God Makes a Way

Several weeks ago, my boys finished survival swim lessons.

Now if you've never seen survival swim lessons before, they can be a little hard to watch at first because the entire point of those lessons is to teach children what to do if they ever find themselves in water over their heads.

And when they first begin, they do exactly what you would expect. They panic a little. Their arms start flailing. They're trying desperately to grab onto something, anything, that feels stable and secure.

And as a parent, every instinct inside of you wants to jump in and help. You want to pull them out. You want to make it easier. You want to rescue them from the discomfort.

But the instructors know something the children don't know yet. The thing that will save them isn't panic. The thing that will save them isn't fighting harder. The thing that will save them isn't trying to control the situation.

The thing that will save them is learning to trust.

Eventually they are taught to roll onto their backs and float. And it's amazing to watch the moment when it finally clicks. The moment they stop fighting the water. The moment they stop thrashing. The moment they trust what they've been taught.

Suddenly they discover that the very thing they thought was going to swallow them can actually hold them up.

I couldn't stop thinking about those swim lessons this week because Exodus 14 feels remarkably similar. Israel is standing at the edge of the sea, and they're doing exactly what my boys were doing.

They're panicking.

They're afraid. They're trying to figure out a way to save themselves. And God is about to teach them a lesson that every disciple eventually has to learn. Freedom is not simply leaving Egypt behind. Freedom is learning to trust God when you cannot see a way forward.

Over the last two weeks in this series, we've watched God hear the cries of his people. We've seen God call Moses from the burning bush. We've watched God confront Pharaoh and challenge the powers of empire that had enslaved Israel for generations.

The God who hears has acted.

The God who hears has delivered.

The God who hears has set his people free.

And yet when we arrive at Exodus 14, something surprising happens.

The chains are gone. The people are free. But the story isn't over, because freedom creates a new question. What happens next? What happens when you've left Egypt behind but haven't yet reached the Promised Land?

What happens when the old life is gone but the new life hasn't fully arrived? What happens when God has brought you out, but you can't yet see where God is leading you?

That is where Israel finds itself.

And if we're honest, it's where many of us live as well.

Listen to what happens.

Exodus 14:10–14 NRSV

As Pharaoh drew near, the Israelites looked back, and there were the Egyptians advancing on them. In great fear the Israelites cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, ‘Let us alone and let us serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” But Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.”

Can you hear the fear in their voices? Behind them is Pharaoh's army. In front of them is the sea. And suddenly freedom doesn't feel very free.

What strikes me is how quickly fear begins rewriting the story. Only days earlier they were celebrating liberation.

After all the plagues, after Moses stood before Pharaoh again and again declaring, "Let my people go," after watching God break the grip of Egypt's oppression, they now find themselves trapped between the army they thought they had escaped and the waters they cannot cross.

Standing at the edge of the sea, it looks as though Pharaoh has the final word after all. Now they are wondering if slavery might have been better.

Fear does that.

It takes the moment of greatest vulnerability and convinces us that God's past faithfulness no longer matters. It causes Israel to forget the confrontation with Pharaoh, the signs and wonders, and the God who had already proven stronger than the mightiest ruler on earth.

All they can see is the army advancing and the sea blocking their path.

Fear shrinks our imagination.

Fear clouds our memory.

Fear convinces us that yesterday's chains were safer than tomorrow's uncertainty.

And before we're too hard on Israel, we should admit that we've all done this.

A person leaves a destructive relationship but wonders if they made the wrong decision.

Someone begins recovery but misses the false comfort of old habits.

A church steps into a new season and wonders whether it should have stayed where it was.

The reality is that getting Israel out of Egypt was easier than getting Egypt out of Israel.

After all, Egypt wasn't just a place.

Egypt was a way of seeing the world.

Egypt taught them that power belongs to Pharaoh.

Egypt taught them that survival depends on control.

Egypt taught them that security comes from what you can see, what you can touch, and what you can manage for yourself.

And even though they had walked out of Egypt physically, those assumptions were still living inside them.

Because freedom is about more than changing your location.

Freedom is about changing your imagination.

It is one thing to be delivered from slavery. It is another thing entirely to learn how to live as a free people. Anyone who has ever been through recovery knows this.

The decision to get sober is a moment. Learning to live differently is a lifetime.

Anyone who has ever grieved a loss knows this. There comes a moment when the funeral is over, the meals stop arriving, and everyone else goes back to normal life. But your heart is still learning how to live in a world that has changed.

Anyone who has ever followed Jesus for any length of time knows this. We bring our fears, our wounds, our habits, our need for control, and our old ways of thinking with us.

The chains may be gone, but the transformation is still unfolding. And that is precisely where Israel finds itself.

