Song of Moses and Miriam – Exodus 15:1-18

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Exodus chapter 15. Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord. I will sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted. Both horse and driver he has hurled into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my defence.

He has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise him. My Father's God, and I will exalt him. The Lord is a warrior, the Lord is his name. Pharaoh's chariot and his army he has hurled into the sea.

The best of Pharaoh's officers are drowned in the Red Sea. The deep waters have covered them. They sank to the depths like a stone. Your right hand, Lord, was majestic in power. Your right hand, Lord, shattered the enemy.

In the greatness of your majesty, you threw down those who opposed you. You unleashed your burning anger. It consumed them like stubble. By the blast of your nostrils. The waters piled up, the surging waters stood up like a wall.

The deep waters congealed. In the heart of the sea 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 and my hand will destroy them. But you blew with your breath and the sea covered them.

They sank like legs in the mighty waters. Who among the gods is like you, Lord? Who is like you? Majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders. You stretch out your right hand and the earth swallows your enemies.

In your unfailing love you will lead the people you have redeemed in your strength. You will guide them to your holy dwelling. The nations will hear and tremble. Anguish will grip the people of Philistia. The chief of Eden will be terrified.

The leaders of Moab will be seized with trembling. The people of Canaan will melt away.

Terror and dread will fall on them. By the power of your arm, they will be as still as a stone until your people pass by, Lord, until the people you bought pass by you will bring them in and plant them on the mountain of your inheritance. The place, Lord, you made for your dwelling. The sanity, Lord, your hands established. The Lord reigns forever and ever.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to the Lord.

Good morning, everybody. We've had a busy few weeks, haven't we? Just as Neil was kind of alluding to at the start, we've had Remembrance Sunday, which was super busy, and then we've run into the centenary celebrations and now we're looking forward to Advent already and we're starting our series, as we've talked about already, of looking at songs in scripture and how they're going to lead us through this time of preparation, coming up to Advent, this celebration that we have at Christmas, of remembering the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. So this morning, there are three things that we could maybe talk about. We could maybe talk about the song of Miriam and Moses.

We could think about Christ the King, or we could think about Advent. Now, if we were looking at the passage that we've read this morning, Exodus, chapter 15, if we're thinking about the song of Moses and Miriam, then we'd maybe think about the video that we had a moment ago that Rob was, I don't know, dressed as some kind of strange Superman, trying to reenact what happened at the Red Sea and failing miserably. But we explored those kind of things earlier on in the year, didn't we? We've looked at Exodus and we've looked at this deliverance of Israel from the hands of Egypt. And it started, of course, with the sons of Jacob and the families who found themselves in Egypt after the times of famine and over the years, over several hundred years, came to be oppressed by the Egyptians.

And at the beginning of Exodus, we meet them in this spot. They're the people of God being oppressed. And the journey they take in Exodus being marked out as the people of God kind of really kicks into gear at this point, just before the song, this escape from the Egyptian armies at the Red Sea that produces this song of praise that we read this morning. It's a triumphant response to the work of God and his power displayed in what he did. And some of the language that we've got in there maybe seems a bit odd to us.

We've got God's great anger against the enemy. We have the enemy being thrown into the sea. We see the enemy being crushed by the work of God. But really what this song is telling us is all about the power of God. Yahweh is annihilating in fury his enemies, but he's doing so to demonstrate that he is a powerful and real God.

The contrast that we have here is between Pharaoh and his armies, the powers of the world who are holding Israel in this oppression, being shown that actually they hold no power before Yahweh. Yahweh turns the sea against them, turns their very nature against them, and demonstrates his power, shows his might, his unmatched power. And that unmatched power causes other leaders around the land later on in verses 14, 15, and 16, to tremble at the power demonstrated by Yahweh. And it's a foreshadowing of what will happen in the future when, when the nation, eventually, as we go through Exodus, move on throughout the land and end up eventually going to the land of Canaan, the promised land. But more than just God, being a powerful God, is more powerful than all the powers in the world.

If you look down into verse 11. Who among the gods is like you, O Lord? The song asks, who among the gods is like you, O Lord? Some of the imagery that's used in this song that the references to the deep, to the flowing waters, they call to mind, or they would have called to mind ancient Near Eastern mythology, imagery, imagery about creation, imagery about the flood, imagery about other gods that had done great things in the world and yet cast in light of Yahweh, these gods have no power. Who among the gods are like you?

God is the powerful one, the one above all. The one who is not only above all a more powerful than that. The forces arrayed against Israel, but actively interested in Israel. You might have noticed another word that we've seen in the past year, several times, or another theme that we've seen several times over the past year. The eagle eyed among you might have looked at verse 13 and seen this phrase, unfailing love.

And we've talked about that when we've looked at the Psalms and we've talked about this word Hesed, this love of God, this wonderful covenantal love of God. A word that's bound up in the idea of a solemn binding agreement with the people. A word that tells us that God has put constraints upon himself so that he will reach out to his people and make it possible for them to be with Him. He'll work out a relationship with them and always make a way of restoration possible, making sure that the relationship with him is not severed. It's loyalty, it's kindness, forbearance, grace and faithfulness shown to Israel by God.

And the song finishes on a similar Note in verses 17, 18. This powerful, unmatched God has an interest in the affairs of his people. He's prepared a dwelling place for them, he's got a home planned out for them. That he too will inhabit. This all powerful God reigning forever with his people.

But maybe we don't talk about that this morning. See what I did?

Maybe we think about Christ the King. It's Christ the King, Sunday today. And after all, that follows on from the theme of God reigning forever, doesn't it? And if we looked at the Gospels, we looked at Jesus and what he did, we look at the way the Gospels tell us about Jesus, especially Matthew, years and years later, it talks about a coming kingdom. And this matched with the Jewish expectation.

The Jews were expecting a messiah to come and establish a kingdom. The Jews were looking back to a time after Exodus. They were looking to the time of David and Solomon, a time when they were a great nation, when they were rich and secure, and they'd been promised by God that there'd be a time like that in the future, a Messiah would come and reestablish Israel as a nation. They were fed up of the years of exile and diaspora and they wanted that great power back. And they were expecting a messiah.

They wanted to be a nation that was free from foreign domination. They wanted this Messiah to come and deliver them because of the unique relationship they had with God. They were disappointed because when Jesus came, the Messiah came. He wasn't one who delivered a physical kingdom for the Jews. When we think about the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, we're thinking about a kingdom that is primarily a kingdom of the heart.

Primarily a kingdom that is. That is spiritual. It's not one that is physical, it's not one that is only for the Jews. And if we looked at the Beatitudes in the Gospels, we'd see some of the characteristics of what this kingdom is like and what the people who belong to this kingdom alike. We'd see that it is a kingdom that is primarily a kingdom of a spiritual life.

It's a matter of the heart. It's a kingdom populated by people who were changed by relationship to their king. God is choosing a different kind of people, a different kind of kingdom. A kingdom with Christ as king. A kingdom that is now that we can experience today as people who put their faith and their trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.

But a kingdom that is also to come, that will be fully realised in a future time. It's a kingdom who is led by a king who has the power over all creation. And when we think about the subjects of that kingdom, they're given a place in his kingdom. They're given the comfort of heaven, the earth as their inheritance. Sorry, the satisfaction of his provision.

And given the right to be called children of God. But maybe we don't think about that either. Maybe we think about Advent. We're coming up next week to the first Sunday of Advent. And we think maybe back to some of those ideas.

We think about Isaiah and the promise of a child that is to come, the one who's going to be called the Prince of Peace, the one who's going to come and rework the natural order and bring about world stability. Going to bring about change, going to bring about that Old Testament promise of a kingdom that is to come. We could also think about the urgency of Advent when John the Baptist said, hurry, for the kingdom of heaven is near. Now is the time to repent and to change. The prophetic promises of old were being realised in the Lord Jesus Christ.

