Between a Rock and Hard Place

6 · Eric explains the meaning of 'defiantly' in verse 8

Point number 1 here, trusting in self-reliance. So if you look at verse 8, it says, 'The Israelites went out defiantly.' So if you go back in chapter 13, God had just sent all these plagues to Egypt, convinced Pharaoh through the death of everybody's firstborn minus the Israelites that God was powerful, and he lets them go. And they were dressed for battle. They were ready to fight as they left Egypt. And oh, by the way, they had just plundered the Egyptians because God had given them favor. So they took gold, silver, clothing from the Egyptians because Egyptians just wanted them out of there. And so now there's a little bit of, okay, God, you did your work, I think we got it from here, as they're dressed for battle. That defiance, though, is not necessarily relying on God, but rather on the self.

7 · Eric asserts that self-confidence collapses into fear when we reach the limits of our strength

When we try to do things in our own strength, we can stir ourselves up to get things to go our way in self-confidence. But what happens when you reach the end of yourself and you realize, 'Hmm, I'm not enough,' and you start to see the army of the Egyptians coming at you and the reality of, 'Oh, I'm not ready to take on 600 chariots even though I'm dressed for battle.' Fear starts to well up. That's the result of self-reliance when it reaches— when you reach the end of yourself, you realize you're not enough.

8 · Eric tells the story of his son Ethan's panic attack during a wildfire evacuation

My son Ethan— thank you for letting me use this story, by the way— my son Ethan experienced this when we were living in Anchorage a few years ago. There was a wildfire that was across the ravine, the riverbed that we lived at, the valley, and we could see airplanes dropping the retardant, helicopters dropping water over the fire. And we had gotten word that we needed to be prepared to leave in case the wildfire made it to the residential area where we were. So we started making preparations. We started packing documents, birth certificates, all those kinds of things. And as we started to do that, my son started to hyperventilate. He started to have a no kidding panic attack. And had to sit down with him, kneel on one knee, get down with him, and calm him down. Calm down, it's gonna be okay. We started to pray. We prayed for the safety of our home and our family. And I had the idea in that moment, hey, let's go talk to the fire chief because he was just down the road. So we both walked down the street, head down to the fire chief, and the fire chief says, hey, I think things are going to be okay. It looks like the winds have shifted and it's keeping the flames away from the neighborhood area. And in that moment, Ethan had an encounter with God. He's like, wow, we prayed and that's nothing that we could have done. The winds shifted, that's God's domain. He had reached the end of hisself, himself, and he realized this is bigger than me, and we reached out to God, and God came through.

9 · Eric applies the illustration to the listener's life: when we hit the limits of our strength, do we cry out to God or double down on self-reliance? He introduces anger as the next stage of self-reliance's failure

So when we're in fear, who do we reach out to? When we reach the end of ourselves, do we cry out to the Lord, or just, we just go harder with our own self-reliance, our own strength? Do we reach the point of anger?

10 · Eric exposits verses 10-11: the Israelites' fear turns to blame

Because in verse 10 here, we see the Israelites complaining to Moses. They feared greatly. In verse 11, actually, it says, 'Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you've taken us away to die in the wilderness?' They're actually blaming Moses for their plight, forgetting that it was God that got them there. In this story, Moses is God's representative. He's a Christ-foreshadowing figure, a typology of Christ. And he's being blamed for what God is actually doing.

11 · Eric applies the Israelites' blame-shifting to contemporary life: we blame authorities—bosses, government—when circumstances tighten

How often do we respond to tight situations by blaming the authorities that are in place, by blaming our boss or blaming the government or whatever authority is over us?

