God Our Deliverer

[0:00] It's one of the worst feelings in the world.

[0:24] It starts deep in our gut. It rises up. We feel it. Our pulse begins to speed up, beat faster.

[0:39] Maybe perspiration will break out on our brow. We begin to look side to side, up and down, both literally sometimes and metaphorically.

[0:53] Is there any way of escape? Is there any way out? The feeling of being impossibly trapped is a terrible, terrible feeling.

[1:06] Sometimes we feel this physically, but much more often in life. We feel this in our life circumstances. Maybe someone has come and confronted you and laid bare a lie that you have told.

[1:21] Maybe you've been married for years and it's never gotten better. And it rises up in you, this feeling of being trapped.

[1:36] Maybe you know a deadline is looming, whether at work or at school. And the number of hours that you have is insufficient to accomplish the work that you have to do.

[1:48] Maybe your bank account continues to drop lower and lower. And the bills continue to come in.

[1:59] Impossible situations make us feel this kind of trapped. And sometimes we feel trapped because we've been foolish.

[2:13] Because we have sinned. And it's left us in a bad place. Sometimes we feel trapped by circumstances that are completely beyond our control.

[2:24] Have no moral bearing. They just are. But they're hard. Sometimes it's a mix of both. In those moments of panic, in those moments of terror, when you're facing a situation where it seems like there's no way out, where do you turn?

[2:44] Some of us will dig deep. We'll find inner strength to go the extra mile. We will find the indomitable human spirit and we will try to gut it out.

[2:59] Some of us will look for an escape. For some kind of compromise. Some easy way out. Even though it may cost us our soul and our character to follow that path.

[3:14] Some of us will crawl up into a fetal position and give up in despair and hopelessness. And some of us might actually turn to God.

[3:26] This is church after all. So that seems like a thought. But you know what? When we turn to God, what do we find? It doesn't always get better. Does it? Because when we read the Bible carefully, we see that God is not a God who has promised to simply make our lives easier.

[3:45] To simply remove the challenges in our life. To free us from every impossible circumstance. To make our life better as quickly as possible. He does not always get people.

[3:55] He does not always get his people out of impossible situations. And in fact, it even seems like he leads them into those situations at times.

[4:09] So is there any hope for us? How are we to think about these things? Friends, this is what our passage this morning in Exodus is going to help us think through.

[4:23] So if you want to turn with me, page 55 in your pew Bibles, Exodus chapter 13. And while you're turning there, just to remember what we've been looking at over the past eight or nine chapters, is God's amazing work of freeing his people who were enslaved in Egypt.

[4:42] Freeing them through his mighty acts of power. The ten plagues, the famous ten plagues where God, with increasing intensity, brought judgment upon Egypt to break the hold that they had.

[4:57] And to let people of God go free from slavery. And right before this passage, we've seen that God has finally done this.

[5:08] That through the Passover, through the judgment on the firstborn, God has finally broken the will of the Pharaoh and he has sent them out. He said, go, you might be free.

[5:20] And so as we come into this passage, Israel is on their way out the door of Egypt. And that's where we are in the story this morning. So let's read it together.

[5:31] We're going to read a good chunk of scripture. So hang in there with me. If you feel like you want to stand, actually, why don't I do this? If you can stand and you're able to, why don't you stand for the reading of God's word?

[5:43] If you don't, if you need to sit, that's fine. But we're going to read chapter 13, starting in verse 17, all the way to the end of chapter 14. So hang in there.

[5:54] Here we go. When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near.

[6:05] For God said, lest the people change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt. But God led the people round by the way of the wilderness towards the Red Sea.

[6:16] And the people of Israel went up out of the land of Egypt, equipped for battle. Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for Joseph had made the sons of Israel solemnly swear, saying, God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones with you from here.

[6:32] And they moved on from Succoth and encamped at Etham on the edge of the wilderness. And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light that they may travel by day and by night.

[6:49] The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people. Then the Lord said to Moses, tell the people of Israel to turn back and encamp in front of Pi-hahiroth between Migdal and the sea, in front of Baal, Zephon, and you shall encamp facing it by the sea.

[7:11] For Pharaoh will save the people of Israel. They are wandering in the land. The wilderness has shut them in. And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and he will pursue them.

[7:22] And I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his hosts. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord. And they did so. When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, the mind of Pharaoh and his servants was changed towards the people.

[7:37] And they said, what is this that we've done? That we've let Israel go from serving us? So he made ready his chariot and took his army with him and took 600 chosen chariots and all the other chariots of Egypt with officers over all of them.

