Trapped at the Red Sea! When Fear Takes Over

(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to Bible Stories. We are your hosts, Matt Mullins. - Hello. - Hey Matt, my name's Todd. We're two ministers slash buds who love telling the stories of the Bible. And we've got a new one for you. This is based out of Exodus 14. And man, it is entitled Trapped. But before we get into that, Matt, it's the second of October, beginning of the month. How you feeling? - I'm good. - It's spooky season. - Whoa. - Keep it in, I sneezed. - You did it. - That was powerful. Did you practice that? - I did. It's my way to assert that, you know, I'm still a man. You know that it is like there's a lot of force that comes out when we sneeze. There's no other motion or thing that we do that's that quite impactful, you know? - My wife, my wife, my wife has lovingly and kindly challenged me to not do it so a lot, 'cause she can just, you know, little and no one would hear it. And I'm like, I can't do it, I just, I convulse. - In middle school, we had a teacher who said, hey, who in here plugs their nose when they sneeze. Raise your hand. And I thought like that was an admirable thing to do. I'd never done it, but I raised my hands. I wanted to be a cool guy. And he's like, you're gonna blow your ear, drums out. You're all dumb for doing that. - Yeah, just let you have it. And you don't even really do it. - No, I was just a poser. He's in jail now though. So, you know, things happen. - Things happen. - But it is October, it is a spooky season. And I thought that maybe, you know, we've got all this stuff floating around. The Great Pumpkin has made its return. It's back, it's stronger than ever. - Yeah. - Every children's theme park for some reason has a terrifying haunted house at night, which I do not understand. - Yeah. - Who are they marketing that to? Certainly not the people in the morning. You know, we've replaced the national bird for this month with a bat, for this month only. - Did not know that. - This month only. Yeah, look it up. Ask Jeeps about it. - Ask Jeeps. - We're gonna go in a different direction though. So, I thought for this month, because there are some scary things floating around, how about we flip the script? And we start talking about not being afraid. In a month where we're, it's all about fear, let's talk about not being afraid. When the Bible tells us not to be afraid, which is a phrase that we get quite a bit, you know, it happens a lot. It isn't pretending that things aren't happening. Not being afraid isn't wishing away, it challenges in our life, and it's not pretending that scary things aren't all around us, and sometimes even in our own life, you know, where things are very challenging, and we are prone to fear or scripture, is filled with people who face down fear, through the power of God, you know, facing armies and storms and enemies and sickness and death. And it's not that they weren't concerned, but that fear didn't overtake them, because they knew that the Lord was with them. So today we're gonna start and look at maybe one of the most famous examples of that. We're gonna talk about Israel at the Red Sea pinned, trapped between a terrifying army, the most powerful in the known world, and a brick wall in front of them. It's just the Red Sea. There's literally nowhere to go. Well, you remember the story after generations of slavery, Israel is finally set free, but then they look behind them as they've escaped Egypt, and they see Pharaoh's army is coming. They look in front of them, and there's this impossible obstacle in front of them. There's the Red Sea. There's nowhere to go, Todd. And it's a pretty good reason to be afraid. When there are no answers, that's a great recipe for fear. And God doesn't tell them not to be afraid because there's nothing to worry about. It's not like that family pretended that I didn't have a fake country accent when I came back from church camp in Alabama for that week, where they just pretended like it wasn't happening because it kind of slipped it. - Hi there, mother. Where we have them for supper. But the call wasn't to ignore things that were going on. Absolutely, Pharaoh was coming. Absolutely, they were in front of the Red Sea. It wasn't like there wasn't any danger. The lesson here is that the danger isn't greater than God's power. They knew who was with them, and absolutely God could and would dwarf any challenge in front of them. - Yeah, for sure. - Well, and that's the thing is it's not that there wasn't real danger. There was real danger. But to have the right perception of what God's doing in it, man, that's so important. We gotta think about what Israel had just witnessed, right? Because God turned the Nile to blood. That's alarming. God's people saw these plagues. They had also experienced the Passover. And then Pharaoh, man, he finally told them to leave. And then suddenly people had to spin the rest of their lives as slaves. And now all of a sudden slaves were walking out of Egypt free. - Well, what's wild is that it's not that they made some mistakes to get there. It's not that they ended up in the space between Pharaoh and the Red Sea and that was an accident or maybe Moses took a wrong turn. God sent them there. God sent them in this direction. And it didn't make any sense for them. So oftentimes in our life, the place where the Lord is gonna grow us the most, the place that our kids and their kids are gonna talk about and remember and have their faith built by. These are places where the Lord leads us to. It doesn't make a