Sermon series: From Bondage to Freedom

Subject: God of the Impossible

Exodus 13:17-22
"Then it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, "Lest perhaps the people change their minds when they see war, and return to Egypt."
So God led the people around by way of the wilderness of the Red Sea. And the children of Israel went up in ordinary ranks out of the land of Egypt.
And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for he had placed the children of Israel under solemn oath, saying, "God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here with you."
So they took the journey from Succoth and camped in Etham at the edge of the wilderness.
And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light so as to go by day and night.
He did not take away the pillar of cloud by day or the pillar of fire by night from before the people."
Exodus 14:5-
"Now it was told the king of Egypt that the people had fled, and the heart of Pharaoh and his servants was turned against the people; and they said, "Why have we done this, that we have let Israel go from serving us?"
So he made ready his chariot and took his people with him.
Also, he took six hundred choice chariots, and all the chariots of Egypt with captains over every one of them.
And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued the children of Israel; and the children of Israel went out with boldness.
Verse 10--
"And when Pharaoh drew near, the children of Israel lifted their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians marched after them. So they were very afraid, and the children of Israel cried out to the Lord.
Verse 13--
"And Moses said to the people, "Do not be afraid. Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will accomplish for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall see again no more forever."
Verse 19--
"And the Angel of God, who went before the

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camp of Israel, moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud went from before them and stood behind them.
So it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel. Thus it was a cloud and darkness to the one, and it gave light by night to the other, so that the one did not come near the other all that night.
Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea into dry land, and the waters were divided.
So the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea on the dry ground, and the waters were a wall to them on their right hand and on their left." (Exodus 14:19-22)

In this series of messages, we have two goals in mind. First, to follow the journey of the children of Israel from their land of bondage (Egypt) to the land of freedom (the Promised Land--Canaan). Second, to take the great truths of these lessons from the Old Testament and show their relation to the New Testament truths that make up our Christian faith. Our New Testament faith has its roots and foundation in the Old Testament, and if we are not familiar with the Old Testament, we will miss some of the wonderful aspects of our New Testament faith.
Today, we want to talk about the miracles of this journey of the children of Israel and observe that miracles continued in the New Testament and into the Age of the Church, and to rejoice in the fact that our God is the God of the impossible!
When the angel announced to Mary that she would give birth to the Savior, He added: "Now indeed, Elizabeth your relative has also conceived a son in her old age; and this is now the sixth month for her who has called barren. "FOR WITH GOD NOTHING WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE." (Luke 1:36-37).
After a sojourn in Egypt lasting 430 years, Israel was dismissed by Pharaoh and departed from their Egyptian bondage some two million strong! We are told that "a mixed multitude went up also with Israel" (12:38), but what the exact component elements of this mixed company were, we are not told. Possibly they were Egyptians who, impressed with the miracle-plagues, embraced Judaism.
Directions as to the Passover, the sanctification of the first-born, and the law of redemption were set before the marching host by their deliverer and leader, Moses. At the

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outset of the long journey, however, it was made clear to Israel that God was to be their Guide.
As they left Egypt, God did not lead the people through the land of the Philistines, although that was the nearest route. Our text tells us that God made this decision because the people may change their minds and return to Egypt if they had to fight their way to their promised destination. After four centuries of slavery, the Israelites were in no position to fight a warlike people like the Philistines, so their course was deflected by God as Moses led the host in military order.
Encamping at Etham, at the edge of the wilderness, an incident of a miraculous and abnormal character occurred--"The Lord went before them" (13:21), constituting Himself, thereby, as their Heavenly Guide.
Here they were without arms, without stores either of clothing or provisions, without knowledge of where bread and water for their sustenance was coming from. But God in His goodness came to them in a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night to protect them until they came to the Promised Land.
God did not tell His people to "go" to Canaan, but "come." He was to be their Guide and traveling Companion through the unknown journey.
The God of miracles is their Companion!
What is a miracle? A miracle has been defined as a work wrought by a divine power for a divine purpose by means beyond the reach of man. The general idea is that it is something wonderful or unusual—an event, experience, or discovery so singular and strange as to awaken in one the feeling of awe. Phenomena in nature and events in history are labeled "miracle."
Webster’s definition of a miracle is clear and concise—"An event or effect in the physical world deviating from the known laws of nature, or transcending our knowledge of these laws; an extra-ordinary, anomalous, or abnormal event brought about by super-human agency."
The Biblical conception of a miracle is that of some extraordinary work of deity transcending the ordinary powers of nature and wrought in connection with the ends of revelation.
Bible miracles often display the reversal of nature's course. They form an effect contrary to the established constitution and course of things. Many of the miracles are a sensible deviation from the known laws of nature, proving that God is not

