RUN!

Tonight I got destroyed in knock out by some middle schoolers. I was sitting here thinking about how to tie that into what I want to say about Exodus, but I can't figure it out. I just want you to know... I lost in basketball to middle schoolers and now I'm humbled. Pretty frustrated, but definitely humbled. I'm also turning 30 tomorrow, but I'm still as immature as the high schoolers I was with tonight - again... humbled.

The other night I talked about the obedience of the Israelites when God directed them to kill a lamb and put the blood around their door frames for protection. Obedience is the beginning of blessing as we can see when we read deeper into the story. As the tenth and final plague, God ends up killing all the firstborn sons of the Egyptians. Pharaoh finally gives in to Moses and Aaron's requests to let the Israelites leave, so all 600,000 men and their families get their belongings together and leave Egypt. That's over 1 million people traveling under the leadership of Moses!

This dude didn't even want to start an Instagram - so much so that he asked God if Aaron could do it instead, and just a short time later... 1 million followers! Men. Women. Children. Babies. Married. Single. Parents. Grandparents. All of them looking toward him. He probably got like 700,000 likes a day!

Anyway, here's the cool part. Pharaoh decides he shouldn't have let the Israelites go and decides to take 600 of his best chariots and riders, and all of his troops to go get them back because they realized they wouldn't know how to live life without slaves. Turns out God wanted to bless the obedience the Israelites showed in killing the unblemished lambs and now following Moses out of slavery, so he creates a large cloud between the two groups of people so that the Egyptians were not able to catch up to the Israelites until they had gotten to the Red Sea. Once at the sea, God instructs Moses to lift his rod over the water and the water splits as the Israelites wait, guarded by the cloud.

This is where the story ties in to the temptation that we have the ability to fight, or the sin that's trying to pull us down that God gives us the means of escaping. The Israelites are getting chased down by evil (that could be sin, Satan, temptation, etc.), but they've been obedient to the instructions God has given so far (like reading, praying, community), so God wants to bless them for their obedience and help them escape from the evil that's trying to chase them down. He still doesn't just hand it to them though. They need to sit there and wait for the waters to split and the ground to dry. Sitting... waiting... knowing that just on the other side of this dark cloud the Egyptians are waiting to come and get them back.

How many know what it's like to get beat up by the same sin over and over again? How many walk back through that cloud because they get to the Red Sea and forget that God can split it? Have faith and walk through it! Don't turn around! Don't go back to the slavery that's on the other side of that cloud! God is working for you, not against you.

God dries up the land and the Israelites cross through this huge body of water, but the Egyptians follow. God causes confusion among the Egyptians while they're in the middle of the parted waters and they struggle to move out from the bottom of the Red Sea. From the other side, Moses raises his staff again, and God closes the waters on the Egyptians - none survive.

Take your struggles and your temptations and RUN from them! Don't turn back. Don't ever think that you're in a place too far from God, or alone without His help. Just lift up your voice and ask in faith for a way out. Then, when that Sea splits in two, let God take that struggle or temptation and drown it! Close the waters and make it impossible to ever go back.