Exodus 15:1-21

Friends, thanks for being back as we start another week working our way through Exodus in the 15th chapter today as we start off on this Monday. This is an interesting chapter, particularly the front part of it. There are these moments in Scripture and they tend to follow big events. We see this, we’re coming up on the Advent season. You see this in some of the Christmas stories. It’s scattered in other places throughout the Old Testament. But here we move into a couple of songs. One is very much considered a song. The other one’s short, but we’ll talk about it. But in a sense, Michael, these are liturgical moments. I think they capture the idea, you know, there are all kinds of songs in the Psalms, of course, the entire book. But woven into the narrative, there are these moments when characters break out into song and it functions as a kind of worship moment for people. It usually happens. I don’t remember how much of that we saw in Genesis, I think, not a lot. But here we have a kind of collective praise moment. And the songs do two things. They function as worship and they also generally retell the part of the story that we’ve just seen. And so that’s the case today as we move into what the scripture calls the song of Moses. Anything to add to that, Michael? No, I was shocked, but I didn’t claim it. Okay, so chapter 15, verse 1, “Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord. I will sing to the Lord, he has triumphed gloriously, horse and rider, he’s thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength, my might, he has become my salvation. This is my God and I will praise him, my Father’s God. I will exalt him. The Lord is a warrior. The Lord is his name.” Yeah, we stopped there. That sets the tone pretty well. “Praise, the Lord is my strength, my might, his name, the Lord.” Yahweh, again, in the text, “The Lord is a warrior, Yahweh is his name.” That is the name, remember, given at the burning bush, a celebration here. And I think in the story, Michael, clearly just a genuine moment of praise. The people have escaped. They have left 430 years of slavery and bondage behind them. It hasn’t been without its bumps, but they stand at a place of deliverance. They stand at a place of hope. And it’s fitting that we’re having this conversation as we move toward thanksgiving, because there are those moments in life where really the only thing that seems appropriate is to be grateful. And in this case, you know, there’s probably not a better expression of that for humans than breaking out in song. I don’t know, maybe not all of you are singers, but here we get the sense that this is just kind of a spontaneous, grateful moment where the people respond with their gratitude in singing. This is a super dangerous thing to lead off with in a study, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to make you roll your eyes pretty hard, but it reminds me in the six Star Wars movie. Yeah, at the end, you know, they they defeat the empire and there’s a scene, a montage of all of these planets where the story has transpired over time. And they’re all singing, but they’re singing in their own tongue. They’re singing in their own way. There’s instruments. It’s this big kind of, you know, recognition of what has happened. And, you know, let me bring that out of Star Wars into reality. There is something on the other side of deliverance. There’s really no better way to describe the human experience than that kind of lightness that moves you to song. Even if you’re not a singer, it’s not the song itself. It’s the feeling that something has changed that is irreversible. There’s no going back. There’s no that Egypt now lies on the other side of the sea, that that God is warrior here. This language that God is warrior. The Lord is his name is is both calling upon God’s ability to save the people, Clint, but also the fact that God is the one who was just named a few chapters before when God names himself to Moses at the burning bush. There’s a kind of communal identity that’s been happening throughout the plagues now in this final deliverance. And they have no other recourse in the other side of deliverance than to offer up a song. I think it it’s maybe easy as a reader who is accustomed to a story like this in our Sunday school classes to to read beyond a section like this. But this is a people identifying a nation defining a life changing fulcrum moment for the people of Israel, and it will remain so for the rest of scripture, by the way. And so the fact that there’s a song here, I think is just a natural human response to the God who is worthy of song. Yeah. And I’m not going to read this word for word, but the next section of the song is a retelling. You know, Pharaoh’s chariots and army were cast into the sea, the floods covered them, you overthrew your adversaries, you sent out your fury, it consumed them. At the breath of your nostrils, the waters piled high, the floods stood in a heap. The deep congealed in the heart of the sea. The enemy said, I will pursue, I will divide, I will draw my sword. You blew with your wind and the sea covered them. They sank like lead in the mighty waters. And so here we get a specific retelling of the events that occasion the song, the deliverance of Israel, the overthrow of Egypt. This is another aspect of songs. We forget this sometimes, but songs in many instances were created to teach. Think of the alphabet song. There is this educational aspect to many of our songs. That’s why we