AND WHEN FROM DEATH I’M FREE!

[Exodus 13:17 - 14:31]

          Introduction to the Scriptures:

[Read Exodus 3:17- 18]

          Verse 19: “Moses took the bones of Joseph with him because Joseph had made the sons of Israel swear an oath. He had said, ‘God will surly come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up with you from this place.’” There’s a man of faith, and they were men and women of faith to remember it for 400 years. But it happened. The deliverance came.

[Read Exodus 13:20 - 14:13]

          Verse 14: “The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.” A little footnote, by the way, that is one of the hardest things, is it not? That you and I may remember the only thing we need to do is to be still.

          Verse 15-16: “Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Why are you crying out to me? . . . Raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water so that the Israelites can go through the sea on dry ground.” I can just imagine Moses saying, “Umm, why didn’t I think of that?” It’s not an obvious escape route but God says this is what I want you to do.

[Read Exodus 14:17-31]

          It is a grand story and we are going to look at its implications not just for them but for us.

Prayer for Illumination – This is a grand story, Lord. Many of us have heard it since we were very young in Sunday School or Bible School. It is a pretty exciting adventure. The older we get the more scary we realize it must have been. But you delivered your children, and everything you’ve done you’ve done for a purpose for us to learn something of your character and your intentions. I pray that as we listen to this story today on this Easter Sunday we might also understand what you are saying to us. It should have a very personal application for every person in this room if we are willing to listen. So I ask that you would speak. Use my words if you will but speak as well to our hearts, through Christ the Living Word, AMEN.

Message

Without warning, David was visited by an exact vision of death: a long hole in the ground, no wider than your body, down which you were drawn while the white faces recede. You try to reach them but your arms are pinned. Shovels pour dirt in your face. There you will be forever, in an upright position, blind and silent, and in time no one will remember you, and you will never be called. As strata of rock shift, your fingers elongate, and your teeth are distended sideways in a great underground grimace indistinguishable from a strip of chalk. And the earth tumbles on, and the sun expires, an unaltering darkness reigns where once there were stars.

          Thus the American novelist John Updike, in his short story, Pigeon Feathers, describes death for those who do not know, or believe, the resurrection. Oh, most of us would not speak of death that way. In fact, we will hardly speak of it at all. We attempt to dance, blithely, through life, as if this haunting specter of Death did not await us at the other end. But it does. It does. And as offended as we may be when someone calls it for what it is, in the quietness and the dark, when our defenses are down and we have tired of distracting ourselves, a cold shudder runs up our back and grips our heart, and we know that we can hear its unrelenting footsteps approaching.

          We would be fools not to fear death. Those who pretend not to care about its approach are not bold and noble, as they would like us to believe. They are like the fool who sits on the railroad track laughing as the freight train hurtles toward him.

          The reality is, every one of us does fear death, whether we admit it or not. That fear becomes apparent in the things we are driven to do by our fear of death. Even the fool who pretends to be bold and careless about its approach is motivated by his fear of death. It affects each of us in different ways. It affects him as well as you and me. We see that fear in those who live by the philosophy, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may die.” The fear of death’s approach drives them to, as the old commercial says, “Grab for all the gusto you can get.” “You only go around once in life. Take all the pleasure you can grab.” The person who lives for his or her own pleasure, getting high on drugs or alcohol or sex, is admitting that he fears death. It’s all going to end one day. I don’t want to miss any possibility of pleasure before the end comes.

          Others, by contrast, live a life of great caution, avoiding risk, taking no chances, trying to hold off death as long as possible, not doing anything that falls outside their comfort zone and safe routine. They obsess about health and safety. They never really stretch or grow. These people often miss the great adventure that life is intended to be because they fear death.

          Some are driven by their fear of death to lie and cheat and steal to get ahead while they can. They will sacrifice their integrity in order to keep a job that feeds and clothes and entertains them, and offers them long-range security. But behind it all, they find themselves enslaved to their fears. They cannot risk telling the truth, or being generous, or conceding their advantage to lift up someone else because, well, death is coming, I need to hold onto as much as I can at whatever cost.

