Oh, uh,

uh, uh, uh, uh, Hello and welcome to Bible stories. I am one of your hosts straight from the swamps of Crystal River Florida.

It's your boy Matt Mullins and your other host Todd Haymans.

He is out on a well-deserved vacation today.

He and his family are in the surf and the sand.

We are, Todd and I, two ministers who love the stories of the Bible

and we can't wait to tell you about them and even though I'm alone

today mom this story is so interesting to me that I want to share it with you so what we've been doing in the past several weeks is walking through the 10

plagues of Egypt and we were right smack dab in the middle of the exodus story.

Well, after the plague of the first in the had enough and he's finally listening he's finally decided that he's going to

allow the Israelites to leave Egypt and so he does. Pharaoh kicks the Jewish

people out of his land but what's interesting is as the people leave, they are headed in a

direction. They're going to the Promised Land. That's where God's going to to bring them but God doesn't take the

Israelites through the most direct route to the promise land if you were to

look at a map to go from where they were in Egypt to the

Promised Land right by the sea is the way to go. It was quick. It was through the

land of the Philistines and if you were plotting a course, like if you put it into ways,

ways would pop out, hey, here's the route you need to take. But that's not the route that God sends them on.

Here's what it says in Exodus chapter 13 verse 17 and this is our

explanation as to why the Lord would take the Israelites the long way around to the promised land. It says this.

When Pharaoh finally let the people go, God did not lead them along the main road that runs through

Philistine territory, even though that was a shortest route to the promised land.

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