sing hymns in church. It’s not just that we like the music, it’s that the hymn becomes a way of teaching the faith. And that lives in a place that is much deeper than some of our intellectual learning. I’m always amazed when, Michael, when you or I have services at the nursing home, there will often be people who aren’t able to really track. And I’m astounded when we start a hymn when How Great Thou Art or Amazing Grace or In the Garden is suggested and we start singing it, you will often, and I don’t mean occasional, you will often see those same people who don’t seem very cognizant begin singing. There’s something, music lives at a deep, deep part of the human heart. And here, the idea of this song is to retell and sort of capture forever the events that they’re celebrating here with this music. You know, water is a very prominent theme throughout all of the scriptures. I would remind you of Genesis, the spirits hovering over the water, you have the well narratives that we went through together in Genesis, some pivotal moments around water there. And I want to remind you, this is, it’s not an easy thing to talk about, but it’s an important reminder as we come to this part of the story. Remember that in the beginning of Exodus, water was a place of death. It was a place where children were being brutally killed by this oppressive overlord that the people of Israel were subject in a way that is unbelievable. And here, it should not pass by us that in verse five, the flood covers them and they go down like depths of stone. In this moment, God is serving justice with water. And the very beginning bookend of this book where water was used as an instrument against the people of Israel is now used as an instrument against their enemies. And God is able to use the water itself to bring judgment upon them. And as we go through these studies together, sometimes there’s this feeling that we’ve expressed, Clint, of maybe sounding like a broken record. But to some extent, if we don’t repeat the theme, we might miss the importance of it. And that’s the, this is pointing to God that the whole of this Exodus text and there’s something deeply true in this statement. It’s in the greatness of your majesty, lauding God, your majesty, you overthrew, not the people’s adversaries, but God’s adversaries. I mean, this language is calling our attention to the fact that in this conflict that we set up over the course of 10 plagues, Clint, God was going to win. Now that he has won, the people are giving glory and praise to the God who did it. And they’re doing it, yes, to teach. They’re doing it, yes, to remember. But they’re also doing it because in this moment, it’s one of these beautiful moments where faith comes easy on the backside of deliverance. In this moment, I think we as the reader are right to believe. They’re doing so odd the pure, honest reflection of gratitude in their hearts. And that’s a beautiful moment. Right. And then, you know, so up till now, this part of the song has looked backwards, what happened. Interestingly enough, the song ends looking to the future. In love, you led the people you redeem, you guided them by strength, the people heard, they trembled, pangs seized the inhabitants of Philistia. Then the chiefs of Edom were dismayed, trembling seized the leaders of Moab, and the inhabitants of Canaan melted away, terror and dread fell on them. By the might of your arm, they became still as stone, until your people, O Lord, passed by, until the people whom you acquired passed by, you brought them in and planted them on the mountain of your own possession, the place, O Lord, that you made your abode, the sanctuary, O Lord, that your hands have established, the Lord will reign forever and ever. So this part of the song looks forward as they’ve escaped Egypt. This now looks forward to them settling the Promised Land, to the enemies that will try to keep them, and the word that will spread among those enemies, that God is on the side of the Israelites. And this anticipates something that in the story, at least, has not yet happened. And so it is very interesting that there is a verse that gets attached to this song celebrating not only at the moment of the story what has happened, but looking forward to what will happen. Yeah, and there is some irony, Clint, that the people here who are said to have terror and dread in the sight of the Israelites will ultimately be some of the people who will cause terror and dread for the Israelites. But there’s an honesty in a book like Exodus that is all at once celebrating the victory of God. And then also simultaneously to those who know this story is also tipping off that it’s more complicated than just meets the eye. That while God has been victorious, we’re going to discover that the people have a far more complicated relationship with these nations than what’s been portrayed in the song. And then there’s a restatement as we move to verse 19, “When the horses of Pharaoh and his chariots and the chariot drivers went into the sea, the Lord brought back the water of the sea upon them, but the Israelites walked through the sea on dry ground.” If you’re reading through this and this is not part of the song anymore, you would think to yourself, “Yeah, you already told me that.” And it could be that this just got sandwiched in a couple of places. More than likely, though, it acts as bookends for the song. It is, to this point of the story, it is the signature event. And so it’s probably not shocking that they