God’s Awesome Power (Exodus 13:17 - 14:31)
Ron White - October 2, 2005
1 Introduction
1.1 You will find it helpful to keep your Bibles open at our passage which is Ex13:17 to 14:31. Our title for this morning is God’s Awesome Power. As we consider it together I hope we will see something of God’s awesome power as he brought his chosen people out of Egypt and his awesome power at work in our own daily lives in ways which perhaps we have not yet recognised.
1.2 Of course, if we would but look we would see God’s awesome power in evidence all around us. Stand on the edge of an active volcano and think about the power locked up within it. Or, as I was once, on a ship at sea, out of sight of land with a satellite navigation system that was not working, trying to find a pod full of scientific instruments on the bottom of the ocean, the pod was about 4` long and a foot or so in diameter. The instruments it contained were for assessing climate change by measuring alterations in the ocean. The officers looked up their charts and using instruments with pains taking care worked out our position from the stars. They were proved to be correct to within 100 yards in thousands of square miles of ocean. Rightly they were congratulated on their skill for being so precise. I also had an overwhelming sense of the awesome power of God. For millions upon millions of years those stars had been travelling through billions of miles, yet their courses were so accurate we could determine our position with such precision. Or, again, when I see a plant, so frail and delicate yet able to push its way up through concrete, I think of God’s awesome power effective through weakness.
1.3 It is good from time to time to stop and look around us at the created world and remind ourselves of the awesome power of God. But, this morning I want to think for a few minutes about the awesome power of God in the passage of scripture before us.
- Firstly in 13:17-18 we have the awesome power of God in his protecting hand.
- Secondly how is God’s awesome power released? In 13:19 we see the Awesome Power of God in the way God remembers and honours a person’s faith even hundreds of years after that faith has been exercised.
- Thirdly in God’s Saving Hand. In 14:1-31 we see the Awesome Power of God in the way that God achieves his purposes through those who simply believe his promise and obey his call even though they have to overcome the mightiest military power of their day.
2. God`s Awesome Power in His Protecting Hand Over His Children
2.1 [Read vv17-18.] It is easy to imagine that if we were just one of the ordinary Jews just following the rest because we had no option, Moses choice of route would have left us baffled. Doesn’t he know what he is doing we would be saying? Anyone who has even only the vaguest idea of geography would know that we were going the wrong way. Why are we going on this roundabout route? But, look again what does the scripture say? Most importantly we are told that “God led the people”. There are times when we rightly believe that God is watching over us and things seem inexplicably to go wrong. There are a number of possible explanations, not least of which is that we have a hostile enemy. But, sometimes things seem to be going wrong, we are baffled, there is no apparent explanation, yet at such times it may be that God is protecting us from some dreadful evil.
2.2 On some occasions God frustrates our plans because he is protecting us from a danger he has foreseen, but which we cannot possibly anticipate. Such was the case in the passage we are looking at. Some time ago Ann and I were having some people round for dinner and I promised that I would get home from work in good time. I arranged everything at the office very carefully, when it came to the time to leave I left plenty of time to catch the right train, 30 minutes instead of the usual 20, I `phoned Ann to say that I was on my way home. I got into the lift and for the first, indeed the only time in 40 years of using lifts daily it broke down between floors. It took 20 minutes for an engineer to come and release me and the others stuck in the lift. I dashed to Euston, hopelessly late for the train I wanted and the one after that too. I got to Euston to be greeted by scenes of chaos. The train I had so meticulously planned to catch had crashed. I forget now how many were injured. I realised then that far from everything going wrong, God had orchestrated things so that they went right. The really unusual feature of this was that on this occasion I saw what would have happened if God had not intervened, usually we are left only with asking “Why?” Of course there were other Christians on the train. Did not God care for them too? Of course he did, but he delivered them through the accident rather than from it. God tailors his care according to our need at the time.
