Rob Morgan - Asking The Right Question Exodus 14:2-
Asking The Right Question
A Pocket Paper
from
The Donelson Fellowship
______________
Robert J. Morgan
March 5, 2000
You shall camp…by the sea. For Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, "They are bewildered by the land; the wilderness has closed them in." Then I will harden Pharaoh's heart, so that he will pursue them; and I will gain honor over Pharaoh and over all his army, that the Egyptians may know that I am the Lord." And they did so. --Exodus 14:2-4
In 1946, author Gertrude Stein felt very tired and ill during a car journey. Rushed to the American hospital at Neuilly, France, she was diagnosed with an advanced state of cancer. The surgeon operated, but it was too late. Gertrude passed away in the evening of July 27th.
Her last words baffled those who gathered around her. "What is the answer?" she asked. When nobody replied, she laughed to herself and said, "Then what is the question?"
Many times we can't find the answers to our dilemmas because we're asking the wrong questions. Perhaps, like Gertrude Stein, we find ourselves diagnosed with an incurable disease. Or we have a child in crisis, or we are facing a terrible legal problem. Maybe the money isn't there for college, or we're in a difficult relationship. Perhaps we've just been jilted by our girlfriend or boyfriend. Our natural instinct is to ask:
How can I solve this problem?
How can I get out of this mess?
How much longer can I endure such pain?
How can I make this go away?
Why did this have to happen to me?
Though natural, those may be the wrong questions to ask. There is a better one--one that results in an entirely new way of looking at difficulties, puts our problems into a different context, and creates a new paradigm for dealing with tough situations.
Do you remember when Jesus arrived in Jerusalem the last time? As He rode his little colt up the Kidron Valley and through the Golden Gate of Jerusalem a spontaneous parade developed. Ecstatic crowds cheered him like a conquering hero, shouting "Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!" But Jesus didn't share their exuberance, for He knew He was only days from the cross. A dark cloud of anguish gathered around his heart, and He cried in John 12:27: "Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? 'Father, save Me from this hour'? But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name."
In other words, in facing the most impossible and excruciating moment of His life, Jesus didn't ask, "How can I get out of this?" but "How can God be glorified?"
That is the approach we need to have. That is is the question we need to ask. "How can God be glorified through these impossible circumstances? What solution to my problem would bring most glory to Him?"
In John 9, the disciples came upon a blind man. He had been blind from birth, and the disciples began asking some interesting questions: "How did this man get into this situation? What fate decreed his blindness? Why did it happen? Who sinned, his man or his parents, that he was born this way?"
Jesus said, "You're asking the wrong question. This man was born blind so that the power of God could be displayed in his life." And for two thousand years, his story has been read by millions of people and preached in thousands of sermons.
Rule #2
That brings us to the second Red Sea Rule for handling tough situations. The first rule says, Recognize that God has either put you here or allowed you to be in this situation. Nothing happens to us by accident, for we travel an appointed way. Rule #2 says: Be more concerned for God's glory than for your own relief. Let your first concern be glorifying God.
Notice the way it's brought out in Exodus 14: Now the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: "Speak to the children of Israel, that they turn and camp before Pi Hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, opposite Baal Zephon; you shall camp before it by the sea. For Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, 'They are bewildered by the land; the wilderness has closed them in.' Then I will harden Pharaoh's heart, so that he will pursue them; and I will gain honor over Pharaoh and over all his army, that the Egyptians may know that I am the Lord."
The NIV says, I will gain glory for myself through Pharaoh; and all his army.
That is, after all, what our lives are all about. For His glory we were and are created. The first question of the Westminster Longer Catechism asks, "What is the chief and highest end of man?" The answer: "Man's chief and highest end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever."
I can imagine someone saying, "I have a real problem with that, for it makes God out to be an ego-maniac. It sounds like He is hoarding all honor and glory for Himself at our expense, like a selfish, demented tyrant. Why should He allow me to suffer just so He can be glorified? If He is so concerned about humility in His people, why doesn't He exhibit some Himself?"
But God, being God, has every right and reason to demand and expect glory. Think of it in terms of a wheel. You are I are little nails or tacks in the rim. We have our job to do, and we're very busy trying to hold things together. Sometimes we're stopped dead in our tracks; other times we're going around in circles. But as long as we're doing the job for which we were made and making forward progress, we are fulfilled.
But God isn't a little nail or tack in the rim. He is the hub, the absolute heart and center of the whole operation. As in any wheel, as long as the hub is the center of attention and as long as all the spokes are tightly connected to it with perfect symmetry, the rotations will be smooth. But if we fail to keep the hub in the absolute center of things, our lives grow wobbly, unsteady and unstable.
