The Lord will Fight for You - Exodus 14

The Exodus journey has incredible, practical spiritual application for us. It is one of the most powerful and amazing displays of the Lord's goodness, care, and mercy on His people. Yet it is also fraught with fear, complaining, frustration, anger, and idolatry from His people. As you listen today, consider these three questions: 

• What is your familiar enemy - the one that comes against you and causes you fear, but is also the one thing you run back to when it gets hard walking with the Lord?
• See the provision of the Lord where you are. What paths have you taken that you thought were crazy or out of the way, led you into wilderness, then saw the hand of the Lord in it?
• Where is the Lord showing you to stand firm and be quiet before Him, waiting patiently on His deliverance?

The Lord desires for us to come to Him with all that concerns us. In repentances, in petition, in worship, in lament, and in joy we can commune with the Lord. However, there are times when we must lay all these things before Him and quiet our hearts and minds to hear His voice. To discern His leading. Today, I'm challenging you, and myself, to trust that the Lord will fight for us, He will give us eyes to see our salvation, but we need to silence ourselves and wait on Him. 

Scriptures Referenced:

• Exodus 3, 13, 14
• Ephesians 6:10-18
• Luke 11
• Matthew 25
• 2 Corinthians 6, 10
• Hebrews 13:5

You can find me on Instagram / Threads

Transcript

Carrie 0:06

Hey everyone, happy Wednesday. Welcome to a new episode of Honey from the Rock. I am so glad you're here. And I am so excited to jump right into the episode today because I am always looking forward to what the Lord is going to reveal about his character to us, the ways that he is going to show us how to follow him and walk in his way and how to know him better and in knowing him better and deepening our union with him, how we can love those around us more deeply and rightly according to truth and grace and love and accountability in his word. And, you know, also deal with some of the things in life that are difficult, some of the sin that really nags at us and can sometimes be difficult to overcome. And I'm actually going to tackle those things in the context of Exodus 14. And there are a few things that I want you to consider as I start going through this. Questions that I am asking myself and places that the Lord is dealing with me and stirring the waters of my heart in areas where I need deliverance and I need freedom. And so as I go through Exodus 14, here are some questions I want you to think about. What is a familiar enemy in your life? And I mean that in the context of what is something that you have wrestled with or been enslaved to that still comes back against you and causes you fear? And yet it's also the thing that you run back to when it gets hard to walk with the Lord. So that's the first question. My second question is where can you see the provision of the Lord in your life right now? And I take this in the context of what are paths in your life that you have taken, that you have walked, that you thought were crazy or out of the way, and they ended up leading you into the wilderness. And yet it's the very place that you saw the deliverance of the Lord in your life, saw his freedom, saw him move in an amazing way that you could never have planned for. It's something in your life, maybe that people look at and they say, you know what, that couldn't have happened except for the Lord. And then my last question is where is the Lord showing you to stand firm and be quiet before him, waiting patiently on his deliverance? So as we keep those questions in mind, I want to talk about Exodus 14 today. And this chapter came to my attention. It's one that I have read before. And, you know, sometimes you you read things and you take them one way, and then you go back and read it again. And it's like the Lord just opens up details or things that you just skimmed over the first or second or fifteenth time that you read it. But today I was reading Exodus 14 in a uh devotional that I'm doing with my mom and my friend Gina in U version. And talking about the walking, this devotional is all about walking the Lord's path, walking it with him. I think I'm remembering that correctly. That's the general gist. Um, but but the particular verse that that this devo highlighted was Exodus 14, 14, which many times we quote, uh, and and it's translated in many, you know, ESV, NASB, I think King James, New King James, as the Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still. And in doing research on this verse today, I, you know, you read that one sentence and it's powerful. It's a powerful sentence. The Lord will fight for you, you just need to stand still. But when you read that verse in the greater context in which it comes, it's even more powerful. But before we get to what that verse really means, and of course, guys, you know, I've done a word study today. I've done, I've done some digging, I've been reading some commentaries, and I think by the end of today's episode, my prayer is that we are all so encouraged and reminded that the Lord, that the Lord is for us, that he does fight for us. But in fighting for us, there are things that he requires of us in our own walk of freedom. And we see that in the Israelites' journey of Exodus um and and into into the promised land. So before I go through Exodus 14, which I know last week I said I wasn't gonna re read all of Psalm 103, and then I read all of Psalm 103, I am not going to read all of Exodus 14. You are welcome. I care about you guys, so I'm not gonna put you through that for a lot of reasons, but I will tell you one of the major ones is there are a few