Trapped to Delivered

his family worshiping with us. Amen? As we are on week two of Exodus part two. So last week we kicked off with chapter 13.

So if you weren’t here, it’s easy to catch up. Next week we are actually going to split chapter 15 into two, and we’re actually going to have a very special worship focus next week. And since we’re a singing church, we’re going to do some more singing.

Does that sound good? You’re going to hear more about that later in the service. This has been our spiritual challenge in this series is to be present in worship. Don’t skip church.

Read the text before you come to church. And I know many of you said that you did this last week, and I would just assume many of you had the opportunity to do that again this week. Bring your Bible to church.

This is really important to do that, and that way you already have it highlighted and underlined. Any questions that maybe stuck out to you as you read the text before you came. In fact, our tech director back there, Ryan, shared a testimony this morning during rehearsal that he and his household, his family, have done it the last two weeks.

And his comment to the team this morning is they’ve been surprised, he and his wife have been surprised, how much conversation it has actually taken place within his home and how much his kids are actually involved in the text. And that’s what we love to see. We want to give you the tools to have those spiritual conversations in the home.

And so the easiest thing you can do is download our app. It’s right on the home page. You can click on it.

It gives you the reading plan to read in advance, and then it gives you the dig deeper and family questions to read throughout the week. Because the best thing that we can do, parents, the best thing that we can do is to teach our kids how to read the Bible. Amen? And so all the textbooks that are vying for their attention, or we ship them off to college and all of a sudden they get all sorts of ideas, we got to teach them how to read God’s Word and apply it to their lives, knowing and trusting that God goes before them and He will carve the path He has for them.

Amen? All right. So here’s our question this morning. As you just heard this chapter read, why does blank have a hard time with trusting God? Who are they? The Israelites.

And you know what’s fun sometimes when you read the Bible is it’s easy to pick on people in the Bible. I love Scripture, and if you’re new to the Bible, because it shows you people’s flaws and failures from the Old Testament to the New Testament. And sometimes we scratch our heads and go, man, these people are knuckleheads.

I mean, look, in one instance they’re in slavery, and then they got to see all of these really cool things take place with the plagues, and then God miraculously gets them out of Egypt. Now they have this pillar of cloud by day and this pillar of fire by night. I mean, what more could you ask for? I mean, here we are in 2026.

We don’t get those kind of miracles today, do we? At least we don’t think we do. Or maybe we’re just too distracted looking down or looking at other things that we miss the hand of God even in our life. And so really, not only do we put the Israelites in this blank, we put Moses as their leader in this blank because we see him flip-flop throughout Scripture.

But it’s no different than the way that oftentimes we live our lives. And what it forces us to do is to humble ourselves and to put us into the text. And what we’ve been encouraging you to do is use your five senses as you read these passages.

See the surroundings. Put yourself there at the scene. See how it is that you would respond if you were faced with the circumstances that Scripture presented to the people at that time.

And so as you heard read right from the very beginning, God’s the one telling Moses to then go and give the instructions to the Israelites. I mean, he even tells them exactly where to camp, specific locations, and specific markers so they would know exactly where they were to be so that God could protect them and continue that hedge of protection throughout their journeys in the wilderness. And so while God is still protecting them because there was other enemies other than just the Egyptians, the guys in Egypt back home are scratching their heads going, wait a second, who’s going to start mopping the floors around here? Where did the farmers go? Who’s going to make my bed? Who’s going to build the next building for us? Like all of a sudden they had this realization that all of their servants were gone.

And that now all of a sudden they’re responsible to take care of themselves. And because they still have hardened hearts, as you read, God’s still hardening their hearts, and they’re still in this prideful state. They actually think, oh man, we screwed up.

We need to go back and get them. They forgot about the fact that God has already struck down their firstborn, so they think they have to go back and get the Israelites and bring them back into Egypt so that they can go back to living their earthly life and having the earthly comforts that they were used to enjoying. And so what do they do? They have these chariots made, and they get the army ready.

It says that he took 600 of the best chariots. Imagine whose job that was to find the 600 best chariots. I mean you’re going against an Israeli population that’s been enslaved.

These people weren’t trained in battle. And then it says not only are we going to get the best chariots, it also says we’re going to get the other chariots as well. Which means they had to stop by the used car sales lot and say these ones will do as well.

Which is crazy to think that they had to make such a presence, and they were really just wanting to intimidate the people of God. And as we read in the very first verses here, it tells us that as they’re approaching, as Pharaoh and his army is approaching, the Israelites look up and they can see them with their eyes. And you can imagine that moment when the oppressor is coming.

