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GOD IS KEEPING HIS PROMISES FOR THE PRAISE OF HIS GLORYExodus 15:1—21INTRODUCTION In 1992 I had been a Christian for 18 years. I had been involved in full-time ministry for 15 of those years. There were a lot of good things that I loved. I loved being a dad and seeking to raise Christian children. I loved being a husband to Jane. I loved sharing the gospel with students, teaching the Bible, leading a team of other Campus Crusade for Christ staff in the task of reaching the UI with the gospel. I loved being involved in my local church. I loved playing basketball and watching my boys play basketball and my daughter dance ballet. I loved reading. I loved hunting. But I did not love Jesus and I didn’t see any problem with that. I was passionate about many things but Jesus himself is not whom I was passionate about. There were many reasons for this but one of the main reasons is because I did not think that how I felt had anything to do with my faith. I had been taught and I regularly taught others that feelings were irrelevant when it came to faith. There was a little illustration I had been taught that I regularly shared. If you can imagine a train pulled by an old steam engine. There are three cars in the train: the engine, the coal car and the caboose. What I taught was that the engine was the Word of God, the Bible, which contains all God’s promises and commands. The coal car was my faith in God’s word. The way we become Christians and the way we live as Christians is by placing the coal of our faith in the engine of God’s word. So far the illustration is absolutely correct. The problem is with the caboose. The caboose was our feelings. The point the illustration makes is that the train can run with or without the caboose. In short, “Faith is Not a Feeling.” There is a very limited way that this idea is helpful. Just because you don’t feel like a Christian at the moment doesn’t mean you are not a Christian, just as not feeling married at the moment doesn’t mean you are not married. However, the effect of this illustration and the broader idea that faith and feelings are in no way connected has been the cause of much harm in the church over the years. It reduces faith to mere assent to facts, to a decision you and I make. Faith we are told is simply a matter of believing that Jesus died on the cross for your sins and praying a prayer to invite him into your life. Obviously faith involves giving assent to the facts about Jesus but it is so much more. We see this so powerfully illustrated in this passage. Let me remind you of the setting. The people of Israel have just gone through 12 to 18 hours of high octane, adrenaline-producing terror. On the previous day, while they were peacefully camped along the northwestern shore of the Red Sea, the mighty army of Egypt had suddenly come upon them, intent on their destruction. They went in a moment from contentment to full blown panic. God immediately intervened by moving the visible sign of his presence, the pillar of fire, between the Egyptians and the Israelites. He then instructed Moses to extend his hand over the Red Sea and the Lord, through a powerful east wind, blew a path through the waters of the Red Sea. The Israelites marched through the Red Sea on dry land all night long. In the morning, after Israel was safely through, the pillar of fire moved and the Egyptian army pursued Israel down through the path between the two walls of water. At that moment, God sent the water back to its place, killing all of Pharaoh’s army that had followed them into the sea. The Red Sea has returned to its natural, calm state. The Israelites are on the southeastern shore of this large inland lake watching as the dead bodies of the Egyptian soldiers and their horses wash up on shore. If you will notice, the last verse in chapter 14 says, “And when the Israelites saw the great power the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant.” We are told that the nation of Israel now has faith in the Lord. What immediately follows shows that connection between faith and feelings. They break into a song of praise. They do what every human being naturally does when they observe something that impresses them. They break out in declaring the greatness of what they have observed or to use a religious word, they worship the cause of what has impressed them. Like sports fans screaming when their team scores; like bargain hunters who call their best friend after making an amazing purchase; like parents after the birth of their child call friends and family, so the nation Israel declare in song their joy in God and his salvation. True faith always produces true worship. True faith understands the true greatness of God and his work and thus produces true worship. That is what Exodus 15: 1-21 records for us. Here we see modeled by the nation of Israel what the purpose of God is in the world and what the point of the Christian life is: worship. True worship is a heartfelt response to God and his salvation. We are going to make four observations about worship this morning. MAIN POINT True worship is a heartfelt response to God and his salvation. I. It naturally arises when his power and grace are seen (vv. 1, 11, 19-21) It is not likely that the Israelites sang this song immediately after the sea returned to its place. Most likely, they set up camp, Moses composed it and taught it and then they gathered in a more formal way to remember and rejoice in what the Lord had done. Then this poem was regularly used in time of public and private worship to declare the greatness of God. Would it not be hard to imagine them singing this song indifferently? The glory of God has been revealed to them in great ways and they respond to his revealing his power and grace by singing this song with emotion. You can hear the emotion in the language, the metaphor and the strength of the words. Read vv. 2, 4 & 11. Then there are the women who en masse follow Miriam in a dance, with tambourines and repeatedly sing, “Sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted. The horse and the rider he has hurled into the sea.” It would be impossible to imagine them singing this in a monotone way with no emotion. My family hates to go to the movies with me. I don’t hesitate to respond, out loud, to what I see on the screen. Many years ago, when Jane and I went to watch the first “Rocky” movie, I punched the back of the seat in front of me so hard the person sitting in it turned around, which embarrassed my wife to no end. I regularly clap and cheer when the good guys win. This was especially true when I watched the recent, “Lord of the Rings” trilogy as I have been a huge fan of Tolkien’s books for years. I can’t help myself. I praise what I see and admire. C.S. Lewis makes this exact point in his commentary on the book of Psalms as he wrestles with why God demands praise. He says, “But the most obvious fact about praise, whether of God or anything, strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise… The world rings with praise—lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game… My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can’t help doing, about everything else we value. I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.” Every human being cannot help but praise those things and people that they find attractive, impressive and beautiful. Everyone does this all the time. What is more impressive to a human being than when they are sure they are going to die or succumb to some other great disaster but then they are rescued by the efforts of another? When the doctor does the emergency operation that saves your life or the fireman rescues your child from the fire or the rich uncle pays your college tuition, you do not stand idly by and feel nothing and do nothing. When someone does something that benefits you in some great way, especially if that work took great effort or required great skill or exposed the other to risk, you are full of gratitude towards the other and delight in their kindness and you express your joy in praising and thanking the person and in telling others about how great the person is. Can you imagine a mother receiving her child whom was trapped in a burning building from the arms of the firefighter who risked his life to save him having no gratitude towards the firefighter and expressing no word of thanks? Can you imagine standing on the shore of the Red Sea and watching this amazing display of power that rescues you from certain calamity and having no emotional response and not uttering a single word? So the Israelites do what every human would naturally do. They have seen God’s grace and power and so they enthusiastically praise him with this song. Miriam and the other women dance, play the tambourine and sing. This is all done with joy. The Israelites deeply felt the danger they were in and then they saw God’s powerful saving act. Their hearts were full of fear of the Lord and trust in the Lord and joy in his salvation and so they declared his praise. These things are unbreakably bound together. As I have stated repeatedly this salvation that God is performing for the Israelites is a foreshadowing of the much greater salvation that Christ accomplishes for his people. When a person sees the power and grace of God in the gospel of Jesus they do the same thing that we see Israel doing here, they worship and thank God because of what they see. We see this in Acts 2 when Peter preaches the first Christian sermon. At the end of it the audience was “cut to the heart” and cried out, “Brothers, what must we do to be saved?” Then a few verses later, after recording that 3000 people became Christians that day it says, “they were filled with awe” and they “ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God”. They were terrified by the threat of God’s justice and were relieved by the promise of forgiveness in Christ and thus joined together in worshipping God with his people. This is conversion, this is the mark of true faith. Your heart is affected by the facts of the gospel. You are affected in knowing that you are a sinner deserving of hell. You deeply fear the Lord’s wrath against you for sin. You are overjoyed to discover there is a Savior for sinners. You admire Christ in all of his perfections and for all of his suffering for you. So you worship our Lord Christ and the glorious Father and the comforting Holy Spirit for the great work of salvation this great, Triune God has accomplished. You do not decide to become a Christian anymore than a Packer fan decides to cheer when Ahman Green scores a touchdown. You see the great work of Christ on your behalf and you rejoice to trust in him and thus worship him. True worship is a heartfelt response to God and his salvation.
II. It recounts what God has done and what he will do (vv. 4-10 & 12-17) I want us to consider the content of their praise. The first thing to note is that this hymn is about God. It is a recounting of what he has done, what he will do and what his actions show us about his greatness and his purposes. This song is not about humans or what humans do, think or feel. Second, notice how detailed and repetitious the descriptions of what God has done are. When you are impressed with what someone else has done, you never tire of describing in detail what it is that the one you admire has done. Sports fans never tire of retelling the story of some great exploit by their favorite athlete. Sportsmen will gladly tell you about the huge fish that fought for an hour or the wily buck that tried to sneak by. Grandmothers will never grow tired of describing to you the accomplishments of their grandchildren. It is the nature of praise to give the details and delight in repeating them. Third, note that the emphasis in vv. 4-10 is upon the Lord’s overcoming and destroying Pharaoh’s army. The power of Egypt and their passion to pursue and destroy Israel is described in vv. 4, 7 and 9. Then the majesty of God in destroying these powerful and perverse enemies is highlighted. He treats the most powerful army in the world as if it chaff. He hurls them to the ground. They sink like lead in the water. He causes the earth to swallow them up. While vv. 4-10 retell the work of God in destroying Egypt, vv. 13-17 describe what God will do in the future. The people of Israel look at what God has done at the Red Sea and understand that this event guarantees his future work. Therefore, they praise him for his future work. The future is secure because God has shown that he is for Israel by this mighty work. There will be many hazards along the way to the land of promise but the God who destroyed the Egyptians will also destroy every other enemy. Verses 13 & 17 tell the end to which God is going to bring Israel. He is leading them to his holy dwelling. He will plant them on the mountain of his inheritance, the place he has made his dwelling on earth. In between these statements of his ultimate goal they list Israel’s enemies, Philistia, Edom, Moab and Canaan. Then the song declares, “by the power of your arm they will be still as stone.” The obvious parallel cannot be missed. In the same way God dealt with Egypt, he will deal with all of Israel’s enemies. There is nothing and no one who can prevent God from bringing Israel to the land of promise. They are safe and secure from all alarm. I hope you can see how this physical act of deliverance for Israel and this journey to the holy dwelling place of the Lord is a symbol, a foreshadowing of the great work of God through Christ. What occupies our attention as Christians is the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. The historical event of Christ coming into the world and of his living, dying and rising for us is what we never grow tired of talking about, singing about and praising God about. We agree with the apostle Paul who says, “I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.” We delight to talk about and sing about the facts of the gospel. Jesus said that he was going to send the Holy Spirit into the world to tell us about the meaning of his death and resurrection. It is the Holy Spirit’s primary work to bring glory to Christ; to point out to us how admirable Jesus Christ is. If you are bored by Jesus Christ and by his death and resurrection, if these things are not what you delight to talk about, then you have to examine where you truly stand with God. To be a Christian and to find no delight in Christ and his work is an impossibility. But also, just as Israel praises God not only for what he has done but also for what he is going to do, so we not only recount and worship God for what he did in Jesus but for what we know he is going to do in the future because of what he did in the life and death of Jesus. Listen to Paul again after talking about what God has done in Christ: “What then shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also, along with him freely give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? God is the one who justifies, who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus who died—more than that—who was raised from the dead is sitting at God’s right hand and is also interceding for us. Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can trouble, or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword… No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Our hearts are full of confidence in regards to the future and we regularly praise God for what he is going to do, all because of what he has done in the Christ. We face the future with confidence in our hearts and praise on our lips because we know that we cannot be harmed. We may lose our health, our money, our home, our loved ones, but we cannot lose the only thing that matters in life, being loved by God and living with him forever. The knowledge of this security produces joy in us that leads us to worship God. True worship is a heartfelt response to God and his salvation.
III. It describes the greatness of God and his purposes (vv. 2-3, 11, 18, 21) There are a number of statements in this song that go beyond mere description of what God has done or will do. This act of God led God’s people to draw conclusions about God, his purposes in the world and his relationship to them. All of these things then become the cause of more joy and worship. The first thing that is stated is that God is highly exalted. The act of God in saving his people and destroying his enemies shows that there is no god like Yahweh. Look at the variety of ways this is stated: “The Lord is a warrior.” “Your right hand, O Lord, was majestic in power.” “In the greatness of your majesty you threw down those who oppose you.” Then the pinnacle in vv. 11 and 18: “Who among the gods is like you, O Lord? Who is like you—majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?” “The Lord will reign forever and ever.” The acts of God in history to save his people are revelations of his glory. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4 that “God has made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” We are not just taken up with the acts of God in Christ but we are taken up with God himself who reveals his glory through Christ. Second, look at v. 2. We don’t only worship God for being an impressive but distant God who deserves our admiration. We worship him because he is my strength, my song, my salvation and my God. While God’s destruction of Egypt preserved the nation of Israel, yet it also was the act by which he saved each individual in Israel. God is praised by the whole congregation but also by each individual. How much more true is the love of God for individual sinners shown in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus? This comes out so clearly in the writings of Paul. He says, “Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ out Lord.” “There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.” “The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus… This is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the worst.” What better thing can a poor sinner like you say than that the great creator God who is “majestic in holiness and awesome in glory” is also, “my strength and my song, my salvation and my God?” Finally, notice, in v. 13, how the act of crossing the Red Sea is the means by which God redeemed the whole nation of Israel. Then in v.16 Israel is described as “the people you bought”. Israel thus belongs to God as his people, distinct from all other people of the world. God bought them, redeemed them to be his people. As Moses says later, in Deuteronomy 7:6, “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. For the Lord your God has chosen you, out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.” As his people he is leading us to his holy dwelling. He is going to plant us on the mountain where he dwells. The point of all this is that the goal of this whole salvation is to live with God forever. It is indeed the chief end of man to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. Back in 1992 I discovered that the purpose for which God saved me was to know God, to be taken up with God himself, forever. It was at that time that I began a regular program of memorizing Scripture and Exodus 15:13 was one of the first verses I memorized because it states the purpose of God in my life, indeed his purpose for all things. He is out to bring his people to the place where he dwells so we can live with him forever. Christ lived, died, rose again and now is at God’s right hand interceding for us for this one great purpose, to bring us to God. God is the end of all things. He is the treasure for which we seek. Christ didn’t die so we could live guilt free lives or so that we could raise Christian families or so we could take the gospel to the world or so we could play golf in heaven. He died to bring us to God, forever. True worship is a heartfelt response to God and his salvation.
IV. It involves the whole people of God in a variety of physical and musical actions (vv. 1 & 20-21) This may be an anticlimactic point but there are a number of things in this worship experience to give us direction as we worship together as God’s people. First, the whole people of God are involved in the worship of God. Moses makes a point of telling us that all the women were involved in this worship. Worship is for all the people of God to do together. All the generations, all the genders, all the races are to worship the Lord for his great salvation. God is most glorified when the great diversity that exists within his people is gathered together in adoration of him. Second, notice that the delight that these people felt in God’s salvation was expressed through the use of their bodies, the women danced. I’m not advocating that we dance in our services. What I am telling you is that it is right for people who are full of joy in God to declare their joy in song and with their bodies. When your daughter dances in her recital you don’t simply sit in your seat and whisper, while sitting on your hands, “yeah”. You shout and you clap because of your delight. True affections for God often produce bodily effects. We raise our hands, we shout, we cry, we stand, we sit, we kneel, we lay prostrate, we bow our heads, and we lift our heads. We express the affections of our hearts through the use of our bodies. We are not all the same in this and there is no ground for judging one another’s sincerity or spirituality based upon either the presence or absence of bodily expressions of your delight in God. I’m simply making the point that it should not surprise us if people express their joy in God or sorrow for their sins or fear of God’s judgment in some physical way. Finally, let me point out that worship involves music and the playing of musical instruments. In particular, in this instance, percussive instruments were used. My guess would be that probably few of us would have liked the sound of the music these women played. We probably would not have liked the melody and the harmony of the singing. These were ancient Middle Eastern nomadic people. They were not people trained in music theory or with a history of the great classical music of Europe or of jazz or the blues or rock n’ roll. Yet, God was pleased to receive this musical praise, which none of us would have liked. Let me say that again, I am certain not a person in here would have liked the music these people sang. I want to explain to you how I and the other elders think about the musical style we are using to express our worship as a congregation. This is what we have told Brent and Connie and Steve as they plan our musical worship. These are the principals we have adopted to guide us in our musical worship. First, we believe that there is no such thing as a “sacred” musical style. God does not prefer one style of music to another. The infinite varieties of combinations of tones that make up music can all be used to express the worth of God from the hearts and lips of those who love him. The critical event in musical worship is not the style of music but the hearts of those who sing and play. Second, our main criterion in selecting music is the theological substance of the lyrics, not the style of music. There are songs, both old hymns and modern songs we will not permit to be sung in our worship because of erroneous doctrine or because of the absence of truth in the lyrics. Third, we yearn to be a place where we are together because we all love Jesus, not because we all love the same kind of music. We want our music to reflect our diversity and to require that we accept one another in spite of our differences. Therefore, we believe that if everyone leaves here Sunday morning and can say that they enjoyed at least one of the tunes that we sing and that they didn’t like at least one of the tunes we sang, we will have succeeded. Fourth, we want to remain connected to the history of the church and so we aim to sing at least one hymn each week. Fifth, we want to involve as many people as we possibly can in leading us in worship. We invite you to use your musical gifts whether in song or on instruments to help lead our congregation in worship. In particular, we are seeking to have a children’s and an adult choir to sing on Christmas Eve and the Sunday following Christmas. Talk with Janet Hutton if you’d like to be involved. True worship is a heartfelt response to God and his salvation.
© Copyright
2004 John Swanson. |