27 CROSSING THE SEA

The crossing of the read sea is one of the two most famous stories in the Bible. David killing Goliath is the other one. The dividing of the Red Sea before the children of Israel is a work of wonder mentioned often in the Bible, other literature and many conversations. From the story of Rahab, the prostitute in Jericho, as recorded in Joshua 2 verses 9, 10, we know it was a terror to the Canaanites. “. . . and said to them, ‘I know that the Lord has given you this land and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you. We have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt.” It was also the praise and triumph of the Israelites, “The sea looked and fled, the Jordan turned back;” (Psalm 114:3). “He rebuked the Red Sea, and it dried up; he led them through the depths as through a desert” (Psalm 106:9).  “to him who divided the Red Sea asunder, His love endures forever. and brought Israel through the midst of it, His love endures forever, but swept Pharaoh and his army into the Red Sea; His love endures forever,” (Psalm 136:13-15). For believers in Jesus, it is a type of baptism, “For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” (1Corinthians 10:1, 2).

The dividing of the sea and the opening of a passage through the waters is a singular instance of God’s almighty power at work in timely fashion in the kingdom of nature. The crossing probably did not occur at the widest or the deepest of the places in the Red Sea. That would have required a hike of 190 miles descending 8,000 feet down and then climbing back up again. It most likely happened at a bay, or gulf, or arm of the sea. By studying what is called a wind “set down,” or “storm surge” and considering the topography and shape of sea floor, professional archeologists, oceanographers and divers have found a place where the Red Sea is 1,000 feet deep at a likely location of the crossing. Scientific scholars have determined that a wind of 60 miles per hour could have blown the waters in one direction making the Israelites passage possible and then later in another direction bringing the waters back and drowning the Egyptians. Verse 21 says, “Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided.” The wind blew all night and furthermore the next chapter’s song of triumph contains this verse, “By the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up. The surging waters stood up like a wall; the deep waters congealed in the heart of the sea” (Exodus 15:8). If the wind was extremely cold, the waters could have frozen. That was not likely and the Bible would have said so if that were the case. The sign for this miracle indicated in the Scripture was Moses stretching out his hand over the sea, to indicate that it was done in answer to his prayer. The wind evidently blew strongly enough for enough hours to make the sea crossable and then, if the wind reversed directions when Moses put out his hand again, the wind could have blown the water back against the Egyptian army. The studies of modern scientists help us understand how God might have performed this miracle. However, even if science could help us understand the possibility of this occurring, for it to happen at just the time when the Israelites needed it to happen would still be a miraculous wonder for which they and we could and should glorify God. This miracle certainly could serve as a confirmation of Moses’ mission as well as to reveal God’s favor to the people whom Moses led. The natural agency was a strong east wind, indicating it was done by the power of God, whom the winds and the seas obey. God can bring His people through the greatest difficulties, and make or force a way where none exists. The God of nature has not obligated Himself to nature’s laws. When He pleases He may either dispense with the laws, or control the timing of natural phenomenon like lightning, thunder, hail, rain and wind, all to serve His purposes.

This story is an example of God’s wonderful favor to His Israel. They went through the sea on dry ground to the opposite shore. They did not go around; they went through. “. . . and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left” (22). And verse 29 says the same thing, almost word for word. “But the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left.” Isaiah 58:8 says something that was surely true that day, “Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.” The Egyptians  could not have attacked them from either the right or the left sides if there was a wall of water there. We do not know if Moses continued to extend his hand or if he led the way through the sea with the Israelites following him. However it happened, this march through the paths of the great waters would make their march afterwards, through the wilderness, less difficult. Those who had followed God through the sea need not fear following Him wherever else He led them. This march through the sea was in the night, and not a moon-lit night if my source’s calculations are correct. It would have been seven days after the full moon, so that they had no light except what they had from the pillar of cloud and fire. This surely made it more dramatic. Where God leads us He will light us; where He conducts us, He will comfort us.

