God Gives Us Victory

KEY VERSE: “The LORD saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea shore. 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.” —Exodus 14:30,31

SELECTED SCRIPTURE: Exodus 14:21-31

SOON AFTER THEY left Egypt, Moses and the Israelites were confronted with another crisis. The Lord directed the route they were to take. He “went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light.” (Exod. 13:21) By following the ‘cloud’ and the ‘pillar of fire’ they were led over a route which necessitated crossing the Red Sea, and when they reached the sea there seemed to be no way of getting safely to the other side.

Meanwhile, after they had left Egypt, Pharaoh repented that he had allowed them to go; so he took six hundred chosen chariots, and all the chariots of Egypt, … and he pursued after the children of Israel.” (Exod. 14:7,8) Pharaoh and his army overtook the Israelites just as they reached the Red Sea, and the people became “sore afraid.” (vs. 10) They could not go forward, and it looked as though they would be captured and returned to Egypt, or perhaps killed. So they complained to Moses, “Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? Wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt?” (Exod. 14:11) Moses, still trusting in the Lord, said unto the people, “Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will show to you today: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen today, ye shall see them again no more for ever. The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.”—Exod. 14:13,14

The Lord then instructed Moses to go forward. He was told to stretch out his hand over the sea and divide it, enabling the Israelites to cross over on dry land. The Egyptian army tried to follow, but the waters closed in upon them, and Pharaoh and his warriors were destroyed.

The 15th chapter of Exodus contains a song of deliverance which was sung by Moses and the Israelites. Some of the opening words are, “The Lord is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation.” (Exod. 15:2) This song of Moses is preeminently one of salvation and deliverance. The overcoming church class of the present Gospel Age is shown in the 14th chapter of Revelation as being with the “Lamb” on Mount Zion, singing a new song and, in the 15th chapter, as singing the song “of Moses and the Lamb.”—Rev. 14:1-3; 15:3

Thus again, Moses and the mighty works accomplished by the Lord through him are indicated to be typical of Jesus, the ‘Lamb’ of Revelation, and typical also of the much larger and more important deliverance accomplished by him, even the deliverance from sin and death—first of the church of the ‘firstborn’, and later, during the thousand years of his reign, of all mankind.

In I Corinthians 10:1-4 Paul refers to the experiences of Israel in passing through the Red Sea. He speaks of the nation as being baptized into Moses in the sea and in the cloud, just as spiritual Israelites are baptized into Christ.

In the Bible, Moses is second in prominence to Jesus Christ. His name appears in the Word of God a total of eight hundred and ten times, seven hundred and thirty of which are in the Old Testament, and eighty in the New Testament. His name appears more than one hundred times in the Old Testament subsequent to his death. Throughout the more than three thousand years since he lived, reverential esteem has been held for him by the Jewish people as their great deliverer and lawgiver.

We see in Moses not only a great prophet but also a type of the Messiah, the Christ. The Apostle Peter, in a prophecy of the work of Christ subsequent to his Second Advent, said, “Moses truly said unto the fathers, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me: him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you.”—Acts 3:22; Deut. 18:15,18

In Hebrews 3:5,6, Moses is referred to as being “faithful in all his house,” and Christ is presented as a “Son over his own house, whose house are we.”

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