God and God alone is the heart and center, the source and secret, of the universe, of the world, and of our lives. To Him along belongs the glory. "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but to Your name give glory," says Psalm 115, "because of Your mercy, because of Your truth."
The children of Israel didn't understand this, so they cried, "How did we ever get into this mess? The sword is behind us, the sea is before us, and we're doomed!" They should have been asking, "How will God gain glory through this situation?"
The writer of Psalm 106 made this very point: "Our Fathers in Egypt did not understand Your wonders; they did not remember the multitude of Your mercies, but rebelled by the sea--the Red Sea. Nevertheless He saved them for His name's sake"
How, then, did God take an impossible situation, flip it around, and use it for His name's sake? There are five ways here in which God was--and is--glorified. First, God gains glory when His enemies are defeated:
When His Enemies Are Defeated
Verse 4 says, I will harden Pharaoh's heart, so that he will pursue them; and I will gain honor over Pharaoh and over all his army…. And in the next chapter, Exodus 15, after their delivery, the Israelites praised the Lord for His victory. Then Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to the Lord, and spoke, saying: "I will sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously! The horse and its rider He has thrown into the sea."
As Paul said in 1 Corinthians, these things happened as examples for us. Once upon a time we were all enslaved by Satan just as certainly as the Israelites were enslaved by Pharaoh. We "walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind" (Ephesians 2:2-3).
Without Christ, we cannot help but sin. We are slaves to all that is self-destructive.
According to Thomas C. Reeves in his book about John F. Kennedy, A Question of Character, JFK became very promiscuous after the deaths of his brother and sister, Joe and Kathleen. Feeling that he hadn't long to live himself, he "accelerated his pursuit of pleasure. Especially after Eunice moved out of the Georgetown house in 1948, girls went in and out of Jack's bed in such numbers that he often neglected to learn their first names, referring to them the next morning merely as "sweetie" or "kiddo."
But there was one woman who resisted his advances, and Kennedy seemed to respect her for that and he confided in her. She later wrote, 'During one of these conversations I once asked him why he was doing it--why he was acting like his father, why he was avoiding real relationships, why he was taking a chance on getting caught in a scandal at the same time he was trying to make his career take off. He took a while trying to formulate an answer. Finally he shrugged and said, "I don't know, really. I guess I can't help it."'"
He spoke those words with a "sad expression on his face. He looked like a little boy about to cry."
Why do people sin? Why are we so easily addicted to pornography, alcohol, drugs, and gambling? Why do we so easily follow the wrong crowd down the wrong road. Why do you becomes slaves to our anger or our ego? We can't help it. Satan and sin are the ultimate slave drivers. They present a wonderful facade--fun, pleasure, fame, fortune, indulgence. But the facades become fetters, and the party always ends in pain.
But Christ comes into our lives and sets us free. As Wesley vividly put it:
Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature's night;
Thine eye diffused a quick'ning ray,
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free;
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
Satan, however, doesn't give up without a fight. He comes racing after the newly converted soul, chariot wheels kicking up storms of dust, seeking to discourage and defeat you.
"The great tyrant has not forgotten you," Spurgeon once thundered to his congregation in London, "and he designs your capture and re-enslavement." He may use your old friends, a spot of persecution, or discouraging responses by your family. He may show you a hypocrite in the church, or just afflict you with a general slacking of zeal. He may launch a missile of temptation right at your heart or mind, or perhaps he'll send a special trial or tribulation.
He tries to box us in, to trap us in difficulty, to entangle us in trouble, to corner us in impossible situations. Perhaps you're in a tough situation right now, suffering pain, worry, anguish, or illness. The devil is behind it, that old tyrant. His flaming darts are aimed at you.
When in the name of Jesus Christ we rebuff the enemy, when we resist the devil and make him flee, when we claim the victory, stand our ground, and resist his wiles, he falls like lightning from heaven. He is drowned in the Red Sea of the blood of Jesus Christ.
"Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free," Paul wrote to the Galatians, "and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage."
Or as it's put in 2 Corinthians 9:13: "Glorify God by your obedience to the confession of the gospel of Christ" (RSV).
God is gloried when sin and Satan are defeated in our lives.
When His Children Are Delivered
God is also glorified when His children are delivered from hopeless perils. In the Red Sea account, the Lord fully intended from the beginning to gain glory for Himself by proving His ability to supernaturally snatch His people from the jaws of annihilation. He never worried for a moment about the outcome, for He well knew He could provide an escape route for His people. "God is faithful," says the Bible, "…who will also make the way of escape."
Now, admittedly, the Lord doesn't always deliver us from our problems in the way we want Him to. He does it His way, but in the long run His way is always best.
