When Words aren’t Enough, Worship

You have probably heard of the epic fashion in which God delivered the Israelites from the Egyptians. After hundreds of years in bondage, God rescues his people by splitting the Red Sea, providing a dry path to freedom. 

But what was the Israelites response on the other side of the sea? What did it look like to be on the other side of the miracle? When words weren’t enough, they resorted to worship. Song and dance overflowed from their souls as they finally enjoyed their long-awaited salvation.

Wonder leads to worship. And if you are a follower of Jesus, then you will always carry a reason to walk in wonder. Check out this clip from Trip Lee as he talks about our everlasting reason to worship, always being on the other side of the sea.  

Prefer to read rather than watch? Here’s the transcript to Trip’s talk: 

I'm going to read you some of Exodus 15, starting at verse 15, and I'm going to read a big chunk, but still stick with me. Exodus 15, starting at 1, "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 and my song, and 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." That's all about what the Lord did.
                                    
"Pharaoh's chariots and his host he cast into the sea, and his chosen officer 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 up in a heap. The deeps congealed in the heart of the sea."
                                    
Verse 11, "Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders? You stretched out your right hand, and the earth swallowed them." It goes on and on and on, they do, singing this song to their God. Now, I think it's notable that this is the way that they chose to praise God after such an amazing act. They didn't stop and meditate on it. They didn't talk it over. They didn't have a small group. They didn't even just shout out the words.
                                    
They have a little concert and praise session. They sing to God right there, outside, together. When I look at it, it seems somehow unworthy of the greatness of this miracle for them to simply say, "God is good, and He's stronger than everyone else, right?" It seems almost trivial for them to just remind each other, but it seems appropriate for them to burst out in song and to praise God in this way, right? I'm imagining them losing it, dancing, cheering. There's a dude doing the worm in the dust over here, and people are losing their mind, because of the incredible miracle that they just saw, that God did not have to do. He did it out of love.
                                    
In that, we see the uniqueness of music, and why it would play such an important part in our following of Him, right? There's something about saying it in rhythm and in melody that gives something extra to it. Songs are better at expressing our emotions. They're more grand. They could've just said, "The Lord is strong." They said, "The Lord is a Man of War." They could've just said, "We got through on dry ground," but they explained it poetically. Songs help us to engage, not just with our minds, not just with our words, but with our whole person. They're soaring and they're grand.
                                    
Don't get me wrong. Of course, it honors God to talk about Him, like I'm doing right now. Of course, that honors God, but there is something very special about doing it with song. There's another tool in the tool belt, and that's music.
                                    
I want to say this. What about you? When we begin to sing songs of praise that celebrate God and His works, do your eyes glaze over? Do you end up kind of disinterested and withdrawn or bored? I'm going to ask you this. Can you imagine somebody, who's with God's people at the Red Sea, who, while all of this was happening and they was having this praise session, was off in the corner, looking bored, on Twitter?
                                    
Well, no. I mean, what would you do if you saw him? You would be like, "Bro, did you see what happened? It was dry, after it had been wet," right? You'd want to shake him out of it, because he had just seen something miraculous. Yet, we do the exact same thing, right? We stand around bored. We've lost our wonder about who God is, and for some of us, we never really had it. We've forgotten how impressive God really is.
                                    
You might say, "No, no, no, but of course the Israelites shouldn't do that. They should sing songs of praise. God had done an incredible miracle on their behalf, right? They were doomed and God showed His love to them in dramatic fashion. He delivered them."
                                    
Then, if you say that, what I want to ask you: Has God not done anything miraculous on your behalf? Has God not delivered us from doom? Has God not shown His love to us in dramatic fashion? I want to remind you of something Paul said, "For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die, but God shows His love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." There has never been an act of greater and more dramatic love than what God did in Jesus at the cross for sinners like you and me, never, not even the Red Sea.
                                    
Let me say this. If you're a Christian here today, you always have reason to praise God for miraculous deliverance. If you know Jesus, we are always on the other side of the Red Sea, and there's a lot to praise God for. Even when we are in difficult times, one of the things that music helps us to do is it helps us to focus in and to praise God for the incredible things that He's done.