One of my favorite portions of the Exodus story is when Moses is standing in front of the Red Sea with his staff raised and God splits the Red Sea in two causing God’s people to walk through on dry ground. This tremendous story of deliverance has always been a beacon of hope that God will make a way! And while that is true, the past few weeks that I have been thinking on this passage have caused me to look at it from a different vantage point that I think will help you like it has helped me. I call it the ‘Are you flippin’ kidding me’ perspective.
One habit many of us have in reading scripture is reading like we already know what is going to happen because we’ve read it before rather than trying to put ourselves in the story as if it is happening for the first time. When you can learn to insert yourself into the storyline rather than always just knowing ‘I’ve read this and they make it to the other side’ it will open scripture up to you in a whole new way.
I call it the ‘are you flippin’ kidding me’ perspective because that is exactly what I would have said looking at two walls of water that I’m supposed to walk through. At the deepest point where it is supposed Israel crossed the water is 200 ft deep. That means that as they were walking through there is a 20 story skyscraper of water on each side of them! I would have been thinking the whole time that I’m probably about to die. Don’t lie! You would have been frightened as well. Are you flippin’ kidding me Moses? You want me to walk one and a half miles through this! See, some of you thought it happened quickly and they just crossed a river, no! There had to walk over 7000 feet, every moment mustering the faith that this wall of water wasn’t going to come crashing down on their families. There was a process they had to endure to reach the other side. See…it’s much more intense when you put yourself there with them.
What’s the point I’m trying to make from all this? Sometimes the thing you think is going to take you out is actually God making a way for you. Looking at the water I’m sure many of them thought ‘this is the end’ even as they walked through, but the thing that looked like at any moment it could come crashing down on them was the very miracle that God used to deliver them from a life of bondage.
Not only was the water a way of escape for the Israelites, but it was the death of the Egyptians. That circumstance…that process….that bad situation that looked like it was going to take you out wasn’t just to help you, it was actually there to kill everything holding you back. 1 Corinthians 10:2 teaches that the crossing of the Red Sea was a type of baptism. One reason we are baptized is to drown the old man, the old ways, the old sins, and everything that is not of God and holding us back the same way God used the Red Sea to drown Israel’s old slave drivers and masters that kept them in bondage.
I wonder how many of you reading this right now are looking at a wall of water in your life, waiting for it to crash down, when really God is baptizing you through your circumstances and wanting you to use it as a means to drown whatever is holding you back. God makes a way where there seems to be no way, but often times He makes a way where ‘the way’ looks like it could kill you! But in the end, friend, God is faithful, and your circumstance is not meant to take you out, even if it looks that way. We must learn to see how God sees! Your circumstance is meant to bring you to the other side so that whatever stopped you before can be washed away forever because you allowed yourself to be baptized in this process.
It’s not an ‘are you flippin’ kidding me’ moment. It’s an invitation from God to walk in more freedom and more glory than ever before. Quit looking at the walls of water on your side. Quit looking at the Egyptians behind you. Set your gaze straight ahead on the end of this road where you come out of this valley of the sea, and God drowns everything holding you back.