“Don’t Just Do Something…Stand There!”
by Rick Labate
Let’s play “What Am I?”
· I am mentioned no less than 11 other times in the Bible.
· I am an event so important that 5 other Biblical writers refer to me.
· I happened when Moses raised his staff and stretched out his hands over the water.
You guessed it by now I’m sure. I am referring the crossing of the Red Sea by the Israelites. Open your Bibles to Exodus 14:1-3.
“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Tell the Israelites to turn back and encamp near Pi Hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea. They are to encamp by the sea, directly opposite Baal Zephon. (Show map and refer to the fact that the Red Sea is connected to other lakes by a series of canals and most likely was a larger body of water at the time.) Pharaoh will think, ‘The Israelites are wandering around the land in confusion, hemmed in by the desert.”
The Promised Land was northeast of Egypt. So what did God do? He had them head south.
· If they continued heading in the same direction they were going to encounter mountains almost immediately.
· If they turned around and headed back north toward Egypt that would not have accomplished a thing.
· If they turned to the west they would been faced with heading back into the southern part of the Egypt. They also would have faced some rugged terrain and thousands of miles of desert and that only once they crossed the Nile River.
· If they headed east they were faced with crossing the Red Sea.
So Pharaoh, thinking his former slaves are lost decides that he made a mistake in letting them go. He gathers his state-of-the-art army. He is determined that his forced labor employees would once again be making bricks to build his cities.
We read in verse 4, “And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will pursue them.” Many still have a problem understanding this apparent capriciousness of God. They don’t want to accuse God of making men his puppets and then destroy them in the end for doing what they had no choice but to do.
Actually we can reconcile this quite easy by using the sun as an analogy. Place a stick of butter and a lump of clay right next to each other out in the sun and observe what happens. The butter melts and the clay hardens. Same agent, different substances. Some become soft when God approaches them and others become hard. What makes the difference is their attitude toward God in the first place.
So the Israelites, now hemmed in on all sides begin a routine that continued unchanged for the next forty years:
· They grouched and grumbled that things were not going to plan.
· They blamed their leader for all their troubles.
· They began to think that Egypt wasn’t so bad after all.
· They concluded that they were all going to die.
But in verse 13 Moses tells them that this will be the last time they will ever see the Egyptians. And they probably thought, “Yes, we know. We’re all going to die!” But it was going to be the other way around.
When Bishop Philip Brooks, author of “O, Little Town of Bethlehem,” was seriously ill, he requested no friends come to see him. But when an acquaintance of his named Robert Ingersoll, a famous anti-Christian propagandist, came to see him he allowed him to come in right away. Ingersoll said, “I appreciate this very much. Especially when you aren’t letting any of your close friends see you.”
Bishop Brooks responded, “Oh, I’m confident of seeing them in the next world, but this may be my last chance to see you.”
The Israelites were told that they would never see their enemies, the Egyptians, again. Now, in verses 13 and 14 we have the two most important verses of this whole story. With the Israelites staring the Red Sea in the face, Moses stands up and proclaims in a loud voice, “All right, everybody grab a pail and start baling!” No, that’s not what was said. Instead he said,
“Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring to you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only be still.”
Sometimes we say, “Don’t just stand there…do something!” Moses said, “Don’t just do something…stand there!”
Then the Lord speaks to Moses in verse 15. “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on!” Notice the important lesson here. They are to stand still in relation to fighting the enemy but they are to go forward in relation to God’s guidance in the path that He had for them. They did all that was in their power to do but their real battle was in believing that God had the power to save them.
In verse 21 the action begins. Hollywood tried to simulate this fantastic event in the film, The Ten Commandments. It took them, before the age of computers, 18 months to figure out how to create a simulation. It took God only a few seconds to actually do it. We are so much more powerless than God it is almost humorous how filled with pride we can sometimes become.
When the last Israelite left the western shore of the Red Sea, the cloud lifted that had been leading the Israelites but was now behind between them and Egyptians. The Egyptians now saw that the Hebrews had escaped. So what do they do, when they see this miraculous path between two walls of water? They go in. Ridiculous! The obstinacy of sin knows no logic.
In verse 25 we have the last words of these men. “Let’s get away from the Israelites! The Lord is fighting for them against Egypt.” Truer words were never spoken. The Lord was fighting on behalf of the Israelites.
And then in verses 26-30 we read about the drowning of the Egyptian army. This is where so many critics attack the veracity of this story. Look at some of the following excerpts from Bible commentaries:
· “It is clear that the “sea” crossed by the Hebrews in ch. 14 was the “Sea of Reeds.” This is a marshy swamp where the papyrus reeds grow.
· “The children of Israel are said to have passed over the Red Sea on their flight from Egypt; there is, however, considerable difficulty concerning this traditional view.”
Their premise is that God does not and has not done any miracles. That there is a natural explanation for everything.
