Wet Feet - Exodus 14:10-18

14:10-18 - The Israelites are stuck between the wilderness and a large body of water in some sort of geological cliff type of feature. As far as which body of water it is, the Bible specifically states that it’s the Red Sea repeatedly, but TB suggests that it’s actually the sea of Aqaba because of something in the translation of the word. Still others that doubt the validity or significance of the story suggest that it’s something called the Reed Sea which is just like a marshy swamp type of land that can get pretty dried out in certain times of the year. The IM talks about the Red vs Reed sea debate, but also notes ‘Bot Latter-day Saints have information that the Exodus account is correct. Both the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants state directly that it was the Red Sea (see 1 Nephi 17:24-27; D&C 8:3).”

The people see the entire Egyptain army heading straight for them and, interestingly, their first reaction is to be snarky with Moses when they say, “Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness?” Moses is not pleased with their sudden change in attitude, but again, showing interesting personal growth over the last year or so, he doesn’t run to God to get dirrections or reassurance that this will be taken care of like he probably would have done previously. Moses simply bears pure testimony to them that “The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.” We see some serious growing up here from Moses which is encouraging.

Apparently at some point though Moses did discuss this development with God, who answered, ‘Wherefore criest thou unto me?” And even though he starts the conversation like that, he still gives specific instructions to “lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it: and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea.” There have been several talks that I’ve heard about this event and the need to move forward in faith and one of the things that’s always been said was that the water of the Red Sea didn’t divide until Moses physically stepped forward and lifted his rod. On the one hand, imagine how foolish he would have felt if after all this time and all these events, he lifted up his rod to divide the sea and nothing happened. I mean, at that point the stakes were so high that if that hadn’t worked and the Egyptians would have taken Israel back as captives, either Pharaoh or the Israelites themselves would have killed him.

But Moses had to “act as if” before anything happened, he had to exercise faith that it would work. And I’ve always thought “so what, if he had walked into the water and it hadn’t worked, then he would have been had wet feet, it’s not like God would have required him to drown himself before it either worked or it didn’t. But I guess that’s the point right? God just wants us to show him that we are willing and that we want to be obedient and exercise faith before he works in our behalf for our benefit. He just wants us to get our feet wet, he doesn’t need the full repentance process to be completed before he gets involved with us, we just have to turn to face his direction. He didn’t divide the Red Sea after they had already swam half way to the other short, they just had to show that they believed He could and they would move forward if that’s what He wanted them to do. Thus it is in our lives, we just have to want to want it, we just have to decide to try it, or to show the most minimum amount of effort ever and He’s right there showering us with His light. And that’s the lesson that I needed to learn today.