If you will, take your Bibles
and turn back to Exodus chapter 14. Having already read the chapter
to you, I only ask you to turn there to see a few things that
I'm going to point out to you as we go through the message
tonight. As the Passover lamb demonstrated
the death of Christ, that's what was demonstrated there. They
took the lamb, the father of that house, chose the Lamb. The Father examined Him. The
Father killed Him. The Father put Him in the fire.
And the Father served Him up to be eaten by the whole house.
And so it is with our Lamb, the Lamb of God. And as the Passover
Lamb demonstrated the death of Christ and His substitutionary
sacrifice, this passage through the sea now illustrates both
His and our resurrection from death. That's what this passing
through the sea. Typically, the Red Sea speaks
of Christ's union with His elect, which makes a way through our
Savior and our union with Him. It makes a way through death
onto life everlasting. And as a figure of death, the
sea also establishes a boundary. which Satan and all those who
serve him cannot pass. It's just like that thing you
remember with Jacob's father-in-law that pursued after him. There
was a space. He went this far, and God said,
that's enough. You can't go past this point.
And this point of death, whenever you read about spiritual death,
and that's what we're talking about when we talk about death,
this spiritual death of which we speak and the New Testament
speaks, It's a darkness, and it's chains. It's what holds
men in bondage. It's what prevents men. Our Lord
said, there's a great gulf fixed between you and I. And that great
gulf is death. You've got to pass from death
unto life. And what I see, therefore, in
these 31 verses, I see the whole experience of grace as the sinner
is brought to see the glory of his salvation. by the power of
God's Spirit in his own passing through the sea, his own passing
from death unto life. Now, you can stand and talk to
a man. Grace is an experience. I don't know if you know that
or not, but grace is an experience. And until you've experienced
grace, you can't talk about grace. You can argue over the doctrine,
but you can't tell what you don't know. Now these men could talk
about going through the sea. These men could talk about God's
power because they were down there looking up at those great
walls of water. And they could talk about these
things when they got to the other side. But standing on this side,
they didn't have anything to say. What Moses said to them
was stand still. In another place he said, hold
your peace. Just hold your peace and listen
and look and see. That's what faith does. Now,
the grace of God as a point of doctrine or an abstract principle
will never benefit or comfort or console anyone, although it
is everlastingly true. I've got no argument over the
doctrine. Some folks say, well, you're
just always downplaying doctrine. Oh, no, I don't downplay doctrine.
You can't know Christ apart from doctrine. You have to know, Paul
said, I know whom I have believed. How did he know? He knew by the
word of God. He knew by the preaching of the
gospel. He knew by the revelation of God. But the grace of God
is a point of doctrine, or just an abstract principle, will never
benefit, comfort, or console anybody. It's only as this grace
is applied to the heart by the hand of God in our own lives. and in our own experience of
grace that we come to understand what grace is. Let me see if I can illustrate
what it is I'm trying to say. God's absolute, sovereign, eternal
grace, his purpose of grace, was an indisputable fact while
Israel served in the iron furnace on the favor that You couldn't
argue about it. You can't say, well, no, there
wasn't no grace back then. Oh, yes, there was. It's this
grace of God's eternal grace. His grace was just as real and
just as much a fact, but the fact didn't comfort or console
Him whatsoever. And God's grace was pure and
real and glorious in all of its divine perfection while the blood
ran down the Israel's backs from the taskmaster's whip. His grace
was just as pure and true and clear as ever. But God's sovereign
grace had no effect on their minds and hearts until God sent
them a preacher and accompanied him with the Holy Ghost and manifested
the grace of God in their lives. They never would have known the
grace of God. God's grace is true whether folks receive it
or not. Whether they become beneficiaries of it or not, it doesn't change
God's grace. His grace is immutable. It never
changes. It's always been grace. John
talks about it. He said, and grace for grace. There's always been grace. Grace
in the creation of the world. Grace in all of these things.
Grace before grace. But it didn't benefit me until
God revealed it to me. Then it comforted me. Then it
consoled me. Then I entered into an understanding
of it. It's got no effect on our minds
and hearts until God sends us a preacher and accompanies him
with the Holy Ghost and manifests that grace in an irresistible
calling and deliverance and then demonstrated that grace by their
passing from death unto life. Now that's what has to happen.
All of the journeys and wanderings of Israel are typical of God's
spiritual Israel and of their walk in faith in this world. Listen here to what Paul said.
