Quote from Forum Archives on August 24, 2009, 9:01 am

Posted by: bhfbc <bhfbc@...>

 

GOD’S SAVING POWER #5/5

 

 

GOD CARES FOR US

August 23, 2009

 

 

Text: Exodus 14:19-31

 

 

This marks my fifth, and final, sermon in the series I adapted from our Vacation Bible School theme, topics, and Bible lessons about “God’s Saving Power.”  Just as the participants learned at VBS, we have been learning from God’s Word His everlasting involvement with His people.  Beginning with God’s call to Moses at the burning bush, we learn that God is with us.  The plagues brought upon Egypt because of Pharaoh’s refusal to let the Israelites go demonstrate that God is powerful.  From the Passover in which the Israelites were spared and released from captivity, we see that God does what He says He will do.  On the fourth day of VBS, the Bible lesson left Exodus for a day.  We “fast-forwarded” to Matthew so that the meaning and reality of Jesus as our Passover lamb could be brought into the lessons.  Through Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection, we are assured that God gives us life.

 

The final day of VBS brought us back to Exodus.  Even though the Israelites have escaped their enslavement to the Egyptians, they still face difficulties.  Pharaoh has once again decided that Egypt needs to maintain their pool of slave labor, so he decides to recapture them.  He has sent an army after them, and they are now hot of the heels of the Israelites.  From the human perspective, they are now in a tough place: a sea blocks their way forward, there is an armed force in hot pursuit, and they are unarmed.  I can see how they might experience a bit of anxiety.  From the human perspective, I can understand completely how they could second-guess their actions, as recorded in Exodus 14:11-12, “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!’”

 

Well, that’s the Israelite’s human take on the matter.  But the Living God who had so recently displayed His complete saving power and victory over Pharaoh had a completely different perspective on the matter.  Let us pick up the testimony at Exodus 14:19 through the end of the chapter.  God cares for us.

 

Let me address one issue about this account quickly.  It is a phenomenally mind-boggling miracle.  It is so outside any of our normal experiences that some decide not to believe it; at least, not as it is written.  Little Jimmy, in response to his parent’s question about what he learned in Sunday school, replied, “This fellow Moses gathered his people and escaped from Egypt.  But while they were being chased by the other army, they came to a sea.  So Moses ordered the engineers to come up and get a pontoon bridge across.  So then the Israelites crossed the water, but when the Egyptians were on the bridge, they blew it up and the other army drowned.”  Little Jimmy’s parents looked at each other incredulously and asked him, “Is that really what you learned in Sunday school?”  “Well, no,” came the reply, “but if I told you what the teacher really said, you’d never believe me!”

 

Some people, even experienced Bible scholars, don’t believe it.  They tell us they believe the stories were told, but they do not that the events happened as they have been told.  For myself, I have no reason to believe that they did not happen as they are written in Scripture.  This doesn’t mean that I have an answer to every question that is raised about the crossing of the Red Sea or any other miracle account contained in the Bible, but I still do not have any reason to not believe the account as read.  After all, I know that at some point in ancient history, a group of people identified as Hebrews and Israelites left their bondage in Egypt, which would be a significant feat in itself, to cross a wilderness and eventually occupy a new territory which was already inhabited by larger and fiercer tribes.  Somehow, this relatively small band of people managed to take possession of this new territory even though they were frequently outnumbered and more poorly armed.  I know that during the course of Israelite history, they lost their land not once, but multiple times, to invading forces and yet were able to take possession of the land again at some point without having to raise an invasion force themselves.  I may not comprehend very completely at all the miracles of God contained in the Bible, but I cannot comprehend at all the reality of Hebrew history without the presence and actions of the Living God who is revealed in His Word.  The history of the Hebrew people is impossible without the presence of the Living God.  God cares for us.

 

One of the ironic realities I find in the Red Sea account is in verse 25: “And the Egyptians said, ‘Let’s get away from the Israelites!  The Lord is fighting for them against Egypt.’”  All too often, the enemies of God acknowledge the presence and hand of God before the people of God do.  Granted, they were the poor guys caught in the middle of two walls of water as the wheels fell off their chariots, so they had a real-time physical reason to acknowledge that God was fighting for Israel.  For them, it became a no-brainer real quick.

