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God promises to protect His people similar to how Heaven has designed our bodies to protect the pupils of our eyes (Psa. 17:8; Prov. 7:2; Zech. 2:8). Our eyelids are very quick to protect our eyes from dust and other treats, so how much more will God be even more quick to protect His people from threats against them.
When God released His people from their prison in Egypt, the question was, would the people of Israel return to the patterns of behavior that enslaved them? Would they walk in freedom, or would they try to do whatever they could do to return to incarceration? Would they look to God to give them their daily bread and living water or did they prefer the bread of affliction and the filthy water of the Nile?
These questions raised in Torah reading בְּשַׁלַּח Beshalach (“when he sent” or “after he had let go,” Exodus 13:17–17:16) are as relevant to us today as they were to our ancestors at the Red Sea.
Just as Adonai showed mastery over the waters of the Sea, Messiah Yeshua also showed His power over the waters. Yeshua also showed how He was the master of the storms and weather.
In antiquity, large bodies of water such as the Great Sea (Mediterranean), Yam Suf (Red Sea) and the Sea of Kinneret/Tiberius/Galilee posed significant challenges for seafarers, particularly during inclement weather conditions, making boat navigation perilous.
In the Exodus, we see that the children of Israel were facing the army of Egypt on one side and the Red Sea at their backs. The cause of their liberation looks doomed to fail. In the other readings from the New Testament we are reading today, we see how Yeshua and His disciples also found themselves in a vulnerable situation on the Sea of Galilee traversing on turbulent seas in a small boat.
The disciples, just as the Israelites in ancient times, faced a mob on one hand and a large body of water on the other. The disciples knew that a storm was coming and it would be dangerous to launch a boat and sail away but it was more perilous to stay in the face of a mob who wanted to take Yeshua as king by force.
In our region, we find Lake Tahoe, spanning 12 miles in width and straddling the borders of California and Nevada. By comparison, the Sea of Galilee, measuring 8 miles across, in the first century A.D. was encircled by multiple kingdoms, all falling under Roman authority. In the northwest and northeast of the Sea of Galilee, were the cities of Capernaum, Bethsaida, Genneseret and Chorzaim. They were all cities in which Yeshua spent a great deal of his ministry. On the southeast side, was the Decapolis, which was a district of Greek Hellenized (Greek) cities, which in ancient Israel times, was the territory of the half-tribe of Manasseh. Yeshua’s ministry in the Decapolis is recorded in Matthew 8.
People usually traversed the sea on boats or ferries but these weren’t the large gas powered ferries like we have on the San Francisco Bay, today, but they were smaller boats, operated with oars and sails.
In the 1980s, Israeli archaeologists unearthed a first century Galilean fishing vessel dubbed the “Ancient Galilee Boat.” Currently residing in the Yigal Allon Museum at Kibbutz Ginosar, this boat measures 27 feet in length and approximately 7.5 feet in width. Such vessels are emblematic of the boats likely utilized by Yeshua’s apostles, who were fishermen by trade.
In 1Corinthians 10, the Apostle Paul draws the lesson from the Red Sea crossing to encourage the Corinthians that when you are backed into a corner, God will provide a way of escape, just like he did with the Israelites at the Red Sea.
So you think you’re backed into a corner and there is no way of escape for whatever your bondage is, He will provide a way of escape.
Who is taming the ‘principalities of the air’?
Yeshua’s encounters with his students out on the boat during storms on the Sea of Galilee (Matthew 14:22–33; Mark 6:45–52; John 6:15–21) have parallels with the accounts ancient Israel had at shore and in the midst of the Red Sea.
“So Jesus, perceiving that they were intending to come and take Him by force to make Him king, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone.” (John 6:15 NASB95)
“After these things Jesus was walking in Galilee, for He was unwilling to walk in Judea because the Jews were seeking to kill Him. Now the feast of the Jews, the Feast of Booths, was near. Therefore His brothers said to Him, “Leave here and go into Judea, so that Your disciples also may see Your works which You are doing. “For no one does anything in secret when he himself seeks to be known publicly. If You do these things, show Yourself to the world.” For not even His brothers were believing in Him” (John 7:1–5 NASB95)
After Yeshua fed the 5,000, His followers needed a reality check. The crowds and even the 12 Apostles were strongly urging and trying to conscript Yeshua as King, so Yeshua strongly urged His 12 Apostles get into the boat and leave the crowd and started to cross the Sea of Galilee, which is more than 7 miles wide at its widest point. It seems that Yeshua was fleeing from a situation that the Apostles thought was a wonderful development in their movement.
Yeshua resisted pressure from the crowds, His own disciples and brothers, to follow the whims of the crowds. Yeshua’s brothers were giving Him political advise, but Yeshua was not a politician. His mission was not to become an earthly king. He was not one to “strike while the iron is hot.” We see later in John 7 that Yeshua allows the people to “set the narrative” for Him.
What we see instead that Yeshua operates on His own timetable and that Heaven doesn’t force us to agree with Him. Heaven wants us to knock, to seek, to look for Him. This is why Yeshua often spoke in parables. For those who were eager to learn higher spiritual truths, they learned them, for those who just wanted to hear a good story and be entertained for a while, they got their entertainment.
Moses’ father in law Yitro was the first political consultant, in a manner of speaking, helping Moses to organize the leadership of the nation and streamlining it. Here, his brothers are providing similar advise to that given by many modern political scientists, public relations and marketing experts today. The sage advice that you’ll hear from any modern publicity consultant is that when you get the buzz, you get moving, and you keep the buzz going. The idea that any publicity is good publicity to keep your name out there, for people to talk about you.
The idea of “not letting a crisis go to waste” is as old as the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
When the devil was tempting Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, as recorded in Genesis 3, is recorded as “Did God really say…?” but that question could also be translated as “Even if God said this…?” The comment can be read either way, the first translation is Satan’s subtle manipulation of Eve while the second translation is more of a blatant call by Satan to Eve to rebel against God. Because even if God said this, I’m gonna just do what I want to do. I did it my own way. Yeah. See how that worked out.
We see how Yeshua’s conducted Himself in the Garden of Gethsemene and in the hours leading to His execution approach was, versus how the political consultants of the day would have spoke and conducted themselves.
And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.” And He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “So, you men could not keep watch with Me for one hour?” (Matthew 26:39–40 NASB95)
At this point, Yeshua and all his Apostles are very sleep-deprived and it’s very hard to stay awake when your body is screaming out for sleep.
One of my students when I taught English in South Korea, was a Vietnam War Veteran. We didn’t know that Korea sent more soldiers to Vietnam than any other country except the U.S. South Korea sent 320,000 soldiers and marines to Vietnam. The South Korean soldiers had a ferocious reputation in Vietnam because they remembered when they were invaded by communists just 25 or so years before and hated communists with a passion. From the 1950s to the early 1990s, South Korea was governed by a series of anti-communist dictators. They didn’t experience real democracy in a form we would recognize until the mid-1990s, which is when my wife and I lived there. We moved there just a few years after they had elected their first democratically elected president.
This Vietnam War vet we met in South Korea at an English language institute where we worked as missionary-teachers recalled a story of a soldier who had fallen asleep while on guard duty. The commanding officer, when he saw the guard asleep at his post, shot him dead, reinforcing the discipline of staying watch and being on diligent while on guard when a deadly, powerful enemy surrounds you on all sides.
Yeshua called the apostles out for their lack of discipline. God tells us we should discipline our bodies for spiritual growth. This is why we are supposed to fast on Yom Kippur. But are we merely abstaining physically from food and only concerned about when the fast will over so we can eat again? Or do we abstain from food and water for that 24-hour period as a spiritual discipline to master our flesh and bring us closer connected with Heaven?
As we train up our children, going through the Torah cycle, we are looking forward to Passover, and in this time, we are instructed to pass this story down from generation to generation. We take this time to teach our children the lesson that our God is the one who is the master of the Red Sea. He is superior to the false gods of the nations.
Yeshua exercised the same power over the Sea of Galilee. Yeshua fell asleep on a boat that was being tossed and turned by the violent waves. The 12 Disciples, many of whom were expert fisherman, inherently knew how much danger they were facing. The boat that Yeshua and the disciples were occupying was in real danger of being flooded or capsized in the storm, yet Yeshua is taking a nap as though nothing was happening around Him. They also asked the same question that the people asked at the Red Sea: Is God with us or not? When Yeshua calmed the storm, the disciples were in awe of Yeshua’s power and brought the disciples closer to Him.
When God drown the Egyptian army in the Red Sea, He also destroyed the last false deity of Egypt. When Yeshua went to the Decapolis and freed the demoniac from the demons who were tormenting him by sending them into the swine and drowning them into the sea, Yeshua’ demonstration of superiority over the demonic realm which really scared the people who saw it. On the one hand, they witnessed a profound transformation of a man who was freed from demonic possession, but the man’s change was met with mixed reactions from those around him.
But rather than drawing closer to Yeshua, the people were scared of Him and sent Yeshua away. The people of the Decapolis valued the swine that were killed by the demons much more than in the man who Yeshua liberated from them.
Summary: Tammy