Stand Still, and Go Forward

Two million people with their backs to the water and the most powerful army on earth coming over the hill. They had been free for about a week. And the man who led them out stands up and says the least sensible thing anyone has ever said to a crowd in that position: stand still. What happened next is the event the whole Old Testament looks back on when it wants to say who God is, and the New Testament calls it a baptism.

Entangled in the land

God did not take them the short way. "God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt" (Exodus 13:17). He knew them. He led them "by day in a pillar of a cloud… and by night in a pillar of fire" (13:21), and He led them into a dead end. On purpose. "Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, They are entangled in the land, the wilderness hath shut them in" (14:3). Sea in front, mountains on the sides, and God says: camp here.

And Pharaoh, whose firstborn was a week dead, has already changed his mind. "Why have we done this, that we have let Israel go from serving us?" (14:5). Six hundred chariots, all the horsemen, the whole army. "And when Pharaoh drew nigh, the children of Israel lifted up their eyes, and, behold, the Egyptians marched after them; and they were sore afraid" (14:10).

Stand still

Listen to what freedom sounds like after seven days. "Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness?… it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness" (14:11-12). They had watched the Nile turn to blood and the firstborn of Egypt die, and one week later, with chariots on the horizon, they wanted their chains back. The Bible does not flatter them and it will not flatter us. And Moses says:

Stand still. Hold your peace. There is no verse in the Bible harder to obey with an army behind you, and it is the first thing God's people were ever told to do as a free nation. And then, in the very next verse, the other half, which is just as much a command: "Wherefore criest thou unto me? speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward" (14:15). Stand still; go forward. Both. Stop trying to save yourselves, and walk toward the water. Salvation is the LORD's, and it still has to be walked into.

A wall on the right hand and on the left

First the pillar moves. "The angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them… and it was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these" (14:19-20). The same cloud, dark to Egypt and light to Israel, standing between the two camps all 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 dry land, and the waters were divided. And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left" (14:21-22). All that night. It was not instant. The wind blew for hours while they waited, and then they walked, in the dark, between two walls of water, with the sound of the army somewhere behind the cloud.

Egypt follows them in. "In the morning watch the LORD looked unto the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, and troubled the host of the Egyptians, And took off their chariot wheels" (14:24-25). Looked. That is all. He looked at them, and the wheels came off. And the Egyptians said the thing they should have said nine plagues ago: "Let us flee from the face of Israel; for the LORD fighteth for them" (14:25). Then the sea comes back "when the morning appeared" (14:27), and "there remained not so much as one of them" (14:28). And on the far shore, "Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea shore" (14:30). They saw them again, after all. Dead. No more for ever.

"And the people feared the LORD, and believed the LORD, and his servant Moses" (14:31). And Miriam took a timbrel, and the women went out after her, and they sang the oldest song in the Bible: "Sing ye to the LORD, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea" (15:21).

Baptized in the cloud and in the sea

Paul, writing to Corinth, said something about that night that nobody standing on the shore could have guessed: "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" (1 Corinthians 10:1-2). Baptized. They went down into the water, with death on one side and the old life behind them, and came up on the other shore a different people, and the thing that had enslaved them was drowned. The fathers took Paul at his word.

And the psalmist, looking back, noticed the thing about the path that is easy to miss: "Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known" (Psalm 77:19). The road was there for one night and then it was sea again. Nobody could go back and find it. You could only have been on it.

Where this lands

The last book of the Bible has a sea too, "a sea of glass mingled with fire," and the people standing on the far side of it "sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb" (Revelation 15:3). One song. Miriam's timbrel and the Lamb's victory are the same tune, because it was the same deliverance: a people who could not save themselves, told to stand still, and then told to go forward, walking between the walls in the dark while the LORD fought. He led them into the dead end on purpose, so that nobody could say afterward they had found the way out. They had not. There was no way out. There was a way through, and He made it, and it was only there for the night it was needed. "Thus saith the LORD, which maketh a way in the sea, and a path in the mighty waters" (Isaiah 43:16). Which maketh. Present tense. He still does, and it is still a baptism: down into the water with the old master behind you, up on the other shore with him drowned, and a song.

Related: Baptism, When I See the Blood, The Door God Shut, and Rest. Scripture from the King James Version, linked to BibleHub; the words of God are marked in gold, the words of Christ in purple.