In the first 19 verses of Exodus
chapter 15 is the song of Moses. That's what it's called throughout
the Scriptures. The song of Moses. It's the first
song recorded in the Scriptures. To my knowledge. I don't know
of another. The very first song recorded
in the Scriptures. Now, doubtless there had been
singing before this. I believe Adam and Eve sang in
the garden. Don't you, when the Lord came
and reconciled them and slayed that lamb and covered them, made
peace between them and God, I believe they might have been singing
that evening. And certainly around Abel's altar
and in different places, doubtless they've been singing before this.
But this is the first recorded song in the Scriptures. And then it's also unique in
that it's the first song Israel sang as a congregation. It's
the first congregational hymn. This is a very significant time
here because Egypt, who laid claim to their citizenship, God
separated them and put Egypt at the bottom of the sea. And
he said, this now is my people. These are my people. And he declared
them a people, a congregation, an assembly of people all together. And he's referred to them in
that way ever since. He calls his people Israel, Israel. And he calls his people the assembly,
the church. And then the song they sung was
the song of redemption. And I thought it might be important
to talk about this for just a little bit because people get all confused
when you start talking about redemption. Redemption is a twofold
work. There's a part of redemption
that has to do with purchase. It has to do with purchase. It
has to do with buying something. But it's also, it has to do with
power. Now redemption, as it has to
do with purchase, is sometimes called in the scripture ransom. You'll see that the Lord hath
paid the ransom. In Hosea chapter 13 verse 14,
he uses both words in this verse, and he said, I will ransom them
from the grave. I will redeem them from death. God pays what the law and justice
demands, which is the power of the grave. And death is the sure
result of our sins and the sentence of the law and the demands of
God's justice. But then there is power. When
you talk about redemption, you're talking about something actually
redeemed. There came a day when the kinsman
redeemer stood at the gate and bought his wife and took his
wife. Now that's what happened. That's
what this redemption is all about. Buying something and then taking
something. He takes it. He takes what he's
bought. And God first revealed, and you
can go all through the Scripture, But when we're talking about
redemption as it is the power, the power of redemption, He redeems
them from death. He breaks its power. He breaks
the power of sin. And He interrupts its curse. And He intervenes in its course.
And all through the New Testament, when He's talking about that
redemption, He always talks about those two things. You go to Ephesians
1, and Paul is praying for them that their understanding be enlightened. He said that you might know the
exceeding greatness of His power to us who believe. And he likened that power to
the resurrection of Christ from the dead. And then when he gets
through stating all those things, and he said, and you hath equipped
who were dead. And he talks about that course,
didn't he? Walked according to the course of this world, according
to the prince of the power of the air, But God, He quickened
us to gather with Him, with Christ. And because He did in those ages
to come, then He makes known to you what He did. He makes
known that purchase to you. He makes known, and He comes
in power. And He establishes that man in
faith. Looking back to the Paschal Lamb
and drawing a direct line to the death of Christ, Peter said
this, he said, we are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ
as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. Redeemed. And that's what God first revealed
to Israel, that salvation was in the lamb. You're purchased
by the lamb. He'd already revealed that to
them. Now He's going to come to them and show them something
about His presence and power of that purchased possession.
And that's what's going on down here in the sea. And then the
deliverance purchased by this sacrificial lamb. Now, brethren,
you can write this down. God's going to have what He bought. God's going to have. Whenever
people start telling you about universal salvation and God calling
this one and calling that one and calling everybody and loving
everybody and all those things, You come right back to this point
right here. Did he buy something or not?
And if he bought it, is he going to have it? I tell you, if I
go down to the store and buy something, I'm going to have
it. They're going to have to haul me off if they don't give it
to me. Because I paid for it. It's mine. And I want it. Don't
you? How much more the blood of the
Son of God that he's purchased. the church which he purchased
with his own blood. You reckon he's going to have
it? You can write it down. All the devils in hell ain't
going to keep him from having what he bought with his own blood.
He's going to have. You can just write that down.
God's going to have what he's bought with the blood of Christ.
