Crossing the Red Sea

If I got my way in everything, I imagine I’d be a different person. In the short term, life would be more comfortable, more well-supplied, less harried. But would it be better? I doubt it. There’s a reason we call giving a child everything they want ‘spoiling’ them. WIthout challenges, discomfort and the need to work through hardship, we become stunted human beings. We would live with insecurity, an inescapable sense of inadequacy and a stifling purposelessness. So some stress, some adversity is necessary to turn us into well formed adults.

This isn’t just true in our emotional development, but also in our spiritual development. We might fantasize about a spiritual life that is an effortless journey with God. One in which God always seems close. Where doing the right things, always seems effortless. Where the wise choice is always self-evident. This is not my experience of a spiritual journey. I’m willing to be, it hasn’t been yours either.

In Romans Chapter 7, Paul describes the our natural state of human beings as being of slavery to sin. God promises us that through Jesus he can set us free, but the journey to freedom isn’t an easy one. It’s full of places where God asks us to do things that seem terribly unnatural. Crises that require us to keep walking where God is leading even when everything in us tells us that we should be going another way. Liberation, it seems, is no easy thing, even when God is on our side.

This morning, I’d like to look at a story that can serve as a paradigm for this journey of faith. It is the story of God leading his people, the Israelites, through the sea from the land of slavery into the land of promise. I think you may find that it speaks to our own experiences along the way with Jesus on our journey from spiritual slavery to spiritual freedom.

DELIVERING ISRAEL FROM SLAVERY

Every nation or people group tells a story about how they became a people. In Canada we talk about fur traders, New France, the battle of the Plains of Abraham. Americans talk about the Mayflower and the Revolution. The British talk about the Battle of Hastings. For Israel, their founding story is the Exodus, culminating in Israel passing through the sea. In an important sense, this is the experience that makes them into a nation. This experience shows God’s power to deliver them and it ends the threat of Egypt reenslaving them. It is the story that tells how a group of slaves became free and became God’s people.

Context

In Genesis, the family of Jacob (to whom God has given the name Israel) relocates to Egypt to survive during a famine. But eventually, as they grow in number, they become a threat in the mind of Pharaoh, the Egyptian king who enslaves them. Moses, commissioned by God, demands that Pharaoh release the Israelites. When Pharaoh refuses, God unleashes ten plagues on the Egyptians, culminating in the death of every firstborn son in Egypt. After this plague Pharoah, relents and the Israelites leave Egypt. But God decides to take them on a circuitous route towards their final destination. Pharoah likely interprets this as a sign that they are lost (and that their God has abandoned them) and so he attempts to recapture his former slaves. So Pharoah mibilizes his crack troops and overtakes the Israelites as they are camped on the edge of the sea.

A Story

As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!”

Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on. Raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water so that the Israelites can go through the sea on dry ground. I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them. And I will gain glory through Pharaoh and all his army, through his chariots and his horsemen. The Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I gain glory through Pharaoh, his chariots and his horsemen.”

Then the angel of God, who had been traveling in front of Israel’s army, withdrew and went behind them. The pillar of cloud also moved from in front and stood behind them, coming between the armies of Egypt and Israel. Throughout the night the cloud brought darkness to the one side and light to the other side; so neither went near the other all night long.

Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided, and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left.

The Egyptians pursued them, and all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots and horsemen followed them into the sea. During the last watch of the night the Lord looked down from the pillar of fire and cloud at the Egyptian army and threw it into confusion. He jammed the wheels of their chariots so that they had difficulty driving. And the Egyptians said, “Let’s get away from the Israelites! The Lord is fighting for them against Egypt.”

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea so that the waters may flow back over the Egyptians and their chariots and horsemen.” Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at daybreak the sea went back to its place. The Egyptians were fleeing toward it, and the Lord swept them into the sea. The water flowed back and covered the chariots and horsemen—the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed the Israelites into the sea. Not one of them survived.

But the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left. That day the Lord saved Israel from the hands of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore. And when the Israelites saw the mighty hand of the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant. (Ex. 14:10-31, NIV)

A Paradigm

While this is a story of Israel’s past, it is far more than that too. It serves as the basis for Israel’s relationship with God. Over and over again in the Hebrew Scriptures we see that God’s call to Israel for loyalty is founded on how he delivered Israel at the Sea of Reeds (the better translation, often erroneous called the Red Sea). It is often explained as God’s deliverance of his people from Slaver into freedom, as in Judges 6:8b-9a, “ I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. I rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians. And I delivered you from the hand of all your oppressors.” God reminds his people what he’s done for them, and how they ought to trust him in response to his history of faithfulness to them.

I would like to suggest, that this is a useful paradigm for us too. While it’s true, we weren’t personally delivered from Egypt, neither were the generations of Israelites whom God reminded of the Exodus. But more than that, in your life, you may have had your own Red Sea experience. Maybe, like the Israelites, you’ve experienced God’s deliverance from a place of slavery to a place of freedom. And maybe like the Israelites, the experience was a terrifying test of your faith. Today I want to look at the places where God invites us to cross metaphorically speaking, from the house of slavery into the house of freedom.

