Part of what the wilderness does is teach us to wait. The pillar of cloud and fire will remain where it is as long as God wants it to. But, the pillar does move. We will stay in wilderness forever unless we find ways to be brave, to pick up our stakes, and to follow the cloud, trusting that God’s presence dwells inside it. We are to trust that God knows when we’ve been in our particular wilderness long enough—to ask him to help us be brave to walk forward when the cloud begins to move, because eventually it will move. It will move because God moves in our lives. There is a way forward.
At several critical moments in the lives of the Israelites, God indicates that they must move forward from where they are. God did not intend for them to stay in Egypt forever, nor was it God’s intention that they remain in wilderness forever. It was God’s intention that they move forward into a better place. I believe that is God’s intention for us, too.
The Way
As the psalmist of Psalm 77 meditates on the Exodus story, he says that God’s “way” was through the sea: “Your way was through the sea, your path, through the mighty waters; yet your footprints were unseen. You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron” (Ps. 77:19-20). For the Israelites, the only way out of Egypt and through the wilderness was… well, through. Part of the way forward entails our willingness to journey with God all the way through the places he wants to take us. Darkness must be entered into in order to be tamed at Creation. Jesus cannot be resurrected without first going through the darkness of crucifixion. The Israelites cannot make it out of Egypt without going through wilderness and foaming sea. We have to face the hard places, not run from them, manipulate our way around them, or attempt to shorten the time it takes to truly heal. No, the hard places must be entered into and fully dealt with—the God who begins a good work longs to carry it through to completion. The Israelites couldn’t sidestep the Red Sea or skirt around it—God took them through it. They had to pass through the water.
Throughout the Bible, water is a prolific and striking image. And there are many different kinds of water. There are the primordial waters at Creation, chaotic and churning. These waters need to be tamed by God. There are the waters of the Flood; these waters destroy. They also save and recede. There are the waters in the wilderness that must be crossed—walls forming on either side. These waters mean salvation for the Israelites and destruction for the Egyptians. In the wilderness, there are bitter waters made sweet; they symbolize the Israelites’ own bitterness and God’s ability to meet their needs. The prophets and the psalmists speak of still waters, waters of quiet rest, where the Lord bids us to come and to find rest.
Waters churn. Waters froth and swell and rage and part. Waters baptize and provide rest. Water is a symbol of death, of life, of creation, of God’s provision and presence. And so I want us to spend some time here, at the waters, with our final image in the wilderness.
Water That Drowns
So the first kind of water I want to deal with is the water that drowns—and drowns out. This is the water of the Red Sea, and it’s here that the Israelites actually see God intervening on their behalf. What we’re told by the Hebrew writer is this: “Israel saw the great power that the LORD used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the LORD, and they believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses” (Exod. 14:31). At the burning bush, we were told that the LORD “saw” the pain of the Israelites. It is at the Red Sea that the Israelites “see” the LORD responding directly to their cries—the waters part and they are free. The Egyptians are drowned.
On a deeper level, the Egyptians are also—drowned out. The voices of the taskmasters, loud and oppressive, are buried in the heart of the sea. They go back into the darkness, where they belong. The Israelites “see” it happen, and how do they respond? They sing. This song is probably the oldest song in the Bible, and it’s the first recorded song of the Israelites. They sing.
They Sing
There’s something profound about that, isn’t there? There’s something profound about a group of slaves learning to sing again, or to sing for the first time. Taskmasters have a way of drowning out the voice of God. Taskmasters have a way of silencing, drowning, our own voice. When the Israelites are exiled to Babylon, they cry out, “By the waters of Babylon we sat and we wept… how can we sing the songs of the LORD in a foreign land?” (Ps. 137:1, 4) Likewise, the beleaguered psalmist of Psalm 77 implores, “Let me remember my song in the night” (Ps. 77:6). We can lose our way in internal wilderness, and like the psalmist, wonder where God is in the midst of it all; a kind of spiritual depression can silence the song that God has placed in our heart. We can forget who we are; we can forget who God is. But something changes profoundly in the lives of the Israelites at the Red Sea. Something happens when we pass through the waters—something changes—when God has brought us through raging waters and we come out safely, saved, on the other side.
And so the Israelites sing these words: “The LORD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation” (Exod. 15:2). It is a “new song,” we’re told, and a song that celebrates that no other god is like the LORD. The voices of the taskmasters, the voices that assault in wilderness, are drowned, water-logged, if you will, by a voice from within that says—God is able.
This article is a part of a three-part series: