Redemption Song

And I think this is true in the church. Some Christians in the church would be content to walk into the service right before the sermon and kind of trim down all of the praying and the singing. That's the engineer type. Give me a good expositional, exegetical sermon. I want charts and diagrams on the screen behind the preacher. I want chiasms and all the rest, right?

And then there's the artist type in the church. who is more than happy to turn the sermon into something more like a 15-minute devotional, and to spend more time in prayers and singing, and the songs that you want to sing, in fact, might be a little more Hillsong-y than John Newton-y.

The thing that's so cool about our text this morning, Exodus 15, is that we find a God of the artist and the engineer. The God who loves prose and poetry, logic and creativity, beauty and syllogisms, propositional truth claims, and music. In Exodus 15, we encounter a God who leads his people through stories and sermons and even songs. The text that we're going to be studying is called the Song of Moses. And in this song, Moses, with the people, is recounting the crossing of the Red Sea. Not in narrative form, but in musical form.

Now what you have to understand about Exodus 15, note takers, you're going to want to write this down, this is important. Exodus 15 comes right after Exodus 14. Now what's so significant about that is that in Exodus 14 the same story is told in narrative form. This kind of happens often throughout scripture and it leads one to ask why God, especially in the day and age where papyrus is scarce, why would you take the time and use up the space to tell the same story twice? We assume he did just a fine job in Exodus 14.

Why would you then tell us the same story again in song in Exodus 15. And the answer is quite simple. Narrative is not enough. God did not just want the truth of the story. He wanted the beauty of the story. He didn't want there just to be a movie. He wanted the movie to have a soundtrack. Now, I've heard that people like the Lord of the Rings movies. Is that true? Would you agree with that? Okay, I couldn't tell you. I fall asleep every time.

For those who love the Lord of the Rings movies, they say it would be nothing without the soundtrack. The same thing is true for Exodus 14. It would be nothing without Exodus 15. So we're going to study Exodus 15 together this morning, but we're not going to go through the details of this happened, and this happened, and this happened. If you want that, I'd encourage you to just go read Exodus 14 in your own private times.

It'll be very edifying. You can find out all the particulars there. What we're going to do is we're going to use Exodus 15, which is the first congregational song in all of Scripture. We're going to use that as an examination of God's principles for how His people ought to worship together when He calls them to salvation.

I know that we already read the text this morning. That was a little hiccup in the service planning. I want it to be fresh in our minds. So I'm going to read it again. And if anybody doesn't like that, look into your heart, ask yourself, why don't you want to read God's word again? Let's just read it again. I want it to be fresh as we walk through this together.

So Exodus 15, starting in verse one.

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.

Pharaoh's chariots and his hosts he cast into the sea, and his chosen officers were sunk in the Red Sea. The floods covered them. They went down into the depths like a stone. Your right 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. The floods stood up in a heap. The deeps congealed in the heart of the sea. 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.

But you blew with your wind, and the sea covered them, and they sank like lead in the mighty waters. 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 and the earth swallowed them. You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed. You have guided them by your strength to your holy abode.

The peoples have heard. They tremble. Pangs have seized the inhabitants of Philistia. Now are the chiefs of Edom dismayed. Trembling seizes the leaders of Moab. All the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away. Terror and dread fall upon them because of the greatness of your arm. They are as still as a stone.

To your people, O Lord, pass by. To the people pass by whom you have purchased. 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. The Lord will reign forever and ever.

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. And 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. Miriam sang to them, sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously. The horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.

This is God's holy, inspired, inerrant, and infallible word. It is completely sufficient for everything that we need pertaining to life and godliness. Amen?

God's people sing

I have 11 points for you this morning. The first point is going to be the longest, so don't panic. The first point is also going to be a little less rooted in scripture. It's just going to be some good biblical principles, but we're going to get into the text a little later. I just didn't want you to freak out. Point number one is sing. Sing.

What I want you to see here is something quite self-evidently true for anyone who's read the Bible more than a little bit. And it's this, God's people sing. Not only do we sing, it is our duty to sing, it is our privilege to sing. The entire Bible bears witness to this truth. The people of God are a singing God, and in particular, friends, Christians are a singing people. The Quran does not have a song book in it. The Bhagavad Gita does not have hymns for people to sing on their way to heaven. This is something unique to Christianity. We are a singing people. Why do we sing? Well, there are several reasons. Bob Coughlin is right to say that God's people sing because we are created in the image of God.

Everyone knows John 3.16.

Nobody knows Zephaniah 3.17. Zephaniah is a book in the Bible.

Zephaniah 3.17, it says this, speaking of the Lord,

He will rejoice over you with gladness.

He will quiet you by His love. He will exalt over you with loud singing.

You can preach a whole sermon on that. God is going to sing over us one day. But the fact is that our God sings. The book of Ephesians tells us to be imitators of our God. Just like children imitate their fathers, spiritual children imitate their Heavenly Father. Our Heavenly Father is a singing God, therefore we sing. Another reason why we sing is quite simply because we've been commanded to sing. You know the verses in Ephesians and Colossians,

sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to one another.

It's a command. Now, you might be the kind to say, I don't like that. I want to know the why behind the command. Well, friend, you should know that God is not in the business of issuing arbitrary commands. Everything that your Heavenly Father tells you to do, there's a reason for it. For the glory of His name, for the edification of the church, and for you, experientially, most importantly, for the good of your own soul. So why is singing good for us as Christians? Well, there's a number of reasons.

First of all, It's because we're not machines. I know that we live in a day and age where people are trained to think, like the main metaphor you use when you think about yourself is almost certainly a machine-based metaphor. When you think about your memory, you'll often say something like, my hard drive is full, right? But the fact is, you don't speak in binary, you know, 0011001, although some of you might.

But by and large, human beings are these people where we need our intellect, our imagination, and our memory to all be engaged together in order to maximally flourish as God's image bearers. And so let's walk through those just a little bit. Let's start with memory. I think you all know how well memory is engaged by singing. So for example, our church is full of a bunch of families that do CC, classical conversations. We got any CC-ers in the house? Whoa, just one, that's crazy. Grant, you're from my church.

Well, if you know anything about classical conversations, they learn basically everything up until like the third grade through songs. Or think about it like this, why do you learn the ABCs to a tune? It's because music makes things stick. Most of my church members are not gonna remember most of my sermons on their deathbed, but they will remember the hymns that we have sung together and the truth therein. Singing also, oh, just how singing engages the memory. How often in the middle of the night have you woken up with some song stuck in your head, and you're like, I have no idea where this came from? Or like after church on Sunday, you're walking around the house, you know, just,

great is thy faithfulness.

You're like, it's gonna be in there forever because singing makes things stick. Okay, singing also engages the imagination. Listen to these lyrics from Hark, I Hear the Harps Eternal.

Hark, I hear the harps eternal ringing on the farther shore,

that's heaven.

As I near those swollen waters,

that's death,

with their deep and solemn roar. And my soul, though stained with sorrow, fading as the light of day, passes swiftly over those waters to that city far away. Souls have crossed before me saintly to that land of perfect rest. And I hear them singing faintly in the mansions of the blessed."

Listen, there are two ways you can say a true thing about death, right? Death is coming for everyone. It's really hard. It's really scary. But the cloud of witnesses is cheering you on from the other side. Great. True. Biblical. Or you can say, imagine death like a swollen river with solemn, deep waters.

Can you hear the saints singing, calling for you on the other side of the river? There's something powerful and good music's ability to invoke the imagination to drive truth down into our hearts. Next, finally, singing engages the intellect. The best hymns do not merely invoke our reason, they also engage our hearts. So let me give you an example of this. Excuse me, I said that backwards. Engage the heart, they also engage the intellect.

Has anybody heard of Sovereign Grace Music? Yes, no, okay. Has anybody listened to their children's album, Theology? Okay, wow. Add that to your to-do list. They have a song on this children's album that teaches complementarianism for kids. It's incredible. It's so good that I had our music guy take that and turn it into a congregational song that we sing so that not only our congregation learns, but also our children learn from a very young age through the songs we sing about how God made them. Listen to these lyrics.

God made the earth and filled it full with seas and trees and animals, and then he made a man. But Adam, he was incomplete, so God gave him a helper, Eve, to carry out his plan. This happy husband and his wife, they showed the world what God is like until they disobeyed. And even though they lost it all, we can still see the fingerprints of God in everyone he makes. We are the image of the God of all the world,

and then it goes,

he made us boys,

and all the boys go, boys!

He made us girls, girls! Different pieces of the puzzle joined together perfectly. We are just the way God wanted us to be.

Isn't that incredible? So yes, there are many reasons why God has called us to be a singing people. Point two. We sing in response.

