“Crossing from Death to Life” (Exodus 14) | 4/9/23
Exodus 14 | 4/9/23 | Will DuVal
The 2013 film “12 Years a Slave” depicts the true story of Solomon Northup, a free African American man who in 1841 was illegally kidnapped and sold into slavery. Solomon realizes he has a CHOICE to make: he can give up hope, and just resign himself to life in bondage; or he can keep fighting for his freedom. A fellow slave advises him: “If you want to survive, [just] keep your head down”, but Solomon replies: “I don't WANT to survive. I want to LIVE.”
This sermon has one PREMISE, and one PURPOSE:
The PREMISE - my assumption, on which I’m basing the ENTIRE message - is that MOST of us here this morning are SURVIVING. We are surviving despite the BONDAGE we experience in one area or another of our lives:
*Maybe it’s your bondage to FEAR.
*Your bondage to ANGER.
*Your bondage to RESENTMENT, your lack of forgiveness.
*Bondage to ANXIETY - you are a SLAVE to “WORRY”,
*or DEPRESSION.
*Or some chronic, physical ILLNESS.
*Or crippling financial DEBT.
*Or GOSSIP, LUST, SLOTH, GLUTTONY, PRIDE, MATERIALISM, WORKAHOLISM, ALCOHOLISM, SEXAHOLISM, T.V.-aholism, SOCIAL MEDIA-aholism…
*Or you’re enslaved by IDOLATRY - you’ve taken a GOOD thing and made it your MAIN thing; you keep looking to a GUY, or a GIRL to FULFILL you, to “complete” you, but then you’re constantly getting let down, cuz God didn’t MAKE your boyfriend or girlfriend, your husband or wife for YOU; He made them for HIM, just like He made YOU for Him, to find your ultimate joy and satisfaction in Him alone, so as long as you keep looking elsewhere… to your KIDS, or your PARENTS, to others’ APPROVAL, or to STATUS, or to JOB PERFORMANCE… ALL good things that when they become your ULTIMATE thing, leave you feeling EMPTY at the end of the day.
*Or you’re in bondage to YOUR PAST: some past TRAUMA that you just can’t seem to shake… ABUSE… DIVORCE… DEATH… LOSS…
Have I hit EVERYONE yet?! I can keep going; a FEW of you are thinking, “Hmf, I don’t struggle with ANY of that!” That’s cuz you struggle with SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS; you’re a modern-day PHARISEE; You need Jesus more than ANY of us!
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Friends: my premise is that we are ALL merely “surviving” SOMETHING this morning!
But my PURPOSE is to show you that you can LIVE.
For all who cry out - “I don’t WANT to just “survive” anymore; I want to LIVE!” - I want to SHOW you how GOD says you can truly LIVE this morning. Namely, by accepting 4 gospel PRINCIPLES, from Exodus ch14, that have the POWER to set you FREE today.
Exodus 14 recounts one of the most important and memorable scenes in all of the Bible. I suspect even if you are a “Chreaster” - that’s our loving nickname for those of you who only join us here at church on Christmas and Easter; Hey - we’re just glad you’re here! - But I suspect if you know ANYTHING about the Bible and the OLD Testament in particular, you know this story: the parting of the Red Sea, when Moses divided the waters so that God’s people - the Israelites - could cross from EGYPT into the PROMISED LAND. From SLAVERY into FREEDOM. From DEATH to LIFE.
And as such, this story is a picture, it’s a foreshadowing, of an even GREATER “death to life” story that I’m guessing you EXPECTED to hear about when you showed up this morning: the EASTER story - JESUS’ story, his RESURRECTION! - don’t worry: we’re gonna GET there.
Because this story - the EXODUS; Israel’s “exit” from Egypt - it functions on THREE levels.
There is the HISTORICAL: like “12 years a slave”, the exodus story is a TRUE one. 3,500 years ago, God literally and miraculously split a sea in half so that His people could escape their bondage. Now, that may be difficult for some of us modern, “enlightened” people to believe. But I would simply encourage you to look around and ask yourself, “Which takes more faith: to believe that there is a GOD who created all this? Or to believe it’s ALL the result of blind, random chance?” Personally, I don’t have enough FAITH to be an atheist. So if you can believe in a GOD, who is powerful enough to create the Sea in the FIRST place, then why is it any harder to believe that God PARTED that Sea?