lot of logical sense to go, but we follow and faith anyway and watch God do something incredible. And this is what has happened. And we see in a little earlier before this happens in Exodus chapter 14, we see that the Lord had promised him, Pharaoh will save the people of Israel. This is God speaking to Moses about what's about to happen as they leave Egypt and God sends them to this place. Pharaoh will say to the people of Israel, they're wandering, excuse me, of the people of Israel. They're wandering in the land. The wilderness has shut them in and I will harden Pharaoh's heart, said the Lord. And he will pursue them and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host. So Moses knows that Pharaoh was coming. It doesn't make it less threatening, but Moses knows this is happening. Pharaoh does exactly what God said. Pharaoh was going to do and he gathers 600 chosen chariots and he pursues them. And the chariots were like the tanks of that time. And so not only are they a strong army, but they're coming with great weaponry against Moses, they're being pursued. - Yeah, and then in Exodus 14, 10, it says that when Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes and behold the Egyptians were marching after them and they feared greatly. - And of course they would. You know, that's a very human response because they're stuck and it seems like doom is right around the corner for him, Todd. - Yeah, for me, maybe for many of us, we could certainly pass some judgment. I mean, we could look back and be a little bit more judgey because we all know how the story ended. But this was reality for them. They're going through this. And so we know that those people will be rescued, but did they know in the moment? They probably didn't know fully the plan there. - Yeah, absolutely. - And that passage that we read about, the Lord, he had prepared Moses for the fact that Pharaoh was going to discount what was happening and he was going to come after them and that God was going to get glory through what was going to happen to Pharaoh in his army. But at least in the scripture, it doesn't say that the Lord told Moses, here's how it's going to happen. Here's how I'm going to get that glory. And it doesn't say anywhere in the scripture and the Lord said to Moses, none of you are going to be lost. It didn't say and the Lord said to Moses, you and your family are going to be completely safe. None of that. All it says is God's going to get glory through this thing. Israel doesn't know how God's going to handle it. Frankly, Moses doesn't know how God's going to handle it. All they know is what they can see. They see this army behind them, they see in front of them. There's nowhere to run. These are not warriors themselves. If they engage Egypt seemingly, obviously, they're going to lose. And that's when fear starts to do something dangerous to us. Fear doesn't just affect how we feel. It affects how we think. And we can get ourselves into a doom loop because we're convinced that there is no hope. And this is what the people of Israel do. It says in Exodus chapter 14 verse 11, fear makes us forget. Here's what it says. They're asking Moses, "Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you've taken us away to die in the wilderness?" And this is sarcasm, right? Like, are there not enough places for us to have been buried back in Egypt that you take us out here today? Was Egypt not a good enough place to do that? Why have you done this to us? What have you done to us and bringing us out of the safety, right? And they, it's revisionist history here. But why did you bring us out of Egypt? Oh, they were slaves and God had rescued them. God had performed miracle after miracle. They had certainly seen God work. And yet this fear has manipulated their minds and all of a sudden, they can't remember the God that they serve and what he's done. And that, again, like you said before, it's easy for us to judge because we know they into the story. But for me sometimes too, I can follow in that same trap of, I'm so consumed in the moment, particularly by fear and seemingly insurmountable obstacles that I don't remember that God is bigger than all those things. And he's even done things in my life that are oftentimes bigger than what I'm facing right now. And if not my life, then the life of believers, past, you know, to remember those things important. For sure. I mean, these people are in a tailspin. And that's what fear can do. I mean, fear can make us reinterpret or even question God's faithfulness. There's no doubt about it. Oh, we all, James, been, remember that? Love that. Do you remember it, though? I do. Okay, good. It's important. Great question. Great, great question. Important for us to remember that. So the people would go on to say that they had it better in Egypt. It was better to serve the Egyptians and to die in the wilderness. Fear has them looking backward at slavery and thinking that maybe Egypt wasn't so bad, which, you know, we can do this too. We know what it feels like to stare at a situation and not see a way out. You know, when the diagnosis comes, when the job disappears, when the financial crisis strikes, someone you love makes a decision that you can't control. You know, you're waiting for that phone call. Every option looks bad. And fear can start preaching to us that God has forgotten us. God has forgotten you. Surely he has abandoned you. And we can be convinced that things are going to end terrible. We can be convinced that we have to take a shortcut and try and solve whatever