want to leave us with it at every chance they get. And so it gets re-emphasized. Then we do move to another interesting thing here. Let me read this. We’ll talk about it. “Then the prophet Miriam, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dancing. And Miriam sang to them, ‘Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously, horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.'” So we’ve seen that refrain. Probably that indicates that maybe they’re singing this entire song. But here the women are motivated. They’re activated. They move out. There’s dancing in addition to the singing. I mean, everything about this speaks celebration. There are a couple of interesting notes as we get into that verse. The prophet Miriam. It’s a strange way for the Old Testament to talk about a woman. It’s not unheard of. It happens a couple of places. This is one of them. Sometimes the word prophetess, maybe that’s a better translation because clearly this is a female. And then we’re told Aaron’s sister, which begs the question, well, would that not also be Moses’ sister? And the traditional answer is yes, of course. One suggestion, though, that I think makes this very interesting, you will remember back in the first chapter of Exodus when Moses was placed in the river, the Pharaoh’s daughter finds him and his sister, a Hebrew girl, is sent to say, “Would you like me to find someone to take care of him?” It is not implicitly clear that this is the same sister, that Miriam is in fact that girl from chapter one, but it is not unheard of. And it’s not unthinkable that the Scripture may be bookending this story with the sister’s appearance first of all in the first chapter and now in this transitional worshipful moment. And so while we don’t know that for sure, many believe that to be true, and I don’t see any reason we wouldn’t think that might be the case. I really don’t have much to add here other than to say that women singing songs in celebration following a victory has other scriptural connections that happen throughout the Old Testament. So in some ways, much like in our own language and culture, Clint, there are ways in which you express things. In the event that a person dies, there are ways that you express condolences. If there’s something that goes really well in someone’s life, if there’s a birth in the family, there are things that you do. You send a gift, you go to the shower, you offer this token, whatever that kind of pattern is. There is, not to take away from it, Clint, but there is a pattern here of the people have won this victory. There’s this connection to this person who has already been significant in the story potentially. What we have in this song is an expression put to music with lyrical beauty, the expression of gratitude to God, the wholehearted awareness of who is responsible for the salvation, and gratitude in response to that. For anyone who’s walked along the life of faith, those are beautiful moments. They’re mountaintop moments when God has been close, when things have gone exceptionally well, especially when that can only be attributed to God’s providence. When you look around and you say, “Hey, I honestly can’t take credit for any of this.” I think if you’ve experienced that, you’ve had some sense in a small measure of what this is, but I just want to end with my final note here being Clint, that don’t read past a song like this without the weight of it falling on you. This is an entire nation. We saw hundreds of thousands of people who have been liberated by God’s mighty hand after hundreds of years of captivity. They now experience freedom for the first time ever, and it’s only because of God’s action on their behalf. That is astonishing. It’s stunning. To see these words and expression of faith in an artistic form, you can imagine the pageantry, you can imagine the joy, that’s a beautiful moment to allow yourself to imaginatively be connected to. Hopefully you have had an opportunity to experience that in your life, that kind of connection to God, and hopefully there’ll be many times to come where you get that experience. Yeah, correct me if anyone knows this not to be the case, but I’ve been sitting here trying to run my way through Genesis, and this may be the first song that we’ve seen as we read our way through the Old Testament, and the significance of that, though there would have clearly been songs from the earliest part. The significance of that, if that’s accurate, and even if it’s not, I still think this is largely true, is that their initial song is completely tied to this deliverance they’ve experienced at God’s hands. Their national voice is to lift up praise for God freeing them from their bondage and slavery, and delivering them out of the hands of Egypt. It’s very likely the first note of song in the Old Testament. Now we know there are other songs, the book of Psalms is full, I mean we see lots of singing in the Old Testament, but this initial note is one that is completely coupled to their experience in the Exodus, in being set free, and I think that matters. That’s not coincidental, I think that’s fitting. Yeah, and let’s not go too long. The reality is, God has delivered them, and there are many occasions of deliverance that are still needed, and that’s what will define the story as it goes forward. So, I hope you’ll join us for that, because though we’ve now crossed a major pivot point in the story of Exodus, the story’s not done, and we walk into a new season. Thanks everybody.