Sermon Transcript
Let’s pray together.
Father, we love you. Lord, we are here to find you, maybe.
Or maybe we want more of you, Lord.
We all need more of you.
I pray that you would meet us here. That you would be real in our hearts, that your presence would transform us today.
We pray those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
The Egyptians had enslaved the Israelites. Pharaoh, king of Egypt, was a cruel lord who demanded more and more and more. So the Israelites cried out to God. They cried out to the God who had once spoken, they remembered, to their ancestor Abraham. They were clinging to the memory that this God had once orchestrated the survival of their people from severe famine through a bizarre set of circumstances.
Maybe this God could orchestrate another bizarre set of circumstances for them at this time. Maybe instead of providing food in a foodless land like he had before, maybe this God could provide freedom from the most powerful tyrant on the planet. Maybe.
They hoped. They cried. They waited.
Little did they know a rescue plan was already in place, but it didn’t feel like a rescue plan. It felt like the darkest and worst kind of oppression. Pharaoh had decreed all male Israelite babies were to be killed by throwing them into the Nile River. Panic must have erupted in every Hebrew home. Every pregnant woman must have started praying for a girl.
Please don’t let me have a boy. I can’t see my baby die. Being a slave is bad enough. Having our sons murdered would be unimaginable. How could God allow something like this?
There was one mother who was so motivated to save her baby boy, she put him in a floating basket in the River Nile and hoped beyond hope for the best. The best is exactly what happened. The daughter of Pharaoh, the daughter of the tyrant, saw this baby, had compassion on him, and adopted him as her own. The villain King Pharaoh must have had a soft spot for his daughter. Look what I found in the river, Daddy!
Can I keep him? We could imagine her asking. The most powerful man in the world was apparently powerless against that kind of request from his daughter. It worked. She kept him.
She named him Moses. Moses would grow up in Pharaoh’s house. So once again, through a bizarre set of circumstances, God had arranged for an Israelite to have access to the highest levels of government in Egypt. Eventually, one day, God tells Moses, we are going to use your access. God says to Moses, go to Pharaoh, Exodus 7:2.
You are to say everything I command you, and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of his country. But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders throughout Egypt, he will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt, and with mighty acts of judgment I will bring out my divisions, the people, the Israelites. And the Egyptians will know I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring Israel out of it. Moses obeyed God.
He probably walked past the guards who probably would have stopped any other Israelite. And he delivered the message God gave him. But just as God said, Pharaoh did not listen. Therefore, just as God had promised, he increased his signs and wonders. He brought plague after plague after plague on Egypt, devastating their economy, their health, and the faith they had in all their gods.
They worshiped the Nile River, so God turned it to blood, showing he had power over the Nile River. They worshiped the sun, so God blocked out its light, showing he had power over the sun. They worshiped the sky, so God brought destructive hail from the sky, showing he was the one who controlled the weather and not their sky god. Everywhere the Egyptians had placed their hope, whether it was those gods or gods of fertility, gods of prosperity, God showed himself as superior and sovereign. It’s exactly what we just read in verse 5.
The Egyptians will know who is the Lord when he stretches out his hand. God is saying through the plagues, Pharaoh isn’t Lord. I’m the one who holds his heart. The sun isn’t Lord. I can do with it as I wish.
Nothing you think is Lord is Lord. I am the Lord. I am King. I am Sovereign. I am God.
Pharaoh still didn’t let the Israelites go.
To Pharaoh, the Godhood of God was still not clear enough. At one point, Pharaoh had asked Moses, Exodus 5:2, who is the Lord that I should obey him? Who is this guy that I should pay any attention to him at all? God was giving Pharaoh the answer, but the totality of God’s Godness was still a question in Pharaoh’s mind.
So God brought the most severe of all the plagues, the plague on the firstborn. Just as Pharaoh had decreed to put to death all male Hebrew babies, So God decreed, just like Pharaoh, the firstborn son in every household in Egypt shall die.
I know our modern sensibilities want to reject a God who would strike down babies. I know. I’m very aware of that. We think, If God would send his angel of death to all the babies in a country, then I don’t want to have anything to do with a God like that. I get it.
I hear people say that, and I think, that makes sense.