names and cities in there that are hard to pronounce that I'll probably end up trying to announce, pronounce anyway. You're welcome. Anyway, but I would I what I would I want to do is I've kind of outlined Exodus 14 and some of the events that happen in Exodus 13. And I would again always, always, always, always highly encourage you to go and read these chapters for yourselves. So let me set the stage for what is going on in Exodus 14. And to do that, we need to go peek back at Exodus 13. So where the Israelites are in Exodus 14 is at the edge of the Red Sea. But how did they get there? What has happened? And like I said, for that, let's go back to Exodus 13. So the Israelites have landed here because of the Lord's miraculous deliverance of them as a nation from the hands of Pharaoh. The last of the ten plagues have happened, which is the angel of death has come and has killed the firstborn son of anyone that did not have the blood of the lamb over their doorposts. The angel of death passed over Israel. And in Exodus 13, Moses gives them the command to remember Passover and lays out what the feast of Passover is going to look like for them throughout generations. And as he's doing that, he tells them and reminds them that the first fruit of the womb, whether it's a woman or whether it's an animal, the firstborn is um to be consecrated to the Lord. And that is in the context of Passover. As the Lord saved the firstborn of Israel because of the blood of the Lamb, now every firstborn, every firstborn later on he says firstborn male, but in Exodus 13, one or two, I can't remember, it's it's the firstborn of the womb, whether it is human, whether it is an animal, is consecrated to him. And as as he is, he lays out, Moses lays out the Passover guidelines, how this feast is going to look. And then it's it's time to go. It's time for Israel to leave Egypt and to be free. And so I love the details in Exodus 13 because Moses gives us a glimpse, I think, into how the Lord was leading Israel, and and maybe they were conversations Moses was having with the Lord. I don't want to add to or take away from scripture, but I just think the way he phrases it is so interesting. Because Moses tells us that after the feast guidelines of Passover were laid down, the Lord leads them out of Egypt, but he didn't lead them toward the land of the Philistines. Why? Because to go up through the land of the Philistines, which is Gaza, Ashkelon, um, several other places, the five fortified cities of of Philistia, is actually the easier way. It was a shorter way. It would have taken them probably about two weeks to get from where they were in Egypt up into the promised land. However, the land of Philistia was already known as an incredibly strong, fortified uh territory. And they were fierce people of war. And so Moses tells us that he didn't lead them toward the land of the Philistines because he thought that the people would change their minds if they experienced war at this point. Which does the Lord know his people, or does the Lord know his people? Because we are gonna see very shortly why the Lord thought that. So what so the and but the people were not ready. They were not ready to face that kind of war. It would have taken them from just being afraid into complete and total fear and turning around and running back to slavery and actually doing it. So Moses tells us that the Lord led the people around by the way of the wilderness to the Red Sea. And as I was reading this, what really struck me was the thought, you know, it goes back to the question I one of the questions I was asking at the beginning, you know, what are ways that you took that you've walked with the Lord where you're like, this is crazy, or this is the wilderness, and this is difficult. Lord, that way over there looks so much easier. And yet in walking the Lord's path, all of a sudden, or in time, or in looking back and remembering, you see, oh my gosh, Lord, I never thought I would say this, but thank you for leading me through the wilderness. Thank you for challenging me in the desert. Thank you for using these things to not only draw me closer and deeper with you, but to deal with the things within me that are displeasing to you, to free me from certain things that I could not have be been freed from if I had gone a different way. And that's really what hit me reading Exodus 13 and and the Lord taking, deliberately taking his people through the wilderness. Because the way that they on the map that looked easier actually would have been detrimental to them. And the Lord led them through the wilderness. And how many times for us I can say in my own life, you know, that I have walked in the wilderness with the Lord and have come out the other side and and thanked him for it because I learned his ways of deliverance, I learned his ways of freedom, I learned his goodness and his faithfulness. I experienced um his cleansing of the temple that um my body is, you know, just the freedom from sin and and the Lord, what pleases the Lord and what doesn't please him. And often we don't understand that when we're going right into the wilderness at first, especially when we find ourselves like the Israelites, backed into a place where it looks like there's no way we're going to be delivered and our enemy is all up in our face. Those are the times that we act exactly like Israel. And so I just see see the spiritual layer over Exodus, even though this is a very real historical event that happened. There is so much spiritual application for us. And I love that throughout scripture we see that the wilderness prepares us and the Lord uses it because he puts us in places where we can only experience his deliverance over our familiar enemies, which, you