Questions from the Red Sea
Exodus 13.17-14.31
Some of you already know this about me, but I’m a sucker for magic—particularly close-up magic, when you can see the person’s hands and examine what they’re doing. I love it because there’s always a moment when the trick happens, and your jaw drops and you feel like you just saw something impossible.
Now of course, there’s always a gimmick—whether it’s sleight of hand or a trick deck or a modified object of some kind, there’s always a way, and most of the time it’s extremely simple. But unless you know what the trick is, you still see it as something completely impossible, something you never could have predicted.
That’s what I always think of when I read Exodus 14. Because the people of Israel find themselves in a situation in which they can see absolutely no way out, and then God rolls up his sleeves and says, “Okay…now watch closely.”
There’s a reason why this story is the climax of multiple Hollywood films, why it is a well-known picture of divine intervention. The images put forth here are simply spectacular. Last week we saw the people of Israel, in slavery in Egypt for 430 years, finally freed by God’s mighty hand. God sent his final plague against the Pharaoh’s hard-heartedness, and the Pharaoh relented at long last, telling Moses to take the people and go.
That’s where we left off: with the people of Israel leaving Egypt and making their way into the wilderness, and as we see at the end of chapter 13, God is guiding them by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, showing them where they should go. And where are they going? He is taking them to the Red Sea, which is the body of water between Egypt and the desert of Sinai to the east.
We just read what happens there: God brings them miraculously through the Sea while the Pharaoh pursues them, then lets the sea fall back down on the Pharaoh’s army. It’s a striking story, and we’ll see it more closely in a bit.
But if you keep reading the Bible, you see that it’s a lot more than a story. As is often the case, this relatively simple story asks us a lot of questions. In fact there are four main questions that the story of the Red Sea asks, and we’re going to take them one by one.
1. What Pictures Does This Story Show Us?
If you read the Bible long enough, you realize that there are things God does all throughout the Bible, and he does them in a particular way, in order to communicate specific things.
The example we have here in our text is the picture of water—God parts the water for the Israelites, and he lets the water fall back down over the Egyptians.
There are many other passages in the Bible where water plays such a significant role, and it’s never on accident.
One the very first explicit images we see in the Bible is the image of water, in Genesis 1.2:
The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
So water here is a picture of formless nothingness—a lot of people have used a lot of words to help explain this, but many theologians have decided to describe it as chaos: over all creation, there isn’t nothing (there are waters for the Spirit to “hover over”), but there isn’t something either. It’s chaos.
When I was a teenager we went to the Bahamas; it was the first time I had ever been on a beach with seriously big waves. When a really big wave crashes over you, you are lost—turning in every which direction, not knowing which way is up or down. That’s what I think of when I think of this formless void of the waters of creation. It’s not inherently bad, but there’s no order to it.
So what does God do? He brings order to the chaos in v. 9-10:
9 And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, [bring order to the chaos] and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas.
So there we see the grace of God the Creator—what does he do? He brings order to chaos.
But then what happens? Man rebels against God (he sins against God), and all of creation is corrupted by that sin. And some time after this, we see the water return in a massive way in the flood, in Genesis 6-7. Nothing could possibly be more chaotic than a worldwide flood that destroys almost everything.
So in this case, we see another layer of meaning added on to this image of water. It’s not just chaos, but it’s chaos as judgment: God judges the sin of the world through water.
We see these exact same things at work in the story of the Red Sea. We see the sovereign Creator, who rules over creation (including its chaotic aspects). Nothing is more unwieldy than water, but God is able to bring order to chaos and make the water go exactly where he wants it to go.
Then, once the people of Israel are out of the riverbed, and the Pharaoh’s army are pursuing them, what does he do? He brings the waters crashing down on their heads in judgment. Just like in the flood.
So this image of water as chaos which God powerfully calls to order to save the Israelites, then uses to bring judgment on the Egyptians, is a picture of what he does on a much larger scale. God created us in his image, but that image his been distorted, mangled, by sin. Because God is just he must punish sin.
But he is not only driven by anger against sin; he is also driven by love for his people. So how does he bring order back into the chaos our sin has created? He takes on a human nature, in the person of Jesus Christ. Christ shows the same mastery over the elements that he did at creation: he turns water into wine at a wedding. In the middle of a storm at sea, he walks on the water without sinking. He commands the winds and the waves to be still, and they obey him.
He lives a perfect, sinless life—the embodiment of order in the midst of chaos—and suffers the consequences of our sin for us, then applies his victory to us.
And how do we celebrate this reality publicly? Through baptism. We are plunged under water, joining ourselves with Christ in his burial—our judgment fulfilled in him—and we come up out of the water, still living and breathing, in newness of life.
We could go a lot further with the symbolism behind these pictures of water, but I wanted to bring it up quickly to show that none of this is accidental. Our God is a wise teacher: he teaches us not only through words, but through pictures—even pictures brought about in human history. God did what he did in Egypt, and brought his people to this particular place at this particular moment, to give us mental hooks on which to hang our theology, images that would help us remember what kind of God he is.