But I’m not going to water this down for us. I can’t.
Exodus 12:29. At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on the throne to the firstborn of the prisoner who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well.
The Lord struck them down.
You may want to ask, are you sure, dude who wrote Exodus? That would be Moses. Are you sure Like the angel of death didn’t go rogue, or it wasn’t some natural disaster that God tried to stop, but for some reason God couldn’t stop? He was looking the other way, his hands were tied behind his back. Are you sure somehow, in some way, this was not God’s plan?
Couldn’t that be the story?
No.
This is clear.
The Lord struck them down.
I know this is uncomfortable, but I actually want to push this on us because here’s the deal: we essentially have the same decision as the Egyptians.
Are we going to surrender to a God like that, or are we going to rebel against a God like that?
Will we lay aside our delusions about who or what is actually in control and worship him who is? Or are we going to keep our delusions like the Egyptians did and resist him? Will we question him? Will we doubt his power like the Egyptians did? Or will we bow to him?
See, if we say, I don’t want to have anything to do with a God like that, we’ve just volunteered ourselves into the place of Egypt in this story. That’s exactly what Egypt said. I’m not going to listen to your God. I don’t need a God like that in my life. I’m not going to respect a God like that.
If that’s what God’s like, well then, Egypt said, forget God.
And they were destroyed.
If that’s what we say, we will be destroyed too.
How about this? If God’s power and absolute sovereignty aren’t enough to get us to bow, maybe his love will be enough. His love, you ask? What are you talking about, love? We’re talking about striking down firstborns here.
That’s not love. Love? Yeah, his love. What if we consider this same God would also not spare his own Son, but struck down his own firstborn so that we may live. Just as God struck down Egyptian sons to buy freedom for the Israelites, so God would strike down Jesus to buy us punishment— to buy us freedom from the punishment of our sin.
Just, just as he He gave his own Son the punishment that we deserve. Just as the death of Egypt’s sons released Israel from the tyranny of Pharaoh, so the death of God’s Son releases us from the tyranny of sin, so we are slaves to it no longer, or don’t have to be. But what if we consider, even with the amount of unimaginable— and let’s face it, there must have been unimaginable weeping that happened in Egypt of Egypt’s sons, even with that amount of despair, there was even more wailing over the loss of heaven’s Son.
So yes, he is the God that would strike down Egyptian sons to free Israel and to show his power as absolute. He is that God. I will not manipulate the text to say otherwise.
But he’s also the God that struck down his own Son for you.
His wrath and his terror are unmatched, and at the same time, his love for you is unmatched. His love is a cataclysmic kind of love, a nuclear detonation kind of love. It’s an utterly otherworldly, can’t look at it without melting kind of love. Kind of love. His love matches the magnitude of his terror, and he’s willing to embrace you with it.
You don’t have to be Egypt in this story.
Surrender to him. Give your life to Christ, and you can be Israel in this story.
So the question for us again is, Will we surrender to him or will we fight him?
Pharaoh oddly did both. He first said, go get your Israelites out of here. I give up. But after they left, he changed back into the same old Pharaoh. He said, saddle up the army.
We’re going to go after them. Have you experienced that? You have a moment of clarity with God, you’ve suddenly risen out of the fog, and you can see what you’re supposed to do, and you’re actually motivated to do it. You’re gonna start doing something God wants you to do, or you’re gonna stop doing something God doesn’t want you to do. Maybe, maybe in this series something has pricked your heart listening to a sermon or reading your daily workbook, and you think, Okay, I’m really going to do this.
But then it doesn’t happen. Students, maybe in the summer when you’ve gone to camp, or for the rest of us, we remember camp, right? While you’re there, everything is obvious. You know what you’ll do different when you get home. It’s clear.
But then you return home, and the fog descends.
Or for any of us, maybe we know we need to end a relationship. We’re motivated to do it. We promise ourselves we’re gonna have the conversation and cut it off for good, but then we see that person and we’re right back to same old Pharaoh. It’s pretty common. So before we throw Pharaoh under the bus for being a moron fighting against the all-powerful God, Maybe we should take a little bit longer look at ourselves.
