Moses 12
Quit Complaining, Start Moving
“When the people of Israel saw the mighty power that the Lord had unleashed against the Egyptians, they were filled with awe before him. They put their faith in the Lord and in his servant Moses.” [1]
“You can throw human nature out the door, but it will crawl back in through the window.” Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Jews have won. The captivity, 430 years to the day, is over. They have taken the spoils of Egypt with raised fists, and their luggage is crammed with booty. Joseph’s bones are packed to go, and they are fleeing Egypt. Let the celebration begin—it’s like going on holiday. They are giddy with anticipation—umbrella drinks all around—bon voyage! But God changes the route. Much like a major road closure, expect delays. What should take thirty days will now take forty years. Shhhh! Say nothing, they don’t know it yet.
The Red Sea…
God knows his people. When faced with trouble, he knows they will turn tail and head back to Egypt. After all, they had been in Goshen for generations. It was all they knew, and the lushness of Goshen was a lot better than the desert.
“So, God led them in a roundabout way through the wilderness toward the Red Sea.” Six hundred thousand Jewish men; imagine the arguments about which map to follow. The women knew better than to offer advice. But God made it obvious this was his job. During the day, he led them with a cloud, and at night, a pillar of fire. The cloud and fire were prominently in front of the two million pilgrims. Most of them would have thought, “a bit of delay, a road closure, an extra night in a different camp,” but what traveler hasn’t had similar upsets? The entire world, at some point, spends the night in the Atlanta Airport. Always travel with extra medications and a change of clothes.
“But God…”
God has greater purposes for himself, the nations, his people, even for us who now can only read about such events. God continues to seek loftier goals for us than we even have for ourselves. We are in a hurry to our favorite destination, the city of comfort in the land of ease. But God is interested in “Glory”—authority, respect, weighty presence, taking him and his work seriously—wanting his people to have his glory stamped on their hearts: “That I am the Lord.” His goal is long-term: to use this confused and fragile throng of Israel as a means to take salvation to the world. The world system hates this reality, the fact that the Jews are the chosen people. That God is by default a Jew, because his Son Jesus is a Jew, and that’s that. [2] But with a great and singular task comes great responsibility. Therefore, the Jews have suffered terribly, sometimes because they deserved it and sometimes because the world hates them, just as Jesus promised. [3]
God wanted Pharaoh to think, “The Israelites are confused. They are trapped in the wilderness.” And now God tells Moses, “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will chase after you. I have planned this in order to display my glory through Pharaoh and his whole army. After this the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord!” [4]
What price glory…
God would pay a price, so would his people. God has promised to share his glory, but we are also called to share in his sufferings.[5] When God chooses us for a mission, the stakes are raised and the intensity multiplies.
Pharaoh has a memory; he must be quite tired of losing, again and again. God uses him like a worn-out puppet. His ego and need for revenge and victory are even greater than his pain. He’s a washed-up leader of a washed-up nation. They need a win so bad. Pharaoh has flip-flopped at least ten times in a several-month period and now took the bait again. He called up his army of 600+ great chariots and mobilized his reserve chariots. This would be an all-out pursuit to destroy the slaves, to end the scourge on his country, and restore his fame. Chariots are faster than carts and masses of people walking, and they quickly caught them at their campsite.
Panic…
This was shocking to the Israelites. We must give them some props. First, they cried out to the Lord. But immediately pivoted and complained to Moses, “Why did you bring us out here to die in the wilderness?” Dripping with sarcasm, they continued, “Weren’t there enough graves for us in Egypt? What have you done to us? Why did you make us leave Egypt? Didn’t we tell you this would happen while we were still in Egypt? We told you, ‘Leave us alone! Let us be slaves to the Egyptians. It’s better to be a slave in Egypt than a corpse in the wilderness!”
John Milton used this reasoning in Paradise Lost, where Satan lay chained to the floor of Hell, claiming, “Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven.” Satan thought anything was better than being subservient. Here, the elders of Israel reach a similar conclusion: better to be a slave than whatever this is; we could die out here, and we probably will. The power of the predictable is alluring. When faced with adventure, glory, and freedom, too many of us give in to comfort. Of course, I don’t want to downplay the appeal of comfort, which is one of the promises of heaven: no more pain, no more tears, no more death. But presently, pain, tears, and death are on the menu. God asks us to follow him where there is adventure, freedom, glory, meaning, and fulfillment, things never experienced by those who shrink back. The people see themselves trapped between the Red Sea and the Egyptian Army. Death by the sword, by drowning, or surrender—what a choice!
Don’t just stand there complaining…
The Lord asked Moses, Why are you crying out to me? Tell the people to get moving! Pick up your staff and raise your hand over the sea. The Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I gain glory through Pharaoh, his chariots, and his horsemen. Enough said.
Skeptics…
There is some irony in God’s impatience, but he’s God, so let’s get on with it. This is the part of the story that the skeptics hate: It’s so barbaric, they complain. Why would a good God drown all those Egyptian soldiers, and the horses, oh my god, the horses. You can’t say no horses were harmed in any way in this epic drama. Thousands were lost, oh, all the little ponies that would never live; what a tragic, mean thing for Israel’s God to do. It’s like feeling sorry for the Nazis, but at least the Egyptians let them go, sort of, but then again, they were going to slaughter them or return them to Egypt.