problems in front of us right now. And here's the problem, though. Fear is a terrible filter for reality. Israel looks at his circumstances and concludes that God has brought them out there to die. But God hasn't brought them out there to die. God has put them in this place to demonstrate his own glory and to show the world, show Egypt, show Israel his own glory. And you may be in a place where you feel like God has brought me here to punish me. God has brought me here to feel this way. God may have brought you to this place to show his glory to you like he's never done before. Yeah, that's right. So Moses, this is his answer and I love it. He goes, fear not, stand firm and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. The Lord will fight for you and all you have to do is be quiet, be silent. So again, the answer there is, hey, fear not, stand firm and see what God's about to do. I'd like to imagine that all of Israel then is silent and quiet and then like several hundred thousand people back, you hear a faint distant, oh, real tail spin, oh, knock it off Jeremiah. Uh huh. Listen to it. Yeah. Fear not. These instructions are pretty simple, right? Fear not. Stand firm and see. Watch what God is going to do. Notice that Moses doesn't say, hey, everybody calm down. Take three breaths, you know, and count backwards from 10. I have a plan. I'm going to figure this out for you doubted me, but watch this. Moses doesn't have a plan. God had told Moses exactly where to be. God has Moses in the situation and God even told Moses that Pharaoh would come after Israel, but God would get the glory through Pharaoh and his army. Moses doesn't know how God is going to do it, but Moses is so confident in the Lord's rescue that he instructs his people. They don't need to be afraid. All they need to do is stand firm and watch. And that's not much of a plan. Moses is so confident that the Lord's going to take care of this. He says, I don't even need your participation, folks. Watch what God's about to do. That's exactly right. You know, fear can lead us into the questions of, well, how is this going to happen? I need all the details. I need every single step in order to see what the outcome is going to be. But at this moment, the people don't need to know the how and all the details. They need to know the who, who can they trust, who can they follow? Yeah. And that's hard for us, you know, for me, in particular, like I want to be in control. And so oftentimes God's going to call us into a situation where we are totally out of our element. We're not going to know the how. We're not going to even know sometimes know the when. We just have to wait and watch the Lord work. Charles Bergen preaching on this passage, he pictured the different voices that we can hear in a crisis. The spare tells us to give up. The cowardice says to turn around and go back. And patient says do something, do anything. But faith tells us to listen to God and stand still. Yeah. And you know, that hits us because fear creates like an enormous urge to take control. Let me just take back my life. Let me figure it out. We all are susceptible to that. I mean, that's reality. But sometimes action isn't necessary. You know, God sometimes allows us to get to a point where we just have to admit, I don't have this. I can't fix this. And that can be terrifying. But that can also be a place where God will say, trust me completely, and that's all we can do. Yeah. Then comes an important turn in this story after telling Israel to stand firm. God tells Moses, tell the people of Israel to go forward. So stand firm and then move forward. Trusting God isn't permanent in activity. It means that we don't run ahead of him when he says stand, we stand. But when he says it's time to move now, it's time to take a step of faith. And by the way, standing firm is also a step of faith. And staring down those challenges in the face and not pretending that things aren't going to happen. But having faith in the Lord that he is going to show himself as he always does, that's also a step of faith. Absolutely. Your waiting is not inactivity. Your waiting is not wasted time. God's going to grow you in that season. And it takes a lot of faith to wait well. But here, the Lord says it's time to move forward. There's only one problem. Forward is into the red sea. Like forward is into death. But then Moses stretches out his hand over the sea and the Lord drives the water back with a strong east wind, the sea divides. And we all know that Israel walks through the red sea on dry ground. So think about this. The thing that looked like the end of the road becomes the road itself. This obstacle becomes their gateway into rescue. Yep, that's right. They may have been looking for a clean, clear highway. But the obstacle was the actual escape route. Absolutely. And while God is making the way in front of them, He's also protecting them from the enemy behind them. The pillar, this manifestation of God's glory, this pillar of cloud and then fire, you know, depending on day or night, it moves between Israel and Egypt and becomes this barrier, this buffer that's going to protect them from the back at their six. Pharaoh's army follows Israel into the sea and eventually Moses stretches out his hand again and the water returns and envelops this incredible army that no one could defeat. And the very same army that terrified Israel has now been defeated in the most astounding way by the Lord himself. And then Exodus gives us this fascinating ending and Exodus 14 verse 31 it says, Israel saw