A 31-day Lenten Devotional Series by Rev. Dave Brown
Yes, the immediate pain of servitude was over. Yes, there was a joyous and hasty exodus of 600,000 men accompanied by an equal number of women and children. Yes, they left with their possessions, along with gifts bestowed upon them by sympathetic Egyptians. Yes, they had sheep and cattle and unleavened bread to eat.
Pharaoh’s insistence that the Hebrews leave was a dream come true, not to mention a million prayers and promises of God answered. Then there was the unexplainable phenomena of the presence of the cloud and pillar. The Lord was going before them and was providing protection and light. Within a short while they were camped by the shores of the Red Sea.
But then Pharaoh changed his mind. This devilish figure woke up to the fact that he had lost his entire workforce. “What have we done, that we have let Israel go from serving us?” (Exodus 14:5) Pharaoh would not let this liberation movement stand. He made ready his chariot and gathered his army with him accompanied by 600 chosen chariots and all the other chariots of Egypt led by their officers, horsemen and army. They went in hot pursuit of the Israelites. It wasn’t long before the Hebrews were overtaken as they camped by the sea.
Quickly, the dream turned into a panic inducing nightmare. They were trapped! What was to happen next? No one knew. The first reaction to the crisis was fear. The text tells us, “And the people feared greatly.” This is a typical human reaction to humanly unsolvable dangers. Besides the two common alternatives of fight of flight, the emotion of fright seems perfectly normal.
The text also says the people cried out to God. This would seem like they were exercising proper religious responses to circumstances. However, their cry was a lengthy criticism rather than a prayer.
11 They said to Moses, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? 12 Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”
Moses offered a godly perspective which we would do well to receive whenever we find ourselves in difficult (humanly impossible) situations where there are two equally undesirable options.
13 And Moses said to the people, “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. 14 The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.”
Reflections: The Lord does not bring us out of slavery just to allow us to be enslaved again to sin, death and the devil! Nor does he plan to destroy us in the deep blue sea. Moses’ word is the answer to our fears. The Lord will bring salvation. He will fight for us. This leads to the Lords’s next word: “Tell the people of Israel to go forward.” Are you preparing to move forward by faith in God’s word?