Psalms Lesson 34

Exodus 15:5-21

Tonight we will finish Exodus 15 and we will see how this was developed by one famous musician musically. In Exodus 15 we have what amounts to a declarative praise Psalm of the nation. We said that it has a proclamation to praise in the first two verses, “Then sang Moses … I will sing unto the LORD; for He has triumphed triumphed:” or He has really triumphed, “the horse and his rider has He thrown into the sea. [2] The Lord is my strength and son, and He is become my salvation; he is my God, and I will adore Him; my father’s God, and I will exalt Him.” We covered that last week as Moses and the nation vowed to praise their God because He has given them victory. And then we did verses 3-5 which is the second section, an introductory summary. This is a short terse description of the historic deliverance by God that led to this particular praise. It was Yahweh has revealed His military nature by totally defeating the enemy. Therefore in verse 3 you have “The LORD is a man of war; the LORD is His name. [4] Pharaoh’s chariots and his host has He cast into the sea; his chosen triads” literally “have been drowned in the Red Sea. [5] The depths have covered them; they sank into the bottom as a stone.”

Now verses 6-19 we have the third section, the main section. Yahweh is praised for His deliverance in the national crisis and for His future deliverance. In verse 6 we come to this phrase, “Thy right hand, O LORD,” notice, this is vocative; it is addressed to the Lord and shifts from verses 3-5; verses 3-5 is a historical recollection, it is a statement of a historic fact. Beginning in verse 6 you have the address to God; this is where the praise turns back to God and He is addressed. “Thy right hand, O LORD, has become glorious in power; thy right hand, O LORD, has dashed in pieces the enemy.” Now I want you to look at that because that is the kind of singing that was done in the Old Testament. And that is the kind of singing and the kind of martial spirit in hymnology that is not too acceptable today. It’s too bad because that is Biblical and it is sound, and it is heretical to undermine that martial spirit. No great saint who has ever lived in church history has ever survived the Christian life with less than a martial spirit, or a very aggressive mental attitude toward God’s promises and His grace.

Now whether we like it or not, we are involved in a spiritual war; whether we like it or not we can very easily become casualties in this spiritual war. And whether we like it or not there is only one set of tools that we have available and if we sit around and don’t get ourselves trained in the use of these tools we are going to be the losers, we are going to be casualties and we are going to go down in misery and heartache and sorrow because we have failed to appropriate God’s tools and use them properly. Christians who are habitually miserable are always people who have, either (1) never realized they’ve been in a spiritual battle, or (2) have not yet become skillful in it. But don’t cry and whine because you find yourself in the middle of a spiritual battle. It began with Satan and continues through this historic incident, which by the way, Exodus 15 answers to what in the Church Age or in the New Testament. Exodus 15 describes something that is true of Israel as what is true of the Church? What great historic event that has to do with the New Testament answers and corresponds to the Exodus event in the Old Testament? The cross of Jesus Christ. Who are the enemies in the New that correspond to Pharaoh and his host in the Old Testament? Satan and his demons and therefore the same aggressive spirit holds true in the Church Age as holds true in this Psalm. The gentle Jesus meek and mild does not change the martial spirit of this hymn. It redirects it to new targets but it does not ameliorate whatever the martialist attitude and the aggressive mentality that’s here demonstrated.

“Thy right hand, O LORD,” “Thy right hand” repeated twice in verse 6 is a title of Jesus Christ. The right hand is always the hand of God that is revealing and delivering in history. Why the right hand and not the left? Because the right hand was used in war for the spear and the sword; the left hand was used to hold the shield, so it’s the right hand that is the aggressor; it is the right hand that destroys; it is the right hand that accomplishes something. So when you see “Thy right hand, O God,” it is the thing that is doing something and Jesus Christ is the One who is doing, the Second Person of the Trinity.

“Thy right hand, O LORD, is become glorious,” or “is glorious in power.” Now God’s grand strategy down through history, His master plan is to glorify Himself. Again, God earns our attention. We do not merit God’s attention, God is grace towards us. Now look at how ironic this thing is: God is gracious towards man, we do not earn, we do not deserve the attention we receive from God through Jesus Christ. We don’t deserve this; however God gives it to us anyway because He’s a God of grace, but going the other way in history, God does not expect us to be gracious to Him. He expects us looking toward Him to operate on the works principle, it goes reverse, the other way, and that God expects us to be won to Him by His works. He merits our attention; we do not merit His attention. And so this is why when it says “Thy right hand is become glorious in power” it means that now as a result of this historic event, God’s right hand is glorious, that is it’s manifest, it’s clear, it’s revealed. And therefore it is revealed in power. What is “in power?” “In power” has to do with the event of revelation. “…Thy right hand, O LORD, has dashed in pieces the enemy.” And the word “dashed in pieces” is the word for extreme shattering, it is extreme destruction, so it is again a very militaristic term.

Verse 7, “And in the greatness of Thine excellency Thou has overthrown them that rose up against Thee; Thou sentest forth Thy wrath, which consumed them as stubble.” Notice in verse 7, “the greatness of Thine excellency,” “Thine excellency” refers to God’s sovereignty and His essence, actually all the characteristics but I want you to notice that the Jew, operating in a historic framework, looked to see the essence of God operating in history over and over and over after event after event after event and this is why the Jew would become exited enough to write this kind of musical praise because it was these historic events that revealed the God whom they sought to know and to live for.

“In the greatness of Thine excellence Thou hast overthrown them that rose up against Thee,” now these verbs in verse 7 are all imperfects which do not mean past tense, they mean more or less as a principle. So verse 7 is really teaching a principle and here is where we have what kind of praise slowly blending into what kind of praise? We have the first kind of praise is rooted to a historic event, we call that declarative praise. Now in verse 7 with the imperfect tense that declarative praise is slowly moving over into descriptive praise. What is happening, you look at a revelation of God in a concrete situation and now you’re beginning to abstract principles from it, draw conclusions, and so in verse 7 you have a preliminary conclusion being drawn that it is always the nature of God to overthrow those who rise up against Him. It is always the nature of God to send forth His wrath and consume His enemies as stubble; that’s always the nature of God. So that one point event of the Exodus mirrors a characteristic that is true forever of God’s character.

So you have one event and that one event can be looked at concretely as a historic event. That’s why I always say look at those events, don’t get in some philosophic discussion or doctrinal dissertation with somebody and you talk about this, that and the other thing. Go back to the historic event and say now look, what happened at the Exodus, or what happened at the resurrection, or what happened at creation? That’s the way to have your discussions; don’t discuss the secondary level of doctrine at first; discuss at the primary level of history. Then go to your secondary level of doctrine and you’ll it a lot easier to discuss if you always ground your discussions at the primary level which is history, and then secondly drawing your doctrine out of that. It’ll help you a lot; here you have the historic event and you have the abiding character of God.

God always was this kind of a God, militant against evil; God always was militant against evil; He was militant against evil before evil was there to be militant against. That was part of His eternal character. What characteristic? God is immutable, meaning He never changed for all eternity so therefore God was as militant before this event as after the event. But the creature didn’t know God was that way until God acted that way so the creature could see it. So every one of these point events takes an eternal attribute of God and shows it into history so the creature can see, oh yes, that’s the kind of God we have. Why do we know that’s the kind of God we have? Because He did it right there, and since we know He’s eternal, He’s immutable, that means He always was that way.

Verse 8, “And with the blast of Thy nostrils the waters were gathered together, the floods stood upright as an heap, and the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea.” Three words in verse 8, first you have “the waters,” plural then you have actually “the flowings” it means the currents in the sea, and then you have “the depths.” Those three words are used synonymously to describe the volume of the water that was moved during the Exodus passage, which should therefore arm you, forewarn you, immunize you against these introductory Bible courses or anything else where you find a liberal view of the Exodus that says they put on their galoshes and tromped across a marsh to get away from Pharaoh. Now can you imagine Pharaoh, the greatest military leader in the ancient world, letting a group of Jews go trotting across a marsh? That’s the way the liberals treat the Exodus because obviously they can’t be too serious about the Exodus and not have miracles. But here is the greatest military leader of all times sitting there while they put their galoshes on and go through a marsh. That’s the picture of the Exodus you will get from liberal clergy men and from liberal professors in the classroom that treat the Bible as literature, that the Exodus really wasn’t a miraculous event, it was a natural event that was just kind of drummed up as time went on. Obviously this verse is completely incompatible with that; you can’t have the depths of the sea, and it’s strange to the Hebrew vocabulary, there are only one or two other words left in the Hebrew vocabulary that he hasn’t used already to try to get across to you that this was a miraculous event. There was volumes and volumes of water.