This story is ALLEGORICAL. It’s a metaphor. And we’ve been tracing the symbolism of the Exodus story for 13 chapters now, but in case you’re new; quick RECAP: God’s people are TRAPPED in Egypt, which represents our SIN; they are enslaved by a ruthless tyrant, Pharaoh, who represents SATAN; but God HEARS their cries, and sends them a DELIVERER, a SAVIOR - MOSES - who foreshadows OUR Savior, JESUS. And in ch12 we learned that Israel needed to be saved not ONLY from Pharaoh, but from God’s OWN righteous judgment as well, because the Israelites were just as SINFUL as the EGYPTIANS were. And the wages of sin is DEATH. So when God sent His PLAGUES on Egypt, and specifically the 10th and FINAL plague - the “death of the firstborn”, the only way for Israel to be SPARED - to be “passed over” - was by painting the blood of the Passover LAMB on their doorposts; a picture of what JESUS would do for us on the CROSS, on Good Friday 1,500 years later, when “the Lamb of God [DIED, to] take away the sins of the world” (Jn 1:29).
So if PASSOVER corresponded to GOOD FRIDAY and Jesus’ Crucifixion, then their EXODUS thru the RED SEA this morning symbolizes Easter SUNDAY, and Jesus’ RESURRECTION.
But thirdly, not only is this story HISTORICAL, not only is it ALLEGORICAL, but it’s also PERSONAL. This isn’t just MOSES’ story… and it’s not even just JESUS’ story… friends: this is YOUR story, it’s OUR story. Or at least, it CAN be. We CAN be set free this morning, from OUR bondage as well. By these 4 gospel principles:
#1 - God allows our PAIN to prove his POWER. (vv1-4)
We read in vv1-4:
“Then the Lord said to Moses, 2 “Tell the people of Israel to TURN BACK and encamp in front of Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, in front of Baal-zephon; you shall encamp facing it, by the sea. 3 For Pharaoh will say of the people of Israel, ‘They are wandering in the land; the wilderness has shut them in.’ 4 And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and he will pursue them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, and the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord.” And they did so.
Sometimes GOD allows us to endure pain, in order to prove his POWER. This first gospel principle is SO essential for us to affirm, because it’s kept more people OUT of freedom than perhaps any other beef that humanity has with God.
“If God is so GOOD, why would He let me SUFFER?”
“If God is so good, why would He promise us freedom, only to have us TURN AROUND halfway out of EGYPT and “ENCAMP” - set up camp - facing our enemies, just as they start chasing AFTER us?! Why would God leave us TRAPPED between Migdol - this Egyptian fort - and the impassable Red Sea - talk about being stuck between a rock and a WET place!
Maybe that’s where some of YOU find yourselves this morning. You feel stuck, TRAPPED, in your pain. And frankly, you feel BETRAYED, by God.
“Why’d God even let me MEET this great guy, and fall head over heels for him, only for him to DUMP me, and break my heart?”
“Why does God let us keep getting PREGNANT, if it’s only gonna result in MISCARRIAGE after miscarriage?”
“Why’d God let me beat that FIRST round of cancer, only for it to come back with a VENGEANCE?”
The Bible offers us an answer to such questions; it’s just not a very popular answer:
“Sometimes God allows our pain to prove His POWER.”
Listen: If God’s main objective in your life was to PROTECT you from all pain, He would be a MISERABLE failure. I don’t know HALF of y’all here this morning, but I DO know 3 things to be true of ALL of you: 1) you were born, 2) you WILL die, and 3) in between, you’re gonna experience a whole lot of PAIN. Those are the three universal truths; I know they say “Death and taxes”, but you can avoid taxes if you’re good enough… or BAD enough… but ya STILL can’t avoid SUFFERING. Death and SUFFERING. So why does God ALLOW it?
Well, He tells us right here in v4; it’s the same reason God HARDENED Pharaoh’s heart so he’d chase after Israel - God didn’t just ALLOW Israel’s pain here… their mental, emotional DISTRESS; God ENGINEERED it! - WHY? For 2 reasons:
“[So that] I will get glory over Pharaoh… and [so] the Egyptians shall know that I am GOD.”
To show you my power OVER suffering… and to show you MYSELF through the suffering.
Friends: God’s great desire for your life isn’t to protect you from pain, it’s to bring you to HIM. And if He’s gotta use your PAIN to do it, then He will. “PAIN is [God’s] megaphone,” C.S. Lewis said, “to ROUSE a deaf world”. (“The Problem of Pain,” p?).
And He wants to USE that pain - God actually gets GLORY from our pain - in one of two ways: either by SAVING us FROM it, or by SUSTAINING us THROUGH it.
God may allow your cancer so He can prove his power OVER it, by miraculously healing you in a way that leaves even your doctors and nurses STUNNED - “there is NO medical explanation for this; something else… some-ONE else HAD to be at work here…”.
