“Who among the gods is like You, O Lord? Who is like You – majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?” (Exodus 15:11, NIV).
When God delivered the Israelites out of Egypt, the pursuing Egyptian army was drowned in the sea just after the people of Israel walked across the bottom of the sea on dry land as the Lord held the waters back and allowed them to safely cross over. Moses and all of Israel sang a song of thankfulness to God for His deliverance of His people. The passage above is from that song.
Note the beginning of the passage: “Who among the gods is like you, O Lord?” Every people had their own deities – gods and goddesses for specific areas of their lives. Only Israel worshiped a single deity, the One True God. Egypt believed its war god went before them and that terror personified went before their god to put fear into the hearts of their enemies even before their god arrived on the scene, let alone their army.
Conquering a people meant conquering their gods. Egypt, like most ancient peoples, believed that as their army fought against an opposing army, their gods fought against the opposing army’s gods. So when the One True God whipped the Egyptians single-handed, it was irrefutable proof that Israel’s God was so powerful that He didn’t even need a single Israelite follower to lift a finger – let alone a sword – to defeat the enemy.
Winning armies always composed victory songs to glorify their gods and to taunt their opposition, so any other people hearing the Israelites’ song – which no doubt the people sang many times – would immediately understand that their God was being proclaimed as Victor. Just as importantly, they would realize that this God was so powerful that He accomplished the win with no help whatsoever from His people.
Remember our verse from Exodus yesterday? “The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still” (Exodus 14:14). Letting God fight our battles is the very best way to deal with most of our problems. Confrontation may occasionally be necessary, but most of the time, leaving the problem in God’s hands is the very best solution. Try it. You, like the Israelites, may very well “stand still” in wonder as you see His mighty hand bring about your victory.
“…majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders.”
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