I remember reading about the great evangelist known as "Gipsy" Smith. His real name was Rodney, and when he was just a gypsy boy in England, his family often lived on the brink of starvation. But his father, a Christian, always trusted the Lord to provide for them, and the Lord always did. One Christmas was particularly difficult. Rodney's father fell on his knees and began to pray, thanking God for His goodness and promises. Rising to his knees, the man looked at his children and said, "I don't know quite what we shall have for Christmas, but we will sing," He picked up his fiddle and began to sing these words:
/In some way or other
The Lord will provide.
It might not be my way.
It might not be thy way.
And yet in His own way,
The Lord will provide.
/In some way or other
The Lord will provide.
It might not be my way.
It might not be thy way.
And yet in His own way,
The Lord will provide.
While they were still singing, there was a knock at the door, and the needed provisions came.
I can tell you with the same confidence that God--for His own name's sake--will deliver His people from every trial and trouble they will ever encounter. In some way or other, the Lord will deliver. It might not be my way. It might not be thy way. And yet in His own way, the Lord will deliver. He will do it for His own name's sake; He will do it for His own glory.
Psalm 50:15 says, "Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me."
When His Name Is Exalted
The Lord also gains glory when His name is exalted, for when He provides deliverance, others see it and fear Him.
Forty years after the parting of the Red Sea, Joshua and the Israelites at last approached the Promised Land. A team of Israeli agents were sent to spy out the land, and two of them came to Jericho. There they were hidden by a prostitute named Rahab. Though she was a sinful and immoral woman, she had a sensitive heart and she was searching for God. Taking the two spies onto her rooftop she hid them under stalks of flax and later helped them escape over the city wall.
This is what she told them: "I know that the Lord has given you the land, that the terror of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land are fainthearted because of you. For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt…. Our hearts melted; neither did there remain any more courage in anyone because of you, for the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above, and on earth beneath."
In the early 1800s there was a Freewill Baptist preacher in New England named Charles Bowles. He was a powerful young man in the pulpit, but in some areas he was disdained because he was black. His mother was the daughter of a Revolutionary War hero, and his father was from Africa. Once in Huntington, Vermont, he learned a mob had formed. They were secretly plotting to interrupt his sermon, tie him to a wooden horse, and throw him into the nearby lake to sink or swim as he would.
He was in a tough spot. If he cancelled his engagement, he would lose the opportunity to evangelize, not to mention his self-respect. But if he persisted in preaching, there would be violence. Going down to a grove of trees, he knelt and prayed earnestly, asking God for wisdom and deliverance. Then he went to the church and began preaching.
When the mob entered, he began quoting from Matthew 23: You brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell? He preached with such power that the mob was arrested. No one dared move. Finishing his sermon, Bowles announced, "I am informed that there are persons here who have agreed to put me on a wooden horse, carry me to the pond, and throw me in; and now, dear creatures, I make no resistance."
But he had a request--that they sing on the way to the lake. As he started down the aisle and out the building, it produced an electric effect on the audience. They began singing and following him. Some fell prostrate on the floor, as though struck by lightening. There was a powerful sense of the presence of God.
And shortly after, the troublemakers did meet Bowles at the lake. But instead of throwing him in, it was the preacher who plunged them into the chilly waters, baptizing them as followers of Jesus Christ.
When we find ourselves in tough situations, we must ask ourselves, "How does God intend to gain glory in this?" For He surely intends to exalt His name in every situation His children face.
When His Exploits Are Remembered
Fourth, the Lord is glorified when His exploits are remembered. There is a remarkable parallel to Exodus 14 found in Joshua 3. These two chapters are the exit and entrance chapters for the children of Israel. In Exodus 14 they escape Egypt into the wilderness. Forty years later, they enter the Promised Land in Joshua 3.
How did they exit Egypt? Through parted waters. How did they enter Canaan? Through parted waters.
Many people don't realize that the Lord repeated the Red Sea miracle at the end of the wilderness wanderings, on a smaller scale but for a very distinct purpose. Look at the way Joshua puts it:
/And Joshua said to the people, "Sanctify yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you…." And it was, when the people set out from their camp to cross over the Jordan, with the priests bearing the ark of the covenant before the people, and as those who bore the ark came to the Jordan, and the feet of the priests who bore the ark dipped in the edge of the water (for the Jordan overflows all its banks during the whole time of harvest), that the waters which came down from upstream stood still, and rose in a heap very far away at Adam, the city that is beside Zaretan. So the waters that went down into the Sea of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, failed, and were cut off; and the people crossed over opposite Jericho. Then the priests who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the midst of the Jordan; and all Israel crossed over on dry ground, until all the people had crossed completely over the Jordan.
