Exodus 15 - The Lord Is a Man of War

Look at Exodus 15, verse three. What does it say? The Lord is a man of war.

The Lord is a man of war. You know, that's interesting. You're probably more apt to think of the

Lord as the prince of peace, right? Jesus is the prince of peace.

But here we see the Lord is a warrior or a man of war.

So in Exodus 15, after the great victory, the Lord wrought over Pharaoh and his army by parting the

Red Sea, delivering Israel, and then collapsing the waters on the Egyptian army.

We see that Moses is now singing a song. So Moses and his sister

Miriam composed this poem or a song of victory.

And this is referred to as what? Okay, the song of Moses, or maybe it's better to say a song of Moses because there's another song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32.

But whatever the case, this is a praise that Moses, his sister, and all the children of Israel sang to the

Lord because of what the Lord did at the Red Sea. And we talked about that last time in Exodus 14, how in the

Red Sea event, there was both judgment and redemption.

Now, you explain that to me. How is that? How is there both judgment and redemption in the same act?

Good. Okay, so the children of Israel were delivered and Pharaoh and his army were judged.

So you see judgment and redemption. And if you think about it, Moses is who?

Moses is the mediator of the old covenant. And he took his rod made of wood and he divided the sea.

Jesus is the mediator of the new covenant. He took his cross made of wood.

And after his death, what was divided? The veil in the temple was divided.

So, you know, that's just another parallel. And at the cross, there was both judgment and redemption.

So how would you explain the judgment and redemption at the cross? Judgment on sin and death.

Okay. Redemption for sins. Right. So yeah,

Jesus took the sin of the world upon himself and was crucified.

And that was God's judgment upon sin. But all who believe in him, all who place their trust in Jesus are redeemed.

So you see all these parallels between Moses and Jesus. We've talked about this when we went through the book of Genesis, how there's so many tie -ins with Jacob or Abraham and Jesus, Jacob and Jesus, Moses and Jesus.

So we just see that straight through the Old Testament. We're seeing it now in Exodus.

So here is another connection. Okay. Turn to the book of Revelation, Revelation chapter 15, and who from the top of their head, from memory, remembers the connection between Revelation 15 and Exodus 15?

Don't look at it and tell me after. I want you to do this from memory. Nobody? All right.

That's a question. What's the connection between Revelation 15 and Exodus 15?

Redemption by blood. Okay. That's a good guess. All right.

Well, we'll see that in a moment. All right. And redemption by power. Throw everything against the wall, see what sticks, right?

See what happens. But I want to stress again, how the Bible is connected.

Every book of the Bible is connected with something else. So the

Bible is a collection of how many books? 66 books written by over 40 different authors over the course of about 1500 years.

And altogether, the scripture gives us the complete revelation of God.

And it gives us God's holy and righteous character, along with his great love for mankind and purchasing our redemption through, as Jim said, the blood of Christ.

But there's a connection with Revelation 15 in that in the end times, when a great victory is won then, what did the saints do?

They sing the song of Moses and the song of the lamb.

And the lamb, the Lord is what? What did we start out with? The Lord is a man of war.

So the war is now in this age, the war is against sin.

The war or the battle, the victory he won on the cross was a victory against sin and its penalty.

Look at Revelation 15, starting in verse one, but there's gonna be another physical battle in the end of days.

Revelation 15, verses one through four. John writes, then I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous, seven angels having the seven last plagues for in them, the wrath of God is complete.

And I saw something like a sea of glass mingled with fire and those who have the victory over the beast, who we would identify as the antichrist, over his image and over his mark and over the number of his name, which is 666, standing on the sea of glass, having harps of God and they sang what?

The song of Moses. The song of Moses, the servant of God and the song of the lamb saying, great and marvelous are your works,

Lord God almighty. Just and true are your ways, O King of the saints. Who shall not fear you

O Lord and glorify your name for you alone are holy, for all nations shall come and worship before you for your judgments have been made manifest.

So the Lord is a man of war. So there was this battle, there was this war between the children of Israel and the

Egyptians, right? I mean, they weren't fighting with swords or with bow and arrow.

The Lord fought their battle, right? And he used the sea and he destroyed the physical army of Egypt.

When Jesus was crucified on the cross, he disarmed principalities in powers.

That's what Paul says in Colossians 2 .15. So I say all this and make this point about the

Lord being a man of war because I really believe that Christians and the modern church needs to balance all of these things out.

People have the idea of Jesus as the Prince of Peace, Jesus meek and mild, and that's all true and it's all fair, but he's also a man of war.

