FROM PANIC TO PRAISE
Exodus 14:5-31
INTRODUCTION
A. HUMOR: HEALTH CARE JOKES
1. Benny got chest pains and went to see his doctor. After examining him, the doctor said,
a. "There are 2 different opinions on how best to treat you. I'm convinced that you need a triple bypass heart operation.”
b. “However, your Gov’t Health Care says all you need is to take this $10 tube of chest ointment and rub it in twice a day."
2. Another guy, Abe, went to see Dr. Myers, his psychiatrist:
a. "Doctor, I need your help in a big way. I feel very suicidal. What should I do?"
b. Dr. replied, "First, You must pay me in advance."
3. Max was crossing over a road & was hit by a bus. He was rushed to the hospital and put in intensive care. A few day’s later, Harry, his best friend, visits him.
a. “So how are things, Max?” Harry asks.
b. “Not good. My wife Leah visits me three times a day.”
c. “So what’s bad about that?” says Harry.
d. “Every time she comes,” replies Max, “she sits at my bedside and reads to me.”
e. “What does she read?” asks Harry.
f. ”My life insurance policy.”
B. TEXT
9 The Egyptians—all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots, horsemen and troops—pursued the Israelites and overtook them as they camped by the sea. 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. 11 They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? 12 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!” 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. 14 The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” 15 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on. 16 Raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water so that the Israelites can go through the sea on dry ground. 30 That day the Lord saved Israel from the hands of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore. 31 And when the Israelites saw the great power the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant. 15:20 Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women followed her, with tambourines and dancing. 21 Miriam sang to them: “Sing to the Lord, for He is highly exalted. The horse and its rider He has hurled into the sea.”
C. THESIS
1. There’s a new Exodus movie coming out that has some amazing special effects. But I can’t recommend it because Hollywood often adds profanity and lewd & inaccurate material.
2. But the opening of the Red Sea is an amazing, awesome story!
3. We’re going to see tonight how God turns our “Panic” situations into celebrations of Praise!
I. A JOYOUS EXODUS
1. Moses was a great man, and a great leader. He’s a great model for all men and fathers today! At this point in the story he has led God’s people from slavery to freedom, and all 2-3 million of them are marching toward the Promised Land.
2. It’s the Exodus from Egypt! “Out of Africa!” Free at last for the first time in over 400 years.
3. The NT confirms this is a picture of our salvation from sin, the wicked taskmaster that seeks to hold us in chains of bondage, bitterness, and burdens.
4. “He set me free, He broke the bonds of prison for me
I’m glory bound, my Jesus to see, and glory to God, He set me free!”
5. They are marching out, ‘high handed’, rejoicing in their new freedom when suddenly they encounter...
a. A shady picnic pavilion? No.
b. A golden city of riches and happiness? No. (That’s where the TV evangelist lives on the monies from the simple minded who believe that’s what the Christian life is all about.)
c. No, they encounter a big brick wall...a problem.
II. GOD LED INTO A PROBLEM: TO TEST THEM
A. CHRISTIANS TOO HAVE PROBLEMS
1. Have you discovered yet that being saved doesn’t insulate nor isolate you from the problems of this sin cursed world?
2. For those who insist on believing salvation is the end to problems I say, ok, but it’s the front end!
3. Struggles and difficulties continue, and oft times increase when you get saved, for now you have a new enemy coming after you! Pharaoh is a picture of Satan pursuing his losses.
B. WHEN GOD LEADS THE WRONG WAY
1. The Christian life is not lived in straight lines. God deals us detours along the way, and they are for our benefit.
2. A straight line from Egypt to Canaan would have been about 150 miles NE and would take less than 2 weeks to traverse. But God takes them SE...the long way around.
3. 13:21 The glory cloud seems to be leading in the wrong direction, though. The same happens to all of us.
4. We have a goal, a destination in our mind, some place we want to go, something we want to become or achieve. Sometimes we even know that God is in it and wants us to get there, but we just can’t understand why it’s taking so long. Can you relate?
C. PURPOSES IN DETOURS
1. God’s delays are not denials. Don’t be discouraged if God has you on a detour route...He knows what He’s doing! “My Lord knows the way thru the wilderness...all I have to do is follow!”
2. Another lesson: God knows what we can handle. If He led them in the straight line to Canaan, they would have
passed right thru the land of the Philistines, brutal warriors who were blood thirsty. But God’s people weren’t ready for that. They weren’t seasoned warriors, they were slaves w/ no weapons of war.
3. As if this detour isn’t enough, God then leads them right to the banks of the Red Sea, just as the Egyptian Army is sent to pursue them.
4. Now they’re hemmed in and pinned down. There’s no way out. Mountains of either side of them, a sea in front of them, and Pharaoh’s military is fast approaching. It’s a dead end. Their back is against the wall.
5. Ever been there? Their problem now causes…
III. THE PEOPLE’S REACTION: PANIC
A. MOSES’ LEADERSHIP QUESTIONED
1. 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. 11 They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? 12 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!” Ex. 14:10-12.
2. “Thanks a lot, Moses. And, um, we told you so! But you wouldn’t listen. ‘Let my people go!’ You just had to have your way...and now we’re all going to die!”
3. They’re questioning Moses’ leadership. God had used him to lead them to freedom from slavery, and now they’re questioning his ability to hear from God and do the right thing.
4. But God had seasoned Moses for such a time as this. While they are speaking words of fear, Moses speaks words of faith...
B. REAL PROBLEM: FEAR
1. “Fear not.” It’s the same thing the…
a. …angel said to the virgin Mary when she learned she was with child.
b. …Jesus said to His disciples in their little boat in the midst of a great storm.
c. …angel said to Mary Magdalene when she was baffled at Jesus’ body missing from His tomb.