This miracle was done, and recorded to encourage God’s people in all ages to trust in Him in the greatest of impossible situations when there is no way out. What cannot He do who did this? What will not He do for those that fear and love Him who did this for these murmuring unbelieving Israelites?  In our own contemporary generation we still find believers, long afterwards, taking courage from the triumphs of this march. Psalm 66:6 tells us to. “He turned the sea into dry land, they passed through the waters on foot—come, let us rejoice in him.” Psalm 77:11, 16, and 19 also encourage us. “I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.” “The waters saw you, God, the waters saw you and writhed; the very depths were convulsed.” “Your path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters, though your footprints were not seen.” Today when we see the handiwork of God we sometimes use the phrase, “I see the finger prints of God in this.” Surely even if we can not see God’s footprints with the natural eye, we can with our spiritual eye.

This event was not only a mighty miracle, it was also a demonstration of God’s just and righteous anger on His and His people’s enemies, the Egyptians. The Egyptians with greed thought to capture the Israelites and bring them back to Egypt again as slaves. In the heat of their pursuit, they went after the Israelites right into the Red Sea. Verse 23 says, “The Egyptians pursued them, and all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots and horsemen followed them into the sea.” “Why,” thought they, “may not we venture where Israel did?” Once or twice the magicians of Egypt had done what Moses did, with their enchantments. Pharaoh may have remembered this, but he forgot how they eventually were defeated on that battlefield at last. The Egyptians had the advantage of chariots and horses while the Israelites were on foot. But chariots are no help, they are a handicap in mud or wet sand.  Pharaoh had said, I know not the Lord; and by this it appeared he did not, or he would not have ventured following the Israelites into the sea with their heavy chariots. They were bold and blind. Rage against Israel made them foolishly daring like this and careless: they had long hardened their own hearts; and now God hardened them to their ruin, and hid from their eyes the things that could have led to their peace and safety. Proverbs 1:17 says, “How useless to spread a net where every bird can see it!” Yet the Egyptians were so blind they were like the bird in Proverbs 7:23, “till an arrow pierces his liver, like a bird darting into a snare, little knowing it will cost him his life.” The ruin of sinners is brought on by their own presumption, which hurries them headlong into the pit. They are self-destroyers.

The Egyptians were troubled and perplexed, “During the last watch of the night the Lord looked down from the pillar of fire and cloud at the Egyptian army and threw it into confusion. He jammed the wheels of their chariots so that they had difficulty driving. And the Egyptians said, ‘Let’s get away from the Israelites! The Lord is fighting for them’” (24, 25). For some hours perhaps they marched or drove through the divided waters as safely and triumphantly as Israel did, not doubting, but that in a little time, they would capture the runaway slaves. However, Oh! these are sweet words! “The Lord looked down.” Yes, we want the Lord to look down. But the Egyptians had to say, “The Lord is fighting for them.” We don’t have to say that sentence; we can triumphantly say, “The Lord is fighting for us.” But, in the early morning watch, the Lord looked on the host of the Egyptians, and troubled them. Now we can see an example of the truth in the Scripture that says the triumph of the wicked is short. It was short that night. However, I see a contradiction here. Why do the Egyptians say “The Lord is fighting for them? If He is the Lord, why not make Him their Lord too and then say the Lord is fighting for us?”

God has ways to frighten sinners into despair, before He plunges them into destruction. That despair should drive them to God, but people do not always react rationally like that.  The Egyptians had bragged and boasted as if the day were their own; but now they were troubled and dismayed, struck with a panic-fear. They had driven furiously; but now they drove heavily, and found themselves plagued and embarrassed at every step; the way grew deep, their hearts grew sad, their wheels dropped off, and the axle braces failed. In this way God can check the violence of those that are in pursuit of His people. They had been flying toward the back of Israel, as the hawk upon a trembling dove; but now they cried, Let us flee from the face of Israel. Israel has now, all of a sudden, become as much a terror to them as they had been to Israel. They could have left Israel alone but they would not; now they would like to flee from the face of Israel but cannot. Men will not be convinced, until it is too late, that those who meddle with God’s people meddle to their own hurt. In the future this will happen again when the Lord will come with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment, the mighty men will seek in vain to shelter themselves under rocks and mountains from the face of Israel and Israel’s King as Revelation 6:15 says, “Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and everyone else, both slave and free, hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains.” Compare this story, to Job 27:20. That says, “Terrors overtake him like a flood; a tempest snatches him away in the night.”

