⁵ When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, the mind of Pharaoh and his servants was changed toward the people, and they said, “What is this we have done, that we have let Israel go from serving us?” ⁶ So he made ready his chariot and took his army with him, ⁷ and took six hundred chosen chariots and all the other chariots of Egypt with officers over all of them. 

⁸ 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. ⁹ 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-hahiroth, in front of Baal-zephon. 

¹⁰ 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 the people of Israel cried out to the Lord. 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.” 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.” 

¹⁵ The Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward. 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. 

¹⁷ And I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they shall go in after them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, his chariots, and his horsemen. ¹⁸ And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I have gotten glory over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his horsemen.” 

¹⁹ 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, ²⁰ 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. 

²¹ Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. ²² And the people of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left. ²³ The Egyptians pursued and went in after them into the midst of the sea, all Pharaoh’s horses, his chariots, and his horsemen. ²⁴ And in the morning watch the Lord in the pillar of fire and of cloud looked down on the Egyptian forces and threw the Egyptian forces into a panic, ²⁵ 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.” 

²⁶ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea, that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen.” ²⁷ So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its normal course when the morning appeared. And as the Egyptians fled into it, the Lord threw the Egyptians into the midst of the sea. ²⁸ The waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen; of all the host of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea, not one of them remained. 

²⁹ 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. 

³⁰ Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. ³¹ Israel saw the great power that the Lord used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the Lord, and they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses. 

Prayer 

Our gracious and heavenly Father, 

We again come to you in a Spirit of praise and rejoicing. Lord, we continue to pray for our nation and all of the division that we face. Let us continue to honor you with our lives, our thoughts, our deeds. Let us live as living sacrifices to you O Lord. 

We pray that you would bless our time in your word. 

In Jesus’ name, amen. 

    Introduction

We’ve actually covered this passage before. About a year and a half ago. 

And I had asked myself “should we do it again?” 

And for two main reasons, I decided to. 

Perhaps most obviously, we’ve been talking about the Exodus and it makes no sense to skip over the most significant event of the entire book of Exodus, when God actually frees the Israelites from Egypt by parting the waters of the Red Sea. 

And although we’ve looked at this passage before, it’s still helpful because it’s God’s word. And a good knife cuts more than once. 

And with that very limited introduction, we’re going to get right into our passage this morning. And the plan is to cover the crossing of the Red Sea and close by talking about how that points us to the gospel. 

And the main idea I want to make this morning: God delivers his people from slavery to freedom. 

In chapter 12, God had brought the most severe plague against the Egyptians when he struck dead the firstborn of all the people in Egypt. When that happened, Pharaoh seemed to finally tell the Israelites to leave. 

Fast forward to Exodus 14, and the Israelites are being led out of Egypt, but Pharaoh has decided to pursue them. 

Now we saw numerous plagues where Pharaoh 

Beginning in verse 5:

⁵ When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, the mind of Pharaoh and his servants was changed toward the people, and they said, “What is this we have done, that we have let Israel go from serving us?” ⁶ So he made ready his chariot and took his army with him, ⁷ and took six hundred chosen chariots and all the other chariots of Egypt with officers over all of them.

We see supreme pride and arrogance on display from Pharaoh. 

God has continually shown his supremacy and Pharaoh won’t accept it. 

Now Egypt had a well-equipped and well-trained army. They have chariots which was the great military technology of that day. 

The Israelites are unarmed. 

⁹ 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-hahiroth, in front of Baal-zephon.

I think the movie the Ten Commandments actually does a good job of capturing the drama. 

The Egyptians are in pursuit of the Israelites. 

With all that God had done for the Israelites, how do they respond? 

Do they respond in confidence and faith and trust in the Lord? 

¹⁰ 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 the people of Israel cried out to the Lord. 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?

The Israelites see the Egyptians coming for them and they’re scared. 

They ask if he’s brought them out into the desert to die. 

It’s the first time in their wilderness journeys that they’ll complain about the Lord’s goodness towards them. But it won’t be the last. 

They lose confidence in what God can do. 