When someone that has abused you mentally, emotionally, physically, even spiritually to a certain degree, is now coming toward you. What is going to be your response? Fear. A normal human reaction.

You have all of your stuff with you. All of your belongings. All of your livestock.

Your family, your extended family, all of your friends are now stuck in this location in the desert. And of course they were terrified, and this is interesting, it says they cried out to the Lord. Which is actually what I think we should do when we’re in a crisis.

In fact, I would submit to you the first thing we should do when we’re in a crisis is submit to the Lord. But we’re kind of sophisticated now, aren’t we? I mean it’s 2026, and God’s given us all of the blessings that he’s given us on planet Earth, so is it really that big of a deal if we go to other sources first? It’s kind of interesting because it used to be, oh man, this internet is so amazing, I can go to Google and Google will give me all the answers to life’s problems. Then all of a sudden we became medical doctors, and they developed this website called WebMD.

And we could just diagnose ourselves, and whenever anything happened medically to us, it would always be the worst case scenario, but we could tell our doctor how they were to treat us. Isn’t that great? And now we live in an age where Jesus has given us chat GPT, and not only does it give you an answer, it tells you exactly what you need to do, and now I can have a personal relationship with AI. And all of life’s problems are solved, aren’t they? You know some of the stuff people put in AI when they’re fighting with their spouse, when they have difficulties with their kids, when they’re trying to figure out how not to be depressed.

I mean there are so many things that are being put in these algorithms, and in these things, when God says I’ve already given it to you. It’s right here, the only source on planet Earth that has the ability to speak into your life, it has the power to transform and change you. In fact, not only have I given you the word of God, I’ve given you churches, I’ve given you other Christian believers that you can come alongside, and you can tell them, you can be honest with them about what’s going on in your struggles, and they will come and pray for you, and they will walk through difficulties with you.

And yet I see some of these things, they can be used for good, but I also see that they can quickly become a device that’s used by the devil to move us further and further away from God, and even further and further away from each other. Again, they’re terrified, they’re crying out, and they turn to Moses, and this one’s worth repeating because it’s so interesting, these two verses. Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? This just proves that sarcasm has been around for a very long time, okay? How many of you are the sarcastic one in your family? Go ahead, raise it loud and proud.

How many of you have family members that say, stop being sarcastic, or all sarcasm is aggressive, or all sarcasm is… I mean, look at this. Who says this? What have you done to us, Moses, by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we tell you in Egypt, leave us alone, let us serve the Egyptians? This is one of those moments you’re like, wait, are you crazy? They are so distraught watching these chariots race toward them, seeing the red sea in front of them, that the only two options they believe are death or return back to being slaves. Even though last week we already heard that God told Moses to tell them they would go into the promised land, and in a moment of time they forgot the promises of God.

Fear is an incredibly powerful force, isn’t it? And it’s absolutely amazing the culture that we live in now, where fear is the tactic, I would say maybe even the primary tactic, used to manipulate us. Do you know this is how the news is written? Do you know when you’re watching it on television, that they’re taught, news anchors, to leave you with a cliffhanger, because they want you to keep watching after the commercial that you have to watch in order to pay for the news that you’re watching? And so you think, oh, I’m going to turn it off after this segment, and then they bait you in with fear. Oh, shoot, now I’ve got to keep watching, because the world’s going to blow up.

The world’s going to blow up every day if you watch the news, just so you know. Oh, shoot, the president’s going here, he’s going there. Oh, now this is happening, now that’s happening.

You can make yourself go mad. I just think that God’s called the church to live differently. I just believe that for us we can get on top of this and not let the fear of media and the fear of society dictate how we live our lives or the joy that God wants us to partake in this side of eternity.

Amen? So Moses, believe it or not, gets it right in this one, because he says to the people, don’t be afraid, stand firm. God is going to deliver you today. Just as you see those chariots racing toward you, you are also with your own eyes going to see the deliverance of God.

And by the way, look at this promise. Every Egyptian you see today, every single one, you will never see again. God is going to wipe them out.

The Lord will fight for you. You only need to be still. Now, if we’re human for a moment, that’s really hard to hear.

If I was there and I’m sarcastic, I’d be like, okay, that’s great, Moses, you go to the front then, and we’ll believe it as long as the first chariot doesn’t mow you over. God’s the one that spoke to you, and if you have this confidence, and this is what you’re telling us to do, then you get in front of this pack, or behind this pack, rather, and let’s just see how this all plays out. Now, it’s so fascinating about this idea of you only need to be still.

