Let the Redeemed of the Lord Sing So
November 7, 2021
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Scripture Reading
Exodus 13:17-15:27
13:17 When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near. For God said, “Lest the people change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt.” 18 But God led the people around by the way of the wilderness toward the Red Sea. And the people of Israel went up out of the land of Egypt equipped for battle.19 Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for Joseph had made the sons of Israel solemnly swear, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones with you from here.” 20 And they moved on from Succoth and encamped at Etham, on the edge of the wilderness. 21 And the Lordwent before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. 22 The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people.
14:1 Then the Lord said to Moses, 2 “Tell the people of Israel to turn back and encamp in front of Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, in front of Baal-zephon; you shall encamp facing it, by the sea. 3 For Pharaoh will say of the people of Israel, ‘They are wandering in the land; the wilderness has shut them in.’ 4 And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and he will pursue them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, and the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord.” And they did so.
5 When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, the mind of Pharaoh and his servants was changed toward the people, and they said, “What is this we have done, that we have let Israel go from serving us?” 6 So he made ready his chariot and took his army with him, 7 and took six hundred chosen chariots and all the other chariots of Egypt with officers over all of them. 8 And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued the people of Israel while the people of Israel were going out defiantly. 9 The Egyptians pursued them, all Pharaoh's horses and chariots and his horsemen and his army, and overtook them encamped at the sea, by Pi-hahiroth, in front of Baal-zephon.
10 When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord. 11 They said to Moses, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? 12 Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” 13 And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. 14 The Lordwill fight for you, and you have only to be silent.”
15 The Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward. 16 Lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground.17 And I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they shall go in after them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, his chariots, and his horsemen. 18 And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I have gotten glory over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his horsemen.”
19 Then the angel of God who was going before the host of Israel moved and went behind them, and the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them, 20 coming between the host of Egypt and the host of Israel. And there was the cloud and the darkness. And it lit up the night without one coming near the other all night.
21 Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. 22 And the people of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left. 23 The Egyptians pursued and went in after them into the midst of the sea, all Pharaoh's horses, his chariots, and his horsemen. 24 And in the morning watch the Lord in the pillar of fire and of cloud looked down on the Egyptian forces and threw the Egyptian forces into a panic, 25 clogging their chariot wheels so that they drove heavily. And the Egyptians said, “Let us flee from before Israel, for the Lord fights for them against the Egyptians.”
26 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea, that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen.” 27 So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its normal course when the morning appeared. And as the Egyptians fled into it, the Lord threw the Egyptians into the midst of the sea. 28 The waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen; of all the host of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea, not one of them remained. 29 But the people of Israel walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.
30 Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. 31 Israel saw the great power that the Lord used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the Lord, and they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses.
15:1 Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord, saying,
“I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;
the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.
2 The Lord is my strength and my song,
and he has become my salvation;
this is my God, and I will praise him,
my father's God, and I will exalt him.
3 The Lord is a man of war;
the Lord is his name.
4 “Pharaoh's chariots and his host he cast into the sea,
and his chosen officers were sunk in the Red Sea.
5 The floods covered them;
they went down into the depths like a stone.
6 Your right hand, O Lord, glorious in power,
your right hand, O Lord, shatters the enemy.
7 In the greatness of your majesty you overthrow your adversaries;
you send out your fury; it consumes them like stubble.
8 At the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up;
the floods stood up in a heap;
the deeps congealed in the heart of the sea.
9 The enemy said, ‘I will pursue, I will overtake,
I will divide the spoil, my desire shall have its fill of them.
I will draw my sword; my hand shall destroy them.’
10 You blew with your wind; the sea covered them;
they sank like lead in the mighty waters.
11 “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?
Who is like you, majestic in holiness,
awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?
12 You stretched out your right hand;
the earth swallowed them.
13 “You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed;
you have guided them by your strength to your holy abode.
14 The peoples have heard; they tremble;
pangs have seized the inhabitants of Philistia.
15 Now are the chiefs of Edom dismayed;
trembling seizes the leaders of Moab;
all the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away.
16 Terror and dread fall upon them;
because of the greatness of your arm, they are still as a stone,
till your people, O Lord, pass by,
till the people pass by whom you have purchased.
17 You will bring them in and plant them on your own mountain,
the place, O Lord, which you have made for your abode,
the sanctuary, O Lord, which your hands have established.
