“Bible promises: The Lord will fight for you”
Exodus 14:14
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
One day, a little boy came home from Sunday School and said, “Dad, that story about Moses and all those people crossing the Red Sea was great!”
His father looked down at him and said, “Tell me about it!”
“Well,” his son said, “Moses was a big, strong man and he beat Pharaoh up. Then while he was down, Moses got all the people together and they ran towards the sea. But Pharaoh's army chased after them.
“And as they got closer and closer, Moses got on his walkie-talkie and told the Israeli Air Force to bomb the Egyptians!
“And while that was happening, the Israeli Navy built a pontoon bridge so the people could cross over. And once Moses and his people got safely to the other side, they blew up the bridge while the Egyptians were trying to cross!”
By now, his father was shocked. He said, “Is that the way the teacher taught you the story?!”
“Well, no, not exactly,” his son said, “but you’d never believe the story she did tell us!”
There are a lot of phrases in our English language that describe being in a predicament, phrases like “painted into a corner,” “up against the wall,” “in a pickle,” “in a pinch,” “in a jam,” “in a tight squeeze,” “up a tree,” and “between a rock and a hard place.” Whatever the expression might be, it means you’re in some kind of trouble from which there is no escape. Predicaments are uncomfortable, nerve-racking, and can often drive us to despair.
So it was for the people of Israel. They were up against a sea, a large and looming sea, and had nowhere else to turn and nowhere else to go. There were mountains to the north, mountains to the south, a great sea to the east, and the entire Egyptian army to the west. Anyone could have told you that, within minutes, the battle would be over and every one of them would be as good as dead.
But we know the rest of the story. We know that before the day was over, the people of God would see the almighty and powerful hand of God make a way through the Sea.
I’ll read the words of Exodus chapter 14: “When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, ‘Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: “Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians”? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.’ And Moses said to the people, ‘Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again’” (Exodus 14:10-13).
Then verse 14: “The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.”
Let’s step back for a moment to see what’s going on.
Just a few months before, the Lord appeared to Moses in a burning bush. He said, “I have seen the misery of My people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers…so I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:7-8).
Moses answered, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is His name?’ What shall I tell them?” (Exodus 3:13).
The Lord answered, “Tell them, ‘I AM has sent me to you’” (Exodus 3:14).
But leaving Egypt wasn’t easy. The people of Israel numbered as many as two million and they had been slaves for more than four hundred years! Certainly the Egyptians had gotten rather used to their free, forced, back-breaking labor and there was no way they would even think of letting them go.
So the Lord Himself intervened. He said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh in the morning as he goes out to the water…then say, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has sent me to say to you: Let My people go’” (Exodus 7:15-16).
And when he wouldn’t let them go, then came the plagues--one after another after another--a direct assault, by the way, on all the gods of Egypt!
The Egyptians believed the Nile was the bloodstream of Osiris, the god of the underworld, so the Lord changed its water to blood, killing all its fish and crocodiles.
The Egyptians worshiped the frog god, Heqt, a symbol of resurrection and fertility. If anyone killed even one by accident, it was punishable by death. So the Lord sent frogs by the millions.
And the Egyptians worshiped Ra, the sun god, what Egypt called one of its greatest blessings. So the Lord covered Egypt in darkness.
Finally, as the Israelites smeared blood on their doorposts and ate their Passover lamb, a destroying angel took the lives of all of Egypt’s firstborn. Only then did Pharaoh let God’s people go.
And as they made their way out of Egypt to the east, it was a new beginning, a fresh start for the people of God. Behind them were four hundred years of slavery and ahead was a Promised Land, a land, God said, that would flow with milk and honey.
But just as soon as the people left, Pharaoh was sorry he had let them go. Public works came to a screeching halt. Countless homes and vast territories were left vacant. The labor of a cheap, enslaved people disappeared from cities and fields. And in their hurry to get rid of them, the Egyptians lavished them with gold and silver. That’s why Pharaoh couldn’t help but say, “What have we done? Why have we let Israel go?!”
