Beeson podcast, Episode 494 Dr. Allen Ross April 28, 2020 Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School, on the campus of Samford University. Now your hosts, Doug Sweeney and Kristen Padilla. Doug Sweeney: Welcome to today's Beeson podcast episode. I am Doug Sweeney, your host, in the studio with my co-host Kristen Padilla. We are blessed at Beeson to have the opportunity to listen to many wonderful sermons from God's word. And so, as you know, from time to time, we like to share some of them with you. So that's what we have in store for you today, another great sermon from the Bible. Kristen, would you please tell us about today's sermon? Kristen Padilla: Last month we played for you a sermon Dr. Mark Gignilliat preached during our fall chapel series on hymns of scripture. And today we want to play another sermon given last fall for this series, this time by Dr. Allen P. Ross. Dr. Allen Ross is professor of divinity at Beeson, where he has taught Old Testament and Hebrew since 2002. He is a world renowned scholar, having written the Hebrew textbook that we at Beeson, and many seminaries, use to teach students how to read Hebrew. Kristen Padilla: The sermon you're about to hear is based on Moses' song from Exodus 15 verses one through 21. It's a wonderful exegetical sermon that invites glorious worship of our triune God. We highly recommend it to you today and pray that it aids and encourages you in your own worship of God. Doug Sweeney: Dr. Ross is one of the most senior Old Testament scholars at work in our country today, so let's go now to Hodges Chapel and listen to him preach from Exodus 15 verses one through 21. His sermon is entitled, The Lord, My Strength and My Song. Speaker 4: Our first scripture reading this morning is from Isaiah the 43rd chapter. We'll begin with verses one through three and continue in 16 through 21. So here the word of the Lord for us today, "But now thus says the Lord, He who created you, Oh Jacob, He who formed you, Oh Israel, 'Fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name. You are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. And through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.'" Speaker 4: "Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters. Who brings forth chariot and horse, army and warrior. They lie down, they cannot rise, they're extinguished, quenched like a wick. 'Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild beasts will honor Me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to My chosen people. The people whom I formed for Myself, that they might declare My praise.'" This is the word of the Lord. Audience: [inaudible 00:03:53]. Speaker 5: Readings from the Book of Revelation. "Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under his wings. Day and night, they never stop saying, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come.'" Speaker 6: "Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor, and thanks to Him, who sits on the throne and who lives forever and ever. The 24 elders fall down before Him, who sits on the throne, and worship Him, who lives forever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say, 'You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power. For you created all things and by your will, they were created and have their being.'" Speaker 7: "And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song, 'You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain. And with your blood, you purchase men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God and they will reign on the earth.'" Speaker 8: "Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they sang, 'Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise.'" Speaker 9: "Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea and all that is in them singing, 'To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb, be praise and honor and glory and power, forever and ever.' Then the four living creatures said, 'Amen.' And the elders fell down and worshiped." The word of the Lord. Audience: [inaudible 00:00:06:59]. Allen Ross: There has never been, in the history of the world, and there is not today, in the religions of the world, any religion that has produced the kind of glorious music that Christianity has produced. Glorious because it lifts the spirit and enables the saint to transcend this life and join with the hosts of angels above. Glorious because it is the full presentation of God's revelation, the plan of salvation, and the hope of glory. And glorious because it gives the proper interpretation of the revelation of the Godhead, in his person and his works. And God is pleased with this. I mean, after all the scripture is filled with commandments for us to sing. It is great if people praise the Lord with ordinary words and expressions, but singing is different. Allen Ross: When you sing praises to God, you are singing words that have been carefully chosen, thought through, prepared, and you can take time with them. You don't have to rush, you can think what you're singing and focus more on the meanings of those words, such as when we heard the Lord's prayer saying, this morning. You have time to meditate, you have to participate. But also when you sing, you are exhibiting in the congregation, the real nature of the unity and diversity of the body of Christ. Because in that time you are going to be very different, but you are going to harmonize and wait for each other and join together and, in the different voices, singing something glorious to God. Allen Ross: It's amazing how the unity of the body can be expressed this way. On one trip to Israel, we were in the crypt in Bethlehem looking at the nativity and we were talking about it and there was another group that came down into the crypt while we were still there. They talked for a little bit and then they started to sing. We recognized it, it was a Christmas Carol, this was at December. And we didn't know what language they were singing, but my group sort of stopped listening to the talk and began singing with them. We found out later, they in Portuguese, we in English, and when we finished that one, our group started a Carol in English, they joined in. We sang about three of those numbers before we exited. Couldn't speak a word to each other, but at that moment we were united in praise to God, singing those hymns in that Holy place. Allen Ross: Also, when you are singing, instead of just saying the words, you are brought out of yourself, it causes your soul to come up higher so that your feelings and your mind are united in the full expression of what you are singing. God commanded His people to sing and His people have responded. When you look at the history of Israel, they sang all the time, they sang when they went into battle, putting the choir in front of the army. They sang when they came back from battle, they sang when they go up to Jerusalem for the festivals, they sang when they were in Jerusalem. They sang their prayers, they sang their creeds, they sang their lamentations and mournful funeral dirges. They sang when it was a glorious triumph, they sang when things look difficult. Even our Lord, in the night that He was betrayed, He and His disciples sang a hymn of praise as they went out to the Garden of Gethsemane. Allen Ross: It is in the heart and in the mind of the Christian world. And it pleases God and it enables us to come out of ourselves and to be truly lifted up in our spirits, to join with the company of angels and the saints and sing these glorious anthems. And someday joining with them all in glory, as we heard read from the Book of Revelation. Allen Ross: We are going to look today at a very early hymn of praise. It's in Exodus 15, it's the Song of Moses. I don't need to remind you of the circumstances, they have been in Egypt as the people of Israel for over 400 years, not this crowd, but the whole nation. And finally, through a series of plagues over the last two years and now crossing through the sea, they have escaped the bondage of the world and are on the other side to begin a new program for God. They are not saved at this moment, they're already believers, but God was rescuing His people from the powers of this world and from the works of Satan. Moses elsewhere would say, when God did all the plagues in Egypt, every one of them destroyed one of the gods of Egypt. And at the end, He destroys Pharaoh and all of his armies who had sought to destroy the people of Israel. Allen Ross: And Moses writes this hymn. It's the kind of hymn that flows naturally from the experience. There is an initial decision to sing, to sing this praise to God, with a brief summary, which tells you very little, but you know it was a powerful event in their life. The heart of the Psalm will go into the details, because the more you know the details, the more glorious the deliverance is and, therefore, the more glorious your praise should be for those supernatural works. And he closes with the lesson that the people of God can build confidence here. If God can do all of this, then what He does in the land, what He does down the way, is going to be truly amazing and they can trust Him. You would think that this moment of great praise and celebration would have lasted, but no, they are enjoying the celebration of the victory on the shores of the sea. Allen Ross: Three days later, into the wilderness, and there is no water. And they are far from praising, they begin to murmur and complain. God was testing them to see if that high praise moment could be sustained through the difficulties. Well, they would have to learn that, because at this point they didn't quite do it. And that's one of the things that praise is supposed to do in us and through us. Allen Ross: Let me just briefly walk you through this passage because it is very profound and very rich and I want to point out a few things that you need to understand to make the best sense out of this. The first part, the introduction, is very brief. "'I will sing to Yahweh because He is highly exalted. Horse and rider, He has thrown into the sea.'" That didn't tell you a whole lot about the miracle at the Red Sea, but it lets you know this is a victory and Pharaoh's armies and the people pursuing them were destroyed. That's all he's going to say in the introduction because he wants to break immediately to tell you out of this, he can't even wait to get to the details, he wants to tell you what has happened, what this means to him. Allen Ross: "'Yahweh is my strength, my song. He has become my salvation. This is my God, I will glorify Him. My father's God, I will exalt Him.'" After going through this experience of the Red Sea, after being delivered so miraculously at that moment, they were brought face to face with the reality, as they should have had by living in Egypt, they have no strength apart from God. They have no reason to sing apart from God. They've been slaves in Egypt. He is their strength now, He is their song, and He's their salvation, because they can't save themselves, but the Lord does it. And they knew immediately that all of this that was done in Egypt, is to cause the world to stand in fear and wonder, but it's to help the Israelites to stand in faith and confidence. And Moses just breaks out in song here to declare what all of this has done for him. "'The Lord is my strength, Lord is my song. He has become my salvation.'" Allen Ross: If you read this chapter carefully, and you glance down at verses 20 and 21, you discovered that Miriam, the sister of Moses, who was a prophetess and she, with the women, take the timbrels and they come out and dance and celebrate and sing. But notice what they're singing, they're singing the very same words that Moses is saying. "'Horse and rider is cast into the sea,'" and so on. The little verb there that says they sang is actually the word "to answer" and it should give the connotation, in this passage, that this was antiphonal singing. Moses would sing a line, they would sing the line, Moses would sing another, they would sing that line. It's the easiest way to teach people how to sing a song, if they don't know what it is. And so they probably celebrated, Moses singing, they respond, they sang and they're celebrating. And this is the congregation entering in this wonderful experience of praise and they too would go through that the Lord has become my strength, my song, and my salvation. Allen Ross: But after that introduction, he wants to give you the details, this is what happens if somebody stands up in church and says, "I want to praise the Lord because he's faithful," and sits down. You don't know what happened. You want more. And he says, "He's cast the horse and rider into the sea." Well, they there didn't need much interpretation, but generations to follow will. And Moses will supply it. Allen Ross: He begins this section on the cause for the praise with the declaration, "'Yahweh is a man of war. Yahweh is His name.'" Man of war, very bold figure to use for God, but He's not a man of war like any man of war you might know. He's not like any human warrior, He doesn't meet Pharaoh chariot to chariot, He doesn't meet him soldier to soldier. It's not the way God fights. And they were expecting this anyway, by the way, because if you read back in chapter 14, the people are standing there on the shore, they're scared to death. They don't know what's going to happen because they're right now boxed in and Moses has to tell them, "Stand still. You'll see the salvation of the Lord because the Lord will fight for us today." And even, a little bit later, these Egyptians decide they can chase them down inside the waterway and into the basin of the sea and all of a sudden all the chariot wheels are coming off. And the soldiers say, "Let's get out of here because the Lord is fighting for them." Allen Ross: God fights in different ways and he doesn't need to use traditional methods. What God fights with in these kinds of situations, is nature. This is not just a military victory that the Israelites experienced and they're celebrating, this is a cosmic victory. When you study the Bible, you will notice, that whenever God wants to establish a new beginning, a new covenant, a new people who will be His sanctuary, according to Psalm 1:14, He will do it by shaking nature to the core. By turning the laws of nature inside out so that everybody will know this was not just a nice little victory they, this is the Lord, God of creation, and he is the one who can command all of creation to fight for Him and to do His will. Allen Ross: It happened at the flood. At the flood, God was ready to start over again with Noah and He could have done a lot of things, but He decides to put everything back under water, like it was at the beginning. And that destroys the wicked world and then gradually the water recedes, dry land begins to appear, Noah comes out, and there's a new order. And He does it here because they're going to be on the other side of the sea and they are going to be establishing a new order. They are the people of God, they're going to be His nation. And yet, it's because God's judgment using nature will do that. Allen Ross: He did it at the crucifixion. It was time to inaugurate the new covenant and so at the cross, three hours of darkness in the land, earthquakes, the veil rent from top to bottom, dead people coming out of the tombs, culminating a couple days later with the resurrection of Christ. All the laws of nature turned upside down because the sovereign God of creation is establishing a new thing, a new order, a people who will be His sanctuary. And according to the prophets, He's going to do it again at the end of the age, when He renovates creation and establish the new order, the new heavens, and the new earth. Allen Ross: This is God's way of showing that what He is doing in judgment on the world and what He is doing in building His people, not anything in nature or in hell can prevent it. Because He's the sovereign Lord of creation. Allen Ross: In that sense, the people of Israel would know, and the world would know, who this is, who is doing all of this. And it certainly fits the nation of Israel because ever since the time of Jacob, they now have a new name, and the name is Israel, which means God fights. You will receive the promises if God fights for you. You can't do it by your own strength, that's what the message was for Jacob, it's the message for Israel, it's the message for us. If God fights for you, who can be against you? You try to do it? You can't. It's a miraculous work, it's a cosmic victory that is being celebrated here. And while they knew what happened, people in later generations needed to know and to be able to see this as it would be reported by Moses. Allen Ross: What he does in the middle of this Psalm, is that he will give you two cycles. He'll give you the report of the deliverance and then a little section of praise and then he'll give you another report, more information, and then greater praise. So he will say in verse four, "'The chariots and army of Pharaoh, He has cast into the sea. The best of Pharaoh's officers drowned in the Red Sea. The floods covered them. They sank to the depths like a rock." All right, we're getting more details now. This is a spectacular judgment on the nation of Egypt, which was seeking to destroy the Israelites. And then he breaks into praise, "'Your right hand, Oh Yahweh, shattered the enemy. In the greatness of your majesty, you threw down your adversaries. You sent your burning anger and it consumed them like chaff. At the blast of your nostrils, the waters piled up. The surging waters stood up in a heap. The deeps congealed in the heart of the sea." So again, describing what God did and it was truly miraculous. Allen Ross: I am always sad and amazed at some of the attempts that so-called biblical theologians down through the years have tried to do, to explain miracles by natural causes. You don't have to read very much too soon come into this. And the Exodus is a real problem for a lot of them because this is just too supernatural. Water coming back and standing up and people walking through on dry ground. I mean, this is incredible. There's one theory that says, "They didn't really cross through the sea, they crossed through an area of lakes and the Israelites were able to walk through the shallow lakes and knew where they were. But the Egyptians didn't know where the shallow lakes where, they went into the deep lakes and that's where they died. So, that's how it happened." Allen Ross: If that's true, we should not be praising God, we should be applauding those clever Israelites for knowing where the shallows were and the foolishness of the Egyptians for running headlong into the deep water. If you're afraid of the supernatural, you're going in the wrong business. And here, this is always portrayed very clearly in the scripture as one miraculous, supernatural work of God, never to be forgotten. And Moses in writing his hymn, is making sure we don't forget it, and the Israelites never forgot it. And in Revelation, they didn't forget it because they too will still sing the Song of Moses. It's there. Allen Ross: And so he breaks again into praise. This should be sufficient to say, "'Who among the gods is like you? Who is like you?'" And then he lays it on, "'Majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders.'" That language is just ... Now he has to pull out all stops because this isn't an ordinary victory on the battlefield, this isn't an ordinary answer to prayer, this is divine power and divine grace, breaking in, turning nature on its head, so that He can deliver His people out of this episode of spiritual warfare and establish them as His sanctuary, which is what Psalm 1:14 says. Allen Ross: "'You stretched out your right hand, the earth swallowed them up. And in your faithful, covenant love, you lead this people that you have redeemed. By your strength you guide them to your Holy dwelling.'" A judgment on the world, a victory for the people of God. They'll need more of them because the world will not go quietly. They want to destroy the people of God, in the Old Testament world, in the New Testament world, but it is God who has sworn and guaranteed it will not happen. It will not succeed. Not even the Gates of Hell, not even Satan himself can destroy what He is trying to do. Satan would love to destroy the Israelites, he