18 The Lord will reign forever and ever.”
19 For when the horses of Pharaoh with his chariots and his horsemen went into the sea, the Lord brought back the waters of the sea upon them, but the people of Israel walked on dry ground in the midst of the sea. 20 Then Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women went out after her with tambourines and dancing. 21 And Miriam sang to them:
“Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;
the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.”
22 Then Moses made Israel set out from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness of Shur. They went three days in the wilderness and found no water. 23 When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter; therefore it was named Marah. 24 And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” 25 And he cried to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a log, and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet.
There the Lord made for them a statute and a rule, and there he tested them, 26 saying, “If you will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, your healer.”
27 Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they encamped there by the water.
I got a text from a friend that said if we ever wanted to do a few sermons on specific topics, he had some ideas. One of the topics he listed was fear. I asked what he meant by that because our sermon this weekend actually has a lot to do with fear. He said things like fear of being alone, fear of being judged, fear of being wrong, fear of missing out, fear of messing up, fear of disappointing others, fear of not meeting expectations. I saw that list and thought, We do have a lot to discuss, though most of that we can’t cover this morning. But that text exchange and my own reflections on this passage did make me realize that the wrong kinds of fears probably drive more of our actions than we would like to admit. Let’s pray, and then we’ll see what our passage has to say about our fear, the wrong kinds and right kind of fear. “Dear heavenly Father . . .”
In our first sermon in the book of Exodus back in September I shared several fears I have, most of them quite silly. I’m afraid I’ll accidentally eat something I’m allergic to, which would make me super sick, which makes me slightly terrified at restaurants where I can’t control cross-contamination, though I try not to let my face show my fear. I’m afraid of heights. I’m also afraid of flying insects. (I once threw a hardback book at a window to kill a wasp. I didn’t kill the wasp but did break the window.) There are other fears, though, more serious ones I haven’t often shared with you. One way that God keeps me humble and clinging to him is how I still struggle through hard conflict situations, which—believe it or not—do come up in a church every now and then.
What makes you afraid? Some of us fear we won’t get the raise we think we deserve at work, so we go out of our way to make sure everyone knows our achievements and how our achievements are better than our coworkers’. Some of us fear that if we rest and take a Sabbath, we’ll fall behind in life or work or something. We fear that if we forgive someone who wronged us, that if we let God be judge, then the person won’t get what he or she deserves. We fear for children and grandchildren, how they are raised and how they’ll turn out and what the world will be like for them. At school some of you might fear standing up for what’s right because you’ll stand out from the crowd, maybe lose friends. Some of you fear telling others something difficult because it might ruin the relationship. We fear a marriage might blow apart or a marriage might never happen. We fear different forms of sickness. We fear being alone. We fear our life won’t matter, so we keep searching for the next form of EPIC, an epic career or epic vacation or epic relationship. We fear missing out, as though if we fully commit to being in one place at one time, somewhere else in the world something better is happening without us there. A friend of mine once said that whenever you see some great sin taking place, there is probably some great fear behind it. That might be true. As I said, if we’re honest, the wrong fears drive more of our actions than we would like to admit.
The euphoria that the Israelites had as they left Egypt on the night after the Passover, does not last long. At the end of last week’s passage, Israel was like a balloon filled with hope and security and the promise of prosperity of which they could have never dreamt. When God first promised Moses of the coming exodus from Egypt back in chapter 4, we read God say in 4:21–22,
I will give [you] favor in the sight of the Egyptians; and when you go, you shall not go empty, but each woman shall ask of her neighbor, and any woman who lives in her house, for silver and gold jewelry, and for clothing. You shall put them on your sons and on your daughters. So you shall plunder the Egyptians.
God promised to so free Israel and so crush Egypt that their women had only to ask, and they would receive the back wages that no man could have ever forced Egypt to pay. And God did it. The balloon was filled with hope and security and prosperity. And not only that, but we read at the start of our passage that God even created a visible manifestation of his presence and power by leading them with a pillar of cloud and fire to protect them on their way. What could go wrong? What could there be to fear?
From Fear, to No Fear, to More Fear (Exodus 14)
Then we come to Exodus 14. Imagine if one thousand ISIS soldiers surrounded our church during our worship service, armed and wanting to kill us. (This was mentioned by Garrett Kell in his sermon at Del Ray church on this passage.) I’m sure we have some animal crackers and goldfish crackers, but we wouldn’t last too long in a siege. And neither would Israel surrounded by the chariots of Pharaoh. The balloon of hope that was Israel had popped. Look with me at vv. 8–12.