2. What Events Does This Story Describe for Us?
But all of that may sound impersonal, and this isn’t at all impersonal. This is real history, and these are real events (if we believe this is the Word of God, and we do), and these real events happened to real people. What must this have been like for them?
I’m convinced this is real, in part, because the people of Israel are so relatable. At the end of chapter 13, God takes them out of Egypt, and instead of leading them north toward the land of the Philistines (which would have been the most direct route to Canaan), he takes them straight east, toward the Red Sea and the wilderness beyond.
Why? Because he already knows these people would freak out. If they went to the land of he Philistines, they would meet the Philistines. And the Philistines are not nice people. God knows if that happened, they would go to war, and they’d run back to Egypt (we see this in v. 17). So he leads them to the Red Sea, guiding them by a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night. When they get to the sea, God tells them to camp there and wait.
Again, he knows what he’s doing. Chapter 14, verse 4:
“And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will pursue them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, and the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord.”
And that’s exactly what happens. Not long after the Pharaoh lets the people go, he regrets it. He calls his army together, and they follow the Israelites out of Egypt. Again, v. 8:
And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued the people of Israel while the people of Israel were going out defiantly.
So now essentially, the people of Israel are boxed in: they have the Red Sea at their backs, and the Pharaoh’s army in front of them. They don’t have time to go around the sea. There is nowhere for them to go. They have chaos on one side (the sea), and death on the other (the army).
So God tells Moses (v. 15):
15 The Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward. 16 Lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground. 17 And I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they shall go in after them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, his chariots, and his horsemen. 18 And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I have gotten glory over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his horsemen.”
In case it’s not clear, all these repetitions are intentional. Three times in eighteen verses, we’ve seen it now: I will harden his heart, so that he will pursue you. Why? So that I get the glory.
This is absolutely unthinkable to the people of Israel, they’re freaking out. So Moses encourages them (we’ll come back to that in a minute), and does what God said. He stretches out his hand over the sea, and it divides.
Can you imagine what this must have been like for them? No one could have seen this coming, just like no one could have pictured what the flood would be like until it happened. Out of the chaos that the sea represents, God brings order: he puts the water exactly where he wants it to go. (By the way, in v. 21 when it says that the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, the word for “wind” there is the same word as the one used for “Spirit” in Genesis 1.2, when he says, the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. It’s not an accident. Order from chaos.)
With the Pharaoh’s army coming from behind, God intervenes again: the pillar of cloud stands behind them and blocks the Pharaoh’s army, giving the Israelites the time they need to cross.
They cross the sea on dry land, the cloud lifts, and the Pharaoh’s army pursues them into the dry seafloor. And once they’re through, God stops the wind, and brings chaos raining down on the army of Egypt—his final judgment against them.
3. What Lessons Does This Story Teach Us?
When I ask this question, I’m thinking about us, because every time I read this story, on top of what I’ve already said and the fourth question that’s coming after, there is an aspect of this event that always jumps out at me, because it is so pertinent for us, Christians of today—and really for human beings in general.
Let’s rewind back to verse 10 of chapter 14. God has boxed them in: the sea is behind them, the Pharaoh is before them, they have nowhere to go—and they are terrified. V. 10:
10 When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord. 11 They said to Moses, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? 12 Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”
Now here’s the question: Why were they afraid?
It's not because they don’t believe God can do great things. They had just seen God unleash ten disastrous plagues against the Egyptians. They could literally lift their eyes and see the pillar of cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night, guiding them. They had concrete, empirical proof that God was powerful. So they weren’t afraid because they didn’t think he could do it.
They were afraid because they couldn’t imagine how he could do it: how he could rescue them from this, how he could get the glory from this.
You see, their problem wasn’t even necessarily a lack of belief; it was more a lack of imagination.
Because they couldn’t imagine how God was going to get them out of this, they came to fear that he might not.
And Moses doesn’t tell them. He doesn’t give them the details of exactly how God was going to rescue them in this particular case. What does he say instead? V. 13:
13 And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. 14 The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.”
He doesn’t give them an explanation; he gives them a promise. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent. Fear not, stand firm, and see his salvation.
But he doesn’t stop there; look at the very next verse, v. 15:
The Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward.”
They didn’t know what he was going to do, but he still commanded them to walk: “You’ve got what you need, God will take care of the rest.”
I bring this up because the Israelites’ attitude and fear in this part of the story is something we see all the time in our lives—sometimes every day.
If we belong to Christ, we too have empirical proof that God can do great things. We have his Holy Spirit, witnessing to our spirits that we are children of God. We know what he did through Christ, and we know what he has done in us.