2.3 Also God led them on this baffling route because he had a larger purpose in view than the Israelites getting a short cut to the land of milk and honey. Don’t you think that there must have been times when even Paul was baffled? He certainly said there were times when he was. In 2 Cor 4:8 he wrote of being perplexed but not in despair. In Acts 13:1-3 Paul and others are worshipping God and fasting and the Holy Spirit said to them that Paul and Barnabas should be sent out on a great missionary journey. Don’t you wish that you could get direct guidance just like that? But, read on. When a little later we get to Acts 16:6-7 we read that Paul’s way is blocked and blocked by whom? Blocked by God himself. Paul may well have felt frustrated or at least puzzled. Here he was busting to preach the good news of Jesus in obedience to God’s specific instructions and what happens? God stops him! Why? Because God has got a bigger purpose in view. Paul then had a vision re-directing him to Macedonia and as a result the course of European, indeed world, history is changed as the Gospel reaches Europe for the first time. Some time God’s guidance and protection baffles us because we do not see the whole picture and, usually, we fail to see how breathtakingly awesome God’s purposes for us are.
2.4 We see in verses 17-18 God’s Awesome Power in protecting his children from dangers they were not yet ready to face and to prepare the way for his larger purpose which is about to unfold.
3. God’s Awesome Power ii Released through Faith
3.1 In Genesis Joseph’s life spans some 14 chapters. If you were tasked with writing in a sentence Joseph’s most significant achievement what one would you focus on? Joseph’s astonishing gift for interpreting dreams? His many years as Prime Minister of Egypt? His management of a major famine relief programme? Or his execution of arguably the only successful large-scale grain storage project in history? Well Joseph is one of the few people included in the New Testament role of honour, if we may so describe Hebrews 11. What is the citation justifying his inclusion in this NT list of great men and women of God? Simply this “By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions about his bones” (Heb 11:22). You and I had we been at Joseph’s side at the close of his life may have thought his request was just the wish of some sentimental old man pining for his childhood home, but to God it was the expression of a living faith in the purposes of God.
3.2 [Read v 19 and Gen 50:24-26.] It is interesting to note that Genesis does not say that Joseph was buried in Egypt, though it does not say what was done with the coffin pending the Jews departure for the land promised to them. But, however it was kept; it was clearly readily available for the exodus and for some 400 years stood as a witness to his faith in God’s promise. Is that not a remarkable testimony to God’s Awesome Power and faithfulness? A dying man expresses his faith in God’s revealed purpose and as weak as those words were uttered by an old man enfeebled by age and death closing down on him, they registered in heaven, God treasured them up and some 400 years later God literally moved heaven and earth in Awesome Power to overthrow a cruel totalitarian regime and release his people from slavery.
3.3 Verse 19 encapsulates a vital principle that runs throughout the Bible. It is a principle that sadly many Christians have failed to grasp. A principle that if rightly understood would help us to understand more clearly issues that at present baffle us. What is this fundamental principle? God’s purposes are achieved not by his arbitrary intervention in history but through his response to the active faith of his children in his revealed word. God sets, or decrees, his purposes in the heavenlies, but in order for his purpose to become a reality here and now, it has to be earthed, and it is earthed through praying in faith. That is why Jesus when teaching us to pray made it a priority that we should pray to God saying “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. This is not an empty mantra. We should be waiting on God to understand what his will is and then praying that will into reality in our experience. A power station generates giga-watts of electricity, and the power company chief executive wants you to use it, indeed is desperate for you to use it, but no matter how much electricity is generated and no matter how committed the chief executive is, your room at night time will remain pitch black until you flick the switch that allows that power to reach your light bulb.
3.4 This verse presents us with at least 3 challenges. Firstly, when people start blaming God for things that are evil in this world and saying “If God is love and if he is all powerful then why does he allow such and such to happen?” Part of the answer, and it is only part maybe “Not why does God allow these things to happen, but, why do you allow them to happen when there is a God who is love and who is all powerful and is longing to find people who will be his partners who through faith will allow God to work in Awesome Power and be part of the solution rather than part of the problem”.
Secondly, are you at all interested in what the will of God is for your life? It is a great pity if you are not, because you will be saddled with second best and missing out on experiencing God’s Awesome Power in you life. After all why should God back a loser, which is what you will be if you relegate God to second place or less in your life? The third challenge is what sort of legacy are you going to leave behind? Merely wealth? Some nice memories? Or a legacy of faith that like Joseph will release God’s Awesome Power here on earth in years to come. 450 years ago this month outside Balliol College Oxford two were publicly burnt at the stake for their faith in Jesus Christ. As unflinchingly they faced the flames one, Hugh Latimer said to the other “Be of good comfort Master Ridley, we shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England as I trust shall never be put out”. A legacy of faith that we still benefit from even today. What legacy will you and I leave? Will our faith expressed in prayer release God’s Awesome Power into society for years to come? Or will we prove to be a waste of space as far as God’s Kingdom and his purposes are concerned.