And the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued the people of Israel while the people of Israel were going out defiantly. The Egyptians pursued them, all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots and his horsemen and his army, and overtook them encamped at the sea . . . When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to the LORD. They said to Moses, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? Is not this what we said to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” (14:8–12)
Imagine how afraid you would be. Fathers, you stand there looking off in the distance and see the soldiers on the horizon and hear the rumble of chariots and the stomp of horses shakes the ground. You bend over to pick up a rock and tell your family to run or get behind you or hide or something. Adrenaline and cortisol rush through your body. Should we fight or fly away? We can’t fight because it’s Egypt, and Egypt has drones and tanks and stealth bombers and weapons of mass destruction. We can’t fly away because we’re pinched between a rock and a wet place, between the desert and the Sea.
From our vantage point, we might say their statement about it “being better to be slaves in Egypt than to die in the wilderness” feels melodramatic. I’m not so sure. If we would fault them, it’s not so much for their logic—it would have been better to have been a slave in Egypt than die in the wilderness… probably—but we might fault that for taking their eyes off of God, the God who had done ten plagues to ruin Egypt and save Israel. We might fault them for misplaced fear, too much of the wrong kind of fear and too little of the right kind of fear. We might fault them for being a lot like us. What does Moses tell them to do—to fight or fly? Neither. He tells them faith must replace their fear. Look with me at 14:13–14, some of the most precious and spectacular verses in all of Exodus.
Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.” (14:13–14)
When God says Let there be light, there is light. When God says Let my people go, they go. The Lord fights for his people. He blows back the water into walls, and they walk on dry ground. The Egyptians should have looked at the pillar of fire, the walls of water, and said, “Nope. We’re in the wrong. Let’s go home. This YWHW ain’t messing around.” But with hard hearts, they charge headstrong to death. And speaking of heard hearts, over the course of Exodus 4–14, there are 19 verses that speak to the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. Some verses speak of the promise of God in the future to harden Pharaoh’s heart (4:21; 7:3; 14:4). Other verses say that God hardened the heart of Pharaoh (9:12; 10:1, 20, 27; 11:10; 14:8). Other verses say that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, without reference to who hardened his heart using a passive verb construction (7:13, 14, 22; 8:19; 9:7, 35; 14:5). And some verses say that Pharaoh hardened his own heart (8:15, 32; 9:34). The takeaway is that two things are true at once: God claims responsibility, yet also holds Pharaoh responsible. Both are true.
If you have a lump of clay and a lump of chocolate and place them in the summer sun, one of those lumps will harden, and one of those lumps will melt. The closer Pharaoh comes to the light and heat and salvation of God, the more he hardens. And he’s not alone. There are people, who on their deathbed, still do not want God on God’s terms, the terms of surrender. But those who still do not want God on God’s terms fail to realize that they will still meet God. They will meet him as judge, not friend. You don’t want to meet God as judge. And you don’t have to.
As you read Exodus carefully, you see that while God told Moses that God knew that Pharaoh would not repent, that’s not what God told Pharaoh. God still had Moses invite Pharaoh over and over again to change his ways. That’s what Christians do. We are invitational on God’s behalf. As long as someone lives, we invite them to know Jesus. Only God decides when to stop extending his invitation. And that’s what he eventually did. The passage says the wheels of the Egyptian chariots got stuck; their tank treads couldn’t make it across the Sea, perhaps because God let water from the walls seep out a bit. Then the whole walls come down. Look how chapter 14 ends.
Thus the LORD saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Israel saw the great power that the LORD used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the LORD, and they believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses. (14:30–31)
What whiplash in this chapter! From “feared greatly” in v. 10 to the instruction “do not fear” in v. 13 to they “feared the LORD” in v. 31. From fear, to no fear, to more fear. What whiplash. It would have been so destabilizing. Or maybe we should say it was not destabilizing but stabilizing. While Israel knew something of their weakness, they now know more of their God who became their mighty fortress in ways they could have never imagined. When the passage says that Israel feared the Lord, it means they had reverence and awe and wonder at the power and presence of their God. The Bible calls that reverence the “fear of the Lord,” which is a good thing for us to have. We might prefer to use different wording than “fear” because our connotations of fear are often different. But genuine faith should involve this type of fear. That’s why the v. 31 links faith and fear: “so the people feared the LORD, and they believed in the LORD.”