We sing in response

Notetakers, I'm going to give you a pocket-sized definition of worship. If you're a seminarian, don't come up to me afterwards and correct it, please. I know Don Carson has a book on worship where he has like a 17-page definition. It's certainly better than mine, but I'm trying to give you a definition that you can put in your pocket, okay?

Worship is the right response to the grace of God. Pretty easy, right? Worship is the right response to the grace of God. It doesn't matter what kind of worship you're talking about. Sacrifice, prayer, singing, giving, serving, all of it is responsive in nature.

And you see that when verse one of chapter 15 begins with the word, then you can see it right there in your Bible. Open book test. That's not an over translation into English from the Hebrew. This word then connects chapter 15 to chapter 14 and chapter 14, God's people were saved from certain death. And then in chapter 15, it says,

Then Moses and the people of Israel sang.

Why did they sing? Because they were responding to what God had done to save them. This is one of the reasons why, Keith, do you guys do a hymn of response in this church? Like, after the sermon, do you sing a hymn? I love it when churches do that. There's a good reason. Assuming that the preaching has been sound and faithful and powerful, you've been, like, just soaking in the gospel for an hour straight. And then if somebody stands up and goes, well, see you next Sunday, it's like, what? No!

I gotta sing! Aaron Minikoff says,

the gospel is so, it's too good to not be sung.

I got to stand up and sing after we have just basked in the glory of the gospel. Point number three, sing together. This is in verse one still. If you look in verse one, it says that Moses and the people of Israel sang to God together. Why do they sing together? Because they've been saved together. Listen, you are certainly free to sing worship songs in the car on the way to work or in your prayer closet alone or with your family and devotionals, but you should know that the apex of Christian singing worship is on a Sunday morning where all of the members of the body of Christ in your local church who have been dispersed and scattered throughout the week, when they all come together with one heart, one mind, one purpose, and one covenant, and they lift up their one voice to King Jesus. And we do it together because we are being saved together. Look around the room. These are the people that you're going to heaven with. You've said, I'm locking arms with you people to make it to eternity.

So much of the way modern Christians think about Their walk with Jesus is like this. Do you guys remember in like the 90s when you would go to a bank they had the drive-thru thing and there was that tube and you'd put your check in the tube with your ID and it would go shoof. That's a hermetically sealed tube and then they'd send you hopefully like a lollipop back with your You see, that's how Christians view their relationship to King Jesus, right? Like, there's me, and I'm in this hermetically sealed tube that goes from earth all the way up to Jesus in heaven, and that's how salvation works. The fact of the matter, friends, is that Jesus saves us, and then He adds us to a family. If you look at the vast majority of metaphors for salvation in the Bible, they are all corporate in nature.

You're not just a sheep with Jesus standing there alone with his staff. You're a sheep in a sheepfold. You're not just a brick. You're a brick that's been added to the temple built on the cornerstone who is himself Christ Jesus. And the examples can go on and on and on. So when we sing, we sing together.

Point four, you can see this in verse two. Verse two, it says,

the Lord is my strength.

Point four is sing history, excuse me. About halfway through that verse, it says,

this is my God and I will praise him, my father's God, and I will exalt him.

Why does Moses include this line? Why does God inspire Moses to include this line in the song? My father's God.

Well, it's because he wants his people to know that you are not the first people that I have ever endeavored to save. I've been saving people. I've been saving since Joseph and Jacob and Isaac and Abraham. I have a track record of grace and mercy to my people. And that's a good reminder for us today.

There's something about every successive generation that tends to just forget that God has been in the business of saving his people since the beginning. And one of the ways that you can drive home this point in your church is by making sure you sing songs from other generations. So for example, on any given Sunday at my church, we might sing songs from the 21st century like in Christ Alone. Is that anybody's favorite song?

Whoop, whoop. Not very many. Okay. Okay, what about this? A song from the 19th century, It Is Well. Whoop, whoop. Okay. Man, in our church, when we sing It Is Well, it's like everybody like gets into a stance and they pull their pants up and they just, you know, like they're ready. We just go. Maybe 18th century, Come Thou Fount. Yeah?

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. Take my heart, Lord, take and seal it. Seal it for thy courts above.

They just don't write them like that, you know?

Open the eyes of my heart, Lord.

Or, you might sing a song from the 16th century, A Mighty Fortress.