And that's always been my contention with any of these so-called gospels
that alludes to the perishing of somebody purchased by the
blood of Christ. It just can't happen. It can't
happen. It's the life and the death of
the substitute that guarantees their deliverance. If you're
looking for assurance, I remember one time this old fellow asked
Henry. He said, are you still saved? Do you still believe you're
saved? He said, I don't know. He said,
is Christ still on the throne? Because that was my hope back
then. That's my hope now. We're justified, Paul said, freely
by His grace. through the redemption that purchased
by the blood of Christ, through the redemption that's in Christ
Jesus, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through
faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness in the remission
of our sins. And he's going to declare that.
He's going to declare that to all God's elect, that he might
be just and justifier of all them that believe. And it is to me of utmost importance
that we know that without the shedding of blood, there is no
remission of sins. That's what Paul emphasizes in
Hebrews chapter 9, don't he? He went back and took those types,
the type of the priest and the sacrifice and all of those things,
and he told you what they were, and he tells you how Christ fulfilled
those things. He came as the guarantor. He
come as the testator. He comes all the way down and
then He talks about that blood and He said, almost all things
are sanctified with this blood. And He said, without the shedding
of blood is no remission of sin. But know this, once that blood
is shed, nothing can prevent that remission. Nothing. God
is going to have what He purchased. Listen to how David described
the events of this day as Israel passed through the sea. There's
two chapters in the book of Psalms that's very interesting when
it comes to Israel, Psalm 105 and Psalm 106. I'm going to quote
you something here from Psalm 106, verse 10. It says, and he
saved them from the hand of him that hated them and redeemed
them from the hand of the enemy. and the waters covered their
enemies, there was not one of them left. Then believed they
His words and sung His praise." When they sing God's hand in
their personal salvation, in their personal redemption, when
they sing God's power in His hand, then they believed His
words and sang His praise. This song is a song inspired
of God. preserved in the Scriptures.
And it's sung by every son of Abraham that passes through the
sea of death to stand on that far shore in the victory of Christ's
blood. They sing it. Every one of them
sings it. You go through and look at these words. If you can't
sing these words, you don't know God. You just don't know Christ. That's it. We see that victory. That's our hope. If you can't
see that victory purchased by His blood and see that righteousness
that He gained in His life, that's our very hope. If we can't see
that, we've got nothing to sing about. But those who see it,
sing of it. They sing of it because it's
just that person. Time will permit tonight, I've
got four things I want you to see concerning this song of redemption. I want you to think a little
bit with me about when they sang the song. I think that's very
important because this chapter starts out with this big old
then, then. Whenever you see a chapter starting
out then, you need to go back and see now what took place just
before this because that's going to be the basis of what he's
got to say. And then I want to talk to you
a little bit about how it was sung and then what exactly they
were singing. You know, out there come a day,
we used to sing songs. We'd sing all kinds of songs.
Sing I'll Fly Away, talking about meeting Mother, Will the Circle
Be Unbroken, and all that foolish rock. We'd sing all that stuff,
but we didn't know what we were singing. We didn't have anything
to sing about. And we needed to know exactly
what they were singing about. And once the believer, once the
believer has experienced this grace, he knows what he's singing
about. When he sees those other songs, that's not the experience
of his heart at all. He doesn't want to sing that.
But he won't sing this song. And then I want you to see what
they hope to accomplish in their singing. So let's look first
of all at the time of the singing. This chapter begins with this
word, then. Then sang Moses and the children
of Israel this song. You know, time is a glorious
thing. I thought about this while sitting in my study. I looked
at that word then. That's a moment in time, isn't
it? Time's a glorious thing. Time was created. It's as much
God's creation as the mountains and the seas and the environment
and everything else that was created. And time was just like
everything else created by Him and for Him. And this thing of
time, Listen how the Scriptures talk about time. When the fullness
of the time was come, God sent forth His Son made of a woman,
made under the law to redeem them that were under the law.