Standing at the edge of the sea, God is not simply asking whether they want freedom. God is asking whether they are willing to trust. Because trust is the birthplace of transformation. Trust is where new creation begins.

And this is where a beautiful biblical thread begins to emerge.

One of the things I love about Exodus 14 is that it echoes the opening pages of Genesis.

In Genesis 1, God's Spirit—the Hebrew word is ruach, which can mean spirit, breath, or wind—moves over the waters. Then God separates the waters. Dry ground appears. Creation begins. God starts the work of making all things good and right.

Now listen to Exodus 14:

Exodus 14:15–16 NRSV

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry out to me? Tell the Israelites to go forward. But you lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the Israelites may go into the sea on dry ground.

Exodus 14:21–22 NRSV

Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and turned the sea into dry land; and the waters were divided. The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left.

The same ruach. The same waters. The same dry ground. The same God bringing order out of chaos.

This isn't just an escape story. It's a creation story.

God isn't merely rescuing slaves. God is creating a people.

God is bringing them through the waters and into a brand-new future. The sea becomes a birthplace.

A nation is being born. The God who hears is not only delivering his people. He is remaking them.

But before the waters part, there is a moment.

A pause.

A decision.

And Moses speaks one of the most important words in all of Scripture.

Exodus 14:13 NRSV

But Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again.

Notice the order. Do not be afraid. Stand firm. Then see.

Most of us want it reversed.

God, show me the outcome and then I'll trust you.

God, reveal the whole plan and then I'll take the next step.

God, guarantee success and then I'll move forward.

But faith doesn't work that way.

Faith isn't really certainty about the future. Faith is confidence in the character of God. Israel cannot see the path. But they can trust the God who sees it. And then the miracle happens.

The waters part.

The people walk through on dry ground.

But here's what I find most fascinating.

God doesn't remove the obstacle.

God makes a way through it. The sea remains. The danger remains. The uncertainty remains.

Yet right through the middle of what looked impossible, God creates a path.

How often does God work that way in our lives?

We want God to remove every obstacle.

God often chooses to lead us through them.

The wilderness becomes the place of formation.

The cross becomes the pathway to resurrection.

The thing we most want God to eliminate becomes the very place where we encounter God's presence.

Sometimes God makes a way around.

But often God makes a way through.

And that brings me back to those swim lessons.

The breakthrough wasn't when my boys learned to overpower the water.

The breakthrough happened when they stopped trying to control everything.

When they trusted what they had been taught.

When they discovered they could float.

I wonder how many of us are exhausted because we've spent so much energy fighting the waters around us.

Trying harder.

Holding tighter.

Managing every possible outcome.

And maybe today God's invitation sounds less like a command and more like the voice of a patient instructor.

Trust me.

Not because you can see the whole path.

Not because you know exactly what's coming next.

But because the God who brought you this far is not about to abandon you now.

The good news of Exodus 14 is that the God who heard Israel's cries in Egypt did not abandon them at the water's edge.

And the same is true for us.

In fact, the story of Exodus points beyond itself.

Because centuries later another person would step into the waters. Jesus would walk down into the Jordan River and be baptized. Not because he needed forgiveness. Not because he needed cleansing.

But because he was identifying himself with humanity and beginning a new Exodus. Then he would spend forty days in the wilderness. Just as Israel spent forty years in the wilderness.

And ultimately Jesus would face an obstacle far greater than the Red Sea.

He would face the cross.

And from every human perspective, the cross looked like a dead end. A place where hope ended. A place where God's promises failed. A place where the powers of the world finally won.

But Easter reminds us that God specializes in making a way where there appears to be no way. The cross became resurrection. Death became life. The grave became the doorway to new creation.

And because of that, every time we celebrate baptism, we are telling the Exodus story all over again. We go down into the waters. The old life is left behind. And we rise into the new life God is creating.

Church, every one of us eventually finds ourselves standing at the edge of the sea. A diagnosis. A loss. A transition. A difficult decision. A future we cannot see.

And in those moments, the question is rarely whether God can make a way. The question is whether we can trust God before we see the way.

The God who heard Israel's cries in Egypt is the same God revealed in Jesus Christ. The God who parted the waters is the same God who rolled away the stone. The God who brought a nation through the sea is the same God who brings dead things back to life.

And that means whatever sea stands before you today does not get the final word. Fear does not get the final word. Death does not get the final word. The God who hears is also the God who leads. The God who saves is also the God who guides. The God who begins the journey is also the God who finishes it.

And when there seems to be no way forward, we remember this:

The God who hears us is the God who makes a way.

And sometimes the way God makes is not around the waters.

Sometimes the way is through.

Amen.