088 - A Friend in High Places

You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?

Is there something here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.

Welcome to More Than Ink. Ever found yourself stuck between a rock and a hard place? Oh yeah, where there's nothing you can do and everything looks horrible, there's no escape at all.

There's no escape and you're totally outnumbered and outpowered. And at the time I think, maybe God's forgotten about me. Maybe this is all a mistake and it's an accident.

Or maybe God brought you there on purpose. On purpose, yeah. Today.

On More Than Ink. Well, wonderful. Good morning to you. I'm Jim.

And I'm Dorothy. And we're excited. Boy, we're excited you're with us today because we are in a great spot in Exodus.

The big crossing happens. You know, every spot in Exodus is a great spot. But this is the one that Exodus is known for. If you're looking for high drama and images of Charlton Heston flashing in your mind, that's kind of where we are today. Very dramatic happenings going on today in the book of Exodus.

I dare say everybody has a mental image of what this looked like, probably derived from movies somewhere along the line. Cecil B. DeMille tells us what this looks like. But it's interesting, there's enough narrative in here that even parts of what Cecil B. DeMille did in his movies, you know, like with the water and stuff, it's actually written here. So we'll see that in a second.

It's very interesting. So anyway, yeah, we are halfway through chapter 13 of Exodus. And just to recap slightly, so the people of Israel have gotten out of Egypt. They're now these two million people plus all their animals are trudging across out of Egypt, out of Goshen, and they're on the way to the Promised Land. And so now it turns into kind of an on the road story from this point on.

But it's actually an on the road story for the next 40 years. But there was this little insertion at the beginning of chapter 13 about the dedication of the firstborn. And we won't take a lot of time to review that, but it's important to instruct the Israelites right there at that point.

Because it's so fresh in their mind what God has just done with taking the firstborn of Egypt. And I think like any life events that we go through, you need to stop and say, you know, there's some important things to note right here before you just go past it. So before you go past it.

And then the particular issues with the Israelites here was the firstborn and the unleavened bread. So these have special importance. They're not just part of a story that happens.

And those aspects will carry forward forever. So go back and read it. So go back and read that. Yeah, we just looked at that. Okay, so we're in chapter 13, and we're starting in verse 17. And we come across this bizarre thing in the field there, this pillar of cloud and fire. So let's just, why don't you start reading for us.

We'll pick it up right at 17. Okay, yeah, there's this great big summary statement here starting in verse 17. When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near. For God said, Lest the people change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt. But God led the people around by the way of the wilderness toward the Red Sea, and the people of Israel went up out of the land of Egypt, equipped for battle.

Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for Joseph had made the sons of Israel solemnly swear, saying, God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones with you from here. And they moved on from Sukkot and encamped at Ephim on the edge of the wilderness. You want to stop there? Yeah, that's good enough. Okay, yeah, before we get to the pillar of cloud and fire.

Yeah, so this is just a summary statement of where we are. You know, we've left Egypt, and he tells us that instead of going what would be the natural route to Israel. Right, the comfortable route. Yeah, from Egypt to Israel, which would be along the Mediterranean coast, which also, by the way, has Egyptian outposts, because it was a well-traveled route for invaders and stuff like that, as well as bad guys. Well, it was a well-traveled trade route also. Yeah, and so God knew that they'd come up against war. They had to fight their way through that area. So instead of the natural route, which is the Mediterranean coast, we head out into the desert of sorts. And I would encourage you, listeners, to get a map out and look at this so you can see very clearly that the comfortable, easy route would have been just to track along the Sea of the Mediterranean up toward Israel. But it says deliberately God did not do that.

That's a huge, important statement right in this summary. God did not lead them that way. He took them another way. So God is the one who is directing the direction they take. Yeah, and not Moses, by the way. God uses Moses, but God's the one that's leading, which is fascinating because in almost every tale of nations or armies or large things, you've got the king of that nation who leads out in front and is in charge. And by saying that God's the one that's leading, it's as though God is the king of these people, which is not an accident. So isn't it interesting that here it says that they went out equipped for battle, but God doesn't want them to encounter war just yet. Yeah, because they'll start wanting to go back to Egypt. Right, and they're too close.

