Welcome to the Kerwin Baptist Church broadcast today. Our desire is for the Word of God to be spread throughout the world so that all may know Christ. Join us now for a portion of one of our services here at Kerwin Baptist Church, located in Kernersville, North Carolina.
Okay, all right. Exodus 14. Exodus chapter number 14 this morning. Appreciate you being here today. And it is my joy, it's my honor, it's my privilege to get to speak to you.
Today, one of my favorite things to do is to be able to stand before our teenagers, number one, and enjoy that and get to speak and share God's Word. And then, a close second to that would be able to stand before you also. And open up God's Word to you. And I'll start by kind of asking this question, and this is a rhetorical. Question, don't answer me, don't raise your hand, don't let it be known.
But how many of you would say that you've been in a situation before where you felt? Completely stuck. You you looked at all the options, you looked at all the different ways and There didn't really seem to be a good way out. of that situation. You couldn't really go forward, couldn't really run, couldn't really hide.
There were some, maybe, some scary things, or whatever the case may be, and you felt like you were in a situation. And for some of you, maybe that's not a past tense feeling. Maybe that's a feeling that you feel today when you walked in. You feel like you're in a circumstance, you feel like you're in a situation, you feel like you're in a place of trouble or trial, and there's no real good option. To getting out.
And I think all of us would probably say that we have been there at some point. And I think what's interesting. Is that when we do find ourselves in a position like that, we are tempted to think, we're tempted to assume. That place of trouble, that place of trial, that place of problems was because of me. I did something wrong.
God's upset at me. I missed God somewhere in all of this. But the story that we're going to look at here this morning, a very familiar story that most of you would know. And you could give the details better than I could. But in this story this morning, we see that there are certain times in our lives where we can be exactly.
where God wants us to be. We can do exactly what God tells us to do. We can follow God directly to where He wants us to go and still find ourselves. completely trapped. Completely surrounded.
Right, and that's what we see here with the children of Israel in chapter number 14 of Exodus. They didn't wander here on accident, they didn't make a mistake somehow, they ended up right where they were because they did exactly. What God said to do. He led them to this place and God gives them a command that's an interesting command. To me, he leads them to this place of no escape.
They're completely surrounded. And God gives them this instruction: He says, stand still. And see the salvation of the Lord. It's an odd thing to tell someone when they're in trouble. It's not what I would choose to do if I were trapped.
God says stand still and see. The salvation of The Lord. I want to read a couple of verses to you here, real quick, before we jump into this. And in Exodus chapter number 14, I want you to see the distress that these people are under. I want you to see the problem that they're facing.
Look at verse number 10. of Exodus 14. The children of Israel have gotten out of Egypt. God has freed them from bondage. They've been in bondage for hundreds of years, and God has led them out.
They've gone through all the plagues. And then the final tenth plague of the death angel, the Passover, and all of that. And so look at verse number 10: says, 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.
And so they look up here and they don't see hope. They've just gotten out of Egypt. And God has led them right to a place where there's a mountain range on either side of them, there's a sea in front of them, and there's an army behind them. And they look up and they don't see a lot of hope, they just see the problem, they see the issue, they see what's going on. I want you to see what God says to them in that moment.
Look at verse 13. It says, And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, see the salvation of the Lord, which he will show to you today. For the Egyptians whom ye have seen today, ye shall see them again no more forever. The Lord shall fight for you. And ye shall hold Your peace before God ever makes a way for them, before He ever does a miracle.
before he ever does any of that. God puts them in a place where they have absolutely no way out. And so we're going to study through this passage here this morning, look at it, apply some things to you. Hopefully it'll help you. It'll encourage you today.
It'll motivate you today. And so let's pray and we'll jump right into this. Lord, I love you. And Lord, I thank you for the opportunity to stand here and open your word. There's many people here that could do it better than I can.
And Lord, I ask that you would just use me today. And use your word. We love you. In Jesus' name. Amen.
I want to give you four things real quick here today. And we'll look at this passage. I want you to see number one. God's direction. God's direction before God ever tells them to stand still.
Before God ever says, I'm going to fight for you, before God ever parts a Red Sea, we all know where this story is headed, right? They're standing here at the Red Sea, there's no way out. Before God does any kind of miracle for them whatsoever, we've got to understand something: they did not end up in this place by accident. This was not a mistake on someone's part. They didn't get here because one of the Jewish kids was holding the map upside down and it led them here to this place.
I want you to see that God led them here. I want you to see first that it was intentional. God's direction was an intentional thing. Look at verse number one. It says, and the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel.
