Spiritual Warfare: When God brings you to Pi Hahiroth

6^th Sunday after Pentecost,June 22, 2008

 

We’re concluding our sermon series on Spiritual Warfare today with a look at an impossible situation Moses and the Israelites found themselves in.  We’re looking today at the crossing of the Red Sea that is recorded in Exodus chapter 14.  So, I invite you to take out your Swords of the Spirit – which is the Word of God – and open up to Exodus 14. 

Exodus is the second book in the Old Testament.  The order goes, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.  These first five books of the Old Testament were written through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit by Moses while he led the people of Israel in the desert for 40 years.  To put our reading today in context, we actually have to go back over 400 years before the crossing of the Red Sea.  Now, I’ll admit before I go any further that I am glossing over a lot of background information.  The good news is you each have all the background information in your Bibles that you can read about for yourselves!

Over four hundred years prior to the crossing, there was a major famine in the Middle East, and the family of a man named Israel moved to Egypt to survive the famine.  While in Egypt the ‘children of Israel’ grew into a huge population.  So huge, in fact, the rulers of Egypt became scared of them, and made them slaves.  After four hundred years of slavery, God raised up Moses to be the person to lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt.  God sent 10 plagues to the nation of Egypt, and after the 10^th plague, the King of the Egyptians – the Pharaoh – let the slaves go free.  Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and was taking them to the land God had promised Abraham thousands of years earlier his descendants would own.

That is where we pick it up in Exodus 14 with select verses.  They’ve been given their freedom and they’ve been led out of Egypt. They are in the desert making good their escape from slavery, and here’s what happened:

Then The LORD said to Moses, “Tell the Israelites to turn back and encamp near Pi Hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea… So the Israelites did this. When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, Pharaoh and his officials changed their minds about them and said, “What have we done? We have let the Israelites go and have lost their services!” So he had his chariot made ready and took his army with him. He took six hundred of the best chariots, along with all the other chariots of Egypt, with officers over all of them. {They} pursued the Israelites and overtook them as they camped by the sea near Pi Hahiroth... As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out toThe LORD. 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!” 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.” 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 can go through the sea on dry ground…” Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night The LORD drove the sea back with a strong east wind and 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 Egyptians pursued them, and all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots and horsemen followed them into the sea…The LORD looked down …at the Egyptian army and threw it into confusion. He made the wheels of their chariots come off so that they had difficulty driving. And the Egyptians said, “Let’s get away from the Israelites! The LORD  is fighting for them against Egypt.” Then The LORD said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea so that the waters may flow back over the Egyptians and their chariots and horsemen.” Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at daybreak the sea went back to its place… The water flowed back and covered the chariots and horsemen—the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed the Israelites into the sea. Not one of them survived. But the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left. That day The LORD saved Israel from the hands of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore. And when the Israelites saw the great power The LORD displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared The LORD and put their trust in Him and in Moses His servant.

They were almost home free.  They were almost beyond Pharaoh’s reach.  A few more hours, maybe another mile or two or three, and they would have been in the desert and Pharaoh’s army would never have been able to find them.  They were almost there, and then God told Moses, essentially, ‘turn around, go back the way you came, then wander over that-a-way until you come to Pi Hahiroth.  And by the way, when you do this, you’re going to be in an impossible situation.’

The impossible situation was that once they came to Pi Hahiroth, they were surrounded with mountains on either side of them, a sea in front of them, and the army of the world’s super-power breathing down their backs.  I love the response of the Israelites when they realized the situation they were in: 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!”

When things don’t go the way we think they should, or when we are blindsided by something unexpected, we often look back to what once was and paint it in a much better light than we should.  This is something for us to remember as we engage the enemy in the spiritual battles we are in: if he can cause discouragement and a longing for the past, he will have started to defeat us.  What the people of Israel were really saying is that it would have been better for them to be slaves than free, because they realize now that their new-found freedom brings challenges – battles – from their enemy who wanted to return them to bondage.

The same is true with us.  In our freedom as Christians, we will face battles with our enemy.  His goal for us is to return us to a place where we doubt the truth of God’s Word, God’s love for us, and our salvation through Jesus.  In other words, to return us to the slavery of hopelessness and thinking that we are better off there; to return us to the bondage of looking to ourselves for guidance and because of that missing the real freedom that could be ours.

Does Moses’ response to the people sound familiar?  “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.”  You can write Ephesians 6:10-14 in the margins of your bibles:  " Finally, be strong in The LORD and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes… so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand."

Remember what we said in the first sermon in this series?  “It’s not about me.”  You can underline Moses’ answer in Exodus 14:14, and write the same thing in the margin there you did in the margin next to Ephesians 6: “It’s not about me!”

