Today's passage is probably one of the most exciting passages in the Old Testament. (In my opinion, anyway ~ for whatever that's worth!) Not only is it an incredible story, it offers great foreshadowing of the ultimate sacrifice of the Passover Lamb, a sacrifice to extend His deliverance beyond His chosen people; the gift of salvation made available to all mankind.
The first thing I found interesting is in the latter part of chapter 13 where God, leading with the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night and speaking through Moses, actually reverses the Israelites' direction of travel. Up till this point, they'd been fleeing away from Egypt; now they are doubling back. Not only are they heading back towards Egypt, but from a military standpoint, are putting themselves in terrain that will make them extremely vulnerable, trapped between natural barriers ~ the mountains on either side and the Red Sea in front of them.
While the Bible says they were "armed for battle," the expression seems to indicate more their level of civil organization and possibly the weaponry they had amassed before their exodus, but it is doubtful that they were in any position to actually engage in full scale battle, especially since just one verse earlier (13:17), God specifically did NOT lead them through the land of the Philistines ~ which would have been a more direct route to Canaan, but would have required the use of an organized military force ~ because He didn't want them to lose heart at the thought of having to fight.
And yet here, hemmed in by the mountains and the Red Sea, God explains through Moses that this change of course was actually intended to encourage Pharaoh's pursuit! Man, if God didn't want them to lose heart at the prospect of war against the Philistines, this seems a little questionable. Like they weren't going to lose heart under THESE circumstances??!!
I love 14:4b: "But I will gain glory for myself through Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD." I love those "and then they will know that I am the LORD" statements ~ the OT is full of them. And remarkably, they pretty much always follow catastrophic events.
Some argue that God doesn't work that way anymore; that natural disasters and terrorist attacks, etcetera, are not specifically used by God anymore to show His holiness, but I don't know. Somehow that seems a little too uncomfortably presumptuous to me. We just don't understand God. But whether He specifically designs a tragic course of events or whether He's simply not stepped in to prevent it, our reaction can be a testament to His holiness, righteousness, love and grace, and His sovereignty in our lives.
After the Israelites deliverance from the Egyptians, we see Moses' beautiful song of praise and expectation of God's future provision and blessing for the nation in chapter 15. In sharp contrast, the chapter ends with the bitter water incident at Marah and the people's grumbling only three days after their miraculous journey through the Red Sea.
It always strikes me as incredible that they could so soon forget God's provision. After all, He was still leading them with the pillar of fire or cloud and He had led them to this place. You'd think even after discovering the water wasn't fit to drink that they'd remember the events of the previous 3 days and KNOW God would provide for them. It doesn't seem so, because this chapter ends on a bit of a sour note (pardon the pun!) and even though God turns the water sweet and promises to keep them healthy and disease-free if they listen to and obey Him, the somber tone of the end of this chapter sharply contrasts with its opening jubilation. And we know, of course, that this is only the beginning of 40 years of whining and complaining and NOT obeying God!
Finding the two contrasting events and moods in the same chapter seems odd, but two observations and consequent lessons can be learned here:
1. The Israelites failed to see the relationship between the affirmation of their faith in worship and the application of their faith in their daily walk. And oh, how true this is of me, too!! I can say the words over and over ~ "just give it to God" ~ but I almost never actually put that into practise when I'm worried or afraid! I've had to confess over and over of not allowing the head knowledge to become heart knowledge. We don't sing Moses' "Song of the Sea" in our churches these days (at least, not in ours), but how many other songs do we sing on a regular basis that really, if we're being very honest with ourselves, we don't actually mean or apply to our everyday lives? It Is Well With My Soul, Great is They Faithfulness, Higher Ground, He Leadeth Me, 'Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus..... the list goes on.
2. Not only did Israel fail to apply their faith to their situation at Marah, they failed to even see that it was a spiritual problem. Oh ouch! It's so easy to point fingers at the Israelites and their lack of faith in the face of what seems like the incredibly obvious presence, provision and blessing of God, but how often are we guilty of falling into exactly the same trap? We tend to view God as being concerned only with the "big" problems of life, but ANYTHING ~ no matter how trivial it might seem ~ which hinders our growth, our sanctification, or our ability to do what He has purposed is a matter about which He is DEEPLY concerned. It is also something He is fully capable of overcoming! Yet all too often, when faced with problems, we don't even consider that it is something about which God is intimately concerned, and we almost instinctively turn to secular solutions without seeking God's solution and allowing Him to work it out in His timing.
