Exodus - 15:1-21

This is ERC Sundays, the messages at Emmaus Rd.

Church in DeWitt, Iowa. ERC is a Church of people

striving to grow in Jesus and make him known to others through

our faith, words and actions. Find out more about our church

at emmausrdonline.org. Here's this week's message.

We will be in Exodus chapter 15 and it is the victory song after

Exodus 15 · chapter mention

the Israelites cross the Red Sea.

And I got to tell you that this song, it's so full and it's so

rich that there is just no possible way that I can, I can

even like skim the surface of all of it.

And so here's the deal. I, I found a line that I think

is really important for us to hear about this morning within,

within that song. But I would encourage you, if

you're not already listening to it, please check out the the

Sunday Leftovers podcast that's going to hit tomorrow afternoon.

We dive deeper into the content that we don't have time for here

today. And if you're in a small group,

you've got a study guide and that's another layer that you

can do that. And if that's not enough, which

for a text like this that may not be enough, I'm going to

offer you a weird 4th resource that you may or may not want.

But here it is. So typically before I preach,

what I will personally do is I will go through verse by verse

and I write a commentary verse by verse.

Now that rarely gets shared with people because those are my own

personal thoughts and reflections on on what God is

saying here, right? But because this text is so rich

and so full, I have copies of my 5 page verse by verse

commentary. If you want that resource, those

are at the connections desk. You can grab one or not, but as

we continue to go deeper and deeper into God's Word and we

try and really ring out those truths and get those things

tattooed on our hearts, the more you can be just, you know, fully

dwelling in that by whatever resource.

I would encourage that. So if you want that, go ahead

and stop by the Connections desk at the end of the service.

Now, as far as like finding a line today and, and, and getting

something that we can kind of understand within a shorter

amount of time, we're going to look at today our warrior God.

Our God is a warrior. And we're going to look at this

under kind of three ideas. First of all, we need to know

why we need a warrior God. Second of all, we need to know

what he fights against. We need to know what he stands

for. And then we need to look at how

he fights. This text reveals all of those

things and more, but this is the line we're going to take today.

So I would encourage you, we're going to read Exodus 15.

We'll read verses one through 21.

Again, this is a song, so I'm not going to sing it because

that would be bad for all of us. I, you have no idea.

I, I feel so bad for my wife every Sunday because I'm over

here and I'm just like, I hope she's got this covered anyway,

so I'm not going to sing it. I'm not going to sing it too

bad. Not going to sing it, but I'll

read it to you. I'll read it to you.

Exodus 15, one through 21 and we read this in Jesus name.

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 in my

song. 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 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 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 will 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 and glorious deeds, doing wonders.

You stretched out your right hand.

The earth swallowed them. You have led your steadfast, you

have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have

redeemed. You have guided them by the

strength of your by 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 you, because of the greatness of your arm.

They are still as a stone Till your people, O Lord, pass by,

till the people passed by whom you have purchased you, 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, the 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

of the women went out with her with tambourines and dancing,

and Miriam sang to them. Sing to the Lord, for he has

triumphed gloriously. The horse and his rider has been

thrown into the sea. Here ends the reading of God's

word. See you.

I mean, it was enough to read it.

If I attempted to sing that like, Oh my gosh, that would

have been that would have been pretty rough.

Now, the attributes of God, they are, well, they're well

documented. God is a loving Father, He's

compassionate, He is just, He is faithful, He is kind, He is

generous, and on and on and on. We could actually probably spend

the next 25 minutes just naming the attributes of God because

they are written all over, not only His word, but they are in

creation itself. The best parts that we see in

our world, in each other. Those are the things of God,

right? He, he, he's all these things.

But verse 3 tells us the Lord is a man of war.

The Lord is his name. In other words, the Lord is a

warrior. He is one who fights.

Now I understand with some peoples modern sensibilities,

they hear about war and they hear about God as this person

who fights in and vanquishes enemies.

And they're like, you know what? I really don't like that.

That's not really the kind of kind of God I want to worship.

