The Exodus
Loveland Pass - 11,992 ft. - old route 6 took you over the pass.
Interstate 70 completed - Eisenhower Tunnel - quicker, safer, more convenient
But not awesome and breathtaking like rte. 6.
You lost something by taking the easier route.
Israel in Egypt - celebrated the Passover - ready to move out the next morning.
Exodus 12:37 The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Succoth. There were about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children.
600,000 men - prob. total of about 2.5 - 3 million people.
v.38 - many other people went with them.
- various motives in going
- these people were to be a snare to the children of Israel later on.
- Numbers 11:4 - “the rabble that was with them began to complain about the food.”
- Leviticus 24 - intermarriage between the Israelites and these Egyptians - produced children who blasphemed the Name of the Lord.
- wherever you have the children of God, you also have the children of the devil, trying to infiltrate.
- Satan could not succeed in keeping the Israelites in Egypt, so he tried to put the Egyptians in with the Israelites.
cf. - the church.
Rameses to Succoth - 15 miles.
Succoth to Canaan via the coastal route - about 200 miles - 8-10 days
But God didn’t want them to go that way.
Exodus 13:17-18 When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, “If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.” So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea. The Israelites went up out of Egypt armed for battle.
God did not lead them on the easy road; he led them into the desert. In the desert, there were no roads, no bridges, no tunnels, no hotels, no direction signs. There were no grocery stores, no places to re-provision. Serious, given the number of people involved!
Why did God do it this way? Wouldn’t the direct route to Canaan have been more obvious?
e.g. Monopoly game - Chance card - Go directly to jail. Avoid the hazards of passing my son’s property! He had Boardwalk and Park Place with hotels on them. The rent would put me out of the game!
Why didn’t God just give the Israelites a free pass to Canaan? The answer teaches us a lot about the way God deals with us today. If Israel had taken the easy road to Canaan, they would have missed everything.
Six reasons why God took Israel into the desert:
1. To show Israel the mighty power of God
- the long road down to the desert led Israel right through the Red Sea.
- the Red Sea experience was something that Israel never forgot.
- it is mentioned over and over again in the Psalms and the Prophets
- e.g. - Psalm 106 was written by an unknown author, probably after the Return of the Jews from Exile in Babylon. Listen to what he writes…
Psalm 106:7-12 When our fathers were in Egypt, they gave no thought to your miracles; they did not remember your many kindnesses, and they rebelled by the sea, the Red Sea. Yet he saved them for his name’s sake, to make his mighty power known. He rebuked the Red Sea, and it dried up; he led them through the depths as through a desert. He saved them from the hand of the foe; from the hand of the enemy he redeemed them. The waters covered their adversaries; not one of them survived. Then they believed his promises and sang his praise.
- God often leads us on a harder road in order to show us His power
Psalm 37:23-24 If the Lord delights in a man’s way, he makes his steps firm; though he stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand.
- the Red Sea is to the OT as the Resurrection of Jesus is to the NT
- it is the definitive miracle through which God reveals His power to His people.
- no wonder that the skeptics try to discredit it, just as they try to discredit the Resurrection of Christ.
- If Israel had taken the Northern route, they would have gone around the Red Sea. Instead, God led them down the Southern route, through the Red Sea.
2. God took Israel into the desert in order to break the power of the enemy.
- Just as God used the crossing of the Red Sea to show his people his power, so He used it to break the power of Egypt.
- There was something that the ten plagues of Egypt had not accomplished.
- they had affected her social life, her agricultural life, her economic life, her family life, and her religious life, but they had not broken Egypt’s military power.
- but God was planning to take care of that at the Red Sea.
- in the words of the negro spiritual:
Oh Mary don’t you weep don’t you mourn
Oh Mary don’t you weep don’t you mourn
Pharaoh’s army got drownded
Oh Mary don’t you weep.
- That’s what happened when Pharaoh tried to use his army to fight a naval campaign! God defeated the military power of Egypt in a battle that the Israelites didn’t even have to fight.
- If they had gone the northern route, the easy route, Pharaoh’s chariots would have been breathing down their necks the whole way to Canaan.
- This great victory had further implications. Many years later, Israel was going to come up against some more enemies. But because of what had happened at the Red Sea, those enemies knew they were as good as dead.
- Rahab to the spies:
Joshua 2:9-11 I know that the Lord has given this land to you 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, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed. When we heard of it, our hearts melted and everyone’s courage failed because of you, for the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.
- the Red Sea episode served notice on the enemies of Israel what they were up against.