Notice also, that God didn't leave the Israelites singing by the sea. He didn't allow them to enjoy their spiritual high for very long. Instead, He promptly led them into the desert, allowed them to experience thirst and bitter water. This tested their faith and endurance, and provided the occasion to teach them (and us!) an important lesson: Expecting to live the Christian life on a continuous high is not only unrealistic, it is unbiblical. We need to thank God in times of victory and elation, but we should not expect things to stay that way forever if we want to grow. It is in the Refiner's fire that we are purified.
(Interestingly, this is another parallel or foreshadowing of Jesus' life: His public life and ministry also started out with a celebration at a body of water ~ His baptism ~ and was immediately followed by 40 days of desert-bound refining. Neat, eh?!)
Boy, did I need to preach this to myself this week!! I am always amazed at God's timing. I have been choosing fear over faith for a while now and struggling with a bit of depression over the last few weeks as a result. Studying this passage these last few days was the kick in the pants I so badly needed! Thanks, Tammy, for asking me to post about this one!!
Insight for this passage gleaned from a few resources, but primarily these two commentaries: The Red Sea: Israel's Deliverance and Egypt's Defeat and The Song of the Sea.
Tomorrow's passage: Exodus 16-19.
22 comments:
Great post, Tammi! Gave me some things to think about.
I don't know if this is the appropriate place for this or not, but I'd like to ask for prayer for my sister, Rebekah. She is 21 weeks pregnant with her third child right now and about 10 weeks ago she had a placental abruption (started bleeding and the accumulation of blood started to tear the placenta away from the wall of the uterus). This happened twice and then everything stayed stable for several weeks. Baby was growing as he/she should be, etc. Yesterday she passed several clots and is now on bedrest, with a 16-month-old and a 3 1/2-year-old. She needs people who are available to come to the house and care for her children while her husband is at work, as she is only permitted to get up to eat or use the bathroom. Please pray that everything will go well for the remaining weeks of her pregnancy and that the help she needs will be available.
Thanks in advance - we really appreciate it.
Oh my goodness! I will definitely add her to my prayers. And you, too, as you try to help her out as best and as often as you can.
Miriam, I am praying!
Tammi, what a wonderful post. You have really blessed my today. I am going back to reread and do some study, thank-you.
I wish I could be more helpful to her - unfortunately she lives in Ottawa, so other than praying and talking to her on the phone, there's little I can do.
Thanks for the prayers. :)
Lifting your sister up in prayer Miriam.
Thanks Tammi for your post.
When you said "I dont know if he specifically causes tragic events" I didnt know that was biblical? I didn't think God CAUSED tragic things to happen. I thought that tragic things can happen and then He acts for the good of those who love Him?
I have some thoughts and questions.
Why did they take the bones of the dead and bury them somewhere else? The spirit of the person had gone.
When I read 14:4 about God hardening Pharaoh's heart I thought of Andrea and the questions you were asking. He did it in this case for God's glory to be known.
I have some notes in my Bible from when I have read this before. I wrote that the Egyptians are our fears, troubles, problems and when we stand still, look to God, He will deliver us from them. As it says in verse 14 "The Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still". This spoke to me in my time of trouble this week and has encouraged me to stop trying to fix everything in the natural and to be still before God.
They only took Joseph's bones along, in order to honour his request that he not be buried among foreigners. He'd asked to be buried in the land of his father, Jacob. (see the last 5 verses in Genesis) His body was finally laid to rest in Shechem on the tract of land that had been purchased by Jacob. This became the inheritance of Joseph's descendants. (see Joshua 24:32)
As for the tragedies, there are numerous times in the Old Testament where God does some pretty horrific things ~ and it specifically says He did them in order to punish the Israelites or their enemies. I think the reason some figure God doesn't work this way anymore is because these incidents, as far as the Bible is concerned, are basically confined to the Old Testament. There are a couple of isolated cases in the New Testament, but usually just involving individuals, not huge numbers of people.
I don't like to THINK of God wiping out innocent people in order to punish them or send a wake-up call to the rest of the world either, but just because I don't want to believe it doesn't make it so. Like I said, I don't know. Maybe someone with more education on the matter will weigh in on this!
