An overview for Sunday School teachers and Bible study leaders of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of Exodus 14:19-31, with the title of “Power Revealed,” for Sunday December 29, 2024. A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:

INTRO: In his classic book, 1776, David McCullough writes about the winter of 1776, when the young American army had lost battle after battle:   “As near as could be determined, Washington now had an army of about 7,500, but that was a paper figure only. Possibly 6,000 were fit for duty. Hundreds were sick and suffering from the cold. Robert Morris and others in and around Philadelphia were doing everything possible to find winter clothes and blankets, while more and more of the local citizenry were signing the British proclamation (of peace for loyalty to the Crown). Congress had fled. Two former members of Congress, Joseph Galloway and Andrew Allen, had gone over to the enemy. By all reasonable signs, the war was over and the Americans had lost.” (David McCullough, 1776, p. 270)

Things looked hopeless for Washington and the young American army — but they were not. Washington and his army not only survived, but won that war for Independence, with what appears to so many to be God’s Divine intervention.

Then you can transition and say: In today’s lesson we’ll see how Israel appeared to be in a hopeless situation, but the Lord delivered them — and He delivered us from an even more hopeless situation through His Son Jesus Christ!

CONTEXT

We saw in our lesson last time in Exodus 12 that God saved Israel out of Egypt through the Passover: they applied the blood of a lamb to their doorposts and were spared the wrath of the death angel. 

Now Israel is finally on their way out of Egypt to the Promised Land, and Pharaoh has again changed his mind, and decided to pursue them with his army. Now he has Israel trapped between his army and the Red Sea. It appears to be a hopeless situation — but the Lord was with Israel, and He would reveal His power in this situation, as we see in our lesson this week from Exodus 14.

OUTLINE

I.  Protective Power  (:19-20)

II. Miraculous Deliverance  (:21-28)

III. Unique Salvation  (:29-31)

TEXT:

I. Protective Power  (:19-20)

19 “The angel of God, who had been going before the camp of Israel, moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them. 20 So it came between the camp of Egypt and the camp of Israel; and there was the cloud [a]along with the darkness, yet it gave light at night. Thus the one did not come near the other all night.”

Here was this apparently “hopeless situation”: Israel was trapped between Pharaoh’s army and the Red Sea. There appeared to be no way out. 

You might get your group involved with a discussion question here:  ??? Did you ever feel like you were in a hopeless situation, but God brought you out of it???
(For example, while I was pastoring in Louisiana in 2012 I became ill and had to resign my pastorate, sell our home, and apply for disability. It looked like my life and ministry were basically over — but God brought us out, and I have served for another 10 years. 

Cheryl & I felt that way again last August when she had her stroke. It was a very dark time, spiritually, emotionally, financially, in every way — but the Lord is already bringing us out of it in ways we could not have imagined.)

You/your group can share your own experiences …

I would also point out that of course the most hopeless situation ever was the hopelessness we had in our sin — we were all lost, “having no hope” as Ephesians 2:12 says —  but God delivered us from our hopeless situation with His power through the death & resurrection of Christ.

So Israel appeared to be in a “no win,” hopeless situation. But IN this situation, God showed His protective power: Verse 19 says the angel of the Lord moved from in front of them, where he was leading them, and it says:  “it came between the camp of Egypt and the camp of Israel.” And as a result it says: “Thus the one did not come near the other all night.” So the “cloud” of God stood between Israel and the Egyptians, and protected them from harm. 

This is an example of the kind of protective power that God has for His children. 

We see another example of this in Psalm 3:3, where David says “But You O LORD are a shield about me; my glory, and the one who lifts my head.” We read from the historical note that introduces Psalm 3 (which IS in the Biblical text) and it tells us that David here was in one of those “hopeless situations”: this was when his son Absalom had rebelled against him and took over the kingdom. David was on the run, with a very few loyal men, and it looked hopeless. BUT GOD protected him. He was his “shield” who protected him in that seemingly hopeless situation.

This verse became very personal for me in 2012-13, when I was stricken with the illness that took me out of the ministry for two years. During that time, Psalm 3:3 became one of the very personal words that the Lord used to sustain me. I knew that He was “my shield,” that means He is my Protector; Guard — just like a shield. So if God is my Shield, that means that if something does touch my life, He must have allowed it, and therefore He must have some purpose for it! This gave me great confidence, know that I hadn’t been punished for something, or just happened to be struck by some “random illness,” or so on, but that this was something that God had a specific purpose for. And looking back I can see that He did. 

We see that reinforced here in Exodus 14. God’s “pillar” was like a “shield” for His people. NOTHING COULD TOUCH THEM while that “pillar,” that “shield,” was there. The Egyptians could not advance until GOD allowed them to! 

This reminds us of the Sovereignty of God. GOD is in charge of this world, and the lives of His people. We are not at the mercy of these often seemingly “random” events. God allows things to happen in HIS time. And when things do come through His protective “pillar” or “shield” — as all of us have seen happen in our lives, even as Christians — we can be confident that this is not “random,” but that He has a reason and purpose for it.

You/your group members may be dealing with some things right now, that this applies to. That difficult thing didn’t touch your life without God’s permission first. Know that the Lord is up to something which will work out for your good and His glory in the long run!  God has protective power for His people — which gives us hope, even in seemingly “hopeless” situations! 

II. Miraculous Deliverance  (:21-28)

21 ‘Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD [b]swept the sea back by a strong east wind all night and turned the sea into dry land, so the waters were divided. 22 The sons of Israel [c]went through the midst of the sea on the dry land, and the waters were like a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.”

23 Then the Egyptians took up the pursuit, and all Pharaoh’s horses, his chariots and his horsemen went in after them into the midst of the sea. 24 At the morning watch, the Lord looked down on the [d]army of the Egyptians [e]through the pillar of fire and cloud and brought the [f]army of the Egyptians into confusion. 25 He [g]caused their chariot wheels to swerve, and He made them drive with difficulty; so the Egyptians said, “Let [h]us flee from Israel, for the Lord is fighting for them against the Egyptians.”

26 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea so that the waters may come back over the Egyptians, over their chariots and their horsemen.” 27 So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its normal state at daybreak, while the Egyptians were fleeing right into it; then the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea. 28 The waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen, even Pharaoh’s entire army that had gone into the sea after them; not even one of them remained. 

This section begins with :21, “Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea.”  Verse 26 repeats that: “Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Stretch out your hand over the sea so that the waters may come back.’”  :27 says he did.

We might ask our class:  ??? What was it about the “hand of Moses” that caused these miracles to happen???

(Of course, the answer is, there was NOTHING special about “the hand of Moses.” It was the power of GOD that made everything happen.  Verse 21 says:  21 “Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD swept the sea back.” So yes, Moses stretched out his hand — but it was GOD who “swept the sea back”!  It was GOD who did it, NOT Moses!

We need to remember that: God can use very weak/normal things to demonstrate His power and accomplish His purposes. Even us!

We have a small feral cat that was found as a baby outside a rent house and was given to us. She is quite a character. Some of our church members call her “Lucifer” because she is not very friendly!  But she is not very big, so some of the neighbor cats will chase her back into our house. One day, our cat was outside, and one of the big neighbor cats started come towards our house to chase her in. Just then I stepped outside the door, and the neighbor cat saw me, and started running away. Well our little cat saw that and started running after her, and then came back with her chest all puffed out like “she really did something,” driving that cat away. But it wasn’t HER power; it was MY PRESENCE that did it!

And it like that with us sometimes, isn’t it? God may accomplish some great thing while we are present, and we think that we have “really done something” — but it wasn’t US, it was HIM! It was HIS PRESENCE that made the difference. We ought to be very humble, and very understanding about just where the power and the blessings we experience come from: it’s all from HIM, not US! There was no inherent power in Moses’ hand — and there is no inherent power in US either. It’s all the LORD! 

But there IS also another lesson for us: that God CAN use even us — even the weakest of us — to do amazing things, because it is HIM, not US, Who is doing it.  

So just what did God do?  :21 says “the LORD swept the sea back by a strong east wind all night and turned the sea into dry land, so the waters were divided.”

So God “swept the sea back” (it’s literally the Hebrew word “halak, which means “walk.” He “walked it back”). Interestingly, it says He did it “by a strong east wind all night.” Some might point to this and say “See, this was no miracle; it was just a wind that made this happen.” I’m sorry, but no “wind” is going to turn the sea into dry land. God may have USED a “wind” to drive the sea back — but that wind was no more the real cause of the sea parting than was the hand of Moses! Moses was there, and the wind was there — but it was GOD who caused this miracle to happen!  