Now in verse 8 when he says this, he says “with the blast of Thy nostrils,” now here is one of those little verses in Scripture that will help you understand a few things the way they thought in the Old Testament. The word “blast” is ruach, spirit, wind or breath and the Hebrew noun is used for all three uses. What does that therefore tell you the way the Jews saw spirit? They didn’t treat it abstractly like your Greek philosophers. When the Jew thought of ruach he thought of the breath out of the nose. I recently got a letter from someone in Thailand telling about some of the native customs that he’s been reading about and he said one of the interesting customs over there is that when a person is near death the native doctors would always come and hold their nostrils tight and probably the person would suffocate but the reason they would hold their nostrils tight was because they wanted to keep in the spirit, or keep the person from dying. So even in present day primitive cultures that same ruach concept holds in that they don’t think of the human spirit abstractly, they think of it as just the breath. And this is why actually when we come to sneeze, that’s how that business of Gazuntide got started, God bless you, when someone sneezes because that comes out of pagan Europe idea of the fact that when you sneeze you may sneeze your soul out and that you actually exhaust all your breath.

Funny though it may be, that shows you something; all in the background of humanity, wherever you go in the globe, there is this common belief that the Bible teaches that the human spirit is somehow linked with physical breath. That is why I say the baby in his mother’s fetus is not a living thing in Scripture because he does not breathe for himself, and after a person stops breathing he’s dead so the Jew just simply says there’s a one to one relationship between physical breath and the immaterial spirit. He uses the same word for both of them; both of them are connected together.

Now here the “blast” would be the spirit “of thy nostrils,” here it is used in the sense of wind and the primary meaning behind ruach is that which causes; remember what Jesus said in John 3 to Nicodemus, those that are born to the spirit are like the wind that blows where it wants to but you can’t tell where it’s going, etc. Jesus is using the same image; it’s a causative thing, you can’t really see it but you can see it’s effect. “…the blast of Thy nostrils.” Notice too in verse 8 how this denies polytheism. The ancient world would have deified the force of wind; what does the Bible do? Makes it an effect of God, God, the Jehovah of Israel is not in nature, He’s causing nature; it’s always the same way. And don’t think because you’re a modern person that you’re any further away from polytheism than the Egyptians. Every time you talk about some scientific process capitalized, for example you’re reading a book on science and you’ll see the word “Nature,” capitalized, you’re right back with polytheism with the Egyptians because the Egyptians with their polytheism deified natural processes. The modern scientist who speaks of eternal process is doing the same thing, he’s deifying that as a process and its degenerated into polytheism.

So you have these three words; notice what is happening in verse 8, “the waters gathered together, the floods stood as a hill, and the depths congealed.” Now this is most interesting. We don’t know, we’d love to know more about this but we know from Exodus 14 that whatever happened God blew with the wind for some twelve hours from the east. Where exactly it was in the Nile Delta and the Red Sea flows out there we don’t know, the north end of the Red Sea, but somewhere over here they crossed. The Sea may have extended further north than it does today. But somewhere here they crossed. Before they crossed for a period of 8-12 hours there was an east wind that blew quite violently across the water surface, but if you think about it for a moment, that east wind could not have been blowing when they were actually crossing because if the east wind cut the channel through the water, then something had to hold the water back while the people went through because if the wind was strong enough to move thousands and thousands of cubic miles of water it obviously would be strong enough to blow down any living person. So the point is, I’ve often heard it said, even by Christians, well the Exodus was using secondary affects, there’s nothing really miraculous about the Exodus.

Well actually there has to be something because the wind stopped for a period and the waters did not go back together again. Now we don’t know why, the word “congealed” may mean that the water was somewhat like a frozen state along the wall, we don’t know, but something happened to congeal the water itself so that it stood away from the people and the people could cross and not be blown over by the wind. So the wind had to stop; so the wind blew for 8-12 hours, moved the water and the water congealed in its position. Then the people moved through, after the wind stopped.

And then in verse 9 the enemy is pictured as saying, “The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil, [my lust shall be satisfied upon them]” see the effective use of the “I wills,” “I will destroy with my sword, my hand shall destroy them.” And this is Pharaoh. And then verse 10, the wind begins again. “Thou didst blow with Thy wind;” and it’s the ruach, “the sea covered them; they sank as lead in the mighty waters.” So obviously there were two winds in the Exodus event. The first one moved the waters apart, then it stopped, then the second wind came and moved the waters back together again. How the waters stayed apart we have no idea except whatever may be intimated in that verb “congealed.” It’s a mystery.