Yeah, the clarion call of the Reformation. Or we might sing psalms from the B.C. area. The point is, is that we're singing songs from many different generations to remind ourselves that our God is the God who has been saving for a very long time. Consider these lyrics from one of the best hymns ever, Let Us Love and Sing and Wonder. It says this,

Let us praise and join the chorus of the saints enthroned on high.

Here they trusted him before us, now their praises fill the sky.

Think about that, friends. On a Sunday morning when you sing true things to King Jesus together, you're actually joining in the eternal chorus of saints who are already singing in his presence. That's amazing. Point five, sing as a leader.

Sing as a leader

Notice again in verse 1, we're doing a lot of work in verse 1, I promise we're going to leave it eventually. But notice that in verse 1 it says,

Moses and the people.

This is kind of like saying the pastor and the church members. I say kind of like, I understand it's not perfectly analogous, there are covenantal differences and office differences, but the leader is singing with the people he is leading. Now, does this mean that Moses had the best voice in Israel?

We don't know. Almost certainly not. He was already, we're told, the most humble person in the world. What are the odds that he's the most humble person in the world and he has the best voice? Pretty slim. Does he have the best understanding of musical theory? We don't know. And it kind of doesn't matter because the heart of leadership and worship has less to do with ability and technical prowess and understanding of theory.

And it has everything to do with you worshiping in spirit and truth. Can everyone who's following your leadership look at you in worship and go, that's what it looks like to worship in spirit and truth. Let me get real practical. Elders and deacons, you are to be, particularly elders, you are to be setting the example in your congregation of what it looks like to worship in spirit and truth on a Sunday morning.

I've been a guest preacher at churches before, where during the musical portion of worship, the pastor who had invited me basically tried to carry on a 20-minute conversation with me. And I couldn't figure out a way to tell him, I'm not here to talk to you. I'm here to praise Jesus. And I just thought, what a terrible, I don't know if he does this every Sunday, but what a terrible example you're setting for your people.

If you are in this church and you are an aspiring leader, I just want to, I think I'm on the same page with Keith here. If you're not singing on a Sunday morning, I just want you to know there's probably no likelihood of you becoming a pastor in the church. It's certainly true in my church. There was actually a man in our church who aspired to be a pastor.

He told me so. And he never sang, and I tried to talk to him about that, and he said,

I don't think it's biblical.

And I said, that's fine, but I'm just, You're the example. I'm trying to train our people how to worship. There's no way I'm going to put you in a position of leadership where the young guy who doesn't want to sing is looking at you and he feels justified in his non-singing.

Or let's bring this home to the fathers. Dads, listen, you are the leader of your home in every aspect. It's not like you're the leader of your home when it comes to paying bills and then kids learn how to worship by watching Mom on a Sunday morning. Here's a good little thought experiment for you, dads.

If your children grow up worshiping only the way that they've seen you worship over the years in church on Sunday, would you be proud of what that ended up looking like? Scrolling through Twitter during prayers, disinterested during the singing, kind of not really paying attention during the sermon.

This also applies to women. This is less of a problem with women. Women tend to enjoy singing more than men for various and sundry reasons. But like, ladies, especially as you get older, your kids leave the home, you're called to be a Titus II woman.

You're called to lead the younger women and show them what it looks like to follow Jesus as women. And whether you realize it or not, whether you like it or not, they are watching you. The younger women are watching you and learning what it looks like to worship and spirit and truth. By the way, you see that in today's text. All the way down in verse 20 you see that Miriam grabs the tambourine and she goes out dancing and leading the women in singing. So my exhortation to you would be to be a Miriam and get some tambourines in here.

Sing to God about God

Point number six, sing to God, wait for it, about God. Sing to God about God. Again in verse 1 Moses leads the people to say this, to sing this,

I will sing to the Lord.

This is a point that may seem unnecessary to make, but sometimes those are the most necessary points of all. We sing to God. Why do we sing to God? Well, because he is the one, according to this verse, who triumphed gloriously. He saved us, therefore we sing to him.

I think that this point needs to be made a little more emphatically in our culture, where many of the most popular worship songs are not God-centered, but me-centered. You can walk into some churches and sing all of your songs and really just be singing to yourself, right? But not only should we be singing to God, We should also be singing about God.

You'll notice this pattern in the text. I'm going to go through this pretty quickly, but if you're a note taker and you like to mark up your Bibles, just lock in here. What you see in this text is that God teaches Moses to lead the people to sing about his attributes and his actions. That is, who He is in His very nature and what He does acting out of that nature.