There are always those who try to analyze and “de-mythologize” Bible stories like this. This reminds me of a story about a young Christian lady who went off to college and came back in tears, doubting her faith. Her minister asked her, “What’s wrong?” The young lady said: “My professor at college said the story of the Exodus wasn’t true; that is wasn’t the ‘Red Sea;’ it was the ‘Sea of Reeds.’ And it wasn’t a “sea” at all; it was only 6 inches deep!” The minister said: “Why, that’s fantastic; that’s just amazing!” He said, “That’s an even greater miracle than we thought it was!” The young lady was startled and said, “What do you mean?” The minister said: “Why, just think what an amazing miracle it was, that the whole Egyptian army drowned in only 6 inches of water!”

Sometimes these skeptics don’t quite connect all the dots. And sometimes as God’s people we’re too quick to accept their “theories” and doubt His word.

But admittedly, we can’t “prove” the Exodus happened, with “pictures” or scientific evidence. It is a matter of faith. But we need to understand, God always works by faith. Hebrews 11:6 says “Without faith, it is impossible to please Him.” In fact, sometimes it seems God purposefully leaves just enough doubt, just enough uncertainty in a situation — even when He does some great thing — so that if you want to choose to disbelieve, you can. 

Sean McDowell (son of Josh McDowell) has an article on seanmcdowell.org, “Why did God use wind to split the Red Sea?” And he basically says He did it 1) to show His power over creation, and 2) to give people the freedom to reject Him if they so desire. Here’s a quote from the end of his article:

“ … there is always room for doubt. Just as a skeptical Egyptian could claim that the east winds blew fortuitously to save the Israelites, we are free to argue today that the universe came from nothing, that moral values emerged from valueless processes, that consciousness arose from matter, or that Jesus never even existed.

God is not going to force anyone to believe in Him. He split the Red Sea with an east wind to show His power over nature, and also to invite the Israelites to trust Him. And yet He gave room for the skeptic to deny Him. And He does the same for us today.”

You might share that quote, and ask your class to discuss their thoughts about it.

(You might include in your discussion a scripture like John 12, where Jesus prayed and asked the Father to glorify His name. Verse 28 says: “Then a voice came out of heaven: “I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.” 29 So the crowd of people who stood by and heard it were saying that it had thundered; others were saying, “An angel has spoken to Him.”

Here the very voice of God spoke from heaven — but some said it was just thunder. It’s like God leaves just enough doubt, that if a person does not want to believe, they can choose to do that if they will. But our response says more about US than it does about the truth of God!)

III.  Unique Salvation  (:29-31)

29 But the sons of Israel walked on dry land through the midst of the sea, and the waters were like a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.

30 Thus the LORD saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. 31 When Israel saw the great [l]power which the LORD had [m]used against the Egyptians, the people [n]feared the LORD, and they believed in the LORD and in His servant Moses.”

“BUT the sons of Israel …” These are some key words.

Things are different for the people of God than they are for the people of the world who do not know Him.

— We saw this in Egypt starting in Exodus 8, where starting with the 4th plague, the LORD specifically began treating HIS people differently than He did the Egyptians:

:22 “But on that day I will set apart the land of Goshen, where My people are living, so that no swarms of flies will be there, in order that you may know that I, the LORD, am in the midst of the land. 23 I will put a division between My people and your people. Tomorrow this sign will occur.”’” 24 Then the Lord did so …”.

So there we no flies in the land of Goshen, no plague on their cattle, no boils on their bodies in the 4th-6th plagues. We see this difference again in the third “trio” of plagues, the hail/locusts/darkness. It specifically says the hail and darkness did NOT come upon the Israelites in Goshen.

And then of course as we saw in Chapter 8, the Israelites were dramatically distinguished from the Egyptians when the death angel passed over their homes and did not take their firstborn. 

There’s a principle here: IF we are truly God’s people, things will be different for us than they are for those in the world.

We see this all through Proverbs, don’t we? So many verses in Proverbs are dedicated to delineating all the many differences between the righteous and the wicked. For example, just from Proverbs 10:

— Proverbs 10:3 “The LORD will not allow the righteous to hunger, but He will reject the craving of the wicked.”

— Proverbs 10:4 “Poor is he who works with a negligent hand, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.”

— Proverbs 10:7 “The memory of the righteous is blessed, but the name of the wicked will rot.”

— Proverbs 10:16 “The wages of the righteous is life, the income of the wicked, punishment.”

— Proverbs 10:24 “What the wicked fears will come upon him, but the desire of the righteous will be granted.”

— Proverbs 10:25 “When the whirlwind passes, the wicked is no more, but the righteous has an everlasting foundation.” 

— Proverbs 10:27 “The fear of the LORD prolongs life, but the years of the wicked will be shortened.”