Why? Because in order to secure peace, if Jesus is the Prince of Peace, in order to secure peace, what do you have to do?

Yeah, you have to defeat the enemy who's causing all the problems to begin with.

So the Lord is the man of war here in Revelation 15. What it's describing is that the

Lord will overthrow the armies of the beast or of the

Antichrist. And what did it say? They sing the song of Moses, which is a song of victory and the song of the lamb.

Now turn ahead to Revelation chapter 19 and we see what is perhaps the most clear picture of Jesus, the

Lord, as a man of war. See, this is the

Jesus that some people don't want. They want the

Jesus who is kind and merciful and that will bless them and do all the things that they want.

They do not want Jesus, the Lord, the man of war. Say, well, my

Jesus isn't like that. My Jesus wouldn't do something like that. I've heard that many times throughout the years.

Well, your Jesus might not, but the Jesus of scripture, that's another story.

Revelation 19 verse 11. So this is an event that is in our future.

It's an event that is going to take place upon the earth. It was to say, now

I saw heaven opened and behold, a white horse. And he who sat on him was called faithful and true.

And in righteousness, he judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire and on his head were many crowns.

He had a name written that no one knew except himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood and his name is called the word of God.

And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed him on white horses.

Now out of his mouth goes a sharp sword that with it he should strike the nations and he himself will rule them with a rod of iron.

He himself treads the wine press of the fierceness and the wrath of almighty

God. And he has on his robe and on his thigh, a name written

King of Kings and Lord of Lords. So here's that connection.

In Exodus 15, the children of Israel, they sing the song of Moses. And this is a song of victory that the

Lord has defeated all of our enemies. And in the end times, the saints that are living and survived the tribulation period, they will again sing the song of Moses and the song of the lamb, which is a song of victory that God has conquered all of our enemies.

Isn't it true that Christians or the church today in the world, the church has a lot of enemies.

Isn't that true? Well, God is going to conquer all his enemies.

Now, the thing is with us, we're not called to fight. We're not called to take up arms and enter into a physical battle.

It's gonna be like the Red Sea. The Lord's gonna do it all. All we have to do is be faithful and trust in him, and he's going to take care of it.

During the tribulation, believers in Jesus don't take tanks and bombs and guns.

Jesus comes from the clouds. All he does is what? He speaks the word and defeats all his enemies.

All right, any questions or comments so far, Larry? Well, a couple of things.

Not only is he a man of war, but he's a judge, it says there in Revelation 19 .11.

He's gonna judge in righteousness, and ultimately, he has king of kings and lord of lords.

He will execute judgment, and also Hebrews 9 .27.

Yeah. It's appointed on a man once to die and after that, of judgment. Right, yeah, for a long time.

This isn't something you hear about a lot today, but Christians were called or referred to as a

God -fearing people. Right, there's not a lot of talk about fearing God today, but for centuries, right up until probably the last century,

Christians were considered a people that feared God. Well, the fear of God isn't a popular topic, but go back to Exodus 15, and anyone else have any thoughts or questions so far?

You have another one? Okay. Well, it's a spiritual battle. Right, yes. That we engage in, so yes, we are called to fight, but it's not a physical battle with weapons.

Exactly. Other than the spiritual, because he gives us the army, or armor, rather, in Ephesians 6, and the only thing that's left unprotected is our back.

So we're not supposed to turn and flee from the enemy because that just gives him a clear shot.

Yeah, a lot of times we have Christians shooting at us from behind too. We're wounded.

Well, I was just gonna add to what he said, what Larry said, is that we're not called to fight.

He said, put on the armor and stand. He says that twice.

Stand, be ready. Right, and the one offensive weapon we have is what?

Word of God. Yeah, the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. All of the armor is defensive.

So the one offensive thing we have is the word of God, which is why we preach and teach the scripture.

You remember when Jesus was tempted by the devil, how did Jesus combat the devil?

Using the scripture. He did it by quoting the scripture, because that's where the power is.

So along this idea of the Lord as a man of war, that's exactly right. We are not fighting a physical battle.

We are not called to fight a physical battle. But since we are called to be good soldiers of Jesus Christ, this is what

Paul says to Timothy. And what does that mean? What are our marching orders?

Faithful, true. Yeah, remain faithful. And I think it is worth pointing out, this is one of the differences between Old Testament and New Testament.

In the Old Testament, there was a physical nation, Israel, and they had a physical kingdom, and they fought physical battles.

When they entered into the promised land, they did fight warfare. But today, the church is, if you can use this term, the church is a spiritual nation.

Therefore, we as Christians, we fight spiritual battles.

What did Paul say in Ephesians 6, 12? For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places.

So as soldiers in the Lord's army, we don't go out on the battlefield and physically slay the enemy.

What do we do? We go on the battlefield of life, and we proclaim the

Lordship of Christ. And we combat, we do combat, combat errors with what?

The word of God, the sword of the spirit. So if somebody tells you, or they tell your children, or your grandchildren, that you're nothing more than an animal who evolved from a primate, you need to take out your sword and say, no.

The scripture says that mankind was made in the image of God. God created man. Man is not an animal that evolved.

Or that, well, the universe just kinda happened, just blew up and exploded into being.

You say, no, the Lord created the heavens and the earth. So this is our job to fight the spiritual battle by proclaiming the truth.

So you have it much better. The Israelites, they had to take a literal sword and go out and fight, and many died.

Of course, many Christians have died proclaiming truth and have been made martyrs. But we have it,

I believe, much better fighting a spiritual war. And it's more than that.

We need to focus on our own personal battle, right?

Resisting temptation to sin. We need to be able to practice self -control.

We need to, as Jesus said, deny self. That's not always a fun thing to do, is it?

To deny self, but that's what we're called to do. To crucify the flesh daily.

So this is our flesh, which wars against our spirit. So there's a spiritual battle going on within me and within you.

And by the way, if anyone says, well, I don't sense that. I don't think there's any battle.

I don't sense that within my spirit. Well, that just means you're still in darkness if you don't recognize that, or you've just given in to sin and temptation.

All right, let's look at Exodus 15 in this song of Moses, this song of victory.

Verse one, then Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to the Lord and spoke saying,

I will sing to the Lord for he has triumphed gloriously. The horse and its rider has been thrown into the sea.

The Lord is my strength and song, and he has become my salvation.

He is my God, and I will praise him. My father's God, and I will exalt him.

The Lord is what? A man of war. A man of war, the Lord is his name.

Pharaoh's chariots in his army, he has cast into the sea. His chosen captains also are drowned in the

Red Sea. The depths have covered them. They sank to the bottom like a stone.

You realize they're rejoicing in this. There's no lament for Pharaoh and his army.

They sank to the bottom like a stone. Your right hand, O Lord, has become glorious in power.

Your right hand, O Lord, has dashed the enemy in pieces. We're not gonna read the whole thing because we already heard it, but verse 11 is great.

Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? You remember, as we went through the plagues of Egypt, how each plague was a judgment against one of the gods of Egypt.

And we said, what's the most well -known god in Egypt, other than maybe Pharaoh himself?

Rah. Rah. Right, most people have heard of Rah, the sun god. It's like, oh, okay, you worship

Rah, the sun god. Well, I'll just block the sun. I'll just make it dark.

I'll make it so dark that you can't even see the hand in front of your face. That was a judgment against the god of Egypt, or one of the gods.

Oh, Pharaoh claims that his son is a deity. What did the Lord do? He took his firstborn.

Oh, Pharaoh, Pharaoh thinks he's a god. I'll destroy his army, and I'll take the people that he enslaved, and I'll make a mighty and great nation out of them, and make them greater than even

Egypt. So you can see what the Lord did, and exalted his name above Pharaoh, and Egypt, and his people.

So the Lord is a man of war. You can either, this is the choice every human being has.

You can either put your trust in him, and love God, and follow his ways, or you can fight against God, and guess what?

You're going to lose. Now, we do wanna balance it out with the other side.

The Lord, what does it say? God is love. The Lord is patient. The Lord is kind.

The Lord is full of mercy. That is all true. But which side you experience, the gracious, the graciousness, the compassion, the love, the mercy, or the wrath, and the man of war?

Whichever one you experience depends on your reaction to the Lord. You either get

Jesus, the Savior, or you get the Lord, the man of war. It's your choice.

So the Song of Moses begins with verse one. I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously.

The horse and its rider he has thrown into the sea. That's how it begins, and that's also how it ends with Miriam taking up that same verse or the same chorus.

So it's kind of like that approach where you tell people what you're going to tell them, you tell it to them, and then you tell them what you told them, right?

And it goes something like that. And that's a good approach to preaching, by the way. You know, you tell people what you're going to say, you say it to them, and then you tell them what you already said.

And that helps people to remember, like, okay, what's the point? So if you go home and somebody asks you, so what was the main point or topic of Bible study tonight?

What are you gonna say? The Lord is a man of war. The Lord is a man of war, good, good.