I really like hippie Jesus who like prances in the meadows and

heals people and and does those kinds of things like that's

that's my God. The God of the quote UN quote,

the Old Testament is not my God. And so many people kind of

reject this idea of our God as a warrior.

And I would tell you that there are some very, very big mistakes

in that. But let me at least lay out a

couple reasons why people might do that.

Because maybe you, you are one of those people.

And if I can name the thing, if I can read your mind and name

the thing that makes us uncomfortable about God being a

warrior and a fighter, maybe we can start to work through some

of some of those issues. And so first, it we don't like,

we don't like God as a warrior and as a fighter because it

seems to draw us back to like a less civilized time in in world

history. So in other words, conflicts

primarily, up until several 100 years ago, conflicts were

primarily always done in violence and power.

So in other words, when we look at God as the fighter and God as

a warrior, and we say those things, we're like, yeah, but

that's not how we do things anymore.

We talk things out, and that's great.

And we should. I'm not, I'm not promoting war,

but I am saying that God when necessary, he fights.

And if we take that attribute away from him, we have done

something terrible. We have, we have made him

smaller than what he is and that is never a good thing.

Second reason, some people get caught up and and they don't

like the idea of warfare. And so they don't want anything

relating to violence or warfare related directly next to the

Gospel, right? Because the gospel again, it's

Jesus and he loves me and he died for me.

And all that's true. But man, there was a war that

was fought in order for that to happen.

And so but people don't like that.

And the other thing is, and this is maybe most relevant, people

will sometimes reject or kind of rub up against God as a warrior

and as a fighter because I don't need that.

I don't need that. I am perfectly self-sufficient

on my own. I am morally self-sufficient.

I am a good enough person. I don't need him to fight for

me. Now saying all that to not

recognize God as a warrior. The problem is it really misses

some. They're just painfully important

things about his character and about how he treats us and about

how he interacts with the world now.

So we have to acknowledge first that war is not always fought

with weapons and physical violence.

We can give, we can give war, we can give fighting that

definition that it does not have to be done with sticks and

stones and swords and guns and God knows what else today.

That's not always what war looks like.

Let me let me bring this closer to you.

If you have battled with depression or anxiety or some

form of spiritual oppression, you know that war doesn't just

happen on the battlefields. You know that war happens in

your head and in your heart. Now some of you, none of you

said Amen out loud, but you know who you are.

You probably walked in here with some stuff today and you're

like, man, I, it, it took everything I had just to get my

clothes on and be in public because it, it freaks me out.

I don't like leaving my home. I get so anxious.

I get so worked up. And, and, and so, man, you might

not be saying Amen out loud, but you better be saying that in

your head because God is fighting that war with you right

now. He's doing it.

He's trying to fight with you. I should leave that there for

now. Now, understanding too, that we

fight a holy war every single day.

If you think that just because you have relative peace in your

physical life that you are not in a battle every single day,

you have, you have made a fatal mistake.

And here's what that mistake looks like.

That mistake looks like ignoring the enemy, because here's the

thing, when we ignore the enemy, we start taking shots from

directions we never even saw. Some of you are living an

incredibly difficult life and you look at that and you go, why

is why is this like this? What is happening?

One of the things that you made a major mistake on is you have

not recognized your enemy. You have not recognized that

you're in a fight. And because you don't know

you're in a fight, you're getting hit from every angle and

you never saw it coming. That's dangerous.

That's incredibly dangerous. We have to see that that there

is an enemy. Now, we don't fear that enemy.

You want to know why we don't fear the enemy?

Because he's already defeated. But a wounded enemy is a

dangerous enemy and he is wounded.

His time is limited. And so, man, we have to be on

the lookout. Now, you say to me, Pastor

Chris, well, what does that look like?

You haven't given me any practical application as to how

I'm supposed to do this. I'm glad you asked, because I'm

going to answer it for you. Let me give you a couple of ways

to get your warrior God fighting for you and on your side.

First and foremost, you better pray and you better be praying.

