By Rev. Dr. Brent Russett — Asbury Free Methodist
July 2nd, 2023 Exodus 15:1-2l
One of the things that I hope we grow in at Asbury is celebrating wins. I am not very good at it, so when something good happens, I often forget to celebrate.
Having four of the youth invite Jesus into their lives at a youth weekend a few weeks back is a win. I have been trying to remember to celebrate when people come to know Jesus by putting up a red balloon on Sunday morning. – I forgot. As I said, I am bad at celebrating wins – but I want to get better.
We came through Covid still loving one another. That is a win. We had a Society meeting/ a business meeting a couple of weeks ago, and there was a good spirit in the room. That is a win.
How you supported the Cuba mission trip and how you support missions, in general, is amazing and something to be celebrated. There are so many good things to celebrate around here.
I recognize that we have experienced loss and pain as well. I don’t view life through rose colour glasses. But I don’t know about you, but I find it easier to focus on the negative things than the positive things. I think that is true for most of us. That is why we need to get good at celebrating the good stuff.
But more than getting good at celebrating good stuff, I want us to get really good at celebrating God’s stuff. That is what our passage does today.
This is our third week in Exodus. God’s people had languished in slavery in Egypt for over 400 years. It was a hard existence with a brutal taskmaster. But God heard the cries of his people and saw their misery and sent Moses to Pharaoh to say let my people go. Pharaoh would not, so God sent plague after plague. Pharaoh would say he would let God’s people go, but after the plague went away, he changed his mind.
Finally, after the 10th plague, when the oldest in the household of Egypt was killed, Pharaoh let the people of God go. God led his people into the wilderness and beside the sea. Pharaoh again changed his mind and sent 600 chariots to attack. The people panicked, but Moses told the people in Exodus 14:14, “The Lord himself will fight for you, just stay calm.”
And God did. He opened a roadway through the middle of the sea, and his people escaped, but when the chariots tried to follow, the walls of water collapsed, and the Pharaoh’s army drowned.
The people who had been their brutal taskmasters had been defeated. The army that had held them in check had been destroyed. They were free from the place where they had been held as slaves. Their response was to celebrate the win.
Exodus 15:1–3 (NLT)
Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord:
“I will sing to the Lord,
for he has triumphed gloriously;
he has hurled both horse and rider
into the sea.
2 The Lord is my strength and my song;
he has given me victory.
This is my God, and I will praise him—
my father’s God, and I will exalt him!
3 The Lord is a warrior;
Yahweh* is his name!
You may remember from last week that the Israelites freaked out when they saw the dust plumbs from Pharoah’s 600 chariots. They asked where is God? -we are going to die – why did you lead us out here?
But one day later, they are singing,
Exodus 15:4–5 (NLT)
4 Pharaoh’s chariots and army
he has hurled into the sea.
The finest of Pharaoh’s officers
are drowned in the Red Sea.
5 The deep waters gushed over them;
they sank to the bottom like a stone.
I thought we were going to die. But God delivered us, and our enemy died.
There was no problem identifying the source of the win. It is not that they had a talented leader. It was not that they had a great army. It was not that they had done anything other than follow God by following the pillar of clouds by day and fire by night. It was not about them. It was about God.
Exodus 15:6–10 (NLT)
6 “Your right hand, O Lord,
is glorious in power.
Your right hand, O Lord,
smashes the enemy.
7 In the greatness of your majesty,
you overthrow those who rise against you.
You unleash your blazing fury;
it consumes them like straw.
8 At the blast of your breath,
the waters piled up!
The surging waters stood straight like a wall;
in the heart of the sea the deep waters became hard.
9 “The enemy boasted, ‘I will chase them
and catch up with them.
I will plunder them
and consume them.
I will flash my sword;
my powerful hand will destroy them.’
10 But you blew with your breath,
and the sea covered them.
They sank like lead
in the mighty waters.
I don’t know about you, but I haven’t been attacked by Pharaoh lately, nor have I been threatened by chariots. But I believe that the physical journey that God had his people on in Exodus is analogous to the spiritual journey that he has us on today.
The Pharaohs in our lives are those things that hinder the freedom that God wants to lead us into. The chariots in our lives are those things that drive fear deep into our hearts.
Jesus, in talking about the enemy of our souls said,
John 10:10 (NLT)
10 The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.
The Pharaohs in our lives want to kill, steal and destroy.
As we walk through the book of Exodus, you will find it full of stories where the people of God are fighting their enemies.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t usually walk around thinking about life as a battle. I don’t really think about having enemies. If I do think about battles, they are mostly about doing hard things like weight loss or reaching for my goals. But that isn’t the kind of battle I’m talking about.
Listen to Paul
Ephesians 6:10–12 (NLT)
10 A final word: Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on all of God’s armour so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil. 12 For we* are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.
Some of you are battling anxiety or depression. Some of you battle cancer or some other illness. Some of you are battling the effects of aging. Some of you are battling in some of your relationships.
But those things are not the real battle. Those things are the weapons of the enemy. The real battle is for your heart and your soul. The enemy of your soul wants to use those things to undermine your faith. The enemy of your soul wants to use those things to rob you of your love for God. The enemy of your soul wants to rob you of peace and strength, and hope that comes from God. The enemy of your soul wants to put you into bondage.
The thief comes to kill, steal and destroy. I have known people who have walked through deep grief and deep sadness with a sense of peace and well-being. I have known others who have been destroyed by their grief. I have known people who have dealt with trauma and come through that difficult journey flourishing. I have known others who have become bitter.
The battle is real. Make no mistake; You have an enemy.
But you also have a saviour. His name is Jesus. Where the enemy wants to enslave us, Jesus wants to set us free. Where the enemy, like the Pharoah, wants to put you in bondage. Jesus wants you to be free.
Colossians 2:13–15 (NLT)
13 You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins. 14 He cancelled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. 15 In this way, he disarmed* the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross.
By Jesus’ work on the cross he defeated the devil and his angels. He had victory over them. He defeated sin and death. You have a saviour.
*****
Now I get that the enemy that was chasing the Israelites was much more obvious than the enemy who harasses us. It is easier to see 600 chariots riding across the desert than it is to detect the schemes of the evil one.
I get that that it is easier to identify what God has done when He opens up a path through the sea, so the people could escape – than it is to see what he has done in our lives when he forgave us of our sins.
So, I get that it is a little easier for the Israelites to celebrate a win than it is for us to celebrate a win. – Or it is until you know what to look for.
*****
Romans 3:10-11 says, “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, there is no one who seeks God.”
Jesus says in John 6:44, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.”
“According to these passages of scripture, people do not seek God on their own initiative. People do not ask questions about spiritual matters unless God is at work in their lives. When you see some seeking God or asking questions about Christianity, you are witnessing God at work. That is something only God does in people’s lives.” (Henry Blackaby -Experiencing God pg 56)
So the fact that you want to know God is not something you have created in yourself; that is evidence that God is working in you. The fact that you have come to Jesus and asked him to forgive you of your sins, while you made the choice, you would not have had a choice to make unless God was working in your life.
The fact that you have trusted Jesus to forgive your sin, and you believe that he has done so, is evidence of God’s work in your life. Faith like that is a gift from God that you exercise.
And if you know you are forgiven, you can sing with the Israelites
Exodus 15:1–3 (NLT)
Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord:
“I will sing to the Lord,
for he has triumphed gloriously;
he has hurled both horse and rider
into the sea.
2 The Lord is my strength and my song;
he has given me victory.
This is my God, and I will praise him—
my father’s God, and I will exalt him!
3 The Lord is a warrior;
Yahweh* is his name!
But instead of the horse and rider, he has hurled your sin into the sea of his forgetfulness, and he remembers it no more. I would call that a win, people. That is something to celebrate.
