Red Sea Road (Exodus 13:17-15:21)

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Well, good morning church. You can go ahead, grab your Bibles, open up to Exodus chapter 13. Exodus 13, we’ll be starting in verse 17 this morning, Exodus 13:17, as you’re turning there. Anne Voskamp accounts in her latest book, way maker story of when they were going through a very hard adoption process recently, they faced the usual logistical hurdles that come with international adoptions. On top of that, there were some major health issues for the adoptive child who’s going to need heart surgery pretty much right away. So they were looking at that while they were then also going through an unexpected crisis at home that hit them very hard. And so they were ready to give up, honestly and in particular, and she said to her husband, they were driving at the time, you know, heading home from somewhere. There were three sisters Oregon. They’re driving by the mountains and whatnot. And then she says, I just I don’t see a way that we can make this happen. And as she said those words, the phone rang one of those like uncomfortable coincidences, where you’re thinking, this might be the Lord on the phone right here. So she did what you do when you think it might be God on the phone. She let it go to voicemail. And sure enough, there was a voicemail. So she’d kind of nervously, hit play on it. It was not the Lord, although I believe the Lord was speaking through this call. It was her friend, Ellie Holcomb, just wanting to let her know to be the first one to hear the song that day. She had just written based on something ad mazkamp had herself written based on an article she had written talking about a Red Sea road. And so that’s the name of the song, which I would certainly recommend to you, along with most of Ellie’s music there. But so the song Red Sea road, the idea that God makes a way when it doesn’t seem like there is a way. In fact, the chorus says, when we can’t see a way, God will part the waves. Remember, that’s exactly what Anne had said, right? I don’t see a way that we can make this happen. And then Ellie, in that exact moment, said, Hey, here’s the reminder you need, by the way. This is what we see today, of course, in our passage. This is the original Red Sea road. It’s even pictured there for you, because this is such the centerpiece of the Exodus story. For us, God leads his people into a cul de sac of assured destruction. And when they cannot see a way, he makes a way. He shows them once again, because we’ve seen it throughout Exodus already his power and goodness. And in this story, we see a picture of our salvation grace, faith and praise. Kind of these three movements that we’ll look at in the passage this morning. So let’s look at movement number one in our salvation grace. This is Exodus. 13, verse 17, all the way through 1414. A good chunk of text. Here it is when Pharaoh let the people go. God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter, for God said, if they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt. So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea. The Israelites went up out of Egypt ready for battle. 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. After leaving Sukkot, they camped at Etham on the edge of the desert. By day, the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way, and by night, in a pillar of fire to give them light so that they could travel by day or night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night, left its place in front of the people. Then the Lord said to Moses, tell the Israelites to turn back and encamp near pihahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, they are to encamp by the sea, directly opposite Baal zephon. Pharaoh will think the Israelites are wandering around the land in confusion, hemmed in by the desert, and I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and He will pursue them, but I will gain glory for myself through Pharaoh and all his army. The Egyptians will know that I am the Lord. So the Israelites did this when the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled Pharaoh and his officials changed. Officials changed their minds about them and said, what have we done? We’ve let the Israelites go and have lost their services. So he had his chariot made ready and took his army with him. He took 600 of the best chariots along with all the other chariots of Egypt, with officers over all of them, the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, so that he pursued the Israelites who were marching out boldly the Egyptians all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots, horsemen and troops pursued the Israelites and overtook them as they camped by the sea near pi hahiroth, opposite Baal zephon, as Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up and there were the Egyptians marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the. Lord, 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? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, leave us alone. Let us serve the Egyptians. Would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert? Moses answered the people, do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today the Egyptians you see today, you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you. You need only to be still. You got to put yourself in this scene here for a moment. I mean, the Breathless excitement that the Israelites would have felt as they were finally, after almost five centuries, leaving Egypt being set free from slavery and oppressive labor. And so they start walking, and they know where they’re going. They know where the Promised Land is, and they know the route as well. So they expected to turn north along the way of the sea. This would be a little bit, it’s not quite, but if you can picture in your head, it’s like, if you were telling your kids, we’re going from Chicago to Grand Rapids on vacation. And you know what that looks like, right? You got to kind of go around the lake and then north up to Grand Rapids. And so you’re there. Maybe it’s 8090 94 one of those, whichever one you’re on, right? Okay, and you hit Gary, and you’re like, we know which way to go from here. And then your parents get on i 65 south. And you’re thinking, why are we going to Indianapolis? Nobody wants to go to Indianapolis. That’s what happens here. Okay, so the Lord has them take 65 South instead. Now these are God’s curious ways. It’s not a shortcut by any means, although it isn’t a detour, because this was exactly his plan, because he knows his people, and he knows that they are not ready to take the usual way, because this was the main way, meant it was heavily fortified. They’re going to be passing Egyptian outposts the whole way, and they weren’t ready for war just yet. I mean, yeah, they’re organized by divisions, but they’re not actually ready for it, considering what happens when they do face war in a few stories from now and numbers. Why not? God’s not wrong. I mean, they just left. They’re disorganized, and it will be all too easy for them to just turn around and go home. I mean, isn’t this why, like explorers and conquerors and stuff, they usually burn their ships when they land somewhere new, because the path of least resistance always leads home, back to the familiar.
Interestingly, this is an illustration of First Corinthians, 10, verse 13. It’s a verse you’ve followed Christ for any length of time you probably have talked about before, and it’s dealing with temptation and stuff. It says this, Paul writes, God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can endure it. First. Corinthians 10 is all about this moment in Israel’s history. And so this is what we’re talking about. God provides a way out. He doesn’t lead them into temptation beyond what they can bear. So he has them take I-65 south. Instead, they couldn’t bear facing war yet. So he leads them elsewhere. He leads them to the Red Sea. Now there is some debate here. What sea exactly are we talking about? Now, there is a Red Sea, you know it. That’s the one you’re probably thinking of for good reason that the big strip of sea between African continent and then Middle East, Saudi Arabia and whatnot, or is this the Sea of Reeds, which is what it says in Hebrew. By the way, yam, suph and Suf means reeds, and that would make sense to be the salty marshes that are a little bit north of this area. The answer is both. Yam suph often refers to the Red Sea, so we know that that’s what it would be talking about. But the water level was higher back then, and so at that point, the sea actually connected to these salty marshes. We’re probably doing somewhere, kind of in the middle there, where it’s not exactly the ocean, but we’re not talking salt marshes either. This is where they’re headed anyway, and as they’re walking there, we get this little note that Moses had grabbed Joseph’s bones. This is the whole reason they were in Egypt in the first place. This is Genesis. You can go back and read that story, but Moses keeps the promises that successive generations had made to Joseph to take him with, so to speak. And we’ve just seen the overwhelming faithfulness of God on display in this moment, because Joseph had said again, hundreds of years earlier, God will come to your aid. And now they’ve seen it. It’s true he did come to their aid. And Joseph’s faith here is rewarded. So they’re let out. They got the pillar of cloud by day, the pillar of fire by night. No doubt where God is leading, right? No question that they’re supposed to go, where they’re going, because he’s right there in front of them. How many of you, by the way, wish you had a pillar of cloud sometimes help you know what you’re supposed to be doing, what college to go to, which person to marry, which career to pursue. You. I got good news for you. If you are in Christ, you got better than a pillar of cloud, because you have GOD HIMSELF DWELLING IN your heart by the Holy Spirit leading you where you need to go. So he’s leading them, visibly leading them. And again, they’re excited, but there’s this growing nervousness also, because apparently they went the wrong way, because now they’re supposed to turn back like they missed their exit, and