So, for example, the attributes of God are highlighted in verse 6, where the people sing of the power of God. Verse 10, where the people sing about the sovereignty of God. Verse 13, where the people sing about the love of God. Well, how do you see God's attributes?

You only see them when He acts. when he takes action. So in verse 3, the people recount about how the Lord went to war on their behalf with Pharaoh and all of his representatives. Verse 4, the Lord casts the enemies of God's people into the sea. Verse 7, the Lord destroys the enemy. Verse 13, the Lord guides his people to their holy abode on the mountain of God. And that's kind of like the majority of the hymn. Sing to God, about God, because of who He is and what He has done. Now, one objection that I heard after the first time I gave this talk went something like this.

Yeah, I hear you, but don't you think God ever kind of gets tired of hearing that stuff sung back to Him?

It was a genuine question. I tried not to smirk. It was a genuine question. Here's my answer. I have the most amazing wife in the world. She's mine and you can't have her. And we have two daughters, Patience and Isabella, 14 and 12. And it's a fun time, fun time in our home. And let's say that one day Patience and Bella came to my wife and they said, Mom, we just want you to know you're so beautiful. and you're so kind, and you're so patient, and you're so loving, and we also want you to know that we see that in the way that you care for us, the way that you buy us the clothes that we need, and you cook the meals, or take us to Taco Bell, whatever, and the way that you do our homeschooling, and the way that you do this, that, and the third, and you look so good in that dress on Sunday. You think my wife would ever get tired of hearing that? You think she'd be like, enough already! Now the problem with that illustration is that my wife is a sinner, and so maybe, weirdly, she actually might get tired of that.

But here's the thing about God, He never gets tired of hearing His people glorify His name for all of His saving deeds. It's literally the reason why He saved us. He saved us in such a way so that we could not boast at all in ourselves, so that He gets the maximum amount of glory. And then He calls us to heaven so that we will give Him that glory ad infinitum, for eternity. So don't worry about, you know, praising the attributes and actions of God to Him too much or too often. He never tires of hearing of it.

Point seven, we sing to bear witness. This point is simple. The song of Moses is a testimony. What's a testimony? A testimony is when you tell about how God saved you. So I don't know how you guys do it at Jefferson Park. I hope it's very common here for people to share their testimonies. If you come visit Glory Community Church and we take you out almost certainly to Five Guys, easiest place to get into. If we take you out to Five Guys after service on Sunday and you're a visitor, I would bet my house on someone around that table going, tell me how you came to know the Lord.

It's just built into our DNA. Well, I want you to know that that's something that the church does corporately. We are always talking about what God has done to save us as his people. And one of the ways that we do that is through song. Now, this has a very powerful evangelistic effect. As I'm looking around this room, there may be unbelievers here. If you are here, you're welcome. I hope you're considering the claims of Christ very carefully. because it's not an accident that you're here. But I would also assume that the vast majority of people in this room are professing Christians who are almost certainly regenerate.

Which means you might say, Sean, this point kind of feels unnecessary. And I would say two things to that. Number one, As a Christian, I never get tired of hearing people's testimonies of how they get saved, right? I want to hear it again. I want a new detail this time. I've been hearing my wife's testimony for 20 years as we have people over into our home. I never get tired of it. So it's edifying for the saints to recount our corporate testimony.

Two, the New Testament assumes that unbelievers will be present among us. Remember that whole part in Corinthians where Paul is talking about speaking in tongues? And he goes, you got to have a translator because if not, some of these unbelievers in our midst during these meetings might think that we're crazy. So he assumes that there are unbelievers present. So when we sing our testimonies together, do not discount the possibility of those evangelistic songs leading some to salvation. Point eight, sing in wonder. Look at verse 11.

Sing in wonder

Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?

John Newton has the all-time world's most popular hymn outside of the Bible, Amazing Grace, and it's become so familiar to us that I think we forget the whole reason he wrote that hymn was to amaze us as we meditate. on the grace of God. And that's what we see in this text, right? You see God leading Moses to feel this overwhelming sense of awe and amazement at what God has done for his people. Who is like you, O Lord our God? He just can't help it. Now think about these lyrics from Amazing Grace. He's speaking about heaven here, okay?

He says this.

when we've been there 10,000 years.

