Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Exodus 15:1-21 comments: Moses and Miriam praise God





Exodus 15:1 ¶  Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the LORD, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the LORD, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. 2  The LORD is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my father’s God, and I will exalt him. 3  The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name. 4  Pharaoh’s chariots and his host hath he cast into the sea: his chosen captains also are drowned in the Red sea. 5  The depths have covered them: they sank into the bottom as a stone. 6  Thy right hand, O LORD, is become glorious in power: thy right hand, O LORD, hath dashed in pieces the enemy. 7  And in the greatness of thine excellency thou hast overthrown them that rose up against thee: thou sentest forth thy wrath, which consumed them as stubble. 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. 9  The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them. 10  Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them: they sank as lead in the mighty waters. 11  Who is like unto thee, O LORD, among the gods? who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders? 12  Thou stretchedst out thy right hand, the earth swallowed them. 13  Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed: thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation. 14  The people shall hear, and be afraid: sorrow shall take hold on the inhabitants of Palestina. 15  Then the dukes of Edom shall be amazed; the mighty men of Moab, trembling shall take hold upon them; all the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away. 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, which thou hast purchased. 17  Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the place, O LORD, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in, in the Sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established. 18  The LORD shall reign for ever and ever. 19  For 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; but the children of Israel went on dry land in the midst of the sea. 20  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 hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.

As Moses and then his sister, Miriam, give glory to God we come across this passage in verse 2;

2  The LORD is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation:

God has delivered the Hebrews, the children of Israel, here from death and destruction at the hands of Pharaoh’s military.
Moses declares that the people of Canaan, Palestina, which we call Palestine today, will be afraid and sorrow for what is coming. The city-states of Canaan are under the sovereignty at this time of Egypt. They have lost their defense. I want to repeat something from the last chapter’s comments.

Numbers 14:9  Only rebel not ye against the LORD, neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are bread for us: their defence is departed from them, and the LORD is with us: fear them not.

The Amarna Letters tell us of Canaanite kings pleading for military help against the Hebrews, military help that was not forthcoming because the Egyptian army was destroyed.
Here is a great fact about reality. Modernism, even Christian modernism, in a process that has been going on since the time of Isaac Newton, reduced God to a sort of ‘first cause’ who wound things up and then they run on their own. Here we see something that is said very plainly in the book of Job starting at chapter 38. Here, in verse 6 God’s right hand destroyed the enemy but it is also stated in 10 that it was the agency of the wind but back in 12 it is His right hand again. What we must understand is that from the Biblical perspective things which we see in the physical universe are caused by God whom we can’t see. They are not caused by theoretical entities of Physics.
For instance, theoretical scientists today, working from mathematical models and computer simulations postulate Dark Matter and Dark Energy, two results of their guesswork as being the stuff that holds the universe together because their own theories of mass and gravity show by their own Math that the universe could not be held together without those two unseen, unproven forces. Dark Matter and Dark Energy have no basis in reality but only in their explanatory power to explain what is observed without bringing God into it.
But, we have the testimony of the Bible that it is God who holds the universe together.

Colossians 1:17  And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.

As man moved his heart away from God he imagined all sorts of spiritual beings as moving the wind, causing the weather, the clouds, the processes of life. He called them gods and they were often based on heroes of the past and larger-than-life men, the mighty men of renown of Genesis 6:4. In our pride and arrogance we eventually moved to imagining fictional and quite dead objects, particles, as causing the things we see as well as natural processes. As an example we have the Big Bang Theory with all of the matter and energy we see coming from a Synchronicity, the size of a period in a sentence. This is just a reworking of the occult’s medieval Jewish Kabbala’s mustard seed or the Hindu cosmic egg from centuries past. The modern pagan’s gods are now just inert things rather than a Thor wielding a hammer. Still, they are pagan gods, nonetheless.
But strip all of that back to the beginning. God makes or permits all reality to happen. Nothing happens, no process, no disaster, no beautiful sunrise, baby’s birth, or fiery volcano without His active role either by direct command or by permission. It doesn’t just happen by a random process.

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