Exodus 15 "Refined Joy" Scott Hoezee

Is there anything more bitter to bear than seeing another's joy over your sorrow? After the September 11 attacks, did anything make you more angry than seeing those throngs of cheering people in various places in the Arab world? While most of us were wiping tear after tear out of our eyes, some were hopping up and down, dancing, singing, and shooting guns into the air in celebration of this great victory over the American "Satan." That was mighty tough to take. It makes you want to do something, and most of what such feelings tend to motivate are not lovely things. Indeed, in Israel these past years, whenever a suicide bomber succeeds in killing Israelis, that bomber becomes an instant martyr-hero in some sectors of the Palestinian community. Just to make sure the celebration doesn't get to go on for too long, however, the Israeli army promptly bulldozes to rubble the homes of each and every suicide bomber.

Seen from the Egyptian side of things, Israel's triumphant song in Exodus 15 would also most assuredly be very tough to take. It's one thing for us to hear joyful strains about "the horse and rider thrown into the sea," but each of those riders had a name and not a few probably left behind a family who mourned them. Some of those same families were already grieving the death of a firstborn son but now that grief was compounded by all those troops of Pharaoh who sank to the bottom of the Red Sea, never again to return home.

Our task in looking at Exodus 15 this evening would be a whole lot easier if I did not introduce this Egyptian perspective. All things being equal, it could be enough just to focus on the justifiable joy Israel felt at the time. And let's face it: those Egyptians who died were on the brink of re-capturing the Israelites, and no doubt slaughtering not a few of them, before herding the whole lot of them back into slavery in Egypt. If someone points a gun at your head and pulls the trigger, only to have the gun malfunction such that you live instead of dying instantly, you cannot help but collapse in a heap of joyful gratitude. So also for Israel: they could justifiably look back on this scenario at the Red Sea and say, "Whew! That was a close call! But hey! We're still alive! Hallelujah!"

We should also not forget this evening that the salvation of Israel at this juncture is one vital link in what will become a centuries-long chain of events that will ultimately culminate in nothing less than the advent of the Christ. We dare not forget that this act of saving grace is somehow of a piece with whatever salvation we now have in Jesus. All along in this series we've been emphasizing the relationship between the books of Genesis and Exodus, seeing in Exodus a sequel that is beginning to undo the damage done to the creation when humanity fell into sin at the beginning of Genesis. We've also said that Pharaoh has all along represented the complete anti-God force of evil and chaos in history. If so, then this victory at the Red Sea is finally a cosmic victory, setting a tone and charting a course that will eventually catch up every creature in the salvation of God.

But even with keeping all of that in mind, we should not lose sight of the cost, the carnage, the sorrow, and the pity of how all this comes about. Because what Exodus 15 forces us to consider is something that is going to dominate the rest of the Pentateuch as well as the Book of Joshua and beyond; namely, the notion of what today is often called jihad, "holy war." In the course of Exodus 15's psalm of praise, Yahweh is called "a warrior." We are also given a kind of sneak preview of things to come when reference is made in verse 15 to Moab, Philistia, Edom, and Canaan--each of those nations will stand in the way of Israel's march toward the Promised Land and each will experience slaughter and massive death at the hands of Israel and, by extension, at the hands of the God, Yahweh, who fights for Israel and is believed to be behind its every bloody victory.

So this evening I want to use the occasion of this song as an opportunity to ponder a Christian, gospel, New Testament perspective on what many people view as the Old Testament's single biggest scandal: violence in the name of the Holy One. Now that we have bitterly watched our beloved Savior become himself a victim of this world's propensity for violence and death--and so as people who have been called by Jesus to be peacemakers, forgivers, and turners-of-the-other-cheek--how do we, given all that, look back on Old Testament holy wars and God's role in all that? Let's be clear up front: this is an at-best difficult topic. Whatever I manage to convey to you tonight will hardly be the last word and it may not even be a very complete word. But it seems to me that we ought not forge forward in the Old Testament beyond Exodus 15 if we do not try to grapple with this topic.