So Pharaoh and his army pursue Israel all the way to the Red Sea. God has led Israel the long way through the desert to get to the Red Sea, even though there is a shorter way directly through Philistine territory. God does this because he says, Exodus 13, if they face war, if the Israelites face war, they may change their minds and return to Egypt. So I’m gonna take them the long way around to get there. This is significant because it shows God knows exactly how much we can handle.
He knows exactly how and where to push us to get us to exactly where he wants us to be. We say a lot in church, you’ve probably said it, or in Christian circles I’ve said it, that God won’t give us more than we can handle. Have you said that? And I always kind of wonder, well, people die, right? From illness or even starvation.
I mean, that happens. That’s really a thing. So did they get more than they could handle? Or people get overloaded, right? They have mental breakdowns.
Sometimes people need to be admitted to psychiatric hospitals. That happens. That happens to Christians. Good, solid, wonderful Christians. That happens.
Did they get more than they could handle? What are we talking about when we say God won’t give us more than we could handle? Here’s what we really should mean. God won’t give me anything that will prevent his purpose for me. He will give me exactly what I need to get me to where he wants me to be.
If he wants me by the Red Sea and he knows taking me through Philistine territory will make me turn around, he’s gonna take me another way. If he wants to free us from an idol of materialism and he knows if he takes us through bankruptcy that’ll get us there, he’ll do it. If he wants us to be more loving, he might put people in our lives who are super loving, or he might put people in our lives who are super unloving so that we see how important it is to be loving. Or he might do both. He’s going to tailor-make our experiences to get us to exactly where he wants us to be, and he’s not going to give us anything to make us end up anywhere else.
He has your heart, and he’s going to keep it on track for his purpose with— for you. So he has Israel by the Red Sea, and the Egyptians are barreling down on them. Pharaoh is coming with, the text says, 600 of his best chariots. That’s like the F-22 of the ancient world. It is the most technologically advanced fighting machine conceived to date, and he’s bringing 600 of them, plus all the other chariots, however many that is.
Israel is trapped up against the Red Sea. And it’s not like the Israelites were all trained, battle-ready soldiers. They were a whole community of people. So there were babies, there were grandmas and grandpas, and there were everyone in between. So I don’t know about your family, right?
I mean, I love my infant son, but he’s not picking up an axe and fighting off an angry Egyptian. Anytime in the near future, and neither were the Israelite babies. So the nation was horrified. Exodus 14:10, as Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up and there were the Egyptians marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the Lord.
They were looking at their circumstances Their hopeless circumstances, and they were terrified. What they should have done was look to their God. That’s a good lesson for all of us. If you’re in an impossible situation, don’t look at your circumstances. Look to God.
If you’re shaking with fear, wondering, Is my marriage going to survive?
If you’re wondering, is the world going to tailspin into chaos with everything happening in Europe and China and everywhere else? If you are trembling, stop looking at your circumstances. Look to the Lord. Let’s look at the Lord’s track record up until this point in the story. Let’s examine whether Israel should have considered the Lord trustworthy.
But first, he has orchestrated events to give the son of Hebrew slaves access to King Pharaoh. And not just shouting distance access, not crazy prophet, let me hold up a sign as your motorcade drives by access. He’s placed Moses in the very family of Pharaoh. That’s see you every day access. That’s I know what you smell like access.
That’s, I know your tickle spots access. So that— God did this so that someday when he wanted to get his people out, he had someone who could walk in the front door and deliver his message. Have you considered where you are and who you are is not a mistake?
That who you sit next to in the office or classroom is not random chance? And even if you have had something as crazy and wild as being abandoned in a river when you were an infant, that it was all part of God’s design?
What if instead of feeling like some kind of scared, powerless victim to circumstance, you felt like God had a special purpose for you with who you are, and where you are right now. What would that do to your fear?
Next, God shows himself sovereign over Pharaoh’s heart. We’re just continuing with God’s track record here. He shows himself sovereign over Pharaoh’s heart. So let me just ask you, are you ever scared of what your boss will say to you?
Scared about what some world leader will do next?
Worried if your friend who carries all your secrets will spill your secrets?
Anything keep you up at night?
We need to remember who holds their hearts.
Proverbs 21:1 says, the king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord. He turns it wherever he will.