that would make you question your faith for a moment, right? Like, do we do We? Are we sure the pillar knows where it’s going here? And worse, they’re given specific instructions about exactly where to camp, so that they would be stuck again. They are camping in a dead end, like God leads them into a trap. Not the only time you’ll see this in Scripture, by the way, it happens quite a bit. Even Jesus, like tells His disciples, Why don’t you guys get in the boat and head across the sea, and then a storm comes up, like Jesus led them into the storm. It doesn’t feel like Grace, of course, when that happens, but we have to see that it is grace when this happens. Why? Because he says he’s going to do that so that they can see who he is, so that they glorify Him, so that they trust him more than they had earlier that day. And it is always grace when it increases our trust in God Almighty. This is why we see so many of God’s weird strategies for victory to gain glory for himself. You think of Abraham and Sarah like, I’m like, you’re in a great nation. So let’s wait until you’re way past menopause, like 90, and then we’ll talk about you having kids. Why? Because you’ll have no doubt that it was a miracle. You have a no doubt that this was God keeping his promises. You think of some of the battles like Gideon or Jehoshaphat, where they don’t even get to fight, like they march into battle and God says, Just hold still. Watch. Okay, who won that battle? You got any questions? You think it was your military prowess because you didn’t even lift your sword, right? So this is how God works. Of course, these weird strategies so that we see who did it. So there they are, though they’re hemmed in on all sides. They got the sea in front of them. They got this fortress, Migdol right by the side of them. And then they’ve got the Egyptian army coming behind them. We see that Pharaoh has changed his mind. He changed his mind because he never really changed his heart. So again, it looked like repentance. Kyle talked a lot about this a few weeks ago, right? It was sorrow, yes, but it was worldly sorrow. It wasn’t godly sorrow, because didn’t lead to repentance. So his heart didn’t change. He hardens it again, and he comes back after the Israelites. So Israel looks up and they see this cloud of dust on the horizon. Can you imagine the fear and discouragement you would feel in that moment, especially if you were marching out with your family, with your kids and stuff? I mean, the discouraged the closest I can think of, probably because I just watched a movie not that long ago, is Butch Cassidy and a Sundance Kid like four of you have seen it, right? It’s gonna be a great illustrator. Illustration for me. All right, okay, but if you saw it way back where Robert Redford just died, it’s a good time to talk about this, okay, little homage here, whatnot, right? But so they’re trying to get away from the law, these bank robbers, and they’re like, flying through mountains and ravines, and they’re, you know, they send their horses off in one direction, and they sneak away in the other direction, and it doesn’t matter, the law is always there behind them, always kicking up clouds of dust in the background and like that’s how Israel feels at this moment. So they’re panicking, right? They’re losing their faith. This moment feels a little bit like what Jesus describes as Satan snatching back the seed of the gospel. And perhaps you’ve experienced something like this, where you turn to Jesus at a certain point in your life, but immediately faced doubt and discouragement because of circumstances. What do we do in that situation? Well, certainly not what Israel did here, because they just start complaining. Won’t be the last complaint. That’s all we’re going to talk about next week, is their complaint. Week, as they’re complaining. It is an ironic complaint, though, you know, were there not enough tombs in Egypt? Like, I don’t know if you know this about Egypt, but Egypt was at this time, obsessed with death. Like, they had lots of tombs. They had some really cool tombs, kind of these pointy looking ones. Maybe you heard of them, right? Like, this is it? So, yeah, there were plenty of tombs, more tombs than anywhere else. And so they’re like, we should have just died there, I guess. So Moses has to direct their eyes. Take their eyes off of Egypt and onto El Shaddai, God Almighty. And he says, Stand firm, and you will see God will deliver. He says in verse 13, that word for deliverance, by the way, is the word Yeshua, as in Yeshua, which gets translated into English as Jesus. It’s like it almost says, Here, stand firm and you. See Jesus the deliverance of God of Yahweh, and that’s exactly what God, of course, does through Jesus later, because he gives us what we see here, just on a different scale. We get deliverance from death, yes, except it’s deliverance from eternal death. We get freedom from slavery, yes, but it’s freedom from spiritual slavery, and it is announced by faith and received as Grace. You need only to be still. That’s actually a really hard message, isn’t it? This is not how we roll, like you need to do