God may supernaturally FREE you from the PAIN of your addiction. You woke up every single day, craving your next drink; until God miraculously DELIVERED you from that bondage, and now the very thought of alcohol makes you wanna PUKE. God can DO that; ONLY God can do that; only He has that kind of POWER.
But sometimes, OTHER times, God instead chooses to prove that He ALSO has the power to SUSTAIN us THROUGH our pain. So He ALLOWS the cancer, He ALLOWS the addiction, to prove that He can sustain you.
God DOESN’T save your marriage, to prove that only He can get you through that divorce, and to FORCE you to RELY on HIM ALONE, just to make it THROUGH.
And along the way, God calls us to quit RUNNING from our issues, and to CONFRONT them instead.
“God, why can’t I just get OVER that past trauma? My childhood abuse? That toxic relationship?” Perhaps it’s because you’ve never actually DEALT with it, so you can keep running as fast and as FAR away as you WANT, but like Pharaoh, your past is just gonna keep chasing AFTER you until you FINALLY “turn back”, and “FACE” it head on, with God’s help.
Friends: God IS powerful enough to save you. And He’s also powerful enough to SUSTAIN you, as you lean on Him, HIS strength, in your weakness.
Gospel Principle #2 - Satan, however, uses our SIN to make us SLAVES. (vv5-9) We continue reading in vv5-9:
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.
Now, as I already told you: IN this allegory, Pharaoh represents SATAN, and EGYPT represents a life of slavery to SIN.
Some of you are thinking: “You actually believe in the DEVIL?!” Well, if you believe in a personal, powerful, yet spiritual and therefore incorPOReal force of GOOD - who we call “GOD” - then why is it any more difficult to believe in a personal, powerful, yet spiritual and body-less force of EVIL, Satan?
But more importantly, you may be thinking, “Who would WANT to believe in a doctrine like SIN?! This notion that God has a standard for how He wants us to LIVE, that we’re consistently FAILING to live UP to…”
But I would just challenge you to consider: we can choose to believe in sin or NOT, but our rejection of God’s objective standard for morality won’t make it go AWAY any more than telling the policeman who pulls you over on the drive home that you don’t BELIEVE in “speed limits” is gonna make your TICKET go away.
When you DIE (and you WILL) and you stand before the LORD to give an account for every single thought, decision, action, IN-action of your entire LIFE (and you WILL, the Bible says),
God isn’t gonna ask if you BELIEVED in His standard…
He’s not gonna ask what YOUR standard was, that YOU tried to live by; YOUR personal, subjective idea of morality…
God’s not even gonna ask you how CLOSE you came to keeping His standard; cuz the Bible is CLEAR: God doesn’t grade on a CURVE; it’s a “pass-fail” test, that ALL of us have FAILED - Romans 3:23 “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”. Jesus GIVES us God’s standard, in Matthew 5:48; He says: “You must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” If you lived a PERFECT life, absolutely NO sin, then you’re good to go; your ticket to Heaven is PUNCHED. But for every OTHER person who’s ever walked the planet, who ISN’T Jesus, we’re gonna have to find ANOTHER way in. Because of our SIN; the Bible says our sin SEPARATES us from a holy, perfect God (Isa 59:2).
And Satan, our Enemy, LOVES it; he wants to keep us TRAPPED in it, ENSLAVED to it. The minute you make up your mind to leave Egypt, you better BELIEVE that he is coming to chase you DOWN. He’s not going down without a fight; your SIN isn’t going down without a fight.
And friends, you need to know: Left to fight on your OWN, you’re just like the Israelites here: you don’t stand a CHANCE. Your sin is FAR too powerful for you; you CANNOT overcome your addiction, your codependency, your anger, your lust, your insecurity, your self-centeredness, on your own.
So what do we DO, when we see the Egyptians, our slave MASTERS, coming for us; v10?
We… FEAR!
“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.”
Speaking of great movies, anyone NOT seen The Shawshank Redemption? Okay, that’s your homework, before you come back next Sunday… cuz you can’t talk about escaping to freedom WITHOUT referencing SHAWSHANK! You remember the character BROOKS? He was the 80-something year old inmate, who had been in Shawshank, for like 60 years, who FINALLY got out on parole, despite trying to pull a KNIFE on someone the week before his release, cuz he didn’t WANNA leave; the prison was the only home he could even REMEMBER. So a few weeks AFTER getting released, Brooks committs suicide. And RED, Morgan Freeman, our narrator, delivers that great line, where he says: “These walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you DEPEND on them. That's institutionalized.”
The Israelites had become INSTITUTIONALIZED. “It would have been BETTER for us to remain SLAVES…” We CHOOSE slavery.
