Exodus Teaching - 04 - Stop and Sing
Exodus Teaching Series #4
TITLE: Stop and Sing
TEXT: Exodus 15:1-21
Introduction
I have a confession. In fact, I find my self confessing a lot of failures these days. I regret that I didn’t study as I should when I was in Bible classes at Mississippi College, or even in seminary. I confess that, even though I came up with a Bible study program when I finished seminary, I never invested the time and effort I should have into those studies. I confess that, even though I prepared studies for all the Bible studies I taught in various churches for 30 years or more, I still wasted a lot of time. The bulk of the sermons and commentaries I have posted on SermonCity.Com today were written after a major heart attack at age 59. “That is the kind of heart attack you have when you don’t live to get to the hospital,” a gracious and caring nurse told me in Rehab.
Now, I have another confession: in my younger days I didn’t have a computer or electronic Bible Libraries, but I was still lax in my studies. I may be rambling right now, but my rambling is with a purpose. You see, I have read Exodus many time, and I have always been aware of chapter 15, but I would skim over the song and go on to the next part of the chapter, the miracle at Morah. In fact, I was planning to do that in this series of messages, but when I stopped to read it again it dawned on me that this is important! The song is important, and its place in Exodus is important. Now that am convinced of its importance, I want to try to convince you of its importance. There are times when we need to stop to reflect on (1) where we are, (2) where we have been, and (3) where we are going.
I drove my wife Becky to the doctor’s office in Bastrop, Louisiana and we went in and took a seat in the waiting room. I opened Dr. J. Mike Minnix’s new book, CHRISTIAN SENIORS LIVING SUPER LIVES, and began reading and highlighting a few lines. Soon I realized that I was listening to two elderly men who were talking about people in town I remembered from my ministry there back when I was a young man. I learned that one man, Flint Robertson, owned Robertson Produce. I had driven by the place for years, and stopped and bought fruit from them years ago. I knew they had relocated to Monroe and the day before, upon seeing one of their trucks, commented to my wife on what a good decision it had been for them to relocate to Monroe. Mr. Robertson was pleased when I told him that, and went on to tell me, “Every year we have been in Monroe our business has increased by 40 per cent.” He told me his son now runs the company. I love to hear success stories like that, and I like to talk with people who can tell you where they have been, where they are, and where they are going in business. I appreciate our text more today than I have before and I pray that the Lord will teach all of us something from this passage today. We are introduced to this song with these words: “Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord. They said: I will sing to the Lord...” (Ex 15:1, HCSB).
I. THE LORD IS WHO HE IS, 15:1-3.
A. He Is Lord.
“Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord. They said: I will sing to the Lord, for “He is highly exalted; He has thrown the horse and its rider into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my song; He has become my salvation. This is my God, and I will praise Him, my father’s God, and I will exalt Him. The Lord is a warrior... Yahweh is His name” (Ex 15:1-3).
1. He is the Creator. In the first Chapter of Genesis, the Creator is introduced to us as God, from the word Elohim, which denotes a God of power. The plural form is used, not to tell us we worship more than one God, but either to magnify His name (as some believe), or possibly to highlight the fact that Creation, like Redemption, is the work of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I subscribe to that position. Elohim is the generic or general name for God, and it might be used of other gods. Elohim, remember, emphasizes power. He had to power to create all things with a word or a thought. A Jewish Hebrew scholar noted that Genesis does not literally say, “Let there be light,” but “Be light.” And it was so. Adonai is another name for God and it denotes sovereignty. He has the sovereign right to reign over that which He has created. In the Bible Adonai is translated “Lord” (capital L and lower case “ord”), whereas, Yahweh (spelled, LORD - all caps), is the covenant name for God. When you see LORD in the Old Testament you know you are looking at the covenant name for God.
Jesus was the Agent of Creation, according to John 1:1-2 and Hebrews 1:2, we read: “In these last days, He has spoken to us by [His] Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things and through whom He made the universe” (Heb 1:2). Again, in Hebrews 1:10, we read, “In the beginning, Lord, You established the earth, and the heavens are the works of Your hands” (Heb 1:10).
2. He is the Sustainer. Job may be the oldest book of the Bible, which may be a surprise to modern day readers. Job was written near the time of Abraham. He was a patriarch and the HCS Study Bible lists Job’s life between 2100 and 1900 B. C. In the Yahweh speeches at the end of Job we find some of the most amazing truths about God that you will find anywhere. God created and sustains the mountain goat, the wild donkey, and the ostrich. He created and controls constellations (Orion and Pleiades - whose names Job obviously knew four thousand years ago!). God asked Job:
“Have you traveled to the sources of the sea or walked in the depths of the oceans? Have the gates of death been revealed to you? Have you seen the gates of deep darkness? Have you comprehended the extent of the earth? Tell ⌊Me⌋, if you know all this.” (Job 38:16-18, HCSB)
In Psalms, the Creator is glorified and praised, and often when we find that, there is the suggestion of His maintenance of all He has created. The psalmist wrote: “The depths of the earth are in His hand, and the mountain peaks are His” (Ps 95:4-5). Once more, in Hebrews, God is the Sustainer: “He sustains all things by His powerful word” (Heb 1:3, HCSB).
3. He is the Redeemer. The Lord charged Adam and Eve with sin and rebellion. He not only announced His judgment against Adam and Eve, He promised redemption through the Seed of the Woman (Gen. 3:15). In His covenant with Abraham (Gen. 12) there is hope of redemption. In Hebrews 1, we read that, through Jesus, God redeems us: “After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Heb 1:3, HCSB). No where is that stated any more succinctly or clearly than in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16, NKJV)
4. He is the God of the Covenant. He is the God of the covenant in Genesis 3, as well as the Abrahamic Covenant (Gen. 12) and the David Covenant (2 Sam. 7). The Messianic Covenant promised the coming One, who would pay the price for our redemption. God took His covenants very seriously and He has never broken a one.
B. He Is the Great I AM.
1. He spoke to Moses from the bush that burned but was not consumed. My good friend, Dr. Bill Cooper of Middlesex, England has written numerous books debunking myths proclaimed by so-called higher critics whose major contribution may well have been that they allowed liberals in America to point to them as proof that they themselves are not liberals. In a series of books: The Authenticity of the Book of Genesis, The Authenticity of the Book of Daniel, The Authenticity of the Book of Jonah, and The Authenticity of the Book of Esther, Dr. Cooper effectively debunks those who claim that Daniel was written as late as 165 B. C. to encourage the Jews of that period to keep the faith. The really serious liberals claim that the three friends of Daniel were made up by some later writer, but a five sided column was found that had been erected on the plains of Dura, with the names, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego printed on one of the five sides. If that is not enough, a clay tablet was found that recorded a rental contract between Abednego and a lady who owned a house. Abednego rented the house for his slave and the slave’s price included twelve meal a day and a token payment at the end of the year. Abednego’s son also signed the contract.
The higher critics claim that Jonah was a story people made up to encourage Jews to be faithful to the Lord. Dr. Cooper shot that theory down, and then provided evidence that debunks the claim that the Book of Esther does not mention the name God anywhere withing the book. In fact, the Hebrew scholars who really has looked into this say there is no doubt that the name, YHWH (Yahweh) does indeed in the Book of Esther. Five times! You see, in key verses the letters YHWH (as we bring them over into English) appear singly in successive words, as the first letter (or last) in successive words in a line.
2. He had heard the cries of the Israelites in Egypt. The Lord had told Abraham that his descendants would inherit the Land of Promise, but they would spend 400 years in a foreign nation first. They had lived in the fertile land of Goshen long enough for their numbers to multiply, from the seventy original Israelites to a powerful nation with enough men of fighting age to become a threat to Egypt, which caused alarm to a new Pharaoh, who enslaved them and forced them into hard labor, and then began killing male babies. The Israelites finally called out to the Lord and He heard them.
3. He was sending Moses to deliver them. He might have chosen any number of ways to deliver them, but He already knew what He would do. He met Moses at the burning bush which was not being consumed, and told him He would send him to deliver His people.
4. He gave Moses His covenant name, YAHWEH. Actually, we have the consonants YHWH, the ancient scribes and teachers believing the covenant name was too holy to pronounce. They would skip it when they came to it in a passage, or leave a blank space when writing it. Later, ancient scholars borrowed the vowels from another word for God and inserted them between the consonants to get the word Yahweh. This was a new name, the covenant name for the Lord. The name means I AM WHO I AM, I WAS WHOM I WAS, AND I WILL BE THAT WHICH I SHALL BE. The late Hebrew scholar Dr. Leo Eddleman, told me it meant more. He said that it means that God was the source of His Own existence and He is the source of our existence.
C. He Is YAHWEH, the God Who Delivers Slaves.
1. Yahweh had just demolished the mightiest army in the world before their eyes. The Israelites had no elaborate military strategy, and no adopted tactics. Simply stated, “He threw Pharaoh’s chariots and his army into the sea; the elite of his officers were drowned in the Red Sea.” (Ex 15:4, HCSB) There was a simply diversion which we may think of as a strategy. The Lord led the Israelites in a winding march that made it seem that they had no idea where they were going. That led Pharaoh to pursue them until they overtook them at the Red Sea where attempted to recapture them and return them to slavery in Egypt. They would also have wanted to reclaim the loot taken by the Israelites when they departed from Egypt.
2. He broke the power, spirit, and moral of Egypt. He not only delivered the Israelites, He broke the power and will of the Egyptian people with a series of plagues, all of which were directed at various deities of Egypt, with the final one was a direct attack on Pharaoh, who considered himself a god. However, he could not even protect his own son from the Lord.
3. Israel was dead to the purpose of God in Egypt. They were dead to the Law, dead to the Conquest, dead to the Land of Promise, dead to joy, hope, and fellowship in Canaan.
4. They were dead to the Covenant. They were children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel, whose name they bore, but they were dead to the fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant as long as they were in Egypt, as long as they were slaves. Just as lost people today are dead in sin, so were they dead to the life of hope, promise, security, and purpose.
5. They were dead to freedom. Just as lost people today are slaves to sin, the flesh, and Satan, they were dead to freedom, life, hope, the Law, the sacrificial system, and all the hope of Passover.
6. They were dead to the Promised Land. As slaves in Egypt they were dead to life, dead to hope, dead to escape, dead to redemption. They were dead to the miracles of Sinai, and dead to the establishment of a mighty nation in Canaan. They were helpless in Egypt and they could only be delivered by the mighty hand of the Lord.
D. In the Same Way, Lost People Are Dead to God.
1. They are dead in sin. They are helplessly lost in sin, dead to the promises of God. I have preached a lot of funerals over the years and I have never seen a dead person sing a solo, turn himself over, sit up, or speak. Nor, have I ever expected to see such a thing, because dead people are powerless, thoughtless, and emotionless. There is no desire to do anything, and if there was the thought there is no power to do it.
My grandfather and some of his friends were known for their practical jokes and once when he was a young man and he and his friends found themselves in a position to pull a prank on other friends and couldn’t resist the temptation. They were sitting up with a corpse all night in a neighbor’s home. The body was laid out on boards laid across a table and when the time came for their replacements to come they bound the body to the heavy board and propped him up behind the door. They spoke to the men who came to relieve them, and as they were leaving the house, but before they got to gate they heard glass brake and saw the men diving through the window into the yard. They were scratched and bruised, but once the shock wore off they realized they were going to be all right. They said they walked into the room and looked at the table and saw that the body was gone. They looked behind the door and it seemed like their neighbor was just standing there in the low light. They panicked and once the first one dived through the window his friends dived through it right after him.
Dead men do not stand up, walk, or talk, but there were times when some of those people who grew up around my grandfather wondered about that. I listened to the talk when I was a youth and some of them could tell stories about a “hant” (haunt) they had seen.
2. They are dead to the promises of God. They are dead and condemned to death, hell, and the grave without any hope or help except that we find in John 3:16. Lost people may never consider what it means to be dead spiritually. Some seem to think they can simply turn over a new leaf and everything will be all right. But, dead people do not turn leaves!
3. They are dead to God’s salvation. Lost people are dead to the promise of everlasting life.
Salvation is a simple thing when we submit to the Lord by faith, but there is no hope for anyone who tries to “find” God or His salvation. Salvation is deep, but it is so simple: just trust in Jesus.
4. They are dead to the blessings God has for His children. God promises life, a relationship with him, and countless other things that are only realized through Jesus Christ.
5. They are dead to hope, dead to life, dead to joy. That just about says it all: no hope, no life, no joy. That is bad enough, but there is more, for the lost person is forever condemned. He is under a sentence of death and unless he repents and receives Jesus he is without hope.
II. THE LORD HAS BEEN WHO HE HAS BEEN, 15:4-13.
A. He Was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
The God of the Exodus is the God of Creation. He called Abraham to leave his home in Ur of the Chaldees and travel to a new and strange land. He entered a covenant with Abraham that could only be fulfilled by the Lord Himself. He was the Lord God of Isaac and Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel. The Lord fulfilled His covenant with the descendants of Abraham.
B. He Is the God Who never Forgot His Chosen People.
1. He chose to enter a covenant with Abraham and his descendants. This was His sovereign choice. He chose Israel, but all Israelites did not choose to serve Him. According to some ancient traditions handed down through the ages, Abraham’s father made and sold idols. According to those traditions young Abram, possibly around 12 years old at the time, worked in his father’s idol making shop, and one day while alone in shop, he picked up a club and began attacking the idols. His father came in and saw him and began to lecture him. Young Abram said, “If they be gods let them defend themselves.”
2. They would stay in Egypt 400 years according to the Lord’s promise. The Lord placed Jacob’s son Joseph in Egypt to secure a place for his brethren when famine covered the entire region. You know the story of how Jacob sent ten of his sons into Egypt to purchase grain. They stood before Joseph, whom they had sold into slavery but did not know him. He forced them to return and bring his younger brother Benjamin back with them. Pharaoh invited him to bring his entire family down into Egypt, which began that 400 year period of time (actually, 430 years).
3. He would bring Abraham’s children back to the Land of Promise. Four hundred years is a long time for you and me. America is not anywhere near that old. General Dutch Shoffner, a retired 3 star, once told me that he had seen grape “stumps” in vineyards in Germany that were over five hundred years old. They were twice as old than America! For the Lord, however, that span of time is no challenge at all.
4. Before beginning their journey the Israelites stop to sing of God’s faithfulness.
“Who is like You, glorious in holiness, revered with praises, performing wonders? (12) You stretched out Your right hand, and the earth swallowed them. (13) You will lead the people You have redeemed with Your faithful love; You will guide ⌊them⌋ to Your holy dwelling with Your strength” (Ex 15:11-13).
C. He Was the God of the Exodus.
1. He crushed the powers of Egypt. He demolished the religion and the politics of the Egyptians, and had the citizens begging the Israelites to leave Egypt.
2. He miraculously delivered Israel from Pharaoh. He delivered them by his mighty hand. They stopped to sing a song to the Lord, praising Him for His miraculous deliverance.
4. After 430 years, He had delivered them by His mighty hand. The Lord had promised that they would go into another country and stay there for 400 years, and they had. Now, they sing His praises, for He has delivered them.
D. He Is YAHWEH, Who Has Delivered Israel from Bondage in Egypt.
“Lord, Your right hand is glorious in power. Lord, Your right hand shattered the enemy. (7) You overthrew Your adversaries by Your great majesty. You unleashed Your burning wrath; it consumed them like stubble. (8) The waters heaped up at the blast of Your nostrils; the currents stood firm like a dam. “The watery depths congealed in the heart of the sea.
“(9) The enemy said: “I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil. My desire will be gratified at their expense. I will draw my sword; my hand will destroy them.” (10) But You blew with Your breath, and the sea covered them” (Ex 15:6-10).
1. He sent Moses to deliver the Chosen People.
2. He obliterated the false gods of Egypt.
3. He broke the power of Pharaoh.
4. He parted the waters of the Red Sea and they crossed on dry ground.
5. He caused the walls of water to fall on the Egyptians and destroy them.
E. What Yahweh Has Done Testifies to Who He Is.
Never in their 430 years in Egypt, surrounded by the so-called gods of Egypt, had these Israelites seen anything like this. In the ten plagues, Yahweh had demolished the false gods of the land of Egypt. It is amazing that the Egyptians returned to those gods, but they did. It is more amazing that these Israelites who are sing praises to Yahweh would ever call on those false gods, the gods who did not exist again. But, they did. The prince of this world will continually turn lost people, as well as carnal Christians back to the false gods of the world.
Word of what had happened would soon spread to the Land of Canaan and throughout the Middle East, as news of what happened would travel by caravan and through other sources from one nation to another. Rahab, forty years later, told the Hebrew spies they knew about what had happened and they were feared Israel. It is amazing that any nation would oppose Yahweh, or go to war against His people Israel. But they did.
Everything the Lord set out to do He had done, and the people now sing His praises. You would think they would never again try to put God to the test. We shall see.
III. HE WILL DO WHAT HE WILL DO, 15:14-21.
A. He Will Permit His People to Know Him.
One of my seminary professors told our class that he had studied under William Barclay for one year and he was told that someone had asked Barclay about the greatest thought he had ever had. He thought a moment and said, “Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so.” Another brilliant biblical scholar was asked a similar question and he answered, “My single most amazing thought is that my Creator permits me call him my Father.”
The God the Israelites had stopped to praise was not hard to get to know, He was not unreachable, and He was no threat to anyone who approached Him. He revealed Himself to their leaders, gave commandments so they might know what pleases Him and what provokes His wrath. He gave them specific worship instructions which should have kept them in a good relationship with their Creator and Deliverer. He protected them for forty years while them lingered in the wilderness after refusing to enter the Land of Canaan and conquer it. We often hear that they were wandering in the wilderness those forty years, but let me assure you that they were not aimlessly wandering around in the wilderness. Simple hygiene would demand frequent moves, but those moves were orchestrated by the Lord so that no move was the result of aimless wandering.
B. He Will Provide for His People.
He would soon provide good water from a bitter spring, manna from heaven to feed the people, and quail for meat. The manna that would sustain them through all those years in the wilderness was always sufficient for them. Of course, the people fussed and complained, and even threatened Moses and Aaron because they didn’t have more. If they had obeyed the Lord they would have been in Canaan within about two years of their deliverance from Egypt.
C. He Will Protect His People.
We can learn a lot from the way the Lord dealt with His people in the wilderness, for His care here is consistent with His character and nature. He could not violate His own holy character, nor would He compromise His plans for His people. Always look for God’s protection and His provisions when it comes to His dealings with His people. He is the same Lord today and He still never compromises His character or holiness. David, in Psalm 23, praises his Shepherd for providing food and water, and for protecting his servant in a mighty way. He provides and He protects.
D. He Will Bless His People.
“You will bring them in and plant them on the mountain of Your possession; Lord, You have prepared the place for Your dwelling; Lord, Your hands have established the sanctuary. 18) The Lord will reign forever and ever!” (Ex 15:17-18).
“When Pharaoh’s horses with his 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. (20) Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women followed her with ⌊their⌋ tambourines and danced. (21) Miriam sang to them:
“Sing to the Lord, for He is highly exalted; He has thrown the horse And its rider into the sea.” (Exodus 15:19-21)
E. He Will Be Sure other Nations Know It.
“When the peoples hear, they will shudder; anguish will seize the inhabitants of Philistia. (15) Then the chiefs of Edom will be terrified; trembling will seize the leaders of Moab; the inhabitants of Canaan will panic; (16) and terror and dread will fall on them” (Ex 15:14-16).
News would soon spread across the nations of the region, and once they had heard of the deliverance of the Israelites, and that God had destroyed the Egyptians, they would be trembling as Israel marched toward them. The Amalekites, their kinsmen who knew of their relationship with the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, moved out to stop them before they got started on the journey, and they would continue to move against them for centuries to come. We will see more on that in another message, but remember that the first nation to move against Israel was the first nation to be defeated.
CONCLUSION
Yahweh was exactly Who He was, He is exactly Who He is, and He will be exactly Who He is going to be. He is the changeless God of eternity. The word they use in the seminary classroom is immutable. He is unchangeable. He does not change on His own and no one can change Him. His holiness is as it has always been. His love is as it has always been. His power is as it has always been. His Grace is as it has always been. His salvation is as it as always been. His plans are as they have always been.
He is the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. He love us enough to give His Son to die for us. He watched as His only begotten Son died a horrible death on a cruel cross for our sins. He loves us enough to save us when we place our trust in Him. However, those who look Him in the face and say, “I don’t want you!” will have their wish granted. Forever! But those who receive Jesus by faith will be delivered from death and live with the Lord. Forever!