And the battle belongs to the Lord. And the battle belongs to the Lord, amen. So starting in verse 20, now

Miriam, who is Moses' sister, she repeats the same thing.

Verse 20 says, then Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, and I stopped,

I saw that and I said, that's, to me, I don't know, maybe you don't think this way, but I thought the sister of Aaron, like,

I would expect it to say the sister of Moses, because Moses is kind of the big man here, right?

Of course, Moses is the one writing this. Why do you think, just get a few thoughts from you, why do you think it says sister of Aaron instead of Moses?

Any ideas? Doesn't want to take the spotlight.

Okay, doesn't want to take the spotlight. Moses doesn't want to, is he trying to be humble, maybe?

Any other thoughts? It may have something to do with Moses being the leader, and Aaron and his sister

Miriam were under him, or at least Aaron was under him. Okay, all right.

It may have something, and I'm sure you have the answer for it. Well, no, I don't, actually, that's why, usually I try to have the answer, but this is one of those things

I looked. One theory was that Aaron's the oldest, so technically, the way things were then,

Aaron was the head of the family, even though Moses is God's man, Aaron is head of the family, and that's what you would say.

That's one theory. Another theory is that Miriam and Aaron are more associated with each other, and Moses is more associated with the

Lord, because there's even times where Moses, or excuse me, there's times where Miriam and Aaron are supporting

Moses, but there's also a time where Aaron and Miriam oppose

Moses, so the two seem to be associated with, so I don't know, that was just an interesting thing that I saw, but anyways, moving on, then

Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took the timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out with her, with timbrels and with dances, and Miriam answered them, sing to the

Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously. The horse and its rider he has thrown into the sea.

So she's now picked up the song of her brother, and she's ending it with that same refrain.

One other thing that stands out here, what is Miriam called? A prophetess.

That's the first mention of her, the second mention is at the foot of the mountain.

Okay, what does it mean that she's a prophetess?

What's the definition of that? A woman prophet. Okay, well, and that's true, yeah.

A prophet, John the Baptist was a prophet, Elijah was a prophet, Moses is a prophet, really, too.

So a prophetess, you're right, it's a female prophet. But a prophet, yes,

Linda? Revelation, she gets revelation from God. Yeah, good.

So a prophet can be a preacher, sometimes that's the way it's used. If you're foretelling

God's word, you can be considered, in a sense, a prophet preaching.

But usually when we think of a prophet, it's someone who does get a direct word from the

Lord. And Miriam, in the book of Numbers, Numbers 12, verse two, we don't have time to turn there, but Miriam says that the

Lord has spoken through me as well. So God did speak directly to her.

Now, we do not believe that there are prophets and prophetesses in the church today.

There were in the pages of the New Testament, because the faith, the church was being established, the scriptures were being written, so God was giving revelation in the first century.

The problem you have if a woman or a man today claims that I am a prophet of God, or I'm a prophetess of God, and God spoke to me and here's what he said, if they quote the

Bible, then it's really unnecessary because we already have it in scripture. But if they say something that's not in the scripture, but God told me this and here's what he said, what's the problem with that?

Well, yeah, I mean, that's good, because yeah, anybody can say that.

I'm a prophet and here, God told me that you should give me $1 ,000. That's what

God said. You can't argue with God, right? And by the way, people on TV, preachers on TV do that kind of a thing.

But really, if God is speaking to people today, giving them direct revelation, then logically you should take that and tack it on to the book of Revelation.

We would have an open canon, and we'd be adding books to the Bible left and right.

What does Revelation say about that? Well, yeah, the book of Revelation ends, and I don't think this is a coincidence.

The book of Revelation ends with the Lord giving a strict warning to anyone who would add to the book of this prophecy.

And theologians throughout the centuries have understood that as the perfect ending, that the

Bible is now complete, and you don't add to it. So if somebody claims that God spoke to them, they better be able to prove it.

And Paul and Peter, Jesus, I mean, whoever it was, they proved it by raising someone from the dead, by performing miracles.

So anyways, that's another sermon for another day. But Jim, you had your hand up? Well, my understanding is that God speaks to us today, but through his word, he doesn't deliver

Revelation to us individually outside of the word. When we study

God's word, there are things, when we study it and we truly study it, we see

God's word in there and his instructions. Yeah. So I think that's probably the only understanding we should have of any revelation or prophecy.

Good. All right, so Miriam is called a prophetess because the Lord did speak to her.

And there are several examples. She's the first, but there are several other examples of women in the

Bible who are called a prophetess. Typically, we think of the prophets as being men and they were, but there are some examples of women being prophetesses.

So can anyone tell us a few of the others? Debra. Okay, good.

Debra in Judges four, verse four is called a prophetess. Who else?

Anna. Anna. Luke. Yep, Luke chapter two, verse 36.

Very good. Anna is called a prophetess. There's a few more. Huldah. Huldah.

Good. That's second Kings 22, 14. Philip's daughters.

Very good. You guys are doing great tonight. Philip's four daughters who prophesied.

Acts 21, verse nine. There's one more. One more.

And we don't have her name, I don't think. We just know her as the wife of another prophet.

Who do you think the greatest prophet is in the Old Testament? Not Elijah.

He's a good guess. I know Jesus said John the Baptist is the greatest, but who's the other one that would be? Isaiah. Good.

So Isaiah eight, verse three. Isaiah's wife is called a prophetess.

So, I mean, that's sort of the exception to the rule, but there are several women in scripture who are forth telling

God's word or they receive direct revelation from God.

All right, any final comments or questions? Yes. Yeah, that's a really good question.

She's not called a prophetess. Mary. But Mary did receive,

I think you could safely say she did receive revelation from the angel Gabriel.

So, yeah, that's a very good point. I'll have to think more about that.

Yeah, but she's not called that, but I could definitely see how that would. Has anyone ever heard

Mary referred to that way? Yeah. I'm thinking that that was a special, special time because she was the mother of Jesus Christ.

Well, I guess what I'm thinking is she didn't go around proclaiming it, right?

She didn't go around preaching. This is what God said to me, because typically a prophet, I think this would be the difference.

A prophet receives a word from the Lord and then proclaims it to everybody else.

And I don't think Mary did that, but valid, valid question. And scripture also has a test for a prophet.

You want to tell us what that is? I can't remember. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's true. It's not specific as to, you know, here's the woman, here's her name, but that's true.

Sons and daughters will prophesy. Very good. All right. Well, now in this final section of verses 22 through 27, again, the children of Israel are delivered.

There's this great redemptive event in Israel's history.

They're all singing this praise to God over the victory that he gave them, but it only took three days for them to go back to their grumbling and complaining.

But you know, I'm not going to defend them because it's not the right thing to do. But if you were out in the wilderness and you went without water for three days, you might be grumbling and complaining too.

You know, it's really easy to look at people in the scripture and kind of pass judgment on, look at that, why are they acting like this?

But if you were there, would you be any different? I don't know. Yeah. Yeah.

So what happens? They're complaining and they do need to be rescued in a sense.

They come to this place called Marah, which means bitterness. There's nobody here named

Marah, right? That is a name that people have given to their child. And yeah, sometimes if you look up your name, what it means, you kind of wish you didn't look it up.

But Marah means bitterness or a source of bitterness. I'm sure that's true with some people named Marah and not true with others, but that's what it means.

And the water there, it was called that because the water was so bitter, they could not drink it.

But what does the Lord do? He performs yet another miracle. Moses takes this branch and throws it in the water and it becomes palatable.

Well, there's no branch that can do that with tainted water. So obviously this is the

Lord, once again, working a miracle to provide for the children of Israel. And now the

Lord is testing them. It says that he's testing them. And here's the thing.

He promises to keep them healthy if they would heed his voice.

So it says in verse 26, it said, if you diligently heed the voice of the

Lord, your God, and do what is right in his sight, give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes,

I will put none of the diseases on you, which I have brought on the

Egyptians for I am the Lord who heals you. And this is one of the great names of God in the

Old Testament, Jehovah Rapha, which means the Lord who heals. So this is a promise, because I know what some

Christians think when they read this. Well, if I just obey God and keep all of his commandments, then

I'm promised good health for the rest of my life, right? I mean, this would be a prosperity preacher's dream text.

So if you all just do the right thing, no disease can ever touch you. Unless I think if you do obey the

Lord and live right and follow his commandments, I think generally speaking, you will be in good health as opposed to someone who's living a kind of a rough sinful life, right?

I mean, just that's how it would work. But this cannot be a guarantee to all Christians that if you obey

God's commandments, that it's a guarantee you'll never get a disease. Why is that?

Remember one of the rules of biblical interpretation, it's all about three things.

No. It's all about three things and they're all the same thing.

Good. Context, context, context. So who is the

Lord speaking to? The children of Israel. This is for them that if they will do this, no disease will touch them.

Did they do it? No. No, no. Again, let me just read verse 26 again.

If you diligently heed the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his sight, give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes,

I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians for I am the