would love to destroy the church, because in doing so, he would be destroying the word of God. And God is not going to let that happen because He has made promises and He will shake heaven and earth to fulfill those promises. Allen Ross: And so Moses then will draw a couple of conclusions for us, which I think you probably can guess. One is the effect of this on the nations and the effect on the people of God. "'Nations will hear and tremble. Anguish will seize the people of Philistia. The chiefs of the Edomites will be terrified. The mighty ones of Moab will be seized with trembling. All the habitants of Canaan will melt away.'" See this is the path they're going to take going up into the land of promise, through the Edomites and the Moabites countries and the Canaanites. And we know from the story of Jericho that they had heard and they were scared to death that the Israelites were coming. Allen Ross: "'Terror and dread will fall on them because of the greatness of your arm. They will be as silent as stone, until your people pass by. Oh Yahweh, until your people you bought pass by and you shall bring them and plant them on your Holy mountain. The place, Oh Yahweh, which you made for your dwelling, the sanctuary, Oh Yahweh, which your hands established. Yahweh will reign forever and forever.'" Allen Ross: These are the implications of this great deliverance. There is much greater that is coming. There will be great deliverances that we can't even begin to imagine, but this one stood the test of time, that God could turn pagan nations to terror just by the word that they hear of what happened at the Red Sea. Which, by the way, assumes somebody is telling them what happened at the Red Sea, which is why God wants praise. Not because He's starved for praise, the angels have been praising Him for ages, but because when you praise the Lord, others will hear, they will learn, and they will understand that there is a life that God has for His people that is far greater than anything this world has. And it's open to anybody who wants to join it. Allen Ross: I have three very short applications I want to draw from this, just to help you think. One is, I think this song, and others like it, should inspire us to be more deliberate in the kinds of things that we sing in private, in church, in congregations, whatever, that we want to make sure that as we sing to the glory of God and to His power, that the language is going to be appropriate to the greatness of God. Sometimes I've been amazed when I've listened to people give testimonies, we were in a prayer meeting awhile back, and there was a minister, should've known better, but a minister wanted to say that they had been praying and somebody in their family was healed. And I was interested to listen, to hear what he had to say, and all he could say was, "You know, it's a God thing." Come on, we can do better than that. That doesn't tell us ... Doesn't even tell us which God you're talking about. Allen Ross: I think the second thing we have to work on is our vocabulary. Read the scriptural hymns and see what language they're using to praise God. Read the great hymns of the faith, see what language they're using, and start to employ them, not just in your singing, but also in the words that you say when you talk about God. So that His glory and His power and His majesty and His honor and all of that, that they repeat again and again, just rolls from your lips as you talk about the Lord and sing praises to Him. When we worship and when we sing and when we praise, time is so critical we can't waste any of it and we have to be very sure that the way we sing praises to God, is going to be adequate to the glory of God. Allen Ross: And finally, one other application. When you sing praises to God, you are entering into a prophetic ministry. When you look at Chronicles, all the musicians, all the singers, they're called prophets. It's part of your service, as a kingdom of priests, because when you sing these kinds of glorious anthems, you are edifying one another, encouraging one another, comforting one another, it's a ministry. And singing it in ways that the world might hear or hear about, you are proclaiming the good news of the Gospel to them and the announcement of the final victory that will come through Christ, Jesus, our Lord. Allen Ross: The church is a singing community and it is deliberately designed to be that because Paul tells us, when God gave us the Holy Spirit, "When you are filled with the Spirit, you're going to sing, you're going to give thanks, you're going to praise, you're going to edify one another." All those things come together as part of your prophetic ministry. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen. Kristen Padilla: You've been listening to the Beeson podcast. Our theme music is written and performed by Advent Birmingham of the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our announcer is Mike Pasquerillo. Our co-hosts are Doug Sweeney and myself, Kristen Padilla. Please subscribe to the Beeson podcast at beesondivinity.com/podcast or on iTunes. Kristen Padilla: (Silence)