the great power that the Lord used against the Egyptians. So the people fear the Lord and they believed in the Lord. So at the beginning, they fear Pharaoh and this is a, the kind of fear here is one that grips your heart and is going to cause you to panic. And at the end, they fear the Lord and the fear of the Lord here, which we see is a healthy thing in the beginning of wisdom. What's the distinction there between Todd fearing the challenges in our life and people that are ominous and the fear of the people had of Pharaoh versus a healthy fear that were instructed to have for God? What is the fear of the Lord, Todd? You know, the fear of the Lord is rightly understanding our position under God and his reign and his salvation. And that he is fully sovereign, he's fully in control. You know, sometimes we can get it twisted. And I can totally, you know, in my mind, which is terrible, I can be in my mind, well, I'll put myself beside the Lord and I'll figure out maybe my way is better. But a good, healthy, godly fear of the Lord is God is in control. And I'm going to trust his timeline. I'm going to trust the outcome. He knows what's best. And so I'm going to have a fear of, man, God knows what's well for me. And he knows the whole plan. So I'm going to trust it. And a part of that is a fear of the Lord is an understanding of who God is. Yeah. You know, he is the alpha and the omega. He is the ultimate supreme power in the universe. There's none above him. There's none beyond him. He is omniscient and omnipresent. He is everything. And that fear of the Lord is a recognition of who he is. That's right. And I'm not holy. He's holy, you know. And that comes with respect. That as you understand who he is greater, we understand who we are greater. And that brings a respect. And not only did they have a healthier understanding of who God is that led to a belief in him, not about him, but they believed in the Lord. Exodus 1431 says in that belief in the Lord, as we believe in the Lord and give our hearts to the Lord that leads to action. Knowledge on its own is not enough. You know, understanding who God is, bigger heads are going to save us. A bigger heads are going to make a difference in our lives. If that greater knowledge doesn't translate into greater belief, which is what the people have here. So their view of Pharaoh got smaller and their view of God got much bigger. So what do we do with our fear? You know, every one of us is going to encounter those things that are bigger than we are. So we need to be careful with the application. Exodus 14 does not mean that if you trust God enough, he's going to part every red sea for you. He is going to solve every problem in the way that you would hope in your life. Sometimes God removes that frightening circumstance. Sometimes he carries us through it. You know, faith is not confidence that God will do. exactly what I want, faith is confidence in God Himself. - I love what Randy Alcorn says. And you guys just a really simple piece of council, a simple line, but it's just shift your focus away from your fear and toward God, focus on God. - It's hard for us when we feel overwhelmed to see how in the world this can turn out for God's glory and for our good. And I think a part of it takes a reworking of what my good means. And if the ultimate expression of what God wants for us in our life, like the ultimate goal for each one of us is to become more Christ-like through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, God can use an awful lot of circumstances to do that. And some of those are really pleasant and some of those are not. But the fact that God is going to continue to get you closer to that goal, even in difficult times, it gives us hope, and it doesn't waste that season where we should be terrified. We can know, we can trust God and trust in His timing and know that even while we're waiting, and when things are really super difficult, God can still do a work in your life and the season isn't wasted, even when it's hard. - Yeah, Matt, I really love what you said too, that our outcome and our desired outcome may not be what God's plan is for our life. It may be that He sees things through and it's really, really great. And things work out best for me and my buddies or my family or whatever. It may be that He just sits with us in those hardships, in that moment of tragedy or loss or trial. It's just a reminder that God loves us so much and He desires our relationship with us. And ultimately, the best thing is that we get God. We get Him, He gets to be with us. And so no matter the outcome, and that's not to say He doesn't have a great plan for life, He does. But in those moments of hardship, no matter how it goes, whether we get a win or we get a loss, He's with us and that's good enough. That's amazing right there. - There was, and this is terrible 'cause I forgot, and I, I mean, we have the internet, I could look it up, but I ain't got it, 'cause you're like, "Oh, I don't lose Canon!" There was a story about this woman who wanted to swim. I think it was like the English channel and she was prepared and she had worked toward it and she was gonna do it and she started to swim and it was a really foggy, very early in the morning and so foggy that her field of vision was limited. And her mom was there in a boat cheering her on, telling her to keep going. She eventually, she was working, working, and she was exhausted and it just, it wasn't ending and she wasn't getting any closer and she's imagining that this fog and the conditions of the