There was a time for His birth, and a time for His anointing,
and a time for His gracious calling and gifts. There was a time for
the woman at the well, wasn't there? He sat there. It was the wrong time of day
for somebody to come and gather water. But he knew what he was
doing. He was there at the right time, and she was there at the
right time. There was a time for the woman at the well, a
time for the nobleman's son, and a time for the paralyzed
man at the pool. There was a time for the leper
to come and throw himself at the feet of Christ. And there
was a time for old blind Bartimaeus to cry out, Jesus, thou son of
David. And Paul said, when it pleased
God. That's the time, ain't it? When
it pleased God, he said, who separated me from my mother's
womb and called me by His grace to reveal His Son in me. There's
a time. Time's a glorious thing. And
bless God, there's a time set in God's predestination for the
effectual calling of His elect. There is a time. Not just any
time, but there is a time. And he arranges providence. He
arranges nations. He told, in one place, Winston
and I were talking about this before church tonight. He said,
I gave Ethiopian Sheba for you. Those were nations that he sacrificed
for them. He said, I'll give people for
you. People for you. There's a time. Nothing's going
to obstruct that time. Nations are set for this time. The princes are put in office. Presidents are put in office,
and kings, and dictators, and wars, and all of these things
that go on, and weather, and all of this. It all goes on for
that time. There is a time in God's predestination
for every one of His elect. And they are all going to hear
that effectual calling. There is a time. It says in Romans
chapter 8, I think it's verse 30, whom He did predestinate,
them He also called. There's a time set in God's predestination. And then Paul said in Christ,
we also have obtained an inheritance being predestinated according
to Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own
will. There was a time for Israel's
bondage and suffering and captivity. And a time for the Word to come
in power. And there was a time for the
lamb to be revealed and eaten. And a time for them to be led
into despair and helplessness. A time for faith to pass through
the sea. I tell you, walking through that
sea was no little thing. And it's no little thing for
a believer when he understands what that sea represents. And
that's the sea he has to... You're going to have to deal
with the sea. You're going to have to deal with the sea. And
you're going to have to deal with Satan. This world and a nature
that you can't resist. And you're going to render you
helpless. If you ever get eyes to see those things, you'll tremble
as you walk through the sea. I don't think there was any singing
going on through the sea, do you? I think they was perfectly
quiet. I know I would have been. Quiet,
passionate. Look at those big walls of water
going up there. There's a time for faith to pass
through the sea and a time for the song of redemption to be
sung. Then, that's how the chapter begins, then, when? When they
saw their enemies vanquished in the sea. When they saw God's
power, God's hand in the destruction of their enemies. Redemption is a song only the
redeemed can sing. Only the redeemed can sing. Because
it has to be sung from the heart. Lots of people stand up and sing
at hymn that we sang here tonight, redeemed, that don't know the
song. They don't know the song. But
those who are redeemed know it. They know it. I'll never forget
old Barnard said he dreamed one night he died and went to heaven.
And he said he, the first sober memory he had
of heaven was the music. He was hearing this great choir
sing. He said, I've never heard anything
like it here on this earth. Oh, but he said, this choir was
singing. He said, you just couldn't believe
the melody and the notes and the words as they sung. He said,
it just sent cold chills down your back. You know, it's just
so beautiful. And he said, oh, he said, I wanted
to sing with them. And he said, I walked, and I
looked, and he said, way up there at the top. And about 8 or 10
people down, he said, was an empty seat. And boy, he said,
I went up them steps hard as I could go, and passed down between
the people. And he said, when I got down
there, he said, and got ready to sit down, he said, I looked
at the seat, and it said Ralph Varner on the back of the seat.
I'd say, the redeemed going to sing this song. Now, you can
read about that in Revelation chapter 15. All the redeemed
stood there and sang the song of Moses and the song of the
Lamb. All of them did. It's a song
that only the redeemed can sing. And there is a time, blessed
God, in the experience of grace, when the redeemed soul of God's
child sees the victory over his enemies by the mighty hand of
grace, don't he? He sees that victory in Christ.
You'd never believe on him if you didn't see the victory. We
see that victory in Christ. He convinces us first of sin. And the man who's convinced of
sin will have to be convinced of righteousness. Because if
you're ever convinced of sin, you're convinced of one thing.
You can't produce a righteousness. God himself, the same one who
convinced you of sin, is going to have to convince you that
there is a righteousness for you, imputed to you by faith. brought out by the Son of God
and declared in His resurrection. And then He's going to convince
you of judgment. Not that there is one, but the
judgment satisfied. God so and so satisfied that
judgment. Then you'll sing about redemption. And nobody will ever convince
you that this world is not dead before God. Moses composed the song and taught
the words to the congregation, but God gave him the heart to
sing it. And there are not enough words, there are not enough arguments
or persuasive powers in the world to cause your heart to sing this
song of redemption. It takes the experience of grace. I keep talking about that experience
of grace and all I'm talking about, I'm not talking about
worn feelings going down your back. What I'm talking about
there is the revelation of God and that salvation and it becomes
a personal thing to you. And God convinces you of sin
that we ain't talking about a group anymore. We're not talking about
what do they believe. We're talking about what do I
believe. We ain't talking about what they say the Bible says.
We're talking about what God said in the Bible. It becomes
a very personal thing. I guarantee you every soul that
sung on the other side of that sea experienced the passing through
it. And he sang from his heart. That's
one time when those old, even the ones who one day would perish,
they sang that song that day. There's a time. The glory is
time when God the Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit
that we are the sons of God. Don't you imagine they sung that? Sons. Sons of God. Sons by God's eternal decree
and sons by sovereign election. Sons by spiritual adoption. Sons
by spiritual union. Sons by accomplished redemption
and sons by the power of God. The power of God in us. Isn't
that what he says there in John chapter 1? He gave us the right and privilege
to become the sons of God. And then secondly, I want you
to see how this song was sung. I think I could read some enthusiasm
into that song. Huh? Can't you? Coming up out
of that sea, Pharaoh right behind you. This glorious cloud moving
around giving you light, giving him darkness. And they came up
out of that sea, they looked at those walls of water. I can't
even fathom that, can you? I closed my eyes in the afternoon
when I was writing this out and just tried to picture what that
would look like, looking at that wall of water on each side. And
payroll coming up the back. And knowing any minute all that
water has to do is close up and you're gone. You're gone. All
that in God's hand. And yet they passed through that
sea. I think I can read some enthusiasm
into the psalm. Their greatest fears lay dead
in the sea. I think it was sung enthusiastic.
And then secondly, it was sung congregational. It wasn't just
Moses singing. It wasn't just Moses. I love
to go to these bigger Bible conferences where you get two or three hundred
people out here in the audience. Boy, when they begin to sing
and sing from the heart, it's something to hear. I can't imagine
what it would be one of these days with a number that no man
can number without any restraint. with a perfect body and a perfect
heart to sing that song of redemption. What a song it will be. What
a song. It was sung congregationally.
I believe it wasn't just Moses singing, God will have all His
elect sing this song of redemption. Every heart filled with gladness
and assurance. Every heart seeing their fears
taken away. Seeing the power of God's love
and rule accomplishing their salvation. Who could hold their
tongue? Could you? I tell you, I remember
my first sight of it. Don't you? I remember it like
it was yesterday. Oh, I tell you, I could sing.
I didn't have any problem singing after that. I didn't have any
problem. They sang that song congregationally,
but they sang this song personally. They were heard as a multitude,
but they sang each one individually. I don't think anybody sat and
let somebody else sing. This was their song and they
were going to sing it. They were going to sing it. It
was extremely personal. And then, fourthly, they sang
this song in confidence. Let a man find confidence in
God and watch him change his tune. Watch him sing. Let a man
find some confidence in God and assurance and watch him sing.
Watch his life turn around. Watch everything change. Watch
his expression, his countenance. Everything changes. It's just
like somebody just coming. It's a whole new person. It ain't
the same person. I sang it in confidence. Now
that man can sing. I tell you, when a man experiences
the grace of God in his own redemption, he can sing with the angels.
And I believe they sang this song with joy. There's a true
joy in the hearts of God's people. They rejoice. They rejoice. They have joy. I don't like pain
and sickness and all the things. I don't like growing old. It
hurts. And they tell me it's just going to get worse. It ain't
going to get no better. And I don't like that at all.
And I see sickness and disease and things, and I don't like
any of those things. And there's no joy in those things,
but the joy is in Him. And the sickness and the pain
and none of those things have got anything to do with that.
