One of my favorite pictures is one that comes in chapter 4. The Israelites have been freed from the hand of Pharaoh through the passover, but he changes his mind and decides to pursue them once again. God leads them to what seems to be the classic "rock and hard place" with the sea behind them and Pharaoh's army coming at them.
Have you ever been backed into a corner? Either when you were little when the bullies trapped you near the bathroom or when you were older and backed into a moral corner? I imagine there have been times like that in your life when you look behind you, and there’s a wall and in front of you and there’s a threat. You’re trapped. Any way you move seems like bad decision. What’s your natural reaction when you get backed into a corner? Psychologists will say that the natural reactions for most people are fight or flight, right? Oh sure, there are times when we just want to slump down next to that wall, lay our head in our hands, cry, call for our mommies, and just give up. So OK, three reactions: fight, flee, or sob. What do you do when either you or someone else paints you into a corner? Maybe another response is, “Why am I so stupid? I can’t believe I let myself get into this situation.” I’ve had that before, haven’t you? Or how about this one, “I can’t believe they put me in this situation! I thought they were my friends. Well, forget them!” Blame is another reaction. Fight, flee, sob, self-blame, and blaming others. There are probably others, too. What do you do?
I want you to notice a certain progression in this story. Early on in the story verse 10 of chapter 14, Exodus says that the Israelites were “terrified.” You’d be scared silly, too. Here they are a rag-tag band of over-worked slaves lead on foot by a guy with a speech impediment being chased by the largest, richest army in the world of their time on chariots and horses. They were truly terrified that day, looking death straight in the eye. But then Moses, good old Moses speaks clearly through his impediment to the rag-tag bunch of ragamuffins: “Don’t be afraid,” he says, as if he can’t see what’s right in front of them or as if he’s gone mad. “Don’t be afraid,” he pleads with them, but “Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today.”
We’re told that the people are hemmed in, behind and before: Egyptians behind, the Red Sea before them. They’re outflanked. They’re stuck and powerless. We see later during the desert wanderings that the reaction of the Israelites here is quite typical. They complain. They complain about the food, they complain about the weather, they complain about their leadership, and they complain that they don’t have bright and shiny fertility gods like their neighbors. They quickly attached blame, too, but never on themselves. They blamed Moses and Aaron, they blamed the nations around them, and more than anything, they blamed God.
The Israelites are backed up into a corner: the Egyptians are pursuing from behind and the Sea is ahead of them. But if we back up a bit, the interesting thing about this story is that God seems not only to have allowed them to be backed into a corner, but he sets it up. Look at this:
“When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, ‘If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.’ So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea.” [Exodus 13:17-18]
If you look at the map, you’ll see this clearly. The land of the Philistines was the southern coast of the Mediterranean sea, and there were probably already trade routes during Moses’ time from Egypt up into Palestine. But instead of taking the route to the Promise Land along the sea – a much shorter route by hundreds of miles – God leads the Israelites to the Southeast and down into what today is known as Saudi Arabia. Now don’t think for a minute that God doesn’t know what he’s doing. Sure, he’s avoiding the Philistines because he knows that if the Israelites immediately face trouble, they’ll quit and head back to slavery. So instead, he makes them go much further without trouble so that it’s harder to go back. He lets them go all the way to the Red Sea and then allows them to be backed into a corner. In a sense what he’s doing is biding time – giving the Israelites a little more time before they face and even greater enemy.
The writer of Exodus says that God does this for a purpose. Chapter 14 in the beginning tells us that God commands Moses to have the people stop and camp by the Sea. He will have Pharaoh come after them there. And then he tells us why. God says, “’I will gain glory for myself through Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD.’ So the Israelites did this.” They camped there. Now this is amazing to me that it doesn’t occur to them right away. They’re camping, building fires, making s’mores, and fixing their sandals, and then we read, “As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the LORD.” What did they think was going to happen? Did they really think they were going to march right out of trouble and into paradise? But again, the interesting thing here is that God put them into this corner. He led the Israelites here to a place where they were helpless, boxed in, stuck. God backed them into a corner, and lead them there for his purpose.
Sometimes God does that, believe it or not. He draws us or directs us to the place where we are powerless in order to show us his power. Exodus says that He sets the Israelites up for a purpose which includes at least three reasons::
- For the sake of the Israelites and their faith
- For his own glory
- So the Egyptians will know by this display of power that he is the Lord
So here are the Israelites, backed into a corner. Sea on one side and army on the other, and their reaction is blame. They cry out to Moses, “weren’t there graves in Israel we could’ve been buried in that we had to walk all the way out here and be slaughtered? It would have been better to be slaves and serve the Egyptians then die out here.”
Ok, fair enough. It seems they have a point.
That happens in life, doesn’t it? We get stuck in a difficult spot. We get behind in our finances or stuck in a messed up relationship, we lose a job or our friends let us down, we fail a test or we fail our parents and we don’t know what to do. Then God steps in and miraculously brings grace and heals us and leads us out of Egypt and out of captivity and we rejoice that God has been so good to us. We’re barely recovering from the partying and WHAM, we hit the wall. We feel like we’re back where we started. We’re hemmed in, behind and before. We’re backed up against a wall again and we cry out to God, “Why did you do that to me? Why did you save me from that last thing only to have to have this happen? What are you doing, God? Am I some kind of Yo-Yo?”
God answers the question in the same way he did before:
- I’m teaching you something.
- I’m revealing my glory.
- I’m teaching something to those who are watching.
Moses speaks wise words here. He says first, “Don’t be afraid.” That phrase occurs over 365 times in the Bible – one for each day maybe. Unlike the Israelites, Moses has learned this lesson. He’s been backed into a corner more than a second-rate boxer. Moses remembers the past deliverance and out of the faith drawn from his past experience he says, “Don’t be afraid. Stand firm.” And then he gives them a promise, “You will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today… The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”
God is often saying in these times, “Trust me. Don’t be afraid. I put you in this situation, and I’ll get you out of it. Sit still and wait for me.”
You’ve been backed into a corner. You’re afraid. You don’t know what to do. You certainly don’t want to sit still. You want to fight or flee or sob or complain or blame someone. Listen to these words: God may have led you here to teach you something, to reveal his glory, and to teach the others who are watching you who don’t know him. Stand firm and still and trust the Lord.
Then, there's another great line... The Lord says to Moses: “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on.” We're not called to sit and wait forever. But think about the situation: “Uh, excuse me? Move on? Are you blind, God? There’s an army here and a Sea there – we can’t move on! It’s easy for you to say, you’re God.”
The Israelites at this point are so scared that they’re immobilized. They can’t move because they’re afraid. They’re so afraid, so stuck, so fearful of making the wrong move that it paralyzes them. Ever been there? But God says move, and you say, “I can’t.” Then a wonderful thing happens here in the story. The cloud moves behind and before the people and envelops them. This may sound cheesy, but God surrounds the people in a cosmic hug of assurance. He protects them physically and comforts them with his power and presence in the midst of their enemies. How beautiful is that? How beautiful is it that when you are backed into a corner, surrounded by all these things pressing in, God reaches out and embraces you in strength, comfort, assurance, and love.
But God doesn’t say “move on,” give them a hug, and then leave them hanging. He says “move on” and then tells them how, gives them his power. God says that when he allows you to be backed into a corner, it is for his glory and so that you and those around will know that he is the Lord. This is the strange truth of the Scripture: God allows us to be backed into corners, be shackled by sin, be visited by pain and suffering, be broken and hurt so that he can reveal his love to us, reveal his glory to us, and reveal his name to those around us. God allows to fall into the need of his deliverance so his power to deliver can be made known. But the glory of God’s deliverance cannot be made known to you or anyone else around if you forget. The Israelites forgot about being freed from Egypt. They forgot about the plagues and the demonstrative power of God. And the glory of God’s deliverance cannot be made known to you or anyone else around if you are silent. It is at this moment that God shows up in one of the greatest shows of deliverance in all of history, second only to the deliverance Jesus offers from the cross. In fact the Exodus story becomes the prototype for God’s salvation and the word-picture for our baptism. Then the story ends with this phrase, “The people feared the Lord and put their trust in him…”
“Faith” is just another word for “trust”. To have faith in someone is to trust him or her. To have faith in God is to trust him. Faith is about a relationship of trust. For the Israelites, when they looked at Pharaoh’s army and freaked out, they weren’t in a strong place of trust at that moment. Moses may have trusted the Lord, but the people didn’t quite get it. They were terrified, afraid for their lives. But Moses tells them not to be afraid because they can trust God. And as the story unfolds we see that what began in fear ended in faith. Terrified in the presence of their enemies, the Israelites become a people who can trust the Lord because they see his mighty works. In fact the story ends saying, “the people feared the LORD and put their trust in him.” What does it mean to fear the Lord? Well it’s a different kind of fear than we normally think of. It means simply to worship God because of his power in a way that leads to trusting him even in times when we feel backed into a corner. It means that there is nothing else to fear because God is more powerful than anything we could possibly be afraid of. It means that we stand in awe at the power and capacity of this God we worship and trust him with our lives.
When we worship the Lord because we see his powerful acts, his ruthless goodness, and his fierce love on our behalf, we can have faith to trust him with our lives. That kind of fear is the beginning of all knowledge and wisdom.
When we see the Lord for who he is,
When we see ourselves in relationships of need
with God as our only salvation,
And when we then place our trust firmly in him,
then we have begun to walk the journey of true knowledge and wisdom.
When we operate our lives out of fear for the enemy,
we incapacitate ourselves from true faith.
But when we “fear” the Lord
by worshipping him for his great acts,
then we are opened up to a freedom from fear and being afraid
because we can trust in him to lead and guide us, to protect and preserve us.
For the Israelites, the key to true and free living was in trusting the Lord, the God who is worthy of awe and fear because of his amazing power exerted on our behalf because of his love for us. For us, the same is true. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and its end is faith, trusting that he will take care of us, even when we are backed into a corner. Next time you're there, pay attention, it may be God himself who lead you there to teach you and the people around something about his glory.