day and like the win was against her and all those sorts of things that she was never gonna get there and so she gave up and got in the boat with her mom and was horrified to learn that she was drugs away from being to where she needed to be, to achieving the goal, to getting to the end and fear has a way of clouding our vision in that way and that we just can't see and we can't see the reality of what God is doing and who God is and that God is bigger than the thing in front of us and that's why it's important to have those cheerleaders with us who are gonna encourage us. That's what the body of Christ is supposed to do. When we are enveloped by fear and our vision is clouded and we feel like giving up, we need brothers and sisters to cheer us on and tell us to keep going that this fight isn't over and that the Lord is still going to show himself faithful even when it feels like we're just not moving or things aren't changing or whatever it is and we feel like giving up. That's what the church is here for to encourage one another. So as we wrap up to money, I wanna just wrap real quick about remembering what God has done for us and allowing that to fuel our faith during those challenging times. Throughout scripture, later on, God's going to challenge the people of Israel to do something and then remind them that he is the God who rescued them from Egypt. He is the God who's shown himself strong and faithful in the past and who's gonna show himself strong and faithful for things to come as well. How has God's work in your life in the past changed the way that you see challenges and fear in today and in the future? - Yeah, well, first, you know, as we read God's work, the Bible, we totally see objectively, factually that he continues to reign supreme, that he wins. You and I worked with the pastor years ago who was so great and he did have a little bit of a corn ball line but he would say, hey, you know guys, I read the end of this book and we win and we would kind of, you know, snicker a little bit about that but it's true. That we know that we live a life from the victory of Christ and that he has already done the work. And so when I think about my own life, Matt, and I think about all the things that he's brought me through, moments of, can I do this? Do I have it in me? I've had to overcome some challenges in life, whether that's academic challenges or emotional challenges or hardships and yet when I look back, you know, hindsight's 2020 and God has always been faithful and he has led me up to where I'm at. So why should I believe that he's gonna lead me or forsake me or not? Continue to guide me for his plan for my life. He's in control and I can fully trust him. There are moments when I do have a little doubt or a little fear come in. But ultimately, when I remember the character and the nature of who God is, man, there's no doubt. He's gonna lead me exactly where he's calling me and he's never gonna lead me. That's the story of the gospel. You know, God carrying you through something that you thought you would never survive and you had no hope and there was no way forward for you. The red sea is a rescue story. God's people faced an enemy that they couldn't defeat, a situation they could not escape and God himself provided away forward of salvation. And that pattern reaches its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus. You know, our greatest enemies are sin and death and we could not rescue ourselves. There was nothing we could do. But Christ died and He rose again. He defeated death. He defeated sin. God did for us what we could never do for ourselves. So when fear asks, you know, what if faith can answer back, look what God has already done. - Yep. The counselor Ed Welch who's written that our worst fears may come upon us, but we cannot imagine the grace that God will give us when they do. It keeps us from turning the story and making it something that it's not, turning the moral of the story that nothing painful is ever gonna happen to us and we're never gonna face discouragement or pain itself. Christianity promises something way better than a trouble-free life. God is gonna be faithful and God is gonna be with you. And even though we may experience this difficult and harm-filled times right now, and even in the future, you know, we're guaranteeing we're gonna have trouble, but we're also guaranteed that Jesus is gonna be with us to what the very end. And that the end of our story is not defeat. The end of our story is complete victory in Jesus. That's how our story ends, just like you said Todd. So today, man, if you're facing down something that you just feel like there's no way out and you feel trapped and you feel like God has abandoned you, remember that you're not alone, that God has not forgotten you, is not abandoned you. Some of us need to hear today that we need those same instructions that the Israelites got fear not, stand firm and see the salvation of the Lord. You don't have to know everything that God is doing right now. You don't have to understand it. You don't have to know what God's gonna do next. You don't have to know how the story is gonna end. You don't have to pretend that what's in front of you isn't frightening. But you do need to remember who is with you and that the Lord's gonna fight for you and that the Lord has already provided the victory even sometimes when we can't see it. - Amen. - Hey, we love you. Thanks for joining us today. We hope you have a great day and an even better week. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)