Even in these impossible situations, it’s all about God.  The war has already been won by The LORD, you and I are just here to pick up our swords and pray as we engage in battle for ourselves, our families and our church.  In fact, let’s look at God’s response 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 can go through the sea on dry ground...”  You can write the scripture reference in the margin here we wrote in the margins of our Bible last week: Jeremiah 29:11,”…I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

God already knows what’s going to happen, and how it will all turn out in the end.  Let’s imagine for a moment you happened to have recorded, oh, I don’t know, say a certain basketball game of a certain championship series.  And say when you watched it the first time you were yelling at the screen, jumping out of your seat, getting excited and angry and frustrated and filled with joy and sadness all throughout the game.  When the game was over, you would know who won.  Now, let’s say you go back and watch the game again.  You know what the battles on the court are going to be; you know who’s going to sink what shot, and you already know how the whole thing ends.  You know what move a particular player should have made to keep the other team for scoring, and if you could, you’d take the knowledge that you have, travel back in time and tell them what to do to win the battle.  You’d go to the guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and hit him upside the head with the playbook and say, “You get paid millions of dollars a year and you’re over here when you need to be over there engaging in the battle?!  Go!”  And you’d be able to say this because you would have a perspective you didn’t have before.

God has a perspective we don’t have: He already knows everything – what will happen, how things will work out, and how the battles will end.  He knows what we’re facing even before we do, and He gives us the same answer He gave to Moses, “Why are you standing there crying to me?  Move forward!  Engage the enemy!  I’ve given you the ‘playbook’, all the tools you need, and the ability to go forward.  Just do it!”

Moses raised his staff over the waters of the Red Sea and it split in two so the Israelites – God chosen people – could walk across on dry ground to safety on the other side.  It wasn’t Moses’ staff that caused the sea to split, it was responding to the call of God and by so doing, allowing the Holy Spirit to be released through Moses.  You see, the Bible says that God sent a strong east wind to drive back the waters; to drive back that which would serve only to keep His people in slavery and bondage.  In Hebrew the word for wind and spirit is the same word – ruach.  God sent His ruach, His wind, His Spirit to make a way for the people.  What if Moses hadn’t stretched his staff over the waters?  Could God still have parted them?  Of course!  But that wasn’t God’s plan.  God elected Moses for that time and place, and chose to use the instrument He did to accomplish His purpose.  The same is true for you and me.  Remember another verse from last week, Esther 4:14, And who knows but that you have come to a royal position for such a time as this?

All along we’ve been talking about our Swords and using them, and the question we’ve asked is, “Since God tells us the Sword of the Spirit we have is the Word of God, how big is your sword?  How much of the Word of God do you have in your life, and are you comfortable with that amount as you find yourself engaging the enemy?”  Here’s a slight variation on that question, “How big is your staff, and are you ready to use it?”  In other words, are we ready to use what’s been given to us – that which is at our disposal – to face the enemy of our faith, our families and the church God has brought us to, and say, “In Jesus name, NO!”

God’s will split the water for us, are we ready to be that instrument of splitting?  God’s going to move the seas for us, are we ready to trust Him and walk on the dry land?  God has already defeated the enemy for us on the cross that tried to hold Jesus and the tomb that couldn’t, are we ready to pick up our swords and pray, engage the enemy, and reclaim the new life in Christ that is ours?  Ready, willing and able?

We are able because of what we talked about in our first sermon in this series when we looked back at our past series leading up to this point.  We are able because we are God’s treasured possessions; who are being kept until the end of time; who, through the power of the Holy Spirit, are being healed of our emotional and spiritual wounds; who have come to know the real Jesus more and more and understand even more fully that He is not a liar or a lunatic, but Lord; who are the last witnesses called in the Bible to tell this generation about the risen Christ; and are dangerous to our enemy because of all this.  We are able!

We are ready whether we realize it or not because of what we mentioned earlier – It’s not about us!  The battle is The LORD’s!  ‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty. ^[1]

The real question is, “Are we willing?”  The war is over, but the battles continue.  When the Israelites in our reading today saw the power of The LORD and experienced His deliverance they put their trust in Him.  We’ve seen and experienced the power of The LORD in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus; in the call of the Holy Spirit and His power in our lives.  We’ve been delivered from the hold the evil one had on us, and the bondage he wants for us.  Are we willing to trust God, pick up the sword He’s given us in His word and pray, and step into the battle with our rallying cry, “In Jesus name, NO!”

We will experience the Pi Hahiroth’s in our lives, that’s a given.  There will be times when we can’t see the way out of a dark, hard situation.  There will be times when we feel like we’ve got mountains on either side of us, a sea in front of us, and the army of a world super power breathing down our back.  That’s when we pick up our sword and pray; that’s when we use our staff and go forward; that’s when we engage the enemy and give him what-for.

Why?  Because we can.  Because we’ve been called to.  Because the battle rages all around us for ourselves, our families and our church.  Because not even Pi Hahiroth can stop our God who gives us His armor, places His sword in our hands, and promises to give us His Spirit to drive out the evil one and his influences ahead of us.

Because He loves us just that much.

 

Amen