[7:53] And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. And he pursued the people of Israel while the people of Israel were going out defiantly. The Egyptians pursued them, all Pharaoh's horses and chariots and his horsemen and his army, and overtook them encamped at the sea by Pi-ha-hiroth in front of Baal-zaphon.

[8:13] When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes. And behold, the Egyptians were marching after them. And they feared greatly.

[8:24] And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord. And 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?

[8:37] 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.

[8:50] 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.

[9:04] The Lord will fight for you and you have only to be silent. And then the Lord said to Moses, Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward.

[9:16] Lift up your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground. And I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they shall go in after them.

[9:28] And I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his hosts, his chariots and his horsemen. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I have gained glory over Pharaoh, his chariots and his horsemen.

[9:40] Then the angel of God who was going before the host of Israel moved and went behind them. And the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them.

[9:50] Coming between the host of Egypt and the host of Israel. And there was the cloud and the darkness. And it lit up the night without one coming near the other all night.

[10:01] And then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. And the Lord drove the sea back by the strong east wind all night. And made the sea dry land and the waters were divided. And the people of Israel went in the midst of the sea on dry ground.

[10:15] The waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left. Then the Egyptians pursued and went in after them into the midst of the sea. All Pharaoh's horses, his chariots and his horsemen.

[10:26] And in the morning watched the Lord in the pillar of fire and of cloud looked down on the Egyptian forces. And threw the Egyptian forces into a panic.

[10:37] Clogging their chariot wheels so that they drove heavily. And the Egyptians said, Let us flee from before Israel for the Lord fights for them against the Egyptians. And then the Lord said to Moses, Stretch out your hand over the sea.

[10:52] That the waters may come back upon the Egyptians. Upon their chariots and upon their horsemen. So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. And the sea returned to its normal course when the morning appeared.

[11:06] And as the Egyptians fled into it, the Lord threw the Egyptians into the midst of the sea. The water returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen and all the host of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea.

[11:19] Not one of them remained. But the people of Israel walked on dry ground through the sea. The waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.

[11:31] Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians. And Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Israel saw the great power that the Lord used against the Egyptians.

[11:45] So the people feared the Lord. And they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses. And this is God's word. Amen. Please take a seat. Let's pray together as we continue to look at this.

[11:58] Lord, thank you for this word. Lord, thank you for the way that you display yourself. And reveal yourself to us in your word. Lord, I pray this morning that as we consider the questions before us, Lord, that we would see you more clearly.

[12:15] That we would love you. That we would worship you. That we would trust you. Because of the kind of God that you are. A God who saves. We pray this in Jesus' name.

[12:27] Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. So as we look at this familiar story about God's power and God's deliverance of his people, what I want to do is explore his work for his people when they were trapped in an impossible situation.

[12:47] I want to look at three aspects of God's work. I want to look at God's plan, God's presence, and God's power. So we're going to look at those in turn as some of the dynamics of what we see from God and in God in this passage.

[13:03] So first, let's look at God's plan. The good news is that God has one. God has a plan for his people. And it's very clear. You look back at the end of chapter 13.

[13:15] And God led them out. And he led them carefully. And by that I mean full of care. The easiest way, if you had a map, I'm going to try to do this for you. Here's Egypt. Here's the promised land where they're going.

[13:27] Okay? And the easiest way for them to get from here to here is to go along the south, eastern, western, which one is it? The edge of the sea, the Mediterranean Sea, along the coastline right up into, it would be across the top of the Sinai Peninsula and through what is now Gaza into Palestine, into the promised land.

[13:51] Right? But the Philistines lived there along the coast. And the Philistines were well known as a powerful nation with a strong army. And God said, I'm concerned that facing that.

[14:04] Just as a note, when it says that they went out armed, where does it say that? They went out, verse 18, they went out equipped for battle.

[14:15] Well, that's probably not a great translation of that phrase. It probably means they went out arrayed like an army. But they didn't have any, there's no reason to believe they actually had any weapons.

[14:27] So arrayed for battle might mean to you they had armor and swords and that sort of thing. That's not the picture. It just meant that they were set apart in companies so that when they traveled, they had an orderly march.

[14:38] March, I believe, is what that means. So as they went out, they were facing this. And God said, I love you. I'm not going to put you in that position. I'm going to take you a different way. So he leads them.

[14:49] Rather than going this way, he leads them this way. South, probably, out of Egypt, into the Sinai Peninsula. The geographic markers in this passage are notoriously obscure to the 21st century readers.