It’s one thing for God to get his people out of Egypt, but it’s a whole ‘NOTHER thing to get EGYPT out of his PEOPLE. Because “enough TIME passes” - 430 YEARS, they’d been enslaved now - that they started DEPENDING on their walls, their bondage. It became part of their very IDENTITY. “This is just who we ARE: we’re SLAVES.”
And I wonder how many of us this morning have become institutionalized by our SIN. So USED to it, even DEPENDANT on it, that it’s almost impossible - dare I say SCARY? - for us to imagine life WITHOUT it. A life FREE of sin.
“I’m the guy who pushes people AWAY, when they start to get too close, because my DAD left when I was young and I’ve never really DEALT with it, so now I’m STUCK with this crippling FEAR of abandonment. So I just keep people at an arm’s length so I can’t get HURT again. I put up WALLS - I ERECT the walls of my own bondage, that I’m a prisoner to; I’m a “people pusher”; that’s just who I AM.”
Or “You’re a people-PLEASER. You SLEEP with guys, to get them to LIKE you, cuz you’re TERRIFIED that they WOULDN’T like you, if they actually got to KNOW you, the REAL you; if they saw your HEART.”
Friends: How has YOUR sin “institutionalized” you? The easiest way to find out is to simply ask yourself: “What am I AFRAID of?”
“I live every day with this crippling anxiety that something terrible is going to happen to my family, to my kids” - that’s probably because you’ve turned your family into an IDOL, a “good thing that has become your MAIN thing; the thing you can’t live WITHOUT.”
Or “I’m scared that the STOCK market is gonna collapse again” - because YOUR slave master is your financial security.
Or “I’m scared of FAILURE” because your master is performance, success.
Or “I’m scared of being OVERLOOKED, getting 0 “likes” on my post”, because your master is INFLUENCE, popularity.
Or “I’m scared of SUBMISSION, so I reject every form of authority in my life,” because your master is CONTROL, your AUTONOMY.
Friends: what are you AFRAID of?
WHATEVER it is, here’s what you need to KNOW this morning - gospel principle #3 - we’re finally getting to the good part: FAITH can overcome our FEARS to make us FREE. (vv10-18; 30-31)
The opposite of “faith” isn’t so much “DOUBT”, as it is FEAR. Fear and faith are mutually exclusive. When Jesus’ disciples were sailing through the storm and it scared them all half to DEATH, you remember how Jesus REBUKED them? He said, “Why are you so AFRAID? Ye of little… FAITH” (Mk 4:40).
Moses says something SIMILAR here, to these fear-FULL Israelites, in vv13&14:
13 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.”
We LOVE that, don’t we? “All I gotta do is be STILL, and God’s gonna do it all - He’s gonna fight FOR me”; just “let go and let God” - I bet half of us here have a COFFEE MUG somewhere at home, with Exodus 14:14 on it.
You know what NONE of us has on a coffee mug? Verse 15; the very NEXT verse…
Just as Moses is getting ready to drop the mic - how does GOD reply?
“The Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry out to ME? [YOU] Tell the people of Israel to go forward. [YOU] Lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and [YOU] divide it, that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground.”
God says: “Why are you standing around looking at ME, Moses, crying out to ME, waiting on ME? Yes, sometimes faith means simply “Being still and knowing that He is GOD” (Ps 46:10); Sometimes it means “WAITING on the Lord” (Ps 27:14). There IS a time to be still and wait.
But OTHER times, like HERE, faith means trusting that God gave you two good legs for a REASON.
Frederick Douglass wrote: “I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”
Some of us this morning are standing around, waiting, praying:
“God: why haven’t you delivered me from my addiction yet?” And God’s answering you back, “Why are you crying out to ME? Why haven’t you gotten YOURSELF in a recovery group yet? ”
“God: why are you letting me suffer from all these HEALTH problems?” And God’s saying: “Get off the couch, wipe the Cheeto dust off your face, and THEN let’s talk…”
“God: why haven’t you fixed my MARRIAGE? We fight all the time, I’m SO unhappy… would you HELP!” And God’s saying, “Don’t look at ME; look in the MIRROR! Are you in counseling, working on YOUR issues, cuz YOU’RE half the equation, you know, in this marriage… Are you involved in CHURCH together? A loving, prayerful, grace-filled community of folks who want to SUPPORT you, advocate for your marriage, hold you accountable, share advice from their own experiences, hardships, empathize with you, pray for you…
Friends: “FAITH” is an ACTIVE word in the Bible. The apostle James said, “I will SHOW you my faith, by my ACTIONS” (2:18). When Hebrews 11:29 looks back on the Israelites here in Exodus 14 and applauds them for their FAITH, it doesn’t say “By faith, they stood STILL and trusted”; it says “By faith they crossed the Sea”!