God is holding the heart of the one you fear, and he is trustworthy.
Next, God has complete control over the weather, the animals, all natural phenomena, even life and death. The point of all this, the point of his track record, The point of this sermon, many of us learned it as a song when we were little. We could have just sung it and been done to begin with. He’s got the whole world in— this is why I don’t sing— in his hands. He’s got the whole world in his hands.
Right? The first service sang with me. Thanks, guys. He’s got the whole world Right, except for maybe the thing that I’m afraid of.
Maybe he doesn’t have that in his hands.
That’s not it. That’s not the song.
That’s not the evidence from the track record that we’ve been investigating. It really is the whole world. He has all life events in his hands, down to what time of day Pharaoh’s daughter went to the river to take a bath.
He has everything in his hands. The thing you’re afraid of, in his hands. You want to know how to face your fears?
You trust the one who holds them in his hands. You can stare your fear in the face and say, yes, you are terrifying, but I know who holds your leash. I trust the one you answer to. If he says sit, you will sit. If he says roll over, you will roll over.
If he says turn to a pile of dust, you are turning to a pile of dust. He holds you. I trust him so I can face you.
That’s how you face your fears.
So after already swallowing a big dose of God’s sovereignty, I mean, Israel saw these events firsthand, right? They witnessed them with their own eyeballs, and they’re now backed up against the Red Sea. You have to wonder if all approximately 2 million of them were scared stiff. Was there anyone who was like, okay team, um, I know we have nowhere to go. Obvious.
Um, the most powerful army in the world is going to be here any minute with intent to annihilate us. True. And we basically have Grandma and shovels to fight them with. I know. But we have God too.
He’s brought us this far. He specifically did not take us through Philistine territory because he knew we couldn’t handle it. So he must want us here. He must think being right here is a good place for us to be. So, so I think it’s gonna be okay.
Call me crazy. You think anybody was like that? 2 million people. Anybody?
At least one person was. Moses was. Moses says, Exodus 14:13, Moses answered the people, do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again.
The Lord will fight for you. You need only to be still. Then of course you know the story, right? God parts the Red Sea, the Israelites walk across on dry land, Pharaoh and Egypt follow, then God lets go of the water and the Egyptian army all drowns. Then these are verses 30 and 31.
After, after the Israelites see the Egyptians floating up on the shore, then they place their trust in the Lord. Here’s the craziest part for me. Uh, what, suspending the laws of nature wasn’t crazy part for you, Dan? No, not really. I really don’t stumble over that at all.
I just kind of figure if God’s big enough to make the entire universe, um, that a little thing like parting the Red Sea is just kind of easy street for him after that point. The craziest part for me is God says, Hebrews 11:29, by faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land. By, by faith They passed through the Red Sea. So apparently, when the Israelites were looking around saying, crazy dictator behind us with his army, crazy physics happening in front of us with a parted sea and 2 walls of water up the middle, dictator Crazy physics. I, I don’t know if we really have a choice, but, but I guess we’ll go with God.
God sees that and says, way to go!
Even though God didn’t really give them any other option other than to trust him, even though they were completely cornered, even though there was no way out other than trusting God, God still says, count it! That’s faith.
That right there, that desperate, cornered, clinging to a slim chance of something— faith.
Proud of them.
Maybe we think that’s odd, but have you experienced that? Been in a situation where you had no choice but to trust God, so you trusted him? And then you found out, oh my goodness, he’s really there. Like, like you went off to college and you were terrified, but you said, okay God, I’m gonna trust you. I’m gonna walk into my dorm room, don’t know who I’m gonna meet, don’t know what he’s gonna smell like, but I’m going to trust you.
I’m gonna walk into my classroom, not even sure it’s the right classroom, but I’m gonna trust you. Or you moved to a new city and you thought, somehow I’m gonna have to try to find a place to live when the only time I’ve ever been in this city is when I was there for an interview for like a total of 3 hours. Now I have to find a place to live. I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to find friends, let alone have a place to sleep at night, but I trust you, Lord. Or maybe your future, or maybe the future of your job was completely out of your hands, and you were afraid.
But you said, not just with words, but with some kind of internal turning of your heart, you said, I can’t control this, but I know you can, so I trust you.