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only the Maker of all these laws, but also their Sovereign, and consequently He is able to deal with them as He deems fit.
One of the difficulties voiced by modernism as to the possibility of miracles is that the laws of nature are self-existent and uncaused and that there cannot be any deviation from them.
But if these laws were designed by a Supreme Will, surely this Will has the power to introduce or interpose a new agency into them. In Bible miracles, original laws are not suspended, violated, or modified in any way, but a supernatural power outside of nature intervenes with a new effect.
Disturbance entered the world by sin, as nature visibly attests, and God must needs miraculously interfere to nullify that disturbance. That is what He did in many of the miracles of the Bible.
But although God is beyond and above nature, He never violates any of its laws. Neither is nature, as Spinoza expresses it, "the strait jacket from which God cannot escape."
If we deny Him the power to perform miracles, then He is no longer a God of freedom, a living God, above nature and independent of nature.
An important aspect of Bible miracles is the fact that they are proper proofs of a divine revelation. They are not only proofs of a revelation but form a revelation in themselves. Miracles guarantee the authenticity of a revelation. Bible miracles form an integral part of Holy Writ and testify to its divine inspiration and veracity. Apart from these miracles we have no other evidence of the supernatural working on man’s behalf in time of crises.
Miracles, as an integral part of the Bible, provide evidence that it is God’s divinely inspired Word. Miracles are both the official and authoritative seal of God.
Miracles are also the insignia of Christ’s deity—"A constitutive element of the revelation of God in Christ"--and Messiahship.
"This beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory; and His disciples believed in Him." (John 2:11). "Now it came to pass, when Jesus finished commanding His twelve disciples, that He departed from there to teach and preach in their cities.
And when john had heard in prison about the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples and said to Him, "Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?"
Jesus answered and said to them, "Go and tell John the things which you hear and see: The blind see and the lame walk; the

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lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them.
And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me." (John 11:1-6)
In these miracles, displays of His inherent power, we have the exercise of His creative, punitive, and healing authority.
And all of His miracles were in "accord with His miraculous origin, sinless nature and moral perfection." They provided God with a method of authenticating Christ’s divine mission. He Himself regarded His miracles as evidence that He was from God and was God!
His miracles prove beyond doubt that He had supreme command over nature and also over the soul and body of man. With the Bible, miracles prove doctrines and doctrines approve the miracles, and both are held together in a blessed unity in the person of Christ who performed the works and proclaimed the words. To all who believe, miracles occupy a prominent place in the array of proofs for the certainty of those things believed. On the whole, it is perhaps increasingly realized that miracles, so far from being an excrescence on Christian faith, are indissolubly bound up with it, and that there is a complete unity in the manifestation of the divine nature, which is recorded in the Scripture.
Bible miracles were designed to symbolize the spiritual blessings that God is able and willing to bestow upon our needy hearts. Old Testament miracles established the supremacy of God as God over all the dead gods of idolatry. The miracles of Christ established His claims to deity and Messiahship. Apostolic miracles established the Church as a divine institution energized by the power of the Holy Spirit.
With these foregoing thoughts on the subject of miracles, let’s return to the scene in Exodus where God manifests His glory in the cloud by day and pillar of fire by night. As the Creator of all solar light, He can use all kinds of light to manifest His presence, and "the pillar" was the miraculous, visible manifestation of the divine presence, but His glory was veiled. This "pillar" which cannot be rationalistically explained, had the appearance of smoke by day and would shelter the people from the heat of the sun. "Egypt was glad when they departed, for the fear of them had fallen upon them. He spread a cloud for a covering, and fire to give light in the night." (Psalm 105:38-39)
Fire also symbolized God’s purity and glory, as well as His consuming wrath against transgressors (Leviticus 10:2; Numbers 16:35).

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This pillar was both a signal and a guide. When it moved, the people moved; when it stopped, they encamped; where it went, they followed.
This symbol of God’s presence, protection, and provision remained with the people all through the wilderness up until the death of Moses their leader. Although His people proved to be "rebellious and stiff-necked," with every fresh trial called forth a murmuring, discontented spirit, God revealed inexhaustible patience, unbounded kindness, and matchless grace in that He bore with their manners during the forty years in the wilderness.
Our text brings us to another miracle!
"And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea into dry land, and the waters were divided. So the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea on the dry ground, and the waters were a wall to them on their right hand and on their left." (14:21-).
"And the Egyptians pursued and went after them into the midst of the sea, all Pharaoh's horses, his chariots, and his horsemen. Now it came to pass, in the morning watch, that the Lord looked down upon the army of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and cloud, and he troubled the army of the Egyptians. And He took off their chariot wheels, so that they drove them with difficulty; and the Egyptians said, "Let us flee from the face of Israel, for the Lord fights for them against the Egyptians.
Then the Lord said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand over the sea, that the waters may come back upon the Egyptians, on their chariots, and on their horsemen.
And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and when the morning appeared, the sea returned to its full depth, while the Egyptians were fleeing into it. So the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea. Then the waters returned and covered the chariots, the horsemen, and all the army of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them. Not so much as one of them remained" (Exodus 14:23-28)
When Israel knew that Pharaoh and his host were pursuing them and that, with the Red Sea facing them, there was no avenue of escape, we read that they were sore afraid and cried unto the Lord and said that it might have been as well to die in Egypt as perish in the waters of the Red Sea. To all appearances the doom of the two million Israelites was settled, since the only way of escape was the valley through which they had passed. But "man's extremity is God’s opportunity." In one way, the fear of Israel was legitimate.

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The 600.000 males, by leaving Egypt, threw the whole course of commerce and business into disorder. All their labor force was gone! Pharaoh asks himself and his servants: "Why have we done this, that we have let Israel go from serving us?" (l4:5).
Those who reject the miraculous in Scripture either dismiss the miracle of the Rea Sea as the product of "mythological fancy or of legendary accretion," or explain it as a natural occurrence.
The Interpreter's Bible Commentary printed by Abingdon Press has the following explanation of the miracle of the Red Sea: "To childish minds miracles seem necessary lest man should ascribe his escape to his own ingenuity. As we grow more mature we begin to see that God’s love and power are manifested in a still greater degree when He inspires people to think up for themselves some ingenious way of outwitting their Pharaoh and getting across their Red Sea. Perhaps there will always be the two schools of thought, for the story of God causing the sea to divide to save His people and drown His enemies appeals to the childish hope for an easy, wondrous way out of our difficulties, a story crooned at the cradle of all religious faith."
Ladies and gentlemen! The above statement is nonsense! It is not childish to believe in the God of the impossible. It is foolish and childish to try to explain away the mighty power of God Almighty.
Adar Habershon in his STUDY OF THE MIRACLES opens his preface with this statement: "The subject of this book is so vast that it seems almost presumptuous to attempt to write upon it. For when we gather together all the testimony to the miraculous throughout the Scripture, the accumulated evidence is overwhelming. It is not written with any thought of defending the miracles or of proving their truth—this would be unnecessary; nor is it an attempt to explain them—this would be impossible; nor does it even aim at describing them, for this has already often been done. Its object is rather to collect from Scripture the innumerable proofs of God’s all-mighty power and of the Divine element in the Bible itself, thus proving incidentally that to get rid of the miraculous from Scripture would be an utterly impossible task."
Here is a man who approaches the subject of miracles with awe and respect and a belief in God Almighty who in His sovereign power and wisdom can do anything He so desires to do to fulfill His eternal plan for mankind.

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In the Old Testament, miracles seemed to occur primarily in connection with one prominent leader at a time, such as Moses or Elijah or Elisha.
In the New Testament, there is sudden and unprecedented increase in the miracles when Jesus begins His ministry. However, contrary to the pattern of the Old Testament, the authority to work miracles and to cast out demons was not confined to Jesus Himself, nor did miracles die out when Jesus returned to heaven. Even during His ministry, Jesus gave authority to heal the sick and to cast out demons not only to the Twelve, but also to seventy of His disciples. Other passages of Scripture indicate that performing miracles was not confined to the seventy disciples, but was characteristic of the churches of Galatia and the New Testament churches generally. This suggests that the occurrence of miracles is a characteristic of the New Testament Church and may be seen as an indication of the powerful new work of the Holy Spirit that began with Pentecost and may be expected to continue through the church age.
B. B. Warfield, the great Bible teacher who taught at Princeton in the early years of the last century, wrote these words: "Everywhere, the Apostolic Church was marked out as itself a gift from God, by showing forth the possession of the Spirit in appropriate works of the Spirit—miracles of healing, and miracles of power, miracles of knowledge whether in the form of prophecy or of the discerning of spirits, miracles of speech, whether of the gift of tongues or of their interpretation. The Apostolic Church was characteristically a miracle-working church."
But........
Mr. Warfield continued his comments stating that the church after the age of the apostles experienced the cessation of miraculous gifts, and that we should not expect such gifts today because God intended them only to confirm the early apostolic message during the time when the apostles were still alive."
Observation! There is no place in the Holy Scriptures that would prove the above conclusion of Mr. Warfield. Within the evangelical church today there are differing positions over the question of the possibility of miracles today.
Our church chooses to believe that God has not changed, neither has His power been diminished. God is Almighty and Sovereign, and if a miracle is performed by Him, we are going to give Him the credit and not seek to explain it away!
Our God is the God of the impossible!