John the Baptist was prepping the way for the Lord Jesus Christ, prepping the way for him to establish a new kingdom, not one based on nation or religion, but based on a personal commitment to God through Jesus and what he was going to do on the cross. A commitment that would result in a changed life. Or maybe we don't really dive in depth into any of those subjects this morning. Maybe we just pause for a moment and we take a breath. Sure, we've got lots of things going on in our lives.

We've certainly got lots of things going on in the life of the church here at All Saints. That's fantastic and that's great. But as we come to this time of Advent, as we come to this time of preparation, let's just pause for a moment and reflect and look at all of the themes, all the great things that we've learned over the past year and some of the things that we've thought about in Exodus, what we can think about. Because today is Christ the King. Sunday, let's just pause and just take a breath and look at the wider picture.

Yahweh's deliverance that's described in the Song of Miriam. Moses shows us his supreme power. And it shows the people who, because of his power, because of his intervention, pour out praise and worship to him. Yahweh called out his people and no other power could intervene. That shows us a pattern.

It shows us a pattern of a sovereign God, one who is powerful, one who has worked throughout history to establish for himself a kingdom, a kingdom populated by the people that he chooses, a kingdom populated by those who conform to his will, who follow the pattern of the Lord Jesus Christ, the one that he established here on earth during his life.

In Advent, we think about the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. We prepare for and we get ready to celebrate that the Lord Jesus Christ is that full and final revelation of God to man, literally, God giving of himself so that he might know us, so that we might be brought into relationship with him, so that we might be subjects in his kingdom, who follow that pattern of the Lord Jesus Christ. At Advent, we're thinking about stepping into time of God in order to establish his plan, in order to make it Real in order to be the mechanism by which we can come to Him.

Maybe we should pause and reflect on that. And as we come to the next few weeks, as we get ready for Advent, as we get caught up in all the excitement, all the things that are going on, maybe we can just take time to remember what God has done for each and every one of us. We can remember all of these things that build up and lend weight to and lend gravity to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. We can be reminded that because of the events of Christmas, we are who we are in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are subjects of his good kingdom.

We are a people who live out lives to bring about a more heaven like kingdom. In this time and in this place. We're bound to our King in a wonderful, mystical, spiritual way because of what he's done for us. If we put our faith and our trust in Him.

And I guess as we think about Advent and we think about that story, we think about that narrative, then what a wonderful thing it is to share with the community around us what a wonderful story it is. We have to tell that as people come into this place in December, as they come to see the Christmas experience, then it's not just about what happened 2,000 years ago, this baby being born, but it's a whole narrative around that, around salvation, around deliverance, about a God that wants to get to know each and every one of us. The fact that we were made for partnership and relationship with God, the fact that by default, human beings, that we're broken in a way that we don't really understand, we don't have that relationship with God, and yet God wouldn't let that situation stand. God throughout history has worked to make Himself known, has worked to make a way back to him possible. And we can see that in the Lord Jesus Christ.

We can, through the eyes of faith, look to him and be redeemed, be made part of his kingdom. Let's be inspired by that story so that in the interactions that we have as we think about Advent and as we see people coming through this place, we share the reality that we can have fullness of life in our Lord Jesus Christ. Let's take that story into Advent, let's take that story into our places of work as we come to Christmas, the places where we go and all the interactions that we have with the people around us in this community.

I want to finish this morning just with some words from the Apostle Paul, who is reflecting on the Lord Jesus Christ, his uniqueness and his power and his work. And it's from Colossians, chapter one. And I just find it amazing that we can think in these terms about the Lord Jesus Christ, the One who is the king, the One who is the One who is overall creation. We can think of the Acts of Yahweh in Exodus and His awesome power, and yet it's the very same one that we can know personally if we put our faith and our trust in Him. And Paul describes Christ like he's the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through him, for Him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from among the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. And through him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on heaven. Sorry. Whether on earth or in heaven. Making peace by the blood of his cross.

Thank you.