Maybe it was an illness you didn’t know if you were going to recover from, and you said, From somewhere deep inside of you, you said, no matter the outcome, I’m yours, God. And then something happened. God showed up. You sensed his presence in a way you never had before. It’s almost like the fear pushed you far enough where you stepped off the cliff into trusting God.
And when you stepped off that cliff, you found out there was something out there to stand on. You didn’t fall. Somehow you were supported out there, and you realized, God is really here. You might still be adjusting to the new city, the job or the illness might still be a question mark, but you also know, oh my goodness, I’m actually standing on someone. You know, even if you can’t explain it fully, there is a someone solid out there, and that’s faith.
If you don’t have that, if you aren’t sure there is someone out there to support you when you are afraid, if God is still a question mark for you, or if you just want to increase the faith you already have, Here’s a couple things to consider doing.
Just looking at the text, it seems like this faith was produced in Israel when they were pushed so far to fear. So maybe, maybe this is a bad idea, but maybe you can pray. You can ask God. You say, God, Please corner me.
Faith is this responsive thing that happens in us when God tells us to do something and we respond to what he says. So maybe pray, God, please corner me. Or maybe, because I don’t know if that prayer is really in scripture, so maybe that’s not a good idea, just looking at Israel and when faith happened for them, maybe pray, God, when you corner me, ‘Cause it seems like it’s gonna happen anyway. When you corner me, let that be a faith-activating event. When something happens that makes me so afraid, let that lead me to faith instead of somewhere else.
That could be a dangerous prayer. If you are a parent, and you want your kid to have faith, maybe pray that for your kid. Maybe pray, Lord, corner my child. Or maybe just pray, when you corner my child, let faith happen in my child’s heart. You might ask, doesn’t that mean my kid might get hurt?
Uh, yes. Yes, it does. That might happen. If you challenge yourself to pray that way, you’re, you’re going to find out really quick what you want more for your child: comfort and prosperity, or faith in the Lord.
After praying for God to either give you an event, or just when an event happens, for faith to be produced in you, God may oblige. And an opportunity may come along for you to trust him. So then our action is simply to step off the cliff, respond to what God has said, respond to the opportunity he’s put in front of us. Really, anytime we trust God with something that he’s told us to do, there is a kind of stepping off the cliff involved, whether we’re backed into a corner or not. God has said to do something, our hearts are motivated to follow that leading, and we are responding, and we take that step out there.
So any of the things mentioned in this series or this workbook, if it’s developing a daily quiet time with God when you do not have time for a daily quiet time with God, whether it’s being more generous with your money and charitable giving, if it’s sharing your faith with someone, in any of those things, there is this internal little switch that flips and we say, Okay, I’m going to trust you, Lord, even though I’m scared. So we step off that cliff and we start doing those things and we find out the most bizarre paradox. And if you’ve experienced this paradox, this is just an indicator for you that, hey, yeah, I do actually have faith. That’s good news. We find out the paradox that stepping off the cliff is actually more stable and secure than staying on the cliff.
We find out, I give God time first when I don’t have any time to give God time, and somehow all my stuff gets done anyway. Or we have a lot better attitude about it not getting done, one or the other. We start giving God our money first. We start being more charitable with our giving. And we find out, oh my goodness, somehow our budget balanced.
It’s not like more money came in, or maybe it did, but there’s something about when we are faithful for how God gives and tells us to do finances, we find out, oh, there’s more peace in my budget somehow. Maybe it’s I start treating my spouse how scripture tells me to treat my spouse and Oh my goodness, my marriage gets better. Maybe as we start sharing our faith with our friends and they still want to be our friends, or they might even have questions to follow up with us, and we find out, wow, when I step off the cliff, somehow it’s more stable than being back on the cliff. I’d rather be off the cliff. We say, Oh my goodness, there is really someone out here.
But we will never find that out. We will never say that unless we actually take that step.
The question is, will we?
Let’s pray together.
Father, thank you for being there to catch us.
Thank you for being there to support us. Thank you that you never leave or forsake us, Lord. Thank you for carrying us.
Lord, give us the faith to step out into whatever you have led us to do. Give us the faith to face our fear.
We pray those things in Jesus’ name, amen.