There is a song by Starfield I think called "Who is like you" based on 15:11.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRZ_WFrXYzM
Its a beautiful song
I get that Joseph wanted to be buried among his own people, but really its just his body? It doesn't mean anything. That's what I don't get. Or did the Jews think of a body and bones more than we do now?
There does seem to be a fair bit of emphasis on exactly WHERE people were buried. Most seem to be buried in the land of their ancestry. It seems fairly important. Hmmmm, I'm sure SOMEONE has written about that somewhere online!! I might have to look it up! (otherwise it's going to drive me nuts now!)
LOL I did a quick look too because it was annoying me. I read a few blogs and articles, people seem to be only *guessing* and making assumptions that it was because of rememberance, memorial etc to carry the bones. So that they would not forget what God promised and did, also out of respect for their ancestors.
ahhh I wonder if Joshua 24:32 means anything, it says "so it became the inheritance of the tribe of Joseph" so maybe the only way the Israelites could claim the land was if their ancestors were buried there?
Did you read Bible.org's commentary on Genesis 50? I found the section called The Death and Burial of Joseph particularly enlightening.
I'm just getting to finishing reading this post.
I agree that the stories of these people have SO MUCH for us now. So much.
I'm here to attest though that God can and does give us a actual "high" of joyful emotion in the middle of AWEFUL pain and loss. Expecting that to last always is not realistic as with any human emotion. You can feel the actual thrill of Christ wrapping his arms around you in the middle of suffering though and you actually feel it like you NEVER have in times of good. It is the peace that passes understanding, the joy in sorrow, the rejoicing in the Lord. Frankly it is so much greater because so many foundations in your human life that you thought were there are GONE. It can fade in discouragement but God does bring it back when we go back to Him. This is why Paul said to rejoice in our suffering, and that we can do that "though our heart and flesh may fail". The most joyful testimony I've ever heard and has ever changed me the most was from a woman who got Parkinsons and boldly says she hopes we get it too (though somewhat sarcastically, the point is that she hopes God brings us trials) so that our joy may be more full. That is a hard statement to understand unless you have been to a very painful place hand in hand with God. With a perspective of His glory being worked in you. Many Christians have not yet broken the chains that link their emotions to their circumstances and instead linked them to the unconditional goodness of His wisdom working to glory of Himself. I'm not saying it's not shaken and faulting at times, or even that you can not loose it, but it's a different perspective on everything.
As far as God doing tragic things well, that just is told by the verse "Is it not from the Lord that both good and bad things come?" Lam 3:38
Even in Job we read "shall we accept good from the Lord and not bad?" (I'm paraphrasing)
Again, I highly suggest the sermon I linked in the comments of the post prior to this one. "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy"
We grow up many times with the tradition that God comes to right the world and he is not the author of bad things. The truth is though that in order to allow for free will, he, being ALL GOOD allowed for the OPTION for turning against him (sin defined, evil, bad things, tragedy, death etc). What God allowed was the option for that. The enemy took that door and fell from heaven.
There is also a different kind of evil that Randy Alcorn discusses in his wonderful book "If God Is Good". It's the kind of evil that God brings and uses for our redemption and loving discipline. He calls them primary and secondary evils "the immoral things we do are primary evils, while the consequences we suffer are secondary evils....Scripture sometimes speaks of primary and secondary evils in the same context, explaining how God uses secondary evils as judgments that may produce ultimate good."
I highly recommend his book and I'll be stepping through it on my blog on Wednesdays starting in March. It really get's down to some of these massive questions that everyone is pondering, and pondering them is so good and it's what God's Word makes us do. It makes us hunger for more from Him. Till we get down to the very heart of who He is and accept all of it in it's glory, and we are changed.
Again, PLEASE see the sermon linked earlier.
I've read a few posts/messages about tragedy (some of Piper's included), and I'm really beginning to wonder if this is another difference between Calvinism and Arminianism. Calvinists seem to believe God does still use large-scale events to shape us, whereas the general feeling I get in the circles I travel (mostly Mennonite, which is leaning much more towards the Arminian side of the spectrum), is that God doesn't work that way anymore. One argument for that stance would be that all the references you give are Old Testament verses.
Personally, I tend to agree more with the Calvinists on this one.
OOOO, yes. Big kettle of theology fish!LOL!
(to quote Marilla from Anne Of Green Gables..sort of .."this is a fine kettle of fish!")
