Yes, we’re tempted to doubt some stories in the Bible. Jonah in the whale, Samson toppling the pagan temple, God’s fire burning up Elijah’s wet wooden altar, the virgin birth of Jesus, Jesus feeding the 5,000 and my favorite: Moses and the parting of the Red Sea. I mean, how did God do that? It boggles the mind – so incredible, so awesome, so spectacular in scope. It’s been popularized again and again in movies and TV. But the biggest part of the story – the part that Hollywood always leaves out – is that in crossing the Red Sea, the people of Israel were baptized into God’s truth that day!
We can only imagine what the Israelites must’ve felt like standing on the banks of the Red Sea, watching the water engulf pharaoh’s men and seeing their dead bodies washed up on the shore (Exodus 14:30). They must’ve stood there with their mouths agape, eyes saucer-wide, holding onto each other with astonished disbelief thinking, saying: “THAT’S the God we serve?? … wow.”
I grappled with the truth of the Red Sea crossing for years, even creating plausible explanations for how it happened: maybe there was a very long, contiguous sand bar connecting the eastern shore from the west; the tide went out revealing this miracle and the Israelites crossed it. And then pharaoh’s men went across, the tide came back in and they drowned.
Possible, right? Sure.
But that’s not what Scripture says happened.
In Exodus, it says there were walls of water on either side, and they crossed on dry ground (Exodus 14:29) – that’s kicking-up-sand dry. And we’re not talking about a few folks skipping across an archipelago of rocks. Scripture says 600,000 men on foot, which didn’t include their wives or kiddos (Exodus 12:37). So at a minimum, between 1.5-to-2 million people were making that journey. And here’s the really crucial part: two million people – that’s a lot of eyewitnesses to the event. Either they were either all liars, every last one of them -OR- they were all off-the-wall, out-of-their-minds insane. Every man, woman, and child who made that crossing.
Are you picking up the scent here? Guys, this stuff happened. It really did. I can’t explain how it happened. It doesn’t matter how. I’ve been in professional ministry for more than 17 years, and I still struggle with God’s truth at times. And that’s okay. The feeling is emblematic of who we are as humans beings.
But God’s Word, this truth we talk about in church and with friends exists whether we’re around to say it does. And we’re not prayerfully hoping it happened. The more time you spend in God’s Word, through praying over it before you read and paying close attention to the details, you’ll find the truth is speaking to you.
And it will convict you soundly. And one day, you’ll be on the banks of the Red Sea just like the Israelites were that day, you’ll do like they did: you’ll sing (Exodus 15) worshipping the Lord and praising His name.
Sometimes, that’s all you can do. And all you want to do.
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