A boy was sitting on a park bench with one hand resting on an open Bible. He was loudly exclaiming his praise to God. "Hallelujah! Hallelujah! God is great!" he yelled without worrying whether anyone heard him or not.
Shortly after, along came a man who had recently completed some studies at a local university. Feeling himself very enlightened in the ways of truth and very eager to show this enlightenment, he asked the boy about the source of his joy.
"Hey" asked the boy in return with a bright laugh, "Don't you have any idea what God is able to do? I just read that God opened up the waves of the Red Sea and led the whole nation of Israel right through the middle."
The enlightened man laughed lightly, sat down next to the boy and began to try to open his eyes to the "realities" of the miracles of the Bible. "That can all be very easily explained. Modern scholarship has shown that the Red Sea in that area was only 10-inches deep at that time. It was no problem for the Israelites to wade across."
The boy was stumped. His eyes wandered from the man back to the Bible laying open in his lap. The man, content that he had enlightened a poor, naive young person to the finer points of scientific insight, turned to go. Scarcely had he taken two steps when the boy began to rejoice and praise louder than before. The man turned to ask the reason for this resumed jubilation.
"Wow!" exclaimed the boy happily, "God is greater than I thought! Not only did He lead the whole nation of Israel through the Red Sea, He topped it off by drowning the whole Egyptian army in 10 inches of water!"
Having shared this story, I need to say that the depth of the Red Sea really has nothing to do with the scripture that we have read this morning. It doesn’t matter whether the Red Sea was 10 inches or 10 feet deep. It doesn’t matter whether we can find some way to rationalize away the parting of the Red Sea. What does matter is that God worked in the lives of his people when they needed them most. The people of Israel needed a path, for the way was closed for them. And God made that way for them.
I. Amazing Stories
The book of Exodus is full of amazing stories that spark the imagination. There is Moses in a basket in the river, the burning bush, the ten plagues, Moses descending from the mountain with the ten commandments, the golden calf, water gushing from rocks and manna falling from heaven… but there is one that stands out above the rest and touches the imagination in a unique way, and it is the crossing of the Red Sea.
Imagine a group of people being chased by an army and finding themselves pushed up against the sea. They were at their end. They had unending water on one side of them and an army coming down on the other. God had promised to take them out of slavery and they had gotten their hopes up and then they found themselves in this predicament. They had two choices, really. They could either drown or be killed by the sword; neither a very good option. But these two options, these two choices don’t take into account the God that had brought them this far.
What is so great about the parting of the Red Sea is that it is completely God. It is not something that the people can take credit for. It is not something that they can pretend they are responsible for. God saves his people from the Egyptians and they know so very clearly that it is God doing the saving.
We don’t always live in the world that the Israelites lived in. We pay attention to the reminder that God helps those who help themselves. We know that we are to pray hard, but we also know that we are to work harder. It’s built into us that we are to do everything we can to take care of ourselves and our families. And yet we do sometimes find ourselves in situations that are beyond our control. We do sometimes find ourselves in places we cannot get out of. Sometimes we find ourselves caught between an army and a sea and all seems hopeless.
II. Oppression
I want to go back again a bit. I want you to think about the things that threaten to overwhelm you. What are you beholden to? What is it that oppresses you? The people of Israel were living under a real oppression that we just don’t deal with. They were slaves. They spent their lives working for the Egyptians and had no control over their own lives because of this. They were so oppressed that when the Egyptians decided to kill all the male boys being born to them, they couldn’t do anything about it. They were so oppressed that an Egyptian could kill an Israelite and that was that. They had no recourse. They had no control over their own lives. They had no freedom. They could not do what they wanted. They could not worship how they wanted. They were slaves. No wonder the African-Americans have identified so well with the story of the Exodus. But I honestly think we all can identify with the Exodus in some way. For we all have things that oppress us. And hopefully, we are all calling out to God to free us from such oppressions. Perhaps we feel overwhelmed by our jobs, perhaps it is our responsibility at home that overwhelms us. Maybe we don’t know how we are going to get out of debt, or how we are going to deal with the difficulties that come with age. For some, oppression takes the form of alcoholism or addiction. For others it is living in a situation of abuse. For some it is a marriage that doesn’t seem to be working out. For some it is chronic pain. Sometimes the oppression that you face might not seem like much to those around you, but it is real and it can be a struggle.