— Proverbs 10:29 “The way of the LORD is a stronghold to the upright, but ruin to the workers of iniquity.” 

Do you see the constant contrast here, between the righteous and the wicked? And this is just from ONE chapter of Proverbs; there are many more there.

ONE EXERCISE you could do would be to hand these verses out on slips of paper for class members to read/or assign them to read these from their own Bible, and then just emphasize the DIFFERENCE God’s word shows here between the righteous and those who do not know God.  We see that in this text: “BUT (here’s the difference!) the sons of Israel walked on dry land …” and it goes on to say “Thus the LORD saved Israel that day …”.

He made a distinction between HIS people, and those who did not fear Him.  

You could also follow up with a discussion question here:
??? What are some of the ways that there could be a distinction between God’s people and those who are not God’s people, TODAY???

(Of course, you and your group can think of many: our moral decisions, lifestyle choices, doctrinal beliefs, use of money, family priorities … on and on. And the impacts on our lives are very different too!)

This can/should be the basis for a testimony by many of us who have been God’s people from the time we were children. Many of us think, “Well, I don’t have much of a testimony because I didn’t go through a lot of bad things …” etc., but this is actually a great testimony: God SPARED us a lot of things by His grace. Things have been better for us than they have been for a lot of people, because He has made the difference for us. I did NOT get into drugs and alcoholism; I did NOT get into some moral problems; I have had a life more blessed than other family members or friends I grew up with, BECAUSE the Lord showed me His grace and I became His (we need to make sure we aren’t “self-righteous” in this; it’s not “our goodness” but God’s grace that makes the difference.)

Now, does that mean that if you’re God’s child, you won’t experience any difficulties? Absolutely not. “In this world you will have tribulation.” But even in our troubles, things will be different for us. Jesus said in John 14:27 that He will give us a peace in our trials that the world does not have. And most importantly, we have the confidence that no matter what happens, we have heaven and glory waiting for us with the Lord. The world doesn’t have that! Things are different — and much better — for the people of God, than they are for those who do not know Him. This is part of the unique salvation God gives His people. 

And of course I would be sure to emphasize that the greatest deliverance God has given us, is not from being killed by an army, or drowned in a sea, or rescued from financial difficulties or anything else — it’s the salvation from our sins that He miraculously gave us in Jesus Christ, which led us to become His people, and inherit all the many blessings, and experience all the differences for good, that He has to give us.

AND IMPORTANTLY: let’s make sure everyone knows just WHERE these blessings come from!  

NOTICE: FOUR TIMES in :30-31 the word “LORD”/“YHWH”/Yahweh is used. (We’ve seen how the word “LORD” in all 4 capital letters in the Old Testament means that in the original text, it is the Personal Name of God, “Yahweh,” “I AM”). This Name is used FOUR TIMES here in :30-31. (NINE times in our whole focus passage of :19-31!) This is no accident! God put His personal name here all these many times to remind His people: this was NOT just “any god” who saved you that day at the Red Sea; this was not Baal or Molech or Asherah or Ra or any other god; it was THIS God, YAHWEH God, the One True God, who brought about your salvation.

We need this message today too, in growingly pluralistic society, where people think it doesn’t matter what god you worship, to continue to believe and proclaim that it is THIS God, the One True God, the God of the Bible, is the One who saves us — NOT JUST ANY GOD — as so many people believe today. 

Sadly not long ago, Pope Francis was on a trip to the island of Singapore in Southeast Asia, speaking to children, and he said to them: “All religions are paths to reach God. They are—to make a comparison—like different languages, different dialects, to get there. But God is God for everyone. If you start to fight saying ‘my religion is more important than yours, mine is true and yours isn’t’, where will this lead us? There is only one God, and each of us has a language to arrive at God. Some are Sheik, Muslim, Hindu, Christians; they are different ways to God.”  (Vatican news website, “Pope calls Singaporean youth to unity”)

This is just the kind of belief that is becoming more and more popular today. But we must resist it, and push back against it. God’s word says NO; it is NOT just “any god” who give us this unique salvation. It is THIS God, YHWH God, the God who saved His people in Exodus — and Who later came to Earth as Jesus Christ, who proclaimed that He is the “I AM” (John 8:58). HE is the One who said: “I AM the way and the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Me.” 

Let’s make sure that we and our group members absolutely know WHERE the blessings we saw today: the protective power, miraculous deliverance, and unique salvation come from. They don’t just come from “any god,” but only to those who put their faith in the God of the Bible, and His “only begotten Son,” Jesus Christ, Whose birth we just celebrated this week.

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