Exodus 13:1—14:10

Steve Schwetz: Sometimes we've heard a story so many times that the wonder of it gets a little lost in familiarity. But there's nothing ordinary about what we'll witness in this study today. Our exciting journey through the book of Exodus continues on Through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee. We'll see the unmatched power of God on full display. It was divine power that rescued the children of Israel from Pharaoh's army. But before that, God's power turned the Nile to blood and devastated Egypt's ecosystem with frogs and insects. Only God could blanket Egypt in darkness, and only God holds power over life and death. And once again, we're going to see something only God could do: the miraculous deliverance of the Israelites in one of the greatest miracles recorded in the Old Testament. In fact, this event was so significant that Jewish people still remember it every year as they celebrate Passover. It's that important. Now as we continue our journey with the Israelites through the desert, we're going to discover that God didn't always answer every need with a miracle. But whenever he did, it was unforgettable. Let's pray for each other as we open God's word. Lord, would you fill us with your wisdom and knowledge and understanding, and then help us to walk more closely with you, trusting you with every part of our lives? In Jesus' name, amen.
Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Now last time we saw that the children of Israel were delivered out of the land of Egypt in the sense that that night they marched out. But they have not crossed the Red Sea. We'll get that, however, in the next chapter, chapter 14. But now they are leaving the land of Egypt and they are moving over toward the Red Sea. And I want to begin reading here in chapter 13. "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Sanctify unto me all the firstborn, whatsoever openeth the womb among the children of Israel, both of man and of beast: it is mine. And Moses said unto the people, Remember this day, in which ye came out from Egypt, out of the house of bondage; for by strength of hand the Lord brought you out from this place: there shall no leavened bread be eaten." As the children of Israel are now coming out of the land of Egypt, why they have this given to them of the Lord. The firstborn in Egypt died. The gods of Egypt claimed the firstborn. God, by the way, claims that. And we find that he sometimes comes off very badly today. He claims the first from believers today. And again, I think that a great many do not give him that place that he should have. It's very important, by the way, to get this tremendous message before us: that God claims the best, the very best, if you please. And here we find that he is claiming the firstborn. I think God claims the first in everything, and he wants to have first place in our lives. The problem has always been so many believers today put him last. They say, "If I have time, I'll do this for the Lord." And they don't have time because they've been giving time to something that is their own, something that was for their own personal interest or amusement. And there are those who say, "Yes, I'm going to give the Lord part of what I make if there's any left over." We always do that. I remember hearing Billy Sunday say years ago he was riding across the country with William Wrigley, the original William Wrigley, the man who really made the chewing gum and made the money from the chewing gum to begin with. And he was a Christian. And he told Billy Sunday on the train, he said, "I've always made it a practice in my life to give the Lord a tenth of everything that I make, and I don't give him the last tenth. I give him the first tenth." That's quite interesting of how God has blessed and prospered. And don't misunderstand me, God doesn't guarantee that to anyone. He hasn't promised that to anyone. But it's interesting how God has blessed men and women who have put him first. And when you put him first, may I say that that means you put him first. That's no mucking around, no compromising, no half-truth in saying that we put God first. He must come first. Now the children of Israel, just as they are on the wilderness march, they've just come out of Egypt. And remember they've been slaves. And God says to them, "The firstborn belongs to me." And immediately many of them could say, "Well look, Lord, you've just delivered us out of slavery and now you're already claiming one of ours." Well, the Lord Jesus does the same thing for you and me today. He saves us out of the bondage of sin and delivers us and sets us free. And he says if the Son make you free, you'll be free indeed. But wait just a moment. He also is saying that I want you to give yourself to me. Well, you say, "I'm free." You are. You don't have to. But the important thing is the blessing comes when we voluntarily come and put him first. That is something that they are having now to learn. I begin reading at verse five now of Exodus 13. "And it shall be when the Lord shall bring thee into the land of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, which he sware unto thy fathers to give thee, a land flowing with milk and honey, that