Then verse 11, the ultimate praise of God. Here is where we begin to shift the praise from the historic past to the future… from the historic past to the future. “Who is like unto Thee, O LORD, among the gods?” This is a reference and a slap in the face to all other religions. Every time you see a phrase like this in the Old Testament it’s saying all other religions are wrong, only ours is right; it’s the John 14:6 of the Old Testament, I am the way, the truth, and no one comes unto the Father but by Jesus Christ, Buddhism is wrong, all the cults are wrong, Islam is wrong, all other competing answers to man apart from those given in Scripture are wrong. And though we in America give them equal rights politically, we as Christians do not give them equal rights to truth; there’s only one answer and it’s ours, and the only answer is the one given in Scripture and therefore that’s the only answer that’s correct.

So when you see a phrase like this, “Who is like unto Thee, O LORD,” it is a smack and a slap in the fact to all other religions except Israel’s. “Who is like Thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders? [12] You stretched out Thy right hand, the earth swallows them,” that’s not past, that is a gnomic thing of principle. That’s descriptive praise again in verse 12, it is a principle that You stretch out Your right hand and it’s a principle that the earth swallows them. This is a reference to the fact that the God of Israel is the God over nature. You had the flood, part of the earth system and it swallowed up the enemies of God; you have the Exodus, the earth system, the Red Sea, and it swallows up the enemies of God. You have the Second Advent of Jesus Christ and if you read the book of Revelation you know the natural disasters that swallow up the enemies of God. So the earth system is built as the execution device for the enemies of God.

Verse 13, “Thou in Thy mercy has led forth the people whom Thou hast redeemed; Thou has guided them in Thy strength toward Thy holy habitation.” Verse 13 gives us a tremendous insight into the mentality of the Old Testament because it says not “unto” but “toward Thy holy habitation,” or “the place of Thy dwelling.” Now verse 13 teaches us that there was always what we will call a millennial hope, that even when the Jews crossed into the land they knew that the millennial hope hadn’t yet arrived but it was going to arrive at that particular place, they always looked forward to it.

Verse 14, “The people shall hear, and be afraid,” these are the peoples round about, “sorrow has taken hold of the inhabitants of Palestine,” now the verb here in verse 14 is past tense, the people have heard, and future, will be afraid. I don’t know why the King James did that there; it shouldn’t be that way, it should be past tense, the people have heard and now they will in the future be afraid, the sorrow has already taken hold on the inhabitants of Palestine.

Now if you’ll turn to Joshua 2:8 you’ll see evidence that this was in effect what happened because in Joshua 2:8 you have Rahab, the prostitute, and she tells the men who come to her shop what is going on and “before they were laid down, she came up unto them upon the roof,” verse 7. Verse 8, “And she said unto the men, I know that the LORD has given you the land,” now watch Rahab’s confession in verses 9 and 10, here is a woman who was an inhabitant of Palestine, who still knew of this forty years afterwards. Look what she says, “I know that Yahweh has given you the land, and that your terror has fallen” past tense “upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land faint because of you. [10] For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea for you, when you came out of Egypt; and what you did unto the two kings of the Amorites,” etc. But at least in verse 10a she confesses that it was the Red Sea incident that contributed to her terror.

Now using the same analogy, the inhabitants of the land in the Old Testament correspond to whom in the New Testament; to whom does the Old Testament inhabitants of Palestine correspond? Satan and his demon forces. What does that argue about their mental attitude toward the church of Christ today? They hate it but they’re afraid of it. How nice to know; it’s too bad that the invading armies under Joshua weren’t confident that the inhabitants truly were afraid; they put on a big bluff and the stupid believers of Joshua’s day and Moses’ day bought the bluff. See, the Canaanites pretended they weren’t afraid so the Jews thought they weren’t afraid, but actually the people were very afraid. And they just put on a bluff. The same thing, the spiritual enemies of Jesus Christ are afraid of what He’s doing; one reason why Satan is very much afraid of what Jesus Christ is doing today is because the Church Age is not in any prophecy; there’s no controls that Satan can dig out from the canon of Scripture as to what is the next move of Christ throughout the Church Age, so every move that Jesus makes is a surprise move and during the Church Age Jesus has Satan behind an espionage barrier where Satan cannot really predict what Christ is going to do next. And this really causes him to be afraid.

That’s the historic background for verse 14 of Exodus 15. Then verse 15 goes on to report how this will spread, panic always is contagious and here you have it move throughout the various lands. [15, “Then the chiefs of Edom shall be amazed; the mighty men of Moab, trembling shall take hold upon them; all the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away.”

Verse 16, “Fear and dread shall fall upon them; by the greatness of Thine arm they shall be as still as a stone; till Thy people pass over, O LORD, till the people pass over, whom Thou hast purchased.” “Hast purchased” is past tense, it refers to redemption; it refers to position of the people. Jesus Christ has died for the sins of believers as well as unbelievers but the word “purchased” here refers to the application of the work of Christ on behalf of believers, the position of a believing nation.

Verse 17, the promise of what God is going to do, what He has started He’s going to finish, “Thou hast brought them in, and will plant them in the mountain of Thine inheritance, the place, O LORD, which Thou hast made for Thee to dwell in, in the sanctuary, O lord, which Thy hands have established.” You see the future hope of the millennium, there it is, showing forth. Then in verse 18 the ultimate answer to it all, “The LORD shall reign forever and ever.” This is the ultimate plan. Now you say wait a minute, I thought God was sovereign, didn’t you just get through saying that God is sovereign, that God is immutable, and therefore God is sovereign forever. Yes, that’s true, but what did I also tell you? That God’s sovereignty isn’t shown in all of its details except by specific historic events; therefore as history progresses we see areas that are not under the direct control of God; they are indirectly controlled by God. You have Satan’s realm, you have evil, that’s not directly controlled by God, it’s indirectly controlled by God, but to see God in His maximum sovereignty would mean to see Him directly ruling in every area. And this is a promise that that will one day be seen. And verse 18, those pockets of resistance, the pockets of indirect control will be passed away and Jesus Christ will be the ruler over all, “The LORD shall reign forever and ever.”

Verse 19, because He has made a historic defeat, “For the horse of Pharaoh went in with his chariots and with his horsemen into the sea,” that verse also teaches us that whoever was the Pharaoh of the Exodus was a man who must have drowned to death, so that’s another key of identifying the Pharaoh of the Exodus, he would be a man who died sometime during his reign from water, this is why Velikovsky, I think, should be paid attention to when he identifies this man as Pharaoh [can’t understand word, sounds like thoam or toam] I believe that is the name of the man who died in this incident. It’s interesting that one of the city’s name is [not sure of word, sounds like: pithume] that the Jews worked on, Pi is the Egyptian hieroglyphic for city, the city of [not sure of word] which would make excellent sense that they worked on the city of the Pharaoh who was killed here.

“The horse of Pharaoh went in with his chariots and with his horsemen into the sea, and the LORD brought again the waters of the sea upon them,” that’s when the winds began for the second time, “but the children of Israel went on dry land in the midst of the sea.”

Now verses 20-21, to understand the musical rendition of Exodus 15 we want to see the hint that’s given to us how it was actually sung in the ancient world. “And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances. [21] And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the LORD, for He hasa triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider has He thrown into the sea.” If you compare verse 21 with verse 1 it’s the same verse. It appears that what happened is that when this was sung, because in verse 1 it says all the people sang it, and in verse 20 and 21 it says Miriam and the women sang it, it apparently was sung with two parts; they would have a chorus and they would sing back and forth because the word “answered them” means to respond to, there’d be a singing of one part and then there’d be a response to it, another part, so we know at least there were two parts to this song when it was originally sung. Notice it was accompanied by instruments, there’s nothing unholy about instrumental music because here they were singing with timbrels and the women were the leaders.

And this also shows you something else about the musicology of the Bible and that is that choirs were not used to sing at the congregation. Choirs were used to help the congregation sing. It wasn’t a performance given by the choir to the congregation. The congregation helped the congregation sing; they were the best singers and they helped the people but the rest of the people joined in with the choir in the singing. So a lot of [can’t understand word] music is wrong in this regard in that we’ve always seemed to make the choir be the performance to the congregation when as a matter of fact in the Bible the choir is the one that leads the congregation and educates it and ministers to the congregation to have the congregation [can’t understand word/s] with good music.

Now we’re going to go through Exodus 15 in Handel’s piece; most of you know Handel from the Messiah and you’ll recognize this music. I want to explain a few things here. This comes from a piece by Handel called Israel and Egypt.