EXODUS 14 – DEFYING PHYSICS
Using 21st century eyes, one could simply write off today’s chapter as great fairytale material for Disney’s animated movie Prince of Egypt. In truth, this is not only shocking information from the ancient past, but vital reading for understanding our present world and our personal future. If so, then lets look at several things worth noting…
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The battle wasn’t between Father God’s children and a powerful enemy. Both the battle and the victory from start to finish belongs to our Lord God Almighty.[a] We’re just the middlemen and all we have to do in life’s storms is to retreat to our Father’s side, and hide in the shadow of His wings.[b] This is why in today’s chapter they followed Father God’s instructions. [v1-4] From where He sits, above time and space, our Omniscient (All-knowing) Father knows exactly how this story will pan out ahead of time, and He will move us like chess pieces into the right position for our ultimate salvation at ‘game-over’.
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We think individualistically and see this event in isolation. Father God thinks wholistically and of the collective results gained from His entire storyline from beginning to end.
That so, then this chapter holds only one incident among trillions of recorded incidents at the End of Time where our Father God will be seen to be just and true.[c] Through Pharaoh and the army of the greatest civilization on earth, Father God begins to be honored [v4,17-18] – as horribly bad as it had to get before finally conceding to who is ultimately Above All. That so, then like a 3D puzzle this event that has already proved to every army on earth that they can’t win against the Creator of All Things, should serve to stop them (or any individual) from pitting themselves against their Maker. It’s as if the Titanic has sunk and now we can all learn from the lives lost in such a needless exercise. Unfortunately however, HIStory will prove that this is not the case and that even in our future, the armies of the earth will gather together in order to come out against Father God’s children.[d] -
The reason for not letting them go had never changed throughout the story. It had not been anything other than a battle for servants and, in this case, all about keeping a nation captive to slavery. [v5] Father God made it clear at every encounter during the previous 13 chapters that He wanted His ‘firstborn son’ to be set free to serve Him, but Pharaoh wanted to enslave them to serve Him. This is a hugely important thing to note here because Believers today
are expecting and waiting to leave immanently – to ‘Return Home’ to our Father God’s Kingdom.[e] Where once it was about a nation extracted from a nation, this future mass exodus will involve a global population extracted from the world. Ironically, though not surprising to God, the reason for the delay[f] could very well be HIStory repeating itself: a battle of wills behind closed doors between the Creator God and the Prince of the World.[g] …Set my people free so that I can ‘bring them home’…[h]
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v10-12 reveal an abysmal representation of the attitude of Father God’s children after everything they had previously saw Him do to purchase their freedom – frogs, hail, utter darkness, AND eye witnessing the deaths of Egypt’s first born sons – and yet when their necks were on the line, they wanted to give up and return to the slavery! That said, we are all guilty of this sort of behavior in one way or another when it comes to trusting our Maker and His Word. If they stopped to care enough to have an inch of faith at all, they would have seen that they had Joseph’s bones with them.[i] A 430 year old prophecy was unfolding right before their eyes![j] Not only that, Father God spoke to Abraham 600+ years earlier and told him that they would be a great multitude and that He would surely bring them out with many possessions.[k] Abraham believed God’s Word without seeing it fulfilled, and that was reckoned to him (accredited to him) by Father God Himself, as “righteousness”.[l]
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Our role is not to complain or to fight, but the have faith in
Father God’s words and stand firm. [v13-14] We’re to be strong in the Lord in the strength of His might. We have an armour but it’s not to fight but to stand.[m] After watching the movie Plan A, I wonder if Moses’ words in v14: “The LORD will fight for you while you keep silent”, may well have been behind the way that the Jews in WWII were led like lambs to the slaughter. Unfortunately, their resolve now may be to never keep silent again! But whatever befalls us in this temporary world, including ourselves being slaughtered[n], we are to stand firm in Faith to the end.[o] -
Father God’s response in v15: “Why are you crying out to Me?”, is another gemstone for understanding our Maker. We were purposefully designed as rulers in His image in order to live and operate in His likeness.[p] So, why on earth are we acting at times as if the world in falling in and we have no power to stop it! “…Go forward!…” step out in Faith, which can often mean: ‘against all odds’. Why? Because “…faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”[q] So then, if you want to annoy your Heavenly Father, don’t listen to His words, don’t have faith in Him, and don’t respect Him by taking Him at His word.
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The Angel of the Lord in v19, who has come out on center stage a few times already, is an important person in
Father God’s epic storyline. Another vitally essential gemstone for understanding why Believers in the Creator God today believe that He has a ‘righthand man’ working with Him.[r] In Hebrew He is someone who is entitled Malach HaElohim. This is a title and it’s capitalized which makes him different to all the other malachim (angles/messengers). So what is His title? Before I can answer, in Hebrew, they don’t use all the small words ‘of’, ‘an’, ‘the’. In English we insert these to make sense of the sentence. However, these small words can actually throw out the meaning completely i.e. an angle of the Lord (one of the many) is clearly different to The Angel of the Lord (a certain person capitalized with an entitlement). Translated directly to English His title is: Messenger God. He is a person who is entitle “Messenger God”, which is an incredibly serious thing to note. Now, so early in the epic Play, this appears not to mean much. Many could fob Him off as just an angel and nothing to jump up and down about. But as this year progresses and you follow my Breadcrumbs, I am hoping that you will know exactly who Mr Messenger God is; and, like no other, what strategic role He has already played in the script, and will play in our future.
The rest of today’s chapter v19-31 is an historical event the defies physics. It was recorded by someone who had been educated for 40 years in the palace of the greatest civilization on earth, and eye witnessed by 2 million+ people who, though slaves and under-dogs, shouldn’t be written off by western intelligence as ‘completely stupid’. The written account was then painstakingly protected in a meticulous archive copying process for close on 2 millenniums, before defying physics by being miraculously preserved against moth, mildew, termites, water damage, age, or anything else known in nature, to surface quite by accident in 1958 in crude clay jars in a salt-filled desert cave.
But here’s the thing and there’s no way around it, our Maker created us in His image and like Him, this includes a Free Will. That true, we’re faced with a choice today and that choice will determine our destiny. Do we stay in “egypt” with all its sophistication and intelligent civilization – even though we know in our heart that we are nothing short of slaves to this life with no way of saving ourselves into another form of existence; or, do we follow in Faith into the unknown our physics-defying Creator, trusting that His word is true: it will indeed be flowing with milk and honey if only we can hold out and keep moving forward through the immediate wilderness journey. If so, it will mean a healthy fear of God (reverence) and trusting in the Servant that He has sent. [v31]
CLICK to return to today’s “Daily Breadcrumbs”
[a] Proverbs 21:31
[b] Psalm 57:1
[c] Revelation 15:3; 16:7; 19:2&11
[d] Zechariah 14:2-3; Revelation 16:14-16; 20:7-10
[e] Matthew 24:36-42; Luke 17:26-36
[f] 2 Peter 3:1
[g] Ephesians 2:2
[h] Revelation 7:9-17
[i] Exodus 13:19
[j] Genesis 50:22-26
[k] Genesis 15:13-14
[l] Genesis 15:5-6
[m] Ephesians 6:10-17
[n] Revelation 6:9-11 & 20:4
[o] Revelation 2:7,10-11,17,26-27; c3:5,11-12,21
[p] Genesis 1:26-28
[q] Hebrews 11:1
[r] Isaiah 53:1