I promise you that there are Christians in this room who

rarely pray, and I promise you that those same Christians who

rarely pray, they are in a position of going, I can't seem

to figure this thing out. I love God, I've been, I've been

looking at my Bible and stuff, but I don't feel that personal

connection. I feel like this is all

academic. It's very dry.

Have you prayed? Have you invited our warrior God

into your heart and into your mind through prayer?

Have you had conversation with Him?

Man, that's the key component to having him on your side,

fighting for you. Second thing, equip yourself

with His Word. This, this thing, it doesn't

just look cool on a shelf because it's a big thick book

and oh, he must be so smart. No, you need this, this the

Bible says God says that his word is a sword sharper than any

2 edged sword. It is sharp, it cuts, it fights.

When we look at Jesus and he is being tempted by a Satan in the

in the desert for 40 days, you know what he uses?

He uses the Word of God and they're all His words, but he

goes right back to the Psalms. He goes right back to God's

promises in the Old Testament, and that's how he fights back.

That's how he beats back Satan. That's what war looks like.

If you're not going to war with this in your head, in your

heart, and coming out of your lips, man, you are greatly

stunted and you will have a difficult time.

Invite the warrior God into your life through His Word.

Next worship, man. By the way, you guys sounded

really good this morning. If you never sit in the front

row, you never get to hear the voices coming this way.

You guys sound great, but that's worship.

That's worship. If you look at verse one, I will

sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously.

The horse in his ride he has thrown into the sea.

It gets repeated in verse 21 as a chorus.

Again, it's a song, right? So as we worship, as we lift up

our voices to God, that is a fight.

That is a battle because you know what's hard to do when I am

feeling anxious, when I'm feeling down, when I'm feeling

like I don't even want to be around other humans, You know,

it's really hard to do. Come in here and say I believe

in you. The Lord is my strength.

The Lord is my joy. But man, you know how powerful

that is? You know what a weapon that is?

God actually, in God's Word, He commands us not an option.

He commands us to sing. And men, I'm going to tell you

something, guys, this is not, this is going to make you very

uncomfortable, especially as we hit that last song today.

God says that men who follow him will lift their hands in

worship. They will raise holy hands as

they worship. That's a challenge.

Now, the thing about worship is, man, it moves our hearts in the

right direction. And what Satan wants from you is

he wants you to worship when you feel it.

Oh, I feel so close to God. So I'm going to worship.

What about when you don't? What about when you don't feel

it? That is the time that you

absolutely have to worship like a maniac because that worship is

your fight against Satan. Last thing here, don't fight

alone. Don't fight alone.

You have your warrior God in all these different ways, but don't

fight alone on this physical earth.

Have brothers and sisters in Christ on your left, on your

right, and guarding your six. You need that.

And I'm not just talking about friends that you text back and

forth with and you gossip with. And Mira, did you see that show?

Did you watch Netflix? No, I'm talking about friends

who will always point you back to the Bible, who will always

point you back to Jesus, no matter what's going on in your

life. They will worship with you when

you're having a great day and they will cry with you when your

heart is broken, but they will do it all with the gospel.

That's a good friend. That's somebody who you won't go

into war with you. Not somebody.

We all have casual friends, I get it.

But man, find people who will be your mat carriers.

I can't get into all that, but the the mat carriers who, who

carried the paralyzed man to see Jesus, He had four friends who

would carry his mat for him. They carried his weight.

Find your mat carriers, find them, go to war with them and

fight them into those spaces. Now, what does God fight against

the Lord? I gotta get there, sorry.

The Lord is a warrior and he fights against injustice is both

seen and unseen in the world and in our lives.

However, this song, as this song goes on, we see two specific

things that he fights against. Now we could go very, very broad

here, but I want to be, I want to be fair to the text and I

only want to bring up what the text brings up.

So I'm going to bring up two things here.

First and foremost, God fights against pride.

He fights against pride. You see these, these people,

these Egyptians, they fought, they thought far too much of

themselves and far too little of God.

Because quite frankly, as the Hebrews are coming out of Egypt

and they're stuck at the sea, they don't have any weapons.

They, they have small children with them.

They have livestock. They're they're carrying their

ancient duffel bags and they're kind of weighed down, dude.

They have no chance. And so the enemy looks at them

and he's like, man, he's getting hungry.

He's salivating. He's like, I got this.

I'm going to get all my gold back.

I'm going to get all my jewelry back.

I'm going to get it all back. And I'm going to drag them by

their hair back to Egypt and I'm going to make their labor three

times as bad as it ever was before.

I am going to own them. I will dominate them.

This is pride. Now, the fact is, pride is

something that God has been fighting since creation fell.

Think about it this way. Adam and Eve, in the very

beginning, it was pride that caused them to fall.

I can be like God. I can be like God.

Yep, that's pride. And, and, and even before that,

it was Satan. Satan in all of his beauty, in

all of His Majesty, one of the angels of God thought, you know

what? I'm incredibly beautiful and I

can do this better than him. You can read about that fall in

Isaiah 14. It was pride looking forward

that caused King Nebuchadnezzar, that caused God to move King

Nebuchadnezzar into a state where he's more beast than man

because he refused to bow his knee to God.

He all the miracles, Nebuchadnezzar didn't matter.

He still thought he was the thing.

And it was. And it was pride that God fights

against in our lives and our hearts.

So I got to tell you. If you think because Jesus loves

you and Jesus died for you, that God will not go to war against

your pride, you have got another thing coming.

You should really rethink this entire thing because when we

exercise pride, God has natural consequences of war against that

thing. So let me put it this way.

When you are always thinking about your feelings and your

situation and your concern and your looks and your money and

you, you, you, you, you, it's all about you.

Because quite frankly, you are the star of this movie and

everybody else is just extras in the background.

That's pride, and it's ugly. Now, what's the natural

consequence that God fights against inside that pride?

Well, let me give you a secular psychologist who says this.

If you are overly focused on how you feel, how you think, and how

you act, but you lack the ability to regulate, you're not

helping yourself. In fact, you are more likely

hurting yourself. That is a secular psychologist

who although they may not know it, they agree with the Bible.

You see how science eventually, once it finally makes its way up

to God, goes, Oh yeah, the Bible was right the entire time.

So let me tell you friends, let me just make this really clear

and really applicable that if you are stuck in your own head

and all of your thoughts are about you and woes me and this

me and this me and this me man, God's going to he's going to hit

you. And it's not because he doesn't

love you. He's going to hit you hard

because he does love you and he needs to kill that self

centeredness inside of you. Now, another thing that

psychologists tell us, and this is kind of interesting and then

I'll stop, but another interesting thing that

psychologists tell us is that for those suffering with

depression and anxiety, one of the greatest things that they

can do to help themselves is go serve.

Did you know that that service actually helps with anxiety and

depression? You want to know why?

It's because it's by God's design.

It's by God's design that that works.

So in other words, if I'm, if I'm feeling down, if I am

feeling overwhelmed, I need to get my thoughts off of me and

put them back on God. Jesus came to serve, not to be

served. Makes sense.

Get out of your own head. You can't figure this thing out.

You go love somebody else and forget about yourself for a

minute and you might actually find that God was right the

entire time. Second thing he fights against

in this text, if we look at verses 11 and 12, it says Who, O

Lord among who is like you, O Lord among the gods, who's like

you? And, and here's the thing, all

those questions are rhetorical in nature.

Of course there's no one like this God, because here's the

fact, God is the only creator. He is not a created thing in the

entire universe. Everything that you see here,

feel touched, can't see, whatever, everything you can

experience has been created. God is the only one who has not

been created. He has created everything.

Now if you can wrap your head around the fact that there is

something that exists without being created itself, man, you

better come talk to me because my mind is like exploding

thinking about that. Like I can't really wrap my head

around it. I can say the words, but it

doesn't. Like, I don't know, it's a lot

for me. It's a lot for me.

But but that's the truth. And so God, knowing that he is

the only one who can save you because He created your immortal

soul, therefore he's the only one who has the right to save

it. He just wants your attention and

your affection. Have you given it to Him?

