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The Lord, the King. I'd like
to start off with opening up to the book of Exodus, chapter
15, and we'll read verses 1 through 18 in a second. The Lord, the King. At first,
when pastor asked me to speak on this, I was like, all right,
well, what can I say about this? This is pretty self-explanatory.
God is King. What else do we need to know
about that? But I'd like to share with you some things that God
brought to my attention as I was studying for this. But let's
go ahead and open up in a word of prayer real fast. Heavenly
Father, I thank you for this night, and Lord, for this opportunity
that you've given me, a chance to get out of my comfort zone,
Lord, and to speak about your word, about who you are, Lord,
what you've done in the past, and what you want to do for us
now. Pray, God, that you would use this challenge to be a blessing
to those that are going to hear this. And Lord, I just pray that
you would help me to just communicate clearly what it is that you would
have me to communicate. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen.
Exodus 15, Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song
unto the Lord, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the Lord, for
he hath triumphed gloriously. The horse and his rider hath
he thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my
song, and he has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will prepare
him in habitation, my Father's God, and I will exalt him. The
Lord is a man of war. The Lord is his name. Pharaoh's
chariots and his host hath he cast into the sea. His chosen
captains also are drowned in the Red Sea. The depth hath covered
them. They sank into the bottom as
a stone. Thy right hand, O Lord, is become
glorious in power. Thy right hand, O Lord, hath
dashed in pieces the enemy. And in the greatness of thine
excellency, thou hast overthrown them that rose up against thee. has sent his forth thy wrath,
which consumed them as stubble. And when the blast of thy nostrils,
the waters were gathered together, the floods stood upright as in
heat, and the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea. The
enemy said, I will pursue. I will overtake. I will divide
the spoil. My lust shall be satisfied upon
them. I will draw my sword. My hand
shall destroy them. Thou didst blow with thy wind.
The sea covered them. They sank as lead in the mighty
waters. Who is like thee, O Lord, among
the gods? Who is like thee, glorious in
holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders? Thou stretchest
out thy right hand. the earth swallowed them. Thou
in mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed. Thou
hast guided them in thy strength into thy holy habitation. The
people shall hear and be afraid. Sorrow shall take hold on the
inhabitants of Palestine. Then the Dukes of Edom shall
be amazed. The mighty men of Moab, trembling,
shall take hold upon them. All the inhabitants of Canaan
shall melt away. Fear and dread shall fall upon
them. By the greatness of thy arm, they shall be as still as
a stone, till thy people pass over, O Lord, till the people
pass over which thou hast purchased. Thou shalt bring them in and
plant them in the mountains of thine inheritance, in the place,
O Lord, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in, in the
sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established. The Lord
shall reign forever and ever. We just finished singing a song
about God's greatness, How Great Thou Art. It's a song I've heard
my entire life in this church. And a good friend of mine told
me that was their favorite. And at first, I was like, really,
that song? It's so old. Why would that be your favorite
song? But just now, as we're singing about it, and especially
for me, having studied this out, I'm just thinking in my mind,
wow, God is good. He is so great. And when you
sing a song like that with those words, really thinking about
how great your God is, it changes it completely. I just read through these first
18 verses, and some of you maybe were just thinking, okay, reading
through this passage, this is a great story. But put yourselves
in the shoes of the Israelites. They were celebrating, because
in case you didn't get the idea, they just got out of Egypt. Pharaoh
finally let them go. So they're excited, they're glad
to be out of Egypt. But then, things change. The matters get worse. They realize
that Pharaoh changed his mind. He's after them now. And so now
they're having to walk through a giant sea. And they're scared
because Pharaoh has mighty men, his whole army's after them,
his chariots and horses, they're all pursuing them. But now, not
only has God spared them, but God has conquered their enemies.
Pharaoh and his army are no more. Now, try to put yourselves in
that place where your life has just been spared. You've just
witnessed God destroy a whole army. Not to mention, he just
split a sea and you walked on dry ground. No puddles or anything
like we may see in movies, but this was dry ground. This is one of those things that
if I were ever to get to heaven, or when I get to heaven and I
can ask God to replay one point in history for me, this is probably
one of the most popular answers that you would hear people say.
Oh man, I would love to see the splitting of the Red Sea. I can't
imagine to be able to see that, that must have been so cool.