3.5 We have seen something of God’s Awesome Power in his unseen protecting hand
and in the way that a few feeble words said in faith will release God’s power in years to come, now let us move on to our final section.
4 God’s Awesome Power in Judgement and Salvation (Ex 14:1-31).
4.1 Have you ever listened to the radio series called “Devout Sceptics”? In one programme a lady, very able and noble in many respects, said that if there were a God she wanted him to be kind and forgiving, not judging. Setting aside the question of whether it is for anyone to put forward a specification for God to conform to, she seemed entirely unaware of the inherent contradiction of a God who forgives without judging. Surely if God is to forgive then there must be wrongs to forgive, and if they are not forgiven then they must be judged. If forgiveness is needed, then an offence must have been committed, and if an offence has been committed then someone has been offended. If right is right and wrong is wrong and justice exists then wrong doing has to be justly forgiven or punished. Anything other than that ascribes to God about as much moral strength of purpose as you would expect to find in a blancmange.
4.2 In this chapter we are faced with the solemn reality that each of us are either under God’s judgement or we have been freely forgiven with a forgiveness that is itself consistent with justice, a forgiveness that is freely available because another has taken the punishment, or paid the penalty for the offences we are guilty of, or our sins. There are no other options. Either you are saved, that is free from condemnation or you are facing condemnation.
4.3 Pharaoh and the Egyptians are a salutary lesson if we would but take heed. In 14:4 we read “The Egyptians will know that I am the LORD” Let us refresh our minds about Pharaoh’s responses to God so far. Exodus opens with the account of Pharaoh’s virtual genocide of the Jews. Then in Exodus 5:2 Pharaoh is confronted by Moses and presented with the word of God. What was his response? Pharaoh is contemptuously dismissive. He says “Who is the LORD that I should obey him?” When Moses word is confirmed by two miracles Pharaoh refuses to be impressed. Then we have a series of 9 miracles, miracles on a tremendous scale, unambiguous confirmations of God’s word and his power, yet Pharaoh stubbornly refuses to accept God’s word. Finally there is the catastrophe of the death of the first born, even Pharaoh’s own household suffered, and at last Pharaoh agrees to let the Israelites go. But, no sooner are they gone then Pharaoh, conscious of the economic and financial implications of letting 600,000 slaves go, changes his mind. He still thinks he can play fast and loose with God, that somehow he can ignore God, that somehow God does not really mean what he says, that nothing really is final, and that there will always be one more chance. Having refused to accept that God is God, Pharaoh having refused to accept all the previous warnings, even though they were backed up by incontrovertible evidence, indeed forcefully so, he still tries to ignore God and do things his way. This time, the 11th time is a step too far. God is not going to put up with Pharaoh’s nonsense any more and the now unavoidable, inevitable outcome is catastrophic judgement.
4.4 God is not a doormat. There is an inexorable law in life. Every moral decision you and I take goes towards moulding our characters and setting up a spiritual momentum in one of two directions. God speaks to you and you take no notice, you find yourself in a difficult situation, you ask God to help and he does, you put it down to coincidence, something else happens and you choose to ignore what God is trying to say to you. Every time you do this you are hardening your heart. Eventually there will come a time, if you are not careful, when you become incapable of responding to God. The Bible says that it is appointed for us once to die (and there is no denying that) and then the judgement. What are you going to say to a God to whom you have chosen to turn your back?
4.5 Pharaoh is one example. The children of Israel are another. They do not come out of the story very well, faced with what they see as certain annihilation at the hands of the Egyptians, they start whining were there no graves in Egypt that you brought us out here to die? But, however feebly they have accepted God’s word. They trusted to the blood of the lamb. They are in covenant relation with God. So in this crisis what are they told to do? “Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.” To get deliverance they had to do nothing but simply trust God. They could not win deliverance; they could not earn it they had only to trust in God alone.
4.6 Each one of us is responding to what God is saying to us this morning, either like Pharaoh we are saying “who is God that I should listen to him?” or we recognising the reality that we need to be saved, that is delivered from judgement, simply by doing nothing but trusting what God has done for us through his Son, who died as the Lamb of God on the cross to provide an atonement, that is he paid the penalty for our wrong doing that if we confess our sins we should be forgiven and cleansed from all unrighteousness.