Good evening. Now, we could have all stayed home and prayed tonight. The Lord chooses for us to gather together, not only, uh, to pray when we're alone, pray with our families, pray with others, but come together. And I think as we came together tonight, I know my own heart was blessed, and I was reminded again of one of the reasons that the Lord wants us to come together as we hear our brothers lead us in prayer. What an encouragement and a blessing as we lift our amen silently and audibly, uh, to the Lord to be able to do that. I'm gonna ask you to turn to Exodus chapter fourteen, if you would, Exodus chapter fourteen. On Sunday, we, uh, began to just consider some, uh, parallel lessons from the story of the Israelite nation as they went from bondage in Egypt and were moving into the wilderness, a place of barrenness, and then, uh, on to the land of promise, land of Canaan. That would be a place of blessing, also a place of battle, uh, they would experience there. And we've seen that there are some real parallels to our own lives as believers. We know the Lord Jesus Christ, we're reminded Sunday night that that journey, uh, that that journey that takes us through those different environments, uh, geographically as they had for the nation of Israel, but spiritually for us, as we go through those, it all begins there with freedom, freedom to journey. Uh, we're not allowed on that road, as it were, to experience the spiritual blessings of God until we have been freed by the blood of an innocent victim that God himself has chosen, and we know that that is through the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. And Sunday morning, uh, we were thinking a little bit about that memorial that God has given to us to remind us as we journey, as we go and battle against the world, and as we make our way through the barrenness of the desert, and and as we experience the battles even of the the land of blessing, that we remember, we remember the cost of our deliverance and other things as well. Uh, we'd like to consider, uh, tonight thinking about this very familiar, uh, I might say famous. Uh, the Israelite nation has been freed from Egypt, from the power of Egypt and that penalty that was over them, the judgment of God that was coming down on that nation unless they were covered by the blood of that innocent, unblemished lamb. And now they've been freed from that, and they're on their way to Canaan. They're on their way to the Promised Land. That's where they're heading. But of course, as we head out, things don't always go as we plan. Uh, we have a couple in our assembly. Uh, they're, uh, Lebanese by nationality, but were living in Kuwait, and they went to England for vacation to visit some family, and while they were on that journey, Iraq invaded Kuwait, and they never were able to go back. The father did eventually go back some to work over there, but their plans were totally changed by an unexpected event. Such happened to the nation of Israel. Something happened that they were not expecting, and they found out very quickly that not only did they need freedom in order to be on the journey, but they found out that they were going to need freedom on the journey, and that's what we're going to look at tonight, freedom on the journey, remembering that Egypt illustrates for us the world, and we know that as believers we are in the world, but we are not of the world. So we're going to look tonight at, uh, three stages, as we have time, of gaining this freedom on the journey, and in each stage we're going to see by the picture here in Exodus fourteen that the nation of Israel realized something, and then they had to react to that, and we'll bring that hopefully, uh, into play in our own lives as we think about that tonight. So first of all, we think about the first twelve verses here, and we see that the first stage was a crisis that God had appointed. Uh, look there in chapter fourteen, and we'll read the first two verses to start out with. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they turn and encamp before Pahachiroth, between Migdal and the sea, over against Baal Zephon, before it ye shall encamp by the sea. So they had left, they were on their way, and God was the one who was guiding them, as we learned at the end of chapter thirteen, it was God himself who would provide the guidance, tell them when to move, and tell them which direction to move, by the pillar of cloud by day, the pillar of fire by night. They knew when to move, and they knew where to go, and God instructed Moses, okay, it's time to move in this particular direction. I have a place where I want the people of Israel, my people, to set up camp. God was appointing where they would go. Jump down with me for sake of time, if you would, to verse eight. And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and he pursued after the children of Israel. And the children of Israel went out with an high hand, but the Egyptians pursued after them. All the horses and chariots of Pharaoh and his horsemen and his army, and overtook them in camping by the sea beside Pi-hahiroth before Baal Zephon. And when Pharaoh drew near, the children of Israel lifted up their high eyes, and behold, the Egyptians marched after them. So here they are en route to Canaan, and suddenly some at the back of the camp see the desert sand begin to be disturbed over the horizon. And as that continues toward them and they get closer, they realize that these are Egyptian chariots. Now just think for a moment, put yourself in the position of those Israelites. They have been freed from Egypt's bondage. They have been taken out from under the judgment of God upon that nation, and they are free, and they're excited, and they're looking toward the promised land, and then all of a sudden they look behind them, thinking they had escaped completely from Egypt, but there are the Egyptians again. Hours, even minutes before, they had no clue. They had no idea that they were being pursued by the Pharaoh and his army. Well, as Egypt represents for us, uh, the world, the world system, and as Pharaoh represents for us the devil, who is