This transcript was generated by whisper.ai. Well, here we go, Exodus chapter 14, the chapter many of you have been waiting for. This is the Red Sea chapter, week three, day four of our look through the book of Exodus. And in this chapter, we see a fifth principle. We talked about four principles we've learned at the beginning of this week in day one. We see a fifth principle for how God is working to set you free, and the principle is this. When it seems impossible, God has planned a way out. God can do what I cannot do. And so when it seems impossible, God has planned a way out. What do you do when you feel like God is setting me free, but the way he's leading me, this is impossible for me. This is never going to work. You feel like I'm in a tight spot. I cannot get out. And you know what I'm talking about. It might be financial, it might be relational, it might be personal. You've hit one of those circumstances where you wonder, how am I going to make it through? How am I going to get out of this one? In a moment, we're going to look at two things that we learned from what happened with the people of Israel that day about how we make it through with God's power, God's strength. It's good to remind ourselves that when these kinds of challenges come, we're stuck. We can't move ahead. We can't move back. We feel trapped. You can choose one of three choices. You can choose escape, you can choose denial, or you can choose endurance. You can try to go backwards. The people of Israel wanted to do that. Denial, you can get stuck where you are, pretend the problem isn't there. Or endurance, you can go all the way through the problem. God's answer is always to take us through the problem. Not around the problem, through the problem. Not escaping the problem, through the problem, through the Red Sea. So what does it take to make it through? Two things. When it seems impossible, God has planned a way out. Two things. Number one, you have to know God has a plan. You must know God has a plan. Every one of us knows the spot that Moses found himself in at the Red Sea. There was a sea on one side and there was Pharaoh's army on the other side rushing towards them. There was no way out. Listen to what happens in Exodus chapter 14, verses 1 to 4, it tells us how Moses got into that spot. Then the Lord said to Moses, "Tell the Israelites to turn back and encamp near Pai-heroth between Migdal and the sea. They are to encamp by the sea directly opposite Baal-Zephan. Pharaoh will think the Israelites are wandering around the land in confusion, hemmed in by the desert, and I will harden Pharaoh's heart and he will pursue them. But I will gain glory for myself through Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord. " So the Israelites did this. Moses, the people of Israel, they were in this spot because God put them there. Now as I know, as I read the spot that they were in, these are the verses many times that people are terrified of reading. You think you're going to be sitting in a Bible study and you're going to have to read one of these verses that has all of these names of these cities from Old Testament times and you're not going to know at all what to say. Well here's a little tip. No one else knows either. I mean I just read Pai-heroth between Migdal and the sea. I could have read Pai-cherry between Barbie doll and the sea and it would have meant the same thing to you many times. There's a sense, it's just reading it with confidence that you can make it through these verses as you read them. God said tell the people. Tell the people to go here. God had a plan. Who got them into this tight spot? God did. God knew they were there. Now I would not say that God gets you into every difficult spot that you're in in life. Sometimes it's you, sometimes it's another person, sometimes Satan is at work. But the truth is God knows you're there and God is greater than you or Satan or any other person so he can use every circumstance and God always has a plan. Even though you and I don't know what the plan is, God always has a plan. You say I'll ignore God or pretend he isn't here. He still has a plan for you. You can run in the exact direct opposite exact direct opposite direction from God. God still has a plan. You can do everything possible to mess up your life. God still has a plan for your life. So here they are at the Red Sea. God has a plan. Moses had to know that because of that he looked to God, he spoke to God and God told him what to do. What's the second thing that you do when you face one of these circumstances? The second thing you do is you must take the next step. First you have to realize God has a plan but then you have to do what they were already doing as they followed the cloud and the pillar of fire. You have to take the next step. How do faith and our actions work together? If you say you have faith and you don't do anything, that's not faith and yet other people talk about faith and it seems that everything that they say is faith is really to their credit, something that they've done. There's this exchange that happens on the shores of the Red Sea that gives us some insight on the faith that it takes in order for you and I to take that next step. You see here what the people said, what Moses said and what God said and in each of them you learn something about faith. What the people said as they faced this situation is in verses 11 and 12. They said to Moses, "Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn't we say to you in Egypt, leave us alone, let us serve the Egyptians? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert. " The people had a hard time with the next step. They had a hard time with faith and so they got into the blame game. It happens to many of us when we get in what seems to us to be a trap. We start to look for someone to blame. Instead of having faith in God, we look for someone to blame. That person that you're blaming right now, that's keeping you from having faith in God. Blame is a barrier to faith. But they blamed because they were afraid. That's why we blame, because we're afraid. They blamed Moses. They said, "It's your fault, Moses. " They looked at Moses. They thought they were going to die. That's what the people said and Moses had something to say to them. What did Moses say? Verse 13 and 14, "Moses answered the people, 'Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you. You need only to be still. '" The people are blaming Moses and now Moses points to God. And what he says sounds very spiritual. Stand firm. You're going to see the deliverance of God. You just have to be still. Stay right where you are. The truth of the matter is Moses got this one wrong. That is not the next step that God was encouraging. Moses didn't know what God was about to do. So somehow he thought they must stand there and see this Egyptian army wiped out. He had faith that the army could be wiped out. He just didn't know how God was going to do it. So he's saying just stand still. That's faith. And there's a lot of people who they say that's what faith is. It's scary to take the next step. So I'll just stay where I am. I'll just sort of hunker down in my hole and I'll stay where I am and God will take care of everything. That's not what faith is. God's going to challenge you to do something that's above and beyond what you think you could do. To show you that he has a plan and that in his plan he can do the impossible. So here's what God said. The people said, "Why did you do this to us, Moses? " Moses said, "You need only to be still. " Here's what God said to me in verses 15 and 16. "Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on. Raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water so that the Israelites may go through the sea on dry ground. '" God says, "You got it wrong, Moses. It's not stay still. It's get moving. Move ahead. " Now, as we talk about this and we talk about faith, some people read this and they think, "I love that. Move ahead. That means it's all up to me. If it's to be, it's up to me. God expects us to make our own way. " No. That's not what this is about. No, God wants us to move his way. This is not them pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps. Remember, God split the sea in two. Human power would have had Moses saying, "We can build a bridge over that thing overnight in the next few hours and we can escape this. " But it took God's power for them to move in this direction. What happened to the people of Israel this day is, instead of getting stuck on what they couldn't do or wasting energy on the little that they knew they could do, they began to move in the direction of what only God could do. Instead of getting stuck on what they couldn't do or wasting energy on what little they could do, they began to move in the direction of what only God could do. Our biggest mistake when we get stuck, when we get afraid, is we start to ask, "What can I do? " rather than asking, "What can God do? " What can God do? Is there even one place in your life where you're asking that, "What can God do? " Raise your staff, God says, the Red Sea will divide. There was no magical power in Moses' shepherding stick. Why did God ask him to do this? Because it was a sign of his faith. It was a step of faith. And we've all seen pictures all of our lives of what happened next, from Ten Commandments to the Prince of Egypt, all of those movies, verses 21 and 22. Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove back the sea with a strong east wind, and he turned it into dry land. The waters were divided, and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left. The Red Sea did not split until Moses stretched out his staff over the Red Sea, and then they started moving towards the Red Sea. You want your marriage to get better? And you say, "I'm just going to sit here and wait for God to do it. " What's the next step in the direction of where God wants you to go? Not where you want to go, not what's comfortable for you, but where He wants you to go. The Red Sea did not split until Moses and the people started moving towards the Red Sea. We want money in the bank and knowledge of how God is going to provide for us before we take the next step. The Red Sea didn't split until they started moving towards the Red Sea. Real faith is not sitting and waiting for God to do something. But neither is it doing something by your own strength and energy. Real faith is taking the next step in the direction of what only God can do. Our Father, we all face Red Seas, places where we're stuck, where we think that miracle could never happen, and we know we cannot force another person's choice. We know there are some things in this world that will not change like we want them to change. We know that there are times when the Red Sea splits. There are times when a marriage that seemed like it could never be healed is healed, where a person who seems like they've gone so far astray, they could never come back, comes back. We've seen you do it before, God. We know that you can do it again. So help us to know what we can do. What's the next step we need to take? I need to take in the direction of what only you can do. Help me to see that today, Lord, and then give me faith to take that step. In your name I pray, amen. Tomorrow, we're going to see together Moses's response to God's miracle.