So Pharaoh rallied his troops and gave the order: “Kill them! Capture them! By any means necessary, bring the slaves home!”
So there they were, with their backs up against a wall--frightened, petrified, terrified at what the Egyptian army was about to do.
But Moses said, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you need only to be still” (Exodus 14:13-14).
And as he stretched out his hand over the water, all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a wind and turned it into dry ground. And all of Israel made their way through the sea, with a wall of water on the right and a wall of water on the left.
And finally, as they made it safely to the other side, and the Egyptian army pursued them, the Lord made the water come crashing down. And Moses couldn’t help but say: “I will sing unto the Lord, for He is highly exalted. The horse and its rider He has thrown into the sea” (Exodus 15:1).
Across the ages, God has allowed His people to go through some Red Sea moments. Abraham marveled at the gift of a son, Isaac, only to hear the Lord say, “Go to Mt. Moriah to sacrifice him there” (Genesis 22:2). Joseph was sold into slavery, then falsely convicted of a crime. David ran for his life into the wilderness. Jeremiah was thrown in jail as a traitor. Hosea’s wife walked out on him. Job lost everything. And Daniel sat in the bottom of a lion’s den.
Every one of you, at some point in your life, has been in a desperate situation--painted into a corner, between a rock and a hard place, with your back up against the wall. There are financial problems, family problems, health problems, and faith problems of all kinds.
Where can you turn? What can you do? Where can you go?
But, thanks be to God, what seems like the end is really a new beginning.
Did you know that John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim's Progress, wrote that great masterpiece from a prison cell? Certainly not the most likely setting for one of the world’s greatest works in English literature.
Did you know that John Milton was blind for twenty-two years? Yet out of his blindness came his greatest works--Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.
When Florence Nightingale was too sick to move in bed, she reorganized the hospitals of England.
Louis Pasteur was partially paralyzed because of a stroke, and lost three of his five children to typhoid fever. Yet it was then that he discovered one of his greatest cures.
And Harry Emerson Fosdick, once a great preacher and religious leader in our United States, had a nervous breakdown soon after graduating from the seminary and wanted to commit suicide. He felt as though life was a terrifying wilderness with no way out. Yet it was then that he found the inspiration to write a book called The Meaning of Prayer. He asked, “Why is it that some of life’s most revealing insights come to us, not from life’s loveliness, but from life’s difficulties?” And he said, “I found God in a desert.”
So what does this story of the Red Sea mean to teach us? It serves to remind every one of us that God is fully capable of fulfilling His promise. And because He is, we are safe.
In the words of a poem: “When you come to the Red Sea place in your life, when in spite of all you do, there is no way back, there is no way ‘round, there is no way, but through, then trust in the Lord with a faith supreme, ‘til the night and the storms are gone. He will still the winds, He will part the waves, when He says to your soul, ‘Go on!’”
One more thing. In Spain, not far from Madrid, there’s a town called Valladolid. It’s where Christopher Colombus died back in 1506. And in that town, there’s a monument commemorating him and his great voyage and discovery.
But what makes that monument so interesting is that, at its base, there’s a statue of a lion standing beside the Spanish National Motto. And that lion is reaching out with his paw and he’s destroying one of the Latin words that had been part of Spain’s motto for hundreds of years.
You see, before Columbus discovered America, the Spaniards thought their country was the end of the world. That’s why their motto read, “Non Plus Ultra,” “Nothing More Beyond.” And the word that the lion is tearing away makes it read, “More Beyond.” When Columbus ventured across the Atlantic, then came back home again, he proved there was so much “More Beyond.”
Someday, at the end of our lives, we’ll have one last “Red Sea” moment. We’ll be up against the wall, nowhere to turn, and no place to go. But by the grace of God, through Christ’s blood-bought gift of redemption, we’ll discover everything that He has in store.
We thank You, dear Father, for the story of the Red Sea, and for Your great promise. Help us to remember that, when all things seem against us, because You are with us, we are safe. This we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen