God. You have lost sight of where you are going; where it is God is taking you. There seems to be no way forward. You know you can’t go back to where you have been. You feel trapped. There seems to be nowhere to go. There is no way out. You are positive this will not end well. Perhaps, you even begin to think that it will even be the end of you or at the very least the beginning of your destruction. You are frightened and reasonably so. The road is not as smooth as you imagine it would be. The journey is difficult. There are hardships and struggles, hurt and pain, it is frightening and your emotions are hard to manage. This is not what you expected.

This is exactly where the Israelites are. They joyfully left Egypt. They wanted their freedom and God was going to take them there. God was leading them. They could almost taste the sweetness of the honey and feel the coolness of the rich milk in their throat. The land of promise was before them and the land of slavery and oppression was behind them. And they gladly followed God as God led them. Now, they have looked up and the Egyptian army is behind them and there is nothing but the sea before them. There is nowhere to go, they can see that they are trapped. There is clearly no way forward and no way to turn back. They are frightened.

Where could they go?  They were going to be killed. The army was coming out to get them, to destroy them. Their freedom, which just a moment ago seemed so real and so tangible, has dissolved right before their eyes. They are doomed.

So they cry out to God and to Moses in their fear. And we think, how can they begin to doubt God so quickly? Where is their faith? Where is their trust?  We often give children of Israel a hard time for this, but let’s step back for a moment and take a good look at the situation they are in here.

This is seriously a frightening situation. Even if they think and look back at what God has done, it is hard for them to imagine what God might do now. Who could really foresee what God is about to do next? Sure, God has turned the Nile into blood. God has filled the land with all sorts of pestilence and disease, caused it to hail, brought darkness to the day and arranged for just the first born sons of the Egyptians to die all on the same night. Those are some pretty amazing things but what can God do now? If you were trapped in such a way could you even begin to contemplate what God might do? Give them all wings so that they might fly, that seems a bit imaginative. That sounds ridiculous, just about as ridiculous as God removing the sea from before them. The only options seemed to them like solutions which could only be accomplished in their dreams, or in fantastical tales they might tell children. What God is about to do it beyond comprehension too miraculous to be even begin to contemplate. The sea before them is just as impassable as a 40 foot thick solid steel wall that reached to the heavens would be for us. As far as they could see it, there is no way forward.

Secondly, let us give them a little credit. They go to Moses, fully expecting for Moses to go to God with their problem. In essence when they cry out to Moses in their distress, they are crying out to God. They might not know what God is going to do about it. They may not think that God can do anything about it. They may doubt if God has the ability to even attempt to do anything about it, but they do know to whom they should go when they find themselves in this kind of distress. They know, when they are following God, when they look up and find they are frightened, scared, dismayed, in fear that there is no way out, they know, they need to cry out to God. And that is exactly what they do.

Let’s be real here. We all know what it is to be in a frightening or dismaying situation. No matter how much we trust God. No what we truly believe about what God is able to do. We know God is mighty, we know God is powerful. We know with God, anything is possible. But our life situations are right here before us. Our daily struggles, our overwhelming problems. The battles we have to face they are difficult. And often times don’t know how we are going to find a way forward. There seems to be nowhere to go. We cannot see anything good in our future. And we are upset, we are frightened, we are hurt we are scared.

Whenever we find ourselves in these kinds of situations, we just are like the Israelites in this situation. They can’t see the way forward. But you know what they do?  They cry out to God. They may not know much, but they know enough to turn to God in their fear, in their dismay. They see nothing but a watery grave before them and the prospect of being trampled by the Egyptians behind them. Either way is certain death as a worst case scenario and being carted off as slaves in a best case scenario. So they turn to God. They cry out to God in their fear. They tell God that they are afraid they will die. They tell God they are afraid of the Egyptians. They are afraid and are wondering if life was better in Egyptians.

And you know what God does. God shows them the way forward. God has them turn their back on the approaching Egyptians. God has them face the impenetrable sea. The Egyptians behind them, the sea before them, they are all too aware of their predicament. And then when it seems there is nowhere to go and nothing to do. The God of creation, who in the beginning parted the seas and formed the dry land, parts the waters of the sea, to form dry land and shows them the way forward.

“God will make a way, when there seems to be no way/ God works in ways we can not see/God will make a way for me.”

The Israelites called out because there was nowhere to go, no road to follow. And God makes a way; a path of dry land from bank to bank, with walls of water on either side, and God says, “Go that way.” They are saved. They pass right through the sea, on dry ground. When there was nowhere to go, no way forward and no way to turn back, God made a way for them, God provided for them safe passage.

When we find ourselves, trapped, frightened, dismayed. When we feel there is nowhere to go, when we come to a point where trusting God is scary, when we don’t know how God is going to bring us through, or where the way forward could possibly be. We can do exactly what the people of Israel did here, we can cry out to God. We can tell God how scared we are. We can tell God exactly what we think about our situation. We can even tell God that right now, when we look at the wreck our life is in right now, that it feels like God has let us here to die. We don’t know whether we will die from the danger we see behind us or the danger we see before us, but we are certain that there is danger on all sides and we don’t know how this can turn out good at all. We can tell God all that. God can handle our fear. God can handle our doubts. God can handle our complaints and God will show us the way forward. The way may seem crazy. God might lead us into the sea itself. But God will make the way. God will lead us. God promises to lead and guide and show us the way as we go along.