thou shalt keep this service in this month." In other words, they were to observe the Passover feast and the feast of unleavened bread. Verse six: "Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, and in the seventh day shall be a feast to the Lord. Unleavened bread shall be eaten seven days; and there shall no leavened bread be seen with thee, neither shall there be leaven seen with thee in all thy quarters." Now frankly, when they came out of Egypt, you remember, they took their kneading boards and their dough that was on it, and it was leavened. God says, "I want you to get rid of that." They had to leave that back in the land of Egypt. "Unleavened bread shall be eaten seven days; and there shall no leavened bread be seen with thee, neither shall there be leaven seen with thee in all thy quarters. And thou shalt shew thy son in that day, saying, This is done because of that which the Lord did unto me when I came forth out of the land of Egypt." In other words, this is to be passed from generation to generation: that God had delivered them out of the land of Egypt. "It shall be for a sign unto thee upon thine hand, and for a memorial between thine eyes, that the Lord's law may be in thy mouth: for with a strong hand hath the Lord brought thee out of Egypt. Thou shalt therefore keep this ordinance in his season from year to year. And it shall be when the Lord shall bring thee into the land of the Canaanites, as he sware unto thee and to thy fathers, and shall give it thee, That thou shalt set apart unto the Lord all that openeth the matrix, and every firstling that cometh of a beast which thou hast; the males shall be the Lord's." Now the firstborn of all the stock that they had. That was true out in the field: that one-tenth and it was the first tenth belonged to the Lord. "And every firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb." You see, God didn't want one of these long-eared animals as an offering. It had to be the lamb. "And if thou wilt not redeem it, then thou shalt break his neck: and all the firstborn of man among thy children shalt thou redeem." They were to be redeemed, as we shall see later on, by silver. Silver was the redemption money. Now he goes on to talk to them along this line, and let's look at this because it's extremely interesting. "It shall be when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What is this? that thou shalt say unto him, By strength of hand the Lord brought us out from Egypt, from the house of bondage: And it came to pass, when Pharaoh would hardly let us go, that the Lord slew all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man, and the firstborn of beast: therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all that openeth the matrix, being males; but all the firstborn of my children I redeem. And it shall be for a token upon thine hand, and for frontlets between thine eyes: for by strength of hand the Lord brought us forth out of Egypt." Now this is to remind them that God had delivered them out of the land of Egypt and therefore the firstborn of their sons had to be redeemed by silver. We are told today that we're not redeemed by silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ. Now verse 17: "And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt." Now these people are just out of slavery, and they're not prepared for warfare at all. And the short way into the land, if you get your map and will note it, would be up the seacoast. It would be up by the Mediterranean Sea, and that would take them right into the land. You remember in the Six-Day War when Israel, you will recall, moved to the seacoast and they moved the Egyptians out? They just came right down the seacoast. Well, of course, they were prepared. They had the tanks and the planes to do it. But these people are just out of slavery and they do not have any instruments even to fight with. So God very graciously, notice how good he is to them, he takes them through the wilderness. It's a long route, but it will spare them from warfare. They'll not have to face an enemy until they do get into the land. Well, in 40 years, they will be equipped. They will have an army as we're going to see, and they'll be prepared. But they're not prepared at this time. And somebody says, "But God by miracle could have delivered them." True. But you see, there is today—I can't help but be sick when I see the attitude of some Christians. They feel like God's got to perform a miracle every minute for them and that you have a right to demand of the Lord that he intervene for you. If you're sick, he has to heal you and all that sort of thing. Well, my friend, he can do it. It's not a question of God's ability. It's always a question of the willingness of God and whether this is the way God wants to do it. Now God could have brought them through the land of the Philistines, but he didn't want them at this time to be engaged in warfare and come up against it for the very simple reason they were not equipped for it. He could have delivered them, and when it's necessary, God's prepared to perform a miracle for us, but only to accomplish his will and his way in our lives. How we need to keep that in mind. Now notice verse 18: "But