This is a direct. Command from God. Moses, tell the people: this is what I want them to do. Right? It says that they turn and encamp before Pi Hahiroth.
That was pretty good. You guys impressed that I actually got that out? It sounded like I knew how to say it. I don't know if that's right or not. You probably know, I don't.
I said it. Mm-hmm.
Sorry, nuts. I apologize. Is it still on?
Okay. I apologize for that. That was That was arrogance. All right. Encamp by that place between Migdal and the sea over against Baal Zaphon.
Not going to say anything. Before it shall, he says, before it shall ye encamp. by the sea. Do you know what this tells us? This wasn't confusion.
This wasn't an accident. This wasn't a problem that they created on their own. This was a specific direction. that God gave them. They were exactly where God wanted them to be.
God didn't just say after they got out of Ed. He didn't just say, head out your way and just figure it out on your own. Do the best that you can. I got you out of here. No, God was leading them.
Remember, there was a pillar of fire that they were following. God led them here. They did exactly what God told them to do, and they still ended up in a very tough, terrible spot. And I'm going to tell you, that's hard for us to accept sometimes. It's hard for us to stomach sometimes that, man, God, I did what you told me to do.
I'm trying to serve you, I'm trying to do what's right, and still we end up in this place. You and I have been trained to think.
Now, it's not biblical. God didn't teach us to think this way, but we have been trained to think: if it's hard, I must be doing something wrong. If it doesn't make sense, I must have missed God somewhere, this is my fault, and we start to blame game, we start to feel guilty, when really. Maybe God has led us to this place. You can be exactly where God told you to be.
And things can still not look good sometimes. God's direction was. Intentional. Maybe you find yourself here this morning. And you're asking the questions like, why did you put me here?
Why did you lead me here? Why are you allowing all of this to happen? Right? Maybe. It was God's intention for you to end up here.
I want you to notice next. is that God had a purpose they couldn't see.
Alright, look at verse number three. If you would. It says, For Pharaoh will say, I love this right here, for Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel. They are entangled in the land. The wilderness has shut them in.
God says in verse 4, and I will harden Pharaoh's heart, that he shall follow after them, and I will be honored upon Pharaoh and upon all his hosts, that the Egyptians may know. That I am the Lord. And they did so. And so they're standing there thinking, we're trapped. We have nowhere to go.
We can't go forward. There's a sea in front of us. We can't run to the sides. There's mountain ranges. We can't go hide.
We can't run back. There's an army coming after us. And so the logical conclusion is: we're trapped. We're doomed. And God says, no, you're not.
You're not doomed. I have a plan through all of this. I have a purpose through all of this. You don't see it yet. You don't know it yet.
You don't know what I'm doing, but I am doing something here. I know I love that God knew exactly what Pharaoh would think. Pharaoh here says they are entangled in the land. That the wilderness has shut them in. In other words, Pharaoh sees what's happening.
He's like, man, you guys played right into my plan. You went to the worst possible place where I don't have to chase you anymore. You're trapped. You have nowhere to go. And God said Pharaoh would feel this way.
Oh, the wilderness has swallowed them up. They didn't know where to go. They got lost. They got turned around. They got upset.
They got scared. And they ran to a place, and now they've cornered themselves. In. God knew Pharaoh would do this. And God allowed this.
Not only, can I say this? God not only allowed it. God orchestrated. This. God brought this because it was His perfect plan, it was His perfect will.
They thought they were surrounded by a problem, but they were actually in the middle of God revealing his power. to them. This right here wasn't about getting Israel out of Egypt as much as it was God showing his people. what he was capable of. God brought them to this place so that he could show them.
what he was capable of. You know, they had a long road ahead of them. God wanted them to know right off the bat, hey, you can trust me. You can follow me. You don't have to be afraid.
You can follow me. I want you to notice next: listen, God had a plan, all of that. God's plan was intentional. But I want you to know that they face some very real pressure. Let's not pretend this wasn't a serious situation, let's not pretend this wasn't something that was scary for them.
Right here, they have Pharaoh's army coming after them. They've got all the horses, they've got all the chariots, they've got all the soldiers, they've got all that coming after them. And this wasn't a small problem. This was at the time the most powerful army in the world. And here you have a group of people who are like sitting ducks.
They can't defend themselves, they have no weapons, they have no training in any of this. And here they see Pharaoh and his army coming after them. Mountains on both sides, Red Sea in front of them, Pharaoh behind. This isn't just an uncomfortable situation, this is an impossible situation. There's not nothing they could do.
They're sitting ducks here. They're just waiting. He's going to get us. He's going to take us back. He's going to punish some of us.
