“THE EXODUS”
(All passed through the sea)
“To Him who smote the Egyptians in their first born,
For His lovingkindness is everlasting,
And brought Israel out from their midst,
For His lovingkindness is everlasting,
With a strong hand and an outstretched arm,
For His lovingkindness is everlasting;
To Him who divided the Red Sea asunder,
For His lovingkindness is everlasting,
And made Israel pass through the midst of it,
For His lovingkindness is everlasting;
But He overthrew Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea
For His lovingkindness is everlasting.”
Psalm 136:10-15
We are all aware, I am certain, how versatile music is in its very nature. Surely, there is nothing new under the sun to sing about, but every year new songs win awards for their various categories, and there seems to be no end of ways to express the emotions of mankind in verse.
In Psalm 136 the song writer boasts of God as Creator, Deliverer and Redeemer. From the creation through the exodus out of Egypt, he gives an account of the majesty and omnipotence of God.
Note that he begins by praising and ascribing glory to God, (Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; ...To Him who alone does great wonders) and ends the same way (Give thanks to the God of Heaven).
But focus for a moment on the third portion of the Psalm; verses 23-25. The psalmist has declared God’s might and wisdom in creation, and His power in delivering the children of Israel. But now the psalm turns personal, and the writer brings the message home with the timeless truth: God is the Redeemer.
“Who remembered us in our low estate”
(For while we were still helpless,
at the right time
Christ died for the ungodly)
“And has rescued us from our adversaries”
(When He had disarmed the rulers and
authorities, He made a public display
of them, having triumphed over them
through Him)
“Who gives food to all flesh”
(Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the
blood of Christ? Since there is one bread,
we who are many are one body; for
we all partake of the one bread)
“Give thanks to the God of Heaven”
(Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!)
Note also that the end of every declaration is a word of praise. “For His lovingkindness is everlasting”
Thus, the psalmist has tied all things together, for every generation of man. All that God has done, all that God will do, springs from His everlasting lovingkindness. “He has not dealt with us according to our iniquities”; quite the contrary, He looked from eternity to eternity, saw our black condition, saw that there was no man to stand in the gap’ “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
God delivered the children of Israel out of Egypt, not because they deserved it, not because they earned the deliverance, not for something they could do later to repay Him, but because He chose them. He chose them to be the vessels of clay through which He would demonstrate His power and His goodness and His mercy; and reveal His great plan of redemption for all who would believe.
The plan was His, the power was His, the purpose was His...the glory is His, now and through eternity.
So it is with us.
“For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren; and who He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.”
The people of Israel had no clue why they were doing what they were doing. They were to pick a common weed dip it in the blood of a lamb and splash it on the doors of their houses, and this was going to save them from destruction!
What foolishness, in the mind of men! What wisdom to the eyes of faith! “By FAITH he kept the passover and the sprinkling of the blood”
My friends, the Bible is written, and in it is all that is necessary to ‘make man wise unto salvation’. But the plan didn’t stop at the end of the written page. Each one of us has a place in the greatest story. Each of us has as much a place in God’s eternal plan as Enoch, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, or any other name in the great script of the ages. Our every step of obedience, however small, furthers the working of His plan. Only eternity will tell our stories. We read theirs now; but ours will be told around the ‘campfires’ of God’s eternal universe. What will our names be then? Will they be changed in accordance with our works in His name, as we so often see in the Old Testament? I don’t know either. But I am confident right down to my socks of this; there is nothing insignificant in the lives of His saints. Whatever He instructs to do, however silly it may seem to the mind of flesh; however paltry or minor we may perceive it to be, it must be done, and it must be done in faith that He, who sees eternity from eternity, “is able to preserve that which we’ve committed to Him”, and will bring us through in triumph just as He did His Obedient Son, whose we are.
Please think of this the next time you find yourself with an opportunity to give an account for the hope that is in you.
Please think of this the next time you have to choose between a worldly comfort or doing God’s will.