the prince of the power of the air behind that world system, and as the Egyptians and Pharaoh were pursuing the people of God in that day, so the world, empowered and directed by Satan, is also pursuing us as we are en route to appropriating the blessings of God. And suddenly we realize, maybe as a young believer, or maybe realize anew as an older believer, that the world is pursuing us. As we look in the New Testament and we study out that word translated world, we find there are several different words which apply to what we're looking at tonight. Uh, one of those words really speaks of the order and arrangement of something. And it reminds us of the present order, the present condition of human affairs, anti-God. And again, we see that more and more in our society, a culture which is increasingly anti-God, Satan behind that, pulling the strings, calling the shots, as the world system is painted clearly before us in the scripture. The other word speaks particularly of a period of time, and included in this thought of the period of time, uh, are the moral and spiritual characteristics of that time. So we see the world system, which has been the world, uh, since Satan came in, uh, to the earth and began to seek to tempt Eve and to lead her astray and, and through her to get to Adam. We see the world system has been in place. It's really not changed in its function, what it's trying to do, but the way that it presents itself is really seen in this thought of a period of time. And the world system working today is pursuing those of us who know the Lord Jesus Christ, who are desiring to enjoy the spiritual blessings that we have in the heavenly places in Christ. God has given those to us. He has promised those to us, as he had promised the land of Canaan to the Israelites. But as we seek to enjoy those and appropriate those, sometimes we forget that the world is pursuing us. We may have thought we had escaped from the world, but how important, how valuable, how essential it is that we realize that the world continues in pursuit. Uh, we could have read in some of the earlier verses there in chapter fourteen that the Pharaoh suddenly realized, what have I done? I've let them go. Not gonna let them go that easily. And so the devil, though defeated at the cross, he looks at you, and he looks at me, and he says, I'm not going to let him go that easily. Look at the reaction of Israel in this crisis that God appointed. Remember, God sent them to where they were. It was his purpose. And notice there, as we continue in verse ten, picking up in the middle of the verse where we stopped, we read, speaking of Israel, and they were sore afraid, and the children of Israel cried out unto the Lord, and they said unto Moses, because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? Wherefore hast thou dealt with, uh, thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt? Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians? For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians than that we should die in the wilderness. They reacted with fear. You notice here that they made a wrong assumption. They said, we're, oh, great Moses, good work. Bring us out here so that we can die. Uh, they, they misunderstood the intention of Pharaoh and his army. They weren't there to kill them, they were there to re-in-enslave them. That was their purpose, to get them and to bring them back so that once again they could have the people of God under their control, under their grip, so that they could get them to do what they wanted them to do for their benefit. And so it is with the world system today. The world system desires to get hold of you, to enslave you, to bring you back under its influence, so that you can benefit them rather than glorifying the Lord. We read Sunday night in Ephesians two two, wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air. That was our, our lifestyle before we came to know the Lord Jesus, before we were redeemed by blood and forgiven and brought out from under the control of the world and the devil. God freed us from that. But there is that tendency within our old nature to drift back toward the world, and the world is very slick, I'll use the word, in the way that it seeks to in bring us back under its bondage. We just think about a couple of them that we see in the scripture. One thing that the world system with Satan behind it, what they try to do in order to bring us back under, uh, their influence and control is to, one thing is to entangle us with the cares of this world. Uh, we see that in Mark chapter four and verse nineteen as the Lord Jesus speaks of that parable of the sower and the seed and the soils. We read there of the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches and the lust of other things entering in, that these things choke the word and it becometh unfruitful. And the cares, uh, really the distractions of this world are a great tool for Satan to use to draw us back under his influence, very subtly, we don't even realize it. I mean, there are many things in the world, uh, that we have to take care of here on this earth, in our culture, our society that we're responsible for, but many of these things, the world system will use it to try to distract us away from what really matters. Wants to distract us away from what's eternal and get our attention on the temporary things of this world. Just distract us, that's all. Just a little distraction here and another distraction there, and one more distraction on this side, and before we know it, we are slipping under the influence of the world. It's just trying to tangle us up, tangle us up to re-enslave us. Another thing that it seeks to do is to shape our thinking. Uh, we read in Romans chapter twelve and verse two, we're warned not to be conformed, not to be shaped by this world, but rather to have our thinking renewed. But this world system wants to shape your thinking. This world system wants to be, uh, the determining factor in what you really value in your life. And as you set your priorities for your life, and day by day, the world system wants to have a big say so in