          Others whine incessantly that everything is getting worse, that everything is going to end in failure. They let their pessimism, or their fear of death, rob them of the incredible joy of just being alive. What a grand thing it is that the dust of the earth breathes and is aware of beauty and glory.

          Do you begin to see how the fear of death can enslave you? Perhaps, if you are honest with yourself, you will find other ways we have not mentioned this morning which are holding you back from the vast joy and pleasure of life – the freedom to live with true courage and spontaneity – restricted because you are haunted by the insidious fear of death.

          Throughout the Lenten season, leading up to Easter, we have been studying that grand story of the Exodus from the Old Testament. It is, of course, the defining story of the Hebrew people. But we have found our Christian story embedded in it as well. In fact, in the parallel story of the Passover which our Jewish friends have just celebrated, we find the meaning and purpose of the sacrificial death of our Lord Jesus Christ. The blood of the Passover lamb on the doorpost which saved them from the judgment of the destroying angel is quite precisely the blood of the Lamb of God on the cross.

          But this Easter morning we come to the defining moment of God’s deliverance of His children from their slavery in Egypt. The way has been cleared and today Moses is leading his people out. But in the central act of the Exodus story we will find the central act of our story as well. It turns out that they had been enslaved by the same fears which enslave us. We pick up the story in verse 17 of Exodus 13.

When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, “If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.” So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea. The Israelites went up out of Egypt armed for battle. [Exodus 13:17-18]

          The shortest and most direct route toward the Promised Land would have been the coastal road which led through Philistine country. But because this was the point of Egypt’s greatest vulnerability, it was heavily garrisoned by Egyptian troops. The Israelites are armed for battle, we are told, but God knows that they are a people who have long feared death, and He does not expect them to act with courage. If they encounter war, or even the threat of war, He knows they will likely turn tail and run back to their old slavery in Egypt.

          Obviously it is the fear of death which has held them in slavery in Egypt now for many generations. You know the word of the slave master: “You do what I say, or you will be killed.” The fear of death enslaves you. It is the most obvious application of our insight about the fear of death. Life, even greatly restricted life as they admit, was only possible if they obeyed the Master who had the power to threaten them with death. So, just like in our opening examples, to avoid death they were willing to concede nearly all of their freedoms. No one had to obey, of course. Not if they did not fear death. That was Pharaoh’s only actual hold over them. His word wouldn’t bother them; it was death that they feared.

          Through Moses, God – the God Who Is, as we have learned; the God who does what He pleases without fail – this God has been demonstrating His power over the forces which had held His people in slavery. With that series of plagues, and the stunning Passover, He has shown that He has the power of Life over Death. Pharaoh does not hold that ultimate power. And God has managed to persuade them to follow Moses out of their captivity. But they are extremely tentative. It is obvious that they are still terrified by the possibility that they will be struck down. The threat has to be coming from somewhere.

          So, looking furtively over their shoulders, pessimistic of their chances for survival, they high-tail it for the desert, their only apparent escape. Continuing with verse 20:

After leaving Succoth they camped at Etham on the edge of the desert. By day the LORD went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light.

          This is an awesome and extremely rare manifestation of God’s presence. God knows how terrified and tentative they are. So He takes the extreme step of making himself visible to them in a pillar of cloud and fire. Though they often wished for this visible manifestation of God’s presence as we do, they almost never got to see it. But God, who of course is capable of showing His presence to them, now provides the reassurance which He knows they will need to keep them from turning back. This pillar of cloud and of fire accomplishes several significant things. It guides or leads them in the direction He wants them to go, it protects them from the army of Pharaoh, whom we are about to learn is in fact pursuing them, and less obviously but no less importantly, it is something of a barrier discouraging them from turning back! They have to face God if they go back. Remember, the pillar came between them and the arms of Pharaoh, keeping each one from approaching the other. There was the possibility of them turning back through their fear of death, surrendering to the Pharaoh.

