Rev. David Holwick X Exodus series, #6
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
July 26, 2009
Exodus 14:9-31
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I. Between a rock and a hard place.
A. Tragedy in New Jersey.
They were a quiet family in Westfield, New Jersey.
Their home was a mansion, but you could tell it was getting
a little shabby.
The husband seemed a little odd - he wore his business suit
when he mowed the lawn.
There were six people in all - father and mother, three teenage
kids, and the father's aging mother.
In November 1971 the father told the neighbors that he was
going to tend to a sick relative in North Carolina.
John List never returned.
A month later police entered the darkened house.
They were not prepared for what they found.
Organ music like you would hear in a funeral home was coming
from a central sound system.
In the mansion's ballroom were laid out the decomposing bodies
of the wife and children, and the mother was upstairs.
All five victims had been killed execution-style.
A letter addressed to List's Lutheran minister was taped to a
filing cabinet in the house.
"I know what has been done is wrong from all that I have been
taught. ...
I wasn't earning anywhere near enough to support us.
Everything I tried seemed to fall to pieces."
The letter cataloged a series of family disasters, from heavy
debt to his wife's lingering illness.
He had lost one job after another.
His daughter had turned into a rebellious teenager and he was
worried she would not continue to be a Christian.
He professed to see a positive spiritual benefit in the murders,
writing that he was certain they would all be in heaven now.
#3761
A true story, though certainly extreme.
But it is not unusual to feel that our situation is hopeless.
B. How do you respond when you are faced with the impossible?
1) Do you just resign yourself to disaster?
2) Do you cling to God no matter what?
II. One deliverance was more than they expected.
A. After Passover, Pharaoh kicked the Jews out.
1) They even got a lot of loot from the Egyptians. 12:35-37
2) Many outsiders joined them.
B. They did not anticipate being trapped by the sea.
1) Pharaoh changed his mind and pursued them with his army.
a) They had nowhere to go.
b) Annihilation seemed certain.
2) They did two things:
a) They cried out to God.
b) They grumbled to Moses.
1> "No graves in Egypt" is humorous - Egypt has more
graves than just about any place on Earth.
2> "Didn't we say to you..." is double-speak: no one
forced them to leave.
III. Three things Moses commands.
A. Do not be afraid. 14:13
1) Panic can be your greatest enemy.
a) It makes you freeze up.
2) The alternative to fear is not charging forward, but
standing firm.
a) Remember what you believe.
b) Remember the God you believe in.
3) Have faith that you will see God's deliverance.
B. Be still. 14:14
1) There is a tendency in a crisis to act too quickly.
a) We have an instinctive feeling that doing SOMETHING,
even if it is the wrong thing, is better than
doing nothing.
b) I've seen examples of this in every national crisis.
1> Disaster hits, blame is thrown everywhere, congress
sets up a committee and they make a bunch of
recommendations for immediate action.
2> In hindsight, we find out that a lot of it was
useless - but it made us feel good at the time.
2) Crisis is precisely the time we need to have a cool head.
a) So Moses says, be still.
b) Being still, in the Bible, doesn't mean you are passive
or stick your head in the ground.
c) It means you quiet yourself and seek God's leading.
Psalm 37:7-9
"Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him;
do not fret when men succeed in their ways,
when they carry out their wicked schemes.
Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret--
it leads only to evil.
For evil men will be cut off, but those who hope
in the LORD will inherit the land."
Psalm 46:10
"Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted
among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth."
3) God is still God.
Gladys Aylward, missionary to China during World War II,
was forced to flee when the Japanese invaded Yangcheng.
But she could not leave her work behind.
With only one assistant, she led more than a hundred orphans
over the mountains toward Free China.
During Glady's harrowing journey out of war-torn Yangcheng
she grappled with despair as never before.
After passing a sleepless night, she faced the morning with
no hope of reaching safety.
A 13-year-old girl in the group reminded her of their
much-loved story of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea.
"But I am not Moses," Gladys cried in desperation.
"Of course you aren't," the girl said, "but Jehovah is
still God."
When Gladys and the orphans made it through, they proved
once again that no matter how inadequate we feel,
God is still God, and we can trust in him. #3271
4) It is not a quietness of resigned fatalism.
a) Moses says that God is going to fight for them.
b) Having God on your side puts things in a different
perspective!
C. Move on.
1) Quietness has its place, but it is not the last chapter.
a) At some point we must act.
b) So Moses tells them to move on.
2) It is an unusual command:
a) Pharaoh is at their back.
b) The Red Sea is at their front.
c) Where are they to move to?
3) They are to move where God makes the way.