So feel that, think about that, the response that the Israelites
would have had to that, and now they're singing about how great
their God is. A different song, a song that
some people believe Moses wrote, but the description there of
how great our God is. And then it goes, the details
that it gives, it gives you this idea that they're talking about
a king here. It ends in verse 18. The Lord shall reign forever
and ever. Now, although we don't find the
word king in here, actually, that word reign, the Hebrew word
for it is, Malak, I believe. Etai had to coach me on that
one. But that word there, it basically means the same thing
as king. It says, to reign inceptively,
to ascend to the throne, causatively, to induct into royalty. Basically,
even though they didn't call him god, they were attributing
king king attributes to God. So this
is the earliest that we believe that the Israelites started attributing
to God attributes of being a king. Now, as we already read through
the message, Israel was describing how great God's hand is, how
powerful he is. And they even said, with your
nostrils, you blew the water, and it came upon the Egyptians. Now, I want us to think about
What does that mean to us? What is a king? We don't have
a king here in the United States. Probably when you first think
of king or queen, most of us would probably think of England,
Great Britain. They've had kings and queens
for a long time. You're always hearing of the
prince and the new princess, their new baby and whatever.
But what does that look like? What does that mean to us? Here
in America, we're so used to, yeah, sure, we have one guy who's
in charge of everything, the president. He has to answer for
everything. But for the most part, it's about
me. It's about what I want. The president can suggest things,
and he has a good amount of power, but the power's supposed to lie
among the people. We're the ones who get to choose
our leaders and whatnot. Whereas, when you're dealing
with a monarchy, royal family and whatnot, it's more of, okay,
well, this person was born into this responsibility. It's not
so much we have a say as to who we want to rule over us, but
that's who we get. And so I'm trying to look around
and try to find out, okay, well, how do you respond to royalty?
I mean, I know with respect and whatnot, they're supposed to
be held in high regard. And a couple things came to me.
Well, in our response to royalty, It was pretty funny. They have
these different websites where they tell you how to respond.
Well, when someone approaches you, you bow to them. And there
are different degrees of how you bow to them. You can either
do a slight head nod and just kind of tilt a little bit, 45
degrees maybe. You don't want to go from the
waist. You don't want to face down because then you're demeaning
yourself more than you have to. All these different things on
how to approach royalty. Basically, out of reverence,
you bow to them, to show respect to them. You're acknowledging
the position they hold. And then, more than likely, if
they ask you to do something, you would obey them. Back in
our ancient history, you read of so many dictators that kind
of let the power go to their head and were corrupted to the
point where they asked you to do something. You didn't do it.
You were executed or you were exiled something. But basically
the Kings started abusing their power and this is what I want. This is what's going to get done.
You have to do it. We've never had to deal with
that yet here with a dictator like that. And then finally,
another emotion or another response would be overjoyed emotions. Either people to the point where
they're crying because they can't believe they saw the Queen of
England or fangirls or whatever, just super excited that they
got to see the prince or what have you. I know if I saw the
queen, I did get to go to England, to London, I didn't get to see
the royal family. But I know even for myself, if
I would have, I would have been pretty pumped about that. Just
the fact that I'm seeing such a giant icon, not that they mean
anything to me, but I mean, this is a somebody over here, and
you get to be in the same place with them. So all these different
responses is what one person may feel or may want to react
with. But all these people aren't who
the Israelites are talking about. Sure, they may have the same
title as the Israelites gave to their God, to our God. We
call him our king. And yeah, sure, these people
hold the same title as king. But in comparison to God, they're
nothing. We have records of people who've
just been corrupted with power. People who are just so focused
with themselves and wanting to please themselves rather than
doing their duties, which is to keep the peace and to serve
the people. We do have examples of good rulers,
but it's so easy to become corrupted with that. At the same time,
they can't guarantee us everything that God guarantees us. In keeping
peace, they can only do so much for you, these earthly rulers
that we have, whereas God, he offers more than just safety. He offers you peace in the sense
that even when things aren't going right, when you don't see
the final answer, the ending of your problem, he gives you
peace. in resting in the fact that you
know that God will take care of you. He will work this all
out for good according to his will. We have these promises
in his word. So, I mean, we know there's a
difference between our earthly rulers and our king of kings,
the king that the Israelites were singing about. there should be a difference
in how we respond. There may be some similarities,
but ultimately, there are differences. I believe that my response to
the King of Kings should be these three things here. I should honor
him and humble myself. We have many examples of people
in the Bible that humble themselves to the point of Like what I said
earlier, when you're addressing a royal person, they said, don't
face the ground, because then you're just demeaning yourself.
We have people, countless examples in the Bible, of people who laid
flat out on their faces out of respect for God. Were they demeaning
themselves? Of course, definitely. Yes, they
were. Because they understood the difference
between them and God in position. People that we would call heroes
of the faith. Abraham fell on his face before
God. Aaron and Moses did. Joshua,
King David, and then the disciples, and even Jesus himself. When
he prayed to his father, he laid on his face out of respect to
God. The son of God himself, when
referring to his father, laid on his face. We should not think
we're... We're any better than them to
do that. I'm not saying every time we
go to prayer now, or tonight even, that I'm expecting to see
everyone on their face. I'm not saying that, but the
principle is acknowledge who you are and where you are in
comparison to God. It's so easy to forget that,
especially in our world where everyone's so materialistic,
especially in our city, where we have everything at our fingertips. We need to remember who we are
in comparison to God. So honor Him and humble yourself. Secondly, obey Him and devote
yourself. When royalty tells you to do
something, you ought to obey it. But I want us to take that
a step further. Yes, we know where we are to
obey God. He makes that crystal clear in
his word. But devote yourself in respect
that when we have a great ruler and when he leads by a great
example, our natural response should be to want to follow him.
And that's what I'm saying by devoting yourselves. Don't just
obey God right now at the moment. but why not continue to follow
him? This great king that Israel was
just talking about, singing about rather, this great God that we
were just singing about and how great thou art, follow him. We know how good he is, we know
his promises. In these verses over here, I'll
just read the first two real fast. In Deuteronomy 11.1, where
Moses is saying to us, Deuteronomy 28.1, he says, that the Lord thy God will set
thee on high above all nations of the earth. I forgot to mention this, but
I love how in that passage right there, Deuteronomy 28.1, and
even in going back earlier, 1 Peter 5.6, we're told that if we humble
ourselves, God will exalt us in his time. It's not that we
know that we're so much lower than God and we have to lay our
faces on the dirt and God knows that we're worms and he just
steps on us and whatnot. No. He wants to exalt us. But in order for him to raise
us up, we need to humble ourselves first. Which brings me to the
last part. We ought to rejoice in him. This
should ultimately be our response. And this is in a specific order.
I honestly believe rejoicing could be done at all times. We can rejoice in him because
in Romans 8, 17, we're told that we are children of God. It says,
and if children, then heirs. heirs of God and joint heirs
with Christ, if so be that we suffer with him, that we may
be also glorified together. And so God wants to, that's the
exalting that he's gonna give us. He gave us this equal inheritance
that we can share with him. Our great high king, the one
that provides these jobs, that provides these witnessing opportunities,
that provides this opportunity to speak, even though it may
not be exactly my first choice, but he knows it's good for us.
All these different circumstances, he wants to bring us up even
even higher or more than where we're at right now. He's offering
us a chance to live with him. Those of us that are accepting
that, we know we have that future to look forward to. We have that
inheritance that he's promised us. John 5, 24 says, Verily, verily, I say unto you,
he that heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me hath everlasting
life." That's the promise that God has given us. Everlasting
life. So God is our King. Not just
our King, but the King of Kings, the Bible says. It takes it even
a step further. So tonight, as we pray, I think
those are three very appropriate responses that we can take to
prayer with us. Honor Him. Humble yourself. Obey Him. See what it is that
God may be asking you to do. For me, tonight, sharing this
challenge with you guys was a step of obedience I needed to take.
It's not always the most comfortable, but I know it's a great opportunity. It gives me a chance to get into
the Word, to share what it is that God's teaching me. So obey
Him, devote yourselves to Him, continue following Him, continue
to obey Him, be progressively obeying Him, and then finally
and ultimately rejoice in Him. We have a future and a hope,
a peace that no one else has unless they know Christ as their
Savior. So rejoice in that.
The Lord The King - God Is Our King
Series Names Of God
| Sermon ID | 6201520425310 |
| Duration | 20:49 |
| Date | |
| Category | Midweek Service |
| Bible Text | Exodus 15 |
| Language | English |
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