A Word for the Church: The Flooded Woods

I got my first bike for Christmas when I was a kid, one my parents had found in the junk yard. When they wheeled it inside during our present unwrapping festivities, my little heart knew no bounds to my excitement. It had a pink and white banana seat, a white basket decorated with gaudy pink flowers hanging from the front handlebars, and it was just my size. 

It served its purpose well; I learned how to ride it over the next little while. I practiced and practiced with training wheels, and when spring came, we took the training wheels off. I remember the first moment of complete freedom -- pedaling down the road in front of our house with my dad running behind me, gripping the seat to keep me upright.

I looked over my shoulder and was horrified and thrilled to realize my dad stood far down the road, and I was pedaling all by myself.

That bicycle carried me to freedom and independence from those training wheels, and I loved it. Since my parents had gotten it from the junk yard, it needed a little tender loving care, and I remember a few hot summer days on the patio with soapy steel wool in my hand as I scrubbed the handlebars that were coated in dark red rust.

Rust, let me tell you, does not come off easily, and my tiny little muscles and skinny little arms worked hard to make any indent at all. But slowly, with concentrated effort, I began to see some metallic shine behind the piled on red. It took time; it didn't happen in a day. I had to attack that rust many times over... but eventually, I found the healthy sheen hidden beneath it.

I was talking to a friend yesterday about unconditional surrender, having open hands before the Lord. This morning when I sat down to read my Bible, the first Scripture the Word fell open to was Luke 14:33: "In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple."

Before I even headed to Exodus, I asked the Lord to show me areas where I -- where any of us who want to follow Christ -- need to open our hands and hearts, where we need to scrub off the rust.

The Lord immediately showed me a scene in the woods. Muddy water poured through the standing trees in flood-stage. The water was filled with debris, detritus, small plants, bushes, etc. The trees, though, stood firm, their boughs uplifted, steady, true as always, deeply rooted.

Psalm 1 is the chapter I chose at the beginning of this year as my theme I wanted to concentrate on: "Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on His law, he meditates day and night. He is like a tree, planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers."

I looked at those deeply rooted trees, and I asked the Lord: "Why the flood, Jesus? Floods are destructive, are they not?"

And the Spirit spoke this to my heart. "This flood brings two things: First, it removes the stones from your path (Isaiah 62:10: "Build up, build up the highway! Remove the stones. Raise a banner for the nations!"), the distractions from among your roots. You are a tree with boughs upraised in praise to the Father. Why are you looking down at your feet? 

"Second, it shows the renewal I intend to give you (Isaiah 59:19: "From the west [keep west in mind; this is significant, and I'll get to it below], men will fear the name of the Lord, and from the rising of the sun, they will revere His glory, for He will come like a pent-up flood that the breath of the Lord drives along.")

The flood wipes out our crutches, our dependencies; it brings the glory of the Lord among the deeply-rooted -- "a pent-up flood that the breath of the Lord drives along."

This picture, this verse. Pay attention to this verse, because it's SUPER AMAZING how it correlates with what God showed me in Exodus, which features one of my favorite Bible stories: the crossing of the Red Sea (or the Sea of Reeds). 

I've always wandered where exactly this crossing took place. The map in my Bible estimates its location approximately twenty miles east of Rameses. It's a good day or two march, which makes sense time-wise as Pharaoh has had a chance to sit in the silence of his palace after the Israelites leave and realize: Hey, I didn't want them to go after all. Who's going to bring me my breakfast?

Random trivia: Since reeds don't grow in salt-water, it's unlikely that the crossing took place on the Gulf of Suez (what is the actual Red Sea), but rather at the southern end of Lake Menzaleh. This is in conjunction with an Egyptian papyrus that places Baal Zephon in that spot (Baal Zephon is where the Israelites wait near the sea in Exodus 14:9). 

Whatever the case, the Israelites arrive at a large body of water, and because Pharaoh just can't learn his lesson, the entire Egyptian army and all its chariots and horses and scare tactics are coming behind them. 

The Israelites are trapped between sea and enemy, and there's nowhere to go. The people cry out to Moses in desperation: "It would have been better had we stayed in Egypt; then we wouldn't have to die in the desert." Better to stay in bondage, in slavery, than wander into the hard, suffocating, deadness of the wilderness. Better to remain beneath the yoke of oppression than step out in faith. Look what happened when we did; we're dead men walking.

Moses answers back in what is one of the most powerful theme verses of my life: "Do not be afraid! Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still."

You need only to be still. I believe I blogged about this a long while ago, but the Hebrew word for "be still" translates with the implication of "rooted. Entrenched. Firm. Unmoving." It shows here that while the Israelites are waiting for their salvation, they are standing rooted, firm against the flood, firm against the overwhelming odds. While it seems like certain death, the Lord is making a way for life, for salvation. 

God tells Moses: "Raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water, so that the Israelites can go through the sea on dry ground." 

A pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night is the physical manifestation of the Presence of God. This pillar has been leading the Israelites, and it has stopped at the body of water in front of them. Now, it moves from the front of the Israelites to the back of them, separating them from the Egyptian army. The Lord gives darkness to the Egyptians and light to the Israelites as He divides the two nations.

"Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind, and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided, and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left" (Exodus 14:21-22).

Long story not quite as long, the Israelites get to the other side, Pharaoh's charioteers follow the nation into the sea, the ground gets muddy, their wheels clog up and come off, and whoosh -- that piled up water that had separated for the Israelites collapses on top of Pharaoh's army and wipes out the entire force. Not a single person survives. "Moses stretched out his hand over the sea and at daybreak the sea went back to its place. The Egyptians were fleeing toward [the daybreak, the rising of the sun (Isaiah 59:19], and the Lord swept them into the sea."

The flood came in, didn't it? 

"The Spirit of the Lord comes in like a pent-up flood that the breath of the Lord drives along." Know what just exploded in my mind this morning?

"All that night, the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind." In Exodus 15:8, the poet calls this wind "a blast of [the Lord's] nostrils." Look back at Isaiah 59:19: "The Spirit of the Lord comes in like a pent-up flood that the breath of the Lord drives along."

Guess what other time the Lord uses an east wind? Flip back a couple of chapters to Exodus 10:13: "Moses stretched out his staff over Egypt, and the Lord made an east wind blow across the land all that day and all that night."

Sound familiar? Yeah! "By morning, the wind had brought the locusts; they invaded all Egypt and settled down in every area of the country in great numbers." Eating, eating, destroying life, as locusts do.

Pharaoh pleads with Moses to pray that the plague of locusts be taken from him, so Moses does, and "the Lord changed the wind to a very strong west wind, which caught up the locusts and drove them them into the Red Sea (or the Sea of Reeds, as above). Not a locust was left anywhere in Egypt."

The Lord spoke to me today in some powerful symbols, metaphors, and parallels:

The locusts come, on the breath of the Lord, on the east winds, bringing destruction. The Lord removes them with the opposing wind, the west wind, throwing them into the Red Sea -- the same sea that collapses over the Egyptians, see the next paragraph -- and not a single one is left.

The east wind parts the Red Sea, and the Israelites enter it, enter what seems like risky, risky death (would you walk a path into the middle of a sea where water is piled up on both sides above your head?). The Egyptians follow the Israelites in, and at daybreak, at the rising of the sun, at the end of the long night... the Lord collapses the water of the Red Sea over the Egyptians, drowning every. last. one. Not a single one is left.

"From the west, men will fear the name of the Lord, and from the rising of the sun, they will revere His glory. For He will come like a pent-up flood that the breath of the Lord drives along" (Isaiah 59:19). 

And then, when this washed over me (heh), the Lord said: "I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten -- the great locust and the young locust, the other locusts and the locust swarm -- my great army that I sent among you" (Joel 2:25).

The Egyptians in this story... they're locusts. They're locusts that gnaw, eat, choke the life from the Israelite nation. These are the dead years, but the Lord says: "See? I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland." The Lord sends the Israelites into the desert, and makes a way through the waters for them.

The Lord showed me this morning: "I will restore to you the years the locusts have eaten." I will come in like a flood. I will wash away the stones that make you stumble. You, my beloved people, must deeply root yourselves in My streams of living water; My presence will pour around you in abundance. Open your hands. Open up that death grip on your crutches. Your rust is coming off. 

I see the steel beneath it, and it reflects the Son.

Hallelujah!