Moses and The Red Sea // Stories We Thought We Knew

**SPEAKER_2** (0:06)
Thank you for tuning in to the New Vision Podcast. Our prayer is that this talk builds your faith, brings clarity and gives you hope. Enjoy the message.

**Bridget Gonzalez** (0:18)
Good morning, my name is Bridget Gonzalez. I'm really, really happy to be in the room with you guys this morning. If we haven't met, I get the honor of being one of your family ministries pastors here. That means I get to help oversee kids ministry and youth ministry.
Give it up, it's fine.
And I can honestly from the bottom of my heart, it's an honor, right? To share the word of God with your children every week. We actually just got back from youth camp, and you'll hear more about that on Camp Sunday, a couple weeks from now. And then we'll be headed to kids camp at the end of July. I mean, every summer that I've been able to spend at camp, whether it's youth or kids, I can tell you there's a lot, how do I put this? A lot of water Bible stories that recreate themselves in the camp swimming pool.
So what does that mean? Lots of pretending to walk on the water at camp, lots of swimming pool baptisms, right? Like at camp. And it's all great, and it's all hilarious, and I love it. I think it's the best, though, to watch when our kids play, they're reenacting the stories that they've learned in the Bible. So thank you. I just want to say all that, to say thank you. Thank you for trusting us with your children. Thank you for allowing us to share those stories with them by supporting kids and youth ministries.
The last few weeks, we've been in this series, stories that we thought we knew. And undoubtedly, some of you, PK has already covered some of the stories that you learned as a child. So today, we get to cover one more of those stories, and maybe even you got to play a swimming pool game because of it. So I'm going to pray, and then we'll jump right into our video for the week. Heavenly Father, God, we thank you for your presence in this place already, God. We thank you that you've surrounded us. We thank you that you've kept us this morning. We thank you that you're going to speak. We thank you that you're going to challenge, God. I pray that every barrier would be removed this morning between you and us, and our ability to hear what it is that you have to say. God, stay with us this morning. In Jesus' name, amen. Let's watch the video.

**Samuel Atwell** (2:37)
The Israelites were going to the promised land and escaping Egypt. And God told Moses to raise his staff at the edge of the sea, and he did so, so it parted.
Like, he broke some of the wheels off of their carts, so it slowed them down. And the Israelites made it safely across, and then Moses raised his staff again, and the sea went back to normal. And all of the Pharaoh's army died and got washed up on the shore. And the Israelites realized how good God has been to them, and they made it to the Promised Land.

**Bridget Gonzalez** (3:50)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody give Samuel Atwell a big round of applause. Man, good job. You did such a great job. All right, so this is Moses and the parting of the Red Sea. The bulk of this story is found in Exodus 14 This is after Moses' burning bush moment that PK talked about last week. It's after Moses obediently approaches Pharaoh to let his people go, to which he responds, no. It's after the 10 plagues, and it's after Pharaoh temporarily releases his people, but then changes his mind and reattempts to capture them by sending his entire army after them. And they meet at the shore of the Red Sea, and the people have nowhere to go. With an army on one side and an impassable sea on the other, it is here that Moses, as instructed by the Lord, takes his staff, right, tells the water to part, and they do. And just as Samuel said, the people followed Moses through, walking on dry ground, till they arrived at the other side, and then their enemies are destroyed behind them. It's an incredible story, all of it, right? The staff, the water, the Egyptian army. This one like Noah's Ark is like an epic story. It's one of the most powerful stories that we have in the Old Testament of God's willingness and power to save his people. And if you learned this story as a kid, there's no way you forgot it, right? I know I didn't. I wasn't raised in church, but somehow a copy of this movie made it to my household. Does anybody know this? Listen, it probably ended up in my house because I was a huge Mariah Carey fan, for one. And I used to come home and watch this movie on my mini combo VHS TV. If you know, you know, it was like the best item that I owned. I would watch it consistently. I knew every song. I knew every lyric, right? And I think one of the favorite moments I have of this movie is they're walking through the Red Sea, right? I'll never forget this scene. And the walls of the water are high on either side of them, like buildings. And it's dark, and so they have lanterns, and they're leading each other. But also, you could hear the sound of the water still. And then as they peered to the left and the right, they would see these ominous fish shadows of the sea creatures that were still very much alive in the sea. And so when I would go to like an aquarium or something like that, my mind and my imagination would overwhelm me. I'd be like, man, I wonder if this is what it was like, right? And I'm so grateful to hear the story, because it put those imaginations and wonder, and then it ignited questions in me about God at a younger age. But this isn't just a story about a miraculous sign itself. It's not just about the wall of water. It's not just about a man and his staff. It is truly a picture of God's character. And I think if we pay attention, it will do in us what God was wanting to do in the people that lived through it. So if you have your Bibles or your Bible apps, turn with me to Exodus chapter 13 verse 17 And we're gonna back up a little bit before the story so we can see what's going on. Verse 17 says, when Pharaoh finally let the people go, God did not lead them along the main road that runs through the Philistine territory. Even though that was the shortest route to the promised land. God said if the people were faced with the battle, they might change their minds and return to Egypt. So God led them in a roundabout way through the wilderness towards the Red Sea. Thus the Israelites left Egypt like an army ready for battle. Something that I noticed in this text right away is that the Lord intentionally led them to the Red Sea. It says there was a shorter way, but he led them the roundabout way, which led right to it, right to the shore. And if you look at the maps of those times, you'll see that in fact, there was a much shorter way that avoided the wilderness and the Red Sea altogether. It was like a military road used by the Egyptians. It was a straight shot to where they needed to be, but the Lord didn't choose that way. He led them in a roundabout way. And I'm not sure how you pictured the story. Maybe if you learned it as a kid, what you thought you knew, but it's clear that the predicament that this people found themselves in, it wasn't an accident. It wasn't a coincidence. It wasn't that Moses didn't know the geography or the topology of the land. It wasn't like maybe you are like me when I learned it as a little kid. I just pictured like this mob leaving, running for Egypt, and they just left one bad situation and found themselves in another on accident. No, it wasn't any of that. It was actually God's leading that led them there. And it's not just this piece of scripture that says so. Another way that we can be sure that this was by design was because verse 21, if we go down, tells us so. It says this, the Lord went ahead of them. He guided them during the day with a pillar of cloud. He provided light at night with a pillar of fire. This allowed them to travel by day or by night, and the Lord did not remove the pillar of cloud or pillar of fire from its place in front of his people. He was in front of them and leading them the entire time. Let's stop real quick and just think about the pillars, if we could, for just a second. First of all, this had to be absolutely amazing, right? A cloud, a pillar. I picture like a tornado type of cloud thing. Maybe there was some lightning in there during the day. A pillar of fire by night that could light up the entire desert if it wanted to. Man, this had to be like absolutely amazing. Being able, think about that, to be able to visually see, right? The presence of God right with you. But not only was it present, it was moving, right? It was going this way and then maybe it swung to the left and it was leading them to what was next. And I actually love this picture so much. Because here's what we have to consider.