[15:04] So we don't actually know exactly where they went. Most of these places are not on ancient maps, let alone modern ones. So it is not exactly clear.

[15:14] There's much ink spilled in the commentaries about what this path looked like. But we're going to go with this. They went south. Seems like the best thing to do. So God was leading them carefully.

[15:25] But not only did he lead them carefully, but then he led them in, in some ways, in a strange way. Because he led them down. And then he said, oh, now I want you to turn back. Go back a little bit the way you came.

[15:38] And put yourself in a terribly indefensible position militarily. Camp against an ocean or against some body of water where when the Egyptians come and get you, which I'm telling you they're about to do, you'll be trapped.

[15:55] It's a very odd thing, isn't it? And yet the text is very clear in verses 1 through 4 of chapter 14. Do this exactly the way I tell you.

[16:07] Camp with your back to the sea. Because I am moving to do something. I have a plan which is to display my glory by defeating Pharaoh one last time.

[16:22] And he is basically baiting the Egyptians with the Israelites in this indefensible position. God has a plan for his own glory that led his people into a very difficult situation.

[16:42] This is what we see in the text. God is leading them into it. And he's leading them with a purpose. But he's leading them into a situation where they will be trapped between the most powerful army in the world at that time and a sea that they're unable to cross.

[17:04] Friends, I wonder if you have felt God leading you into impossible situations. Maybe at your school you're the only Christian that you know. And you wonder, how could this be God?

[17:17] How can I do this all by myself? Maybe you're a parent and God has given you a special needs child. Maybe your boss has called you and said, I'm sorry, we have to let you go.

[17:36] Right after you put the down payment on the house and the baby's on the way. Maybe you've chosen to be faithful to the Lord by remaining pure in your relationships.

[17:53] But it's led you to a place where you think, I'm never going to get married if I keep doing this. There are all sorts of ways in which following the Lord or the Lord's leading and sovereign control over our lives puts us in these situations that feel impossible and we feel trapped.

[18:16] And isn't God gracious to show us the heart of the Israelite people so we don't feel alone? Because look at them in verses 15 through 19. Right?

[18:27] What are they... I'm sorry. In verses 11 through 14. In verses 11 through 14. Do you see what the Israelites say? They say what we say in our hearts in those circumstances, don't they?

[18:38] They say, God, what are you doing? Why did you lead us out here to die? Why did you... Why didn't you leave us where we were? Even though that was terrible, at least it wasn't as bad as this.

[18:51] God, how could you do this? We doubt, God, are you really in control? Is your plan really good? We question, why have you done this to this?

[19:04] This seems evil, not good. The fundamental question, God, have you really led me only that I would suffer and be destroyed?

[19:15] When we feel trapped, those are questions that rise up in our hearts, aren't they? And Moses speaks to them and to us these words in verses 13 and 14.

[19:33] 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.

[19:44] The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent. Which might mean stop complaining and griping, but I actually don't think so. I think actually what that means is you have only to be still.

[19:58] You don't have to do a single thing. Just stand firm and watch God do his work. As we face these impossible circumstances, this word comes.

[20:15] Stand firm. How can we do that? Well, the wonderful thing is that not only does God have a plan for us, but God promises that his presence will go with us.

[20:28] As you read this story, God makes it so clear to his people, I didn't just free you from Egypt and then let you loose in the Sinai Peninsula and said, good luck, hope that works well for you.

[20:40] He didn't just sort of push him out of the house and say, okay, you're on your own. No. In fact, it's the very opposite. God chose to give this incredible manifestation of his presence with his people.

[20:55] A pillar of cloud and a fire. And we don't know what it looks like. You probably have images, whether it's from Charlton Heston or from Steven Spielberg and the Prince of Egypt.

[21:05] You probably have some vision of it. But the fact is, nobody knows what this really looked like. But it was very clear that it was big and it was obvious and it was clear that God was going before his people.

[21:20] And by doing that, this manifestation was reminding them, I am with you. I am with you, the one who did all these things to free you from Egypt.

[21:35] I am with you. If you remember, I am with you and I will provide for you. This pillar of cloud not only gave them direction, but it wasn't just like a little will-o-wisp saying, oh, go this way, not that way.

[21:53] Right? It was also a pillar of fire by night so that they had light. If you've ever traveled in the desert, you might want to travel during the night, not during the day some of the time.

[22:05] Because it's really hot. So, God gave them light so that they could travel by night if they wanted to. God gave them shade, potentially, during the day.

