What To Do When You Don't Know What To Do
The Rev. Dr. Johnny Ray Youngblood
Senior Pastor, St. Paul Community Baptist Church
Brooklyn, New York

(This sermon is also available in audio.)

Exodus, chapter 14, is what I want to talk from for a little while this morning. Exodus, chapter 14, beginning at verse 10:

As Pharaoh drew near, the Israelites looked back, and there were the Egyptians advancing on them. In great fear the Israelites cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, "Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, 'Let us alone and let us serve the Egyptians?' For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness." But Moses said to the people, "Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still."

I want to talk from the thought, "What to do when you don't know what to do." If you have served any time on terra firma, if there is any span of time that you've been a part of between the cradle and the grave, you know that life slings its arrows of outrageous fortune. You know that every now and then you will find yourself without intention between a rock and a hard place, between the devil and the deep blue sea. You'll even find yourself, and please accept this with reverence, you will find yourself with the brackets of your mortality being damned if you do and damned if you don't. If you've lived any while, you know that that does occur, so whenever we find ourselves between a rock and a hard place, between the devil and the deep blue sea, what do you do? What do you do when the brackets of your mortality are damned if you do and damned if you don't?

What do you do when you don't know what to do? That is a good question. I'm glad that you posed it this morning, because I think I found something that could be good for the living of these days and the exercising of our discipleship. Surely, there is a word from God's word about what to do when we find ourselves in this kind of predicament.

In the Exodus text I just read, we are dealing with a group of recently emancipated slaves. They have for a number of years, made brick without straw. For a number of years they have been a part of the construction of cities that they were not even privileged to be citizens in. They have served and not been served, and they have served almost without any kind of remuneration. But now, God Himself has declared an Emancipation Proclamation, though it has been signed with the blood of the first-born of those who have been oppressors.

These people, the released ones, are the people of God, and they march now from the land of oppression toward that place that God Himself has set up and whose foundation God Himself has laid. They march toward the Promised Land. They're marching, y'all, can't you see them with your mind's eye, with the rich imagination that God gives us? I can see this motley group, I can see this throng of nomads making their way, and maybe, I am not sure, but maybe they are singing in their hearts songs like, "We're marching to Zion, that beautiful city of God. I'm on my way to Canaan-land. I'm bound for the Promised Land." I don't know what their song might have been, but I can almost now hear and feel the tramp, tramp of their march toward the Promised Land. As they marched toward the Promised Land, they are probably even saying things like, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty. We are free at last." They're on their way, y'all. They're excited.

Things are going well for these recently emancipated slaves, and then, all of a sudden, they reach this body of water called the Red Sea. They look at it. They stare at it. They check it out in whatever way they can and discover that there are some serious impossibilities that are accompanying their presence at this body of water. They recognize that it's too deep to wade in, they do not have the strength to swim, and neither do they have the abilities within their ranks to pull together a Corps of Engineers that can build a sea-going vessel or a bridge across. They are, in a word, inhibited.

About the time they are accepting their predicament at the Red Sea, they start to hear behind them the tramp, tramp of rushing steeds and the roaring of chariot wheels. They can almost feel the breath of the angry Pharaoh going down their necks, and they turn and realize that Pharaoh has blood in his eyes. It is as if Pharaoh is saying, "Somebody's dying today. I've been embarrassed before my family. I have been chagrined and embarrassed and humiliated before my people. My nation is now in ruins because of, in a word, you people." He's got blood in his eyes, y'all.

There they are, the Red Sea in front of them and Pharaoh behind them with blood in his eyes. What do you do when the Red Sea is in front of you and Pharaoh is behind you? "Well," somebody says, "just take a route to the right or the left." But, they cannot do that because there are mountains on both sides. What a predicament--Pharaoh behind them, the Red Sea in front of them and mountains on either side.

My brothers and my sisters, have you in your own way ever been there in life? I know I have. What do you do when you don't know what to do? What do you do when you're between a rock and a hard place? What do you do when you're between the devil and the deep blue sea or Pharaoh and the Red Sea? What do you do when there are mountains on either side? What do you do? This text tells us some things that we can do as we sit here and leave here today.

The first thing you do is this: You do your best to reassess, recall why you are where you are. Why are you between a rock and a hard place? Why are you between the devil and the deep blue sea or between Pharaoh and the Red Sea with mountains on either side? They are here because they are walking within the Will of Almighty God. Now, that is something that a lot of us Christian preachers don't tell you. We tell people that if you come to God, everything will be all right. Hey, God will get you in trouble. Doing God's will put you in some awful, as well as awesome, predicaments. God's trail leads along some tricky paths from time to time. You follow God -- you will wind up in a dungeon with lions. You follow God -- you will wind up in a fiery furnace. You follow God -- you'll wind up going through the valley and the shadow of death. God's path does not always lead across some lit mountaintop.

