The Exodus

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in Exodus chapter 12 this morning. And we’re going to finish up our look at how God delivered his people from bondage in Pharaoh’s Egypt. This is our 10th message on the subject.

So I’m going to finish this up today and then we will move on to something else next week. But we’re going to talk today about how they finally left. How God, after all of these things that took place, God orchestrated events in such a way that they left and left in quite a hurry.

as I think about this and try to relate stories and scriptures to my own life to help me understand them better well the thing that I think of here if you’ve ever been out to dinner with a small child you understand how quickly circumstances can change and how you may have to make a quick exit Madeline especially is my easy one to put to bed Now, Benjamin, sometimes we have a 30-minute standoff every night about whether or not he’s going to go potty. With Madeline, all I have to do is get her ready and say, all right, let’s go to bed. And she leads me in there, and I put her in her bed.

But if we are out to dinner in the evenings, as sometimes happens, if we’re out to dinner, Chick-fil-A in particular, she’ll be running around playing, having a good time. We’re sitting around talking after dinner. And there are subtle signals that the situation is about to change.

If she starts rubbing her eyes or if she starts tripping over stuff, I’ve learned you have about 10 minutes before it gets ugly. Now, if we’re at home, she goes to bed at a certain time. She’s not as tired.

You just take her in there. She’s good. If she’s running around at Chick-fil-A playing, she gets tired a whole lot faster.

And that eye rubbing starts. If she starts falling down, you have 10 minutes. I’m not exaggerating.

You have 10 minutes to get where you’re going to be before everything breaks loose. And so, you know, I didn’t notice that at first. and so we had a few ugly incidents. But I’ve learned the eye rubbing starts.

Circumstances are changing, and we need to make a hasty retreat. We need to get home and get her to bed. We need to hurry our way out of there.

Now, why am I talking about Madeline getting cranky and having to go to bed? Because sometimes things can be going on as they have for as far back as you can remember. And suddenly, when God is involved, the circumstances can change like that.

And God says, it’s time for you to go. And I could point to you at places and times in ministry where I’ve been going along and everything is as normal. And then God says, you need to go. Now, this is not a resignation message.

I see looks of concern on faces. Now, I’m just saying there have been times where the circumstances have changed. And God has made it clear that, okay, you’re supposed to move on.

And it’s just not necessarily something that’s built over time. God just says, now’s the time to go. Okay, God, if that’s what you’re saying, I’ll go now.

Sometimes you can be in a circumstance in life and things change and God makes it very clear to you, you don’t take your sweet time moving on to the next place I tell you to go. Sort of like we talked about last week where he told them in preparation for the Passover, he said that they were to eat the Passover supper with their loins girt and their shoes on. And if you remember, it’d be hard to forget, but if you remember, I talked about the tornado shoes and the tornado pants.

You’ve got to be prepared to go at a moment’s notice. And I’m not saying we keep one foot in everything we do. I’m just saying we’ve got to be prepared at any moment.

I’m not talking about leaving churches or leaving jobs or anything, even that, you know, that big. But no matter what we’re doing, whether it’s in big things or little things, we’ve got to be prepared at a moment’s notice to put it down when God says to put it down and go on to the next thing he’s called us to do. And so it was for the Israelites, they had been in bondage.

Ladies and gentlemen, they had been in bondage. It just went out of my mind. There are two numbers involved here.

One is 480 years and one is 430 years, I believe. I’ll find it here in a minute but they had been in bondage over 400 years in Egypt and through all of these plagues through all the nine plagues that we talked about for what was it two weeks ago for all the nine plagues that I would have you know what I would have let them go when Moses threw the stick down and it became a snake but that’s just me before the plagues even started but through all these plagues, Pharaoh was not fazed and refused to let them go. And the Israelites had probably come to a place of despair where they thought, we are never going to leave this place.

We are never going to get out of here. Our children are going to continue on in slavery and our grandchildren are going to continue on in slavery and our great-grandchildren are going to continue on in slavery just as our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents have. Nothing’s ever going to change.

And yet God so quickly changed the circumstances on a dime and said, it is time for you to go. And so we look at Exodus chapter 12, where they see these circumstances and what changed was the Passover, was that 10th plague where God said, I’m going to take the firstborn of every family in Egypt. And if you want to be spared, you need to be under the blood of the lamb.

And we talked last week about how that applies to us as well. If we want to be spared the wrath and judgment of God, we’ve got to be under the blood of the lamb. Now, who is our Passover lamb, Jesus Christ, correct.

