God’s Guidance and Protection
Do you know where God wants to take you in life? Do you know what you need? Do you even know what is possible? I think we all have dreams and expectations on our lives, but the hard part is that they don’t often line up with God’s hopes for us, they don’t often line up with what we or others need and they don’t often include what is possible with God. In fact, the hard part is that God’s guidance can be scary, it can take us into the unknown, it can feel as if there is danger on all sides, but God will bring us through.
At first glance it might not feel like today’s story relates to us much with God’s grand guidance and the spectacular parting of the sea, but it has so much to say to our lives and experiences. Just started with the idea of the pillar of smoke and fire. We might think, well if God was to lead us in such obvious ways, we would follow, right? Well, just take a moment to think about that reality. If a great pillar of fire suddenly appeared right in front of us, it would be terrifying. Would your first inclination be to follow it? Even smoke, who runs into or follows smoke? Every step would have been unclear, clouded by the smoke. They couldn’t see where they were going. Every step would have been following danger, as the fire could literally consume them. Now I think we can relate a little more. God often calls us into the dangerous and unknown. He calls us to follow, even when it doesn’t completely make sense, even when we don’t know the way, even when it seems terrifying.
Following God is stepping forward with trust into this reality. Of course, God will reveal a lot to us, but it starts with a place of trust. Being Christian and following God is not easy. It continuously calls us into the unknown, so that we might grow into it. It continuously calls us to step into what scares us so that we might be set free of fear and see the glory of God’s protection. It continually calls us to follow Him, even when we don’t know the way. This applies to almost every situation in our life. You can ask this question to any situation in your life, am I doing this out of fear of the unknown, fear of danger, or am I doing this trusting the infinite potential of God’s love.
If the Israelites were left to lead themselves, they would not have taken this route. They wouldn’t have gone to the widest part of the Red Sea. They would have gone the direct land route through the waring territory of the Philistines. God could have protected them then, but that would have immediately thrown them into war. They would have to walk through an enemy territory. We know that Israel will eventually fight, even against the Philistines, but God knows at this moment that war would be awful for them.
I think we automatically agree, because we know war is bad and we would rather God’s justice prevail, but it is even more than that in this moment. We hear Israel would have felt hopeless and run away. This is what happens when Israel sees Egypt, they immediately start complaining saying, “Why did you bring us out here to die, wouldn’t it have been better for us to be slaves in Egypt?” Why wouldn’t they react this way? They may be marching like an army, but they have never faught a war, they don’t have the equipment or the training and now all of a sudden they are pinned between the Sea and the army of Egypt. They are surrounded by danger and there seems to be no good choices. Don’t we feel like this sometimes. There are no more good choices to us. We are surrounded by danger. No matter which way we turn we are either going towards a wrong or rejecting a good.
Yet, God wants to help us walk through the midst of it. Confident and protected, even while danger surrounds us. This starts with the pillar of fire, going from in front of them to behind them. The danger and mystery that was God guiding them, now becomes God being their shield. Even with all the strength of Egypt, they still couldn’t come close to Israel. Then God leads Israel through even more danger, as God parts the Red Sea. In this moment, the Israelites would need to trust God and Moses more than they trusted the world around them. They could have easily said, “we are not going through those waters. The waters could close in at any moment and kill us.” We could say it isn’t trust, as they will do anything to avoid Pharoah, but how often do we trust more or find comfort in the evil we know, more than we are willing to step into the potential danger, that really is even greater.
Notice where trust leads them in this moment. Not just to be protected by God, but also to see enemies overthrown, but even more so to find ourselves delivered from slavery and into a great potential for bounty and the promised land. Following God takes us into situations that are scary, but it is the way we are delivered, the way we step into his promise and the way we see his bounty and glory.
There is one difficulty that we need to look at. It is when God takes away his protection and guidance from someone.
What does it mean that God hardens Pharoah’s heart? We don’t want God to override us, I don’t think God wants to either. What would be the point of that? We would just be automatons, robots, not people at all. God doesn’t need to create a foil either, our sin does that enough. This idea of overriding a heart doesn’t really seem to be love, so either we need to change our view of love or something else needs to be happening here. God does affect us in many ways, he often protects us from our own choices or tries to influence and point us in the right direction. We are more comfortable with that, as long as it is in the positive sense.
The hardening of Pharoah’s heart is a little different though. Up until this point in the story we have seen Pharoah himself harden his heart numerous times and God hardening his heart as well. After so long of Pharoah being adamantly hard hearted and an enemy of God, it seems that God gives in and stops protecting Pharoah from his own evil, he stops trying to influence Pharoah in the right direction. I believe that God’s inaction in this case, is his action. Because God is so continuous in his giving, protecting and guiding work, him pulling that away, might as well be an action, as we experience the great difference. This still feels uncomfortable, but it does make more sense to God’s character to me. In the least it seems as if God is giving Pharoah what he wants and that includes his desire, fear and hatred for the Israelites.
An interesting idea, I first heard on the Bible Project podcast, is that when we make ourselves out to be such vehement unrelenting enemies of good, God speeds up our own hatred or the consequences of it. Its as if God steps forward and back in time and brings all of our anger and the consequences of our actions to bear evil fruit all at once, so that he might defeat it all at once. This might seem strange, but it is a great mercy to all those around the evil, as they don’t have to live through it consistently. If God had done this earlier, how could it have stopped Israel’s geneside of the Israelite children, but he knew when was the right time and what was needed. We still struggle with the immensity of the consequences as the waters close in on Pharoah’s army and wish God could have saved the people with evil in their heart. I think God wishes that too.
Yet Egypt’s army doesn’t chase after Israel in the wilderness or go into the sea out of trust, or from a relationship with God. They go into danger for power, greed, hatred and violence in their hearts. As we mentioned there were probably Egyptains travelling with Israel, so a path through the dangerous waters that saves many Egyptians, because they trust and obey God and Moses, becomes the end and consequences for those that go in with their own wills.
It is the same way the cross of Christ either condemns us or sets us free. We can look at God with our own wills, our own desires, our own fear and anger and so we become the ones who have put him on the cross and that cross becomes the judgment seat. Or we can go to God recognizing our weakness, our need, moving towards death with faith and trust. As we path through the danger and mystery of death on the cross, we are then brought through to the other side, where we might experience freedom, promise and the hope for a more bountiful life than we can imagine. AMEN