know, again, those are the ones we need to overcome. And we can experience his move for us in victory while also purging the sins that so easily beset us. I mean, it's the the wilderness is where we learn discipline. And so to finish up Exodus 13, just a couple of other things of note. Moses fulfilled the wish and prophecy of Joseph by taking his bones uh with Israel so that he would eventually be buried in the land of his fathers, be buried in the promised land. And also the Lord has very specific ways that he then manifests himself to Israel. He this is where we learn about the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. And these manifestations were with Israel throughout their entire time in the desert. And I love it because as I was reading it, it reminded me of the verse from Hebrews 13, which where um the writer talks about the fact that the Lord says that he will never leave us or forsake us. You know, you think about the account of the Israelites in the wilderness, the the complaining and and the murmuring against the Lord at Meribah, the disbelief, the unbelief that they exhibited towards him when 10 spies came back and said, This land is crazy. And two of them were like, This is the land that the Lord's given us, and it's awesome. Let's go. Um, and then they had to wander for 40 years. In the midst of all of that, in the rising and the falling, and and the Israelites also having to live out the consequence of their disobedience. The Lord was still with them, even though he had to discipline them, even though they provoked his anger. Um, and and there were so many times too where he was pleased to provide for them. Um, but we get this pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. The other thing that I think is really interesting, and it's reiterated in chapter 14, is that Moses tells us that um that Israel left Egypt in battle formation. That's that's again, that's how it's translated in our English translations from the land of Egypt. But as I was reading a couple of commentaries, um, this doesn't necessarily mean that they left armed and ready for war, right? That would contradict the Lord's concern to say if I take them to Philistia, they're gonna experience war. They're not ready for that, they'll turn tail and run. But really, what it means, what the Lord's trying to show us, is that his people did not flee Egypt as fugitives in disarray. That's how Kyle and Delich, um, some commentators from I think the 18th or 19th century put it. Um, no, they left in order. They didn't leave like they were turning tail and running out of there because they were afraid that the Egyptians were going to change their mind, which spoiler they do. But they left decently and in order with the spoils of Egypt given to them and led by Moses, ready to march forward into freedom. So these are kind of the things that we need to have in mind as we look at Exodus 14. And I love that Exodus 14 really does happen in a bunch of chunks. And I love how clear and precise the Lord is in his instruction to Moses, how faithful Moses is to give that instruction to the people of Israel, and also how we see what the Lord has prophesied will happen come to fruition. So the first chunk of Exodus 14 is where the Lord tells Moses how to maneuver the Israelites. So they've come down, they're down into the wilderness, they're and all of a sudden they're at the Red Sea. And the Lord is very detailed in how he wants the Israelites to camp now that they're at the Red Sea. And from what I understand in my study is that there was the Red Sea at their backs, and then there was also massive mountains and craggy hills surrounding them. And so they were really locked in. But the Lord is specific, and he tells them to turn back, so whichever way they had been walking, they were close enough together at sea, but the Lord wants them to turn back a little bit and camp at Pi Hyroth between Migdal and the sea. And they were to camp actually come directly opposite a city called Baalzephon. And so most of these cities actually can't be found today. People aren't quite sure where they're placed on the map, but I did see with with Baal Zephon that it is actually what they do believe is that it was a city where one of the major Egyptian deities was set up. So it was symbolic of a of idolatry and and demonic activity and that kind of thing. And the Lord says, you set up your camp right across from the city. And again, just the words that the Holy Spirit gives Moses to describe how Israel left Egypt, right? So they've been marching and they're coming out. They left in battle formation, which again doesn't mean necessarily armed and ready to fight, but they left in it orderly. They left orderly and and and weren't running screaming. Um, but Moses also tells us that Israel left Egypt boldly. So they saw the works of the Lord, they knew that he was working to deliver them, and they left bold a face, which just in the Hebrew means raised up. They were uplifted, they were in a sim symbol of might, right? And I loved this quote from the topical lexicon that says, at the very birth moment of the nation, Israel is not portrayed as a disorderly mob fleeing oppression, but as a disciplined host leaving Egypt under God's command. Chamush, which is the word for bold, I believe, um, underscores that redemption carries with it the call to readiness. Let me say that again. Chemush underscores that redemption carries with it the call to readiness. Even before Sinai, the people are organized for holy warfare against the coming challenges in Canaan. And and, you know, that last sentence, like they're they're baby prepared, right? Like they're toddlers just learning how to walk, kind of right. But I love, I love that idea that this this word, this boldness, underscore redemption carries with it the call to readiness. When we are redeemed, we are we are redeemed by Jesus from the state that we find ourselves in, right? The sin that has lifted us up, the our pride, our jealousy, our envy, our bitterness, our unforgiveness, our sexual immorality, our addiction, whether it's to drugs or alcohol or food or um to you know other things of the flesh, our our idolatry, our covetousness, um, our self-defensiveness and our insecurities, all of those things in various forms in each of our lives are where Jesus finds us and he redeems us. But as he redeems us, right, he in Psalms, David says, You plucked my feet out of the miry clay and you set me upon a rock, right? Jesus doesn't just deliver us and then pat us on the head and send us on our way. No, he lifts us out and he puts us in a place of stability in him. And that's something that we grow in and that we mature in as we grow in sanctification and walking with the Lord and know him deeper and deeper and deeper as we are experiencing his forgiveness and cleansing as we repent and deal with our sin and we we dig into his word and we seek him and pursue him because he has sought us and pursued us. And so when we're called and we're redeemed by the Lord, he first does it because he loves us and he wants to see us reconciled to him. He he delights in us, he wants us with him, but also he puts us in a place of readiness because this walk and way with Jesus is a war. And that imagery is used throughout all of scriptures. And obviously, we know about Ephesians 6, we should know about 2 Corinthians 10, um, we should know about 2 Corinthians 6. Um, obviously, and Jesus, I mean, the amount of times Jesus talks about, you know, wrestling the strongman. I think it's Luke 11. This this walk is a war. And so redemption, the Lord redeems us, but he also prepares us and makes us ready to to walk on this narrow path, which brings a lot of opposition. And so the Lord tells Moses has has the Israelites settled, you know, in between these places, wherever they are on the map. And then he tells them, he tells Moses that Pharaoh is gonna wake up and it's gonna be like, why have we let these people go? I don't understand. They're gonna change their mind. And in changing their mind, they are all of a sudden going to say, What are they doing? Why are they camped there? They're wandering aimlessly. That means they're right for the picking. Let's go get them. And that's exactly what Pharaoh does. But what the Lord says in this process is, I'm going to harden Pharaoh's heart, which this is, I mean, the Lord has said this several times about Pharaoh. Pharaoh's going to harden his heart, harden his heart, harden his heart. And then it changes to where the Lord says, Now I'm going to, I'm the one who's going to. Harden Pharaoh's heart. Why? Because he wouldn't turn to me. He had opportunities to cease hardening his heart and turn to me, and he wouldn't do it. And so here once again, the Lord is saying, I'm going to harden Pharaoh's heart. But what does the Lord say after that? I will be honored through Pharaoh and all of his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord. And isn't that amazing? Because how many times throughout all 10 plagues in the earlier chapters of Exodus does the Lord say that? You know, he wants, he, he wants to get glory for himself. He wants the Egyptians to know that he is the Lord. And I I forgive me if I I can't remember exactly if it talks about it in Exodus. And I can't remember if this is part of just the the oral tradition of the Exodus from old rabbis and stuff, but I think there were Egyptians. Yeah, there were Egyptians that went with Israel out of Egypt and into the wilderness, wanting to go to the promised land. Honestly, the reason why I was confused for a second is because all of a sudden I was thinking about the Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston. And while that is an excellent biblical epic, it's not super accurate in some places. So things were getting a little twisted in my mind. So now, so the Lord has said the Egyptians are going to do this, they're going to know that I'm the Lord. And then the next chunk of verses, verses five through nine, um, show exactly that. Now all of a sudden, here comes Egypt, here comes Pharaoh with all of his chariots. I mean, he outlines like there's chariots, there's officers in these chariots, there's specialized chariots, there's horsemen, there's soldiers. And when I was talking with my mom about this, I it really struck me because it it mirrored to me how Paul describes the um the demonic um principalities and powers in Ephesians 6. And what it also brought to mind is a Jackie Hill Perry song. And I can't remember which one it is right now, but she says in it, there's, man, there's level to them, there's levels to them devils. This ain't checkers, this is chess. And it's so true because when Paul talks about the the principalities that come against us, he says that it's rulers, it's powers, the world forces of this darkness, spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places. And it it just the way that Moses described Pharaoh and his chariots coming after Israel, it mirrored it for me. Um, he took 600 select chariots, all the other chariots of Egypt with officers, um, horses and chariots, his horsemen and his army. I mean, there's all kinds of people geared up for war, and they race towards Israel by the sea. And here's where it starts to get interesting, and this is where Exodus 14, 14 comes into context. So Israel's gone out boldly, right? We see that. They've been lifted up, they they are confident the Lord's got their back. They are they've left orderly, they haven't been running like a bunch of banshees, you know, like chickens with their head cut off. Oh, we're free, we're running around and we're running away. No, they left in decently and in order. But now, now they see where they've camped, and all of a sudden they've looked behind them and who's coming. Their old, familiar enemy, Pharaoh and Egypt. And instead of remembering what the Lord had done for them in the ten plagues, how he had literally just redeemed them and had them walking orderly out of Egypt. It hadn't been that long ago. They see Pharaoh coming and they lose it. They look at Moses and they're like, What have you done to us? They are frightened. And I am not saying that that is not an understandable feeling because I've experienced that, and that was why it was one of the questions that I asked at the beginning. What is a familiar enemy? The one that has come against you and come against you and causes you to fear, but is also the one thing that you run back to when it gets hard to walk with the Lord. And here's why I'm asking that. And I've asked it of myself, and I'm asking it of you. Because when Israel sees Pharaoh and Egypt coming after them, they turn around and they start accusing Moses and they start accusing the Lord of wanting them to die in the wilderness. You know, basically they they're like, is there be is it because there were no graves in Egypt that you've taken us away to die in the wilderness? Why have you dealt with us this way in bringing us out of Egypt? And then they lie. Didn't we say that we just want to stay, leave us alone so that we can serve in Egypt? We want to just stay. We don't want to be free. Which is the reason why I say it's a lie, is because I believe it's Exodus 3, where the Lord shows up to Moses in the burning bush, and he says, I have heard the cries of my people. The cries of my people longing to be delivered and to be free. And now they're saying, We didn't want this. You know, it and we've all done it. We've begged for freedom from the Lord in a particular area. We fought and we've wrestled. And as the Lord starts leading us into the path of freedom, we start to experience opposition, right? We start to experience warfare. It is, it is a fight to overcome ourselves. It is a fight to pick up the cross that Jesus appoints us every day. It's a fight to cause our flesh, as as Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 9, to bring our flesh into subjection. And when he's talking about that there, he's not just saying, okay, flesh, you know, it's time for you to be quiet. You just need to settle down and you need to submit to Jesus. No, he is using the language of a wrestler and a gladiator. Like I stomp my I am, I am, I am jamming my flesh down to the ground and I'm stepping my foot on the jugular. So that stops getting back up and messing me around to do what the, you know, because I'm gonna do what the Lord's called me to do and I'm not gonna let my flesh win. And but here in Egypt, here, well, here with Egypt pursuing them, you know, Israel is is losing it. And right, they said it would be better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness. And this right here is the perfect example as to why the Lord was like, you know, I'm not gonna take them through Philistia because if they have to engage in actual war, they're not ready. They're not ready to do that. They are not prepared to go into an actual war. And so I'm gonna lead them into the wilderness because I'm going to continue to show them my desire to deliver them. And again, it just shows how faithful the Lord is. And again, it shows us how deeply, obviously, the Lord knows us, and how many times we don't accurately know ourselves and we don't know the desires and intents of our own heart. And so Moses is standing there, he's got the children of Israel freaking out, and he's like, All right, people, here's where we're at. You need to stop accusing the Lord of this cruelty, right? And and sometimes, again, just relating it to my own life, there have been, you know, can we cry out to the Lord and ask him why he's doing things? Absolutely. But we have to be careful and not accuse the Lord of doing things that violate his word and go against his nature. You know, when the Lord tells us the parable of the talents in Matthew 25, what does he say about the last servant who buries his talent in the ground? And when he's called to account, the Lord, you know, the master asks him, Why did you bury this talent in the ground? Why didn't you put it in the bank, or at least would have gained interest? And what does the that last servant say to him? I knew you were a hard master. How did he know that? The master had been generous to him, he had given him a whole talent to work with. But because for various reasons, I'm sure the servant decided that he was just going to bury it in the ground and not work with it and use it as the other two did, he found himself in a bind when the master of the house comes back. And and and we have to we have to be careful. We can ask the Lord why he's choosing to do things. We can groan and we can lament and and and we can absolutely grieve. I'm not saying that, but we need to be careful to not accuse the Lord of being cruel, to be to not accuse him of being anything that goes against who he has revealed himself to be in his word. And that's exactly what the Israelites were doing. The Lord had put on full display his desire for their freedom. He had worked miracles on miracles, on miracles for them. He had sent plague after plague, and in those plagues, he had preserved them. He had kept them from many of those plagues. And this whole entire time, they know that they're being led by the Lord. But now at this first test, they turn around