“1 Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord: “I will sing to the Lord, for He is highly exalted. The horse and its rider He has hurled into the sea. 2 The Lord is my strength and my song; He has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt Him. 3 The Lord is a warrior; the Lord is His name. 4 Pharaoh’s chariots and His army He has hurled into the sea. The best of Pharaoh’s officers are drowned in the Red Sea. 5 The deep waters have covered them; they sank to the depths like a stone.
6 “Your right hand, O Lord, was majestic in power. Your right hand, O Lord, shattered the enemy. 7 In the greatness of Your majesty You threw down those who opposed You. You unleashed Your burning anger; it consumed them like stubble. 8 By the blast of Your nostrils the waters piled up. The surging waters stood firm like a wall; the deep waters congealed in the heart of the sea.
9 “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 10 and my hand will destroy them.’ But You blew with Your breath, and the sea covered them. They sank like lead in the mighty waters. 11 “Who among the gods is like You, O Lord? Who is like You—majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders? 12 You stretched out Your right hand and the earth swallowed them.
13 “In Your unfailing love You will lead the people You have redeemed. In Your strength You will guide them to Your holy dwelling. 14 The nations will hear and tremble; anguish will grip the people of Philistia. 15 The chiefs of Edom will be terrified, the leaders of Moab will be seized with trembling, the people of Canaan will melt away; 16 terror and dread will fall upon them. By the power of Your arm, they will be as still as a stone—until Your people pass by, O Lord, until the people You bought pass by. 17 You will bring them in and plant them on the mountain of Your inheritance— the place, O Lord, You made for Your dwelling, the sanctuary, O Lord, Your hands established. 18 The Lord will reign for ever and ever.”
19 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. 20 Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women followed her, with tambourines and dancing. 21 Miriam sang to them: “Sing to the Lord, for He is highly exalted. The horse and its rider He has hurled into the sea.””
When it comes to basketball, the point of the back screen post isn’t to know it. The point is to execute the play. When it comes to the Bible, the point of the history of salvation through the Red Sea isn’t to just know that it happened. The point is to execute faith in the God who does deeds like the part of the Red Sea. It’s the play. It’s the faith. That’s the point.
The point is not to merely know the data. Our tradition is into knowing. Roman Catholics are into intermediaries. Lutherans are into mystery. Pentecostals are into experience. The Reformed are into knowing. On the whole I’ll go with knowing, but the correction for us is that knowing isn’t the point. The point is putting faith in this God of whom we now know.
You can know the book of Romans without trusting this God who reconciles Himself to sinners. You can know every word of the book of Psalms without praying. You can know the book of Exodus without entrusting yourself to the God who will lead you in ways you don’t understand. The question at the end of our time together in this book is whether you have faith in this God; that’s the point—faith is the point; that’s the claim of this sermon.
We will study this in three points. First: the song of the past. Second: the song of the future. Third: the song continues. First, in verses 1-11, the song of the past. Second, in verses 12-18, the song of the future. Third, in verses 19-21, the song continues.
We see this faith expressed in song in our first point: the song of the past. Last week we listened to Moses recount the history of the Red Sea salvation. This week he sings it. It’s the same story—just sung and instead of said, and that changes a lot. It doesn’t change the facts. It changes the force. It owns it. That’s how music works. Music helps you own the words. That’s why most of us will listen to it and not a book on tape on the way home. That’s why we sing in this sanctuary far more than we recite.
After the Red Sea collapsed on the Egyptian army, the people sang. They owned the data of what happened. Moses led them in song. We shouldn’t be surprised that he and possibly others came up with this song so quickly. Folk artists still do that. Music used to be a much more widespread activity. We’ve largely professionalized it. Church is one of the few institutions left which democratizes it, which is why you would do well to sing whether you think you are a good singer or not. “If anything is worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly,” as Chesterton put it—meaning the deeds that matter are too important for you not to do.
The first word of Moses’ song is about owning faith. The first word is “I”—“I will sing to the Lord.” That “I” is like the “I” in the song How Do I Live? “How do I live without you? I want to know. How do I breathe without you—if you ever go? How do I ever, ever survive?” No one listening to that thinks, “I do wonder how the lyricist Diane Warren would get along without her man. I should check in on that.” You think about yourself. You become the “I” of, “How do I live without you? I want to know.” That’s how it works with, “I will sing unto the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously.” It’s not the data. It’s owning it. It’s faith.
Moses’ song is emphatic. Phrases like “triumphed gloriously” or “highly exalted” are as emphatic as it gets in the Hebrew. The message is that God’s victory over Egypt was a blowout. In 1916, the Georgia Tech football program beat Cumberland College 220 to 0. That’s what’s going on with “I will sing unto the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously.” I chose a football illustration because that’s something that gets many in our culture excited. Is there anything of that in you regarding what God is up to in the world? In your life?
God’s victory over Egypt is so familiar that we skim over its oddity. Think about verse 1’s, “The horse and its rider He has hurled into the sea.” How bizarre would it be to see an orca whale in our parking lot after the service? That’s how bizarre it is to have horses and chariots in the middle of a sea. You’d be left thinking, “how did that get there?” That’s the wonder Moses is owning in this song. That’s why you are to feel wonder when you sing certain hymns.
Singing owns truth. It holds it close. The next lyrics holds God close; “The Lord is my strength and my song; He has become my salvation.” That’s relationship. Perhaps you’ve listened to Delilah, the late-night radio show host. People call in and ask Delilah to play a song for that someone special in their life—a friend, a spouse. “You know Delilah, she’s been with me through everything.” “She sounds like a pretty special lady.” “You don’t even know. She’s my strength. She’s my song. Delilah, she’s my salvation,” and then Delilah finds a song that seems to fit. That’s the way you are to think about verse 2, “The Lord is my strength and my song; He has become my salvation.” If that sounds funny to you, ask yourself why is it that people write songs about God. People write songs like Amazing Grace or How Great Thou Art because they know God personally the way those callers know their special someone. That’s why we have these songs we sing to God in this sanctuary.
These people know God. That’s what Moses was expressing in verse 2, “He is my God, and I will praise Him, my father’s God, and I will exalt Him.” Moses knows that he stands in a long line of those who love God. His father, who was a slave, knew this God as did his mother who saved his life out of faith in God. Others know Him too and love Him just as much you do.
Like any good song, Moses’ song uses poetic imagery; “By the blast of Your nostrils the waters piled up.” Poetic imagery makes music memorable. That’s why, “I’m sad and I’ve been sad before,” isn’t a lyric and, “Hello darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again,” is. That’s why, “I used to have the world by the tail and now I have nothing,” isn’t a lyric and, “now I work down at the carwash where all it ever does is rain,” is. Taking, “By the blast of Your nostrils the waters piled up,” in a literalistic fashion and imagining like the Mormons that God has nostrils misses the point. It’s a poetic image of rage. The Lord is snorting with anger over these proud Egyptians who refuse to learn their lesson. These snorts of rage are the wind that pile up the water of the Red Sea. If you’re thinking, that’s not how it went, Moses seems to think it is. He also seems to think it was an east wind that the Lord sent all night. Moses is teaching us how to see the world. We’re to see it as if this God is involved in it all. The question is whether you think this is your Father’s world.
Moses pictures the Egyptians as a bunch of thugs. The language of verses 9-10 is rapid fire like rap. Egypt says, “I will pursue; I will overtake them. I will divide the spoils; I will gorge myself on them. I will draw my sword and my hand will destroy them.” You’re meant to feel the fury of Egypt. You’re meant to see the Egyptians like a bully about to pounce on a little child, and then out of nowhere that child’s big brother, who is twice as big as the bully, walks around the corner, and that bully shrinks away. That’s, “But You blew with Your breath, and the sea covered them. They sank like lead in the mighty waters.” That’s God. The question of the Exodus isn’t whether you know the fourth plague was the flies. The question is whether you are learning to trust this God in the midst of this hostile world. Were you this past week?
That’s the motivation for the question of verse 11, “Who among the gods is like You, O Lord?” We’ve been seeing for this whole series that no one is like the Lord. That’s the point of these first fifteen chapters—“that you might know that I am the Lord and no one is like me.” Calvin says that this is the Lord “ravishing us with astonishment.” Do you think anyone is like the Lord? If you’ve learned that lesson, you are trusting Him. If you aren’t trusting Him, you haven’t learned that lesson. To know the Lord is to trust the Lord. To know Jesus is to trust him. Don’t limit faith to mental agreement. It’s you putting yourself out there into God’s hands. You’ve got plenty of contexts to do that in every day.
That’s the song of the past—of what had just happened at the Red Sea. It’s our longest point because it’s the heart of the song and takes up the most verses. Now we come to something unexpected—our second point: the song of the future.
What we have now is likely prophecy. Much of prophecy was expressed through song. The prophets often used musical instruments in their ministry. Prophecy isn’t about data collection either—as if knowing the connection between two verses is a sign of spiritual maturing. Seeing that connection and learning to trust this God who keeps His promises, His prophecies, is a sign of spiritual maturing.