 

For the Israelites, though – God’s chosen people, mind you – that lesson had to be learned over and over and over.  At times, it is real obvious that it never sunk in.  The Israelites had just witnessed and experienced the most amazing miracle to date, the Passover, and had not merely left Egypt but had been shown the door by the Egyptians themselves as they handed their former slaves all kinds of personal possessions as they left, yet as soon as they found themselves in a hard spot, they complained how much better life was in Egypt as slaves than being brought to the desert to die.  Then they experienced their miraculous salvation and the enemy’s destruction at the Red Sea.  Three days later, they were grumbling against Moses, “What are we to drink?” (Exodus 15:24)  At Marah, they witnessed God turning the water from “bitter,” undrinkable, to “sweet,” drinkable.  About two-and-a-half months later, what were the Israelites doing?  Grumbling once again.  “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt!  There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” (Exodus 16:3)  They received quail and manna from the hand of God.  God cared for them, but what did His people do the next time they faced a challenge?  Did they remember the hand of the Living Lord and say something like, “The Lord is fighting for us?”  Or did they say something like, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and our livestock die of thirst?” (Exodus 17:3)  In spite of the many times and miraculous ways that God demonstrated His care, their response to challenging times was this last question.

 

For as many times as I participate in VBS and hear and/or teach that God cares for us, I must admit that I can sometimes portray the outlook of the Hebrew assembly instead of Moses.  I can forget that God cares for us and that God cares for me.  I can overlook the truth that God cares for me so much that He “sent His only begotten Son.”  I can read the book of Exodus and scoff in amazement at how quick the Israelites were to forget and ignore all that God had done to display His power and might.  I can wonder in puzzlement how they could forget what they had just seen God do to preserve their lives.  I can criticize them for their fickle shallowness.

 

Then I look at my own life.  God has gotten me through troubling times before, but I still look at troubling times now with a great deal of uncertainty.  There are days I don’t know which way to turn.  There are days when I feel so defeated that I wonder if God does care for me.  I do not do well peering into the future and coming up with trustworthy predictions.  I never have.  So when I do think that I need some firm answers and solutions to problems, and none appear on the horizon, I feel isolated.  I wonder if God is here, since He seems to be silent.  I think and act more like the Hebrew assembly that I criticize more than I want to admit.

 

Thank God for His Word and simple lessons such as those found at Vacation Bible School.  Thank God that He reminds me - and I hope you, too - that He cares for us.  I am pretty certain that each of us has had our own “Red Sea” experience where we know beyond any doubt that God opened the way through, and that He cared for us in His own miraculous way.  So remember that the next time we face our next challenge and remember that God cares for us.

 

Speaking of reminded, I heard a song the other day by an artist I have not listened to for a long time.  The artist is Annie Herring, and the song is “Bread Alone.”  One of the verses reads:

 

Man cannot live in his own strength

For he will surely fall.

The Lord will go to any length

If man will heed the call.

Father of Lights has spoken true,

He knows what’s best for me and you.

Man cannot live in his own strength

For he will fall if he won’t heed the call. 

(Annie Herring, “Bread Alone,” Latter Rain Music, 1998)

 

There are frequent reminders all over the place that God cares for us – if we will heed the call.

 

On day four of VBS, and in last week’s sermon, the lesson was about Jesus’ death and resurrection.  God still provides His Passover lamb so that all those who have the blood applied can escape the angel of death.  God gives us life.  This is the call to which we must turn.  This is the call we must heed.  God’s saving power is overwhelmingly magnificent, but we must heed the call and turn to Him.

 

The Israelites have a wonderful story of deliverance and redemption, but it is not theirs alone.  It is God’s account of His love for us, too.  The epic story moves from the Old Testament into the New Testament.  Paul writes, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.” (Romans 8:1-2)  Out of their slavery, God heard the cries of His people and called Moses to act as His deliverer.  God is with us.  In their confrontation with Pharaoh, who many considered their god, the Living God empowered Moses and Aaron to bring plagues upon the Egyptians.  God is powerful.  God promised that He would set His people free, and they were set free, even though it was completed at a terrible cost to the enslaving Egyptians.  God does what He says He will do.  Through the new covenant declared by Jesus the Christ, God saves His people still today.  God gives us life.  Even when there is a pursuing army behind and a sea in the way ahead, God does not abandon His people.  “And when the Israelites saw the great power the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant.” (Exodus 14:31)  God cares for us.

 

 

 

Rev. Charles A. Layne

First Baptist Church

PO Box 515

179 W. Broadway

Bunker Hill, IN 46914

765-689-7987

bhfbc@bhfirstbaptist.com

www.bhfirstbaptist.com

 

 

 

 

 

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