This pattern of “fear wrongly placed, followed by the instruction not to fear, followed by a salvation by God that results in fear of the Lord”—this pattern—is a common pattern in the Bible (see Jonah 1 and Matt. 10:26ff). For example, in the Gospels Jesus is on a boat taking a nap when a storm comes across the Sea of Galilee (Mark 4:35–41). The professional fishermen become terrified. They wake Jesus up. He asks them why all the fear (4:40). Then he calms the wind and storm with a word. Then we read that they were more afraid. “And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’” (4:41). The wrong kind of fear was driven out by the right kind of fear. I imagine the Israelites looked over the Red Sea and said the same: Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him? God caused their hearts to melt in the sunlight of God’s heat and light and salvation. Has he done that in your heart? In the passage, hearts that melt are also hearts that sing.
Let the Redeemed of the Lord Sing So (Exodus 15)
When the Lord drowns the wrong kinds of fears in the sea, and those fears are replaced with the right kind of fear—a fear and reference and awe of the Lord—people want to sing. And that’s happens in 15. In chapter 15 the redeemed of the Lord sing so. I love so many of the lines in this song. Look at just again at the first three verses.
Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the LORD, saying, “I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea. The LORD is my strength and my song, and 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 man of war; the LORD is his name. (15:1–3)
Do you see how it begins? The song begins by saying that the Lord has become your strength and your song. He’s not only Creator and Savoir; he is Song. Think about what it implies to call God your song. As our hearts soften, God becomes the melody that quickens our steps. God becomes the anthem that drives out all our fears.
And notice how “God-ward” the song is. Every bar is about God. “For he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea… The LORD is a man of war; the LORD is his name… Yourright hand, O LORD, glorious in power, your right hand, O LORD, shatters the enemy. In the greatness of your majesty you overthrow your adversaries; you send out your fury; it consumes them like stubble. At the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up…” And so on. Godward from first bar to last.
Exodus 15 is a much different song that Hannah Kerr’s hit song “Warrior.” If you ever listen to Christian music on the radio, then you’ve probably heard it. I have no joy in picking on Christian music, which is why in seven years of preaching I’ve maybe done it one other time. But as I’ve listened to the song “Warrior,” I’m not sure, except by the slimmest of definitions, in what sense we would call it a Christian song. It goes like this:
I will keep the hope alive / I will find the strength inside / I will keep the hope alive / I am a warrior, I will survive / You’ll never stop me / I’m a warrior / When I fall down / I get stronger / Faith is my shield / Your love is the armour / I’m a warrior / I’m a warrior / I’m a warrior / Jesus make me a warrior
I don’t want to take away from those of you who love the song. In the comments section under one version of the song on YouTube a woman named Marjorie spoke about how the song carried her through her battle with cancer. I bet it did. And certainly, if the two choices are either being a warrior or a doormat, either falling down and getting back up or falling down and staying down, then I want to be a warrior and I want to get back up again. Certainly. But if your primary anthem is “I’m a warrior,” then you have another gospel, not the gospel of Exodus 15 where God is the warrior. As Pastor David said last week, Exodus gives us something better than an underdog story. The gospel according to Exodus is a redemption story. This is why we sing, “You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed” (v. 13).
I think again about that list of fears my friend sent me, the fear of being alone, being judged, being wrong, missing out, messing up, disappointing others, not meeting expectations. Perhaps surprisingly to you, the Bible dignifies these fears as real. They are no figment, as we say, of our imaginations. The fears are real as the gods of the Egyptians were real. And of course these fears, rightly understood, are conquered in the presence of the Lord, as the gods of the Egyptians were conquered by the Lord.
The biblical authors who come after Exodus consistently encourage us to look at the crossing of the Red Sea, which happened in the past, to give hope in the present (Ps. 66:5–6; 74:13; 77:16–20; 78:12–14; 89:9–10; 106:7–12; 136:13–15; Isa. 43:14–21; 51:9–11). Look what God can do, they say. Just as I encourage you to look not only to the Exodus for hope but to the cross of Christ. On the cross, Jesus died and absorbed all the wrath of God, as though he was punished as a Pharaoh. And if Jesus died for you and your sins, if the walls of God’s wrath that were meant for you instead crashed down on Christ, then you have nothing to fear. As Moses told them, so I say to you, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of Jesus, which he has worked for you and will work for you when he comes again.”
We have nothing to fear—except we do. We have the right kind of fear to drowning our wrong kind of fears. Let’s pray . . .
Family Discussion Questions
What are some silly fears you have? What are some more serious fears you have?
What do you think the fear of the Lord means and why is it a good thing?
What has Jesus done in the gospel to take away our fear?