We see here the prophecy of God’s people entering the land and the response of the Gentiles; verse 14, “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.” The Exodus is over. The Conquest now begins.
The Israelites are to take the lessons of faith they’ve learned and apply them now. The don’t. They will choose not to trust the Lord of the Exodus and so that generation will pass away outside the land. Faith takes lessons of the past and applies them now. That’s what the song we will sing after this sermon will do. “I will sing unto the Lord for He has triumphed gloriously the horse and rider thrown into the sea,” combined with, “I will sing unto the Lord for He has triumphed gloriously the grave is empty won’t you come and see?” You aren’t learning the lesson of the Exodus if you aren’t living the new creation based on the resurrection. It’s now.
We are to make this now song our own. We are to make faith our own. Songs do that. Dolly Parton wrote I Will Always Love You. Whitney Houston made it her own. Nine Inch Nails wrote Hurt. Johnny Cash made it his own. Many songs in the 90’s took music from 80’s song and gave them new lyrics. That’s making it your own. That’s part of how faith works. You make the Psalms your own. You make the Exodus your own. You act as if it has to do with you.
Each generation needs to make it their own. You see that with the word “stone” in verse 16, “terror and dread will fall upon [the Canaanites]. By the power of Your arm, they will be as still as a stone—until Your people pass by.” This is the same word as “stone” from verse 5, “The deep waters have covered them; they sank to the depths like a stone.” The idea is that the Lord is doing it again. Faith is trusting that this God who worked in the past is working today.
That’s a fair portion of what Jesus was doing. He’s not teaching much of anything that’s new. He’s explaining how it was always meant to be understood. His deeds are a doing it again. Doing the sacrificial system again. Doing the kingship again. Doing a surprise victory again. God’s people sang songs about the Exodus for centuries. We’ve been singing about Jesus’ resurrection for centuries. It’s the same God doing the same salvation. The beat goes on. The question is whether you’re adding your voice. The question is whether you’re owning it or assuming assenting to awareness is spirituality. We see that in our final point as well: the song continues.
This isn’t the only place this song of Moses appears. Please turn to Revelation 15, “I saw in heaven another great and marvelous sign: seven angels with the seven last plagues—last, because with them God’s wrath is completed. And I saw what looked like a sea of glass mixed with fire and, standing beside the sea, those who had been victorious over the beast and his image and over the number of his name. They held harps given them by God and sang the song of Moses the servant of God and the song of the Lamb,” and then comes the song of the Lamb.
In glory, we will recount the great deeds of God and of this life. This song will still be sung because even in glory our God will do unexpected acts of love and grace—echoes of the Red Sea, echoes of the empty tomb. We will remember and we will re-enact. We will then know the God of Moses. We will know the Father of Jesus. Faith will be sight.
This song of Moses will be and has been remembered. Now we see how. It’s remembered because Miriam grabbed a tambourine and taught the women of Israel the song. We see her teach the first line of Moses’ song in verse 21, but almost certainly taught the whole song. You’ve got to ask yourself, why include this? Why tell us about Miriam teaching this song to the women? It’s not included just because it happened that way. There are millions of details which happened but didn’t make their way into Scripture. Why include this one?
We’re told that Miriam taught this song to the women because we only know songs because someone taught us. Think about why you know songs about God. “This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.” “Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells you so.” Who taught you that? Who teaches what really matters to the next generation? It was almost certainly a woman and likely one specific woman taught about God—your mom. “The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.” You want something that needs to be remembered to be remembered? You want something that’s worth passed on to be passed on? Miriam knew what to do. You tell the women. You tell the mothers.
And you learn to sing what matters. Consider that. Consider the work that Seth is called to. Consider the work that our musicians put into our services. Consider your own singing. We are to own this. Miriam did. Those mothers did.
That’s our last word in this book of Exodus and it’s a perfect place stop because it’s where we started. Does anyone remember what started this series? The Lord worked out His plan through women doing the obvious kindness in front of them—two midwives having nothing to do with a tyrannical government policy aimed at killing babies, a mother trying to take care of her newborn in that deadly situation, a sister keeping watch over her baby brother in the river, the daughter of a king recognizing that no good would come out of drowning a baby boy.
Look at what the Lord did through that. He crippled a tyrannical superpower. He unleashed a glory war that’s still convincing people that He’s the one they ought to revere. He’s quite capable of doing whatever He wants through whatever He wants—handfuls of dust tossed into the air, a strong east wind, four decades spent watching sheep in the backcountry, a simple shepherd’s staff. This has been all about what He can do. You’d be very wise to do what you sang at the beginning of this service. “Ponder anew what the Almighty can do, if with His love He befriends you.” Amen.