Skeptics always seem to feel sorry for the wrong people. The skeptics are against the divine personage because they aspire to be a divine personage themselves. They insist the story is not true. They posit it’s a myth, or the Israelites waded across a very shallow body of water called the Reed Sea. [6] If it is true, the jig is up for them and their story. Their story sucks; their happy ending is that we are in charge of our own lives, and there is no final authority, God, or judge, so there is no absolute truth—except that there is no absolute truth—and they are absolutely sure about that. This means morality is a social construct and is flexible. The grand trophy for them is that you don’t have to follow any rules but your own. It’s the Marquis de Sade gone wild. It’s the morally confused painter, Jackson Pollock, cigarette hanging from his mouth, as he splatters modern morality on a canvas. It makes no sense; no one can live it. It’s also Picasso, an older contemporary and influencer of Pollock, cubing up the human figure, moving the pieces around on his canvas, and creating his confused reality, unaware of passing it on.
Imagine an atheist parent tucking their five-year-old in bed and whispering, “Honey, this life has no meaning, nothing is going to be alright. It doesn’t matter if you play fair or treat others well; there is no morality. Take all you can, honey, lie if you need to, it’s the survival of the fittest. Trust no one, just win, win, and win some more.” This scene is hard to imagine because it isn’t right. It seems nonsensical to most of us because it is impossible. When we are in charge, it is the ultimate cul-de-sac.
If the flight from Egypt story is true and God saved his people out of captivity, saved their firstborn sons, and drowned the Egyptian army in the Red Sea, then God is the Lord overall, and their only way to win is to get on their knees and repent of their sins. But they won’t need to stop being human, the Israelites certainly didn’t, and neither have we. So much for the struggle of the skeptic, now back to the struggle of the believer.
Get going…
This is the definitive moment in the Exodus. Passover was big, very big, but it was all for nothing if they didn’t escape the Egyptian sword. The picture is easy to imagine; the people are complaining, crying out, and cursing. God speaks above the rabble and tells Moses to get a move on. There is a time for talking and a time for action. God tells Moses to take that stick of wood, that simple shepherd’s staff, raise it above the sea, and behold the Glory of the Lord. The Angel of the Lord took his position behind the people, between them and the Egyptian army. The cloud, filled with the presence and power of God, moved behind them as well. Everyone was in position.
“Then Moses raised his hand over the sea and the Lord opened up a path through the water with a strong east wind. The wind blew all that night turning the seabed into dry ground. So the people of Israel walked through the middle of the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on each side!”
The rest of the story is well known. The best estimate is that it took an entire night to cross the sea on dry ground. After the crossing was complete, it is believed that the Angel of the Lord released the Egyptian army, and they pursued their slaves. Once they were fully in the sea on the same dry ground, and Moses was on the other side, God confused the Egyptians and destroyed their chariots. Then Moses raised his staff once more, and the great sea collapsed in on the Egyptians, and they perished.
Walking through the night
Let us consider what the average Israelite was thinking, walking for several hours through the night across the Red Sea. You are the mother of three children, you are weary, you have been very worried, but near you is your firstborn son, and he is alive! The Angel of Death passed over your bloody door, which seems to be the most important fact. It had taken a week to get to this point, and you thought many times that you might die. There was fear and chaos, and the gloom that drifted over all the people. You were way back, you couldn’t hear much, and there were so many people. But when your husband said, “Let’s go,” you picked up everything and moved. It was a while before you noticed you were not only walking on dry ground, but between walls of water. It was a marvel, your heart was pounding, and you gathered your children closer around you. Reaching the other side was a great relief, but the Egyptians were still coming. It all was just too much, but you had seen enough to confirm your belief in your God. When the water covered your enemies, you worshipped and rejoiced.
Little did any of the people realize what was to come. Forty years of wilderness wandering. They would test God, and God would test them, and finally, neither Moses, Aaron, the elders, nor the men of that generation would be allowed into the Promised Land. It would be a time of great victories and great defeats. The early victories, the Passover, and the Red Sea laid the foundation. Whether it be two million people or just one person, there is a great truth to acknowledge: “You can throw human nature out the door, but it will crawl back in through the window.” We all must take this journey; may we obey and not take so long.
Bill Hull
Reporting from the Red Sea.
[1] Exodus 14:28 & 14:31 NLT.
[2] Genesis 12:1-3.
[3] John 16:33
[4] Exodus 14:3,4 NLT.
[5] Glory is all that God is and all that God has. The price God paid was his life in his son, Jesus.
[6] An actual theory, it does not occur to them that two million people lugging their stuff with their animals might have a tough time crossing an ankle or knee-deep sea for miles and miles, or how the Egyptian Army perished in water not even up to their horses’ bridles.
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Outstanding series. Got me thinking in all kinds of new directions. Thank you, Pastor Bill. You’re a SUPERgenius (a little nod to Roadrunner and Coyote).
I sure do enjoy your writing and for some reason, today especially.