Many of you know this is in other parts of scripture. In fact, many of you love the verse in Psalm 46, which says, be still and know that I am God. People put this on coffee mugs.

They put it on t-shirts. It’s kind of a cool slogan. Be still and know that I am God, but what’s fascinating about the Old Testament is that it was actually written in Hebrew, and there’s different Hebrew words that are used in different scriptures, and our English language is kind of limited, and so oftentimes they’ll use the same English words for different Hebrew words because we don’t have as many words as they have, and when you dig a bit deeper into Psalm 46, it actually does.

Be still means to let go and to be still, but when you dig into the phrase be still in Exodus chapter 14, it actually means this, to be silent and to keep quiet, or another way to say it is shut up. But you can imagine chariots coming at you. Everyone’s like, Moses, do you see that? Moses, what’s going on? Moses, why are we in this circumstance? God, don’t you care? What happened? Are you on a lunch break? Why did you even let them leave Egypt? Why are you letting them get so close to us? And God so patiently says to Moses, raise your staff, that same staff that you threw down in front of Pharaoh, and you saw me perform miracle after miracle after miracle, now raise that staff and stretch out your hand over the sea, and you’re going to watch the sea divide, and not only are you going to watch the sea divide, which is a miracle, you’re going to see all these other little miracles that take place in this text as well.

Maybe some of you caught it, that as the water is parting, that God is also simultaneously drying up the land. They are about to walk across this thing on dry land. Unbelievable miracle taking place in this time in history.

Here’s some other really cool things. It says the angel of God, who had been traveling in front of Israel’s army, withdrew and now moved to behind them. Who’s the angel of God? Jesus.

Here’s Jesus in the text. Who was in the burning bush? Jesus. Everyone say Jesus.

Good. There’s a Sunday school answer for you. This is where you see the trinity at play in the Old Testament.

So not only do they have a pillar, a cloud, and they have the fire, they now have Jesus with them, and he goes from leading them to now going in the back, the reason he’s doing this is because he is going to protect them from their enemies. Look at what it says. The pillar of cloud also moved from in front and stood behind them, coming between the armies of Egypt and Israel.

And throughout the night, the cloud brought darkness to one side and light to the other side. So neither went near the other all night long. How is he able to do this? Because he’s the God of creation and he can command the moon and the stars and the sun and the universe if it means protecting you and me.

He is God and he is so much greater than sometimes I think we give him credit for. He is so much more majestic than we can actually hope, dream, study, or imagine. And he is always at work for our good.

This is what scripture tells us. He is at work for our good, for those who love him, who are called according to his purposes. What’s the key here is that the God who leads you is also the God who protects you.

And so here they go. They start taking that bold step on that dry ground headed straight into the middle of the sea, which takes an extraordinary amount of faith if you think about it. How do they know how long this thing is going to be up? It’s not like they had instructions.

You have one hour to complete this task. No, Jesus is with them. Visible signs, cloud, fire.

Moses telling them this is God’s plan and this is how he’s going to rescue us. Now again, God’s not letting up on the persecution, is he? The enemy is approaching. In fact, the miracle that God has now provided for them to be a way out in this moment, God is also allowing the enemy to step foot on that same dry ground.

And I think this is one of the most difficult parts of the Christian faith is for us, if we’re calling the shots, we sometimes want God to do things in our timeline and in our way, right? Like God, why don’t you just wipe them out before they left Egypt? Why don’t you just make something in the middle of the desert that just stopped them in their tracks? Or why don’t you just cause a huge fireball to come and you just consume? That would have been a cool miracle. I got some other ideas for you. Why did we need to see them and why did we need to feel their presence coming toward us? Sometimes we don’t always have the answer to those questions.

Sometimes life throws curveballs at us. I told you last week that the week prior for me was kind of crazy in the fact that on Tuesday my son and I got in a car accident and then on Friday night my neighbor decided to have this crazy party at our house, which now we laugh about, right? Thankfully nobody got hurt and everybody got home safely. But I didn’t tell you what actually happened Saturday night.

And I didn’t tell you what happened Saturday night because when you’re in preaching school they tell you to not ever say anything that gives an excuse for why you might not be preaching to your top performance. But now that it’s been a week I can tell you. So you want to hear what happened to me last Saturday night? So just so you know I’m a man of routine, especially when it comes to Saturday and Sunday.

Sunday is a very important day for me. This role that I’m tasked with in preaching God’s Word I take very seriously. I go to bed early.

It’s the only night of the week that I lay out my clothes. Actually my wife lays out my clothes. She picks my outfits if you’re wondering, okay? And so everything is orchestrated so that I am full capacity 100% healthy and able to do this on Sunday morning.

I take it very seriously. Well last Saturday night we were getting ready for bed. I wanted to be in bed by 9, asleep by 9 30 and our boys come busting through the door and they say you’re not going to believe this but the hot water tank is leaking all over the basement and half of our basement was completely flooded.

And I said, God do you not know it is Saturday night? You have six other nights to make the hot water tank explode. Come on dude you’re part of the Red Sea you can’t hold a water tank together? So the next thing you know we’re in the basement with all of our towels and our shop vac cleaning up the water. I got to bed around midnight.

Henry, thank be to God, figured out you just had to turn all the water off in the house. So we had zero water. So on Sunday morning, remember last week we had two baptisms, I took a wipe bath.

First time I’ve ever done that. And I was exhausted. Aren’t you glad you didn’t know last week? And that wasn’t necessarily something that was like an enemy.

It was just a life circumstance coming at me. Or how about this? Well my son called me, the one that’s running the camera in the back, my other son, because he’s on a golf course with another eighth grader. And some guy in his golf cart, whether it was his wife or his girlfriend, comes flying up on him and swearing at them because he didn’t think they were playing fast enough.

And everything within me, my first reaction is to get in the car, drive to the golf course, and beat the living crap out of this guy, right? I was like, are you okay? I’m okay. Is your friend okay? I’m okay. I said, what happened? And I was thankful that they actually stood up for themselves.

They’re like, you realize we don’t have a golf cart. We have a pole cart. You realize we’re in eighth grade.

Eighth grade. Like who does that? Like why do we have to live in a society where people are just jerks? And wouldn’t you know that when they got to the end of the round of golf that they were playing, the staff at the golf course asked them how things went. And they told them, they said, yeah, there was this guy who was really upset and he kind of got a little vulgar with us.

And I thought it was so cool the golf course let him play another two holes at the golf course. So see how you can see the good even in the midst of the bad? But what is it for you? Is it a co-worker that has it out for you? Maybe it’s a spouse and your marriage is just about ready to just implode because you and your spouse can’t get on the same page. Maybe you’re at war with a member of your family or a neighbor, even in your own community.

And it feels like it’s pressing in. It feels like it’s just trying to take over your life. Maybe it’s a diagnosis that you or someone that’s close to you received.

And instead of just being still, you’re doing all this research because you can’t help it. And of course, the internet never paints a good picture. It’s always the worst case scenario picture.

And you’re being overwhelmed with fear. You’re being overwhelmed with anxiety. You’re being overwhelmed by all the pressure that’s coming in on all sides.

And hear me this morning. This is what your loving Heavenly Father says to you. Just be still.

Just take a deep breath. Realize how much you are loved by me. And I go before you and I’m behind you.

In fact, I’m to your left and I’m to your right. I have never stopped praying and interceding for you, which is what Jesus and the Holy Spirit do. And I pray that there’s a hedge of protection around your mind and around your emotions and around your marriage and around your family.

Because the only person that’s going to be able to heal the situation that you are in is God. You are not going to be able to do it on your own. I don’t care how much you pay for counseling, how many sessions you go to for this, that, or the other thing.

The only thing that can bring healing to the human heart is God and God alone. Amen? Now I want you to hear this because this is hard as well. And some of you, you’re facing just insurmountable pain even now.

And I would love nothing more than to take that from you. I would love nothing more than to figure out how to help you navigate that situation. So hear this.

Don’t go through life alone. There are people, there are plenty of people in this church that have gone through, I guarantee it, the same situation that you’re in. And the worst thing that you can do is shut yourself down or try to live independently outside of the Christian community.

We have people here that will pray with you, that’ll walk alongside you. Lisa and I have good friends. She was in a car accident and she’s still battling physically.

She can’t work because of the situation that she’s in. This is what I love about our church. Our prayer partners, because she can’t get here, went to her house and laid hands on her and prayed over her and invited God into that situation.

And we’re going to keep praying and believing that God is going to meet her in her moment of need. Amen? Because look at what it says in verse 24. During the last watch of the night, does anybody know what that is? It’s between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. Let me just say it again.

Last watch of the night is between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. Is God taking it easy on the Israelites? I mean, He could have done this for breakfast. He could have done this during their lunch break. Had the cherry.

I mean, literally, they get there and everything goes dark and now they’re up all night trying to figure out whether or not they’re going to survive another day on planet Earth. Why does God do this? Does He play games with us? Or is He drawing us closer to Himself and reminding us, man, no matter what hardship you face, no matter what battle you are in, the best thing that you can do is what we said in the song that on our knees we are going to fight with our hands raised high. And why do we raise our hands? Because it’s a form of surrender to God, knowing and trusting that He will see us through it.