Please think of this the next time you find yourself in a position to reach out to a brother or sister with encouragement, service, love.
The children of Israel applied the blood of the lamb to the doors of their houses, called to the kids, went inside and closed the door.
They roasted the lamb, in its entirety.
They prepared the unleavened bread.
They crushed and mixed the bitter herbs.
They girded their loins, kept their sandals on, and ate
in haste, ...but in peace.
At midnight a great cry arose from neighboring Rameses. Wailing, crying, running about in aimless terror.
But in Goshen, not even a dog was heard to bark.
They rested in the promise of God that when He saw the blood He would protect them. The same arm that brought great Egypt to its knees would protect them. They ate in peace and did not go out from under the protection of that blood. They stayed there until the messenger came, from an entirely defeated Pharaoh, to bid them farewell.
“The Lord is a warrior; The Lord is His name!”
Here is another aspect of this account that amazes me. They all obeyed! It has been my experience in life that there is a dissenter in every crowd. As it has been crassly put, “every party has a pooper”. There is a reason that cliché has endured; it’s true! No matter the intrinsic virtues of any idea, the larger the audience the more certain there will be a whiner, a debater, a rebel.
But on the night of God’s Passover, they all obeyed. I believe the Spirit of God moved upon them with the gift of faith to accomplish His ends. Without absolute obedience among these thousands of people, there would have been no type (symbol) in this account, of the security of the believer. I also believe that if one household had failed the scriptures would have revealed them to us. It happened plenty later, in the wilderness. There was Achan, Korah, even Aaron and Miriam. At times, the whole nation erred in their grumbling against Moses (I Cor 10:1-13). But no one erred this night. They were all delivered, they were all brought safely out of Egypt, they were all brought safely through the waters.
This is a type of all true believers in Christ. Not one will be lost. (Not a bone of it was broken. “They saw that He was dead, they did not break His legs”) The body of Christ will come through to the other side complete. God saves to the uttermost.
As morning broke over the horizon, doors slowly opened, people stepped out into the early sunlight, and the moving began. Can you picture it? Perhaps the sounds of wailing and crying could still be heard coming from Rameses, but in Goshen, there was solemn silence as they began to gather goods, load wagons and donkeys, round up livestock. Then the children begin to play, running around the worker’s feet. The dogs are leaping and running with them, someone scolds a child who is underfoot; then little by little neighbor exchanges a word or two with neighbor until, finally, Goshen is filled with excited chatter and scattered laughter, as they realize the magnitude of what has happened and joy fills their hearts!
To the unbeliever, Satan is a hard taskmaster. He would have a man making bricks without straw; toiling and striving to no gain, until his flesh fails him and he lays down in death and eternal separation from the One who could have been his deliverer.
But once a man believes, and obeys, and leaves his slavery to follow Christ, he becomes, not an escapee, not a fugitive, always looking over his shoulder and running away, but “more than a conqueror”; going out in confidence and in the clear light of day, and never looking back. There’s nothing for him behind in a devastated Egypt. Nothing to see but the empty eyes of those who must stay because they refuse to go. In front? Things that “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the mind of men”.
“O, to grace, how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be;
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter
Bind my wand’ring heart to Thee!”
The new nation of Israel moved out from Rameses, to Succoth, then camped in Etham on the edge of the wilderness (Ex 13:20)
Verse 21 says, “And the Lord was going before them in a pillar of cloud by day to lead them on the way, and in a pillar of fire by night to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night.”
This is our first type of the Holy Spirit. Remember, the people have been saved by the shedding of the blood of the lamb. They have placed their trust in that blood to save, and are delivered form their old life, entering into a new life, behind a new leader. From that moment on, the Holy Spirit was with them both to guide and protect; as He is with the believer in Christ. See verse 22:
“He did not take away the pillar of cloud by day,
nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people.”
Now that the people are delivered and made His alone, He comes down to dwell with them. What a God we have!
