The Song of Moses

                                                                            Exodus 15:1-21

 September 5, 2024

 The Song of Moses

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. 

One has to wonder if the person who goes by the title of Christian believes that.

 “Pharaoh's chariots and his host 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.’ You blew with your wind; the sea covered them; 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; 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 still as a stone, till your people, O Lord, pass by, till 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.  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.”

They were witnesses of God's power. It took a little faith to step into to Sea with the walls of Water on each side, but they were now out of the sea on dry ground, and they witnessed God letting the  Egyptian army come into the middle of the Sea and the waters to cover them.  And they did not look to Moses to give him praise; they looked to the Lord, for He alone had done a great thing.  This is what I witnessed: God begins to move in a Church, and the next thing you see is many churches copying what they believe will give them the same results.  I witnessed and was part of the Law Renewal, a method using Lay people to go to the Methodist Church and share what Jesus was doing in their lives.  Soon, other denominations were asking Ben Campbell Johnson, who heads up the program for the Methodist, to send a team to their Church.  But as always, it was the Baptists who came up with a copycat version, and soon, if a Church had great success, and we witnessed God doing that in the lives of many, including the team members, a year later, they as for another team to come in hope of it bringing renewal, and it just did not work.

Many of us who were leading teams believed God had withdrawn His hand, and it became apparent that the Lay Witness Mission had become like the church that had the same Evangelist come back the next year, in that two years ago God had shown up, and they believed it was the Evangelist, and not God who spoke through him. 

As we keep reading the account, we will find they had short memories of their God; are we that much different?

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice