Nowhere To Turn

No Where to Turn

(Ex. 14:5-31)

Intro: This is my 1st Bible (Hold up 1st Bible).

Do you know that difference between this Bible and yours is…well…it says the same thing; it’s the word of God…however this Bible is really special to me.

Before I was a Christian – years before, my grandfather gave me this Bible.

My grandpa was a very special guy to me…

He prayed all my life that I would become a Christian. He never would get off the phone without saying, “Scott, I wish you’d start going to church.”

I would dismiss it and say, “OK, grandpa, I’ll think about it.”

I’d go back to my business and not even think about it.

I could have cared less about God.

I re-found it in my office the other day, and I begin to flip through it…and I was blown away.

I am what some will call and “active reader” meaning I highlight everything, I write notes in the margins, I write questions, I don’t know why – I just do.

That’s what makes this Bible so incredible to me…the things I highlighted are from a time when I had NO idea about the Bible…I had no clue about church, I had no clue about anything…but these highlights represent my first glimpses into the amazing, incredible, and all-sufficient heart of our God.

This was the Bible I read when I had no bias and it was a very rough time in my life.

It was literally the first time I read Scripture…how I miss those days…don’t you?

One of the 1st stories I ever highlighted was the story of Moses.

Even if you’re not a Christian or a Jew, everybody knows all about Moses.

It’s captivated people for millennia…it even captured the great director Cecil B. Demille in 1956 to direct the epic The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston…you know, the “Let my people go…” guy.

So the story of the Exodus is familiar to all of us.

However, just like everything, things can become so familiar that we forget about the little details that make the Scriptures so amazing and life-changing!

Before we get started we need to get an important point: In the Exodus the hero is not Moses, church.

The hero is God.

It is by His design and His power that the Jewish nation is set free from 400 years of slavery to Egypt.

God is the hero – God has the final say – and no matter what, our God is in control, church!

I want to fill you in a little on the background going on here.

This is paraphrasing btw, b/c for time’s sake we can’t read the whole book.

So a baby gets hidden in a basket in the reeds while there is a period of ethnic cleansing going on by Pharaoh’s order b/c the Hebrews are too prosperous.

They are having too many babies…can’t have an uprising, you know.

Pharaoh orders the death of all boys…

So a lady has a boy and puts him in a basket.

His name was Moses, who, because Pharaoh’s daughter picked him up was in line to possibly be the next Pharaoh, and then found out he was a Hebrew and killed a guy for mistreating the slaves, then didn’t want to be Egyptian anymore and ran out to the desert and became a shepherd with his father-in-law, Jethro…no he didn’t move to Kentucky.

He hangs out there for about forty years, and then God calls him by way of a burning bush. He tells Moses that He’s going to go back to Egypt and face down the Pharaoh, who btw is Ramses, who is basically a brother to Moses and demand the release of over 2 million people who sustain the Egyptian economy.

Obviously that didn’t sit too well with Ramses and he says no…a few times – then God sends the 10 plagues, and then the Hebrews are released after Pharaoh loses his only son to the plague of the first born.

During that time the Hebrews are told to get rid of the yeast and consecrate themselves for 7 days, paint the door posts with lamb’s blood so that the angel of death will “Pass Over” them and spare them…thus the Passover.

So, they are told something big is about to happen – something monumental – so big, that they will celebrate it year after year after year.

Think about this – you’ve seen the 10 plagues, you’re seeing the Passover, and you’re ready to let the Egyptians get some payback!

You are literally watching the miraculous hand of God at work…how incredible would that be?

Now we can get to chapter 14

So now, Pharaoh has changed his mind after some friends told him he was an idiot…he’s like “what did I just do?!?!” And so he rallies the army – witch, btw is the largest and most powerful military on the planet at this time, and chases them down.