Followed by Death

Thank you for reading this sermon from Christ Fellowship. I hope and pray that this sermon will be a blessing of grace and truth to you. With that said, let me encourage you not to use this sermon as a replacement for your local church. Christ Jesus did not establish his Church simply for us to consume content. Instead, He calls us to be part of a real, covenant family.

Have you ever had the feeling that you’re being followed? You’re driving in your car, and you notice someone making all the same turns as you. Or you’re shopping in the grocery store, and it seems like the same person keeps popping up. It’s a weird feeling.

Abraham Lincoln often spoke and wrote about his belief that death was following him. He had recurring dreams of death. A few days before his assassination in 1865, he told his wife about a dream where he wandered the White House and found a casket guarded by soldiers. When he asked who had died, they said, “The president.” …

This morning, we’ve come to the part of the Exodus story when the Hebrews are finally leaving Egypt. God has saved them from slavery, and they are walking away as free people for the first time in hundreds of years.

There are on the way to the promised land. But they quickly realize that they are being followed. Pharaoh changed his mind again and he is pursuing them with an army.

But even before that happens, God reminds them that their salvation from slavery is not yet a salvation from sin and death. Let’s start reading in Exodus 13:

11 “After the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites and gives it to you, as he promised on oath to you and your ancestors,

12 you are to give over to the Lord the first offspring of every womb. All the firstborn males of your livestock belong to the Lord.

13 Redeem with a lamb every firstborn donkey, but if you do not redeem it, break its neck. Redeem every firstborn among your sons.

14 “In days to come, when your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ say to him, ‘With a mighty hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

15 When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord killed the firstborn of both people and animals in Egypt. This is why I sacrifice to the Lord the first male offspring of every womb and redeem each of my firstborn sons.’

This is a group of people celebrating their freedom from 400 years of slavery, but God very quickly commands them to remember it by killing more animals. He makes death an important part of their worship for generations.

They are also carrying death with them.

19 Moses took the bones of Joseph with him because Joseph had made the Israelites swear an oath. He had said, “God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up with you from this place.”

They literally dug up the bones of Joseph and carried them in the wilderness for 40 years, a constant reminder that death was still an enemy.

And when the Hebrews make it to the edge of the Red Sea, they realize that Pharaoh’s army is pursuing them. Watch how the respond:

10 As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the Lord.

11 They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt?

12 Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!”

Already their faith has failed them. And what are they afraid of? Death.

Humanly speaking, they were right to be afraid. Egyptian chariots were the most feared instrument of warfare at the time. They carried archers at high speeds, and they could cut through the ranks of opposing armies. In this case, the Hebrews were trapped by the sea. Death was descending on Israel.

But you probably know the story. God tells Moses to walk into the water. God commands the winds and the waves and the Red Sea parts in two. The Hebrews walked across the sea on dry land.

But you may not know that the Red Sea was considered by the Egyptians to be a barrier to the afterlife. They wrote about it in their book of the dead. And God used that sea to drown the world’s greatest army.

It’s not a coincidence. It was judgment. What had Pharaoh done to the male infants of the Hebrews? He drowned them in the Nile River. God had not forgotten. He drowned Pharoah’s army in the waters of death.

But the Hebrews passed through death, which is a powerful image of their future salvation from sin and death in Christ. Listen to how Paul makes this connection in Romans 6:

3 Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

Passing through the water unharmed foreshadowed the work of Christ on their behalf.

But it doesn’t end there. During their wilderness adventures, the Hebrews faced many brushes with death. And they never seem to learn their lesson, that God would protect and provide for them.

Not long after they pass through the Red Sea, they spend a few days in the desert and have trouble finding suitable drinking water. They complained and God provided.

Shortly after that, they started to run out of food. Watch what happens in Exodus 16:

2 In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron.

3 The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”

What are they afraid of? Death. What does God do? Do you remember?

He literally rains bread down on them from heaven! But then they start to complain that they have to eat the same thing every day. What does God do? He sends flocks of quail.

Again Exodus 17, the people find themselves in a place without drinking water. And once again, God provides water from a rock.

It is easy for us to look back on their complaints and judge them for being ungrateful and unfaithful. But if we were wandering the desert without food and water for days and weeks at a time, we would have done the same thing.

It’s as if God wants them wrestling with the harsh reality that they are being followed by death. And of course He wants their trust.

Time and time again, God provided life where there was only death. And time and time again, the story provides us with important connections to Jesus.

The deaths of the firstborn animals in Exodus 13 point us to the death of God’s firstborn Son, the Lord Jesus.

God leads the people with a pillar of light and Jesus describes Himself as the light of the world in John 8.
The Red Sea crossing points us to Christ’s victory over death and judgment for the people of God.

God provides bread from heaven and in John 6 Jesus describes Himself as the bread of life. He explicitly links Himself to the story of manna in the wilderness.

God provides water from a rock, and in John 7 Jesus calls Himself the living water. In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul says that Moses and the Israelites were saved because they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them and that Rock was Christ!

At the end of Exodus 17, the Israelites are attacked by the Amalekites. This is my favorite foreshadowing of Christ in the entire Exodus story.

11 As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning.

12 When Moses’ hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up—one on one side, one on the other—so that his hands remained steady till sunset.

This is blatant imagery. As long as Moses kept his arms stretched out, the people would be saved. Come on! That’s Jesus on the cross!

11 Who among the gods
is like you, Lord?
Who is like you—
majestic in holiness,
awesome in glory,
working wonders?

12 “You stretch out your right hand,
and the earth swallows your enemies.

13 In your unfailing love you will lead
the people you have redeemed.
In your strength you will guide them
to your holy dwelling.

That’s from the song of Moses in Exodus 15. And in Revelation 15, John sees the host of heaven singing what he calls the song of Moses and of the Lamb:

3 “Great and marvelous are your deeds,
Lord God Almighty.
Just and true are your ways,
King of the nations.

4 Who will not fear you, Lord,
and bring glory to your name?
For you alone are holy.
All nations will come
and worship before you,
for your righteous acts have been revealed.”

… … The story of the Exodus reminds us of a sobering reality: like the Hebrews, you and I are being followed by death. We may not see Egyptian chariots on the horizon, but the shadow of death is never far from us. It stalks us in the loss of people we love, in the fears that grip our hearts, in the frailty of our bodies, and in the brokenness of this world.

But here’s the good news: if you are in Christ, death is no longer your master. Just as Israel passed through the waters of judgment and came out alive on the other side, you have passed through death in Jesus. Romans 6 says you were buried with Him in baptism and raised with Him to new life. Death may follow you, but in Christ, it cannot overtake you.

So, what does that mean for us, practically?

1. We don’t need to live in fear.
The Israelites constantly thought they were going to die. We do the same: we worry about our health, our finances, our relationships, our future. But if Christ has already defeated death, then even our worst fears cannot undo us. What’s the worst that can happen? We die. But if we die in Christ, we will also live forever with Him.

2. We can trust God’s daily provision.
God didn’t just save Israel once at the Red Sea and then leave them to fend for themselves. He gave them water, bread, protection, and victory. In the same way, Christ doesn’t just save you from sin and then abandon you; He is the Bread of Life, the Living Water, and the Light of the World. He sustains you every day, often in ways you don’t even notice.

3. We are called to walk in faith, not grumbling.
Israel’s repeated failure was not that they lacked needs, but that they lacked trust. They grumbled instead of prayed. They complained instead of believed. And if we’re honest, many of us live the same way. Our call is to lay down our grumbling, lift up our eyes, and say, “Lord, I trust You to provide.”

4. We look to Christ stretched out for us.
When Moses raised his hands, Israel was saved. And Jesus stretched out His arms on the cross once for all, and by His death, we live. That’s not just history—it’s our hope today and tomorrow and the next day.

Death may follow you, but life is ahead of you in Christ. Trust Him. Feed on Him. Drink from Him. Walk in His light. And when the shadow of death feels close, remember that Jesus has already passed through it for you. Every time you feel hopeless, look at the cross.