We hear and teach that when God tore the veil in the temple at Christ’s crucifixion, He opened the way for us to come into His presence. That is an accurate teaching. It is given credence in the quote from Hebrews 10:19,20 above.
I have also heard one preacher say, “When God rent the veil, He did open the way into His presence, but I like to think of it also in this way; that a God who yearned for fellowship with His creation tore the veil that separated us, and rushed out to meet us where we are.”
“And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
Well, the Israelites were about to begin their training in learning God’s presence and protection over them.
Wouldn’t it be nice, now that we belong to Him, to go our merry way without trial or tribulation? Unfortunately, there are those who teach this demonic doctrine.
“Accept Jesus”, they say, as though He waits on the sidelines like a wallflower, hoping we’ll pick Him for our team “Accept Jesus, and when He is in your life, you have His power at your disposal. Speak peace to yourselves; speak health and wealth to yourselves; you can speak in His name and it will come to pass!” Of course, this claim is usually preceded or succeeded by an exhortation to also “speak” a large check toward that preacher’s organization...
We do not have magic mouths. The ‘name-it/claim-it’ doctrine is just what I labeled it above; demonic. It would keep you diametrically opposed to God’s leading and His will in your life. It will accomplish nothing except to enslave you again to Egypt, and the old master’s voice.
Paul tells us in Romans that “...God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” And what is that purpose? It’s in the next verse; “...to become conformed to the image of His Son...”
We would never need a promise that all things will be caused to work together for good, if we could wiggle our noses and make them all good in the first place.
Throw up the fairy dust of man’s foolish doctrines and think all the happy thoughts you can muster, but you won’t fly so far as the bedroom window...and when all is done, trials and tribulations will still be waiting. Rejoice in this, Christian, he’s making you more like Jesus!
The children of Israel were seen by Pharaoh as wandering aimlessly, and God was about to show His glory, both to Egypt and to Israel.
Pharaoh looks up from his son’s cold body and from his desolated land, and wakes up. “Hey! What have I done? I let them go! The brick kilns are cold. Mud is drying and cracking and the straw goes ungathered!” So he jumps in his chariot and gathers his troops and sends out the trackers.
Y’know what I always like about the movies made from classic swashbuckler stories (eg, Zorro, Robin Hood, The Three Musketeers, The Scarlet Pimpernel, etc)?
At some point in the story the hero is always in the castle, or in the city, or wherever the bad guy’s stronghold is. Then he is discovered and fights his way through a whole troop and rides out through the gate. Then, the bad guy, (Sheriff of Notingham, or Sergeant Garcia, or Robespierre...whoever...), yells, “Close the gate! Close the gate!” But it always closes just behind the fleeing hero, then the gatekeepers stand there (on the inside) looking stupid, and the bad guy yells, “Open the gate! Open the gate!”
I can’t help thinking of those movies when I read these verses. Kinda late to close the barn door, Pharaoh. They’ve gone their three days journey; but they went with much more than their families and their goods and their herds. They went with Jehovah-Nissi (The Lord, my Banner).
The Israelites find themselves now, camped by the sea, with impassable mountains to the North, open desert to the South, and a really irate Pharaoh rumbling up behind with his seriously depleted (12:29) army.
So they begin to whine.
They needn’t have. They needn’t have asked “Why”. We needn’t. God knows why. The ‘why’ will be revealed to us in time, if necessary, to bring His glory and His people’s good. In the meantime, let our cry in the deepest of trials be, “It is well, it is well with my soul!”
These are the times, reader, when God’s workings are most evident in our lives. These are the times He uses to demonstrate His wisdom and His power and His love, and make us a testimony to others.
Consider, He could have led His people across the Red Sea and well out of Egypt’s reach on the first day. But that would not have so fully glorified His own name. All our trials are opportunities. Opportunities for us to build faith and trust in God; opportunities to submit ourselves to His will and see His saving hand at work in our lives; opportunities to see His glory.
“Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” James 1:2-4
The error of unbelief has always had the same results; denying the child of God the full enjoyment of His deliverance when it comes.
In an evil time, David declared, “I shall one day perish by the hand of Saul”. But how did it turn out? Saul fell on Mount Gilboa, and David’s throne was established forever, according to God’s promise. Elijah, in a time of deep depression, hid in the caves from a wrathful Jezebel. How did it turn out? Jezebel did a header to the pavement and Elijah was caught up by a divine whirlwind into Heaven. Peter ran out and wept bitterly, then went back, defeated, to his fishing...thinking all was lost. How did it turn out? The morning sun showed him a resurrected Savior, waiting for him on the shore with cooked fish for his belly and a charge to “Feed my sheep”.
It is ignorance of God’s will that makes us afraid in trial. His will is not to neglect us, or see us fail, or sit back and watch us struggle in the mire for His own entertainment, like the mythical gods of the heathen. His will is to make us more like Jesus. Development, then deliverance. Not one without the other.
To take the Israelites across earlier would have been to give deliverance without the development. But it was not His will for them; it is not His will for us. He exhorts us to “Stand by, and see the salvation of the Lord!”
And He will fight for us, while we remain silent. (Ex 14:14)
Moses, at God’s command, stretched his hand out over the sea, and the “Lord swept the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and turned the sea into dry land, so the waters were divided.”
Look at chapter 15, verse 8. “The flowing waters stood up like a heap; the deeps were congealed in the heart of the sea.”
And back in 14:22, “the waters were like a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.”
Remember these verses when you hear someone argue that the water was shallow where they crossed, or that something caused the waters to dam temporarily. If the latter were true, the waters to the South of them would have continued flowing away, not standing up as the scripture says. And “congealed” is very significant, since God had to change the very molecular makeup of the water to do this. It was not a dam of rocks, or even simply a wind; it was J-E-L-L-O!
And all the people crossed on dry land in the midst of the sea. All the people. My friends, He sees, He knows, He stands ready to deliver in His time, and we will all be brought safely to the other side.
This is our heritage, believer. This is the historical type of our complete and eternal deliverance in Him; to Him.
Notice that they did not so much as utter a word of praise until they were on the other side. Not within the land, not while wandering aimlessly, but when they turned and saw their enemies utterly destroyed forever.
God confused the enemy. God removed their strength and made all their cunning and weaponry as nothing. Then, He established His glory for all the nations who would hear of these things later, by bringing the waters back down on them in the midst of the sea.
No one can come to God without faith. No man will follow into His Heavenly habitation on their own merit or under their own power. His redemption is for those who have believed in the shed blood of His Passover Lamb.
There are a lot of different belief systems in the world. There are many claiming even to be “Christian”, who do not teach salvation by faith in the blood of Christ; but hope to win heaven by a Christ ‘boiled with water’ (leaving out the wrath of God against sin) or ‘raw’ (trusting in the following of His teachings only). But God said, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you”, and you can rest assured, believer...you must believe, seeker, that the only way you will see God and Heaven, is by way of the cross of Christ. Any who try to come up by another way will be washed away in a sea of eternity without hope, without rest, without God.
But over the one who has put his trust in the blood of the Pashcal Lamb, hangs the divine promise, “The Lord will fight for you, while you keep silent.”
Do we understand these things? Do we believe them? Are we realizing them? Do our lives manifest the power of them? It is God’s grace that has made them unchangingly true for every member of the body of Christ. Their truth, therefore, does not depend upon our manifestation, or realization, or understanding, but upon the precious blood of Christ, which has canceled all our guilt, and laid the foundation of all God’s declarations concerning us.
“Thou wilt bring them and plant them in the mountain of Thine inheritance, the place, O Lord, which Thou hast made for Thy dwelling, the sanctuary, O Lord, which Thy hands have established. The Lord shall reign forever and ever.”
Exodus 15:17,18
“In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.”
John 14:2,3
