Presented to Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army, 24 August 2014 by
Captain Michael Ramsay
Ever wonder if
maybe you should have gone another way – even if it is the long way home. In
these two videos from Facebook, some of the people at times looked like they
were really wishing that they took a different flight in the second video or a
different route home; even if it was the long way home in the first one. In our
text today, God sends the Hebrews the long way home. Exodus 13:17-22:
17 When Pharaoh
let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine
country, though that was shorter. For God said, “If they face war, they might
change their minds and return to Egypt.” 18 So God led the people around by the
desert road toward the Red Sea. The Israelites went up out of Egypt ready for
battle.
19 Moses took the bones of Joseph with him because
Joseph had made the Israelites swear an oath. He had said, “God will surely
come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up with you from this
place.”
20 After leaving Sukkoth they camped
at Etham on the edge of the desert. 21 By day the Lord went ahead of them in a
pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to
give them light, so that they could travel by day or night. 22 Neither the
pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front
of the people.
The long way home:
there are a number of things that struck me about this short pericope that we
will address here today. One, why are they carrying Joseph’s bones with them on
their long journey (v.19)? He died about 400 years before the events of our
text. To put this in context, roughly 400 years ago this year Pocahontas lived
and died in North America. Their carrying Joseph’s bones with them would be
like we here going on a trip across the border and carrying Pocahontas’ bones
with us to where she was born. Why would we take her bones on the long journey
home? Why would they take Joseph’s bones on the long way home?
Another question
that arises is, if God takes the Hebrews the long way home so that they will
avoid war, as it says in V. 17; why does Verse 18 say that He has made sure
they are equipped for battle?
And as God takes
them the long way home so that they can avoid war because war may make them
want to turn back to Egypt (v.17); reading further: we see that God
leads them to the banks of the Reed Sea, where they find themselves apparently
trapped by an Egyptian army about to wage war and then the Israelites do say to
God and to Moses, Exodus 14:12, “Leave us alone! Let us serve the Egyptians.”
Before we go
into too much detail here, I want to point out something that is very important. God is with
them. God, (and/or) His messenger, the Angel of the Lord is in this column of
fiery cloud that goes before them day and night (vv.21-22). Just like through
the plagues that Sarah-Grace spoke about last week[1],
the LORD never leaves them nor forsakes them and here He seems quite concerned
with the Israelites’ salvation; He doesn’t want them to leave or forsake Him,
thus He takes them on the long way home (cf. TSA doc. 9).
Now about the
first question we asked today: why do they take Joseph’s 400 year-old bones with
them as they move from one country to the next? They did bring Jacob’s bones
home 400 years ago and they didn’t bring everyone’s bones who died in Egypt.
They didn't and don’t even bring Joseph’s brothers’ bones with them - the
namesakes of all of the tribes of Israel – so why do they take these
400-year-old bones with them on this long trip home? To help us answer that
question, I have another question for us: who was Joseph to Egypt and why was
He there in the first place? [2]
God sent Joseph
there to prepare to save the Egyptians and the sons of Israel from famine as
even Joseph’s own brothers sold him into slavery; as we remember the story,
Joseph went before Israel into Egypt and now God is taking Joseph out before
Israel as they exit Egypt. Even as they follow God, now fleeing Egypt for their
salvation, they can remember how they wound up down in Egypt in
the first place following God for their salvation (Genesis 37-50; cf. also Genesis 15:15).
God will never leave them nor forsake them; the question that is asked in verse
17 of our text today, ‘will they forsake God’? Will they repent of their
salvation?
God will never
forsake them; will they forsake God? God will never leave us or forsake us,
will we forsake Him? And why does God take them the long way home? These
questions are inextricably linked.
This is the
scenario that is painted for us as we try to discern the answers to our
questions before us today: God has just delivered Israel out of Egypt into the
desert through the plagues (Exodus 6-12). Pharaoh seemingly notices that they
are not coming back after a three day excursion as he was told they would
(Exodus 3:18, 5:3, 8:27).[3]
His heart is hardened and he is determined to engage the Israelites. He is
ready for battle. The Hebrews are armed for battle the text says (Verse 18). The
Israelites are on the run and God could lead them into the land of the
Philistines to escape Pharaoh but God says that if He does this then they may turn around and
return to Egypt and the language is even harsher than this. The language implies
a forsaking of God and His mission. The literal wording here in Hebrew is that
God will take them the long way home because if they take the short way they
may REPENT of following God.[4]
They may repent of their salvation the text says. This is serious.
And then just as
it seems like the Israelites are on the verge of forsaking their salvation from
Egypt and repenting of following God, God leads them to being hemmed in between
Pharaoh’s army and the sea. The Israelites are armed for battle but they aren’t
prepared. Another question for us in our series of questions today: why would
God lead them away from the land of the Philistines to spare them meeting with one army and take them to the Reed Sea to wait for a different
attacking army? And this is even more interesting because this land of
the Philistines that God spares them from is probably not land where any
Philistines even live at all yet.[5]
The Philistines are in this land by the time the text that we have in our
Bibles is recorded but not by the time that the events are taking place; so why would the Bible mention the Philistines? It
would be like if we acknowledged that David Thompson came through Saskatchewan
en route to BC about 300 years ago. We know what we mean when we say this even
though the truth is that neither Saskatchewan nor BC existed then. So at the
time of the exodus there was probably no Philistine garrison in what would
become the land of the Philistines but there was in all likelihood a very large
Egyptian army there waiting for them.[6]
God was saving them from war on two fronts. God was saving them from one
Egyptian army just as He was to deliver them from the other Egyptian army
through the Reed Sea. This is why the text says, in essence, that God is taking
them the long way home so that they don’t face battle and aren’t tempted to
repent of their salvation from Egypt.