So when that last plague came, when the judgment of God was poured out on Egypt for Pharaoh’s resistance, really for the nation’s resistance to God’s call to let his people go, when that judgment was poured out, when the firstborn of every family was taken, that’s when the heart of Egypt was changed. That’s when Egypt’s pride was broken. That’s when Pharaoh’s resistance was shattered.

And so we begin looking at verse 31 of chapter 12. And he called for Moses and Aaron by night. You notice the angel death came through at midnight.

Pharaoh didn’t even wait until the next morning. He called Moses and Aaron in the middle of the night and said, rise up and get you forth from among my people, both ye and the children of Israel, and go serve the Lord as you’ve said. Get out of my country.

Get out of my country, you and your people, take all your stuff, get up and go. Go serve the Lord, as you have been saying all along. Go serve the Lord.

And take your flocks and your herds, as ye have said, and be gone and bless me also. Well, this is quite a change of heart, apparently. It would seem a change of heart from somebody who has been refusing any instruction from God.

To now say, go and serve your God. Take all the things that you need to serve your God. And while you’re at it, ask this God to bless me also.

Pray for me also. Because God had brought him to his knees. And I gave you the example of the student.

And I kept having to say, you can fight against the rule. You’re free to fight against the rules as long as you want to. But eventually you’re going to get tired.

And you’re going to learn obedience one way or the other. Well, Pharaoh was to the point now where he’s tired. And he’s learned obedience.

And he says, go. And the Egyptians, verse 33, And the Egyptians were urgent upon the people that they might send them out of the land in haste. For they said, we be all dead men.

The rest of the people of Egypt were saying, go, just go, get out of our country, leave. Because they were afraid if you stick around. They took the firstborn this time.

Who’s next? Am I next? Just go before we’re all gone.

And the people took their dough before it was leavened and their kneading troughs being bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders. And the children of Israel. Think about this.

I was telling this story to Benjamin the other day and couldn’t really explain leaven to a four-year-old and was just trying to tell him, you know, they just took their flat bread. They didn’t even have time to make their sandwiches. Ladies and gentlemen, they didn’t have time to let their bread rise.

They didn’t have time to slice it with their lunch meat and all that. They just had time to take the dough and get out. And so they carried everything with them.

And the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses, and they borrowed of the Egyptians jewels of silver and jewels of gold and raiment. You know what? I think that’s only fair.

At first glance, I look at this and say, why were they taking jewels from the Egyptians? I’d say they’re owed about 400 years back wages. What do you think?

Borrowed of the Egyptians jewels of silver and jewels of gold and raiment, and the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians so that they lent unto them such things as they required, and they spoiled the Egyptians. When it says they spoiled the Egyptians, That’s not like we talk about today, spoiling a child, giving them everything they want. The Egyptians were ruined financially.

They ruined Egypt. They took so much of the wealth. Now, God gave them favor.

I don’t know that that means that God gave the Egyptians warm, fuzzy feelings about the Israelites. The way that makes sense to me is God made the Egyptians understand we have got to get these people out of here, give them whatever they want, just to get them to go away. if you’ve ever had a salesman, like a door-to-door salesman of cleaning products, come to your door and you’ve bought a bottle of something just to get them off of your porch, you understand the situation they were in.

God orchestrated it in such a way where they were willing to give them whatever they want, just go, get out of our country. And they spoiled the Egyptians. And the children of Israel journeyed from Ramses to Succoth, about 600,000 on foot that were men beside children.

That’s a lot of people. 600,000 men and their families. And a mixed multitude went up also with them, and flocks and herds, even very much cattle.

And they baked unleavened cakes of the dough, which they brought forth out of Egypt, for it was not leavened, because they were thrust out of Egypt and could not tarry. Neither had they prepared for themselves any victual, any food supplies. That word, I think, is where we get the word vittles.

So if you just read that as vittles, you’ll understand what they didn’t have with them. They didn’t have time to prepare anything to eat, so they just baked their unleavened bread as they’re out on their way, as they would camp for the night. And now the sojourning of the children of Israel who dwelt in Egypt was 430 years.

That’s where it was. I told you there were two numbers, because there are two numbers that are taught in the Bible here. 430 is the number of years that they were in Egypt.

From the time, I believe, of Jacob entering with his sons at Joseph’s request to the time of the Exodus was 430 years. The book of 1 Kings also teaches that the Exodus was 480 years before the temple was built. So that’s how we can kind of come to around the 1440s BC being the time of the Exodus.

So they journeyed, and they’re still not out of Egypt. Now, Egypt controlled a lot of land. if you look at any maps from that time or of their settlements at that time they don’t necessarily have to have been made back then but their settlements basically hugged the Nile River but they controlled a lot of land around them so they might have left Egyptian settlements but they’re still not out of Egypt and they’re headed off toward the Red Sea.