I don't want to ask who the oldest person in this room is, but I'll tell you, it doesn't matter how old you are, you can't really fathom 10,000 years. Intellectually, I'm sure you can get enough zeros on a page to kind of make sense of it at one level, but experientially, that means nothing to you. But believe you me, it's going to feel like you've already been in heaven for eternity and it's just begun.

And so he says,

when we've been there in heaven for 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun,

he's talking about the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. You're going to be able to behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ with no veil. and no fear of destruction. When you've been basking in that, not for a second, not for a minute, not for 100 years, but for 10,000 years. He says this,

we will have no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun.

How can we not wonder? at the glory of God and His salvation.

When you meditate on the gospel, this is the heart disposition you should be led to. You think about the Apostle Paul, he's writing the book of Romans, one of our favorite books, but if we're being honest and if you've ever tried to preach through it, you really understand this, one of the more dense and complicated books in all of the New Testament. And as he's talking about justification by faith alone, from chapter, essentially, like one and a half, all the way to chapter 11, finally, after he finishes it, he's meditating on it. He just has to stop, put the quill down, and he writes these, well, writes these words, then he puts the quill down. He says,

Oh, the depths of the riches in wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments. How inscrutable. are his ways.

So our music should lead us to wonder at God.

Sing the truth

Point number nine, sing the truth. This quote from Keith Getty brings me great joy every time I think of it because I am the worst singer you probably ever know, you will ever know. Our music guy says,

you know, Sean really does have a voice unlike anything you've ever heard.

Keith Getty says,

your voice may not be a professional standard, but it is of a confessional standard.

So basically you may sing badly, but you can sing the truth. Now this point, sing the truth. Again, it's one of those points that may not seem like it needs to be made. Of course, we want to sing the truth.

And yet we often sing songs that do not tell the truth about God and his grace. in the American church. And I want you to know it does not honor God even if your heart is in the right place. It does not honor God, it does not glorify God to sing things that are patently false about him. Let me give you an example.

There's a song called Reckless Love and it says this,

oh the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God.

Now, if you've read your Bible, Ephesians 1, Ephesians 2, those kinds of places, you'll know that the thing that's so bad about this is that when the Bible is at pains to describe the love of God, it's at pains to tell you precisely the opposite. The love of God is not in any way reckless.

It's part of the divine economy of salvation that God planned since before the foundations of the world. In love, He elected us and adopted us and predestined us. In love, He sent His Son to live the perfectly righteous life we could never live and then die and then be resurrected. In love, He sent His Holy Spirit to seal all who were elected and predestined and adopted and all those for whom Christ died. In love, as a guarantee of inheritance until we acquire possession of it on the day of glory. Father, Son, Holy Spirit working together in the divine economy of the Trinity to bring about our salvation in love.

It's the opposite of reckless. We shouldn't sing this. I've been married for 20 years. My wife is a very lucky woman. That wasn't meant to be a joke. Let's say, I actually wrote her a poem this year, and no one will ever see that besides her, but I wrote her a poem. Let's say that I didn't write the amazing poem that I did. Let's say I wrote a more sophomoric poem.

Your hair is like the whatever, your nose is like the Tower of Shiloh, you know, your belly button's like a goat. I went like full Song of Solomon on her, you know. And what if at one point in that poem I said, and your eyes are the deepest blues of the, whatever, Mariana Trench, right? Like the deepest part of the deepest sea, that's the color of your blue eyes.

And I did it out of love, and I put a bow on it, and there's flowers, and I'm gonna take her to dinner afterwards, and I have it all planned, and I come home from work expecting her to have read it, right? And I come home, and she's fuming. Honey, baby, darling, you know, like, what's wrong? I did the, I crushed it. She would go, how long have we been married? And I would say, 20 years. And she would say, and what color are my eyes? Her eyes are brown. She would actually have every reason to be very upset with me in that moment. There's no reason that a husband who's been married to his wife for 20 years does not know the color of her eyes.

In the same way, there's no reason that you, brothers and sisters, In the American church, with the embarrassment of theological riches that you have, you can get any version of the Bible you want and carry it around in your pocket and access it any time of day.

You can get it read to you by Ray Orland if you want to, or James Earl Jones. You can read in the Greek, you can read in English, you can read in the Message Bible, you can read in the NIV, the ESV. You can read 10,000 amazing theology books. You're a member of a healthy church with a pastor who preaches the gospel faithfully.

There's TGC and Nine Marks and Desiring God. There's no reason for you to sing songs to God that have lies in them. And God has every reason to be displeased with us when we do. Point number 10. Sing the whole counsel of God. Look at verses 15 and 16. The Song of Moses speaks of both the love of God and the justice of God, the wrath of God and the grace of God. It says this.

Now the chiefs of Edom are dismayed. Trembling seizes the leaders of Moab. All the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away. Terror and dread fall upon them because of the greatness of your arm. They are still as a stone.

Sing the whole counsel of God

Listen, the reason why you see this kind of language in this song is because it is a gospel song. And the gospel does not only talk about love, nor does it only talk about wrath. It talks about both. You cannot understand the wrath of God unless you fully understand the love of God. You cannot understand the tragedy of hell unless you understand the beauty of glory.

We need to be able to sing music that captures the full counsel of God in the story of salvation. Let me give you one example of a hymn that does this really well. I don't know who the music people are in this church. I saw you on the guitar. I don't know who's the decider, probably you. I would say add this to your repertoire.

Day of judgment, day of wonders. At his call, the dead awaken. Rise to life from earth and sea. All the powers of nature shaken by his look prepare to flee. Careless sinner, what will become of thee? But to those who have confessed, loved, and served the Lord below, he will say, come near, ye blessed. See the kingdom I bestow, you forever shall my love and glory know.

Love and justice, wrath and grace.

Sing with joy

Here's the deal. If you would never be content to be in a church where the pastor doesn't preach the whole counsel of God, you should not be content to not sing the whole counsel of God. Point 11, sing with joy. This one's tricky. This is maybe the trickiest point of all. Here's the truth. right at the outset. God is not pleased by joyless singing. Okay.

What do we do on a Sunday morning when we come in and we're not feeling joy? The baby threw up down your shirt on the way in. Your retirement took a hit. You're anxious about the future. You honestly can't stand your boss. You're in a fight with your spouse. Your children are in rebellion. You've got the shingles. I mean, the list could just go on and on.

As a pastor, I wish I could just stand at the door as people filed in and just kind of turn them around, open up a hatch on their back and push the joy button. But at the end of the day, that's not what God wants, and really that's not what I want. What I want is for our people to sing with joy because they are full of joy. But what do you do when people aren't feeling joy? Now let me ask you this. This song that the people of Israel are singing, do you think that they struggled to sing it with joy? You think they did? No, good correction, good correction.

They had fled Egypt in the night. They thought that they were going to be safe. They found the Red Sea in front of them. They looked back and they saw Pharaoh's army behind them. They were going to die. Certain death and destruction. And then God, through his Redeemer, opened up the waters of death and allowed them to pass through. And then they got safely to the other side and they sang. It wasn't hard at all for them to sing with joy. They were about to die. And then God did a miracle and saved them. How do we get our people to sing with joy when they're struggling?

We have to remind them that we were facing certain death. Hell was in front of us. The enemies of God were behind us. God, through his Redeemer, the greater Moses, Jesus came. He opened up the waters of death and baptism. We passed through them. safely to the shores on the other side. Yes, I understand it's a long journey from here to the promised land, but the fact of the matter is, at least we get to journey as strangers and exiles because we should have been dead.

The earth should have swallowed us up. We should be in hell, suffering under the wrath of God in heaven, which, excuse me, in hell, which we so rightly deserve. And yet here we stand. So how can we not sing with joy? I said I had 11 points. You remember that earlier? I'm not going to call this last thing a point. I'm just going to tell you one more cool thing I want to show you and then we'll wrap it up.

The Song of the Lamb

The Song of Moses. I hope after this sermon, if you've never studied it or considered it before, I hope you're like, oh, my goodness, this is incredible because it is. But I want you to know that the Song of Moses is not just in the book of Exodus. It actually makes its way all the way to the book of Revelation. And like so much of what happens with Jesus, the gospel transposes the song of Moses into another gospel key. In the book of Revelation, it says this,

and they sing the song of Moses,

speaking of the saints,

the servant of God and the song of the lamb.

Now that doesn't mean there's the Song of Moses and the Song of the Lamb. It means the Song of Moses becomes the Song of the Lamb in light of His great salvation.

So this is what you're going to sing for the rest of eternity.

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.

Indeed they have. Let's pray. Father God, we come before you as we close out our time together studying your word. And we pray that we will not be like those who look in a mirror and forget, but that we will put into practice what we have seen and heard and experienced today. Lord, grant us by the power of your Holy Spirit to grow in light of what we have received. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.