and they start accusing him. You just wanted us to die in the wilderness. And they're accusing Moses, right? The Lord's servant. You just brought us out here to die. What's wrong with you? And so while fear and frustration in the wilderness are very understandable emotions, we also need to be very careful about how we address the Lord because He still deserves our reverence. He still deserves our worship. He still deserves our absolute love and adoration. And obviously, scripture gives us a lot of pictures of people crying out and lamenting. Um, but I think the lesson here is in our fear, it's so important to not accuse the Lord of things that he is not. And we don't know the things that he is, and we don't know the things that he isn't if we're not in his word and pursuing him every day. So Moses is now dealing with these very frightened people who are freaking out and they want to turn around and they wish that they had stayed in Egypt. And what does Moses, what does Moses stay, say to them? I love this. He says, Do not fear, stand by and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will perform for you today. For the Egyptians whom you have seen today, you will never see them again, ever. And then he says the verse that we that is often quoted The Lord will fight to you while you keep silent. And that's in the NASB. So here is the is is Moses' response to the people, right? They've accused the Lord of bringing them into a worse situation, which is actually the path to freedom, than the situation that they were in, which was complete and total bondage and slavery to Egypt. You know, and I can't remember if it was last week. I think it was last week. Maybe it was, I can't remember. When I was talking about Christine Cain and her example of the healing being worse than the actual surgery, that's literally what the Israelites are going through right now. They're seeing what they're walking through, the path to freedom as worse than where they were. But but what Moses says to the Israelites is so key for verse 14. So verse 13, he says, stand firm. In the Hebrew, it says, it means stationing oneself and taking a stand, especially of standing quiet and passive to see the mighty deliverance of the Lord, which again reminded me of Ephesians 6. Because how many times does the does Paul tell us in Ephesians 6 to stand firm? Right? I mean, he he tells us, be strong in the Lord and the strength of his might. Put on the full armor of God so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, and he lists out all the rulers, all the demonic, all the, you know, all the forms and levels that the devil takes. Therefore, take up the full armor of God so that you will be able to resist on the evil day, and having done everything to stand firm. Stand firm, therefore, having belted your waist with the truth, put on the blessed breastplate of righteousness, and having strapped on your feet the preparation of the gospel of peace, in addition to all taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. I just love the correlation between these two passages. Moses, stand firm and watch, see the salvation of the Lord. He is going to work on your behalf. And then he says, The Lord will fight for you while you keep silent. And this is where I really felt the Lord leading me and also showing me in my own life a principle that I really need to take into my heart and into practice in my union with him. So I know I've I've talked about it a lot in this episode, and I've talked about it a lot throughout the first 22 episodes of this podcast. You know, how much we need to cast our anxieties for the Lord. We pray without ceasing. Um, you know, ask, seek, and knock, just all the ways that scripture shows us that we can commune with the Lord and communicate with him. But communication is a two-way street. And I think often, and I have, I can absolutely own this in my own life, when I talk about praying and talking to the Lord, there's an awful lot of verbal vomit that comes out of my mouth. Right. And it's not that the Lord doesn't want me to come to him and to express my heart, to confess and to wrestle and to ask him for things and to pray his word. He wants all of that, but he also wants me to listen. And I think that's actually one of the biggest keys in Exodus 14 to take away is that when the enemy came up, Israel lost their mind. They started freaking out, they started accusing the Lord, they start accusing Moses. And what is Moses's command to them? Stand firm and be quiet. Be quiet. So this word, this stand firm in because standing firm and being quiet in in these two verses are very intimately related. So the the Hebrew word for stand form appears about 48 times, and it shows a deliberate positioning of people, armies, or even the Lord Himself taking a fixed intentional stance. The context falls naturally into covenant administration, military engagements, worship, judicial scenes, and prophetic expectation. Together they underscore that true stability is found only where God places a person or a nation. The theology of this word, this Hebrew word for stand firm, weaves through scripture like a firm foundation. And I love this. Whether in covenant, conflict, worship, or prophecy, God establishes, God sustains, and God vindicates all who take their stand at his command. And he connects it with stand firm and see the salvation of the Lord. And salvation, I mean, this, oh my gosh, you guys, this is so amazing. The salvation, this word in the Hebrew weaves through the Old Testament as a multifaceted testimony to the Lord's rescuing power, whether that's historical, moral, or eschatological. Rooted in the Exodus, affirmed in Israel's monarchy, prayed for in exile, and promised by the prophets, this