something when you’re in tough circumstances, you gotta fix it. And so it is a hard lesson to learn. Don’t just do something stand there, not what we feel in our flesh, and yet exactly what we are called to do. Jesus himself says later, John, chapter five, verse 24 whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged, but has crossed over from death to life. Whoever hears and believes this is what makes Christianity different from every other religion on the planet, because every other religion says in this moment, start moving, get to work, try harder, give alms, pray five times a day, make a pilgrimage. Here’s four noble truths you should be thinking about. Here is an eightfold path for you to follow, but not with our God of grace. He does everything. He does all the work. We just trust Him. We step back and we see at the end that it is finished and that we have crossed over. We cannot earn it. We can only receive it. You can see why I call this section grace, then unearned favor. And it is. And hopefully you know that Friday was Reformation Day, where we celebrate the recovery of the great truths of the gospel during the Reformation. I mean, this is one of the great Reformation Day themes, of course, one of the five, Solas, sola, gratia, grace alone. We are saved by grace alone, and we’ve seen it here as well, in Christ alone, in Yeshua alone. So what is our response? And that’s the second movement, which is faith. Let’s finish up chapter 14, beginning in verse 15. Then the Lord said to Moses, why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on. Raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea, to divide the water so that the Israelites can go through the sea on dry ground. I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them, and I will gain glory through Pharaoh and all his army, through his chariots and his horsemen, the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I gain glory through Pharaoh his chariots and his horsemen. Then the angel of God who had been traveling in front of Israel’s army withdrew and went behind them. The pillar of cloud also moved from in front and stood behind them, coming between the armies of Egypt and Israel. Throughout the night, the cloud brought darkness to the one side and light to the other, so neither went near the other all night long. Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night, the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided, and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground with a wall of water on their right and on their left. The Egyptians pursued them, and all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots and horsemen followed them into the sea during the last watch of the night, the Lord looked down from the pillar of fire and cloud at the Egyptian army and threw it into confusion. He jammed the wheels of their chariots that they had difficulty driving. The Egyptians said, let’s get away from the Israelites. The Lord is fighting for them against Egypt. And the Lord said to Moses, Stretch out your hand over the sea so that the waters may flow back over the Egyptians and their chariots and horsemen. Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at daybreak, the sea went back to its place. The Egyptians were fleeing toward it, and the Lord swept them into the sea. The water flowed back and covered the chariots and horsemen, the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed the Israelites into the sea. Not one of them survived, but the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground with a wall of water on their right and on their left. That day, the Lord saved Israel from the hands of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore. When the Israelites saw the mighty hand of the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in Him and in Moses, his servant. So God acts through his mediator, Moses, just like later in our salvation, God will act through Jesus, the new and true Moses. What does Moses do? He raises that staff of God that we met a few chapters ago. And when he does, God divides the waters so that if. Cheryl can walk through on dry land. Now, if you know your Bible Well, you’ll have heard some very deliberate echoes of the creation story. On day two, God divides the waters, basically sky and sea, and then on day three, God creates the dry ground. And so why the deliberate echo? It’s because Moses is trying to show us that God is Lord of Creation, like the Creator, God is the one that we’re dealing with here. Of course, we’ve already seen that God’s Lord of Creation. We saw it in all the plagues. There’s no doubt about who’s in control, but we get to see it again, and it’s a reminder of why we trust him. So what happens at this moment, a strong east wind arises. God sends it. Maybe there’s some sort of tidal movement. At the same time, people are always looking for a natural cause for what happened right here and there is, it’s mentioned. There’s an east wind of some sort at the same time, it’s clearly miraculous. I mean, just at that exact moment when Moses goes like this, a strong east wind happens to blow up. Never mind the strength of this wind, because the waters are divided into the word that’s used there refers to a city wall like that’s not a natural occurrence. Obviously, this doesn’t just happen. So I get that the Bible doesn’t always slice as finely as we do between the natural and the supernatural. The Bible recognizes quite accurately God’s in charge of it all. So he uses ordinary means. He uses extraordinary means. It doesn’t really matter. It’s always God. But here we are definitely dealing with a miracle. Phil Reiching, in his commentary on Exodus, he shares the story of a theologically liberal minister, and as somebody who would deny the authority of Scripture, the resurrection of Christ and the possibility of miracles, and he’s preaching in an old African American church on this story. And so when we get to this moment, of course, African American church is way more dialogical than all of you very dull people who don’t ever talk back to me in the middle of the sermons and stuff like that. And so a man in the back shouts out at this point, praise the Lord taking all his children through those deep waters. What a miracle. And this theologically liberal minister is having none of it. He says it was not a miracle. They were in a marsh land. The tide was ebbing, and Israel picked their way across six inches of water, and the guy in the back shouted, praise the Lord. Drown in all them Egyptians in six inches of water. What a miracle. There’s a point. It’s a funny story, but there’s a point to it also, right? It’s like, when you come to this either trust or don’t like, just don’t try and sit on the fence like this liberal minister was doing, either believe in God, in which case you believe in miracles, or reject God and don’t pretend otherwise. I’m reminded of John Updike’s famous words, one of my favorite poems, seven stanzas on Easter and he writes this, let us not mock God with metaphor, analogy, side stepping, Transcendence, making of the event, a parable, a sign painted in the faded credulity of earlier ages. Let us walk through the door? Well, Israel is walking not just through the door. They’re walking through the dry ground as well, and Egypt follows them in. And there’s this pointed irony in verse 25 when God, who promised to fight for Israel, is fighting against Egypt, and he jams the wheels of their chariots. Again, not hard to imagine how this would happen. They’re driving across what used to be water, so, yeah, their wheels get stuck in the mud, right? And it says they drove with difficulty. And that word for difficulty is literally, they drove with heaviness. Well, that’s a word we come across a bunch in Exodus, because that’s the word that gets translated glory when it refers to God and hard when it refers to Pharaoh, and Pharaoh’s heart in particular, and that’s exactly what’s happening. You want to know the difficulty here. The difficulty is that Pharaoh’s heart was hard, heavy, so that the people would see the heaviness, the weight the glory of God. Well, once Israel crosses Moses, stretches his staff out again, the waters return to their place. The Egyptian army is drowned. There are no survivors. Actually interesting, by the way, Egypt does not show up as an enemy of God’s people again until the time of Solomon, like about 500 years later, because the devastation that they experience here. So no survivors. Now, I realize we read this today in the modern West, and this all seems a bit harsh, but it isn’t. It is fitting judgment. After Egypt’s attempted genocide against Israel, and how did they try to wipe out Israel by throwing the baby boys into the waters? And so here instead, it is they who are drowned in the waters. This is we talked about it before, the boomerang nature of sin. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth perfect justice. It can wrinkle us. I get that, but also need to know that deep down, we long for this sort of judgment. We long to see evil at last put to an end. That’s why the saints burst into song after Babylon is thrown down in the book of Revelation, which we looked at this spring, like we want to see evil and injustice defeated, and when it happens, the rightness of that judgment will lead to joy and praise. You can see this even today. I mean, you think of the jubilant celebrations that happened on VE Day or VJ Day, and you’re going, where was the grief at the loss of life in these moments that grief is real. It’s just not the time for it, the time it’s the celebration the overthrow of evil. So Israel is there watching bodies wash up on shore seeing this dreadful picture of God’s judgment on unrepentant sinners while they are happy and dry, which means the Red Sea represents salvation and judgment at one and The same time. I mean Israel passed through the waters of judgment, because, of course, they deserve to die too. We talked about this a lot when we looked at Passover. Whole reason they had to sacrifice a lamb was because they all deserve to die equally, but so they pass through the waters of judgment, just like Christians today. It’s the point that Paul makes in First Corinthians 10. I told you First Corinthians, 10 was all about Exodus. It says this, our ancestors passed through the sea. He uses a curious word, doesn’t he? They were all baptized into Moses, in the cloud and in the sea. A Baptism reminder is helpful for us. The waters of baptism represent judgment on our sins. That’s why we’re buried with Christ in His death. There’s that reminder, this is where I should be. I should be killed. I should be buried, not just under dirt, but in hell because of my sins, and then, of course, we get salvation. We’re raised to new life in Christ. So the idea there is, we all have to pass through judgment. The question is just whether or not we’ll cross on dry ground. How do we do that? By putting our trust in Jesus, the one who did it for us, there’s nothing for us to do except to receive it from him to I mean, look at verse 31 right. The Israelites saw the mighty hand of the Lord displayed against the Egyptians. The people feared the Lord and put their trust in Him. That’s it exactly. We see his salvation and glory, and we put our trust in Him. So it is a question of faith, which is another of the great Reformation Day doctrines. Of course, sola fide, by faith alone. We are saved in Christ alone, by grace, alone, through faith alone. And where does that lead our last movement, of course, praise me. Read chapter 15, verses one to 21 then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord. I will sing to the Lord, for He is highly exalted, both horse and driver. He is hurled into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my defense. He has become my salvation. He is my God. And I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt Him. The Lord is a warrior. The Lord is his name. Pharaoh’s chariots and his army. He has hurled into the sea. The best of Pharaoh’s officers are drowned in the Red Sea. The deep waters have covered them. They sank to the depths like a stone. Your right hand Lord was majestic in power. Your right hand Lord, shattered the enemy in the greatness of Your Majesty, you threw down those who opposed you. You unleashed your burning anger. It consumed them like stubble by the blast of your nostrils, the water piled up. The surging waters stood up like a wall the deep waters congealed in the heart of the sea, the enemy boasted. I will pursue. I will overtake them. I will divide the spoils. I will gorge myself on them. I will draw my sword. My hand will destroy them. But you blew with your breath and the sea covered them. They sank like lead in the mighty waters. Who among the gods is like you, Lord, who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders, you stretch out your right hand, and the earth swallows your enemies and your unfailing. Love, you will lead the people you have redeemed and your strength, you will guide them to your holy dwelling. The nations will hear and tremble. Anguish will grip the people of Philistia, the chiefs of Edom will be terrified. The leaders of Moab will be seized with trembling. The people of Canaan will melt away terror and dread will fall on them by the power of your arm, they will be as still as a stone until your people pass by, Lord, till the people you bought pass by, you will bring them in and plant them on the mountain of your inheritance, the place Lord you made for your dwelling, the sanctuary Lord Your hands established. The Lord reigns forever and ever. When Pharaoh’s horses, chariots and horsemen went into the sea, the Lord brought the waters of the sea back over them, but the Israelites walked through the sea on dry ground. Then Miriam, the prophet Aaron’s sister, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women followed her with timbrels and dancing Miriam sang to them. Sing to the Lord, for He is highly exalted, both horse and driver. He is hurled into the sea. Well, how could they keep from singing in light of what they had just seen and experienced, and notice how personal this song is. Even though they’re saved corporately, they are saved as a nation. And yet the words are, I will sing right. The Lord is my strength, my salvation, my defense. And it had to be because they had a first hand experience of his power and goodness. It’s like a later song that we sing. This is my story. This is my song. And then he transitions. The song transitions from the first person singular to the second person. I’m gonna sing because of you, because of your character, Lord. So for what exactly do they praise God? I think we see at least five aspects of God’s character and work here in these verses. First of all, they praise God because he’s faithful. You see it there in verse two, when he says, I will praise God, right? My God, my father’s God. And usually when we get that my father’s God, it even mentions some other fathers too, like some grandfather’s great grandfather’s like the God of your father, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. So we’re talking about God’s faithfulness throughout generations. We’re singing to the God who keeps his covenant promises to his people. We saw that with Joseph and his bones as well. Of course, he’s faithful. Second, they praise him because he’s a warrior in verse three, not usually what we praise God for is it. And yet, here we see it. They praise Him because He is a God who is both willing and able to fight against and defeat the forces of evil, oppression and injustice. You can understand why. Again, consider Israel absolutely hopeless, not only when they were in slavery in Egypt, but especially when they were there in front of the Red Sea, facing slaughter themselves, like they’re about to be murdered by this oppressive regime. And so this is a very understandable celebration of a people who are unexpectedly saved. We may go, really, the Lord is a warrior. That’s what you’re praising him for. I think the weirder thing would be if they were to go, well, that’s a relief, but really, what a shame. Like, that’s not the normal response in this moment when you your children have been saved. Now, we have to be careful, of course, because Christian history of the church is littered with some really unfortunate moments when the church took up the sword for the sake of Christ, which is not how it’s supposed to go. It just does not excuse Christian war mongering. You look at some of those blemishes, like certain aspects of the Crusades or the wars between the Catholic and Protestant churches across the centuries, this doesn’t excuse Christian war mongering. It actually does the opposite, in fact, because what do we see here? It’s the Lord who is the warrior the church is just standing still in this moment, the people of God, and He fights for us. But yes, that means we praise God that he is a warrior. We praise God for His wrath, for His just judgment on sin, for his war on hell. Because one commentator put it, his wrath is not a vehement, irrational, vindictive, arbitrary, capricious venting of some supernatural spleen. It’s a manifestation of the repugnance of a holy God against all who defile, disrupt and destroy his world and to his his people, we share that repugnance when it comes to evil. Third and worship Him because He’s unique. Verse 11 Kyle read for us earlier, right? He alone is God. He alone is worthy of worship. There’s no one else like him. Yes, and of course, we’ve got this. By now we’ve seen this. He spent all those plagues showing those gods the Egypt, those aren’t real gods. There’s nobody there. Okay, he I alone, am God, and he has proven it yet again. Fourth, we praise him because he’s loving. Verse 13 talks about his unfailing love. That’s what motivates his works, this display of his wondrous power. It’s his love for his people who trust in Him. And then fifth and over it all, of course, this is the one that holds it all together. We praise Him because He is Savior, because he has saved us. And it’s there in verse two, of course, he is my salvation. It’s there in verse 13. You have redeemed your people. He redeems his people. That word redeems means he purchased the slaves. Just what he’s done, not with gold or silver, as we’ve talked about with with the precious blood of Christ, that lamb without blemish or defect, which reminds us, because, of course, we’re still looking forward to Jesus at this moment in history, but these past acts of deliverance produce faith in future deliverance. I’ve seen him do it before. I will trust he will do it again. And that’s the second half of the song. Do you notice that, like once we hit verse 14, we are now entirely future. They’re praising him for what hasn’t happened yet, but they believe that God will bring them into the Promised Land to the mountain of their inheritance. Verse 17, and that’s before they even knew Jerusalem was going to be the capital, and that’s where the temple was going to be. But their inheritance was secure in God’s mighty hands, they sing of it a good lesson for us too, right? We sing to remember what he’s done, to remind us of what he’ll do. We sing to cultivate in ourselves the hope of heaven, the resurrection of those who die in Christ, the perfect justice and joy that will come to the new heavens and the new earth. And then it’s just worth mentioning verse 20 and 21 Miriam then leads, this is Moses’ sister. Miriam leads the women in praise too. I think it’s worth pointing out here, because in these 15 chapters of Exodus, we’ve actually Exodus, we’ve actually seen women celebrated over and over and over again, Moses’s faithful mother, yoke it, or his sister, Miriam here, but who’s also the one who kind of keeps an eye on him while the baskets floating down the river. We got the midwives, Puah and Shipra. We got his wife, Zipporah, who has to save him at one point because of his sin. And so it’s this reminder. We talked about it with the Gentiles last week with foreigners, but this week, there’s no second class citizens in God’s covenant community when it comes to gender, either women as well as men, have welcome. Are called to serve, have a quality of access to God by grace through faith. The takeaway here is that salvation demands a response, and that grateful worship is the proper response. When you see that you’ve been saved, you burst forth in praise and thanksgiving. It’s like the 10 lepers. Remember Jesus heals 10 lepers. They don’t realize it at first, as they’re walking away, they realize we’ve been healed. And most of them keep going, and just one of them comes back and says, I got to talk to this guy. I got to say, thank you. Thank you for what you’ve done for me. We are called to be that last leper who comes back. He did it. He did everything, so he gets all the praise. It’s actually interesting. In this song, Moses doesn’t get any mention. There’s no like, right? And by the hand of his servant, Moses, or something like that, he gets no mention. But why would he get a mention? What’d he do? He lifted a piece of wood up at one point. What do you even bother with that one like we know who did this. Since the work was God’s alone, the glory is God’s alone. That, by the way, another of the great Reformation Day themes, soli Dell glory. We are saved in Christ, alone, by grace, alone, through faith, alone to the glory of God alone, we can’t save ourselves. We can’t even keep ourselves trusting in God, as we’ve seen in this story already, and as we’ll see next week, so God saves us. We look up and we see his Yeshua, his deliverance. We see Jesus. God does everything he can to make sure that we see that he is the one who saved us, which leads us to trust, to obey and to sing. And that’s our big idea for today, nice and short and simple, see his salvation and sing. See his salvation. And sing. All three movements are there because that salvation is gracious. Salvation right? It is by grace and the sight is what produces faith. It is faithful sight. And then, of course, we sing his praise. I mean, this is the Christian life in some see his salvation and sing. But what does it look like practically, just a few thoughts to get you going on application, the sorts of things you can discuss in your community groups, more specifically later on. But first of all, I think this means that we give up Self Reliance again. Kyle talked about this earlier. It was Kaylee who read the verse earlier. That was my bad. I’m sorry. Sorry, Kaylee, wherever you are, good reading, but Kyle talked about this one for sure, right? He talked about this one in our time of confession, of giving up self reliance, we keep reverting to earning salvation like we keep going back. We’re like, I know I’m saved by grace alone, but I’m pretty sure I should try harder so that I can earn it this time around, like I get it. There is effort involved in the Christian life grace, as opposed to earning, not to effort. That’s important. But we keep going back to our works, and in the process, we keep stealing glory from God. There’s Richard Lovelace who said that most of us in our day to day depend on our sanctification for our justification, meaning, we depend on how well we think we’re doing that day. We depend on our performance that day, for our sense of how God thinks about us at that moment. That is a dangerous way to live, and we don’t have to. We’ve been saved by grace. Give up your Self Reliance as you give up your Self Reliance increase your faith at the same time, because you see what he’s done, you see how he saved you, and then you trust what he will do, going if he’s done all this, then my future is good in his hands. I know it is. But increased faith then will lead to increased obedience. Of course, it will. We trust him. We see His goodness and His glory. We go. I want to, like prove that I trust him by listening to what he says. And I think we see this here in the story, with how quickly they were tempted to go back to Egypt, the first sign of difficulty, they go. We should try being slaves again. I see this a lot more next week. There’s an old quip that basically what it says that God got them out of Egypt, but he hadn’t gotten Egypt out of their hearts. And that’s what’s true for us too. God has delivered us from sin, but we still got sin in our hearts, at least until glory. And so we increase our obedience as we increase our faith. And then lastly, of course, we sing, sing, sing to our God. Be the glory to our God, the only God, our Savior, be pray, see his salvation and sing. Let’s pray to him now.
Lord, we have seen your salvation. We see it here in Exodus, how you saved your people. You alone. Did it by your mighty hand, not by anything they had done, not because they had earned it or deserved it, not because of their cleverness or ingenuity. It was all you Lord, but we have seen it in our own lives as well, because we know that we never could have done enough to earn our salvation. And so you sent your Son Jesus to earn it in our place, to give it to us when we trust in Him and so God, when now that we see your salvation, we only pray that You would help us then to trust, to believe and to give ourselves wholly to you, Lord, we sing of your goodness and glory and grace, and as we sing even now to close this service, we pray that you were to remind us of these gospel truths, drive them deep into our hearts, so that they speed us on our way as we pursue you to the promised land, to the new heavens, to the new earth, to the glory that awaits those who trust in your deliverance and your salvation, we pray in Christ’s name, Amen.