Nonetheless this
is quite the predicament at this point in time. It appears as if God is leading
them out of the frying pan and into the fire by taking them the long way home.
An angry pharaoh is behind them; there is a short cut away from him but maybe
unbeknownst to most of them, there is a garrison waiting there and then God
leads them the long way round so that Pharaoh’s army can almost catch them and
they will follow God to a point where they are apparently – to quote a nautical
term – ‘stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea’ or more literally in
this case, stuck between Pharaoh’s army and the deep Red sea, as God leads them
the long way home.
How about us? Do
we ever get stuck? Do we ever lament that God is leading us the long way home?
Do we ever think we need to do something right now and question and even
threaten God to repent of following Him if He doesn’t take us where we
desperately think we need to go? Do we ever pray and pray and pray for
something? Do we ever pray for relief from the wilderness? Do we ever pray for
something that we really want but for which there might be some reason,
possibly even unbeknownst to us, that that isn’t the best? Do we ever plead for
God to do something that seems like it is our best or even our only option
(when if we saw the whole picture, we would realize it may not be) and then do
we cry and yell and complain with the Israelites when God spares us from the
potentially disastrous fruit of our own prayers?
Have you ever
worked really hard at a task, invested your heart and soul into it and then
someone else gets all the recognition for your hard work? Or have you ever
worked really hard for an employer just to have nothing go right and at the end
of the day wind up holding a pink slip of paper on the unemployment line? Have
you ever prayed really hard that you would achieve a certain grade or pass a
certain course or even graduate from school but no matter how much you work and
no matter how hard you pray, you still fail to achieve your goal? Have you ever
prayed for a quick deliverance from an addiction or a temptation? Have you ever
looked at other people that God has taken the quick route out of adversity and
cried, ‘why me Lord;’ ‘Why must I go the long way home?’ Look at the Apostle
Paul: how many people did the Lord heal through him? How many people did God
deliver from temptation and trial straight through Paul’s own hands? Yet, God –
despite the fervent prayers of this righteous man (cf. Proverbs 15:19; James
5:16; 1 Peter 3:12) – the Bible tells us, God refused to remove the thorn from
Paul’s flesh (2 Corinthians 12:1-10).
Do we ever get to
the point where life seems totally unbearable? Where everything is seemingly
going wrong? Where we are overcome with grief, sorrow, despair; where we don’t
know why we seem to have the Midas touch in reverse as all the golden
opportunities in life we touch seem to turn to dirt and dust before our eyes?
Do we ever get to the point where we are on our knees beseeching God to please
deliver us from the darkness that is everywhere in our lives? Do we ever wonder
why we –like the Israelites- seem to be faced with a choice of either slaughter
from our foes or ending it all by jumping into the deep blue sea? Do we ever
cry out with the Israelites, “Were there not enough graves in Egypt; is that
why You brought us here to this place (Exodus 14:11)?” “Why didn’t You just let
me die?” Are we ever tempted to cry, “it would have been better, if I never
followed you God; leave me alone so that I can just go back to how I was
before?” This is where the Israelites are in their souls as their walk with the
Lord is leading them today to the apparent choice between death by sword and
death by drowning. “Why didn’t You just let me die?”
And it is in this
moment of absolute despair when they notice God’s never-ebbing concern in a
powerful way: He parts the Reed Sea and God continues, through the fiery column
of cloud, to lead the Israelites to salvation. The Hebrew version of the text
is especially clear that they were on the very real verge of repenting of their
salvation from Egypt, when they finally see what God is doing, what He has
always been doing and the remarkable deliverance that He is offering to them in
their moment of crisis.
It is the same
with us today. Sometimes when it seems like things are completely unbearable;
sometimes when it seems our prayers are left unanswered; sometimes when we
can’t understand why we are on our knees daily and nothing is changing;
sometimes when we can’t understand why God is taking us to a place we do not
want to be and we do not understand; sometimes when we lament that everything
seems to have gone awry; that is when we can be assured that God is with us.
God takes us the long way home and as He does we can remember that even and
especially in these struggles, these temptations, these trials, these
challenges; even in the midst of all of this, God loves us and that may be
precisely why He is taking us the long way home.
Sometimes in the midst
of everything around us – all of our trials and tribulations - as we look back
we will see that (just like with the Israelites) God takes us the long way home
so that we will not face more than we can possibly bear and we will not risk
repenting of our salvation. Sometimes it is precisely because God loves us and
because He will never leave us nor forsake us that He does take His time,
walking with us the whole long way home.
Let us pray.
----
[1] Sarah-Grace Ramsay, Plague Pops – Salvation only comes from God:
Exodus 7-12 (Sheepspeak: August 2014: Saskatchewan). Available on-line at http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.ca/2014/08/plague-pops-salvation-only-comes-from.html
[2] cf. Terence E. Fretheim, Exodus, (Interpretation:
Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, Kentucky, 2010), 151.
[3] Cf. Peter Enns, Exodus, (NIV Application Commentary:
Zondervan: Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2000), 271.
[4] Walter Brueggemann, The Book of Exodus, (NIB I: Abingdon
Press: Nashville, 1994), 788.
[5] R. Alan Cole, Exodus: An Introduction and Commentary.
Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 1973 (Tyndale Old Testament
Commentaries 2), S. 123.
[6] R. Alan Cole, Exodus: An Introduction and Commentary.
Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1973 (Tyndale Old Testament
Commentaries 2), S. 123.
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