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Ex.15:1-21

Songs and singing are a normal part of human. Every culture in the world it seems sings. We sing lullabies to our babies, we teach our children to sing songs from their earliest age, we sing along to the radio, we sing when we're happy, we sing when we're in the bath, we sing in tune and we sing out of tune. We sing too when we're sad – there's a whole category of music known as the blues. Some of our great sporting occasions are marked by the singing of national anthems – "Land of My Fathers" rings out to be followed by "Swing Low Sweet Chariot". The FA Cup Final has its community singing each year which includes "Abide with Me" and Liverpool is famous for singing "You'll never walk alone"

If you attend the various meetings of this church you know that we sing. We sing on Sunday in the services – each of the hymn books we have available contains around 900 hymns and we sing a wide range of them. In the four years I've been here we have sung more than 500 different hymns from Christian Hymns alone! But we don't just sing on Sunday we sing at the Tuesday Fellowship, we sing at the Wednesday prayer meeting and we even sing at church business meetings.

Singing has been something that has characterised Bible religion for centuries, for millennia. It is also something that characterises heaven and so singing is something that will never stop!

Does this imply then that our singing in our church gatherings is merely down to tradition – that singing is what churches do?

Well this evening as we come to consider the chapter we read earlier in the service we come to deal with the first recorded song in the Bible. We find that singing began because the people of God had something to sing about!

The Israelites have just crossed safely through the Red Sea. They had been pursued by Pharaoh's crack troops but these chariot divisions had been swept away and destroyed as the waters of the Red Sea crashed down upon them. As ch.14 comes to a close we read:

Ex.14:31 "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."

Immediately following this Moses leads the Israelites in a song to the LORD.

It is clear that it is not just Moses who sings even though the song uses the "I" form – but the whole company is involved. This is not rampant individualism but a mark of the way in which what the LORD had done for His people involved them individually as well as corporately – we do the same when we sing songs like:

             "I will sing of my Redeemer" or "I will sing the wondrous the story".

Nor is the singing restricted to men only – the women appear to be joining in singing responsively:

Ex.15:20-21 "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. 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.”"

So the very first song recorded in the Bible involves the corporate worship of God's people. The people of God have been generally singing ever since and have been known to be such. Otherwise a psalm like Ps.137 would make no sense. In that Psalm the people of God have been taken away into exile and are being mocked there by their captors who wanted them to sing songs of Zion. How difficult the people found it to sing when they felt they were no longer experiencing any blessing!

Ps.137:4 "How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land?"

But here the Israelites have cause to celebrate and to rejoice! They could sing to the LORD as they stood safely on the further shores of the Red Sea because:

Ps.126:3 "The LORD has done great things for us;"

Let's look more closely at Moses' song. We can divide the song simply into two parts.

The first part comprises vv.1-12. In these verses the singers look backwards with thankfulness and celebrate what the Lord has just done for them. It is surely the most reasonable thing in the world that the Israelites having been delivered from critical danger in such a dramatic and decisive manner should respond in praise to the God of their salvation! Wouldn't it have been rather astonishing if they hadn't responded in this way? They had reason to sing and so sing they did!

If the church were not to be characterised by similar singing what would that suggest about us? Wouldn't it suggest that we had nothing worth singing about? Wouldn't it suggest that we didn't value what great things the LORD has done for us in saving us? But when we realise how extraordinary is His love, how wonderful is His mercy and how generous is His grace then surely joyous singing will mark the church. And because God's love, God's mercy and God's grace to us come in rich and varied ways how appropriate for us to sing a wide range of songs that dwell long on the greatness of our God who has done all these things for us!

Moses' song is wonderfully God-centred:

ü  v.1 He had triumphed gloriously

And in the verses that follow the song focuses upon the strength and the faithfulness of this God who has gone to war on behalf of His people.

This God is not some strange unknown deity He is the LORD that is He is the God who entered into covenant relationship with His people in the past and keeping His covenant promises and maintaining His covenant commitment in the present and on into the future!

It was a great army that had opposed the Israelites. Pharaoh was the world's superpower of the day and it was Pharaoh's elite that had chased after the Israelites. But what are the world's armies compared to the LORD? He hurled them down to the depths as a boy might throw a stone into the sea.

The enemy is shattered before the majestic greatness of the LORD. How easily they are destroyed! Stubble burns fast and furiously for a moment and then is gone – how easily the LORD overcomes those who oppose Him!

The enemy, the Egyptian army, was so proud and so puffed up. How confident were the boasts of this army! Just look at the attitude it had:

v.9 "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."

How frightening and intimidating Pharaoh and his army must have appeared to the Israelites as they came breathing their threats! How frightening and intimidating the modern world with its mockery and opposition to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ! How easily such opposition is overturned when the LORD says enough is enough!

The Egyptian army followed the Israelites in hot pursuit but a mere breath and they're gone forever!

Well might Moses end the first part of his song with wondering praise:

vv.11-12 "Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders? You stretched out your right hand; the earth swallowed them."

The LORD, who is taking care of His people really is a God who is in a category all of His own. Other men may like to like to set up their idols and worship their false gods but there is none like the LORD!

Having celebrated what the LORD had already done for His people the second half of the song moves on to celebrate what the LORD will go on to do in the future.

This song speaks prophetically about what was yet to take place in the subsequent history of the Israelites as they travelled on their way towards the Promised Land.

We might ask ourselves why then does the song still speak in the past tense?

The answer is a simple but profound one. So certain is it that the LORD God will do and will accomplish all that He sets out to do that future events are as good as done already when the doing depends upon God. After all there is none like Him! There is none with power to withstand Him! There is none with a comparable greatness which enables them to resist Him.

The first part of the Psalm supplies the springboard and the confidence that undergirds the second half of the song. The greatest forces known to man have been powerless to stop the LORD doing what He intended to do and so nothing with be able to stop Him in the future either!

The later history of the Israelites will bear out the confidence that has been expressed in this song.

When the Israelites do eventually arrive in the Promised Land they do find that the news of what the LORD had done for them in delivering them from Egypt and taking them safely through the Red Sea had already got to the inhabitants. The effect of knowing that the LORD took such care of His care people did indeed cause the inhabitants of the land to lose courage:

Do you remember what Rahab said to the spies that she hid when they came to spy out the land?

Jos.2:9-11"I know that the LORD has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you. For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you devoted to destruction. And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you, for the LORD your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath."

Let us too learn the lessons that are here for us. Yes, we are certainly meant to celebrate and to rejoice in the great things the LORD has done for us in the past but we are not to leave it at that! Because He has intervened powerfully in the past we are encouraged to trust Him in the present and also to go forward into the future with confidence in Him. Let us make sure that our faith does not become some fusty dusty affair with nothing more than an antiquarian interest – the faith of the church is to be a living vital faith that continues to look away from ourselves to Him!

The song ends with a conclusion that stretches on into a never ending eternity:

v.18 "The LORD will reign forever and ever."

There are three other examples of songs being linked to Moses in the Bible.

1.       Deut.32

At the end of his life Moses composed another song which would remind the people on the one hand of what God was like and what He had done for them and on the other warn them of the dangers of failing to take the LORD and His law seriously enough.

In the opening verses of this song the greatness of the LORD occupies a prominent position:

Deut.32:3-4 "For I will proclaim the name of the LORD; ascribe greatness to our God! 'The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he.'"

However the people had failed to respond to Him as they ought to have done.

How important it was for the people to listen to this song too and realise that blessing was not their automatic right. Abuse of privilege would lead to discipline and judgment. Having taught the song to the people Moses insisted on the seriousness of it all:

Deut.32:46-47 "Take to heart all the words by which I am warning you today, that you may command them to your children, that they may be careful to do all the words of this law. For it is no empty word for you, but your very life, and by this word you shall live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess."

2.       Psalm 90

Ps.90 carries the heading "A PRAYER OF MOSES, THE MAN OF GOD". In this prayer Moses demonstrates the now familiar concerns. Moses speaks of the greatness of God and laments the waywardness of God's people before pleading for the favour of the LORD God to rest once more upon His people.

3.       Rev.15

In the final book of the Bible we read of the Song of Moses and the Song of the Lamb.

The characteristics we've met before:

Rev.15:3-4“Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations! Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.”

As before there is here the same looking backwards to see just what the LORD has done for His people in His great and mighty acts on their behalf. Such actions call for a response of celebration and joyous praise.

But now in the NT dispensation there is something new and fresh. While the deliverances God had wrought for His people in the OT era were real they nevertheless were not the final deal. The OT acts of deliverance served as a foreshadowing of the mightier acts of deliverance to be accomplished by the Lord Jesus Christ, our Passover Lamb.

If the Hebrews had been right, and they were, to celebrate and to rejoice in the God who had delivered them at the time of the Exodus how much more so should we celebrate and rejoice in the Triune God who has secured for us a far greater exodus, bringing us out of a far greater slavery, and who leads us on to a far better Promised Land!

May the LORD teach us to sing aright!

Amen.