Since I have a new computer and haven't yet mastered the technique of adding my own photos to the blog, I am just using photos that are included with the computer, hence these cute penguins. It is winter, after all.

Yesterday we looked at the Red Sea episode and saw the great deliverance that God wrought for the Israelites. And what happened to the Egyptians? Did God just send them a memo telling them to turn back? Did He send them back another way so He could deliver His people? No. He killed them. Without warning? No again, with plenty of warning. Remember all the plagues in Egypt? Even near their dreadful end, God sent a cloud between the Israelites and Pharoah's army to keep them from one another. That should have given the army pause. But they persisted in following the Israelites, God's people, straight into the Red Sea . . . and died.

We see here both God's righteous wrath against the children of men, and His amazing grace to the children of men. Exodus 14:30 says this: Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore.

Were the Israelites so much better than the Egyptians that God chose to save them and not the others? You and I both know the answer to that. Just look at Exodus 15:24, three verses after their glorious song thanking God for His deliverance. They were just a toe's length out of Egypt when they began grumbling against the Lord who rescued them. They were no better than the Egyptians, and neither are we.

Why then the rescue of an ungrateful people? Deuteronomy 7:7 gives us the answer. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that He swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery.

He rescues because He is God, the faithful God who keeps His covenant and loves those who are His own. This rescue is about His awesome grace and steadfast love. We would be as the Egyptians if it were not for Him. Let us live today as His rescued ones.