IV. Parting of Red Sea.
A. This is a famous event, but one with many questions.
1) A lot of weird theories, too.
B. The location is disputed.
1) In Hebrew it is "yam supf", the Sea of Reeds.
a) It could be referring to a string of salt water marshes
and lakes between Egypt and Sinai.
b) It could also refer to what we now call the Red Sea,
which is much wider and deeper.
C. What did God do to it?
1) Exod. 14 contains miraculous elements and naturalistic ones.
a) A wind blows all night long.
b) Moses raises his staff.
c) The sea divides.
2) A popular modern theory.
a) Florida State oceanographer Doron Nof investigated
whether the parting of the Red Sea is "plausible
from a physical point of view."
Using a common phenomenon called wind set-down effect,
he found that "a northwesterly wind of 20 meters/sec.
blowing for 10-14 hours is sufficient to cause a
sea level drop of about 2.5 meters."
Such a drop in sea level, Nof speculates, might have
exposed an underwater ridge, which the Israelites
crossed as if it were dry land.
Although the event is plausible, Nof estimated that the
likelihood of such a storm occurring in that
particular place and time of year is less than
once every 2,400 years.
#35926
b) What about the "walls" of water? 14:22
1> A wind set-down effect affects a wide area,
not a narrow channel.
2> It might be that the reference to wall is a poetic
metaphor, like hills clapping their hands.
3> But this is not a poetic passage, so maybe there
were walls of water after all.
A> God can do anything.
c) Whatever it was, it worked for the Jews, but not for
the Egyptian army.
1> They were confused, wrecked, and drowned.
V. The Jews gain faith.
A. The event causes them to fear God and put their trust in him.
1) Notice that they gain this faith AFTER the sea parts.
2) Even more impressive faith is to believe before it parts.
B. Do you trust God for the impossible?
William Willimon, the chaplain at Duke University, tells of a
woman who had begun to attend his church with her family.
His church was mostly white, but this black woman said that
she had felt welcomed there.
She had had a difficult life and had experienced first-hand
oppression, tragedy, and hate.
Her beloved husband of many years had died a terrible and
painful death.
Her only son had been put in prison after a sleazy banking deal
went bad.
Now she had taken in her two little grandchildren all by
herself, even though she was now getting on in years.
As Willimon visited her, he felt this overwhelming sense of
futility.
What would become of her now?
How could she hope to overcome her difficulties?
The woman simply said to him, "I know God will make a way for
us.
I've found that when I've reached out, he'll be there.
Not always when I wanted him, but always when I absolutely
needed him.
He doesn't always come on time, but he always comes.
I'll make it, with his help, yes I will."
Without thinking he blurted out, "How can this be?
You've got these two children, huge financial problems, your
health isn't great.
After all you've been through?"
In effect he was saying, Old lady, you've got to face facts
and be realistic.
But how did he know?
On further reflection, he wasn't so sure that this woman's calm,
confident trust, trust affirmed in so many places in
Scripture, was stupidity.
Maybe she was right.
Maybe God's life-giving abilities can't be contained in my
little box labeled "POSSIBLE" next to the big one called
"IMPOSSIBLE".
#29142
John List claimed to have faith, too.
But rather than trust God for the impossible, he decided to
make his own way.
After murdering his family, he evaded capture for 18 years.
It was as if he had disappeared off the Earth.
Then in 1989 the television program "America's Most Wanted"
profiled the case and presented a plaster bust of what he
would look like at that time.
Immediately a co-worker in Virginia called the police.
He was arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to five
consecutive life terms.
But there is a great irony to John List's story.
He killed his family because he felt their finances were
crumbling, just like his house.
But in the ceiling of the ballroom where he'd shot his wife and
children was a stained-glass skylight.
It not just any skylight, but one made by the renowned
glass artisan Louis Comfort Tiffany.
That stained glass was worth twice the amount he had paid for
the house!
#3761
But he decided to make his own way...
What about you?
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SOURCES FOR ILLUSTRATIONS USED IN THIS SERMON:
# 3271 "But I Am Not Moses," by Jonathan G. Yandell, Leadership,
Winter 1995, p. 39.
# 3761 "List Plays God,"(Time Life Books: 1993), p. 88.
#29142 "I'll Make It, With His Help," by William Willimon, Rev. Brett
Blair's Illustrations by Email, www.sermonillustrations.com,
February 20, 2005.
#35926 "A Skeptic's Guide To The Miracles Of Exodus," by Michael Lukas,
http://www.slate.com/id/2215127/, April 8, 2009.
These and 30,000 others are part of the Kerux database that can be
downloaded, absolutely free, at http://www.holwick.com/database.html
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