Crossing the Red Sea
Part 4 - Freedom
Exodus 14v29-31
19th August 2016
We've been reading about God's wonderful deliverance of the Israelites from their Egyptian slave masters, through the Red Sea. The story finishes like this:
Exodus 14v29-31
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 mighty hand of the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord
and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant.
In verse 13, Moses had prophesied to the Israelites that "The Egyptians you see today you will never see again." That prophecy came true. God's people were free! They would live, and die, in the desert for 40 years. It wasn't easy in the desert. There were snakes, and Amalekites, and boring food, and a lot of sandhills. Life would be hard. But it wouldn't be slavery.
And for us Christians, life can be hard. But we're no longer slaves.
John 8v34-36
Jesus replied, "Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.
Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever.
So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed."
We have been set free from slavery to sin, and made children of God. That is a wonderful privilege. So:
Galatians 5v1
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a
yoke of slavery.
Paul writes about the crossing of the Red Sea in:
1 Corinthians 10v1-2
For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they
all passed through the sea.
They were all baptised into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.
Later in that passage, Paul makes it clear that:
1 Corinthians 10v11a
These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us.
So we should look for an application of these aspects of the story to our own lives. As we saw earlier, the cloud is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. So when Paul speaks of being baptised into Moses in the cloud, he's talking about being baptised in the Holy Spirit. And when he speaks about being baptised into Moses in the sea, it's an obvious reference to baptism in water.
The pillar of cloud followed the Israelites all the time they were in the desert. In the same way, baptism in the Holy Spirit remains with us throughout our earthly discipleship. Ephesians 5v1 urges us to "go on being filled in the spirit" (the verb is in the present continuous tense).
But baptism in water is a once-only event. Just as the Israelites were baptised into Moses in the Red Sea after they'd escaped from Egypt, but before they'd reached the safety of the desert - so Christians are baptised after they've escaped from the domain of sin and death and have entered the kingdom of God.
Baptism in water is more than a ceremony. It's a sacrament. Baptism is effective. God works in the ceremony of baptism to set us free from the evil forces that used to oppress us. God wants us to be free from sin - free indeed. All Christians sin, but those who receive baptism by faith as believers, can expect to be free from sin. Sin becomes a free choice.
Just as the Red Sea cut off the Israelites from the pursuing Egyptian army, so baptism in water, when received in faith, cuts us off from demonic power and the compulsion to sin. God's promise then still applies today.
The Egyptians you see today you will never see again.