October 4, 2026

Indianola Presbyterian Church

“On the Brink”
Sermon by Rev. Trip Porch

October 4, 2026                                                                                                                    Based on Exodus 14:5–7, 10–14, 21–29

Last week, we were with Joseph in slavery in Egypt. And if you have been following this series with us from its beginning in the book of Genesis, you might remember that Slavery in Egypt is not actually where the story was supposed to end.

God had made a promise to Abram. God said, I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you, and through you all the families of the earth will be blessed. And over the course of generations, that promise seemed to take shape.

Abram became Abraham who set out in search of God’s promised land. Abraham had Isaac. Isaac had Jacob.
Jacob had twelve sons, one of them was Joseph. And eventually, through Joseph, Abram’s descendants found their way down into Egypt during a famine, where they found food and safety and a place to live.

Then Genesis ends, with God’s Covenant to Abram not yet fulfilled. Though the promise of a people being made from his descendants is beginning to take shape. The promise of a land to inhabit has not yet been fulfilled, Egypt is not their land.

Then Exodus begins and there is a good bit of story we skip over to get to this story. Generations pass since Joseph. The Israelites, Abraham’s descendants, become numerous, a big segment of Egyptian Society.
A new Pharaoh comes to power, one who does not remember Joseph and does not care about what Joseph did for Egypt.

Even worse, This Pharaoh is a tyrant. He builds a racist narrative that the Israelites are different from Egyptians, that they are somehow less than them… and Pharaoh becomes fearful of the Israelites. Afraid that they are so numerous, they’ll take over. So, Pharaoh orders a genocide and commands the Hebrew midwives, Shiprah and Puah, to kill the newborn sons they deliver. The midwives refuse.  Pharaoh escalates.

Eventually, under this continued systemic oppression, the Israelites cry out to God.              

And God hears them. God remembers the covenant. God calls on Moses. God sends Moses back to Egypt.
There are plagues. There is the Passover. And finally, Pharaoh relents. Pharaoh lets them go. And that brings us to today's story. 
After generations of slavery, God’s people are finally free. Except there is one major problem. God has led them out of Egypt straight to a dead end. They are standing on the shore of the sea and Pharaoh has changed his mind again. He sends his army after them. Suddenly, the Israelites look behind them and see the Egyptian army coming and they look in front of them and see the sea. They panic… maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. Maybe we should just relent and accept our fate.

Sometimes the most frightening moment in a journey is when you have no idea what comes next, and the risk of that uncertainty is so scary, you want to turn back.

They have been told that God is leading them toward a promise. But they cannot see the promise. They can only see the sea. And so they say to Moses: "Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?" It is a pretty sarcastic question.  And underneath the sarcasm is fear.

What have you done to us? Why couldn't you just leave well enough alone? At least in Egypt we knew what tomorrow looked like. At least in Egypt we knew what to expect.

There is something so human about that. Because we like certainty. We like familiarity and comfort. Even when the familiar things are not what is right for us. We like knowing what comes next.
Sometimes… when God opens a door, the hardest part is walking through it without knowing where it might lead. The Israelites are standing on the shore… they are on the brink, on the precipice… And Moses tells them:
"Do not be afraid. Stand firm, and watch the Lord rescue you today"

What a beautiful Sentence… It’s the kind of thing I wish I could have as a Pep talk everyday I’m facing something hard…
Do not be afraid… Stand Firm… watch how God will rescue you.

A few verses later, God will add to this pep talk and will say to Moses:
"Why are you all standing still and crying out to me for help? I’ve made a way… Tell the Israelites to go forward."

Go forward.

I love that this story gives us these messages to people frozen on the cusp… Do not be afraid.   Stand Firm
And then: Go forward.

Because faith is not the absence of  or denial of fear. Faith is not standing at the edge of the sea and suddenly becoming completely certain that everything will be fine.
Faith is sometimes being terrified and not allowing that fear to freeze you… But trusting God enough to take the next step. The Israelites are not foolish for being afraid. They have just escaped generations of slavery.
Pharaoh's army really is coming after them. The chaotic unknown waters really are in front of them. Their fear is not imaginary. And God does not simply tell them, Stop feeling afraid. God makes a way through the thing they are afraid of.

The waters divide. And the Israelites walk through. The story says that the waters stand like walls on either side of them. And they walk into the unknown.

There is something beautiful about the imagery here. Because throughout Scripture, water is often associated with chaos and death.

Back in Genesis, creation begins with God's Spirit moving over the waters of chaos. And then God separates the waters and brings forth a new creation. It’s why the waters of baptism symbolize dying and rising into new life with Christ…

Here, once again, God divides the waters. And something new comes through. The Israelites enter the sea as a collection of escaped slaves that are roughly held together. But they emerge on the other side as a people, as a community, as a nation. This is not just an escape story. It is a birth story. God is creating something new.

God is making good on a promise that began generations earlier with Abram. Remember that promise?
"I will make you into a great nation." It has taken a long time. Longer than anyone in this story could have imagined. There was no straight line from Abram to the Red Sea. There was wandering. There was famine.
There was Joseph. There was Egypt. There were generations of slavery. There was suffering. There was Moses.
There were plagues. There was Passover. There was fear. And now there is water.
And somehow, through all of it, God has been faithful. That is the long faithfulness. It isn’t that everything happens quickly. It isn’t that the people of God always understand what God is doing. It isn’t that the path from promise to fulfillment is easy. It’s that God keeps moving the story forward. That God makes a way through what otherwise seems impossible. Even when the people cannot see where the story is going.

I think that matters for us. Because most of us aren’t standing literally at the edge of a sea with an army behind us. But we know we know what it feels like to live between our past and our future. We know something about being on the brink. Most of us know what it feels like to leave something behind without knowing what will replace it.

Often in life, we find ourselves standing between what was and what will be. And because we love what is familiar…the temptation always is to go back. Not necessarily because what was behind us was good.

But because it was known. There is a reason the Israelites keep talking about Egypt. They will do it again and again throughout the wilderness. Their nostalgia even grows to the point of rewriting history and misremembering how good life was while being enslaved by Pharaoh.

They will romanticize their past… because they are unsure of their future. They will remember the food… because they are so hungry…They will remember the predictability…. Because they are afraid of how uncertain they are .And… They will begin to forget the chains that bound them.

There is a part of us that does this, too. We can look backward and remember what was comfortable without remembering what was costly. We can confuse familiar with faithful. We can assume that because times are hard, God must be abandoning us. But sometimes the opposite is true. Sometimes God is leading us forward precisely because God has not forgotten the bigger, longer promise.

The Israelites cannot see the promised land from where they are standing. They don't even know yet that the wilderness will take forty years of hardship to get through. They don't know what is waiting for them on the other side of the sea. They don't know how difficult the journey will be. All they know is that they cannot stay where they are. All they know is that God says: Go forward. Go forward because I am with you.
The Israelites do not get a map. They get a pillar of cloud and a voice to guide them. They do not get a five-year plan. They get manna, one day at a time. They do not get certainty. They get God's presence. And perhaps that is what faith looks like more often than we want to admit. Not knowing.
Not having the whole thing figured out. Not being certain that the next step will work. But trusting that the God who has been faithful before will still be faithful when we cannot see what comes next.

So maybe you are standing on a shore of your own this morning. Maybe there is something behind you that you can't go back to. Maybe there is something in front of you that you can't see a way through. Maybe you are just tired of not knowing. And maybe we are standing on one together… as a church, as a city, as a country.

If so, hear what the Israelites heard. Do not be afraid.
Your fear makes sense. God isn't scolding you for it. But fear doesn't get to make the decision. Stand firm.
The God who made a promise to Abram… who heard the cries in Egypt… who carried this story through generation after generation… has not forgotten you either. And go forward.
You may not be able to see the far shore. You may only be able to see the next step. Take that one.

Because this story has always been carried by a God who keeps promises, even when the people can't see where they are going. A God who makes a way through the water. A God who is already waiting in the wilderness, with bread enough for the day.

That is the long faithfulness. It held Abraham and Sarah. It held Joseph. It held a frightened people on the edge of the sea. And it will hold us.

So do not be afraid. Stand firm. And go forward.

Amen.

WE GATHER IN AWE AND PRAISE

                                                                                                                     *indicates stand if you are able

PRELUDE                                                             “Guide Me O Thou Great Jehova”                          arr. Richard Kingsmore

INTROIT                         “Be Still and Aware of God’s Presence”                                   Sally Ann Morris

Be still and aware of God’s presence within and all around.                 text: John Philip Newell

WELCOME                                                                    Rev. Trip Porch

One: This is the day that the Lord has made

All: Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

*CALL TO WORSHIP  

One: God is my light and my salvation; of whom should I be afraid?

All: Though violence rises all around me I will not be drawn into fear.

One: One thing I asked of God, that will I seek after:

All:  to live in the presence of God all the days of my life, to behold the grace of  God.

*HYMN 740                                                                         “Lead me, Guide Me”                                           LEAD ME, GUIDE ME

*PRAYER OF CONFESSION                                                                                            Karen Crockett

God of grace, We confess that we often live as though we are on our own. We cling to what is familiar, even when it keeps us from becoming the people you call us to be. We allow fear to make our world smaller. We forget those whose stories are different from ours. We forget that your love reaches beyond our boundaries, our traditions, our languages, and our understanding. We confess the times we have mistaken our own certainty for faithfulness. The times we have seen only obstacles where you were opening a way. The times we have guarded our tables rather than making room.

Silence for personal confession

Forgive us, O God. Teach us to trust your grace. Teach us to walk faithfully into the future you are making. And teach us to recognize your image in every person you place along our path. Amen. 

*ASSURANCE OF PARDON

*RESPONSE OF PRAISE 659       “Know That God Is Good”                                 MUNGO NI MWEMA

*PASSING OF THE PEACE                                       

     One:   The peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all,

     All:      And also with you.

WE LISTEN FOR GOD’S WORD

ANTHEM                              “For the Music of Creation”                            C. Hubert H. Parry

                                                                                                                                                                      arr. Jeremy Bankson and Tom Trenny

CHILDREN’S MESSAGE                                                           Sharon Renkes

PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION

SCRIPTURE   Exodus 14:5-7, 10-14, 21-29

When Egypt’s king was told that the people had run away, Pharaoh and his officials changed their minds about the people. They said, “What have we done, letting Israel go free from their slavery to us?” So he sent for his chariot and took his army with him. He took six hundred elite chariots and all of Egypt’s other chariots with captains on all of them.

 As Pharaoh drew closer, the Israelites looked back and saw the Egyptians marching toward them. The Israelites were terrified and cried out to the Lord.  They said to Moses, “Weren’t there enough graves in Egypt that you took us away to die in the desert? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt like this?  Didn’t we tell you the same thing in Egypt? ‘Leave us alone! Let us work for the Egyptians!’ It would have been better for us to work for the Egyptians than to die in the desert.”

 But Moses said to the people, “Don’t be afraid. Stand your ground, and watch the Lord rescue you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never ever see again.  The Lord will fight for you. You just keep still.”

 Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The Lord pushed the sea back by a strong east wind all night, turning the sea into dry land. The waters were split into two. The Israelites walked into the sea on dry ground. The waters formed a wall for them on their right hand and on their left.  The Egyptians chased them and went into the sea after them, all of Pharaoh’s horses, chariots, and cavalry.  As morning approached, the Lord looked down on the Egyptian camp from the column of lightning and cloud and threw the Egyptian camp into a panic.  The Lord jammed their chariot wheels so that they wouldn’t turn easily. The Egyptians said, “Let’s get away from the Israelites, because the Lord is fighting for them against Egypt!”

 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea so that the water comes back and covers the Egyptians, their chariots, and their cavalry.”  So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. At daybreak, the sea returned to its normal depth. The Egyptians were driving toward it, and the Lord tossed the Egyptians into the sea.  The waters returned and covered the chariots and the cavalry, Pharaoh’s entire army that had followed them into the sea. Not one of them remained.  The Israelites, however, walked on dry ground through the sea. The waters formed a wall for them on their right hand and on their left.

One:  Holy Wisdom

All:  Holy Word

SERMON                                                                                                Rev. Trip Porch

WE RESPOND TO GOD’S WORD

*HYMN INSERT       “O God, by Your Mercy, We Come to This Place”    Carolyn Winfrey Gillette

TIME OF OFFERING   online giving is available at  www. indianolapres.org/give

OFFERTORY                             “Amen Siakudumisa”                                                         S.C. Molefe

                                                                                                   performed by The Santuary Bells                                     arr. Cathy Moklebust

COMMUNION

INVITATION TO THE TABLE

GREAT PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING

SHARING OF BREAD AND CUP    532                         “Una espiga”                                                       UNA ESPIGA

 PRAYER AFTER COMMUNION

Thank you, God, for feeding us at the same table as our neighbors, out of the same loaf, from hands that were not our own. Now send us out to the people you have put within reach. Let the grace we have received here show up on our streets this week. Amen.

*HYMN 65                             “Guide me O thou Great Jehovah”                                       CMW RHONDDA

TIME OF COMMUNITY SHARING

CHARGE & BENEDICTION 

BENEDICTION RESPONSE            “Amen Siakudumisa”                        S.C. Molefe; text: South African

POSTLUDE    “Variations on ‘Holy Manna”        arr. John A. Stallsmith

Acknowledgments: Unless otherwise indicated, all texts and music are printed and broadcast under OneLicense.net license #A-702452