term finds its climactic fulfillment in Jesus Christ and its sure application to all who trust him. And both of those definitions are out of the topical lexicon. And I just, I love it. So Moses says, stand firm and see the salvation of the Lord. He's going to work for you today. This enemy whom you have been fighting, who has been pursuing you, who now makes you feel like you are cornered and there is no way out, guess what? The Lord is going to eradicate them today. But you know what you need to do? You need to be quiet and you need to stand as the Lord fights for you. And I was talking about it earlier. There are many things that we need to do, things that we need to obey the Lord in, in walking out the path of freedom and seeing the Lord deliver us and cleanse us from sin and from bondage. And sometimes obedience looks like simply standing firm, trusting the Lord, and being quiet. And I say that in the context of here in Exodus 14, the Lord had already spoken and told, told the people, told Israel, told Moses what he was going to do. The whole point of them coming out of Egypt was to be delivered. And they had seen the faithful hand of the Lord again and again and again. I love the interlinear translation that's on Biblehub.com says, Yahweh will fight for you and you shall hold your peace. And this word silence, charash, um, it is an interesting word. Um and it has several different meanings. But we are called part of what it means is that we are called to harness our silence in service to the Lord, right? Who both guides and plows and honors the quiet heart. I really liked what Matthew Henry had to say about it. He said, Compose yourselves. This was his encouragement to people reading his commentary. Compose yourselves by confidence in God into peaceful thoughts of the great salvation. God is about to work for you. If God brings his people into straits, he will find a way to bring them out. And this ties into the other question that I was um asking at the beginning. Where is the Lord showing you to stand firm and be quiet before him, waiting patiently on his deliverance? Because, friends, what the Lord does to deliver his people is magnificent. I'll go through this quickly and then I'll be done. But again, I encourage you to go and read this for yourself. So after Moses tells the people to see that the Lord is going to fight with them, they only need to be quiet, they need to be still. The Lord then says, Why are you crying out to me? And when I was reading commentaries, they they all said, you know, Moses didn't put in what he said to the Lord, but obviously the Lord is hearing everything that's going on, right? Even if he weren't with them in a in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, the Lord is omnipresent, he is hearing all of this. So he says to Moses, Why are you crying out to me? Tell the sons of Israel to go forward. And I love that. You know, Moses gives us this picture of you need to, we're this is where we're at. This is where the Lord has put us, and we are going to stand firm and we're going to be quiet and wait for the Lord to fight for us. And how does the Lord tell Moses that he's going to fight for them? He tells the people of Israel to start moving forward towards the sea. And then he commands Moses to stretch out his hand over the sea, and it will become dry land. It's going to rise up on the right hand. On the left, but it will be dry land for Israel to walk through. And again, I said the Lord said it twice. He says, I'm going to harden the hearts of Pharaoh and the Egyptians so that they'll go in after them. I'm, you know, the Lord's essentially saying, I'm going to give them over to the desires of their heart, but they're also going to experience the consequence of not listening to me, of not seeing my glory and my splendor and my power and my holiness. You know, because the plagues were also an opportunity for the Egyptians to repent and come to the Lord. They could have come to the Lord because later the Lord makes provisions in the law for the sojourner, for the foreigner to come to him and be a part of his nation. And so I'm going to harden their hearts, but I will be honored through him, and people are going to see my glory. And it's true, the further the Israelites go, they, you know, they travel to get to the promised land. They hit different, they hit Midian, they travel through Moab, they travel or past Moab, they don't go through it. Um, but different cities, people have heard about what the Lord has done for them in Egypt. He has heard, they've heard about what the Lord did to the Egyptians to free his people. And it strikes fear into people's hearts. They're like, we don't want to mess with you people. And then other nations don't care and want to go to war. We can talk about that another time. But here's what I love. And this is the other really important part that I wanted to say. Then Moses tells us that the angel of the Lord who had been going before the camp of Israel moved from in front of them and goes behind them. And the pillar of cloud moves from before them to go behind them and sits between Israel and Egypt all night. This is happening in the middle of the night. But I love it. Many times when you see the phrase, the angel of the Lord, it is a theophany, which is a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus in the Old Testament. So he had been going before them. Now he comes and he stands between his beloved Israel, his beloved people, and the Egyptians who are pursuing them. And so Moses stretches his hand over the Red Sea and he parts the sea. It says that he sends in a strong east wind to dry the bed of the sea so that Israelites can walk on dry land. And so here, there goes Israel. And if you've