He said, all these things happened unto them for examples. Have you ever read that word
example? Sometimes the scripture uses
the word example and sometimes it uses the word example. And
I thought that peculiar. Now, I've heard this said that
they're the same thing, but they're not the same thing. I looked
them up. And the one is an example as it's demonstrated. The other
is an example as it is a figure, as a picture. That's what example
means. All of these things happen under
the M for in samples. They happen as figures and they're
written for our admonition. Listen to this. I'm going to
give you the writing, the translation from two other translations of
the Bible. The first one says this, all
this kept happening to them with a figurative meaning. That's
what the first translation said. And then the Young's literal
translation, some of you had Young's dictionaries and so forth,
and he has a version of the Bible. It's called Young's Literal Translation. It reads like this, and all these
things as types did happen to those persons and were written
for our admonition upon whom the end of the world has come.
So if we look at these things tonight in figure, which is how
they're preserved and what Paul said over in 1 Corinthians 10,
that's what he said about these things. And we look at these
things. And I see in these things, as
a figure in tight, my own experience of grace. And I want to show
you tonight 10 things that I see in this chapter. I'm just going
to touch on them as we go through. That picture the grace of God
as it's revealed in the lives and hearts of God's elect. And
the first thing I see in this chapter, as I read through it
there a while ago, is the gracious ordering of God's providence.
God ordered His providence. And it was exactly the providence
that it took to lure in Pharaoh and his army. It was the exact
providence that He ordered to leave Israel helpless by the
sea. Because there's not going to
be any demonstration of grace until God leads you to this place
of helplessness. You're just going to piddle around
and try to work and impress God and make deals and accept things
and on and on and on as the world does until God renders you helpless
at His feet. And helpless at His feet, then
you receive grace. He said, this is grace. If you look at a map, the quickest
way to Canaan was north. It was north. All they needed
to do was leave Egypt. Some writers say in no less than
two weeks they could have been in Canaan. Two weeks. It was
just right there. Here's where they are in Egypt
and here's Canaan right up here. All they had to do was go right
up the coast. But the Philistines were up there. And these were
servants. These were slaves. They didn't
know anything about war. And God said if I take them up
the coast, they're going to run into the Philistines and they've
got no heart for battle. and they'll die at the hand of
the Philistine. So He didn't take them that way.
And besides that, God had an everlasting purpose of grace
to show these men, and a revelation of grace, and that way went the
opposite direction. The opposite direction. It's
God's sovereign, eternal purpose of grace that determines the
way. You can sit back. My wife and
I was talking about this earlier this afternoon. There's no human
logic or reason in it. You can look at how God led them
to Canaan, and there's no human logic in it. You can look at
it, and it's just, why would He do that? Why would He go this
way? Why would He do this? And that's what we're forever
saying about, why would the Lord take that child? Why would this
happen? Why would that happen? I'll tell you why it happened,
according to His purpose of grace. He worketh all things after the
counsel of His own will. And His will toward us is a gracious
will. Nothing really made much sense
until Israel stood on the other side. Now standing on the other
side of the sea, everything made sense, didn't it? Here's their
enemies dead. Here's the sea closed in. Now
they see something of the power and glory of God. To their own
benefit, they know what this cloud's all about now. This cloud's
leading them. This cloud's overshadowing them.
This cloud's protecting them. They've got a whole different
outlook on it now, Glenn, on the other side than they did
on that side. God's providence is something
that we all have to learn to rejoice in. We've got to learn
to rejoice in it. And even then, our rejoicing
comes by faith. trusting the God who delivered
us. Alright, here's the second thing. I see here that God's
wise and gracious providence led them to a place of utter
hopelessness. Grace, pure, eternal, sovereign
grace cannot be experienced until chosen sinners are rendered helpless
and hopeless before God. In our studies in Matthew, I
showed you where all of these people who followed after him,
every one of them was sick. All the sick folk and all them
possessed with demons and all them who were lunatic and all
them who had been rendered helpless all flocked to him, didn't they?
None of them was arguing about you know, how much of a man he
was and how much God he was. They flocked to him because he
was the healer, he was the Christ. This had to be the Son of God. They saw the glory of his miracles
and stuff. How did they see that? Because
they were helpless and hopeless. That's why. They're no longer
found. I tell you, when God makes you
helpless and hopeless before Him, you don't find hope in all
these things that the man out here who has all that stuff can
find. He finds all kinds of stuff.
He can do this, do that, and do something else, and he finds
all kinds of glory and hope in it. When God takes it all away
and shows you the reality of where you are and who you are,
that you can do nothing before Him, then you listen to Him and
you wait on Him. And then you see His Majesty
and experience His grace. Pharaoh saw their predicament,
and what he saw was entanglement. He said, they're entangled in
the land. I've got them now. They're in the flypaper. All
I got to do is go gobble them up. He saw their predicament. He said, they're entangled in
the land, and the wilderness has shut them in. And that's
pretty much where we are when God finds us in it, entangled
in this old nature. This world in which we live is
a spiritual wilderness. It offers no assistance whatsoever
to aid in our escape. And the only way to learn this
is by experience. Only God can reveal to and convince
men of their utter helplessness before Him. It's His working
of providence and His spiritual work in the heart. to bring us
to that point. Until He does, there's not going
to be any walking with God. There's nothing in the nature
of man to deliver him from his enemies. And naturally speaking,
Israel had no wisdom. They had no wisdom of war, no
wisdom of geography, and no will to fight. If Israel as a group
knew where they were going, they wouldn't have went there. What
they did when they saw saw their predicament was blame Moses for
bringing them there. You brought us here. Why didn't
you leave us back there? Men are not going to trust God
until He's brought to see His utter helplessness to deliver
Himself. A man is utterly void. He is
utterly void of everything that it takes to save his soul. Void. There's nothing in there. Not
that he don't look. Oh, I've looked. I've looked
and hunted and grasped at straws and everything else, but there's
just nothing there. Ain't nothing there. And all whom God will effectually
deliver, He'll first lead to despair. And then thirdly, I
see next in the experience of grace that God showed them up
to Christ. Christ is the only way out of
helplessness. Because you can't know God apart from Christ. You
can't know Him. The only way to know God, God
manifested Himself in Christ. That's the only way to know God.
We can sit back and speculate on passages of Scripture and
talk about passages of Scripture all you want to, but all you
know about God and its experience to save your soul is what you
see in Christ. Will God save sinners? Well,
He raised His Son from the dead. Huh? God came into human flesh
for some reason. He didn't come here to fail.
I guarantee you that. Whatever it is He came here to
accomplish, He did accomplish. But there's no way out of helplessness
except Christ. It's Christ or doom, Christ or
go back to the iron furnace, Christ or Satan's bondage. It's
Christ or death. Moses said, stand still. That's
what he said. Just quit moving about. Quit
complaining. Quit worrying. Quit flopping
your arms all around. Quit with all these foolish statements
like you're making. You should have left us back
in Egypt and all that. He said stand still and see the
salvation of the Lord which He will show you today. Today. He's going to show you this. And then fourthly, this seeing
Christ is a revelation. Egypt didn't see Him. They didn't
see Him. They saw God's power. They saw
God demonstrate His plague. They saw the power. Why would
anybody who went through those ten plagues? I individually preached
on all ten of those plagues so that you could see exactly what
kind of impact that had to have on them. And after all of that,
and the death of their firstborn, now they're over here and they're
scratching their head and saying, why did we let them go? We need
to go get them. We need to take what's left of
Egypt and go get them. My soul. Huh? They didn't see anything. They
didn't see any power. They didn't see any glory. They
didn't see any of that. And that's the way we are. We
see it in the moment. We see it when God's hand of
judgment falls on a city like New Orleans, or falls on a family
and takes a loved one, or falls on an individual and takes him
out. We see it then for a moment. Brother Mahan said, we like cows
eating grass. He said, they come to load one
up in a truck, take him off to the butcher, and all the cows
look up. And they watch him till he gets
in the wagon and leaves, and then they go back to eating grass.
That's the way we are. We see it for a minute, just
like Pharaoh saw it for a minute. And then that's it. It's gone.
Just seeing Christ is a gospel revelation. It's not something
men decide to have and then obtain, or something they can obtain
by a lot of effort. It's not of Him that willeth.
That's what the Scripture says. Think about that. It's not of
Him that willeth, nor of Him that runneth, but of God that
shall with mercy. Paul said we speak the wisdom
of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained
before the world under our glory, which none of the princes, none
of the men of wisdom and power and prudence, none of the princes
of this world knew. For had they known it, they would
not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written,
I have not seen nor heard, neither have entered into the heart of
man, that is, mankind. the things which God hath prepared
for them that love Him, but God hath revealed them unto us."
That's what he said. And that's been true in every
age. It was true in the garden, it was true at Abel's altar,
and it's been true all down through time. That's how it comes. It's
a gospel revelation. God leads His people into this
place of despair and there shuts them up to Christ And when they
had nowhere else to turn, He gives them the revelation of
His salvation in Christ. And all those who see Christ
by this revelation of God, they go forward. And that's why God
said, quit playing around. Get in the sea. Go forward. Go
forward. Quit crying to me, He said. And
go forward. All right? Fifthly, it's then
in the experience of grace that the sinner sees the way open
through the sea. Now there's a lot here and I
don't have time to get into all of it, but that rod in Moses'
hand is the gospel, that Christ, that restored rod is Christ.
And he lifts that, when that's lifted up, when that gospel is
lifted up, that sea parts. That sea of death parts when
his gospel is preached. And they see the way through
the sea. And that's God's way through
the sea. Through the sin. Sin demands
payment, justice demands satisfaction, righteousness demands a just
recompense, and God's wrath has to be exhausted. That's that
great gulf. That great gulf fixed. The only
way to get there is to go through the sin. You don't have to deal
with it. The only way to pass through
the sea is by faith manifested by the sovereign power of God's
Holy Spirit. It said in Hebrews chapter 11
verse 29, by faith they pass through the Red Sea. That's what
it says. By faith. By faith. And we know what faith is about.
Faith is seeing Christ. Faith is trusting Christ. They
pass through the the sea, and they passed, and he says this
time and time again, on dry ground. On dry ground. It's by faith
alone that we pass through the sea. God-given, grace-given,
Spirit-created faith. And I'm going to tell you something
about this faith tonight. True saving faith is always active
and ever-present. Let me say that again. True saving
faith is always active. There's no such thing. Faith
that is no more, preachers have called it for a hundred years,
they've called it an insurance policy. It's not an insurance
policy. An insurance policy is not active. It's something you sign and you
go and you set it up on the shelf and you just go get it whenever
you need it. That's not faith. I'm not altogether sure that
you could even say that faith is accomplished. Faith is an
active, vital, living principle of the heart. Once God gives you faith, that
faith is active. That faith moves, and thinks,
and sees, and hears, and reasons, and understands, and walks, and
serves, and does all those things of which he describes faith. Faith is a living principle necessary
for every hour of every day. What happened 10 or 20 years
ago has no bearing on today at all. And I'll show you that in
the lives of them as we go through the book of Exodus. I took my
first breath 62 years ago, a little over that, 62 years ago. You know how long it lasted?
Less than a minute. I needed the next one. And in
another minute, I needed another breath. Huh? Faith. as it is described in
the Scripture, is the new man. It lives, it breathes. Listen
to this, Hebrews 10.38, Now the just shall live by faith. In other places it says the just
shall live by his faith. But if any man draw back, My
soul shall have no pleasure in him, but we are not of them that
draw back into perdition, but of them that believe to the saving
of the soul." Listen to this in 1 Corinthians
1. He said, moreover, brethren,
I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you. which
also you have received, and wherein you stand, and by which also
you shall be saved, if you keep in memory what I preached unto
you, unless you have believed in vain." True saving faith continues. It's a living, vital principle.
Now, I know that there's two I's. There's two U's if you believe. There's that old man, there's
that new man. That new man is the man of faith. He's the man of faith. And that
man is born of God. That's what it says over in the
book of John. He's born of God. And that man lives and breathes
and sees and understands and he does all these things. That's
faith. A living vital principle of the heart. God said for that man to go forward,
and that man obeyed God. The way is open. And then, sixly,
this whole work is a work of grace. As I read through this, and I
know that this was God's purpose in doing this, but Pharaoh surely
would have overcome them. These men were out here almost,
well, conservatively, they say over 2 million. And they're harnessed,
which means they were in a military formation. And they came out
of Egypt that way. If there was 5 or 10, if there
was 5 abreast, that company of men would stretch out for 60
miles. And if there were more, then
you can shorten it down by the percentage of width. But you
know they couldn't get out here too wide, because the road wasn't
that wide. So here they are in this big caravan, almost 60 miles
long. You think about that. Almost
all the way to Little Rock. Stretched out. God said, go forward. And they
went forward. But this whole work is a work
of grace. And Pharaoh surely would have
overtaken them. But God had a cloud. And that
cloud removed from in front of them where the cloud led him. And he went to the back now to
preserve them. And he sits back there, and the
way this cloud is, it causes darkness to fall on one side
and light to fall on the other. That's the grace of God. Do you
ever think about that? Why don't your brother see these
things? Why don't your mother see these things? Why don't mine? The grace of God. It's the grace
of God. Exodus 14, 19, and the angel
of God which went before the camp of Israel removed and went
behind them, and the pillar of the cloud went from before their
face and stood behind them. And it came between the camp
of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel, and it was a cloud
and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these,
so that the one came not near the other all the night. All right, here's the seventh
thing set forth here in the experience of grace. I see in this passing
through the sea, I see the reality of baptism. First Corinthians 10.1 says,
moreover, brethren, I would not have you ignorant how that all
our fathers were under the cloud and all passed through the sea
and were all baptized unto Moses. in the cloud and in the sea. This is a picture of the reality
of baptism. They followed Moses, believing
what he preached, and identified and confessed what they believed
as they walked under that cloud and walked through the sea. They
were consecrated to him and consecrated to God. And baptism, among other
things, is a public consecration of ourselves to Christ. Again, I'll remind you this word
that we read here last week. Those who went out of Egypt,
it says, went out harnessed. And that speaks to me of a spiritual
union. A spiritual union. And this baptism,
actually, if you read about it, let me see if I can find it here
real quick. I think it's in Colossians 2. Yes, here it is. Colossians 2.12.