[22:16] It's not clear whether the pillar of cloud gave them shade, but it's possible. Not only that, but that pillar of cloud became a shield as well. When the Egyptians came thundering over the horizon and the people were afraid, it says, God moved that pillar to land between the armies of Egypt and the people of God.

[22:44] My kids are Star Wars fans. I'm a Star Wars fan. Put up a ray shield, an impenetrable shield. No bullets could get through. No chariots could get through.

[22:55] No people could get through. God protected his people with an impenetrable shield with his presence.

[23:06] And not only that, but it also comes, his presence comes with his promise. Did you notice back in chapter 13 the odd little verse about Joseph's bones? Now, if you don't know Joseph's story, go back to our sermon archives.

[23:22] There's a great bunch of sermons on those from about a year and a half ago. Joseph, who God led in a very circuitous and very difficult path where he suffered deeply and unjustly many times, and yet God used him in the end to deliver his people from famine and to provide for his people by bringing them to Egypt.

[23:50] Joseph was a reminder of the kind of God that the people of Israel knew. And not only that, but that this God was a God who would fulfill his promises.

[24:01] Because 400 years earlier, Joseph had said, you're going to be enslaved, but the Lord will come and he will deliver you. And when that happens, take my bones with me, with you. That's exactly what he said.

[24:13] Which is sort of crazy. But now these people are experiencing it and they can say, oh, God is with us. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and Joseph is the same God who is with us now, fulfilling his promises to make us his people and to take us into his promised land.

[24:33] So God's presence is a sweet and powerful help as they face these impossible circumstances.

[24:46] I don't know if any of you are hikers. I like to hike. I don't get to hike as much as I like to. I was never a very adventuresome hiker. I stayed on the clear paths with the clear blazes and the maps and, you know, but I have friends who like to be more adventuresome and they'll try to find the trail that used to be there but isn't very well marked.

[25:07] And one of the things that I learned from them is that when you're hiking, a map is good, but a guide is far better. Right?

[25:17] Because when you're out in the trail and you've lost the blaze and you're not sure where you are, a guide who has been through those woods many times will know how to address it.

[25:28] Will know where the path should go and how to get you back on it. A guide will know what to do when, like I had one hiking adventure where we ran into a beehive on the trail and we, the group of us literally scattered into the woods and then our guides brought us back together and said, okay, this is what we're going to do, this is how we're going to do it and he led us through because he knew better than we how to do this.

[25:55] Maybe in another example, maybe some of you have experienced this as you followed your GPS through New Haven and you realize, wait a minute, I would rather have someone who knows this neighborhood tell me how to get from point A to point B because the way that Google Maps gets me there or Waze gets me there, it might be the most direct but this is not the best way for me to go.

[26:19] It may feel unsafe, the potholes may be terrible, there are all sorts of things that Google doesn't know but someone who lives in a neighborhood will say, oh yeah, the best way to go there is you go here and here and here.

[26:32] God has said, I will be your guide, I will go with you and with my presence, I will provide both direction and leadership.

[26:42] it's like in the Lord of the Rings when Aragorn shows up at the Prancing Pony in Bree, meets with Frodo and his friends in a time of dire threat and says, I will go with you and I will lead you through the wilderness in the face of great enemies, I will take you.

[27:03] God, even more than that, says, I will go with you. And friends, isn't this a comfort because when we face those impossible situations, when we feel trapped, the first thing that we feel is, I'm alone in this.

[27:22] I'm alone in whatever the thing is. No one can help me, nobody knows. And God comes and says, it's just not true. I am with you.

[27:35] He does not abandon us, but he walks through it with us and he makes a way for us. So we've seen God's plan to lead us for his glory.

[27:50] We've seen God's presence to remind us that he will carry us through. But then finally, we see God's power. God's power to make a way.

[28:01] And this is obviously at the center of this passage that God's power to save and deliver his people is what this passage is all about. It's what you see in verses 13 and 14 of chapter 14 where it says, stand and watch the Lord's salvation.

[28:18] And you see it at the end of the chapter again. So the Lord delivered and saved Israel from Egypt. How did he do this? He did it by a great display of his power.

[28:31] Now, you might wonder why the Red Sea? Why water? We don't get it. Maybe if you're from New Orleans or from Houston, you might get it a little more than we do.

[28:44] But in the ancient world, water was a very fearsome thing. Partly because most people didn't know how to swim. And so water was the place of death.