seen The Prince of Egypt, which I just absolutely love, oh my gosh, it's so good. It's one of my most favorite animated films of all time. I love how they portray this because they do show it in the middle of the night. The people walking through the Red Sea. And I love it because it shows the walls of the water up. And it did flashes of lightning and that kind of thing. And as they do it, there's there's this shadows and silhouettes of fish and and and whales and stuff in this. It's just so cool. It's so brilliantly and beautifully animated. Anyway, so Israel starts going across, and then I love this. I love this. So Israel's moving through, and then Moses tells us at the morning watch, right? So Israel, it's all night. It's the dead of the night that they are going through the Red Sea. And at the morning watch, I love this. The Lord looked down on the army of Egyptians through the pillar of fire and cloud. It's like the Lord just kind of like part, like he's just looking down. I don't know why I love that so much. I just think it's so cool. But he looks down into them and he sends them into confusion. He causes their chariot wheels to swerve and he made them drive with difficulty. And then all of a sudden, the Egyptians realize once again, we are facing this God of Israel. He is making this difficult for us. We need to flee. We need to run away from Israel because the Lord's fighting for them against us. Right? But then there's still that contingent that decides to keep pursuing Israel. And the Lord says to Moses, after every single person who was in the Exodus of Israel gets to the other side, the Lord tells Moses, stretch out your hand so that the sea comes back over the Egyptians. And so Moses reached out his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its normal state at daybreak. And what the Lord said was going to happen happens. They see their enemies dead on the shore. And friends, I I just want to encourage you as we've gone through this chapter of Exodus, which once they get to the end, Israel is like, we fear the Lord and we fear his servant Moses. We are going to listen to them, which we know the rest of the story. We know that that was not always true. But as we consider the story, consider where you are in your life with things that you know the Lord desires to free you from. Where are you afraid of this enemy or afraid of this sin or maybe even afraid of the road that leads to freedom? Where are you wrestling with the Lord and struggling with what he's asked you to do or the path that he is requiring you to take to get to freedom? Where, and in that struggle, where where can you think about how can you think about times in your own life beforehand where the Lord has freed you, where he has put you in a place to stand and wait on his delivering hand, and then boldly walk into the way that he is making before you? Think about those things. Ask the Lord to show them to you. Ask the Holy Spirit to bring to your remembrance. And I need to ask him to bring to mind the things that he has done for us. And this episode really fits with what I talked about last week. In the act of remembering how the Lord has delivered us before, when we are facing down another enemy and another foe that is trying to tempt us and lure us back into what we sometimes think is freedom. And it, or sometimes it just because it's familiar, it feels safe. And the Lord's saying, No, will you trust me? Will you trust that my desire for your deliverance is maybe it will be difficult. That way is narrow and it's constricted. And yes, it means sacrifice, but it also means abundant life. It also means freedom. It means knowing me and communing with me. And that we can take those things and we can look and see the situations that we are in, and we can say, you know what, Lord, you have never let me down. You have never let me down, Lord. I have made maybe I've had disappointments in my life and I've had struggles and I've had difficult things, but you know what, Lord? You have always been there for me. And so I'm going, I am going to trust you. I'm going to make the conscious decision to consistently trust you, Lord. And when we see the Lord come through, I pray that it provokes a sense of awe and a sense of reverence and that holy fear, that we, that we should fear the Lord and his might and his power, but also that it provokes worship and adoration and joy and thanksgiving, which it does in the people of Israel. Exodus 15 has the song of the sea, which is the song that Miriam writes and has all of the people of Israel sing along to. But today, friends, I know I've gone a little bit longer than I usually do, but I just, I want us to hear, I want us to hear the heart of the Lord for us. I want us to see how how he provided for Israel, leading them into the wilderness, knowing what they could handle and what they couldn't, knowing the preparation they needed in the desert and in the wilderness, providing them with his with the angel of the Lord, with that pre-incarnate theophany of Jesus to lead them, providing them with the pillar of clouds by day and the fire by night, giving them Moses, who loved the Lord and spoke the word of the Lord to his people, and and giving us giving us the grace and and the mercy and and the strength that we need to be free. I pray today that you will silently and trustingly, for lack of a better way to put it, lay all of your quests at the feet of the Lord and sit and wait on him. The Lord is going to fight for you. You need only to keep your peace. The Lord is for you. He wants to see you redeemed. Will we take the time to sit and wait for his voice and his leading and trust that the path that he has chosen is the very best thing for us? I pray that we will. Amen.