          But while the people have left Egypt, they are still in fact slaves to this fear of death. So now we will see God’s brilliant strategy, not only to help them escape, but (and this is something far greater) to truly set them free. The problem is, of course, that a slave master is never going to voluntarily give up his advantage. So even after all it has cost him and his people, the pharaoh, who in the midst of his grief over the death of his own first-born son, the heir to the throne, had conceded and let the people leave with Moses, now begins to have second thoughts. We read about that in the 14^th chapter, beginning in verse 5.

When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, Pharaoh and his officials changed their minds about them and said, “What have we done? We have let the Israelites go and have lost their services!”

          So he gets his chariots together, he gets his army together and they pursues the Israelites and he overtakes them, verse 9 says, “as they camped by the sea near Pi Hahiroth, opposite Baal Zephon.”

          Now they would not have been there except God had turned them back to that spot. It is an interesting development. We just read that God was leading them straight out into the desert, a more certain escape route. Now here they are back camping by the sea. It looks like a trap to me and to the Pharaoh. One of the things I love about God is how He understands and uses the natural course of events. He understands human nature in the same way and uses it to accomplish His purposes. He is God, after all. If He can speak the universe into being through a grand cosmic explosion, He could certainly have simply annihilated the pursuing Egyptians on the spot. But that would not have accomplished what He set out to do. He wants the Israelites to understand Him, to understand His purpose here. Right now His goal is not only to liberate His people, but to teach them a few things, to teach them about His care, to teach them how to live better, and most importantly, to recognize His love and His concern for them. As we saw last week, above all else, God wants us to have a personal, loving relationship with Him. That’s His desire. That is why He made us in His image. It won’t do for Him to intimidate us into abject fear of Him. He is going to walk us through the process of becoming what He wants us to be. He wants us to be relating to Him, conversing with Him along that path, and that is going to require a power that works on the inside, that transforms hearts; it doesn’t just judge the world from the outside.

          So, as the first couple of verses of chapter 14 have explained to us, on the western edge of the desert, He has called them back toward the sea. He knows Pharaoh will be confident that he can teach these Israelites a lesson, and in his hubris, he will over-extend himself. And sure enough, Pharaoh thinks these foolish slave people must have concluded they cannot survive in the desert, and now they are wandering there lost. Turning back, they have trapped themselves between the desert and the sea. So he marches his army (and he has brought a formidable army, a huge, intimidating core of fighting charioteers) up behind the quavering Israelites.

          And if we don’t think these people are primarily motivated, not by their fear of God, but by their fear of death, look at verses 10-12, that little conversation with Moses.

As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the LORD. They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone [listen to this]; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!”

We’d rather be slaves than to face death. Isn’t that what we started out talking about? The fear of death enslaves us.

          So the stage is set, not simply for escape, but for true deliverance. It is set for what God knows they will need to see and understand. You understand what God has been doing? They had been held in bondage by the threat of death. So now God is going to eliminate the threat. They are not just going to escape. He is going to eliminate the threat. In essence, He is saying, you were right to fear death. You do not have the strength nor do you have the wisdom to escape this enemy. But you are about to learn something profound about both your great enemy, and about me, your great advocate and friend.

          And now comes that amazing event which would shape the Israelite people forever! Even today, this event is the source of their national identity. God is about to deliver them, not only from slavery, but from the fear of death which had held them in slavery.

          There are many fascinating attempts to explain what happened next. I’m going to suggest briefly what seems reasonable to me, based entirely on what I read in the text. But however you explain this, what is essential is to recognize what God was accomplishing here.