I don’t care how you want to dissect it, one way or another it has to be a miracle. How would the wind be able to come through at the exact moment the Israelites needed it, sustain itself for the entire crossing and then quit at the exact moment when all of the Egyptian army was in the water.
If the crossing really did take place in this shallow body of water only a few inches deep then praise the Lord because that’s even a bigger miracle. That means that all those men and all those horses drowned in water only 6 inches deep!
This story teaches us several things:
· You have no problem God cannot solve.
· You have no enemy God cannot defeat.
· You have no ability to save yourself but must depend upon God to save you.
When it comes to your eternal salvation, don’t just do something…stand there and let God bring you over to the other side called heaven.
It was June 1988 and I was invited to spend a guys only weekend with two of my closest friends, Mark and Gary, on the eastern shore of Virginia. On Sunday we borrowed from a church member a skiff with an outboard motor to explore some of the shoreline, water and islands of the Chesapeake Bay.
About 2 hours into our exploration Gary said, “I want to look for arrowheads on this island. You guys can take the boat and pick me up in an hour.”
So Mark and I headed for distant waters. Mark was in the front of the boat and I was running the motor. After doing some exploration of our own we were headed back to pick up Gary when Mark said, “Rick, open the throttle all the way up.” I did. We were enjoying bouncing along the top of the water with the wind in our hair.
In a few moments we suddenly hit the wake of a much larger boat. We hit it at just the wrong angle and before we both knew what was going on we were thrown out of the boat.
“Mark, hang on a minute, here comes the boat.” But just as it was headed for me the boat’s rudder turned. The only part of the boat with was coming within reach was the back. One problem, the motor was still turning and I knew if I didn’t get out of the way I risked being badly cut by the propeller. So I backed away from boat until it passed and then I started to swim after it.
As soon as I started to swim after it, the rudder corrected itself and off it went into the wild wet yonder. There we were…two young men treading water in the Chesapeake Bay without a boat of any kind nearby.
“Mark, we’re young and healthy. Let’s just swim to shore. It’s only about a mile away.”
“You go ahead Rick, I’m just going to tread water and see if the boat comes back or get the attention of anyone else.”
“You sure? That’s a big chance you’re taking!”
“I’ll be fine, Rick. You go on.”
I did. If I was going to drown I was going to drown swimming. If I drowned I was going to drown trying. If I drowned I was going to drown trying to get somewhere.
I was confident. I was a runner. I used to be a good swimmer. In fact, when I was 12 years of age I set the Pennsylvania state record for 50 meter backstroke. Reality check. I was no longer 12 and I had to go a lot further than 50 meters. Still, no problem. I’ll make it.
In order to keep myself encouraged I knew that I had to avoid one thing--looking at the shore while I swam. I wanted to be able to swim for a while, look up and when I saw that the shore was closer I would know that I was making progress. I put myself into an energy-conserving side stroke and after 20 minutes I looked up at the shore. It was then that I experienced what many people who drown must experience. The shore was not any closer.
Now I was getting very concerned. I had a conversation with the Lord that was up close and personal.
“Mark! What about him?” I looked back and he was still treading water. I shouted out to him but he couldn’t hear me. There was nothing else to do except keep swimming.
I was really starting to get tired after another 10-15 minutes when I looked back at Mark, by now just a dot on the distant water. “What in the world? What is he waving?” In his hand was a mop. The same string/spaghetti mop that was in the bottom of our boat and had fallen out when we did. I found out later that as Mark was treading water, the mop floated right within his reach. Mark had wrung it out, held it up and was waving it.
Even better than that, someone in another boat saw him waving the mop and was on the way to pick him up! “Yes! We’ve been rescued.”
They picked up Mark and we’re now on the way to me. As they got close they yelled out, “We’ll come back for you!” What? What do you mean come back for me? Come get me! I don’t care if I have to hold on to the propeller! As I watched the boat head off for shore another boat spotted me and was on their way over. They helped my weary bones and sore muscles into the boat. Needless to say, I was very grateful.
After the excitement of that adventure ended and I was driving back home the Holy Spirit spoke in my thoughts. He said, “Rick, that is exactly the way you have been living your life. You have been trying to do everything yourself. You think that if you just try harder and harder you’ll make it to heaven. Rick, it doesn’t work that way. Just as you were powerless to make it to shore on your own you are just as powerless to save yourself. You have two choices. You can continue to exert your own feeble efforts or you can do what Mark did. He recognized his helplessness, did what he could to signal for help and let someone else rescue him. What are you going to do?”
Wow. He sure had my attention. Ultimately, my earthly life, on that Sunday afternoon, was in the hands of someone else who came and rescued me. My eternal life is in the hands of Someone else who came to rescue me.
No matter how you say it, “Don’t just swim…signal for help,” or “Don’t just do something…stand there,” it teaches us the same thing. When it comes to our problems in life and our salvation we need to stand back and see the deliverance that the Lord will bring to us today.
