About a month ago, we looked together at the account of the plagues on Egypt. If you were here then, you’ll remember that we said God is in charge of the whole world, even those bits of it where he is not acknowledged. But how he uses that depends a lot on whether you are one of God’s people. God is a God who makes a distinction between his people and other people; when it comes to his people, he makes all things work for good.
Someone checked with me after that sermon, quite rightly, that I wasn’t saying that life would be a bed of roses for Christians. And of course I wasn’t saying that. We all know Christian people who have had to endure the most painful suffering, and many of us have had a very hard and difficult life. Being a Christian certainly does not immunise you from life’s difficulties. Paul acknowledges this in the same chapter of Romans where he says that all things work for good for those who love God.
It is this bald, painful and all too familiar reality that the next few chapters of Exodus grapple with. What happened to the people of Israel after they came out of Egypt? On the night of that first Passover, the people of God came out, tired, incredulous, laden with farewell presents from the Egyptians, and full of joy. God had done it. God was more powerful than Pharaoh. They were free!
Despair as Egypt Chases
So, was life going to be a barrel of laughs from then on in? Far from it! God quite deliberately led his people into a cul-de-sac in the desert, so that when Pharaoh changed his mind again and chased after them, they had nowhere to turn. They were hemmed in by the sea on every side, and the Egyptian army was thundering up behind them. They were trapped. They were done for.
How do you think the Israelites felt at this point? We don’t need to guess; we are told in chapter 14, verses 10 to 12. They were absolutely terrified. They cried out to Moses in panic. And they felt that they would have been better off to have stayed in Egypt, and you know how bad life was for them there! Utter despair and panic. In much the same way as the people of God today feel despair and panic as life seems to fall apart.
Joy as Egypt Destroyed
Let’s skip over the next bit of the story, for a moment, to have a peak at the back of the book. How does the story end?
Well that was the reading we had, the song from Exodus chapter 15. The story ends with the people singing and dancing out of sheer joy. It’s a celebration, it’s full of loud, exuberant music, the tambourines come out, and the relief, gratitude and sheer happiness of it just overflows.
What a Contrast!
You couldn’t get more contrasted emotions if you tried. The fear and despair, the depression even, as the Egyptian army thunders up, and the joyful singing once the whole episode is over. You couldn’t get a greater contrast.
So what is it that got the story from being off the emotional scale at one end, to being off the emotional scale at the other end? What happened in between to bring about such a dramatic change in the mood and feeling of the story?
The answer, of course, is God. There’s no doubt who is at the centre of the celebrations. Verse 2: I will sing to the Lord for he has triumphed gloriously… The Lord is my strength and my song and he has become my salvation; this is my God and I will praise him, my father’s God and I will exalt him. What happened to turn the story about? God did.
In fact, it was all God’s work, just like he said it would be. When the people cried out to Moses in panic, Moses said this: “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. The Lord will fight for you, and you only have to be silent.” God will look after you. All you have to do is watch. Those Egyptians you see today, you will never see again.
So no surprise that, when they are the other side, it is God that they were singing about He made all the difference.
What did God do? Well several things. He was with his people; he was in that pillar of cloud and fire; he never left them alone. Just as we saw with the plagues, God was absolutely in control over the forces of nature. He could control the wind, the waters, the mud. He could make the Egyptian chariot wheels either fall off or get stuck in the mud, depending on how you read it. Either way, as Exodus 14 says, they had difficulty driving.
In the song of Exodus 15, we read in verse 9 what the Egyptians were saying as they charged in after them. The poetry becomes staccato, orders barked by military commanders. “I will pursue. I will overtake. I will divide the spoil. My desire shall have its fill of them. I will draw my sword. My hand shall destroy them.” But what does verse 10 say? “You blew with your wind; the sea covered them; they sank like lead in the mighty waters.” All God had to do was breathe out, and those great military plans came to nothing.