Again, it can be easy to be critical of that. But it’s tempting to lose sight of God when an army is coming towards you. It’s temping to lose sight of God when a situation seems hopeless. 

It’s easy to lose sight of the big picture of what God is doing, easy to forget what God has done and how he has blessed you. 

Moses gives them a powerful word. 

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. 

Fear not. The most commonly given command in the Bible.

God had promised where he was bringing the Israelites. 

Exodus 3:17, the Lord said to Moses: 

and I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey

That’s the land to which God had promised Abraham in Genesis. 

He promises again in Exodus 6:6 and 6:8. 

And after all the plagues, all the wonders that God had done, the Passover where the firstborn of the Egyptians all died and God spared the Israelites. 

After all of that, at the beginning of Exodus 13:3-5, the Israelites were told: 

³ Then Moses said to the people, “Remember this day in which you came out from Egypt, out of the house of slavery, for by a strong hand the Lord brought you out from this place. No leavened bread shall be eaten. ⁴ Today, in the month of Abib, you are going out. ⁵ And when the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, which he swore to your fathers to give you, a land flowing with milk and honey, you shall keep this service in this month

They had again been reminded of where the Lord was bringing them.   

God’s promises are trustworthy! 

And yet the Israelites fall into fear. The Israelites were in a dire circumstance in the eyes of the world. I think all of us would be tempted to fear too. 

But they had the promise of the Lord. 

I think fear, stress, worry, and anxiety are extremely common for us in our society. 

But so many of the fears we have are not necessarily even about life and death situations. They’re not usually fears where we are in imminent danger. 

We so often live in our minds, and dwell on situations and fears. 

I can be terrible at this, by the way. So I don’t want to sound condemning. 

But the problem is when we do that, and I know some of you know what I’m talking about, we can really go to some irrational places with our fears. 

To some extremes that are never going to happen. 

I’m not saying we need to be in denial if we’re fearful. 

But in the face of fear, let us also respond in gratitude to God for his goodness. 

And again, it can be tempting in the face of fear to make up a story for how things could go that is terrible, everything goes wrong, it’s all bad. That type of worry is not productive. It robs us of joy. It wastes time. It distracts us from the promises of God. 

God is a good and loving God who has a good plan for his people in the world. 

And he had a good plan for Israel. 

Let us respond with gratitude, faith, and trust in the Lord in the times where we’re fearful. 

The Israelites made a mistake when they jumped to the worst case and lost sight of what God had promised them, lost sight of the wonderful things the Lord had already done for them. 

Moses says: stand firm. 

 We see phrases translated “stand firm” several places in the Bible, especially in Paul’s letters. 

In this instance, what it seems to be saying is to stand still. Stand and watch. Look and see. 

Especially as Moses continues this thought. 

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.” (Exodus 14:13-14)

He was with them. They’d didn’t have to perfectly understand everything. They didn’t have to have control over everything. Again, I think these are temptations that we all face. 

Let us look at what the Lord is doing. At what he has done in our lives and in his church.  

Verse 15:

¹⁵ The Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward.

Go forward? 

 For the Israelites, with Egypt in pursuit, there are only two directions to go. 

Towards the army or towards the water…

But it is in that moment that the Lord will do a miracle that the people could never have possibly imagined. 

How could they? God does something that has never happened before it. But that’s what God does. 

Verses 16-18 preview what God is specifically going to do. 

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. ¹⁷ And I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they shall go in after them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, his chariots, and his horsemen. ¹⁸ And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I have gotten glory over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his horsemen.”

 God is leading his people. And the Egyptians are going to follow but it won’t go well for them. God delivers his people from slavery to freedom. 

Verse 19. 

¹⁹ 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, ²⁰ 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.

 God had been leading the Israelites by a pillar of fire. He had been directing them but he had also been protecting Israel. 

And it says that the pillar moved before Israel. 

But verse 20 also says that it came between the Israelites and the Egyptians. 

Some think that the crowd created some sort of darkness or fog around the Egyptians which temporarily prevented them from following the Israelites. 

²¹ Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided

The waters part. 

I think this is the mental image we probably most prominently have with the sea parting. It’s like in the Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston. 