/}}}
I grew up beside the Doe River in Carter County, Tennessee. It is almost exactly the width and depth of the Jordan. I fished in it, swam in it, and often walked its banks. It was possible for me, in the dry season, to wade across the river in some of its broader spots. Other places came up to my hips, and in its narrower confines, the water was over my head. But occasionally the Doe River flooded, and it was a sight to see, overspilling its banks, driving residents to higher ground, raging past our house, the water carrying debris and timber like corks.
The Lord could have brought the Children of Israel to the Jordan during dry season. He could have ordered them across at hip level, or taken them to a broad, shallow area where they might have sloshed across. But in His providence and timing, He brought them there at flood stage.
God doesn't always arrange the easiest ways for us, for if everything came easily we'd never learn to trust Him.
As it was, the priests leading the multitudes stepped forward by faith, as ordered, into the raging water. As they did so, the flow suddenly ceased, and the waters begin gathering in a heap upstream, as though held back by an invisible dam. The riverbed below the dam became dry, and the children of Israel, who had stepped out of Egypt through parted waters, dryshod, forty years before, now stepped out of the wilderness and into the Promised Land in the same way.
Now the question: Why did God repeat the miracle? The answer is given in Joshua 4. Twelve men were commanded to dig out of the river twelve large stones and to erect a monument. Verses 19-24 say:
/Now the people came up from the Jordan on the tenth day of the first month, and they camped at Gilgal on the east border of Jericho. And those twelve stones which they took out of the Jordan, Joshua set up in Gilgal. Then he spoke to the children of Israel, saying: "When your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, 'What are these stones?' then you shall let your children know, saying, 'Israel crossed over this Jordan on dry land'; for the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan before you until you had crossed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which He dried up before us until we had crossed over, that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord, that it is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever.
/}}}
God intends for His exploits to be remembered. The reason He dried up the Jordan was to remind the Israelites of His prior miracle. And the reason He ordered a monument built was to remind future generations of what He had done at both the Red Sea and the Jordan.
That's why we need to tell our children of those things that God has done in our lives. That's why we need to share our testimony with others. That's why we sometimes keep journals, or write our experiences out for future generations.
That's also why I love Christian biography so much, especially missionary biography. I've just finished the autobiography of missionary Isobel Kuhn, and it's made me praise God for the things He did in her life and through her. Mrs. Kuhn grew up going to parties and dancing the nights away. She was a very worldly young lady, given to parties and society. But as her mother prayed for her the Lord began dealing with her. It took a broken engagement and a period of heartbreak, but gradually Isobel became a powerful woman for God.
Together she and her husband John faced with incredible resilience suffering, serious illness, war, danger, and death--but they left in their wake a growing, thriving church among the Lisu peoples of China. She died at age 53, but she left behind several books chronicling God's exploits among the Lisu and in her own life, and I've been blessed as a result.
Psalm 136, written hundreds of years after the Exodus, says, O give thanks… to Him who divided the Red Sea in two, for His mercy endures forever. He intends for His exploits to be remembered, and as a result He wants you to find ways of sharing with others how His grace has been sufficient in your life.
When His Praises Are Sounded
Finally, God gains glory when His praises are sounded. When we pass from Exodus 14 to Exodus 15, we notice the first thing the Israelites did, having arrived safely through the waters onto the western shore of the Red Sea, was to break out into song, praising God for His deliverance.
Exodus 15 says, Then Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to the Lord, and spoke, saying: "I will sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously! The horse and its rider He has thrown into the sea!"
The greater the problem, the stronger God's help. And the stronger His help, the greater our praise should be.
The old commentator C. M. Mackintosh wrote a hundred years ago, "It is when the people of God are brought into the greatest straits and difficulties, that they are favored with the finest displays of God's character and actings; and for this reason, He ofttimes leads them into a trying position, in order that He may more markedly show Himself."
Then Mackintosh said: "We too frequently lose sight of this great truth, and the consequence is that our hearts give way in the time of trial. If we could only look upon a difficult crisis as an occasion of bringing out, on our behalf, the sufficiency of divine grace, it would enable us to preserve the balance of our souls, and to glorify God, even in the deepest waters."
What crises are you facing right now? What difficulty? What hurt?
Try this. Instead of asking the usual bevy of questions that crowds into our hearts, stop yourself and consciously ask this one instead: "How can God be glorified in my life through this situation?"
You may not know the answer at that particular moment, but you can be certain there is one. And you can trust Him to reveal it in His own way and in His own time, and for His own glory, for as Jesus taught us to say:
Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory--forever. Amen!