Exodus 13, 14:1-12.
WHILE the fourteenth chapter is one we want to read and talk about, and a most interesting story does it tell, let us first take special note of some verses in the thirteenth, which we shall need to remember and to think about.
First, let me ask you to see again how God thinks of children, and not only grown folks, in the eighth verse: “Thou shalt show thy son,” and in the fourteenth verse, “It shall be when thy son asketh thee.” The eyes of God rest on boys and girls, and He bids us who are grown up to tell them the way of salvation; to teach them about Jesus and His love, even from babyhood.
Then see God’s care over His people which is told us in the verses from 17 to the end of the chapter. Look at the map, which I suppose you have at the back of your Bible, showing Egypt and the peninsula of Sinai.
The “way of the land of the Philistines” (verse 17), was the short way close to the Mediterranean Sea straight across to the land of Canaan; there the people of Israel would have met enemies very soon, and had to fight their way through.
The “way of the wilderness of the Red Sea” led southward down the Sinai peninsula close to the Red Sea to Mount Sinai, then north and east to Palestine. God, who thought about and loved those people, led them this longer way around, so that they might find it easier to travel, with no enemies at all to meet until they were well on their way. In verses 21 and 22 see how God went with the children of Israel; before them by day in a cloud to guide them on their way; and at night in a pillar of fire to light their camp.
How did they know their way? By following the cloud; that was all they had to do.
Suppose they got away from the cloud, what should the people do? Why, get right back, and take care not to get away from it again!
Just so with you and me, if we are saved; we must keep close to God in our lives, and if Satan leads us away, (he will if he can), let us get right back by prayer to Him. But there is more than one reason why.
Chapter 14. Not straight across, above the Red Sea about where the Suez Canal is now, but down the Egyptian side of the Red Sea, the children of Israel were led. This was God’s way; He was not through with Pharaoh, and that proud king was going to be humbled lower still. Pharaoh and his servants presently were saying to one another,
“Why have we done this, that we have let Israel go from serving us?” and an army was sent out quickly after those they had just been glad to send away free. “Six hundred chosen chariots, and all the chariots of Egypt,” “all the horses and chariots of Pharaoh, and his horsemen, and his army” caught up with the former slaves by the Red Sea, and frightened them terribly. They were “sore afraid,” and they cried out unto the Lord; indeed they were so discouraged that they thought they were just going to be killed.
It is easy for us to read the story, and think how those people were perfectly safe, because we know that God was with them, but they only saw and heard their enemies behind them, and saw the sea ahead. They didn’t really trust God, indeed I am afraid that many of them did not know, Him as their Saviour; they were not only slaves of Pharaoh, but slaves of Satan. Yet God had given His word that He would take the people to the promised land. Many of them died in unbelief, but their children went into the country God gave for their home. Many an experience did they have on the way, truly, but those who trusted in God did not die in the wilderness. Of course, Canaan was not heaven, and no doubt some of those who crossed from Egypt to that land, or were born on the way to Canaan, were like a good many today: they knew about God, and yet never came to Him as lost sinners, and asked Him to be their Saviour. What about yourself?
ML 01/22/1922