- God takes us on the hard road spiritually because he wants to break Satan’s power in our life. There may be areas of our life where Satan holds the upper hand. We may live in fear and trembling of his power.
- But God sometimes takes us into the wilderness to break that power.
God teaches us to depend upon him to fight the battle for us. And he wants to strengthen our hand for battles that lie ahead of us, that only he knows about.
3. God took Israel into the desert so that they might hear and receive the Word of God.
- if Israel had gone the direct coastal route, they would have missed going to a place called Mount Sinai, the mountain of God, where God gave Moses the Law.
- if Israel had gone the easy way, there would have been no time for them to stop and listen to God’s voice.
- they would have been too busy sight-seeing, shopping, kibitzing with the other travelers on the coastal road.
- sometimes God calls us into the wilderness in order that we might stop and hear Him speak to us.
4. God took Israel into the desert in order to teach them that they were different
- he taught them that they were a nation that had been called out of the other nations.
- he taught them that they were a special people, chosen by Him to be separate for the purpose of being His ambassadors to the other nations.
- the only way God could teach them that was to get them alone, away from the distractions, away from the other nations and peoples of the world.
- if Israel had gone to Canaan by the easy road, that wouldn’t have happened.
- the coastal road was well-traveled by caravans and merchants who were plying their trade between Egypt and Mesopotamia.
- there were many way-stations along the route where travelers could stop and find lodging. There were many villages and marketplaces along the way.
- if Israel had taken this route - the direct route to Canaan - they would have been exposed to all these distractions. Their eyes would have been taken off God and the purpose for which God called them.
- many of them would have been tempted to become merchants and traders just like the people they were meeting. They would have lost sight of their distinctive mission as the people of God.
- when God calls us to travel the harder road as Christians, it is often because he is keeping us from something that would be very bad for us.
- by leading us into the wilderness, he is forcing us to live by faith, not by sight. He keeps us from getting distracted by the good things that the world has to offer.
- He is helping us to remember that He has called us to be His special people.
- He is reminding us what life is all about. He is reminding us of our mission.
2 Corinthians 6:14-18 Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.” “Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.” “I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”
5. God took the children of Israel into the desert to teach them to live on God’s resources, not their own.
- approx. 2.5 - 3 million people involved in the Exodus
- the United States government is just now finding out what it takes to feed and provision just a few hundred thousand troops in the desert. Each person requires up to six gallons of water per day. Multiply that by 2.5-3 million people, and you would require several hundred railroad tank-cars per day, just for water.
- when they were hungry, God fed them with manna and quail
- when they were thirsty, God gave them water from the rocks.
Deuteronomy 8:2-4 Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years.
- sometimes God takes us into the wilderness in order to bless us, and prove to us that he has His hand upon us.
6. God took Israel into the desert in order to prepare her for battle.
Exodus 13:18 …The Israelites went up out of Egypt armed for battle.
- evidently, when the Israelites left Egypt, they thought that they were ready for battle, but they weren’t.
- as soon as Pharaoh and his officials realized that the Israelites had left, they set out after them in their chariots (Exodus 14:7)
- Egyptian chariots were the super-weapons of the world at that time.
- lightweight, made of wicker on a wood frame, lower and wider
- each had driver and a warrior
- long knives on the hubs of the wheels to slash foot soldiers
- all the nations were afraid of the Egyptian chariot forces.
Exodus 14:10-13 As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!” Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again.
- Israelites may have thought they were ready, but they were just terrified greenhorns when it came to fighting. They didn’t know the first thing about it.
- God ultimately wanted these people to take territory for Him, but they sure weren’t up to it at this point. They needed training.
- they needed forty years of boot-camp in the wilderness before they were ready to fight the battles to take the Promised Land.
- often God will take us into the wilderness in order to fit us with our spiritual armor.
- we may think that we’re ready for the fight, but it isn’t until we are seasoned by suffering, by hardship, by deprivation, and by being shut up to total dependence on God that we are ready.
- so God took Israel by the harder road for those six reasons
Speaking of the experiences of the Israelites in the wilderness, Paul wrote in…
1 Corinthians 10:11 These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come.
In other words, the Exodus serves as an example of the way God deals with us today in our spiritual lives. We may find ourselves in the desert. Don’t despair! The God who leads you there does so for a reason.
1. He does it to show you His power
2. He does it to break the power of the enemy in your life
3. He does it so that you might really hear the Word of God
4. He does it to teach you that you are special to Him
5. He does it to teach you to rely on His resources, not your own
6. He does it to equip you for spiritual warfare