          As I look at God’s miracles (this is my perspective on all the miracles in the Bible), I tend to see them as the Hebrews did. Remember the word “wonders” which God used earlier in describing how He would convince Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go? The word “wonders” in the Hebrew is pretty much interchangeable with the word “miracle,” but what it describes is not what we usually call a miracle. It does not describe the overturning of the laws of nature. God has no need to overturn the laws of nature – He wrote them. He simply knows precisely how to use those laws to accomplish His will and purpose. So the word “wonders” for the Hebrew spoke of natural events which were used by a supernatural God to accomplish His sovereign will and purpose. That is a wonderful insight, and I hope you can trace it in looking at other miracles along the way. The Hebrews saw no real distinction between the natural and the supernatural. Both were simply ways of describing what God was doing. He’s the one acting after all.

          Now admittedly, this particular wonder is quite spectacular, but I am not surprised that it has several very possible natural explanations. No one, however, could call the timing and what it accomplished anything less than supernatural.

          You can see the picture here. The people are trapped by the sea, with Pharaoh’s army right behind them. Now the Hebrew text does not tell us that this was the Red Sea as we know it today. In fact, the Red Sea was quite a distance away, and the Israelites had not had nearly enough time to reach its shores. The actual word in the Hebrew text is yam suph which means quite literally “the sea of reeds.” Reeds, incidentally, do not grow in salt water. Now understanding a little bit about the geology of this area will help you. The deep trench which constitutes the Red Sea continues up the Gulf of Suez, getting shallower as it goes until it tapers off into a series of low-lying lakes that lead up to the northeast corner of the Nile delta, ending at the Mediterranean Sea. It is a natural extension of the Red Sea, and that is why it has been excavated to form the Suez Canal today. It was a natural course for that waterway, connecting the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.

          The Israelites were likely trapped at an arm of one of those low-lying lakes along the way, perhaps Lake Menzaleh on the shores of the Mediterranean, which had the influence of tides as well. What happened next is one of God’s perfect miracles in my estimation – the laws of nature used at precisely the right time and way to accomplish His will and purpose. He had said to the Israelites, just relax and watch what I am about to do. Then at the critical moment He told Moses to hold out his staff toward the water. Moses did so and some phenomenon, perhaps what physics calls a “wind set-down” began, blowing hard down one of the channels of this tidal lake. Now to have its effect, the wind has to be at exactly the right angle and the right strength – the direction from which the wind did in fact often come at that time of year and in that area. No doubt the tides themselves cooperated, and this wind did what it has done in other circumstances since then, it pushed the water hard against the far end of the channel, exposing and drying the shallow bottom at a narrow crossing further back on the lake bed.

          That’s all the text actually tells us. “A strong east wind . . . turned it into dry land. The waters were divided, and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground.” There could be a very natural explanation for that could there not? The water on both sides of them form a barrier or, as they call it, a wall which kept the Egyptians from surrounding them or attacking them from the side. So the sea is also their protection. The Egyptians’ only option is to follow the fleeing Israelites across the newly exposed ford. But the dry crust, which was enough to support the people on foot, was no more than a thin covering, and when the fully armed Egyptian army plunged in with horses and narrow-wheeled chariots, they would inevitably have broken through, they would have become bogged down, axles would have broken, wheels would have come off, and in the midst of that confusion and panic, the tide turned, the wind stopped, the water came rushing back down the channel, and, as the text tells us, Pharaoh’s army was washed away, washed into the sea and destroyed. That’s the way God does miracles.

          However it happened, the effect was precisely what God had intended. Not only had the Israelites escaped what seemed to them certain death, but (this is a tremendously important part of the story) the Pharaoh and the army they feared – the taskmasters who had held them in captivity all those years – were destroyed as well. In the early morning light, as our text ends, the dead bodies of their tormenters began to wash up on the shore, and it was clear to all what God had done. This was more than a narrow escape, which might leave them in fear of the next attack at a time and place when they least expected it. No, this was clear deliverance. Those who had held them in slavery were dead. They could no longer be a threat to them.

          The image I have in my head at this moment is the loving father or mother, after the evil person who has kidnaped and perhaps tortured their child has finally been caught and summarily killed, holding their sobbing child in their arms and saying, “It’s all right, honey. He can never hurt you again!” That’s deliverance. Not, “Well, we got you back this time,” but, “He can never hurt you again.” You see, not only have they been rescued, the threat has been eliminated.