12 · Eric returns to the Puck story: after praying, Eric refused to lie, but the major denied leave anyway

So in that situation with Puck, he gave me the two impossible options to consider. You ever feel that hairs standing up in the back of your neck, that weight in your chest when you know something's not right? That's what I was feeling. I prayed about it, knew I couldn't go through with what he was asking, so I went back to his room, was like, 'Puck, I can't do this. I can't lie for you. Let's go talk to the major, see what we can work out,' which of course he didn't like because he knew what the answer was going to be. We walk over there, 'Hey boss, this is what's going on,' and his words are, 'Yep, he can't go.' So now we're stuck again. And now Puck's mad at me. And now I had somebody to blame, an authority over me to blame if I wanted to. If only we were liberated from that oppressive leadership. If only we were free of bad leaders, political, work-wise, or otherwise.

13 · Eric applies Moses' words—'Fear not, stand firm, you need only be silent'—to the congregation's present experience

When you feel that fear rising, when you feel that anger rising, remember God's word, what Moses says here, 'Fear not, stand firm.' And then that little blurb there that originally got me on this passage a few months ago, 'You need only be silent.' That hit me hard a couple of months ago when I was reading through this passage and decided to use it for the consortium. How many times are we in fear, in anger, and the Lord just says, 'I got this, just be silent, be silent before me.' Is there something that's causing you not to trust in God? That's causing you not to be silent before him?

14 · Eric signals the shift from the Israelites' self-reliance to Pharaoh's heart idols

This brings us to our next point: trusting in the desires of your heart. This is Pharaoh's perspective.

15 · Eric provides historical-theological context for Pharaoh and Egypt

So Pharaoh's name means great house. Egypt means temple of Ptah, which was god of creativity and craftsmanship. It represents technology, the arts. Egypt was the power of the day. In the Bible, Egypt is another representation of Babylon, which represents man's rebellion against God and his rule, culminates in the form of Pharaoh. Pharaoh set himself up as an incarnation of the gods, as a son of God, if you will, a false son of God. And now he's faced with having to deal with the reality of letting all these slaves go, and maybe he's not as divine as he thought. How's it gonna look to the rest of the world for this world power to let all its slaves go? And he's stuck.

16 · Eric exposits verses 5 and 8, showing Pharaoh's pursuit of Israel as a revelation of his heart's true trust: chariots, status, power, divine pretense

When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, in verse 5, the mind of Pharaoh and his servants was changed toward the people. And then in verse 8, the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and he pursued the people of Israel. So he was trusting in his chariots, his status, his power as a world ruler, his quote-unquote divine authority, his 600 chariots, which represented the advanced technology of the day. His world-class army. That's where his heart was, very far from God, which we'll get to here in a minute. But let's talk about the heart for a moment. Tim Keller, in his book Preaching, which I read as been preparing for sermons and whatnot, he explains that when the Bible talks about the heart, we as Americans have a very different connotation of what the Bible is trying to say. Our society tends to think of the heart as emotions, feelings, affections, and our society tends to pit that against analytical thought, of rational thought. And according to Keller, that biblical view of the heart is, is not either/or. It's more than that. In the Bible, the heart is the seat of the mind, the will, and the emotions all together, not one or the other, all of it. What the heart loves most is what it most trusts and commits to.

17 · Eric cites Jesus' teaching on treasure and the heart to explain Pharaoh's trajectory

That's why Jesus says in Matthew 6:21, 'Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.' And we see Pharaoh's heart slowly and steadily hardening all throughout Exodus. He's trusting in the things that give him identity, his supposed divinity, his power, his army, all that stuff. And it culminates in this showdown with God at the Red Sea.

18 · Eric applies Pharaoh's trajectory to the congregation: if your identity is rooted in anything other than God, you are on the same path as Pharaoh

Now, you might be saying, 'Well, I'm not Pharaoh. I'm not a ruler of an empire. I'm not trying to kill or enslave people. I'm not evil.' But if your identity is wrapped up in something that's not God, then you might be closer to Pharaoh than you think. You're in danger, if you pursue that thing above God, of hardening your heart by trusting something else for your identity or your worth.