Since no one seeks after God, since no one comes to the Father unless the Father draws him – this means that whenever you hear someone at your work or someone in a coffee shop start asking about spiritual things – it is a sign that God is at work. By the way, if someone starts asking you spiritual questions, that is a chance to change your agenda to get on board with God’s agenda.
There are some of you here who went through a lot of life without thinking about God, but all of a sudden, something happened that you became interested in spiritual things – that is a God thing.
****
When you came to Jesus, that is a huge win. That is a parting of the Red Sea kind of win. But my guess is that you see smaller wins in your life almost every day.
If you have been at Asbury for a while, then you know that we emphasize discipleship. When you learn to hear from God and obey him, that is a win. If you are walking closer to Jesus now than you were a year ago, that is you and Jesus winning over the enemy. When you sense what God wants you to do in this next phase of life, and you step into it, that is a huge win.
When you walk through your battles with peace, that is a huge win. When your battles don’t define you, but you allow Jesus to define who you are – that is a win. When you live out of who God has made you instead of who the world tells you are – that is a huge win.
When you battled temptation and didn’t give in, when you choose to follow Jesus when it is hard – that is a huge win.
When you have been defeated by the enemy of your soul, but you choose to come back to Jesus and confess your sin and lean into him for help – even that is a win.
I love how our passage ends
Exodus 15:20–21 (NLT)
20 Then Miriam the prophet, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine and led all the women as they played their tambourines and danced. 21 And Miriam sang this song:
“Sing to the Lord,
for he has triumphed gloriously;
he has hurled both horse and rider
into the sea.”
They knew how to celebrate what God had done.
I love the picture of Miriam leading the women in worship. I was in Ghana, West Africa, teaching theology. On the Sunday we drove about an hour outside the capital city of Accra to this country church. It was a poor area. The weapons formed against that church were poverty and there was addiction in the area.
I was there to preach, but before I preached, the people worshipped. I mean, they worshipped. At one point in the worship, the women started dancing with tambourines. At one point, they even formed a conga line.
In the middle of difficult lives, they were celebrating what God had done and was doing for them. Now I am not expecting us to form a conga line in our church. But maybe we could form one in our hearts and celebrate the work of God.
When you have eyes to see, there are opportunities to celebrate what God has done all around us. We call that worship. One definition of worship is celebrating the win. God’s win. When God has done what only God can do, a great response is to worship.
That doesn’t mean that you have to sing – although music is often a backdrop to celebration. But it does mean that we give thanks. It does mean that we remember.
How are you at that? Have you lost sight of or taken for granted what God has done. Could it be that you haven’t seen any recent wins because you haven’t had eyes to see what God is doing around you?
You may be at a point in your life when you are not so much on a battlefield but in green pastures beside still waters. Celebrate that. Celebrate what God has done and what God is doing.
There is a spiritual discipline called Examine. It can be done at the end of the day or the beginning of a new day. I want you to consider practicing this as part of your personal devotion. It consists of two questions. The first is, Lord, where did I see you at work today? – or if you do it in the morning – Lord, where did I see you at work yesterday? Look back on your day and give thanks for the places where God showed up. The Bible says everything good comes from God. So, the good you saw in your day was from God – give thanks.
The second part of Examine is to ask the question, Lord, is there something that happened today that I need to confess and ask forgiveness for? If he brings something to mind, confess it.
If you don’t take time to notice, you may not notice. But when you notice what God is doing – you can get on board with him. You may even start a conga line in your heart.
How are you at celebrating what God has done? Do you notice what God is up to day by day? Here is what I have found. When I start noticing what God has done and giving thanks for it, it increases my joy. When I start noticing what God has done in the little things of life, it causes me to pray more for the little things of life. I see more answers to prayer. That increases my joy.
When I start to see how God is involved in my life every day – that gives me both peace and faith. I want you to experience that too.
So, consider taking up the daily discipline of Examine. It doesn’t take long, but it is good. The two questions are, Lord, where did I see you at work today? Lord, is there something that happened that I need to confess? Celebrate the wins. Deal with the losses. See what God will do.
My prayer is that we will learn to worship.