Listen: God had to do HIS part; no question. The Israelites didn’t have a PRAYER of crossing that sea without Him. But remember: God had already PROMISED to do His part, way back in v4, and friends: when God makes you a promise, you can take it to the BANK; it’s already as good as DONE. So here in vv17-18, God simply REMINDS them:
“ I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they shall go in after [you], and I will get glory over Pharaoh… And the Egyptians shall KNOW that I am the Lord…”
Friends: do you realize that when it comes to YOUR deliverance from bondage, God has ALREADY done His part? You don’t need to stand around and wait and pray any longer, because when Jesus Christ walked out of the grave 2,000 years ago, God SPLIT the sea that once divided you from Him, the separation that your SINS had made between you and Him, and God paved a PATH instead, for you to cross from death to life, if you will but BELIEVE! Trust in Jesus… Have FAITH!
Not a PASSIVE faith; Jesus said, “If anyone would be my disciple, he must FOLLOW me” (Matt 16:24). It’s an ACTIVE verb.
Listen: Hell is FILLED with people, today, who BELIEVED in Jesus… passively, intellectually. Good church folks who could’ve ACED any theological exam you gave them; they mentally assented to all the right doctrines about God. The Bible says, “You believe in God?” Believe in Jesus? That’s good; so do the DEMONS! They knew EXACTLY who Jesus was, and they begged him to stay away from them. (Jam 2:19)
No, friends, faith doesn’t mean merely “believing”; it means FOLLOWING, drawing CLOSE to Jesus. You can look, and believe that the Sea is split, but that won’t do you a BIT of good, til you walk THROUGH it, til you FOLLOW Him, in FAITH. THAT is TRUE faith: walking, crossing over.
And by the way: we don’t all have the same DEGREE of faith, the same QUALITY of faith. I’m sure a FEW of the Israelites walked through thinking, “This is AMAZING! Look at all the FISH, the SHARKS, swimming right by! God: you are AMAZING!” But I bet there were a whole lot MORE of them looking around, thinking, “Oh my GOD; we’re all gonna DIE!”
But guess what: God saved ‘em BOTH. Because “We are saved not by the QUALITY of our faith, but by the OBJECT of our faith” (Tim Keller, “Exodus 14”, TGC 2011). And who is the OBJECT of our faith?
Gospel Principle #4 - it’s JESUS. Jesus, who won our RESCUE through his RESURRECTION. (vv19-29)
Remember, Moses, who splits the sea here, just “foreshadows” an even GREATER Deliverer; Hebrews 3:3 calls Jesus the “better Moses”. And many commentators go beyond that, and they identify Jesus as the “messenger of GOD”, here in v19, who puts himself between Israel and Egypt, to DEFEND God’s people:
“Then the angel (or MESSENGER) of God who was going before the host of Israel moved and went behind them, and the pillar of cloud [remember: that is the manifest presence of God Himself; He too] moved from before them and stood behind them, 20 coming between the host of Egypt and the host of Israel….”
Friends: that’s exactly what our Savior Jesus did for us on the CROSS: he put himself BETWEEN us and our sins; he endured the darkness so that we might be brought into His perfect LIGHT. v21:
“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 [us].”
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…”
Friends: For all who HAVE trusted in Jesus this morning, hear this good news: not ONE of your sins remains. They’ve been thrown into a sea without bottom or shore; our sins they were MANY, but Christ’s MERCY is more. And he CONQUERED your sin through His RESURRECTION! 1 Corinthians 15 says, “If Jesus HASN’T been raised from the dead, then our faith is futile and we are still DEAD in our sins.” (v17)
But praise God: like the Exodus story, the EASTER story - the empty tomb, on Resurrection Sunday - it’s a TRUE story!
And friends: it can be YOUR story this morning. Romans 6 says, “all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus [like Israel, we’ve gotta pass through the WATER; faith is ACTIVE…] …we were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”
Or in OTHER words, put more simply, as Jesus HIMSELF put it: “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes… Has crossed over from death to life” (Jn 5:24).
Friends: through Jesus’ death and resurrection, God has split the SEA for you - He’s DONE his part; the walls are standing up on either side - the only question left NOW is: will you walk THROUGH? That’s where the chapter ENDS; in vv30 & 31 here:
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.”
Will YOU believe, this morning, in JESUS, the BETTER Moses, who alone has the “great power” to defeat ALL your sin, leave it DEAD on the shore, and SAVE you for life everlasting with Him?
Friends: Don’t be content to go on merely SURVIVING!
Aren’t you ready to LIVE?!