that, about how you're going to spend your time, how you're going to invest your life today and tomorrow. Uh, the world wants to have a big influence in that, about what your goals are, what you're living for in reality. Now, the world doesn't care that much about what we say we're living for, as long as what we're really living for lines up with what they want us to think. They just want us to shape, they want to shape our thinking so that we think like they think, without even realizing it. As we reason through problems, and we make choices, and we make decisions, the world system, Satan behinds it, behind it, wants to shape, uh, the way that we reason out those issues. Not that we think with the mind of Christ, not w- that we look at things through an eternal perspective, but rather the world wants us to look at things like they look at things. Uh, even our attitude about what is worldly, what is of this world, it wants to shape our thinking. A third way that it seeks to re-enslave us i- t- is to mark our lifestyles. We read in James one twenty seven that pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, uh, first of all, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and number two, to keep himself unspotted from the world. So the world system has a desire to spot you, to mark you. You know, as i- it's as if we're, we're walking our brother pray tonight, uh, of those, those robes of righteousness, our position in Christ, which cannot be soiled or spotted anyway, uh, but we know in the book of the Revelation, I believe it was the church at Sardis, uh, they were spoken of, of, of wearing those white garments, the practical living in this world, again, the righteousness of Christ. But yet, practically speaking, we can be marked, we can be spotted by this world as we get involved in the, in the world's activities, this world system. A- and fourthly, we'll just mention very quickly another thing that the world system loves to do to entangle us and to bring us back under its influence and control is to limit our worship. Limit our worship. Uh, back in, uh, chapter eight of Exodus, you remember Pharaoh, uh, telling Moses, look, you can worship then if you really insist on it, but just worship right here in the land. No, no separation now. Don't, you don't need to, to come out from among us and be separate. Just stay right here. And then if that doesn't work, a little later in the chapter, he says, okay, well, you can sacrifice and you can go into the wilderness, but don't go very far. You know, stay connected, uh, keep, keep one foot in the world and, and one foot there in worship if you must, but don't get too far. In chapter ten, uh, Pharaoh gives in a little bit more and says, okay, you can sacrifice, but leave your children behind. Don't involve them. Leave some things here that are sure to bring you back. And lastly, he said, go ahead and sacrifice in the wilderness. Go ahead and go a little further if you need to, and go ahead and take your children, but don't take any flocks and herds. Leave them here. And the world doesn't want us to have anything to bring in offering to God. It wants to get us to use our time and to spend our efforts thinking so much about the things of this life and this existence here temporally, that we come before the Lord in worship and, and we don't have anything there. We've left our herds and our flocks back in the world. And that's the work of this world system. That's the work of the devil. He is pursuing you. The world is pursuing you, sneaking up behind us, intending to re-enslave us. And God's people in that day... they were fooled by that. They didn't realize what the intent of the enemy really was, and they responded in fear, and then they also did pray, you notice. Uh, you see how they prayed there. At the end of verse ten. they cried out unto the Lord. Well, we would think that was good until we read verse eleven. They weren't expecting God to do anything for them. That was a prayer without faith. Tonight we came together to pray, and we came seeking to pray, believing, trusting God that he is hearing us, and he will answer according to what he knows is perfect and best and acceptable, that pleases him. We came praying in that way, but they cried out, God help us, but they didn't believe God was going to help them. They were turning on Moses right after that and saying, why'd you bring us out here to die, Moses? I guess we're just going to die. They didn't expect God to save them. They were just throwing up a prayer in panic. A- and finally, they contemplated compromise. They said, Moses, we would have been better off had we have just stayed there in Egypt. That's what we should have done. And maybe it was going through their minds, I wonder if there's any way that we can put up a white flag and go back now. Maybe we just ought to be there. Maybe we ought to just give in to Pharaoh and compromise with him, and maybe he'll let us live, and hey, we'll never make it to the place of blessing that God wants us to have, but, but at least we can, can go on. You know, this world system in which we live, it hates us. It hates us. The Lord Jesus told us that in John fifteen, In verse nineteen, he said, if you were of the world, the world would love its own, but because you're not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. And may we never be fooled by this world system, which tries to deceitfully befriend us. It's all for its benefit, not for ours. It's for our hurt. The world is like that spy that infiltrates and and comes in to our army, as it were, and and gets to know one of the high-ranking officials, maybe a a a beautiful woman sent over by the enemy to befriend, supposedly, this high-ranking officer who has the information that the enemy wants. And so she comes and begins to, uh, show a lot of attention and affection to this man, and he falls into the trap, believing that she really loves him, when all the time she really hates him, because she wants the information to give back to her superiors so that her side can come in and defeat his side, even taking his life, if possible. And that's exactly what the world is trying to do. And therefore, we read in First John chapter two, don't love the world. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. Isn't it amazing that those words are not written to unbelievers, but to believers? Why would God need to command his people not to love the world? Again, our old nature is attracted, and as human beings here, as it were, trapped in time, we are very susceptible to the pleasures of this world. He says, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world, and the world passeth away in the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. He said, don't love the things in the world. Don't let the world trap you and re-enslave you, even as the people of God, the temptation is there. Watch out for those lusts of the flesh. We might call them pleasures. They have to do with how you, how you feel, and in those lusts, those desires that want to be fulfilled so that you will feel better. He said, that's not of the Father. And then the lust of the eyes, that could maybe be encapsulated in possessions, what you own or what you have. And then there's that pride of life, position, how you're viewed, how others look at you, or even how you see yourself. These things of the world, what the world tries to use all of these things to just distract us, to just entangle us, to just pull us away, to just mark us, to just limit our worship, to shape our thinking. In James four four, we read, ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. The story is told of a family from New York, and they decided to leave the, the rat race, and they wanted to, to move out west, and, and they bought a ranch, and they were going to raise cattle there. So some friends from back east visited them and asked them, well, does your ranch have a name? And the would-be cattleman said, well, I wanted to name it the Bar J, and my wife favored Susie Q. One son, he really liked the name for the ranch to be the Flying W, and the other one wanted the Lazy Y. So we compromised, and we're calling it the Bar J, Susie Q, Flying W, Lazy Y Ranch. And the friend looked around, he said, well, where are all your cattle? And the man said, none survived the branding. If you compromise with the world, you won't survive. If we compromise with the world, we won't. The, the Lord appointed that crisis. He allowed them to be in that situation that he might teach them a lesson and show them his power and his glory. And that brings us to the second stage. In chapter fourteen verses thirteen through twenty two, we have the command that God assigned. He gave them a command, verse thirteen, and Moses said unto the people, fear ye not, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will show you today, for the Egyptians whom you have seen today, ye shall see them again no more forever. The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace. The Lord had a command, don't be afraid. You stand still and you do what I say. Don't compromise with the enemy. And then he said, I'm going to open up the sea, and it's going to be a wall to your right and a wall to your left, and I want you to march right through. The Lord has commanded us, as we've already referred to in Romans twelve two, don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed. Be ye changed by the renewing of your mind, your thinking being made different. How we need to be reminded of this over and over and over, because this world is always coming against us. We need to be careful not to be conformed, not to be fashioned according to the pattern of this world system, not to allow our culture to shape the way that we think. The decisions we make, what's important to us, that must be determined by God, and the only way that's going to happen is that if we're transformed, if we're changed into another form, be transformed by the renewing of your mind, by the renovation of your mind, and we know that comes through the word of God. As we read in two Corinthians three eighteen, as we with an open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord are changed into or transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. As we gaze into the Word of God, as we search the scriptures, seeking the Lord Jesus there, we're able to live in this world and as many of, uh, of you men do, when you take that air and you put it in and you dive down in the water and you're breathing, you're living in the water, but you brought your air with you. You're in the environment of the sea, but you are breathing through that hose and through that mouthpiece from that tank, and that's exactly how we are as believers. We are in the world, but we're not of this world. We're drawing our breath, we're drawing our strength from the heavenly places in Christ, though we live here. That is God's intention. And the Lord told those people, don't fear. Take your stand, and when I tell you to step forward, you do it. And he opened up the ocean, opened up the red Sea, and said, walk through. And the Israelites, by faith, we see in verse twenty two, 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. And we read in Hebrews eleven twenty five— eleven twenty nine, excuse me, there in that chapter of faith, it says, by faith they passed through the Red Sea as by dry land. Again, standing there watching the waters on each side, it took faith in God. They had to believe what God said to step out into the middle of that. And when God tells us, look, I don't want you to be conformed to this world. I'm going to open up a path for you. I'm going to open up a path for you which is going to enable you to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. I'm going to enable you to think differently, and I'm going to enable you to go against the flow of this world. And we stand there at the edge, and we look in. And, you know, I can't help but think about maybe some of those Israelite teenagers. You ever notice how teenagers, they're not afraid of doing something like that. They probably ready to run out there. Come on, dad, let's go. This is great. Look at this, the water on each side. Maybe some of, uh, the older folks are saying, hold