Exodus 13-14: Examples, Part II

 Big Idea: Follow God’s direction when it isn’t easy.

I was in a church back in the 1990s that tended to be very insular and cliquey. It is hard to penetrate the relationships and friend groups of such churches. I remember how they were praying for, and stating so from the pulpit, that a member would not have to be transferred for his/her job to a city in North Carolina. The members treated it as if moving was the worst possible thing that could happen to this person. In the end I think they got out of it, but I’m still mystified why such a big deal was made of it. What if this was actually a beneficial step in the person’s life? What if God had something better for them? What if it would have meant personal, financial, spiritual, or social growth? This church purported to believe in missions—wasn’t that a form of mission?

It’s an odd example, but to me it’s analogous to the Israelites’s situations. Common sense would have said, follow the Via Maris, the coastal trade route, and get to the promised land of the Canaanites in two weeks (well, it would have been longer with that many people, but the Via Maris was the I-75 of that day). Instead, they went through the Sinai—“wilderness” to us means the Rocky Mountain National Park, but it was the desert. And that trip ended up forty years longer because they refused to enter “the land flowing with milk and honey.” 

Sometimes the less obvious, less easy, less direct, less convenient way is God’s way. It’s better for us, and it’s better for Him to show his glory in our weakness, a concept that is so un-American and so hard for me to understand that I am reluctant to type it. Do we ever pray for God to use our weakness and insufficiency, or do we only want our “talents” to be used? 

I find the reverse, as well. We look at others and say, “what have they gone through?” and look at ourselves and see our difficulties as bigger than they are. This is called the fundamental attribution error in psychology. It’s a trap and a barrier to fellowship. We don’t know what others have gone through, or will go through, and how they processed it, until they tell us. Until they do, I refer you to John 21:20-23, where Jesus basically tells Peter to mind his own business about John’s future.

Comparisons lead to complaints, which is where we find the Israelites in 14:10-20. “What, there weren’t enough graves in Egypt (the land of the death cult!) that you brought us out here to die? Pretty sarcastic! “We were better off as slaves.” Comparisons with others and with past circumstances lead to complaints, and complaints lead to so much more.

Moses has a simple answer that speaks today: Do not fear (that being our basic human state); stand firm (don’t take erratic, unheedful, foolish action), and be quiet.  Why? So you can see what God will do.

I need that today; I’m in an entrenched situation and unsure what to do. I want to run ahead; perhaps I should only ask God to act.

The outcome, of course, was deliverance, which meant the destruction of that part of Pharoah’s army pursuing them. I don’t like allegories, so this is not some “our enemies will be slaughtered” at which point we have to figure out what or who our enemies are. More on that in Part III.