Notice how the Egyptians were all drowned. As soon as the children of Israel arrived safely on the eastern shore, Moses was ordered to stretch out his hand over the sea giving a signal to the waters to close again, as before, on the word of command. They had opened to the right and the left and now  the waters immediately returned to their place and overwhelmed all the host of the Egyptians. As verses 27 and 28 say, “Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at daybreak the sea went back to its place. The Egyptians were fleeing toward it, and the Lord swept them into the sea. The water flowed back and covered the chariots and horsemen—the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed the Israelites into the sea. Not one of them survived.” Pharaoh and his servants, who had hardened one another in sin, now fell together, and not one escaped. An ancient tradition says that Pharaoh’s magicians, Jannes and Jambres, perished with the rest, as Balaam also perished with the Midianites whom he had taught to seduce the Israelite men into sexual sin. Numbers 31:8 tells us that part of the story. “Among their victims were Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur and Reba—the five kings of Midian. They also killed Balaam son of Beor with the sword.” Here God avenged on the Egyptians the blood of the firstborn of Israel whom they had drowned: and the principal is repaid with interest, it is paid back double, full-grown Egyptians for newborn Israelites. We can see that the Lord is righteous, and precious is his people’s blood in his sight. God had seen the Egyptians killing the Israelite babies and He did  not like it. Psalm 72; 14 says, “He will rescue them from oppression and violence, for precious is their blood in his sight.”

God paid Pharaoh back for all his proud and wicked conduct towards Moses His ambassador, mocking the messengers of the Lord, playing the fool with them and bringing ruin on themselves without remedy. Now God got for Himself honor on Pharaoh, looking on that proud man and abasing him. We see here the kind of justice to which Job 14:12 refers, “look at all who are proud and humble them, crush the wicked where they stand.” We can say, “Come and see the desolations he made, and write it, not in water, but with an iron pen in stone forever. Here lies Pharaoh, that bloody tyrant who defied his Maker. Remember his demands, threatenings, and judgments. He was a rebel against God, and a slave to his own barbarous passions. He was perfectly lost to humanity, virtue, and all true honor. Here he lies, buried in the deep, a perpetual monument of divine justice. Here he went down to the pit, though he was the terror of the mighty in the land of the living. This is Pharaoh and all his multitude.” Similarly, Ezekiel wrote, “Which of the trees of Eden can be compared with you in splendor and majesty? Yet you, too, will be brought down with the trees of Eden to the earth below; you will lie among the uncircumcised, with those killed by the sword. This is Pharaoh and all his hordes, declares the Sovereign Lord” (Ezekiel 31:8).

The Egyptians gave great thought and attention to carefully preserving and honoring the bodies of their noble dead, but here we see dead Egyptians humbled even after they died in the water. Their bodies were exposed and scattered carelessly on the shore. God sent a tide to wash them up there so the Israelites could gather yet more silver and gold from the jewelry they wore and whatever swords or other military equipment they may have had with them.

The Israelites could take full notice of the wonderful work God had done for them. It evidently made a strong and good impression on them. Verse 31 says, “And when the Israelites saw the mighty hand of the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant.” Now they were ashamed of their distrusts and murmurings, and, in the good mind they were in, they would never again despair of help from Heaven, no, not in the greatest difficulty. They would never again quarrel with Moses, nor talk of returning to Egypt. They were now baptized to Moses in the sea. This great work which God performed for them by the ministry of Moses bound them effectually to follow his directions, under God. This confirmed their faith in the promises that were yet to be fulfilled; and, being brought like this triumphantly out of Egypt, they did not doubt that they would be in Canaan shortly, having such a God to trust and such a mediator between themselves and Him. Oh that there had been permanently such a heart in them as now there seemed to be! And Oh that they kept this attitude in the months and years to come instead of complaining about the report of the ten spies and then gripping so much in the wilderness. Sensible mercies, when they are fresh, make sensible impressions; but with many these impressions soon wear off: while they see God’s works, and feel the benefit of them, they fear Him and trust in Him; but they soon forget His works, and then they slight Him. How well would it be for us if we were always in as good a frame as we are in sometimes!

Leader be informed. Leader beware. Leader prepare yourself. People are not usually consistent. This is a series of leadership lessons. And today’s lesson is a warning. Even with this very great and wonderful success and the people’s good reaction to it, difficult, complaining days still remained ahead.