So, you figure out why you are where you are. If you are where you are out of obedience to God, then you are in a good place at the right time. All you got to do then is talk to God. If you are there out of disobedience, I've got some good news for you. If you call on God right now, He is known to come to where you are, and out of His grace He will lead you to where you ought to be. So, you don't even have to give up if you are in the wrong place for the wrong reasons. Oh, ain't that some good news?

Once you find out why you are where you are, the next thing you do is turn to divine leadership. That's what they did in this text. It says, "They prayed unto God, and they said unto Moses." Got it? "They prayed unto God, and they said unto Moses." You turn to divine leadership. Now, divine leadership can be an awkward reality. You pray, but you turn to Doug Bailey. You pray, and you turn to Johnny Youngblood. What if they're not right? You ought to let logic prevail across the board. You do not not go to doctors because they get sick. You do not not deal with morticians because they, too, are scheduled to die. You do not not deal with attorneys who also break the law. You do not not deal with bankers because they are broke. So why is it you decide you can't listen to us on certain issues because of our own humanity? You've got to understand that somebody who is a traffic director does not have to be going where you are going, but they can still tell you how to get to where you want to go.

All of my life I have struggled with this business of being a leader, of being a man of God. Even when you did not know my name, didn't know my address, I wondered why God called me. If you search the scriptures, the characters who parade across again and again are some of the weirdest people you have ever seen. Can I tell it the way I see it? You've got Abraham who lied and pimped his wife, and yet he is the Father of the Faithful. You've got Ezekiel who was an ancient-day Timothy Leary. You know if you read Ezekiel, some of the stuff he said he saw, he was on something. You've got Jeremiah who can't stop crying, and then you even have Jesus, who I said on yesterday was Mary's baby and Joseph's maybe. You had John the Baptist, who didn't dress like a preacher and certainly didn't have the language of a clergyman. All of these characters are characters who make up the Bible, but there are those who want those of us who are leaders today to conform to something we will never conform to. All we are are beggars telling other beggars where to find bread. You listen to divine leadership.

They turned on divine leadership, but we are to turn to divine leadership. They turned on divine leadership. Why in the world does Doug Bailey have Calvary Church out there dealing with all of these down and out people? Where does he come from like that? You know what they said about Moses? They said, "We told you don't bring us out here. We told you leave us alone. We were doing fine before you got here. We could have died in Egypt. We could have died with smiles on our faces as slaves, and here you've got us out here to die." Whenever you are dealing with that, you still have to listen to divine leadership, and, sure enough, Moses kind-of ignored what they had to say.

Moses went on to give directions on what to do when you don't know what to do. Moses said to them, "Fear not. The first thing is fear not." Now, if you think that some of the four letter words that we hear on the streets are bad, trust me. F-E-A-R is one of the worst four letter words in the human language. Fear. Susan Jeffers, a woman in New York, has written a book called, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. I contend theologically, that whenever you are afraid to do something, that is the reason, really, you ought to do it. God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of a sound mind.

Jesus, interestingly enough, didn't go around saying, "Good morning," to everybody. He didn't go around saying, "Nameste" to everybody. Jesus just walked around telling people, "Fear not. Fear not. Fear not." He knew the prevalence of fear because Satan is the author of fear, and when people can make you afraid, when the devil can invade your being with fear, fear paralyzes you. I've seen people getting across a busy street, and they were moving (didn't have any business crossing where they were crossing, but they were moving), and when the car came upon them, rather than getting on across, they would freeze right where they were.

Fear will paralyze you, and when you are between a rock and a hard place, the devil and the deep blue sea, what you don't do is become afraid. Somebody has said that there are 365 "fear not's" in the Bible, one for every day of the year. Don't worry if you are in leap year, just use one twice. If it's worth using once, use it twice. But fear not, fear not, fear not. What a wonderful word. Fear not.

Now, this is something that's really interesting. Moses, their leader, is not on the other side of the Red Sea, he is not exempt from the attack that Pharaoh is intending to launch. He is in the same predicament that they are. Listen, the advice of divine leadership can really be strange from time to time. I am telling you I know because I've both gotten it and given it, and here it is. Moses is right where they are, and he says, "Fear not." Y'all, that's strange advice. Red Sea in front of you, Pharaoh behind you, mountains on either side, and he says, "Fear not. Fear not, but hear the Word of the Lord." Whatever it is today, fear not.

Then Moses said, "Stand still." Now, that's the King James rendering. This rendering here, the New Revised Standard Version, is "Stand firm." That still wasn't good enough for me. Look, if you are between Pharaoh and the Red Sea, and if you've got mountains on either side, you can't move. Why would you say, "Stand firm. Be still"? I can't go anywhere. I can't help but be still. There's got to be something else there that God is saying. While I was in college I ran a little track, and that gave me the clue to what God was really saying. When they were there between the Red Sea and Pharaoh, between those mountains on either side, what God was saying when He told them, "Fear not," was He was telling them what they tell you in track: "Get in the blocks." When you get in the blocks, the orders are, "Take your mark, get set, and wait for the gun to go." That's what Moses meant when he told them to stand still. He was telling them to, "Take your mark, get set, 'cause we're going to go in a little while." You're between a rock and a hard place now, you're between the devil and the deep blue sea, but you better get ready because when deliverance comes you need to be out of there."

Then Moses said, "See the salvation of the Lord." He didn't say, "Do it." He said, "See." There's something I've discovered about God. God will allow us sometimes to do 99 things toward completing an effort, but God's got a habit of keeping one thing in his pocket that he's gonna do. You can do everything that you can do, but God's gonna always keep in reserve some power to participate in your blessings.

Have you ever done a puzzle? Worked on it, worked on it, worked on it; came down to the last piece and couldn't find it? Pull up the pillows on the sofa, turn the sofa over, sweep behind it, accuse the children of messing with your puzzle, call the store saying they didn't give you all the parts--have you ever done that? Well, God kind of does that with the puzzle of life. God will give us so much to work with, but trust me, there is always some reserve. The reason there is reserve is because God is a glory-hound. God loves glory. The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament show forth his handiwork. The elders are always saying, "Holy, holy, holy." God loves glory, so God is going to always keep some reserve where God can get some glory. So God says, "Now, I'm going to deliver you, but all you are going to do is see it." Oh, help me, Holy Ghost. "All you are going to do is see it. Watch me work. I'm going to do it for you, but all I want you to do is see the salvation."

And, lo and behold, it was time to move. God said to Moses, "What's that you got in your hand?" See, God couldn't deal with the people even through the leader without also dealing with the people that was in the leader. You missed that. Let me do it again. You see, I don't care what the pew thinks. There is always some pew in the pulpit, because everybody who has ever been in the pulpit came from the pew, and we don't forget our pew-dom. Just like you doubt and you fear and you question, we do the same. We just can't let you know it all the time. When God said to Moses, "Tell them, fear not, stand still, see the salvation," Moses looked at God and said, "Now, what you gonna do?"

I know I am right about it because in Numbers, Chapter 11, when God told them how he was going to feed them, Moses is the one who said, "How you gonna do that?" God said to Moses, "What's that you got in your hand?" He said, "A rod." What does a rod have to do with the Red Sea, Pharaoh, mountains on either side, and all these people out here? I've got a rod. What has that got to do with what is going on? And God said, "Stretch it out."

To all of the leaders who are here today, we seldom have all of the resources we need to do God's will. But don't worry about having what you need, use what you've got, stretch it out.

When Moses stretched it out, Lord, God Almighty, a geological phenomenon took place. Those waters that had for eons of years massaged the bosom of the Red Sea went on a split shift. God sent the wind, and the wind blew it dry. They started saying, "Walk together, children, don't you get wary 'cause there is a great town meeting in the Promised Land." They walked across on dry land! God said, "I'll show you what I can do."

They were on their way across, but I had a problem with the text in terms of the logic that I operate by. I had a problem with this text. They were on foot. Pharaoh had chariots. In the words of my grandma, "How come them people in them chariots didn't catch up to them people on foot?" And I kept reading the scriptures, and I realized that when they went to the Red Sea, there was an angel in front of them, guiding them to where they were to go, and when Pharaoh got behind them, God told the angel, "To the rear." The angel that was out front went around and got behind and put distance between those and their oppressors. Y'all, whenever God decides He is going to protect you -- I don't care who your enemies are--they'll fall at your right side, and they'll fall at your left side, but they will never touch you. That's why, every now and then, my childhood comes back up in me, and I remember the song they taught us in Vacation Bible Study: "All night and all day, the angels keep watching over me." The Lord said, "I'll fight your battle." You ought to let the Lord fight for you, because when the Lord fights your battle, you don't have to worry. The Lord knows how to fight. The Lord's been fighting for a long time, and He will fight your battle.

Good day and God bless you.

Copyright 2001 The Rev. Dr. Johnny Ray Youngblood

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