It would be too easy to get back. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So God understands the heart of his people. But it is interesting, especially when you apply this to us, could it be that God takes us into situations that are not the easiest or what it looks like to us, the most obvious path forward?

Right. He takes us in a way that at the time we go, what is this? Well, that's what's happening here, but it's because God has a superior understanding of not only your own heart, but of the nature, the circumstances that you're aiming into that you don't know about. God's wiser.

And what he intends to show you or to do. And that becomes very clear in this story when God corners them between the Red Sea and the armies of Pharaoh. We haven't gotten there yet, but we will. So I just want to point out that this little statement about Moses carrying the bones of Joseph is not a throwaway statement. That's right, yeah. Right, that's how the book of Genesis ends, with Joseph saying to his brothers, now when you go up from here, take my bones, and Joseph was embalmed and put in a coffin in Egypt, but everybody knew where his grave was, and they took him. They took his remains with them when they left that country.

According to his request. Because, Hebrews says, because he believed that they would go and that God would give them that land, and he wanted to be buried there. Yeah, I think what an incredible long-term testimony it was to the people of Israel in their captivity.

Four hundred years. For four hundred years, those bones testified and said, well, someday we're going back, because Joseph said, when you go, take my bones, and so I guess we're going back someday, but that day's not today, but in the story right now, it is today. And it's interesting that you say we're going back, because yes, their forefathers came from there, right?

They are all the tribes of Jacob, but this generation had never been there. They didn't know what was there. So for them, it wasn't really going to feel like going back.

It was going forward into an unknown territory. But they knew they were going to be leaving Egypt. It just seemed more and more impossible as the years went on, but there's the bones of Joseph. If the bones of Joseph are still here, we're going back someday, and we're taking them with us.

Yeah, that's amazing. You know, it made me think, too, as we just think about where God's taking them to what looks like an impossible situation, a situation that you can't escape from. It reminded me of 1 Corinthians 10, 13, where it says that God provides a way of escape. He doesn't put on you more than you can handle. So even there, Paul tells us, God's got this all wired together. He knows how this is working. He knows the situation you're going into.

You're not telling him anything new when you cry out to him about your situation or about your inability to handle it. He knows all that stuff, and sure enough, that's exactly what he's doing with Israel. Yeah, it's really interesting to me that you should cite that here, that 1 Corinthians 10, 13 passage, because the context of that is Paul is saying and has been saying in all of chapter 10 of 1 Corinthians, all of that happened to them for our benefit and for our instruction so that we would not do what they did. Yeah, exactly. So that tells us this is a really important story, not just for the real people who lived it, but for all of us who are looking back on it.

For those of us that are reading it today. That's right. There is something here for our instruction, for our benefit, so that we'll know that if it looks like God has backed us up against the Red Sea, God has a way of escape that only he can provide. Yep, exactly. Well, let's push on. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, let's push on. This is actually part of the logistical handling that God does for them in a gracious way in the desert. This is an amazing thing. It's just stated so simply.

Yeah, it just comes and goes. Starting in verse 21. And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light that they might travel by day and by night. The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people. There's a lot of repetition in that little paragraph. Just a couple of verses. You say to yourself, what?

What is going on here? You know, if you've ever walked in an exposed place like a desert, it's a tremendous problem because you're not going to walk in the heat of the day at noon because the sun is just so brutal on you. I mean, the sun is brutal. And then, of course, at night you can't see where you're going, so both of them are hazards. And so here God provides this wonderful, wonderful thing where he says, I'm going to be there, I'll be a cloud to shield you in the daytime, shield the sun from you.

Whoa, really? And at night, since we'll travel at night, which most desert travelers travel at night because there's no sun out. So this allows them to travel both during the day and the night, and without needing a map, all you have to do is follow. So it's one phenomenon, and in the daytime it was cloud of smoke, and in the nighttime it was a pillar of fire.

Now, if you know, if you've ever camped and had a smoky fire, you know that in the daytime you see the smoke and you don't see the embers, but in the nighttime you see the embers and you don't see the smoke. But this is such an interesting visual image, right? A cloud is visible, but you can't grab it, right?