19 · Eric catalogs potential heart idols—power, money, status, family, peace—and warns that if these take God's place, they cannot save or sustain us

We all have this propensity to be lord of our own lives, to choose something to believe in apart from God: influence, power, money, status, title, achievement, even good things like family, peace, comfort. But if it's in the place of God, then we're in danger, because that thing in your life that you hold dear It can't save you. It can't sustain you. It can give you a little bit of pleasure, a little bit of comfort, but it's not your source of life. What's that thing in your life that if it were taken away would cause you to have a crisis of faith, would cause you to mistrust God, would cause you to question him? I could never forgive God if he ever took away fill in the blank. What's that thing?

20 · Eric shares a personal example of a heart idol: peace in the home

For me personally, it's peace in the home. Not a bad thing in and of itself, but when I get back from a work trip and I want to just relax and have some time to myself, but there's relational issues at home that need to be taken care of, there's chores, there's family responsibilities— those things demand of me that my peace be set aside for for a bit. And if I hold on to that thing so dear that I start to cause conflict with my family, then I'm in danger. The problem in trusting that thing, whatever it may be, is that it's not the source of life. God is the source of life. When we put that thing in the seat of our heart, it starts to eat away at us. That's the beginning of a hardened heart.

21 · Eric traces Pharaoh's hardened heart back to the serpent's lie in the garden: God is holding out on you

We see the extreme of it in Pharaoh, moving away from God into unbelief. It's a heart that believes the lie that the serpent told in the garden, that God is restrictive, he's self-absorbed, he's selfish. Does God really have my best interests at heart? Did God really say not to eat from the fruit of the garden? He's holding out on me. He's holding out on you, is the implication. That's a dangerous place to be. Because whatever that thing is that you're holding onto in place of God is gonna let you down. If you run towards that instead of him, it starts to lead to deconstruction, disorder, chaos. We see it in Egypt. It leads to their destruction. If we persist in pursuing the idols of our own heart, eventually God gives you your desires, and he will say to you what we should say to him. 'Not my will, but yours be done.' What a hard place to be. We're supposed to say that to him, not to us. We cannot exist apart from the giver, the source, and redeemer of our life. Being master of your own life will eventually lead to spiritual death, as it says in Romans 6:23, 'The wages of sin is death.'

22 · Eric applies the theology of heart idols directly: the reason you feel stuck may be that something has displaced God in your heart

So where's your heart right now? Maybe you haven't outright rejected God, but maybe there's something in your life that holds some very special place of more prominence than God. And maybe that's the reason you feel stuck in your situation or feel that you're in a— between a rock and a hard place. Is there something that's influencing your decisions perhaps?

23 · Eric transitions to the third false refuge: cultural norms

Which brings us to our third point here: relying on cultural norms. If we look at it from the Egyptians' perspective, the Egyptian culture, I believe the text subtly gives us a message here.

24 · Eric exposits verses 4 and 17, noting God's twofold declaration that 'the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord

In verse 4, the text says, the Egyptians— God says, the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, distinct from Pharaoh. And he says it again in 17, I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go after them, and the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord. He reiterates it. He's wanting the Egyptians to know who the Lord is. You see, the Lord was targeting the cultural spiritual powers that were behind Egypt. All the plagues that happened in chapters In the previous chapters in Exodus leading up to the Red Sea crossing, all those plagues— the frogs, the locusts, the darkness— all of that stuff was targeting the gods of Egypt. Like the sun god, there was darkness on the land. Where was the sun god? God was showing that he's God.

25 · Eric translates the concept of Egypt's spiritual powers to contemporary culture: power brokers, social media influencers, paradigms, and cultural norms

In our society today, we don't have the same type of frog gods or anything like that, but we do have forces that influence our society, power brokers, influencers on social media, paradigms, cultural norms. The society that we live in has its heart desires, if you will, that shape how we view, how we respond to tight spots and tight situations.