We’re going to skip ahead a little bit to chapter 13 chapter 13 verse 17 and it came to pass when Pharaoh had let the people go that God let them not through the land of the Philistines. Okay, it would seem that the shortest route for them to take to get from Egypt to the promised land would be to go around the Mediterranean Sea up the north side of the Suez Peninsula right there into Egypt. I mean, right there into Canaan.

That’s the straightest shot there is. Israel and Egypt actually border each other if you’re not familiar with that part of the world. They actually border each other.

And they could have just walked from one country to the next. But instead here it says that God did not lead them through the land of the Philistines. Where the Gaza Strip is today and some of the surrounding area was Philistine territory at that time.

So God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was nearer for God said, lest peradventure the people repent when they see war and return to Egypt. God said the people will go through Philistine territory And they will see the Philistines and they will regret that they ever left Egypt and say, let’s go back there where, yeah, we were slaves, but at least we were saved. Because the Philistines were big, burly, scary, warlike people.

And they weren’t going to just let this massive human army move through their territory to settle on land behind them. They were going to stop them. Or they were going to at least go out there and try to stop them.

And so they couldn’t stop them because God was with them. and had given them the land. But they were going to go out and try to stop them and God said the Israelites were going to turn and run.

You think about a people who had spent 430 years beaten down in slavery. They come up against an army of really tough Philistines. Were they going to stand there and fight or were they going to turn tail and run?

They were so beaten down that there’s no way they were going to stand up to the Philistines. And so God led them another way. God led the people about through the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea, and the children of Israel went up harnessed out of the land of Egypt, and Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for he had straightly sworn the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones away hence with you.

And they took their journey from Succoth, and encamped in Etham in the edge of the wilderness. And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light to go by day and night. Now, God led them every step of the way through the wilderness.

God didn’t just say, get out of Egypt. He said it’s time to go, and he showed them which way to go. Now, there was this pillar of cloud.

I don’t know exactly what that looked like, but I’m sure it had to be impressive. We’ve all seen some pretty impressive cloud formations here recently, but this had to be something that would really stand out. And this pillar of cloud would move and they would follow it.

And at night there would be a pillar of fire. Now I don’t know that they were moving around a lot at night. I’m assuming they had to camp out somewhere.

So why the pillar of fire? I would think just a reminder God’s with you. You may be out here in the wilderness.

You may have Egypt behind you and the Red Sea in front of you. But God is still here with you. It’d be a good reminder there.

And he took not away the pillar of the cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night from before the people. God never neglected to lead them. God never neglected to remind them that he was there with them.

And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they turn and encamp before Pihahiroth, and between Migdal and the sea over Baal-Ziphon, before it ye shall encamp. . .

Excuse me. The Egyptian names I get right. It’s the English that trips me up.

Before it shall ye encamp by the sea. for Pharaoh will save the children of Israel they are entangled in the land the wilderness has shut them in and I will harden Pharaoh’s heart that he shall follow after them and I will be honored upon Pharaoh and upon all his host that the Egyptians may know that I am the Lord and they did so God said go camp this way Pharaoh’s heart is going to be changed he’s going to come after you but you watch you watch I’ll have victory and they will know who led you out of Egypt. Some of the most exciting things in the Bible happen right after God says, or after somebody says, and they will know.

I go back to David saying that they may know that there is a God in Israel right before he slayed the giant. God says they will know who has done this thing. And it was told the king of Egypt that the people fled and the heart of Pharaoh and his servants was turned against the people.

And they said, why have we done this that we have let Israel go from serving us. How quickly we forget. How quickly we sometimes, this is not just a Pharaoh thing, this is a human thing.

God can chasten us, and we can repent. How quickly we forget why we are where we are and start to wander again. Why did we let them go?

We had all these slaves doing work for us. Why did we let them go? And he made ready his chariot and took his people with him.

And he took 600 chosen chariots and all the chariots of Egypt and captains over every one of them. And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and he pursued after the children of Israel. And the children of Israel went out with a high hand.

They were excited. We are going to capture these people. It’s going to be shock and awe.

They’re not going to know what hit them. I was listening to the radio yesterday and they were talking about the invasion of Iraq in 2003. And they said, you know, we thought it was going to be over just within about a week.

And I thought back, and it’s the first time I thought about it in a long time, I remember hearing that. We thought it was going to be over in the course of about a week. And, you know, most of the country was under our control at that point.

But, man, we thought we were going to just go in there, get Saddam in a matter of hours, and it was going to be over. We rode into it high-handed. This is going to be easy.

It’s never as easy as we think it’s going to be. Pharaoh and his army said, we’re going to go in there, it’s going to be easy. They rode in high-handed.

They were ready to go. But the Egyptians pursued after them all the horses and chariots of Pharaoh and his horsemen and his army and overtook them in camping by the sea beside Pihahiroth and before Beelzaphon. And when Pharaoh drew nigh, the children of Israel lifted up their eyes and behold, the Egyptians marched after them and they were sore afraid and the children of Israel cried out unto the Lord.

Think about that. You’re encamped down there in the wilderness. God’s been leading you out of Egypt.

Finally, after 430 years of slavery, you’re leaving Egypt. And then you see Pharaoh’s chariots and his infantry bearing down on you. They cried out to God.

And they said unto Moses, because there were no graves in Egypt, it really gets on my nerves the way they keep whining at Moses. They said unto Moses, because there were no graves in Egypt, Hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? We might say something like that today.

Oh, good, because, you know, there weren’t enough graves in Egypt, so you led us out here to be killed. That’s good. Sarcasm there.

He should have slapped them all. Not really. But they began to whine and complain.

Yes, they cried out to God, but they also began to murmur and complain. Well, we kind of do that, don’t we? Let me rephrase that.

I kind of do that, don’t I? I’ll cry out to God in a time of trouble, but then I also want to bellyache. Instead of just trusting that he’ll take care of this.

Wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us to carry us forth out of Egypt? So why have you done this to us? Like Moses was the only one who wanted them out of slavery.

Like Moses picked them up physically and made them leave Egypt. Like Moses took some kind of sick pleasure in leading them out there to be killed. Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, Let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians?

for it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians than we should die in the wilderness. Didn’t we tell you back there, leave us alone and let us serve the Egyptians? Oh yeah.

Yeah, when you were getting all those jewels and being told to leave Egypt, you sure were telling me, let us alone to serve the Egyptians. They said, because it’s better to live in Egypt as slaves than die as free men in the wilderness. And I submit to you, that’s exactly backwards.

Better to die as free men in the wilderness than to live as slaves. And Moses said unto the people, fear ye not, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will show you today. For the Egyptians whom ye have seen today, ye shall see them again no more forever.

I love that. You will see this army again no more forever. Isn’t that what Pharaoh had asked for, by the way?

I don’t want to see your face again. Well, that’s about to happen. The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.

He says, quiet down and pay attention because God is about to show you his salvation here. And the Lord said unto Moses, wherefore criest thou unto me? Speak unto the children of Israel that they may go forward.

God here apparently sort of asked Moses, why are you asking me about this? You already know what I’ve told you to do. You tell the children of Israel to go forward.

But lift thou up thy rod and stretch out thine hand over the sea and divide it. And the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea. and behold I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians and they shall follow them and I will get me honor upon Pharaoh and upon all his host upon his chariots and upon his horsemen and the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I have gotten me honor upon Pharaoh upon his chariots and upon his horsemen they are going to realize when it’s too late who they’ve been fighting against and the angel of God which went before the camp of Israel removed and went behind them and the pillar of cloud went before their face and stood behind them, went from before their face and stood behind them.

So this pillar of cloud that has been, has been leading them now moves around to the rear of the camp to protect them, to stand between them and Pharaoh’s armies. And it came to, it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel. And it was a cloud of darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these so that the, so that the one came not near to the other all night.

God held the Egyptians at bay all night. And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. And again, I told you, I’ve heard where some scientists have identified an underground ridge that runs east to west under the floor of the Red Sea.

And they’ve said that if the wind blows just right at the correct angle and just hard enough, it can actually blow the waters back. And I’ve seen them do this with scale models. It’s really, really neat.

But if it blows at just the proper angle and blows it just hard enough, then it can actually push the water back, exposing this ridge of dry land where you could actually walk across it, walk across the Red Sea. Now, their implication then is that it’s not a miracle, that a little natural phenomenon could have caused that. Now, My question, Mr.

Scientist, is who is it that orchestrated that natural phenomenon to happen at just that precise moment? Hmm, coincidence? You have a lot more faith than I do, if you believe in that kind of random chance.

So maybe God did use a natural underground ridge. Who made that underground ridge in the first place, and who revealed it at just that precise moment? And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground, and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left.

And the Egyptians pursued and went in after them to the midst of the sea, even all Pharaoh’s horses, his chariots, and his horsemen. God held them back until just the right time, again, just that precise moment, when the Israelites were just out of their grasp, and the Egyptians ended up in the middle of the sea. And it came to pass that in the morning, watch, the Lord looked unto the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud and troubled the host of the Egyptians and took off their chariot wheels and draved them heavily so that the Egyptians said, let us flee from the face of Israel for the Lord fighteth for them against the Egyptians.