I'll tell you what. Your spouse can't save you, so

they're not worth worshipping. Your kids can't save you, so

they're not worth worshipping. Your job can't save you, so

that's not worth worshipping. Your money can't save you, so

that's not worth worshipping. Any possession you think you

need to be fulfilled cannot save you, so it is not worth

worshipping. God is in a war with Satan and

he is fighting for your attention and your affection.

Give it to him. You owe it to him.

But even beyond the fact that you owe it to him, give it to

him because he loves you more than anybody else ever will or

ever could. Give it to him.

Last thing, how he fights, OK, God fights in terribly

unconventional ways. And I, and I mean that in the in

the nicest way we read in verse 13, you have let in your

steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed.

You have guided them by the strength of your into the

strength of your holy abode. Now there's a lot there.

Again, more than I can talk about, but in the direct context

of this narrative, we see God, we see them celebrating because

God congealed the waters for a time.

That's a crazy concept. He congealed the waters for a

time, and then as soon as the enemies of his people were in

the right position and his people were safe, the waters

came down and crushed them. That's a fight.

It's not a fair fight, but it's a fight.

But that's the thing. God doesn't always fight in such

conventional ways, and we have to see the motivation of why he

did fight that way. He fought that way because of

his unending, steadfast love. That is the motivation for the

fight. Unending steadfast love.

Now as we take this idea and we and we get a greater view of the

narrative and in that, in that concept of a steadfast love.

So Fast forward to us, people like us.

How then is God fighting for us? Well, let's Fast forward to

Jesus. In Matthew 14 we read that Jesus

was amongst the crowds and He saw them and they were sick and

they were weak and He healed them.

He fought back Satan through healing.

And then later that same day, also in Matthew chapter 14, he

Matthew 14 · chapter mention

feeds over 5000 people because they had come to see their king

and they had nothing, that there was nowhere for them to get

food. So He fought off hunger by just

providing food miraculously for all those people.

And then in steadfast love, Jesus pushes back the powers of

evil as he casts out demon after demon, releasing people into

freedom. Because here's the thing, if,

if, if you're suffering from something like that, guess what?

You are isolated and the enemy has won.

He is, is isolated. You, you can't be part of the

community. Therefore he wins God in his

fight through Jesus Christ, in his steadfast love, he releases

those demons. He cast them out, he kicks them

out. Know that we can have

relationships both with God and man again and and and of course

Jesus and John chapter 17. He fights for us through prayer.

John 17 · chapter mention

Do you know what God do you know Jesus is praying for you right

now, right now. He sits at the right hand of

God, the hand of power, and he intercedes for you in prayer

right now. I feel that.

I feel that because I wouldn't be on this stage if he wasn't

for me. If he wasn't praying for me, I

couldn't be here. And you can't be where you are

without him praying for you. He is fighting for you.

And let me give you one last thing and then we'll close.

Jesus fought like hell on the cross, but it didn't look like

it didn't look like the warrior, the fighter that the people

wanted in Jesus's day, the those who are seeking the Messiah and

waiting for him, They were waiting for somebody like King

David who was going to come in and he was going to be this

great warrior and he was going to slay giants with a stone or a

sword or whatever, and he was going to take back political

power for his people and the Romans were going to be kicked

out. It's not the warrior we have, is

it? It's not the warrior we wanted,

but it's the warrior that we needed because as he fights on

the cross, he looks at the people who persecuted him.

He looks at the people who killed him, and he said, Lord

forgive them. They don't know what they're

doing. That's the kind of way that's

how our God fights. He fights in humility.

He fights with his own life. Friends, don't miss that.

Don't miss the fact that God has sacrificed everything in his

fight for you. And the fight is done.

I understand that we go through things.

I, I feel it, I really do. But the fight is done.

And he won it on the cross with his blood.

He, he, he shed, he shed it all. He gave it all away so that you

could be confident that in this war you have already won.

Amen. Let's pray.

Thanks for listening to ERC Sundays.

To support the work God is doing an Emmaus Rd. church, visit

emmausrdonline.org/giving.