It says we're buried with Him in baptism, wherein also you
are risen with Him, now listen to this, through the faith of
the operation of God who has raised Him from the dead. Now
that's not talking about the ordinance of baptism. It's talking
about the reality of baptism. It's talking about your experience
in baptism. What do you see when you go down
in that water? What are you confessing when
you go down in that water? You are confessing a work of
grace in your heart. You are confessing your faith
in the Lord Jesus Christ that you were represented in Him,
buried with Him, and raised to walk in newness of life. Alright, here is the eighth thing
I see here. This resurrection from the sea. Resurrection from
the sea. What a newness of mind it must
have been for them to stand on that other side of the city.
Over here they're complaining, crying, crying out to the Lord. All of these things tempting
the Lord and all those things on this side. Over here they're
singing. They're singing. What a change
of mind and heart comes about. And what a newness of mind. Oh, and how much more those who
can see themselves in spiritual union with Christ, who have passed
with Him through the sea, and now sit, as the Scripture said,
with Him victorious at the right hand of God. All right, here's
the ninth thing here in this experience of grace. That this
standing in this spiritual resurrection, they look back. And they see
all their enemies dead on the seashore. They look back. They couldn't see. Over there,
they feared their enemies. Over there, they trembled for
their enemies. And over here, coming up out
of the sea, they look back, and they see them all under the judgment
of God. Now, that's what a man sees.
Over here, he fears. He's trembling. He's crying out
to God. His enemies have closed in on
Him. Justice has closed in on Him. God's justice and righteousness,
God's holiness, all those things, His sins have just closed in
on Him. And He's helpless and hopeless
before God. And then God reveals Christ to
Him and shows Him that way out. And He goes with Christ, sees
Himself resurrected in Christ. And resurrected with Christ,
seated at the right hand of God, He looks back and sees the judgment
of God on this world. They did. They did. Isn't that how you see this world? They did. That's how God taught
Ezekiel how to preach. Took him out in the wilderness.
He said, what do you see out there? He said, bones. Dry bones. There are many of them and they're
all dead and they're all dry. He said, now preach to them.
Because that's what you're going to be preaching to in this world.
Dead, dry bones. That's what Israel saw when they
looked back. All their enemies washed up on the seashore. Only
those who have experienced a spiritual resurrection can see spiritual
death and the judgment of God on this world. Alright, here's
the last thing. The believer in a true experience
of grace sees salvation accomplished. They see the whole thing. On
this side, they see the whole thing accomplished by God. They
didn't do anything. Didn't do a thing. All they did
is what God told them to do. That's all they did. He did the
work. He split the sea. He killed the
enemies. He shut them up in the wilderness.
He did the whole thing, Russell. He did the whole thing. And over
here, they've got nothing to bag on. Over here, they're going
to sing about praise unto God what he'd done. And that's what
they did. And God quickens the sinner and
brings him to repentance and faith. He's a new creature. He'd
been called out of darkness into light, chosen from among the
dead to receive life, and called from the guilty to receive pardon.
And he sees this work as the work of God altogether accomplished
in Christ and applied to his heart by the Holy Spirit. They
didn't have anything to do with that. God did that. Israel saw that great work, it
said, which the Lord did upon the Egyptians. And they feared
the Lord, and they believed the Lord, and they believed His servant
Moses. May God be pleased to make this
our experience for Christ's sake.