That treasure is in Him, and it's secured at the right hand
of God. There's a true joy in the heart
of the sinner saved by grace. called in the Scripture, joy
unspeakable and full of glory. We're told that Christ is the
Son over His own house, whose house are we if we hold fast
the confidence and the rejoicing. Isn't that something, how He
tied those two together? Our confidence and rejoicing. Steadfast unto the end. And then
sixthly, they sang this song unto the Lord. All spiritual
hymns are sung unto the Lord, isn't it? He's the only one worthy
to sing to. When you find out what redemption
is all about, all this honor and mother, the oldest mother
and youngest mother, and all this kind of foolishness, that
goes right out the door. I don't have any ambition to
honor anybody but God. Don't you? He's the only one
worthy to honor. And I'll tell you this, I'd no
more allow a heresy to be sung in this church than I would for
it to be preached. Early religions sang songs honoring
themselves, and honoring their experiences, and honoring their
kinsmen, and God's people sang praise unto their Savior and
their God. Now, what set the tone of this
song was the experience of deliverance. That set the tone of the song.
It was all of God and nothing of them. Isn't that your experience? Huh? Can you go back as far as
you can go, you go back in your experience, is there anything
of you in it? It's all of Him, ain't it? Huh? It's all of Him. It's His providence, His calling,
His creature, His message, His gospel, His Son, His redemption. I've got nothing to sing about
for me. Everything I've got to sing about is Him. That's it. Sin is the only thing I've got
to sing about. And I don't want to sing about it. Every line of this song was composed
of Moses and sung from the grateful hearts of a people delivered
out of bondage. Alright, here's the third thing
I want us to see. I want you to see what was sung. And this content, this content
of the song, it's all of God. It's about what God has done
and what God is doing and what God's yet going to do. And this
man in whom God has wrought repentance and faith is a man who knows
and confesses that God is his strength. That's the very first
thing he said, God is our strength. He is our strength. And I thought
about giving an example or two here, but as I thought about
it, he's our strength in everything. I can't give you one or two examples.
He's our strength in everything, isn't he? We're like that paralyzed man
who lay at the pool of Bethesda, helpless until he comes and does
for us what none other could do, and even what we ourselves
couldn't do. And he's our strength against
our own nature. No man can resist his own nature.
That's foolishness. said, well, I'm going to get
right one of these days. That's exactly what he's talking
about. He's talking about resisting what he's never been able to
resist. I don't know where he gets the idea. Well, I do, too.
Satan gives it to him. He's our strength against our
own nature. Before God's quickening, we were
by nature the children of wrath, even as others. Paul makes that
perfectly clear. And then he's our strength in
regeneration. Where's the man that can bear
Himself and be born of Himself. You can't do that. You didn't
have anything to do with your first birth, let alone the heavenly
birth. We're born, He said, not of blood,
nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of
God. And then He's our strength and our understanding. The Son
of God hath come and given us an understanding. We'd be down
there with those Foolish, worldly theologians down there debating
about this and debating about that. You ever listen to these
call-in radio shows they have sometimes? I get bored late at
night driving and turn them on and get to listen to them and
they got some preacher on there and he's just taking questions
from all over and he starts dealing with all these things. I listen
to him and he starts explaining things that he don't no more
know about than a man to man. He's our strength and our understanding. He's our wisdom. And then he's the strength of
our hope. Brethren, we don't hope in our hope. That's where
we go wrong so often. We try to hope in our hope. We
look and say, well, what's wrong? What's wrong? I've loosened my
grip. What happened to my hope? That's
because you're looking here instead of looking there. He hasn't changed. He's still right where he was.
He's still exactly who he was, where he was, and how he was.
I am the Lord, I change not, looking unto Jesus, the author
and finisher of our faith. He is the strength of our hope.
Peter said, He was foreordained before the foundation of the
world, manifest in these last times for you who by Him do believe
in God that raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory. Now
listen, that, your faith and your hope, might be in God. That is where it is at. That's
where it's at. He's our strength. And then Moses
said, He's our song. You see, the thing about deliverance
experience is that it teaches us a song. It teaches a man a
song. And it's a song none other can
sing. It's the song of redemption. It's called in Revelation 15,
the song of Moses and of the Lamb. When Moses sang this song,
he sang this song with an understanding of that Lamb. that Paschal Lamb. He understood what this Lamb
said. He knew when he composed the words the relationship of
the Lamb to the victory. