The song of Moses (1): The song of victory
[Exodus 15:1-18]
Do you have a favorite hymn or gospel song? If so, what is the song you love to praise these days? Why do you enjoy singing that praise? For me, I am enjoying praising the Korean hymn, “Face to Face With Christ My Saviour.” When I sing that hymn with the longing hope that I will be able to see the Lord face to face at the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus, I often experience my heart becoming heaven. Especially when I sing verse 3 and the chorus, I miss the heavenly life that will be with Jesus forever: “What rejoicing in His presence, When are banished grief and pain; When the crooked ways are straightened And the dark things shall be plain. Face to face shall I behold Him, Far be-yond the starry sky; Face to face in all His glory, I shall see Him by and by!” When I sing this song to God, I think of the ancestors of the faith who died first. When I feel that I missed them and I want to meet them again, I long to see Jesus more than before and dwell in Heaven forever. And when I think of the Lord who gave this living hope and the hope and grace of eternal life, I cannot help but to sing praise to Him.
The ultimate reason why we praise God is because we are saved. In other words, the purpose of our salvation is to worship God. Look at Exodus 3:12 – “And He said, "Certainly I will be with you, and this shall be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God at this mountain.” The Bible tells us that the purpose of God's raising up Moses and use him to deliver the Israelites from Egypt was for them to serve (worship) God. So God sent Moses to Pharaoh, King of Egypt, saying, “Go to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord, ‘Let My people go, that they may serve Me’” (8:1, 20; 9:1, 13; 10:3, 7, 8, 26). In other words, God wanted to save the Israelites from Pharaoh's hand through Moses so that they could worship God. Look at Ephesians 1:4-6: “just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” The purpose of God's love for us and chose us in Christ and predestinated us to be children of God is to praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In a word, we who are saved by God's grace and became the children of God, we must praise and worship Him.
The Bible Exodus 15:1-18 is the song that Moses and the sons of Israel sang to the Lord (v. 1) after they experienced the God's grace in saving the Israelites from the hand of the Egyptians (14:30) by overthrowing the Egyptians in the midst of the Red Sea (v. 27). In other words, it is the song that concludes the most important historical event, the Exodus, and the finale. It is a song that Moses and the Israelites sang to God as they witnessed the death of the Egyptian army in the Red Sea. It is the song of God's victory and salvation in the Red Sea that ended in victory in Pharaoh's confrontation with God. Therefore, we can say that this song of Moses is the song of victory. As we meditate on the Moses’ song of victory in three ways, I pray that we will receive the instructions God gives to our church so that we may obey them and glorify God as we sing to God the song of victory like Moses and the Israelites.
First, the song of victory that our church must sing to God is to praise God as He is.
Look at Exodus 15:1b-2a: “…"I will sing to the LORD, for He is highly exalted; The horse and its rider He has hurled into the sea. ‘The LORD is my strength and song, ….’” The song of victory sung by Moses and the sons of Israel was the song of confession and acknowledgment of God as He is. They praised God who “is highly exalted” and who is “my strength and song.” Such praise cannot be sung to God without faith. In other words, we cannot offer the song of confessional and acknowledgment of God in our unbelief and in doubt. And we have no choice but to acknowledge that faith in God is a gift of God's grace to us is because even though the Israelites saw the ten plagues that God did in Egypt in the days of the Israelites living in Egypt, God leading them with the pillars of cloud and pillar of fire in the wilderness and so on, they didn’t believe in God and continued to complaint to God in unbelief. Then the Israelites saw the Lord who is “a warrior” (v. 3), covered the Egyptians and their chariots and horsemen with water in the Red Sea, leaving no one but annihilated them completely (14:28). “When Israel saw the great power which the Lord had used against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord, and they believe in the Lord and in His servant Moses” (v. 31). With this faith, the Israelites praised God as He is in fear of Him. They sang to the Lord, ‘God is highly exalted and He is my strength and song and He has become my salvation’ (15:1-2). We can find the similar hymn in Psalms 118:14 – “The LORD is my strength and song, And He has become my salvation.” This psalmist's song was sung by the Israelites when the Israelites returned to Jerusalem from the Babylonian captivity and rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem under Ezra's leadership (Wiersbe). At the time, there was the sound of joyful shouting and the sound of salvation (or the sound of victory) in the tents of the righteous, the Israelites (v. 15). After all, God delivered the Israelites from the hands of the heathen nations, whether Egypt or Babylon, so that they could witness the power and glory of God. And as a result, the Israelites by faith sang the song of salvation or the song of victory which acknowledged that God is God.
We are God’s people saved by God's grace. God has forgiven us our sins by His death and resurrection because He gave His only begotten Son Jesus on the cross and called us righteous. In short, God saved us through Jesus Christ. We who receive this gracious gift of salvation, what is our duty? It is to praise God. We should lift up the confessional praise by faith that acknowledge God as He is (His being) with gratitude and gladness. I hope and pray that as we meditate more deeply on the cross of Jesus and give thanks to God for the grace of His salvation, we may offer the joyful praise to our God of salvation and our Lord of victory. I hope and pray that we may sing praises to our Almighty God, God our strength and God of salvation who delivered us from all sins. I pray that we all praise the Lord's greatness, and the sound of triumphant song among us may become louder and louder.
Second, the song of victory that our church must sing to God is to praise what God has done.
As we read the Old Testament, there are times when we see a duel between God of Israel and the Gentile gods. An example is the battle between Elijah and the Baal prophets on Mount Carmel (1 Kgs. 18). In the battle, the duel was about whether the God of Israel is the true God or the gods of the Baal prophets is? As we know, the result was that the God of Elijah, the God of Israel, is the true God. But about five centuries earlier, in Egypt, there was a duel between the God of the slave Hebrews and the polygods served by the great empire Egyptians who commanded the world. And that duel was the ten plagues that Moses did before the king of Egypt before Moses and the Israelites came out of Egypt. The background of those ten plagues was intended to disable the gods of Pharaoh and the Egyptians, while demonstrating that only God of Israel was genuine (Exod. Chps. 7-12). For example, the first plague, turning the Nile into blood, was the incapacitation of the Nile guardian god, Khnum, whom the Egyptians served. The second plague was the frogs disaster that caused the entire Egyptians to suffer. This was striking the frog-headed god Heqt. The third plague was all the dust of the earth became gnats and it was striking the god of the earth Sep. From the fourth to the tenth plague, God plagued Pharaoh king of Egypt and the Egyptians through Moses, so the gods they were serving were Hatkok, the god of insects (fourth plague), Apis, the god of fertility (fifth plague), Imhotep, the medical god (sixth plague), Nut, the god of sky (seventh plague), Seth, the grain guardian god (eighth plague), Re, the sun god (ninth plague), and the tenth is the death plague of the firstborn of all the Egyptians, including the king, and the firstborn of all livestock which was a disaster that neutralized Orisis, the god that gives life (Internet). In the end, God proved that God is the only true God who lived through Moses by incapacitating the gods of the world’s strongest Egyptians.
The song of Moses in Exodus 15 is also a confession that God is the only true God. And Moses and the sons of Israel are praising what the only true God did for His people, the Israelites. In particular, in Exodus 15:4-12, we can see that Moses and the Israelites praising what God had done for them. The content of their praise was that the Lord, “a warrior” (v. 3), sent forth His burning anger (v. 7) and shattered the enemy with His right hand (v. 6). More specifically, Moses and the Israelites praised God the Almighty Creator who casted Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, his chariots and his army into the sea (v. 4) and then blew with His wind (v. 10) and thus the sea covered them (vv. 5, 10). They praised God for His marvelous work in the Red Sea, especially in verse 11: “Who is like You among the gods, O LORD? Who is like You, majestic in holiness, Awesome in praises, working wonders?” Moses and the Israelites confessed that none of the gods are like the Lord God, and praised the Lord God, majestic in holiness, awesome in praises and working wonders. This confessional praise implies that the God of Israel is the true God and all the Egyptian gods are false.
In praising God, we must praise God, knowing that “The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!” (Deut. 6:4) In particular, we must praise God, remembering the wonderful and marvelous things God has done. Of those wonderful and marvelous things of God, we must praise God, remembering the great saving grace that He bestowed upon us because He sent His only-begotten Son Jesus to this earth and let Him be crucified. The work of the Lord on that cross was a wonderful and marvelous work of the Lord's victory over Satan, and we are to sing a song of victory to that one and only God. May this triumphant song ring in our church.
Third and last, the song of victory that our church must sing to God is to praise what god will do in the future.
Moses and the Israelites, who witnessed the wonderful and marvelous work of God in the Red Sea, praised God for who He is and what God had done for them. And in Exodus 15:13-18, they praised God for what He would do in the future. What God would do in the future was that after God delivered the Israelites out of Pharaoh's hand and made them triumphant, the Lord led the redeemed people by grace and by His power to the Promised Land that is the land of Canaan. In the process, God promised that the nations would hear the wonderful event of salvation that delivered the Israelites from Egypt and that all the people would tremble. Look at Exodus 15:14-16: “"The peoples have heard, they tremble; Anguish has gripped the inhabitants of Philistia. Then the chiefs of Edom were dismayed; The leaders of Moab, trembling grips them; All the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away. Terror and dread fall upon them; By the greatness of Your arm they are motionless as stone; Until Your people pass over, O LORD, Until the people pass over whom You have purchased.” Not only did God promise to lead the Israelites and plant them in Jerusalem, the land of Canaan, the land of His inheritance, but also to make it for His dwelling, the sanctuary which His hands had established (v. 17). And the Lord promised to reign over God's people forever and ever (v. 18). This word of promise never ended with God bringing the Israelites to Canaan, the Promised Land. Furthermore, this promise of God was fulfilled when Jesus, who is the true Moses, died on the cross and resurrected for us, the church, and made us the temple of God and reign over us. But this too is not the final fulfillment of God's word of promise. The final fulfillment is that the Lord will come back to us and lead us, the church of the true God, to God's dwelling place, the true New Jerusalem, heaven, where He will reign over us forever. When we think of the Lord's work to be done in the future, we cannot but praise the Lord who will come again. May we all be praying, expecting, and waiting in faith for the wonderful things the Lord will do in the future and sing the song of salvation and of victory to God.
I personally enjoy singing “How Great Thou Art: (v. 1) “O, Lord my God! When I in awesome wonder consider all the worlds Thy hands have made, I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, Thy power throughout the universe displayed. (v. 4) “When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart! Then I shall bow in humble adoration And there proclaim, my God, how great Thou art!.” When my soul praises how great my Savior God is as I think about His second coming, there are times when my heart becomes full and hot tears come out. How can we not praise our Savior God who sent His begotten Son into the earth and crucified Him for us, for our salvation? Let us all sing praises to the Lord our God for His greatness.
Praising the Lord for His greatness,
Pastor James Kim