[28:55] But even more so, water had a mythological power in the worldview of the ancient Near East. I remember my freshman year in college, I read the Epic of Gilgamesh and the place of the sea as a power of chaos and of destruction and of uncontrolled anger.

[29:18] Maybe not anger. Uncontrolled power. And one of the amazing things is when the scriptures come along, when God begins to, when God tells the story of how he created the earth, what's the first thing he did?

[29:30] He took water and he put boundaries on it, right? It's not the first thing. But it's one of the major things that he did in the creation story is to put water into its place.

[29:42] He controlled the seas and he put boundaries on it. This far and no farther. And he brought dry land out of it. To an ancient Near East person, that story is telling us God is a greater power than the thing you most fear.

[30:00] And God wanted to show that again. Just like we saw with all of the plagues and how they were a decreation of some sorts, a reversal of the creation order where Egypt was feeling the impact of that.

[30:16] Here God is going to do that one more time by using water. Now, what water was it? All right, so if you wanted to spend a lot of time, you could read about which body of water do we think was really in view here.

[30:35] There are translation questions. Is it the Red Sea or is it the Sea of Reeds? There are questions about how this happened. There are questions about where this, again, the geographic markers aren't clear.

[30:45] So there's lots of ink spilled over these questions. And I'm not going to solve all of them. Let me give you a couple of things. First of all, whatever the body of water is, we need to see that God used both natural and supernatural means.

[31:05] This is what the text actually says. Look with me in verse 21. Right? As his people with their backs to the sea and no way to get through it, God says, I'm going to make a way through it.

[31:19] Right? It says in verse 21 that he used a strong east wind that blew all night and made the sea dry land and the waters were divided. So there you see God using a natural force in his control to do what he said he was going to do.

[31:33] But then you keep going and send verse 22 and the people of Israel went in the midst of the sea on dry ground which in itself, have you ever tried to dry a piece of ground after it's been underwater like a riverbed or a marsh?

[31:50] You know, you can pull out the biggest fan you want. It's not going to get hard that quickly. Typically. Right? So God did something withdrawing it that I think is beyond what would be normally expected even if the wind blew the water away.

[32:05] But even more than that, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left. Friends, this describes something that is supernatural, not merely natural.

[32:18] And if we, the week after Easter, having celebrated the belief that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, if we believe that God can raise someone from the dead violating the laws of nature, superseding the laws of nature for his purpose and his glory, we think that God can do it here by separating the water in a supernatural way.

[32:41] He may have used natural means. He clearly was also using supernatural power. power. Both of these things are true and we don't need to fight about it anymore. We can just move on and say God did this because both the natural and the supernatural were in his hand and in his control and for his purpose to show his power in delivering people.

[33:04] And in his deliverance, it had two aspects because he not only parted the sea, but then that sea was both a place of deliverance for his people and judgment on his enemies.

[33:18] Do you see, did you hear how the Lord baited the Egyptians to come in? He held them back with the pillar of cloud for a while and so they're chomping at the bit and maybe they can see through and watch the Israelites begin to go through and they're chomping at the bit, right?

[33:36] And then he finally releases it and it says that he hardened the Egyptians' hearts so they went after them into the sea. And then their chariot wheels, which had been going along on the dry ground that the Egyptians had been walking on, it says that he then confused them and then after he, as he confused them, their chariot wheels got stuck and they realized that God was against them and that God was bringing destruction on them.

[34:09] And interestingly, when it talks about the waters returning to their places, did you notice that it said the Egyptians fled into it? And did that seem odd to you?

[34:20] I think, I may be wrong, but I think the picture here is that the Egyptians are in the middle of the sea. They've been thrown into chaos by the Lord. They've gotten stuck. They're starting to think about fleeing and suddenly the water is coming back, not just from the side but from the shore as well.

[34:36] And so as they're fleeing into it, they're actually trying to flee out of the water but they can't flee out of the water because the water is coming at them from all sides.

[34:48] And God buried them in a deluge of his wrath and of water. And the nation that stood itself proudly up in defiance of God, the Pharaoh who had said, I am God himself and I am the ultimate power.

[35:07] The nation that had drowned the firstborn of Israel in the Nile River. Their power, their greatest symbol of might was their chariots and their army and God buried them in the bottom of the ocean or of the sea.

[35:26] So God delivered his people by judging their enemies. but he also delivered his people by providing a way through for his own.

[35:37] They walked on dry land. They had the cloud going before them and they stood and saw the salvation of God. For what happened here was final.