You can't hold onto it. It can conceal something. It can also reveal something. And it's moving. This cloud moves with them. And then that pillar of fire says it gave them light at night. Well, light is comforting, but fire also consumes a fuel, right? It's burning something. But with this phenomenon, there's no visible source for the smoke or the fire, and it moves with them. They didn't have to build the fire and say, oh, go that direction, right?

Or they didn't have to trudge through the desert with torches in their hands. This is a fascinating thing. And how tall would it have to be for two million people to see the direction of it?

Yeah. I mean, it had to be a tremendous relief to the nation as they're out there thinking, look, we're out here in the middle of nowhere. But you say, well, but you know, we've got this cloud. We have the visible presence of our God.

Right, and we have this light which allows us to travel by day and by night. This is the visible, practical presence of God in their midst. And this cloud slash pillar of fire will be a persistent character all the way through Exodus. All the way through the wilderness, yeah.

All the way through the wilderness. And then we'll see the cloud all the way through the Scripture characterizes, indicates to us the visible presence of God. Visible presence of God, yeah. Right, when they built the tabernacle, the cloud descended on it. When Solomon built the temple, the cloud descended on it. Jesus at his transfiguration, we saw the cloud.

All the gospels record this. And when Jesus said, when I'm coming back, every eye will see me coming in the clouds. In the clouds, yeah.

The presence of God. So when you run across this term, the cloud, sometimes, a very few times, it just means the weather, what's floating around in the sky. But most of the time when you run into the cloud, all the way through the Bible, it's indicating something to you about the presence of God. Yeah, and it's significant that it's a pillar, and it's not pointed out very much. But I mean, it extends from the ground and goes straight up in the air.

It's a column. And the common notion of where God was is up in the sky. Right, up in the sky. So it actually showed us, well, you know, I'm going to lead you, and I'm going to shelter you. And the source of it is heaven itself is where God is. So it was just a great picture of God's nearness and his presence and his practical care for them.

It's a wonderful thing. Okay, so we have that established, and we jump into chapter 14. Should I read? Yeah, why don't you?

Okay. Chapter 14, verse 1. Then the Lord said to Moses, Tell the people of Israel to turn back and encamp in front of Piachiroth, between Migdal and the sea, in front of Baalzaphan, and you shall encamp facing it by the sea.

By the sea. For Pharaoh will say to the people of Israel, They are wandering in the land, and the wilderness has shut them in. And then 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 so they did so.

They camped there. Okay, so that's really important, God said. The reason I've led you out here and backed you up against the sea is so that I will get the glory over Pharaoh, and the Egyptians will know. Egyptians will know.

I'm the one that did this. Yeah. Right, so at first they misinterpret it. Ah, they're lost. They're wandering. They've done something stupid. Yeah, they're stuck.

Yeah. Maybe their God is suddenly in company. He doesn't know what he's doing. He's led them up against water. But if you remember back in chapter 9, the Lord had said, Now for this reason, O Pharaoh, I've let you remain in order to show my power, in order to proclaim my name through all the earth, and that everyone will know that I am the Lord who reigns. So this is like the ultimate statement of that. I will finally get the glory over Pharaoh. Yeah, and you wouldn't think this was necessary, because after the ten plagues, I mean, gosh, don't we know who God is and what he's like and his power, the extent of his power? But this is kind of the last of it all. This is it.

I will get glory over Pharaoh. By the way, I don't think I mentioned this last time. You can correct me if I did, but this word glory in Hebrew always means heavy. So it's a weight kind of thing. The weight, yeah. And if the weight is on you, it's actually translated as a burden. But if it's the weight of something in your presence, our closest equivalent is the elephant in the room. There's some kind of big thing here.

That's the idea here with this glory. God's going to say that I'm bigger and I'm heavier. I'm weightier than Pharaoh himself. Well, in a sense, the weight of God is going to continue to come down on Pharaoh, as if it hadn't already.

It flew the plagues on the whole country. And the result is that all the Egyptians will know who I am. So even from the very beginning of this process. From the beginning of this process, it's all been about Pharaoh saying back in Chapter 5, oh, I don't know your God.

Why do you want me to do what you're saying? Well, after this, there won't be any doubt in anyone's mind who God is in all the Egyptians. Or in the minds of the Israelites. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Well, let's push on and see what happens. So they camped there. Actually, you'll notice in the phrase we just read, it looks like they kind of shot past. They went past. They had to turn and come back to a particular spot. They kind of ambled around.