God led the people about, through the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea: and the children of Israel went up harnessed out of the land of Egypt." Now that word "harnessed" is a very interesting word. I guess in the Elizabethan days that it probably was quite meaningful to those people. But "harnessed" to us just means that they really were put under a yoke again. But that's not it. The whole thought is they went up orderly. They did not come out of Egypt as a mob. They were organized. They came out. They didn't have an army, but they certainly were organized. And it means by five in a rank. They lined up five in a row. And if you had seen them going through the wilderness, you'd probably have seen the most orderly group that you have ever seen. Now there's something else that's quite interesting here. It says, "And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him: for he had straitly sworn the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you; and ye shall carry up my bones away hence with you." Now you will recall back in the book of Genesis, in fact it's in the last part of the book of Genesis, it's the 50th chapter, and at that time I called attention to it: that Joseph, when he died, he said unto his brethren, "I die: and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land unto the land which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence." Now that time has come. Quite a few years have gone by. At least 200 years have elapsed. And now there has arisen a Pharaoh who knew not Joseph. He's no longer the national hero in the land of Egypt. He was at the time he died, but he's not now. Joseph knew that that would be true. They couldn't take him out of the land of Egypt and bury him at the time he died. So Joseph said, "I want to be buried in that land." Now Moses took up the bones of Joseph to bury him in that land. Why remove his bones? What difference would it make if he's got a hope someday of being raised from the dead and taken up to heaven? Why, it wouldn't make any difference whether your launching pad was in Egypt or up in the land of Israel where he's buried up in the Ephraim country. Well, the fact of the matter is he expects to be raised in that land, for that land. For there is to be a resurrection of these people in that land for the millennium and then for eternity. That will be heaven for them, and that was the hope of Joseph. And this is the hope of Moses, you see. It's by faith that he does this. And then we're told, verse 20: "And they took their journey from Succoth, and encamped in Etham, in the edge of the wilderness." Now you'll find that they're moving now toward that wilderness, and it's a frightful wilderness. Now again, notice what God does in verse 21: "And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night: He took not away the pillar of cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people." Now these people crossed that hot and burning desert, and Moses himself called it a very frightening desert. But they went through it and they didn't even get sunburned, for they had a pillar of cloud over them by day. These people had something that no other nation has ever had, and this is the appearance of it now: and that is, they had the glory. And no other nation has ever had the visible presence of God. And that's the way that Paul, you'll recall, he defined the children of Israel. He raised the question, you'll recall, "Who are Israelites?" That's in Romans 9:4. "To whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory." These people had the glory, the visible presence of God. Now no nation has ever had that, and the church does not have the visible presence of God. And these people that talk today about they've had a vision and they've seen something. The thing to do is when you have a vision, and I'm sure many of us do at night—we have a very vivid dream—the thing to do is not to try to feel that God is speaking to us in it, but to find out what we had for dinner. That's the explanation for it. It's not God speaking to us. It's the fact that we ate something for dinner we should not have eaten, and that's the explanation of it. But the church has nothing visible given to it. We are blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies, and we walk by faith. You see, these people are walking looking to the coming of Christ. We look back to a historical event. And frankly, we do not need the visible presence of God to walk by faith. They did in that day because the redemption had not been worked out in history as it has for us today. So you see now God is making every preparation for every eventuality that will bring these people safely through the wilderness. That is the preparation that he's making. And actually, they're not really out of the land of Egypt. They are out of that fertile valley of the Nile, and they have now hit the desert and they are crossing over coming now to the Red Sea. And that brings us in chapter 14 to this particular section here, and I'm begin reading now in chapter 14. "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they turn and encamp before Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, over against Baal-zephon: before it shall ye encamp by the sea." Now I don't know about you, but I don't know where these places are. I take it that they are there between the Nile River where they left the land of Goshen and the Red Sea. They moved into that area. Now notice, though Pharaoh has let them go, he's still reluctant to let them go. Verse three: "For Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, They are entangled in the land, the wilderness hath shut them in." Now he had of course spies watching their movement, and a movement of two and a half million people would be very difficult to conceal anyway. Now he expected them to go up the coast route through the land of the Philistines. Now they have headed out toward this wilderness, and frankly Pharaoh thinks they're lost, that they don't know where they're going, that no one would attempt to go through that dreadful wilderness. Now notice God says that when he sees that, why he'll think the children of Israel are trapped, and he's going to go after them. Again, you see he let them go reluctantly. Verse four: "And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, that he shall follow after them; and I will be honoured upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host; that the Egyptians may know that I am the Lord. And they did so." Now you would think that what had already happened was enough, but believe me, something even more profound is going to take place that will convince the Egyptians. And now verse five: "It was told the king of Egypt that the people fled: the heart of Pharaoh and of his servants was turned against the people, and they said, Why have we done this, that we have let Israel go from serving us? And he made ready his chariot, and took his people with him: And he took six hundred chosen chariots, and all the chariots of Egypt, and captains over every one of them." So that the host of Egypt is going with 600 chariots. Now you can imagine what 600 chariots would do to a poor, helpless, defenseless people, and especially women and children and cattle. Why they would make havoc of them and make hash of them all also. Now "the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued after the children of Israel: and the children of Israel went out with an high hand. But the Egyptians pursued after them, all the horses and chariots of Pharaoh, and his horsemen, and his army, and overtook them encamping by the sea, beside Pi-hahiroth, before Baal-zephon. And when Pharaoh drew nigh, the children of Israel lifted up their eyes, and, behold, the Egyptians marched after them; and they were sore afraid: and the children of Israel cried out unto the Lord." Now this is the proper place for me to stop today because this is what you do with a continued story. Here is the Red Sea ahead of them, the host of Egypt back of them, and these poor defenseless people are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. How are they going to get over? Well, we'll just have to stop there today and we'll find out next time. May God richly bless you, my beloved.
Steve Schwetz: Have you ever been caught between the devil and the deep blue sea? You know, most of us have been there at one time or another. And maybe you're feeling that way right now. Maybe you thought that you were following the Lord's direction, but now you feel stuck and frustrated and really unsure which way to turn. Well, there is an answer. You can turn to God, cast your burden on him, and trust him to deliver you. For more great instruction from God's word as you face life's uncertainties, why don't you go to our app or visit ttb.org and download Dr. McGee's free digital booklet, *How to Have Peace in Anxious Times*? In it, you're going to find that Dr. McGee reminds us that peace is found not in the absence of trouble—that's not going to happen until we're in glory—but in the presence of God. When anxiety does press in, God invites us to bring everything to him in prayer and then promises a peace that stands guard over our hearts and minds. And honestly, couldn't we all use a little more of that kind of peace? And while you're at ttb.org, why don't you check out a wide variety of ministry resources we make available, including our monthly newsletter that shares really good teaching from Dr. McGee as well as stories of what God's doing around the world as his word's taught? Again, you'll find us at ttb.org or just call us, 1-800-65-BIBLE. Now as we go, I've got a quick thank you for those that are praying for the people being impacted worldwide through this systematic study of God's word. Your prayer support is vital. And if the Lord prompts you to financially support the ministry, as Dr. McGee used to say, to put some gas in the tank or maybe a new set of tires for the bus, we'd welcome that too. Find out more about how you can invest in this fruitful ministry by calling 1-800-65-BIBLE. You can visit us online at ttb.org or connect with us through our app. Thanks again for your company on the Bible Bus. I'm Steve Schwetz, and I'll meet you back here next time as we continue gleaming great truths from God's word. Our journey on the Bible Bus today is supported by the prayers and gifts of fellow passengers as we travel through the Bible.