[35:48] There is no more Egypt after this in the story of Israel for hundreds of years. They are now across a body of water that the Egyptians cannot cross and their power has been broken.

[36:01] Israel is now truly and finally free. Free to go and free to follow the Lord and free to go back to the promised land. The victory was decisive and the salvation was clear and now as they looked ahead there was only goodness that they would anticipate.

[36:23] They had been delivered from the hand of the Egyptians. Look with me at the end of chapter 14 real quickly. Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore.

[36:37] In verse 31 I'm going to read it a little differently so watch with me. Israel saw the great hand that the Lord used against the Egyptians. It's actually the same it's the same root it's the same idea.

[36:49] God's hand that brought judgment on Egypt was the same hand that now was plucking Israel out and delivering them and leading them. Now they're in the hands of God not the Egyptians anymore.

[37:05] What a great salvation this is. God has shown great power over the forces of chaos and nature over the greatest army in the ancient world at the time he has delivered his people.

[37:20] Friends what good news this is. What good news it is is that God is a God who by his plan and with his presence and by his power deliver his people and so now here we are and God's going to give you an A on that exam that you don't have time to study for and God's going to give you that job back that you just got fired from and God's going to heal your cancer and he's going to make your marriage new.

[37:48] Wait a minute. No that's not actually what it says. Friends he may do those things he can do those things we see in the gospel that for his purposes and for his glory God will sovereignly intervene in our lives to show his power and show his ability to save and deliver.

[38:16] You see it through the gospels as Jesus does this to say this is what the kingdom of God looks like. This is what the reversal of the curse looks like in the world. This is how I can deliver you.

[38:29] But friends we must see that though we can ask for these things and God may graciously give them to us this is not the main point and application of this passage for that is not what God has promised us most clearly.

[38:49] In fact what God has promised us instead and what the story of the exodus looks forward to is a greater deliverance from a greater enemy with a greater display of power.

[39:02] For the Bible tells us that the greatest enemy that we have is our sin and death that is the result of it. 1 Corinthians 15 26 says that the last enemy of humanity is death and that death is a result of sin and that sin is the greatest enemy because it is the thing that separates us from God.

[39:25] It is the thing that keeps us from being God's people and yet God has not left us in the face of that enemy without hope but in fact he has intervened in the world.

[39:39] He has sent his son Jesus to come and to be the ultimate deliverer the greater savior and Jesus has come and you can read through the book of John and see how much John is telling us that Jesus is the second exodus and the greater exodus for his people and Jesus has come and by his perfect life and by his death for us and by his resurrection he has defeated the power of sin and death.

[40:09] He has died a death that he did not deserve so that we who by faith are joined with him will not face. He bore a judgment he went through the valley of the shadow of death and the waters of judgment that God poured out on him he went through those for us so that we would walk on the dry land of the forgiveness that he has achieved for us in Christ and he has brought us through that that we may be raised to new life with him who is not a dead savior but a risen savior who has passed through death into now eternal life.

[40:54] And friends we know from the passage that was read earlier this morning that this is not done. Just like Israel they are now free from Egypt but are not yet at the promised land.

[41:04] We are not yet at the promised land either but we know that the victory won at the cross and at the empty tomb will one day fully be ours when God will remake the world and the heavens and the earth will come together and God will dwell among his people and there will be no more sickness and no more sorrow and no more sin and no more death and no more sea because God will be there.

[41:33] And that friends is the greater deliverance that this passage points us to. This is what he has done for us. And friends that's not just hope for the future but it's help now because God does still have a plan to accomplish his glory in our lives and God still promises to be with us through every circumstance that we face as impossible as it feels but we can look back on the victory of the resurrected Christ and look ahead to the certain hope of the victory the final consummation of that victory and friends we can endure and we can look for God's glory and we can ask him God show me how are you bringing glory to yourself in this and there are times you'll see it more clearly and there are times you won't but that's the question that ought to be asked as you cling to this great salvation a God who is able to deliver you let's pray

[42:44] Lord we thank you this morning we thank you for the exodus and for your great display of your power and glory Lord we thank you for the greater display of your power and glory at the cross how you defeated sin and death and for all who by faith are gathered with Christ and joined to Christ Lord that we have this hope this certain hope that we are participants in your victory over sin and death and Lord that we will be raised to new life Lord that we will be with you in eternity in your ultimate victory over all things Lord I pray for those today who are in impossible situations Lord that you will strengthen them and encourage them Lord we pray these things in Jesus name Amen thank you .

[43:42] yarana