Yeah, they ambled around. God led them to do that. And God said, camp here. So God has set up the circumstances. He set up the place.

We're ready to go. And they're camped there in Verse 4. Okay, Verse 5. So 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've done that we've let Israel go from serving us? So he made ready his chariot, and he took his army with him and took 600 chosen chariots and all the other chariots of Egypt with officers over all of them. 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. The Egyptians pursued them. All Pharaoh's horses and chariots and his horsemen and his army and overtook them encamped at the sea by Pihach-haroth and in front of Baal-zaphan.

So he overtook them. So they are literally trapped. They are trapped. Backed up against the sea.

They're backed against the sea. And it looks like all of the army of Pharaoh and all his chariots, including his 600 chosen chariots, that's his elite force, and then all the rest of the chariots. And some people have speculated perhaps his entire army. Well, and these guys are whopping mad because they've all lost a firstborn.

What were we thinking? Yeah, exactly. They've all been through all of this, and they're like, we're going to kill them.

Yeah. And this is a massive army. This is the entire military might of Egypt. But they're out to slaughter two million people. So they're going to go out there and work on it. They're going to take everything they've got. And they're out there with the intent with the full army of actually taking out the entire nation.

It's going to be a slaughter. So they're out there, and they catch up to them where they are. And Pharaoh, according to the beginning of chapter 14, thinks that God's being silly, and he's having them camp in a very vulnerable place, which it is from man's perspective. It's a very vulnerable place. You do not back yourself up against a wall like a sea.

Militarily, that's silly. So Pharaoh goes after them, and he does indeed, when we get to verse 9, he does indeed overtake them, and there they are, face to face. It was interesting that it says that the Lord, in verse 8, the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh so that he pursued the people, right? This event here, chasing them out to the Red Sea, is the last time we come across God hardening Pharaoh's heart.

Now it's going to be referred to again in chapter 14, but it's referring to this same event. God is taking credit here for Pharaoh's heart condition. He said, because I'm going to do something, I'm going to show myself.

My glory will be unmistakably seen. Yeah, yeah. I find it too fascinating in a way how short Pharaoh's memory is from the 10 plagues.

Isn't that amazing? Because he was saying like around verse 5 or 6, he was saying, so what were we thinking, basically? Why did we let him go? What reason did we have to let him go?

I think, well, I can give you 10 good reasons why you let him go. And have you forgot that already? Yeah, you know, this just drives home to me. We've talked a lot about the hardening of the heart, that a hardened heart is bent on its own way, even to the point of self-destruction.

Yeah, yeah. And we see that clearly in Pharaoh, right? His heart was hardened. Now whether it was attributed to Pharaoh or to God or passively it just happened, a hardened heart resists the Lord and refuses to listen and eventually drives out his word because a hardened heart is bent on its own way and it will ultimately wind up in self-destruction.

Yeah, self-destruction, which is a fascinating thing. I think we've all experienced that kind of rage or that hatred where it's just blind and you just do stuff. Just determined to do what you're going to do. And will not be deterred. Just to work it out, you know, just do it. And if someone says, well, you know what you're doing? It's probably not in your best interest. That's never stopped me.

It doesn't stop you, exactly. And that's exactly where Pharaoh's right here. This is not in your best interest. If someone was going to counsel them, maybe as counselors did, they'd say, look, it's in our best interest to just let them go because since we didn't do that, we suffered the death of our firstborn. All those plagues, you know, they're just bad business. Indeed, there was a time a couple chapters back when the servants of Pharaoh said, don't you see you've ruined Israel? Let them go.

Let them go. So you would think his counsel would be, you know, we just need to lick our wounds and let this go. But even in this hardening of the heart, this is your pride that persists after this. And this hardening of the heart, for me at least, is closely tied to the idea of pride.

There's something about when we overestimate who we are and while I'm doing this, you know, because it's the principle of the thing, you know, I need to prove that I'm actually a righteous person or something like that, that that hardening ends up elevating us and elevating our pride. Yeah, I don't think righteousness had anything to do with it in this case. It was all power. No, it was all power.

It was all power. But I mean, here his reputation's been soiled basically by what God has done to them. So there's a pride issue. You know, in previous plagues, we talked about the pride issue and his pride comes up. I think this is his last kind of eruption of pride in his life where he says... Because he still has his army. Yep. He still has some power with his army. His country has been decimated, but he still has his army.

Yeah. And so he does something that even he himself should know is not in his best interest. I mean, what if God chooses to bring plague number 11 on them? But it doesn't seem to register in his mind that what he's doing is he's chasing a God who has proven himself to him already. He knows what God is like.

Why in the world would you do this? And that's what a hardened heart, that's what a pride hardened heart does. It disregards what you know is true about God and when you know what's true about your consequences from the bad behavior.

It's a bad deal. So what are we going to take home from this particular passage? Because this is a little bit of a short passage, but it introduces next week the crossing of the Red Sea. Yeah, if you're waiting for us to read the crossing, we're going to wait until next week.

We're holding that for next week. We're just still here. You know, I'm walking away from this particular passage with two things. One, God had set this up, right? Deliberate. God deliberately brought the people into this cornered place where they could not rescue themselves and only God would be able to deliver them.

Truly powerless, yeah. And then the third thing is God was with them. God was with them in this demonstrably visible way, right, in the cloud and the fire. They could not deny that this phenomenon was with them.

Going before, coming behind, making himself known, making his presence known. And we're going to see in the next chapter how he camps God camps between the Israelites and the armies of Pharaoh all night so nobody can go anywhere. So, you know, God brings us into a situation where it's very clear to us that we can't fix it ourselves and only he can. Yeah, and so do you find yourself in situations where you seem powerless?

Not just seem powerless, you're genuinely the archives. That's what keeps you up at night because you realize how powerless you are to meet the situation. Well, you're in those situations and then you often slip to the wrong conclusion, which is, well, maybe God doesn't know this is happening. Maybe this was accidental. Maybe God's a little out of control right here. Or he's not paying attention. He's looking the other way.

Or he's not paying attention. Or as the psalmist says, are you sleeping, God? And I think we often move into this area and this powerlessness to think we're on our own and we're going to suffer and fail and we have enough rationality and imagination to be able to imagine how bad it could become. And so that's what we dwell on. You know, the tip right here, from here forward even, in the entire Old Testament is don't dwell on that. Dwell on what God has done and God will do on your behalf. And what God has promised to do for you.

That's why this is a touch point in many ways. This is why God constantly reminds him, I'm the one that got you out of Egypt. So when circumstances, you know, what we call living by sight, we look at the sight of what's going on. When circumstances shout at you and threaten you, you do have a choice to either focus on them or to focus on the reality of the presence of God. And they even had the advantage of having the cloud and the pillar there so they could focus on the presence of God. But we can focus on the presence of God, too, even in the midst of those kind of super, super threatening circumstances. But just remind yourself, God is not out of control. And in fact, like what you just said, our circumstance may indeed be deliberately determined by God so that he will be glorified.

I've brought you here to show you something you wouldn't see any other way. Right. This happened at the death of Lazarus. Yes, that's a good example. Jesus allowed them to have their back up against the wall with the death of Lazarus. And Jesus says, you know, basically God will be glorified through this. But that means he deliberately allowed them to go through the trauma of death.

He deliberately allowed that, and he could have stopped that. But there was more at stake here than just saving life. There was about glorifying God. And that's exactly what we're seeing right here. Well, that's what happened with the death of Jesus, right? Yeah, exactly. That they were backed up against the wall. Jesus was dead, which sets the glory of the resurrection in such stark contrast. Yeah.

So God will be glorified, and he demonstrates who he is without any kind of qualifications through the things he does. And this is what he's doing right here. Well, we are out of time, and we left you on a cliffhanger for next week.

That's right. We've got our back up against the ocean. We've got Pharaoh's armies facing the face. What's going to happen? Who's going to win? How's it going to resolve? Do you know?

We'll find out next week. So, we're glad you're with us, and join us next week as we resolve this dilemma with the Back to the Red Sea on the next episode of More Than Ink. More Than Ink is a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City, and is solely responsible for its content. To contact us with your questions or comments, just go to our website, morethanink.org. Okay, let's do it again. Let's do it again.