OUT OF ALIENATION & INTO RECONCILIATION

The first place we likely encounter this experience is in choosing to accept God’s act of deliverance. We all find ourselves alienated from God and enslaved to sin. Writing to the church in Rome, Paul depicts our helplessness over sin: “I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” But despite our helplessness to live in a way that pleases God, we are invited to trust that God, who, by rights should be our enemy, is willing and able to save us. Again, from Romans: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”

But this act of coming to God in faith is not always an easy act. When the Holy Spirit convicts me of sin, we begin to realize how broken, selfish and depraved I am. I might doubt that God could love or save someone like me. After allI, I might not forgive someone whose actions were so offensive towards me. And so I come to a crisis of faith. I can choose to believe that God is pretty and vindictive. That he dredges up my awareness of my sinfulness because he enjoys making me squirm. Or, I can choose to believe that God’s love goes beyond my own understanding. I can choose to believe that God only brings up my sin so that I can know true forgiveness. That he sees how terribly sinful I am and delights to offer me grace. So I find myself on the shores of my own Red Sea. Pursued by the sense of sinfulness that overwhelms me, do I choose to follow God into the promised land of life with him, even when my natural self struggles to understand how God could possibly be so gracious. It is through this crisis that God calls me to be a member of his people. If you are a follower of Jesus, you’ve had your own Red Sea experience. Some might have been more dramatic than others, but you’ve had to choose to fall on the mercy of a God who has every right to punish you. You’ve had to trust that God’s greatest delight is not to punish wrongdoing, but save the wayward and lost.

OUT OF FEAR & INTO FAITH

But we don’t just experience this Red Sea moment once. During the course of our Chrsitain walk, God routinely leads us to the edge of the water, to the crisis of faith where we must chose to trust him and follow him through the sea. This happens in many areas in our lives, but here are a couple of examples.

Forgiveness

Writing seven years after the conclusion of the Second World War, C. S. Lewis talked about how we can view extending forgiveness are a terrible thing we must do in the face of human cruelty. He writes:

Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive, as we had during the war. And then, to mention the subject at all is to be greeted with howls of anger. It is not that people think this too high and difficult a virtue: it is that they think it hateful and contemptible. 'That sort of talk makes them sick,' they say. And half of you already want to ask me, 'I wonder how you'd feel about forgiving the Gestapo if you were a Pole or a Jew?'

There are times when forgiving others feels like a moral and necessary thing to do. But Jesus who demands we love our enemies, calls us to a more radical form of forgiveness. And our own forgiveness is contingent on our willingness to forgive others, even when they’ve done the unforgivable to us. Again, the fact that we’ve been wronged may lead us into the place of spiritual crisis. If we refuse to offer forgiveness, we become captive to bitterness (and cut ourselves off from God’s grace) but on the other hand forgiving the person who has wronged us in profound ways feels too costly to contemplate. But Jesus asks us to step out into the sea, calling us to follow him in his radical forgiveness, the same forgiveness that has made my salvation possible. But it is only in following Jesus into impossible places that we can find freedom from such evil.

Maybe the shoe is on the other foot. Maybe you feel like you have to confess something terrible to others. You fear being cast out if you admit the depth of your own sinfulness. And so you live a pretend life. But walling ourselves off from others is poison for our souls. You cannot know acceptance without owning up to your sinfulness, because you’ll always live in fear that if you’re discovered, you will be rejected. And so you’re at the water’s edge again. Living a life is killing you, but you wonder if you dare to follow Jesus into the sea, because you’re not sure he or his people can love you when they see just how sinful you are. But Jesus invites us to come and experience his forgiveness, and to seek forgiveness from those you have wronged, so that you may find freedom from the lie.

Being Church

Another place where we find God leading us to the water’s edge is with regard to church. Church is a wonderful idea, but often a terrible reality. The Church ought to be the place of greatest acceptance, a collection of sinners, transformed by God’s grace. And yet, many experience the pain of rejection, or abuse in a place that ought to be a sanctuary.

Church is a decidedly mixed bag. And yet this is the place where God has led us. At our backs is a life of solitary faith. A life where we try to live for God alone, and unsupported. If you’ve tried to do that, you probably know that it’s not how we’re meant to live. But we find ourselves on the water’s edge being called to join a group of people who might love us one day and betray us on the next. Yet this is Jesus’ vehicle to lead us from slavery into freedom. The wonderful people in God’s kingdom give us strength for the journey. They give physical form to God’s grace in our lives. The scoundrels in church teach us about God’s love for sinners, and they give us the practices we need to become proficient at loving like God loves. Only by practice will we learn to love the unlovable. And when we do, we’ll have a deeper understanding of God’s love for us.

WHAT ARE MY RED SEA MOMENTS?

What are your Red Sea moments? What are the places where the status quo feels untenable, but God’s call is to some place that feels impossible? Maybe God is inviting you to find freedom with regard to finances. I’m not saying Jesus is inviting you to play the lottery, but that he’s challenging you to be generous when you don’t even know how you’re going to pay the bills. But he wants to show you what it is like to live with confidence in his provision.

Maybe your Red Sea is your mortality. You feel like you’re running out of time, and now that the end seems so much closer than it once did, you start to second guess whether you can trust God about what happens after you take that last breath. Maybe God wants to lead you out of a place of fearing death through the sea into a place of peace, and anticipation of resurrected life with him.

Maybe it’s your professional life. You work a job that pays the bills, but it’s killing your soul. Maybe Jesus is calling you to step out in a new direction that looks scary.

Maybe it’s dealing with an addiction. You know that it is destroying your life, or that it might even kill you, but the road to life without that thing that you depend on is too scary.

Jesus calls us to scary places. He does this because these are the places where we can find the greatest freedom. If you lift weights, they tell you that you’ll only grow stronger if you do more work than your body is adapted to. It’s only by pushing harder that you increase your muscles mass. Faith works the same way. It’s only as we push harder, out of our comfort zone and into places where we must rely on Jesus to survive, that we see how truly faithful Jesus is. And when we finally understand the faithfulness of God, not in some academic way, but in our every-day life, that we can follow God more and more as he leads us to the promised land of freedom. Free from sin and free to live life with God. To know him, and the incredible depth of his love, his grace, and his power.