All God had to do was breathe, and the Egyptians were destroyed, never to be seen again. Total victory. Now the people had no more cause to worry.
What got the story from panic, despair and depression to exuberant relief, joy and gratitude? God did. Effortlessly.
Forty year later
Time would come when the people of Israel would feel a déjà-vu moment with this story. Forty years later, they found themselves on the edge of a mass of deep water, this time the river Jordan. They would hear the reports of the Canaanites, who lived the on the other side, with remarkable military capabilities. They would remember how their parents ran away in fright after hearing ten of the twelve spies report how they include giants. But as well as hearing of the powerful enemy, they would also hear of God’s promise of a good land, flowing with milk and honey.
I believe that this is when Moses wrote the book of Exodus for the people of Israel. Can you see how this morning’s reading from Exodus 15 was exactly what they needed to hear? They could read in Exodus chapter 14 of the panic, the fear and the despair that their parents felt as they were trapped by the Red Sea and the Egyptians thundered behind them. And they would identify with that fear, because that would be exactly how they felt as they stood before another body of water facing another powerful enemy.
But they could also read the song in Exodus 15, and start to sense the joy, the relief and the gratitude that erupted once God had blown away the Egyptians with a couple of breaths. Faced with that same fear, they could read chapter 15 and start to get caught up in what the future would feel like. Utter joy! The song in Exodus 15 is exactly what the people of Israel needed at that time.
1400 years later
There’s another déjà-vu. Not 40 years later, but 14 hundred years later!
A frightened group of 11 disciples sat around their teacher, a man called Jesus. They had given up their livelihood to spend their lives living with him. Only now he’s told them he’s going away, and it sounds like that means he’s going to be killed.
Let me read from John chapter 16, verse 5: “But now I am going to him who sent me, and none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart.” And from verse 20: “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you”
Overwhelmingly powerful forces were about to engulf them. Is this why they gave up everything to follow Jesus, only to be abandoned by him and then crushed? So Jesus holds up before them the joy that will be on the other side. He wants them to sense what they will feel like after the resurrection.
2000 years later
That’s 1400 years later. Now come forwards with me another 2000 years. We gather around that same table. And like those first disciples, the pressures of life threaten to engulf us. The biggest pressures of all are our sin and our death – we feel so fragile. Is this why we gave up everything to follow Jesus, for the pressures of life to remain this intense.
But God is gracious. He holds up before us Exodus chapter 15. He wants us to start to sense what it will feel like on the other side, when every foe has been overcome. We need to read and meditate often on those Scriptures that speak of the new heavens and the new earth, that God will usher in when Jesus returns. How wonderful it will be on that day. Think about it, pray about it, talk about it as often as you can.
Exodus chapters 14 and 15 show us that you cannot get a bigger contrast between how we feel now and how we will feel on that day. And these chapters tell us that the reason for that contrast is God. If we get stuck in the despair of the here and now, and find we cannot get caught up in what will be, it is because we have left God out of the equation. Now, just as then, God is with his people; he never abandons us. Now, just as then, God is in complete control over every force of nature. Now, just as then, God will crush and totally destroy every enemy, and the last enemy to be destroyed will be death itself. 2 Thessalonians 2:8 even tells us that the Lord Jesus will destroy his enemies with the breath of his mouth.
So what will we see? What will we feel? What will we fix our gaze on? Is it possible that we might read a chapter like Exodus 15, and start to taste, even start to feel, how we will feel then, even though it is in the future. The darker the present, the more we have to allow God gently to hold before our eyes what it will be like.
Let’s allow Exodus 15 to capture our imagination and our hearts. Days of darkness still may meet me, sorrow’s path I oft may tread; but his presence still is with me, by his guiding hand I’m led. When I tread the verge of Jordan bid my anxious fears subside; death of death, and hell’s destruction, land me safe on Canaan’s side: Songs of praises, songs of praises, I will ever give to Thee. And when we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ll have no less days to sing God’s praise than we first begun.