          Now this is a great and powerful story, but it is not just a remarkable event from a distant past. It is precisely true for us as well. As you will remember from our opening illustration, the fear of death still commands us, doesn’t it? It keeps us in bondage. It does not allow us the freedom to become the glorious and spectacular creatures God created us to be. So many of our decisions, so many of our actions grow out of our fear of death.

          But the story of Easter is the story of the Red Sea crossing. Once again, this time for all time, God has acted on behalf of His children. Look if you will at the two verses from Hebrews 2 which are printed in your bulletins, because this is where it all comes together. Verses 14 and 15 of Hebrews 2 say this about Jesus:

Since the children [that’s us] have flesh and blood [we’re subject to death as well], he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

          That is where the story of Exodus becomes our story. In fact, this time it is the ultimate deliverance which is offered to the whole of the human race. For this time God has not just eliminated some particular earthly threat but Death itself! He walked into the devil’s lair, He absorbed the mortal blow of Death itself on the cross, He stood up again when that was complete and walked out of the tomb brimming with an unconquerable life, having proved His power of Life over Death once and for all. The enemy was dead. Now that our last great enemy, Death itself is dead, Satan has no more power to keep us enslaved by our fear of death. We don’t need to be those people we described at the outset, who do all kinds of things they might not have done because they fear the approach of death. Death itself is dead! Satan has no more power to keep us in slavery by our fear of death. No longer motivated by fear, we have become free to become all that God ever created us to be.

          After the resurrection, there is no reason for us ever again to fear death. Oh, the dying process can be frightful. This world is still broken. That ultimate healing is on its way, but He has shown us that this dying process is simply the portal to life. The disciples understood that. That knowledge gave them their stunning boldness to proclaim the good news of the resurrection and life, even under the threat of death. And you will know that all but one of the disciples lost their life in defending the resurrection. They knew that the whole point of their newly discovered faith was that Jesus had defeated Death. They no longer feared it. They could proclaim that gospel boldly. Nothing could stop them from doing what was right and good and life-transforming.

          My friends, do you understand? We no longer need to fear death. We no longer need to be motivated by our fear of death. We no longer need to settle for life’s deceptive, counterfeit pleasures, because we think we only have this brief moment to enjoy them. No, God says, I want to give you life eternal. You don’t need to fear death. It’s not going to interfere. We can live with a holy boldness that draws us through the thrill of a life lived as God intended for it to be lived. We are free to learn the deep and surprising joy of offering grace and generosity to others, for we know there is nothing lost in the bargain. The person who has really been set free from the fear of death has to be the most optimistic, gracious, contagiously joyful person there is. For he has been set free from the last great enemy Death itself. Yes, the resurrection is our Red Sea, it is the end of death, it is the end of our slavery. In the words of that grand early American hymn from the deep south, “What wondrous love is this, O my soul, that caused the Lord of bliss to bear the dreadful curse for my soul?” That caused the Lord to face Death itself on my behalf. Then that grand and compelling final verse, “And when from death I’m free” – the title of our message today; this could be your experience. “And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing and joyful be, and through eternity I’ll sing on.”

Closing prayer – Father, I want to thank you on this Easter Sunday that you have not simply helped us to escape our latest enemy, our latest crisis, but you have eliminated our great enemy entirely. Death itself is dead. We no longer need to fear death if we will follow that leading. For you present yourself to us also, not in a cloud of fire or darkness but in the person of Jesus, the One who defeated death and who alone can walk us through Death into Life. This resurrection can be ours as well. I pray that you would give us the boldness to take you at your word and to begin today, this very day, to live the grand life that you desired for us to enjoy once we were free of Death. May that message of resurrection resound not only in our words and thoughts but in the way we live our lives from this day forward, for we do so in the name of our living God, even Jesus Christ, AMEN.