He's probably going to put some of us to death. Right? And maybe some of you find yourself here this morning. You find yourself in a situation that you can't fix. You find yourself in a problem that you didn't choose.
You find yourself in pressure that you can't escape. And the truth is that you don't need a little bit of help. You need God to do something that you can't do yourself. Right, I mean we have to understand that What we see here. Is that God had all of this orchestrated?
It doesn't look like it from the outside. It looks like God's led His people into a place that doesn't make any sense, and He's abandoned them. But God didn't just allow this moment, He arranged. This moment. He led them to a place that the only way forward was for him to step in and do something incredible.
So, with all that being said, right, God's direction, it sounds encouraging to us, but guess who didn't know the end of the story? Children of Israel, they don't know how this is going to end up. All they see is: man, you led us here for what? She should have left us in Egypt. I want you to see next their distress.
God's led them here. God has a plan, but the Israelites can't see that yet. Look at verse number 10. We read it earlier. It says, 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.
So I want you to see first what they saw. Verse 10 says, The children of Israel, they lifted up their eyes. And what did they see? It's all a C? They saw some mountains on either side.
They saw an army coming after them. Right? And this verse hit me hard this week. How many times do we lift up our eyes in our lives, and all we see is the pain? All we see is the struggle.
All we see is the pressure. All we see is the problem. All we see is the circumstance. All we see is the impossibility. The children of Israel lifted up their eyes and they didn't see hope.
They didn't see what God was doing. They didn't think in terms like that. They saw an army that was coming after them and they thought that this means certain destruction. It was the very thing that they thought they had gotten rid of, the very thing that they thought they had escaped. And it was coming straight at them.
They didn't see that God had a plan. All they saw was Pharaoh's army. And I think sometimes that's what we do a lot of times. In fact, that's what I do a lot of times. And I look around and I see the problems, I see the pain, I see the struggles, I see the things that don't make sense, I see the things that aren't fair.
And so the Bible here says they lifted up their eyes and they saw exactly. What was coming up? They saw exactly the predicament that they were in. I want you to notice next what they felt.
Alright, look what the Bible says. It says Pharaoh drew nigh. Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians marched after them. And then look at this next phrase: And they were sore afraid. The little phrase sore afraid doesn't mean that there was mild concern.
It doesn't mean that they looked at that situation and think, well, that's something to probably monitor. No, it means they panicked. It means that they were fearful. It means that they were terrified. And here's the thing, what brought on the terror?
What they saw. What they were looking at. The circumstances that surrounded them. And I think sometimes that's the reality of how we're wired sometimes. What we focus on determines how we feel.
When our eyes are fixed on the problem, when all we can see is the pressure and the uncertainty and this might happen and that might happen and worst case scenario type things, our mind starts running ahead and guess what follows? Our heart. We become fearful. They didn't feel fear first. They saw something that produced This fear.
The problem wasn't that just Pharaoh was coming after them. The problem was that's all that they. could see Nothing had even happened yet. Pharaoh wasn't even there yet. They just kind of saw him off in the distance.
He's coming this way. And immediately, what they saw affected their heart, and now they're fearful, sore afraid, the Bible says. You know, when you lose sight of God. In your life, all you can see is the problem. who fears the natural results.
To that, what they saw. affected how they felt. I want you to notice next what they said. All right, look at the end of verse number 10. It says they were sore afraid.
Notice what it says. And the children of Israel cried out unto the Lord. Look at verse 11. They said unto Moses, Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? Wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt?
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 that we should die. In the wilderness, look how quickly their fear turns into these words that they're saying. They go from trusting God in chapter number 13 to now accusing God in chapter number 14.
They looked around, they saw the problem, they lifted up their eyes, the Bible said. And what they saw produced fear. They were sore afraid. And now it's coming out in what they say. It's coming out in how they speak to Moses, it's coming out in how they address God.
And listen, I'm just going to be honest with you today. Right, and listen again, don't raise your hand. How many of us have been there at some point where we're mad, we're upset, and that's exactly what's going on here. They're not just confused, they're not just worried, they're angry. And where's the anger directed?
Right, Moses is getting a lot of the brunt of it, but if you look at the end of verse number 10, what does it say? They cried out unto who? They're mad at God. They're furious at God. Why did you bring us here?
Why did you put me here? You should have just left me in Egypt. I wish you would just leave me alone. We see that they're saying these things, and they're mad. At God.
Listen to what they say. They say, Were there no graves in Egypt? There's sarcasm there. What, the graves in Egypt weren't good enough? There were plenty of graves that we could have had in Egypt.