And yet…how often are we faced with situations, or with sins in our lives, and we despair, unable to see how God could possibly make good come out of this? This is one reason why God gives the people of Israel the feasts we talked about last week: to help them remember that just as he saved them in the past, just as he knew what he would do even when they didn’t know, he will be faithful to sustain them in the future.
The people of Israel never could have predicted that God would part the sea in two. We will never be able to imagine or predict what God can do for his people.
And that’s okay. That’s part of why our God is worthy to be worshiped and followed—because he can do things we can’t possibly imagine.
That knowledge—the knowledge that we lack imagination—should bolster our faith rather than weaken it.
We don’t know how he’ll do his will…but he does. He doesn’t expect us to understand it all. But he does expect us to trust him, that he understands it. And there always comes a point where he calls us to obey in our uncertainty, where he says, “Why are you crying to me? Go forward. You’ve got what you need, I’ll take care of the rest.”
The result of such a life is what we see in v. 31, at the very end of the chapter.
31 Israel saw the great power that the Lord used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the Lord, and they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses.
To fear the Lord isn’t to be afraid of him; it is to acknowledge that God can do what we cannot. The fear of the Lord is humility, and reverence before his great power.
This is such good news for us. Our God is the God who brings order out of chaos, who brings life out of death, who brings his people out of darkness into light.
But that deliverance rarely looks the way we think it will. Like I said last week, it would have been so easy for God to simply change the Pharaoh’s mind so that he would let the people go. It would have been so easy for God to never let the people of Israel be enslaved in the first place.
But instead, he took them through the sea, not over it.
Why?
There may be several possible answers to that question, but I can think of at least one. And that is because theoretical conviction is very different than experiential conviction. It’s one thing to hear the gospel, to read the Bible, and to believe what you see there. And that is a wonderful thing. It’s a miraculous thing. It’s something that only happens through the work of the Holy Spirit in us.
But that faith takes on a very different character when it has been pulled through suffering. It gains the weight of experience.
God took the people through the sea, and not over it, so they would know—so that they would not just believe intellectually, but fully—that he was with them in the chaos. Not just because Moses said so, but because they were there, and they felt the wind holding the sea at bay, and the mist on their faces as they walked past. The Pharaoh was coming after them, but God was behind them, holding him off long enough for them to get across. He was on either side of them, holding the sea away.
It’s one thing to hear that God will fight for you; it’s quite another to see him fight for you. It’s one thing to hear that he will sustain you; it’s quite another to have no strength left, and to watch him hold you up. It’s one thing to believe the promises that God will strengthen your faith; it’s quite another to look behind you, to look at your past suffering, and to see that all that time, he was there, giving you what you needed, even when you couldn’t feel him.
We can’t imagine how God could possibly work in us and for us. But our lack of imagination is no obstacle to his power. We don’t need to know how he’ll do what he needs to do. We just need to trust that he will.
And that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to trust, because in Christ, he has.
Which brings us to our last question, the question of this story:
4. What Choice Does This Story Set Before Us?
This story isn’t an end in itself; it points the way toward a much bigger story.
Ultimately, how does God work out his will in our chaos, in our sin, in our guilt?
He brought the people of Israel through the Red Sea, this instrument of judgment piled up high on either side of them, and brought them out onto dry land on the other side. They didn’t deserve this. They were just as guilty of sin as the Pharaoh was. And yet, in God’s grace, he brought them through the judgment rather than raining it down on them. Once they were through, he sent the sea crashing down in judgment on the Pharaoh’s army; in one mighty moment, God defeated the imminent death that was pursuing the Israelites. And just like that…the people were free. They were safe, and they were free.
We are no different. The sea—this instrument of judgment—is what we deserve, and the judgment is necessary. God is just; he must exercise justice. The sea is what we deserve, and its judgment is necessary.
So Christ brought us through it. He suffered judgment for us, carrying us through and placing us on the other side. In so doing, he brought down judgment on sin, and he defeated the death that we deserve. Those of us who have been brought into Christ will never again be slaves to sin, or to the death that is its consequence.
That is how he fights for us. That is why we have nothing to fear. That is how we “see the salvation of the Lord.”
But that is not what all of us will choose. There are two things that happen in this story. The people of Israel walked through the sea on dry land, and the Egyptian army was covered by the sea in judgment.
Likewise, we only have two possibilities: we are saved through Jesus Christ, or we are judged by him. The agent of salvation, the Savior of the world, is also the great Judge, who will judge the living and the dead.
So which side of that fence will we be on? Will we trust him, and fear him, and submit to him in thankfulness for his grace? Will we repent of our sins and accept the free gift of salvation he is holding out to us? Or will we refuse him, and remain obstinate, and keep trying to be our own masters?
That is the question the Red Sea asks of us. There is only one right answer, and it is so right that I pray no one in this room will choose another. Let Christ carry you through the waters of judgment, and thank him that he suffered that judgment for you. See his great power, and fear him, and believe in him.
