He Fights for His Glory

"We have a God who fights for His own glory." That sentence came before a single verse of Exodus 14 was read on Sunday, the Queensland room asked to say it back out loud. Grow up in church and you hear "God loves you" until the words thin out and love sounds like an emotional statement, felt far away from your week. Exodus 14 says something harder. God fights. Fight is an action statement, and it puts Him in the middle of the situation. Which leaves the question: what is He fighting for?

God Announces the Purpose First

God tells Moses to turn the people around and camp by the sea, then explains why: "I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and he will pursue them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host." The trap is deliberate, and the purpose is announced before the miracle: glory.

That is where most of us stall. We hear God loves me, and the sentence ends there, with me as the endpoint. Skepticism does the same from the other direction, making your logic the boundary God has to fit inside. You think the sea is the greatest obstacle in front of you? Let me show you what I can do.

God does not exist for your comfort, but you exist for His glory.

The Greatest Offence Is Not Your Sin

Ephesians 1 says He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, predestined for adoption as sons, to the praise of His glorious grace. One of the greatest ways God displays His glory is His love. Where were you when the sun and moon were made? God was already thinking of you.

Any father understands this. The highest honour a dad receives is a child walking around confident in his love.

The greatest offence you commit to God is not a sin. It's actually your doubt about His love towards you.

Pharaoh Forgot

Exodus 14 verse 5: when the king of Egypt was told the people had fled, the mind of Pharaoh and his servants was changed, and six hundred chosen chariots went out after them. This is a man who watched ten plagues land on his country and buried his own firstborn.

The past glory of the power of God cannot always give you the conviction that you need to live in today's presence of God.

Verse 8 says the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart. He is in control, but He is not controlling. The regret over letting Israel go came from Pharaoh's own people, and God allowed a heart already set against Him to keep running. Israel is about to make the identical mistake.

Watch the Timing

The sea opening is the famous part. What matters is when. Israel is days out of four hundred years of slavery, and nothing can break them. Then they lift up their eyes and see the Egyptians marching after them.

Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? ... It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians.

Read the emotions in order. Fear. Then regret: why did we ever leave. Then blame: this is your fault, Moses. Then the fourth, which exposes more than the rest. Priority. Given the choice, they would rather survive as slaves than die as free people.

It's like slaves want slavery because of the food they eat on the table. No matter how you decorate that table, it's a slave's table.

That is the moment God chose to fight. They had not repented or worshipped. They had just said they preferred Egypt.

While We Were Enemies

Romans 5 states the same timing plainly: while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son. The sea did not open because Israel praised well enough to win God's favour.

God fought for you when you were there against Him.

Everything in us twists that back into earning. Effort has its place, on the far side of that line.

The opposite of grace is not effort, it's earning.

What Moses Had to Carry

A second relationship in the story is easy to skip: Moses and the people. He carried them forty years and the pattern never stopped. Numbers 11 catches him buckling.

Why have you dealt ill with your servant? ... Where am I to get meat to give to all these people?

Shepherds know that prayer, and so does every parent. The difficulty is doing exactly what it was sent to do: hardship is a channel to experience God's glory in love, the whole vision of house church, tasting His glory by loving each other.

You are not called into this whole house church to be served, but to serve. ... We're tired of planning church and playing church.

That was Jesus' own line. Get off the sofa, ask the shepherd what you can do, and do not go home without cleaning the house. Some shepherds are still cleaning up at 1am every Friday night. And your greatest issue is usually a person: your husband, your wife, whoever is sitting next to you. When they are difficult, you come to God.

Who Is the Hero Here?

Verse 13, with the army closing in.

Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord ... The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.

Your only job is to be silent. Just shut up and watch. In chapter 15 Moses sings about a warrior God who fights for him.

He is not the silent God. He is a fighting God. He wants you to be silent in front of His presence.

Opposition turns up on this journey, and it exists for the glory of God, so it cannot destroy you. What spoils it is turning trouble into self-worship. I should be comfortable. I should be convenient. I should be honoured.

Regain the Art of Being Fascinated

The real worry here is not the skeptic or the person who has never met Christ. It is people who lost the ability to be fascinated by the glory of His love. You're so used to it. An encounter from ten years ago gets substituted in again and again, until the hero is someone other than God.

God is not the God of yesterday, but God is God of today and tomorrow.

Which flips the question this series keeps asking.

Greatest issue is not about not getting what you want. Maybe you just don't know how to regain the art of being fascinated in his beauty. Gaze upon his beauty and know that he's enough.

Moses spent a lifetime on it: born, called, certain he would change the world, broken into an old man asking God to send someone else, then leading millions who nearly stoned him. Next week, how it ended outside the promised land.

So stand at the Red Sea again. God, would you fight for me? Would you fight for my heart? Done with feeling hardened, dry and distant. Done with blaming my pastor, my shepherd, my church. Today: watch me, watch my glory when I split the sea in two.

If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son ... how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

The battleground is prayer, and that is where rest is. What needs fighting is a heart gone hard, one that lost the ability to be fascinated with God's glory.