You want to bring us out here and dig new graves? How many times have you ever been sarcastic with God? Anybody ever been there? Like, don't raise your hand.
Okay. Notice what they said. Why did you bring us out here? The blame. Anybody ever blamed God?
Been upset, mad? Look at what they say now. It would have been better for us to just stay and serve in Egypt. That's distorted thinking. Their fear now has made them emotional and it makes them irrational.
When you can't reconcile what you believe about God. When you can't understand what God is doing, when you have questions about what God is doing in your life, it's easy to start accusing God. It's easy to start not trusting and following God. The very God that you say you trust will let trouble come sometimes, let problems come sometimes. And we start to question, we start to get angry, we start to get mad.
How dare you allow this? And let me say this this morning: if you've ever been there, Doesn't make you a bad person. It makes you human. But it does reveal a little bit of a problem that we have. Right?
Fear if it's not dealt with. If it's not handled, if it's not cut off at the source, it's going to turn into blame and it's going to turn into bitterness. And I love what God does here, right? In the middle of all of this, they're complaining, they're accusing, they're griping, they have frustrations. Right?
God speaks. But he doesn't speak in a way that condemns them. He doesn't speak in a way that judges them. He gives them some direction here. Aren't you glad?
Aren't you glad? that God continues to speak to us. Even when we treat him so awfully. Aren't you glad for the voice of God? That calls out even when we're in trouble, even when we don't trust him, even when we don't follow him.
He still calls out to us. I want you to notice. Third. God's directive. or God's instruction.
In the middle of all that fear, all the panic, all the questions, all the accusations, all the frustration toward God. He doesn't argue with them, but he speaks to them. Look at verse number 13. He speaks to Moses, and Moses speaks for the Lord here. He says, And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not.
Stand still. See the salvation of the Lord which he shall show to you today. For the Egyptians, whom you have seen today, I love this, you shall see them again no more forever. The Lord shall fight for you. And he shall hold.
Your peace. Let's look at God's instruction to them. First, I want you to notice a command against fear. God says in verse number 13, He says to Moses, Tell them, fear ye not. The first thing that God addresses is not their situation.
It's not the predicament that they're in. He doesn't do a miracle right away. Right? He addresses their fear. Before God ever changes their circumstances, He wants to speak to what is going on inside of their soul.
There's nothing but fear there. They see nothing but problems. They see nothing but issues headed their way. And God doesn't say, Hey, listen, here's what I'm going to do. Here's the plan.
Here's how this is going to work out. He goes, No, no, no, listen, just don't be afraid. Fear not. He says, they're looking at the army, but God is looking at their hearts. He's looking at their souls.
God didn't start by fixing their problem, He started by confronting their fear. I know sometimes that things look scary. Things look bad. Things look like they couldn't get any worse, and you don't see any sort of a way out. The children of Israel had every reason.
To look at their situation and say, well, there's no way out of this. Can't go forward, can't go backward, can't go to the side, can't run, can't hide. The situation looked scary, but God addresses them by saying, Hey, listen. Don't fear. Don't be afraid.
Now I want you to notice a second what he says. A call to be still. Notice what he says in verse 13. Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not. He says, stand.
Still. Man. Let's be honest. If I'm in danger. That sounds like horrible advice to me.
I want to run. I want to find somewhere to hide. I want to fight. I want to move forward. I want to do something.
But God says, stand still. In other words, just hey. Relax. Rest. Stay where you're at.
Sometimes the hardest thing to do. In the Christian life is to wait. It's to just wait on God. You want to be, we're such progressive people, we're men, right? Oh, not all of you, some of you are.
Us men, though, we like to do things. We don't want to sit around and wait. We want to fix, we want to solve. God says don't do anything. Stand still wait.
And let me say this: that standing still doesn't mean you're just not doing anything. You know what this was a call to do? This was a call to trust God instead of what they saw. God says, stand still. Notice what he says next.
This is a chance to see God's power. Look at what the verse says. And Moses said unto the people, Fear you not, stand still, look at this, and see the salvation of the Lord. God's telling them: hey, listen, you don't see it yet. You don't know what I'm doing yet.
I'm working on something here. Stand still, rest, trust me. And if you do that, You're going to see something really cool. You're going to see something really powerful. You're going to see something you've never ever seen before.
Stancil and C. The salvation of the Lord. They're looking at the water. That's what they see. They see the mountains.
They see the army. They see all the horses and chariots. God says, I want you to see something different. Hey, listen, why don't you lift your head up? Instead of looking at all the problems that are in front of you, he says, Look at me.