on now, let's just check this thing out a little bit. Don't get too, uh, ahead of yourself here. Uh, isn't it like that sometimes we see a new believer, they are so excited. They get saved and they're ready to head right in there and be transformed by the renewing of their mind. Uh, they don't care about the things of the world suddenly. And sometimes we're saying, now hold on here, let's don't get too out of kilter with this. Let's be wise about this thing. Of course, there's a, a, a wonderful place and need for wisdom. When it comes to taking God at his word and being obedient, may our reaction be as the reaction was of those people, by faith. They crossed, they stepped in. And then finally, as we close, we see the consequence that God achieved. Uh, that starts in verse twenty three of chapter fourteen and really goes through most of chapter fifteen, but we'll just touch on it very quickly because we see what God did for them. Uh, look all the way down to, uh, verse twenty eight. And here, as the, uh, children of Israel have gone through the Red Sea, and of course the Egyptians tried to follow them, and we read in verse twenty eight, and the waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen and all the host of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them. There remained not so much as one of them, but the children of Israel walked upon dry ground in the midst of the sea, and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left. Thus the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the seashore, and Israel saw that great work which the Lord did upon the Egyptians, and the people feared the Lord and believed the Lord and his servant Moses. Then saying Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord. The morning dawned, and they looked back, and the waters had come back to where they were before, and they saw the Egyptian soldiers lying dead, every one of them, there on the seashore. They had acted in faith, and God had honored their faith and given them that victory. As read in First John chapter five, verses four and five, for whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world, and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God. And if I am willing to step out in faith, God will give me the victory. And they realized their victory that day. They saw that they had been saved from the, the power of Egypt over them. And they also saw that they were now separated. They were separated from Egypt. The Red Sea was between them. And the Lord says, come out from among them and be ye separate. A verse that I love that I'll just, uh, share with you real quickly in Galatians six fourteen, I'd encourage you to put this to memory, particularly the last part of the verse. But there Paul says, but God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. In other words, the world has been defeated. No longer, uh, does it have me in its bondage unless I allow it to. God says it's dead to you, and you're dead to it. A man was walking through a park, and he passed a massive oak tree, and a vine had grown up along the trunk of that oak tree. It started out very small, just a little vine, and it began to, to work its way up. But now, after quite a long time, the entire lower half of the tree was covered by the vine's creepers. As you looked at that, it looked that those, th- that vine and those creepers would, would suck the very life out of that tree, would kill it, and, and truly it would have eventually, except for the gardener had come and taken a saw, went down to the base of that tree where the vine started, and he cut that vine in half right there. The vine was still there, the creepers were still there. They had their, uh, influence, and they were there in that sense, but there was no life in it. And that's really what the Lord Jesus has done for us. By his death on the cross, the world has been crucified into us, and we have been crucified into the world, and we don't have to give in anymore. We've been freed from that. We've been separated, and God says we can come out and be separate from the world. I know this is a, a difficult thing in many ways to even make that, that line of demarcation. We don't have the Red Sea there, maybe as clearly as they do, as they did, but God, the Holy Spirit, will enable us to know what is his will, good and perfect and acceptable will of God. As we seek to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Let's close in prayer this evening. Father, we do give you thanks tonight for your son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we realize that apart from his work there on Calvary, your perfect son, the Lamb of God, Christ, our Passover, who has been sacrificed for us, apart from his work, we would have no hope to have any freedom from the control of the world in our lives, but we thank you that because of him, or we can rejoice, we can sing praises as Egypt did when they realized that they had been freed and separated. They had come out from Egypt. Lord, may we come out from the world and be separate. May we have the wisdom to know that the world is pursuing us. May we have the insight to recognize what the world is trying to do in our individual lives and influence us and impact us and re-enslave us so that we are not able to honor you to the extent that you desire for us to do. Father, help us to be wise and to encourage one another. And Lord, help us to respond with faith and to step out, even though it means we're going against the world. And I thank you for these brothers and sisters. Father, thank you for their faithful testimony, for their, uh, desire to be here tonight. Father, I thank you for that, the encouragement that it is for me, and that we can remind each other, Lord, of our need of always trusting in you, leaning on the Lord Jesus, allowing him to live his life through us. We thank you, Father, that we are dead, yet we still live, but it's not us, but it's Christ who lives his life through us. Father, may the life that we now live be lived by the faith of the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us, and we pray in his name. Amen.