If you and your family—a really, really big family—were slaves for four hundred years, how would you expect to get free? Maybe a law could be passed outlawing slavery. Or maybe a new president could be elected. Or maybe you could dig a super long tunnel and disappear to a new country. With over four centuries to think and pray about it, I bet the Israelites had dreamed of a thousand different ways to freedom.

And yet, they probably never imagined what God had planned for their deliverance. They had no idea that Moses—that man who had run away from Egypt forty years earlier—would be God’s chosen man to confront Pharaoh. They had no idea they would have to make bricks without straw. They had no idea that God would give Moses powerful signs to impress Pharaoh, and that Pharaoh wouldn’t be at all impressed. They had no idea that everything was going to get worse before anything started to get better.

But that’s how God usually works. Trouble before triumph. Suffering before salvation. Danger before deliverance.

And in this case, a nasty plight before a lot of plagues. Ten plagues, to be exact—each of them meant to make the gods and goddesses of Egypt look small and the real God of Israel look big. First came blood, then frogs and gnats and flies, then dead animals, then boils and hail and locusts, then darkness, and finally death of the firstborn. It was a hard time for the Egyptians.

And a hard heart for Pharaoh. No matter how many times Moses talked to Pharaoh, and no matter how bad the next plague was, Pharaoh just wouldn’t let the Israelites go. That was Pharaoh’s fault. And God’s plan. All at the same time.

When Pharaoh finally let the people go, he changed his mind one last time and chased the Israelites to the Red Sea. It looked like things were about to get
a lot worse.

But then they didn’t. The bad things, that is. They got much better. Just when the Egyptians had the Israelites stuck between a rock and a wet place, God
blew the water into two walls, and God’s people walked through the Red Sea
on dry ground.

True, the Egyptians followed after the Israelites to destroy them. But that was hardly a fair fight. After all, the Lord fights for his people. God made the Egyptians panic, made their chariots heavy, and then made the water swallow them up.

The Israelites were so happy they sang and danced and praised God for their redemption. God had answered their prayers, and the people were free at last.