God Said “Go Forward”                                                       12/2/45

 

Scripture:  Exodus 14: 1-15

 

Text: Exodus 14: 15b;  “ .... Speak to the children of Israel, that they go forward.”

 

Everyone in our country wants to be free - and for that matter everyone in any country of the world wants freedom.  Everyone in this church wants to be free.  We like freedom of worship; freedom to form our own opinions of some of the historic church doctrines; freedom to go to this church or - if we choose - to go to some other church; freedom from the dictation of some ecclesiastical hierarchy or of some state official.

 

But not everybody is willing to pay the price of responsibility and obligation that freedom requires.  It is so today, and it has been so from ancient times.

 

The children of Israel, during their captivity in Egypt, suffered an unfair lot.  Those who made bricks through long hours of each day were presently forced to go out and get their own straw while continuing to make the same numbers of bricks.  They suffered under an Egyptian law, requiring the death of their male children lest they grow, as a people, fast enough to become a menace to their masters.  With the heel of an alien enemy on their necks and backs, they cried unto the Lord of hosts for help.  Probably it seemed slow in coming to people who, month after month and year after year, had cried out “how long, O Lord, how long?”

 

But salvation did come in the person of Moses.  He managed to frighten the mighty Pharaoh into letting the Hebrews go out into the desert, supposedly to worship their desert god - but actually to escape!

 

When the Israelites had been gone for a few days, and the Egyptians missed their hardworking, low priced labor, and fear arose that the Hebrews were doing what they secretly intended to do - escaping - Pharaoh organized several hundred of his chariots and took after them.

 

During the first few days of their freedom, the Israelites had been hilarious.  Moses, they praised highly.  But when they saw the chariots of Pharaoh approaching like an angry cloud, in the distance, they proved themselves still slave-minded.  Free of shackles, their minds did not enjoy all that goes with freedom of body and spirit.  They began to complain bitterly against Moses and against God in words like these: “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?  Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt?”  (The old, familiar, ‘I told you so!’)  Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying ‘Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians?’  For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians than that we should die in the wilderness.”  [Exodus 14: 11-12].  Better a live slave than a dead freeman, they whined.

 

It has frequently appeared to me that there is a distinct weakness of responsible fiber in the soul of those people who will go along quite contentedly with the program of their church, their town or their government so long as things seem to be going well, only to mount a fence of detached criticism when things get heavy.  The church member or the citizen who is willing to talk of “our church” or “our community” when things go well; but who starts talking about the errors of “you people” when things get hard or go wrong, betrays a kind of cowardice.  It seems to me that the responsible freeman will stick to the word “we.”

 

To return to the Jews in the desert, Moses himself was upset, though he did not show his distress to the people.  He said, “Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.”  It was an exhortation at least not to run!

 

Then he went to pray, and at prayer his own sense of security and well-being was restored.  And the Lord said to Moses, before he had gotten well-started with his prayer, “Wherefore criest thou unto me?  Speak to the children of Israel, that they go forward.”  [Exodus 14: 15].

 

Not “stand still,” but “go forward.”

 

For them, “forward” meant into great difficulty, into uncertain danger, into the sea; but “backward” meant back to captivity; worse enslavement and misery than ever.

 

You remember the story from that point on - how they trudged into the sea, found it was not too deep for them, and were saved when the Lord let the wind change so that their pursuers were drowned behind them.  [Exodus 14: 21-28].  But remember this, well, about the story; unless they had had the courage to go forward into the deep, they never would have discovered the salvation that God had for them all the time.  The same truth holds for us now, personally, and it is so for our generation.  It is so for our church.

 

It is hardly necessary to point out the pertinent, parallel situation in which we live today as a generation and as a church.  We have come forth out of the likelihood of slavery due to Nazi and Japanese military power.  And now we are confronted with peace-building problems that, in their way, are more complex and baffling.

 

An intelligent serviceman, an educator for many years before entering wartime service in the Navy, wrote home as follows:  “The problems of peace are more complex and frustrating than those of war to me, and I’m sure, to many men in the service.  While the war was on, we had only one aim; it was tragic, but clear and compelling.  Now the peace brings many possible aims, and even more selfishness.  I become depressed when I think about it, in spite of myself.  We are such a people for talking a lot, and acting little and late, in peace time.”

 

We must now live without some of the forces which compelled and drove us in wartime.  Invasion headlines, radio echoes of doom, unified programs of war effort - we are fast leaving these drives behind.  Now do we have enough of the spirit of freedom to wade ahead into life’s unanswered difficulties with confident faith?

 

A lecturer in our city this past week pounded home his own conviction that the strength of present-day Russia is the deep seated faith which most Russians have in their Communistic principles.  With equal conviction, it must be said (and he said it!) that the strength of our way of life lies in our faith in God.  Without faith a people does not march well, or long, in the movement of history.

 

Now is our love of peace the love which “beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things?” 

[I Corinthians 13: 7].  Having paid a high, sacrificial price for victory, are we going to go ahead and pay the high, sacrificial price for peace?

 

God said, “Speak to the children of Israel, that they go forward.”  And he is surely saying the same to us and to all mankind today.

 

Two of three months ago, the minister of a large church in Minneapolis told his people that there was a snake after that church!  The story he told them went something like this: A man was all dressed up in new suit and best shoes, on the way to church.  It would be his duty to pass the offering plates.  On the way to church he passed a sunken mudhole and heard a frog croaking for help.  The frog said, “Please help me out.  I’ve been down here three days; I haven’t had anything to eat, and I’m dying.”  The man was sympathetic; but he knew full well he would have some explaining to do if he walked to the front of the church to pass the offering plates in a muddy suit.  So he said, “I can’t help you now, but if you’ll just hang on to life and wait until church is over, I’ll go home and put on my old clothes and I’ll come and help you out.”

 

After church, he was hurrying home to change his clothes, when he met a frog which looked very much like the frog that had appealed to him for help.  He stopped and said, “Aren’t you the frog that was down in the mudhole crying for help?”  “Yes,” came the answer.  “Well, who helped you out?”  “Nobody helped me out.  I got out by myself.”  “Didn’t you tell me that you had been down there for three days, stuck and starving, and that you couldn’t get out?”  “Yes.”  “Well, how’d you make it?”  The frog replied, “After you left, a snake came after me!”

 

The minister who told that story said, “There’s a snake after [our church] that says, ‘you’d better be effective, you’d better be efficient, you must do a better job, because if you don’t, you’ll lose your chance to serve Christ effectively; your people will drift away.  You’ve got to do better work here!” -- and stay equipped to do it.

 

Well, there is the same kind of snake after us in this church.  We’re not croaking out of a mudhole for help.  And I hope we’re not in immediate danger of being bitten.  I hope we are the kind of frog that will jump because we want to - because there are important leaps to be made and in keeping “on the jump” we shall always be out of the way of the snake.

 

We’ve been trying to take our place; and it is a place of modest leadership because of our size and a fair degree of prosperity; in the benevolent giving of Congregational churches of this state.  For three years, we have nearly, though not quite, reached the fair apportionment goal suggested as our fair share.  This year, we propose to reach that goal.  What is more, we propose to raise our sights well over that goal of the past for next year, in the face of post-war needs that call for a very substantial and courageous increase in giving for the next three years.  Mission properties must be repaired and rebuilt.  Missionaries who have lost health and possessions must be cared for.  New missionaries must be sent to fields for which we are responsible.  Work must be continued and strengthened among students and returning service personnel of our faith.  The spiritual life of our whole fellowship must have stimulus and encouragement.  We are going to give of our time, our prayers, and our substance for it!

 

And we need to double the total of our special sacrificial giving to War Victims and Reconstruction for the next three years in order to do our fair, Christian share of mercy and rehabilitation “midst war’s” destruction and havoc.

 

Our own work needs strengthening here at home.  We need above all else to gather faithfully, regularly, devotedly in this house of God for worship.  It is the privilege and self-directed duty of every Christian man and woman, boy and girl, to feed on faith at its fount.  And the most important outlet at the fount of God is in worship in his church.  Is it right to let any weather, any desire to relax, any beckoning of nature or distances that would not keep us from our work-a-day job keep us from Sunday worship?  Is not our relationship to God even more important than the bread and butter of our job?

 

We need more eagerness on the part of more members in consecrated service; that our children may be well taught, that our youth may have and make better opportunities in the growth of Christian grace, that we may be better informed and busy about the problems of our world.

 

We need better equipment.  A family can function better when housed in decency.  It is so also with a church.  The home in which this church is housed was built well, and in quiet good taste.  But, like any house, it needs considerable improvement from time to time.  Our basement is clean now; but its walls, window casings and general arrangement are going to have to have a major overhauling which had better be planned before installation of the new heating ducts that will complete, a year or more from now, our new heating system.  In planning for the improvement of our home here, we must look well ahead, “gird up our loins,” and be on the move.

 

We’ve been taxed for war, and much of our future effort is mortgaged to this war.  For war is, in a sense, a dictator.  But with peace it is fundamentally different!  True peace has to be built, dared, adventured for, given for, by people who love their freedom so much, and with such faith, that they will voluntarily struggle for it!  And joy in the struggle!

 

When the weather is heavy at sea, a good helmsman will keep his ship headed into the storm.  That is the way for us to run -- into the wind.

 

Two weeks ago, when, at the beginning of this year’s every-member canvass, I outlined the budget needs of this church in the face of the service we must undertake, I said: “No giving under duress.”  We’re going to subscribe this budget because we like to, and take joy in the privilege of Christian giving.

 

In this spirit, and making a “courageous and substantial increase in his name and for their sakes,” we now pledge our support of God’s work through this church for the coming year.  In quiet dedication let us lay our pledges to this church, and to War Victims and Reconstruction, on the offering plates and at His table.  Let it be our first and best gift of this Advent season.

 

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, December 2, 1945.