You know VG..my take on it is just simply that Jesus did not come to nullify the OT but to FULFILL it in every way. The character of God does not change, it stays the same. So, the character of the God of the OT is indeed the God of the NT. Even in the sermon I recommend Piper says that one thing. He has been doing one thing since the dawn of time and that is working His glory to the satisfaction of Himself. He did not change course when Christ came, he continued on and is continuing on today.
The Piper debates always come down to just what you said. We hate to divide the body and get petty but when it's effecting a biblical view of God, we have to make sure and stand up. To do that gracefully with truth is a challenge. We don't serve or follow Calvin or Arminius. It's easy for people to take on these groups and never think again about the theology that started them. I would guess there is probably valid points on both sides. We have to take one thing at a time and test it against the Word in detail and as a whole. I do know that the Word does not ever contradict itself.
It will be so good for us to do this journey! BECAUSE the bible is coherant. We will travel on and see I'm sure that tragedy did come to the NT saints from GOd's hand for the working of His glory. We know that it came as punnishment too when the husband and wife in Acts were struck dead by God. That sounds very OT eh? I'm sure there will be more.
He did use differnt methods at different times though for different purposes so we have to remember that too. For instance, he used signs and miracles a lot at the beginning of the gospel to aid in the spread of the Word and the validity of it being from God.
I think anytime we put God in a box though and say he does or does not work this way or that, we better look out and "gird our loins" LOL!
i'd just tend to want to error on the side that does not put God in a box. i'd feel like I was in there with Jobs three friends about to get zapped.:)
Haha, yes, precisely! That's kinda how I felt having this debate with a friend of mine just a couple of weeks ago. Just flatly saying "I don't believe God works this way," or "Yes, He does" simply didn't sit well with me. Those feel like defining statement about a side of God that we just don't understand, which I think is dangerous territory.
Like I mentioned earlier, I don't like to THINK of Him destroying people we classify as innocent, but that's not enough grounds to just decide that means He wouldn't.
I have a real problem calling myself anything but a Christian these days exactly because I DON'T agree with everything Menno Simons taught (in fact, I specifically DISagree with at least one fairly foundational point), but I've grown up surrounded by Mennonite teachings and I don't foresee us switching from our current church ~ which is, of course, Mennonite ~ anytime soon. But I am growing more and more aware of just how seldom we actually test what we hear from the pulpit and really think things through for ourselves, searching Scripture to confirm or disprove the things we hear and read. It is of VITAL importance, and yet so few seem to take it seriously.
There is a real need to stay and be a light in a church that may not be right on biblically. If it's the best option in your area then you can sure stay and be a light in a loving way to your brothers and sisters around you. It's hard though. I think what you are doing is just right, study when you can, listen to sermons online that seem to mirror more clearly the validity of the Word as a whole. We are blessed to be in a good bible teaching church. I guess you have to weigh how much it is helping your faith grow or how much it is confusing your faith. There is certainly disagreement everywhere and my husband and I just two sundays ago had an issue with something that came from the pulpit. However, God can use these to help you search Him out more.
I love how Piper says not to be a microscope to people but a telescope. I microscope zero's in on how small something is to see it's details. A telescope is needed for to see something so big we just can hardly begin to comprehend. So, I have a button on my FB that says "Be a telescope, not a microscope- show how BIG God is!"
Keep truckin girlfriend ;) Spur others along your way too! You will help make their joy full as you pray God will open their eyes as you go, becuase that part belongs to Him alone.
I'm not worried that the teaching from our pulpit isn't biblically sound, it's more certain issues in the religious background of this our denomination that I'm not sure I necessarily agree with. However, I don't believe they're salvation issues, so I'm just agreeing to disagree. ;)
My church background and denomination has always taught that the bad things don't come from God, they come from Satan or our own actions, and at times things happen because of judgment etc. So I get confused over things at times as I try and work out what I was taught that was right, and that which is wrong. I don't really even listen to my pastor when he preaches anymore because most of the time its all waffle. I read and listen online to sermons instead.
Nicole,
Sadly, I think that is the case in the world a lot today. I'm glad you are searching on your own.
Tammi - isn't it amazing how God works?! He knew that you would need to study these particular chapters and orchestrated things to make it happen.
Excellent post and great follow up discussion as well.
Here's a humorous, yet insightful, look at the desert road.
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