And so we call out to God and do what we can to try to get out of the things that oppress us. But the thing about oppression is that it doesn’t let you out. Even when you think you are free, it comes after you. Israel had been told that they were free. They headed out, on their way to the wilderness, on their way to the Promised Land. But those that oppressed them had not given up. They came after them with an army. They meant to destroy the people of Israel. Sometimes we think we may have escaped from our oppression. Sometimes we think we may have made it. But when we try to do it on our own, we will often find that that which oppressed us will chase after us and bring us back in, and even make things much worse. And then we find ourselves in the place that Israel found themselves: with our backs to the sea and an army bearing down on us.
What do we do when we cannot save ourselves? Where do we go when there is no place left to go? Do we just give up at that point? Do we stand and fight? Or do we continue to believe and continue to follow where God leads?
III. Spread out you Hand
The people of Israel didn’t handle it very well. They grumbled because they were afraid. We didn’t read this part this morning, but it is worth going back to Exodus 14:11,12. Here the people of Israel ask Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!” Harsh words came from the people of Israel. They had stepped out in faith and it seemed to be leading them to disaster. When we step out in faith things sometimes seem to go wrong, and we begin to ask these same questions? We wonder whether we really had been hearing God in our lives. We wonder whether it may have been better to have continued the way we had been going. But the fact is that God didn’t call the people out to the shore of the Red Sea just to die. Instead, God had something great planned.
God had been leading the people of Israel with a cloud by day and a pillar of fire at night. And the cloud came between the people of Israel and the Egyptian army. God shielded the people of Israel from the army that was after them. God kept them from battling each other. It seems that Israel was just as ready to fight as Egypt was, but God didn’t allow for either. So God bought the people of Israel time by coming between them and the army that oppressed them.
And then Moses acted on faith. He stretched out his hand over the water. Oh, he could have looked very silly. He could have stretched out his hand and nothing would have happened. More people would have laughed at him and their doom would have been complete. But Moses knew that that wouldn’t happen. He knew that God had brought them this far and would take them through the next step. So he spread out his hand, and we are told that through the night a wind blew and parted the Red Sea. We are told that the Israelites crossed it with a wall of water on their right and on their left. And we are told that a way was made for them that had not been there before.
This is the point where faith pays off. You’ve got your back to the sea. You’ve got no place to go. Your problems are running you down, about to hit you. You’ve run out of options completely. And then God opens a way that was not there. God opens a path that did not exist. Up to this point it has been about trusting God. Up to this point it has been about accepting that God will fulfill his promises. Now it is just about following the path that God has set before you. I’m sure there is trust involved at this point also, I’m sure it may have been scary crossing the sea with walls of water on either side. But God has just shown you what he can do and now all you need to do is walk on the path that he has opened before you.
God is able to open a path for you out of the oppression that you face. And when it comes time, God will work in a powerful way to make that path come alive, a path that you had not seen up until that time. But you are called to prepare yourself to see that path. You are called to follow God down what may seem like a dead end as he prepares you to be released from that which oppresses you.
And so, I want you to take three life lessons from Moses and the people of Israel. There are three life lessons that we can learn from and that will affect how we live and how we follow God.
The first of these is that we can learn from the fact that the people of Israel called to God in their slavery and he heard them. They cried out and asked for his help. They pleaded for him to come to them in their need. We must do the same. We must turn those things that oppress us over to God in prayer. We must give up the illusion that we can work our own way out of them and instead we must lift them before our God.
Our second life lesson is to see that Israel followed where God led, even though it seemed like it was leading them to a dead end. Oh, they grumbled about it, as we often do. They complained and worried about what God had in front of them. But, in the end, they followed when they needed to and went where God told them to go.
And our third lesson has specifically to do with Moses. Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. He was willing to look foolish for his faith. He put all his trust in God and allowed God to use him in a mighty way. By stretching out his hand he was acknowledging that God was in control and God would open the path before them. And God did this very thing. And God can and will do this very thing for you as well. So, call out to God for help, go where God leads and be ready to look foolish for God’s sake, putting your trust in his faithfulness. And just watch to see what God does for your sake. Amen.
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