By faith they passed through the Red Sea as by dry land, which the Egyptians assaying to do were drowned. Hebrews 11:29
Stuntmen prepared to perform some amazing antics during a television program about people in their trade. One of those antics was falling backwards out of a third storey building into a huge air cushion below. Just before the first of the stuntmen jumped, the announcer stepped in front of the camera and held up his hand. ‘Please’, he urged the audience, ‘don’t try this at home. These are highly trained people and they know what they are doing. You will kill yourself if you try this stunt’. The announcer’s warning just makes sense; it is hard to believe anyone could be foolish enough to try to emulate those stuntmen. But then, we have the example of the Egyptians who tried to do what the Israelites had done at the Red Sea crossing. The Egyptians were missing two key ingredients for success: faith, and the God in whom the Israelites had placed their faith.
It must have taken a great amount of faith for that huge crowd of Israelites to step off the beach and begin marching across the now-dry floor of the Red Sea. But God had opened a way for them to escape, and they marched. That presented their Egyptian pursuers with a choice: remain safe on the seashore, or follow the example of the Israelites. Tragically for them (but good for the Israelites), the Egyptians entered the corridor that had been perfectly safe for the Israelites. Their great mistake brings to mind a woman to whom we were trying to present the Gospel message. She told us, ‘I have my church. I go every Sunday, and I am very active there. I am just as good as you people are.’ This woman made the mistake of believing that her religion was the equivalent of the repentance and faith that produces salvation and provides eternal life. Like the Egyptians, she said, ‘I can do that, too’. But the Egyptians were drowned, and the religious woman lost her soul.
Our faith enables you and me to do and be that which the world around us is incapable. But we need to be careful that we move and act in faith, in firm and absolute reliance on God, or we make the same mistake as unbelievers. For example, there are some folks who are fully persuaded before the Lord that they do not need insurance because God will take care of them. And He does. But there are other Christians who assume that because other Christians can get by without insurance, they can too. They are acting in imitation, not in faith. And disaster could be the result. For those people, much better to thank the Lord for giving them the income to pay their insurance premiums.
Unless we are moving in faith, we had better not move, or we could be in trouble. – Jim MacIntosh