We will hardly be the first to do so, of course! Various ways of grappling with this issue have abounded in church history. A most famous, and ultimately heretical, solution was posed by the theologian Marcion. Marcion ended up seeing such a huge cleft between the Old and New Testaments that he proposed a radical solution: the God we read about in the Old Testament must be a completely different God than the one who sent Jesus to this world in the New Testament! Since there is no easy or obvious way to reconcile the Old Testament's God of wrath and war with the New Testament's God of love and grace, we must conclude that it was some lesser deity who drove the action in the Old Testament.

In more recent times writer Jack Miles has written a "biography" of God. The premise of Mr. Miles' work is that God in the Bible needs to be treated like a literary character who grows, matures, and develops over time. God, in short, is a little immature and naive when the Bible begins, but through experience, hard knocks, and the like, God becomes more refined, more gentle, gracious, and finally loving.

I'm just going to assume that most of you do not find that approach to be very helpful. So we will note still other opinions. Some more liberal scholars claim that what you have in the Old Testament, and especially in a book like Joshua, is ordinary, secular history getting re-told through a theological lens. On September 11, Al Qaeda terrorists indiscriminately slaughtered babies, children, women, men, and any number of innocent people. Osama bin Laden assured the world that this was done by the decree of Allah, but most of this world's Muslims disagreed rather heartily. But the fact is that one can always look back on terrible events perpetrated by one group against another and then claim that this was the will of God. It's not "the devil made me do it" but instead "God made me do it." But someone's claiming such divine authorization does not necessarily make it so.

So also some scholars look at something like Joshua, they read there Yahweh's decrees about Jericho that "not a man, woman, child, or sucking infant is to remain alive," and they see in this some writer's later attempt to clean up Israel's brutal history by saying that all that mayhem was divinely sanctioned and so is beyond critique. But just because the author of Joshua said God told the Israelites to do this, that does not mean we have to buy this idea. Maybe Israel did things God did not want them to do but then covered themselves in later years by hiding behind the cloak of an ostensible divine decree.

Again, I'm going to assume there is some material in that line of thought that likewise makes you squirm theologically! But then, this is an uncomfortable area. Don't forget that there are not a few people in this world who reject the entire Bible (and who bristle at theological claims that this is God's infallible Word) in no small part because they cannot accept a God who sanctions the deaths of Canaanite infants. And let's admit further that many, if not most all, of us are not wild about this prospect, either.

Although I know many people in the world would regard this as a cheap dodge, I myself end up saying that there are certain inscrutable matters we cannot figure out fully. But what we can say, and as Christians what we must say, is that the definitive revelation of God is to be found not in the Old Testament's wars but in the Christ of God, our Lord Jesus, who is, as the New Testament repeatedly tells us, the express image of God, the Son who is the exact representation of his Father. Jesus is the Word of God who makes God known and so he was able to say "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father."

But if seeing Jesus the Son reveals to us also his Father, then what does this tell us about God? It tells us that God is familiar with suffering and acquainted with grief. It tells us that, as can be seen in also the Old Testament, this entire matter of bringing salvation to the earth is a bloody business shot-through with difficulties and injuries and finally also death. As we've thought about before on Good Friday in years past, it's one thing to ponder Jesus' words "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father" when Jesus is sitting on a mountainside dispensing one pearl of divine wisdom after the next. It is, however, quite a different matter to see the Father in Jesus when he is wearing a thorny crown, blood trickling along this nose and other men's spit glistening in his beard.

I myself do not have any easy way to reconcile the God of grace we know through Christ Jesus the Lord and the idea that this same God would ever authorize the slaying of an innocent baby or child in Jericho. What we can know for sure based on the whole witness of Scripture, and climaxing in the gospels, is that the struggle to salvage this world gone bad has been a titanic battle between good and evil. For whatever the reason, it appears in the Bible that the act of creating the cosmos was a lot easier than the act of redeeming it once it went bad. God's spoken word was enough in Genesis to make every last thing that exists. But if God has that kind of power--if without seeming to break a sweat God can snap his fingers and create quasars of light and whales the size of whole city blocks--then why by the time you get to Exodus does this same God seem to engage in a kind of arm-wrestling match with someone as puny as Pharaoh? Why can't God just snap his fingers and--zip, zing, zoom--instantly transport the whole lot of Israel from Egypt to the Promised Land, no fuss, no muss?

Why, in short, does Creation look like an act of sheer will but Redemption looks to be more like a pitched battle and an incessant effort on the part of God to woo his people to love him? Why must God plead with and cajole his people to be faithful? Why can't our problem with sin and this world's entrenchment in evil be resolved speedily? To these questions we don't have firm answers. But based on what we do know in Scripture, one would have to conclude that salvation is an act of ongoing love and sacrifice, of battle and opposition, and so it simply will not move quickly and it can never be accomplished painlessly. Salvation is going to involve death before it is fully finished.

Remembering all of that not only helps us to be even more awed by God's efforts on our behalf but may serve also to prod us into recalling that these are serious and weighty matters not to be trifled with lightly, not to be reduced to some pop level of easy formulas, pithy little slogans, or greeting-card-like sentimentality. The works of God, and the underlying character of God displayed in and through it all, do not need to frighten us necessarily but they do summon forth all the respect and awe we can muster. This is yet another reason some of us have difficulty with those who talk about God as though he were a casual acquaintance, a chum, whose salvation is a given. Of course, God in Christ is our Friend and his salvation is something he truly does give to us freely, gladly, and by grace. But as we have noted before, the joy we feel over all this is a last emotion, not a first. Our joy is thoughtful, tempered by the remembrance of what all this cost God.

There is even a curious hint of this at the end of Exodus 15. Ironically, even after the joyful psalm that occupies most of this chapter, and even despite the powerful way by which God has now fully rescued Israel from the clutches of Pharaoh and company, even so there is this dark warning (almost a threat) in verse 26. God throws a huge "If" into Israel's future: "If you do as I say and follow my decrees, all will be well. If not, then you remember all those plagues that the Egyptians got? They will all be yours!"

This reminds me of that scene in one of C.S. Lewis' Narnia books in which one of the children inquires about Aslan after hearing him described as a quite large lion. "A lion," Lucy exclaims, "I think I should be quite afraid to meet up with a lion. Tell me: is he quite safe?" "Safe!?" the answer comes back, "Course he isn't safe! But he's good. He's the King I tell you!" Exodus 15:18 is the first place in the Old Testament where Yahweh is described in royal terms, reigning the earth as a lordly King and Monarch. Like the fictional Christ-figure of Aslan, so the real God in Christ is tremendously good--good beyond the fathoming of it--but only a fool would trifle with this good God's almighty power and resplendent nature. This God can, and in the course of bringing salvation often has needed to be, also quite fierce and furious. As verse 26 says, this is the Lord who saves and heals his people but that tidbit of nice news is couched within the realization that there is a measure of power within this Lord God that must not be underestimated.

The joy the Israelites felt after crossing the Red Sea in safety--after being "baptized" as we described all of this last Sunday evening--is understandable and appropriate given what they had just experienced. Yet the same chapter that details this holy glee and delight cannot end before Yahweh points a finger at the fate of the Egyptians, reminding Israel that the slender thread of his grace is all that separates even them, the chosen people, from a similar fate. It is almost as though Exodus 15 is saying that our joy over salvation, necessary though it is and proper though it is for God's people to erupt in just such jubilation, must nevertheless be tempered by the memory of what this redemption has cost: what it has cost the creation, what it has cost God.

The chapter ends with a mini-version of paradise at a place called Elim. Twelve springs and seventy palm trees are described--both twelve and seventy are biblical number of perfection, creating here an idyllic picture of a kind of mini-Promised Land. As the people soaked up the bounties and goodness of that pretty place, they had much about which to think and much thoughtfully to ponder. They were receiving a most great and mighty salvation. Once the dancing stopped and the tambourines had been put away for a while, it would have been wise and prudent for the people to devote some serious time to contemplation in an effort to deepen and refine their joy. And who knows, in the midst of such reflections, maybe a few people thought to say a prayer for the people in Egypt who were grieving so much over the cost of salvation. It would have been a God-like thing to do. It still is. Amen.