Day 21 -- Exodus 14-16

In our reading for today Moses says to the terrified people of Israel, “Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the LORD will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again” (14:13-14).

Those three words—Do not be afraid—enclose the essential gospel. Fear is the opposite of faith, not doubt. All of us sometimes experience doubt, but doubt does not constitute our essential human problem, fear does. Fear is what separates us from God--fear of the future--fear of the harm other people might be able to do to us. There is not one of us who has not been frozen in his or her steps by anxiety and fear. But to this fear the Word of the God always speaks directly—Do not be afraid. God has made a covenant with you. He will fight for you. Bad things may happen to you along the way, as bad things happened to Israel, but in the end you will triumph, not by any action on your own part, but because God himself will deliver you. The problems that confront you today will not be there tomorrow. As Moses says to Israel—“The Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again.”

So we are not to be afraid of people and circumstances, but we should have a proper respect for the power of God. When the children of Israel saw their drowned pursuers—those of whom they had so recently been afraid—the text says that they recognized “the great work that the LORD did against the Egyptians. So the people feared the LORD....”

This appropriate fear is the right attitude we should toward the God who delivers us from the things of which we are afraid. We worship a dangerous and glorious God. Holy fear goes well beyond the word “respect,” because it comes with the overwhelming need to praise the Object of Our Praise. The text says that in response to their deliverance Israel sang the song we find in Chapter 15 , the psalm that begins with the words—“I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously. . . .”

And the the proper purpose of human beings is to praise God. That is what we were created to do. Music is by no means the only vehicle of praise. All the arts of humanity are gifts given to us for that specific purpose. So is human science. So is the ability to live and act and work with integrity. The ethical life—the righteous life, to use a biblical word--is properly the highest praise we can offer. And all of us can strive to live that righteous life, whatever our abilities or talents. Integrity in acting and working is possible for all of us by the grace of God.

One word about where the events of our text take place. The Red Sea mentioned in 15:4 may be the Sea of Reeds, a large shallow slough on the western edge of the Sinai. It is quite conceivable that its shallow waters might have been driven back by a strong, persistent desert wind and returned when the wind ceased. So the miracle that saved Israel might possibly be explained by natural phenomena.

And the manna Israel ate in the wilderness--the Bread of Heaven--was probably the secretions of a desert insect still found and consumed by the desert dwellers of Sinai today. But that does not matter, beloved.

As we said before--Miracles do not create faith; faith creates miracles. The real miracle is the faith itself. Faith is the way that God delivers people like you and me from the fears that paralyze us and gives us something to live for—a reason to give praise to the LORD, our strength and our might, which is the whole motive of our existence and the meaning of our lives.