26 · Eric uses Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress to illustrate cultural norms' deceptive power

There's one example that comes to mind from this book Pilgrim's Progress. Anybody read this book Pilgrim's Progress? Anybody not read it? So I'll explain it briefly. It's written by John Bunyan a couple hundred years ago. It's an allegory of the Christian life. So the main character is Christian, and he realizes he has a burden of sin that eventually will lead to death, and he's trying to get rid of it and trying to figure out how to walk the Christian life in order to get to eternity, the eternal city, and bring his family with him. And he— along the journey, he comes across a character named Mr. Worldly Wiseman, who, when I read this book several years ago really got my attention. For me, being a military officer, gone to a prestigious school and had a career and was on path, I was around a lot of worldly wise men, elder people who had gone before me who had a lot of 'wisdom' to offer. And this is the wisdom that Mr. Wise Man offers. He counsels Christian that he doesn't have to go through all the perils of the journey that the Evangelist has sent him on. He can avoid all of that by going to Mr. Legality in the village of Morality, who's— and Mr. Legality's son is named Civility. He needs to get to know these people. And by following Legality, Morality, and Civility, he can have peace with the world and not have to worry about the burden that he's carrying. But the problem is that Christian turns away in his quest for the village of morality, from the narrow path that leads to God. And it's a picture of our Christian life, of what's influencing us. Legality, morality, civility— those are good things, but if it takes us away from God, what are those norms that are taking us away?

27 · Eric gives a concrete personal example of cultural influence: the Eagle and Fledgling statue at the Air Force Academy with its inscription, 'Man's flight through life is sustained by the power of his knowledge

For me, military training, corporate culture now that I'm in, those things influence— they influence all of us. There was a statue at the Air Force Academy that I used to walk by every time I go from my room to class and back. The Eagle and Fledgling statue, you can Google it, it'll come up. It's actually really pretty. It's an obelisk with eagles and little fledglings underneath. And inscribed on the base of the statue is a phrase that says, 'Man's flight through life is sustained by the power of his knowledge.' Sounds good on the surface, but the more I walked back and forth and saw that, like, there's something a little bit off for me as a Christian with that saying. Is my flight through life sustained by my knowledge? Should be sustained by God's word as I grew in maturity with him. But there was that cultural thing there that was influencing me, and I had to be aware of it.

28 · Eric illustrates family-level cultural norms with a humorous story capturing his family's reflexive negativity: the crowd first says the train will never move, then that it will never stop

What are the cultural norms that are influencing you, whether it's at work, in the military, family ones? In my family, there was a norm of slight negativity that influenced us that I came to be aware of. I can capture it in this funny story. There's a man who is designing this train, a behemoth of a big train. And he's got a crowd around him, and the people are looking at it thinking, 'That thing's never going to move.' This is all told in Spanish. 'Ese monstruo nunca va a mover.' And sure enough, though, he gets it going, the steam. The pressure rises, and it starts to chug, and it starts to move. And then the people are watching him, around him, now say, 'That thing's never going to stop.' 'Esto nunca va a parar.' That encapsulates some of the thinking in my family, just constant negativity, not looking at the positive, looking at the negative. And it was something that I needed to wrestle with when I was younger.

29 · Eric applies the cultural norms diagnosis: there is no neutral ground

So what are the norms and things that are influencing you? Because there's no neutrality. If God and his word are not your influence, something else is influencing you. What's your response to that?

30 · Eric exposits Psalm 135:15-18 to describe the fate of those who trust cultural idols: they become like what they worship—deaf, dumb, and blind

See, the idols of the nation that God was targeting, it's captured here in Psalm 135, the result of seeking after our cultural gods, our cultural idols. Psalm 135, verses 15 through 18. I think it's up there behind me. Yeah. The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths but do not speak. They have eyes but do not see. They have ears but do not hear, nor is there any breath in their mouths. Those who make them become like them. So do all who trust in them. So that thing that society holds up as dear, that cultural norm, that idol of the age, it's deaf, dumb, and blind. And if we follow it, if we pursue it, we'll end up just like that— deaf, dumb, and blind.

31 · Eric asserts that God's goal is to dismantle idols—personal and cultural—that rebel against Him

God seeks to tear down those idols in our lives and in our culture that rebel against his word and his ways. And his work at the Red Sea was God's culmination of what he was already doing in Egypt up to that point. It's the continuing of his plan of salvation that started in Genesis and started to work its way through the Bible all the way to Revelation and eventually through the cross.

32 · Eric signals the shift from diagnosis to prescription

So let's look at it from God's perspective, trusting in God's saving grace.

33 · Eric reframes the sermon's central metaphor from human perspective to divine: God Himself faced an impossible dilemma after the fall

God had a dilemma as well, right? In Genesis, we see— Genesis 3, we see the fall of man, and now God's holiness is being challenged by sin in the garden. He's got a cosmic dilemma. His justice needs to be satisfied, but he also loves his creation, and his love demands reconciliation to his image bearers in the garden. So he was stuck. How can he satisfy his holiness and his justice and his wrath and still love his creation at the same time? Fortunately, the Bible story shows us how he works that plan of salvation out that culminates in Jesus standing in the gap of God's love, his rock, and the hard place of his justice to resolve the dilemma.

34 · Eric exposits verse 19, identifying the angel of God as a representation of Christ in the Old Testament

The Red Sea crossing is a foreshadowing of Jesus' work on the cross when he stood between the gap of light and darkness. He took on the wrath of God in our place and imputed his righteousness onto us that we may walk through the chaos of the waters with new life in God. Praise God. In verse 19, it says, 'The angel of God moved and went behind them, coming between Egypt and Israel.' Now, that angel of God, the angel of the Lord in other places, that's a representation of Christ in the Old Testament. It's the angel who is not just a normal angel. If you look in Exodus 3, When Moses encounters the burning bush, the angel of God is what's, what's identified as the flame of fire out of the midst of the bush. But then a couple of verses later, in verse 4, it's God speaking to Moses out of the burning bush. And so you get this connotation, oh, this is something different than just a regular messenger from the Lord. And so this angel of the Lord, representing Christ in the Old Testament, stands in the gap between the darkness of the Egyptians and the light of the Israelites, showing what Christ did for us on the cross.

35 · Eric continues exposition: the splitting of the waters symbolizes Christ splitting light from darkness

And then the waters are split, right, that they may walk into, into dry ground. He split light into dark. He split light and darkness. John Stott, in his book Cross of Christ, says God's divine love overcame his divine wrath. Through divine self-sacrifice in the God-man Jesus. Christ says to us, 'Fear not, I have overcome the world. In the world you may have tribulations, but take heart, I have overcome the world.' He throws the forces of darkness into confusion in verse 24 here. When evil stands in the presence of God, it panics, it gets thrown into confusion, and then it finally is absorbed into the chaos of the waters, the self-destruction that's brought upon itself.

36 · Eric explains the theological symbolism of the waters: they represent chaos, traceable to Genesis 1 where the Spirit hovers over the formless deep

You see, God is in control of the chaos. The waters here represent chaos because in Genesis 1, if you go back there, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. So that connotation is that the waters represent an unformed earth, chaos that God put order to when he created the world. And then you see it again, that callback to that very instance in Mark 4 when Jesus calms the storm. The chaos that was represented in the storm, Jesus brings order to, which is just a hearkening back to what he did in creation. And then again here in Exodus 14, the waters being divided. Shows that God is in control of the chaos. He divides it, and as the Israelites go through, they can trust in the Lord that he is in charge of the chaos. And then as the Egyptians try to go through, the chaos envelops them as the hardening of their heart shows the end of that road.

37 · Eric synthesizes the biblical-theological connections: the God who ordered chaos at creation, calmed the storm, and divided the Red Sea is the same God believers serve today

The same God who ordered chaos in Genesis 1 calmed the storm in Mark 4, divided the waters in Exodus for his people to pass through, is the same God that we serve.

38 · Eric exposits verse 15, interpreting God's command to 'move forward' as a picture of the Christian life

In verse 15, God says, 'Why do you cry out to me? Move forward.' This is a picture of the Christian life for us. God has made a way where there doesn't seem to be a way. He's divided the waters, and now it's up to us, in the power of his Holy Spirit, to walk forward. In new life.

39 · Eric draws the full redemptive-historical analogy: the Israelites' journey from slavery through the Red Sea to new identity and law is a picture of the believer's salvation

See, the Egyptians had this— had the Israelites captured as slaves, and God redeems them. He saves them. He causes the waters to be split for them to pass through, kind of like a baptism. And then he gives them a new identity as the nation of Israel. And then he gives them the Ten Commandments, the rules and the word to live by. That's a picture of our lives as believers. He saves us out of bondage. He gives— we were baptized in him. He gives us new identity, and then he gives us his word, his law to live by. But he saves us first.

40 · Eric resolves the opening Puck story: after prayer and advocacy, the major found a bureaucratic solution through the Red Cross

Back to Puck's dilemma. After much prayer, under my breath, I really felt stuck. I didn't want to let my buddy down, but I wanted to do the right thing. I went back to the major and started arguing for his case, explained that his grandmother was like a second mom, she practically raised him, even though she wasn't his legal guardian. And so after some back and forth, he finally had the idea, 'Well, maybe we can get the Red Cross involved, and there's some bureaucratic things that the Red Cross can do represent the family and have an official request and all this. And it worked. We were able to get Puck home for his grandmother's funeral. The major got his bureaucratic requirements, and I didn't have to lie. The Lord made a way through a difficult situation for me there. It just took a little bit of verbal wrestling, some prayer and verbal wrestling to make it happen.

41 · Eric interprets the name Israel ('struggles with God') and applies it to the congregation: wrestling with God is part of the life of faith

The name Israel means 'struggles with God.' Are you wrestling with the Lord? Do you need to perhaps submit to his lordship in a particular area?

42 · Eric uses the photograph displayed throughout the sermon—a white flower growing between concrete and asphalt—as a visual metaphor for God's provision

This picture that's been in the background here, this white flower, to me represents what it looks like when we trust in the Lord. I took this picture a few years ago when we were in Anchorage, just right before I was going to mow my yard. Garage door opened up and this flower was just in the sunlight, perfect. I got my camera, I got a really nice picture out of it, but What a picture of life and beauty springing forth in a hard place. Between the concrete of the garage and the asphalt of the driveway, life was springing forth. And what a picture of the way God takes care of us. Matthew 6:25-34, Jesus says, 'One of these is arrayed better than Solomon.' the flowers in the field, how much more will he take care of you?

43 · Eric closes with Matthew Henry's summary of the passage: those who make God's glory their end, His word their rule, His Spirit their guide, and His providence their director can trust that God goes before them just as He led Israel

I'll finish with this quote from Matthew Henry. He's a commentator that wrote this huge book as I was preparing for this Exodus message, and he sums up the passage this way, which I think is appropriate for us here this morning: Those who make the glory of God their end and the word of God their rule the Spirit of God, the guide of their affections, and the providence of God, the guide of their affairs, may be confident that the Lord goes before them as truly as he went before Israel in the wilderness.

44 · Eric issues the final charge: trust God in uncertainty

So trust in the Lord during the uncertain times. Know that darkness will not prevail against the light of the Lord because he's overcome the darkness. Watch the Lord swallow up those forces of darkness and chaos. And make a path straight for you in the chaotic waters of life.

45 · Eric closes in prayer, confessing personal conviction over self-reliance, cultural norms, and heart idols

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word. Thank you for the conviction. I know I've felt convicted in relying on my own strength, relying on the cultural norms that have influenced me, the idols of my heart. Lord, confess that stuff before you and pray that you be Lord in our lives here at Cross of Grace, Lord. Thank you for making a way where there doesn't seem to be a way. Thank you for bringing beauty in tight, dark places. We pray that your Spirit would continue to move us on that path of life as we seek new identity in you and seek to live by your word. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.