Isn’t it interesting that in that time period, He tells Moses to stretch out his hand again. And at daybreak, I think God did this on purpose because He wanted them to see this all play out. He could have wiped them out in the middle of the night.

God waited until the sun started rising so that they could see the destruction of their enemy. And as they were coming toward them, that sea went back together. And those chariots and those Egyptians, they were swept into that sea.

And not one of them, as Moses prophesied, survived. Not a single enemy of the Israelites survived. Now what’s interesting about this as well, is Paul actually referenced this verse in this chapter in the letter he wrote to the church in Corinth.

And this is good for us to hear this today. So imagine he’s in the New Testament, he’s writing to the church, the New Testament church, and he tells the New Testament church, I don’t want you to be ignorant of the fact that our ancestors, these people, were under the cloud and they all passed through the sea. He retells and he relives the account.

They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and into the sea. And for us, this is very important as a sacramental church that believes in communion, believes in God’s work in baptism, that this once again shows you how God rescues us through water and specifically through the waters of baptism. Verse 30, that day the Lord saved Israel from the Egyptians and Israel with their own eyes saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore.

Try to imagine that. I actually put this in chat GPT and it said this is against our guidelines for creating images. And maybe that’s the point, that we don’t have an image for this.

But again, God wanted them to see that their enemies had been defeated. God wants you to see that your enemy, the devil, has already been defeated. And do you know what you and I see today? We see the empty cross and we see the empty tomb.

We see what it is that Jesus has already done for us, that victory has been declared for you and for me over every area of our lives. I love this because it says the Lord saved, the Lord saved, the Lord saved. Israel didn’t save themselves.

They didn’t get the engineers together. They didn’t say, well, let’s come up with a plan because we got this army coming and we’ll build some trenches and we’ll do this or that. It’s not a Hollywood movie, you know, produced by Mel Gibson, where they just solved the problem on their own.

They didn’t save themselves. Moses didn’t come up with a plan. He didn’t save them.

God is the only one that saved them. And of course, what should be their response is when they saw the mighty hand of the Lord, which is a theme throughout all of Exodus, the mighty hand of the Lord displayed against the Egyptians. Now we see a healthy fear of the Lord.

And this fear is a respect for who God is and what he is able to do. And because of that, they put their trust in him. Praise God for that.

And that’s our heart’s desire for all of you, that you see the mighty hand of God in your life. That as you look back at your life up to this point, you can see over and over again where he has been faithful, not where you’ve been faithful. You can see the way that he’s orchestrated events in your life and he’s put people in your path.

And sometimes you’ve listened to that advice. Other times you’ve rejected it. And somehow in all of that, God continues by his grace and mercy to lead and guide you.

Because you know how easy it would be today to give you this message? Here’s your problem, church. This is what you need to do. Stop doubting.

Stop having so much fear. Put your trust in the Lord. Don’t complain.

Have greater faith. Do what God tells you to do the first time and have a nice day. And you know what that’s called? It’s called a law law message.

That’s not law gospel. This is what you need to hear today is that Israel is terrified. Israel complains.

Israel cannot save itself. God opened the sea. God brought them through.

God is the one that saved them through the water the same way he saves us through the waters of baptism. And so here’s your encouraging word today as you leave. The Lord is fighting for you.

He is never going to stop fighting for you this side of eternity. He is all around you. He knows your enemy.

He knows the tricks of the devil. He knows the things that you so easily fall into. And I’m telling you, he will guide you through it.

He will put people in your path and around you that are God-fearing people that will lift you up in prayer, that will check in on you, that will help support you in this time of need. He is the one that saves us. Praise be to God.

Amen. For his amazing grace and mercy. So again as you leave here today, leave with your head held high knowing God’s already at work in your life.

He’s already working on tomorrow and next week and next month and next year. He’s already orchestrating things you don’t even know about because I don’t think we realize this side of heaven how much we are actually loved by Almighty God. It’s too hard for us to comprehend.

He’s with you and he will get you through this circumstance. Amen. Will you bow your heads and close your eyes with me this morning.

Heavenly Father, I thank you for my friends that are here and the opportunity to share your word and be reminded once again of the mercy and grace that you do give us through your son Jesus Christ. That just as you protected the Israelites, you continue to protect your children to this day. So God, remind us of that each and every day as we wake up and we live our lives in fear, a healthy fear of who you are and that you go before us.

We love you, we thank you, we pray all these things in your holy name. Amen.