2. To each of these God was saying, “You may not understand your circumstances right now, but don’t worry, I’m still in control!”
3. Ill.—Someone has said there’s 366 times the Bible admonishes us not to fear, and if that’s true, there’s one for every day of the year, including during a leap year!
4. HUMOR. A little boy had 1 line to deliver in the church play, but his knees were knocking back stage. He just had to walk out and say, “It is I, be not afraid”. He walked out and saw the big crowd and said, “It’s me, and I’m scared!”
5. Fear is when we can’t see God thru our circumstances.
Faith is when we see our circumstances...but thru God!
6. They looked left and right, front and back, and there was no way out. But there’s still another direction to look...and that’s up!
7. I believe God wants our backs against the wall sometimes so we’ll do just that. You see, He gives water to those who are thirsty, not full. He heals the sick, not those who are well.
IV. GOD’S 2 COMMANDS IN CRISIS:
A. “STAND STILL!”
1. We don’t like to be told to wait, do we? We want to do something. We want to try to help God out, or help ourselves out.
2. Just standing still is unthinkable in our society today. The most popular words in advertising today are: Now, Instant, Immediate, Fast.
3. I can take my car title or even a post dated check down here to a place and get some ‘Fast Cash’ for the low APR of just 350%! I can get my oil changed at ‘Fast Lane’.
4. I can eat ‘Fast Food’ and go pick up my ‘Fast Photos’ during that hour. To pay for it all I can get another advance at ‘Fast Tax’ and if I want, maybe even pick up a Fast Woman!
5. We don’t like to wait. If someone is ahead of us in line, we are pacing. No wonder the concept of waiting on God is foreign to us. But the Bible says...
6. Psalms 27:14 ; “Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.
7. Waiting on the Lord is when we quietly and calmly trust Him until He provides clear direction. It’s the opposite of panic. It’s different than trying to fix things or make things happen.
8. Ill.—A pastor who was given a new car. He had a nice one already, and could have sold it, but he had a family in the church whom he knew needed a car. He purposed in his heart to give it to them. But before he got to them they went out and got a loan they couldn’t afford because they ‘had to have a car’. If they had just waited and prayed, God had a plan in the works for them!
B. STAND & SEE YOUR SALVATION!
1. When our back is against the wall is when God does His very best work. “Man’s extremities are God’s opportunities!”
2. Notice that this miracle came in 3 stages:
a. DIVERTED THE GLORY CLOUD. Vss. 19-20. The cloud moved behind them like a wall between them and their enemies. And He’s not only our Savior, He’s also our protector! David in the Psalms said He’s my high tower, my refuge, my shield, my defense. No weapon formed against me shall prosper.
b. DIVIDED THE WATERS. Vss. 21-22.
HUMOR.-- Nine-year-old Joey was asked by his mother what he had learned in Sunday School. Well, Mom, our teacher told us how God sent Moses behind enemy lines on a rescue mission to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. When he got to the Red Sea, he had his engineers build a pontoon bridge, and all the people walked across safely. He used his walkie-talkie to radio headquarters and call in an air strike. They sent in bombers to blow up the bridge and all the Israelites were saved.
"Now, Joey, is that REALLY what your teacher taught you?" his mother asked. Well, no, Mom, but if I told it the way the teacher did, you’d never believe it!
I don’t have a problem believing in this miracle. God made the sea and the dry ground under the water. The liberals say, “No, the water was only a few inches deep.”
Well then God did an even bigger miracle in drowning the entire Egyptian army in ankle deep water! Can you imagine being there for this great miracle?!
c. DROWNED THE EGYPTIANS. Vss. 23-28 Pharaoh was reaping what he had sowed. For what was it that Pharaoh had done to all the male Jewish babies? Drowned them! “Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap!”
CONCLUSION
A. ILLUSTRATION: DESTRUCTIVE BOMB PRODUCES MUCH DESIRED SPRING!
1. In 1944, a farmer from Sussex, England wrote to the Scripture Gift Mission enclosing a five-shilling ($1.25) offering. The Scripture Gift Mission was involved in placing Scripture posters in bomb shelters and providing troops with Christian literature.
2. In his letter, the farmer requested prayer that no bombs should drop on his small farm. His previous harvest had not been good, and Sussex was experiencing a drought. His farm was very dry and he was forced to buy water.
3. The secretary of the Mission wrote back and said he could not ask that no bombs would fall on his property, but instead he would pray that God's will might be done.
4. In June 1944, Hitler unleashed the V1 rockets on England. One of these landed on the man's farm. It broke all his windows, but no one was hurt.
5. The explosion was so big that it went down very deep and unearthed a spring. The spring not only watered his farm well, but it enabled him to let others have water too.
6. Grateful for a very good harvest, and the farmer sent a fifty-pound check to the Scripture Gift Mission as a thanksgiving offering.
B. THE CALL
1. Maybe your back is against the wall. Be encouraged, fear not, stand still, and see what God can do. God didn’t deliver His people from slavery only to drown them when they were cornered. And God didn’t save you only to forget about you now.
2. “Got any rivers that seem uncrossable?
Got any mountains you can’t tunnel through?
God specializes in things thought impossible.
And He knows a thousands ways to make a way for you!”
3. The problem and the panic led to this miracle and then the praise followed, which we’ll look at tonight, along w/ your testimonies.
4. What Red Sea has God brought you thru?
What mountainous barriers hem you in? Do you have enemies pursuing you?
[This is a reworked version of “Back Against the Wall” by Jerry Shirley]