I don’t know exactly what all this means, except that I can tell that their chariots got broken down and bogged down in the mud. And circumstances happened in such a way that the Egyptians were out there in the middle of the seabed and were terrified because they realized that God was fighting for the Israelites and they began to turn back. And you know what?

And we could look at that and say, well, then why did God sort of like shooting a man as he’s running away? Why would God flood them? Well, the Egyptians have shown time and time again that they’re prone to change in their minds.

And this was going to be an ongoing problem for the Israelites. And the Lord said unto Moses, stretch out thine hand over the sea that the waters may come again upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots and upon their horsemen. And Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to his strength when the morning appeared.

And the Egyptians fled against it, and the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea. When Moses stretched out his hands again, the waters back in, and they were covered. And the waters returned and covered the chariots, and all the horsemen, and all the hosts of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them.

There remained not so much as one of them. But the children of Israel walked upon dry land in the midst of the sea, and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left. Thus the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the seashore.

And Israel saw that great work which the Lord did upon the Egyptians, and the people feared the Lord and believed the Lord and his servant Moses until their next bout of trouble in the in which case they began to doubt again. Now just as an aside here, there’s debate over whether or not Pharaoh was killed in the waters himself. And I’ve gone back and forth on it also, excuse me, but there is the passage, I believe in Psalm 136, that talks about God overcoming Pharaoh and his army in the waters of the Red Sea, which makes me tend to believe that Pharaoh was drowned here also.

There is, I mentioned to you, I couldn’t remember the name last week, but I mentioned to you there is a pharaoh. There’s a pharaoh in Egyptian history, in recorded history, from around the same time. The dates don’t overlap perfectly, but a lot of the dates are speculative anyway, when you get that far back in history.

There’s a pharaoh in Egypt from around this time, named Amenhotep II, who, strangely enough, was not the firstborn. He was not the heir to the throne, but something happened to his older brother, which would explain if, guys, this is just speculation on my part, but would explain why the Pharaoh wasn’t killed in the 10th plague. And we know from history as well that it was not his first son, but his second son that inherited the throne on his death.

The first born was taken in the 10th plague. That would explain why the second son inherited the throne. It’s also said that he ruled in a time of prosperity that ended abruptly, really without explanation.

And according to some of the things that I’ve read, he was the only, now, I need to do more research on this, but just based on what I’ve read, said that he’s one of very few pharaohs whose mummies have been found with cysts indicating things like smallpox. Wasn’t there a plague that caused boils? Now, if he drowned in the Red Sea, how would they still have his mummy?

The Bible says they washed up on the seashore. So don’t take that as the Bible says it was him. But history seems to, just based on what I understand, and I’m not an Egyptologist, but just based on what I understand, there’s a Pharaoh in history that seems to match up a little too well with the story of the Exodus.

Just a little aside there to remind you that this is not just a story. This is a true story that’s recorded in God’s Word. There’s some evidence for this story.

It’s a true story from God’s word about how he really did deliver real people. And these stories teach us something about our lives and that God is still really delivering real people today. Just as he delivered them, he delivers us.

It may not be as big and dramatic as what he did in Egypt, as what he did for the Israelites, but it’s deliverance nonetheless. And it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about 430 years of slavery or our little problems, when we’re in the middle of the little problems of life, and that’s all we can see, they look pretty big to us. And yet there’s no problem so big that God can’t handle it.

There’s no bondage so big that God can’t deliver us. But there’s also no problem so small that the heart of the Father does not care. And ladies and gentlemen, if you’ve learned nothing else through this series of messages, I want you to realize that God is in the business of delivering his children.

He’s always at work delivering his children. That deliverance may not always take the form that we think it ought to. It may not always look exactly like it ought to.

Because we may think, God, that means you’re going to take the problem away entirely. It may not be that he takes the problem away entirely. It may just mean that he gives us a means to deal with it.

But God is always at work to deliver his children. Four things that he did here in this passage and will be done. First of all, God delivered his people by breaking the enemy.

Pharaoh was an incredibly proud, stubborn man. And nine plagues didn’t do it. But on the 10th plague, God finally broke him and got him to obey.

Sometimes God has to break the enemy. Sometimes God has to bring those who oppress us. That can be other people.

That can be Satan’s forces in our lives. It doesn’t matter. Sometimes God will have to break the enemy to give us relief.

But he broke Pharaoh. I mean, Pharaoh was so broken in Exodus 12, 31 and 32, it talks about him calling to Mose

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