See the salvation of the Lord. Listen, just because you don't see God working. Just because you don't see what God is doing does not mean that He's not doing anything. Faith isn't seeing what God is doing, it's trusting that He is doing something. I want you to notice next.
A conflict that God fights. Notice verse 14 with me. He says all that. Stand still, see the salvation of the Lord. Look at verse 14.
The Lord shall fight for you. And this might be the most important part of the entire message, the most important part of any verse that we read. They didn't have to do anything. They didn't have to fight. They didn't have to run.
They didn't have to hide. They didn't have to fix anything. They didn't have to grab a sword or a spear or any of those things. God never intended for them to win this battle. God said, I'm going to do it for you.
I'm going to win this fight. I'm going to win this battle. I'm going to go fight for you. And there are battles in our lives, guys, we were never meant to fight. We were never meant to go to war on some of the things that we go to war on.
God said, I will fight for you. Can I say this is that God doesn't need your strength? God doesn't need your ideas. God doesn't need your plans. God doesn't need your effort.
What God needs and wants is for you to trust Him. I know that seems hard when we look at all the things that we deal with and all the dangerous things and all the pressure-filled things. But God is saying, listen, you don't have to fight that battle. I'm going to take care of it for you. I'm going to fight for you.
I want you to see next. He gave a charge to be silent. Notice what he says at the end of verse number 14. And ye shall hold your peace. They were doing a lot of talking.
Just a couple verses before. A lot of accusations, a lot of blame, a lot of griping, a lot of complaining. And listen, let's be honest, humanly, who could blame them? You brought us out here to kill us? That makes no sense.
But God said, here's what I want you to do: be quiet. Yeah, I think. Just stop talking for a second.
Some of the most spiritual thing you and I can do is just be quiet and let God work. Let God do what He's going to do. Faith doesn't always speak.
Sometimes it stays quiet and watches God do something incredible. In one moment, we see all of their fear, all of their concern, all of their frustrations, all of their accusations, and God replaces all of that with some instructions. What does he say? He says, don't fear. Stop fighting.
Stop striving. Stand still. See what I'm going to do. You don't have to fight. I'm going to fight.
When you don't know what to do, God's instructions are simple. Stand still and watch me work. I want you to notice next God's deliverance. God has spoken here. Fear not, stand still, see the salvation of the Lord.
I'm going to fight for you. And now we finally see. What God's going to do, I want you to notice first. A divine way. Look at verse number 15.
It says, And the Lord said unto Moses, Wherefore criest thou unto me, speak unto the children of Israel that they 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. There's no way out of this situation. They needed something divine.
If they were going to get out of this situation, they needed something miraculous to happen.
Now what I find interesting is that God just told them. A couple of verses before, what did he say? Stand still, don't do anything. And now he tells them to move forward.
So which is it? Make up your mind. Do we stand still or do we move forward? And so what I notice here is that A lot of times in our Christian life, there's a time to stand still. There's a time to wait.
There's a time to be patient. But there's also a time when God says so that we move forward. that we walk by faith. This is going to take something divine here. Right.
God doesn't say go back. God doesn't say fight. Which honestly, if we're thinking about it, I think going back sounds better than going forward. Forwards the sea. I'm going to drown in the sea.
I'm going to go back and take my chances with Pharaoh. Maybe, maybe he'll take me back and let me live. But God doesn't say go back. God doesn't say run. God doesn't say hide.
He says go forward. That's literally the only way that has no chance of survival. Walk into the sea. No, thank you. But that's what God tells them to do.
And then God does what only He can do. We know the rest of the story. The Bible says that Moses stretches his hands out over the sea, God parts the waters. Makes dry ground, the walls of water stand up on either side. And then God says to go forward.
Move through this. We see a divine way. I want you to see next. We see a dependent walk. Look at verse number 21.
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 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. I'm gonna tell you: if I'm one of the people in Israel and I see that water go back and I see that there's a path through there, I'm still a little bit hesitant to go into that water. That took a tremendous amount of faith.
Because I said some pretty awful things to God just a few minutes ago. I accused him and I was mad at him and I was sarcastic to him and I blamed him. Thank you for listening today. We hope you received a blessing from our broadcast. The Kerwin Baptist Church is located at 4520 Old Hollow Road in Kernersville, North Carolina.
You may also contact us by phone at 336-993-5192 or via the web. at Kerwin Baptist Church.com. Enjoy our services live and all our media on our website and church app. Thank you for listening to the Kerwin Broadcast today. God bless you.