It’s not Moses who does this ultimately. It is God, literally parting the water for his people to cross. 

 ²² And the people of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.

What must that have been like for the Israelites? 

All of the miracles that God had done. Being brought into the desert. And now they’re walking on dry ground with the parted waters of the sea on either side of them. 

Imagine that for a moment. 

They had been given an incredible promise. And here it happens. 

God delivers his people from slavery to freedom.  

The Israelites make it across safely but then the Egyptians start pursuing them. They’re no longer being supernaturally prohibited.  

²³ The Egyptians pursued and went in after them into the midst of the sea, all Pharaoh’s horses, his chariots, and his horsemen. ²⁴ And in the morning watch the Lord in the pillar of fire and of cloud looked down on the Egyptian forces and threw the Egyptian forces into a panic, ²⁵ 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.”

It’s ironic. The wheels the Egyptians chariots were getting clogged. The chariot was their greatest symbol of military strength, but here it’s a weakness. 

The soldiers of Pharaoh want to turn back. They say that God is against them.  

²⁶ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea, that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen.

God had parted the waters. And now the sea is going to be closed back up.  

²⁷ So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its normal course when the morning appeared. And as the Egyptians fled into it, the Lord threw the Egyptians into the midst of the sea. ²⁸ The waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen; of all the host of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea, not one of them remained.

In verse 30, the story ends. 

 
³⁰ Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. ³¹ Israel saw the great power that the Lord used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the Lord, and they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses.

The Lord delivers his people from slavery to freedom. 

The Egyptian army is defeated without Israel having to fight a war. Israel is now totally and finally and forever free of Egypt. 

Gospel in Exodus

And that brings us to our second part which is looking at the gospel in the Exodus. 

For the Israelites, God is using this miracle as an instrument of his grace. 

The Egyptians were evil. They have not submitted to God. They have persecuted and oppressed the people of God, the Israelites. 

And so the miraculous event God used for the redemption of Israel, he used for the downfall of Pharaoh and the judgment of Egypt. 

Every person is going to ultimately bring glory to God. Either you will bring him glory through being an example of the grace of the gospel. Or you will bring him glory as the righteous judge. 

And that is the beginning of Israel’s exodus. God acting in mighty ways to redeem his people and fulfilling his promises. 

There are a number of parallels between the exodus and the gospel. 

The Israelites were in slavery in Egypt. We were enslaved to sin and Christ redeemed us. 

The Israelites complain and rebel here. That’ll be a continual theme. We continue to struggle and rebel. But for the person who has faith, Jesus continues to be faithful. 

God redeemed Israel to bring them to the Promised Land. And God is bringing us into a land too. To a new heaven and a new earth. 

Both the exodus and the new covenant of the gospel are commemorated with meals. As we talked about last week, the Passover meal was celebrated annually, as a reminder for God’s deliverance in the exodus event and for him sparing the Israelites. With the gospel, we celebrate the Lord’ Supper, communion which is a reminder of Jesus body that was broken for our sin and his blood that was shed for our sin. 

Exodus was in fulfillment of the promises of God to Abraham for land and to Moses for deliverance from slavery. The gospel is fulfillment of God’s promise of providing a Messiah, a king from the Davidic line, a perfect and spotless lamb to be sacrificed, of giving his Spirit to those who have faith. 

In both stories, we see victory in a place where it appeared to be defeat. Israel was caught between an army and the sea. It seemed there was no way out. In the gospel, Jesus died on the cross, where it looked like that was the end of Jesus’ ministry, where it appeared that he had been defeated. 

For both the Exodus and the gospel, they are entirely acts of God.  It was entirely a work of God in freeing his people from slavery in Egypt and it is entirely a workof the Lord in redeeming us from the penalty of sin.  

The exodus and the gospel are both stories of intervening in a situation where there was no hope. Egypt between the army and the sea. And we were dead in sin, and hopeless apart from Christ. 

Both events are undeniable, indisputable, irrefutable, unimpeachable proof of God’s love. God loved Israel. And God loves you. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have enteral life (John 3:16). God shows his love that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).

Thanks for visiting! Have a blessed day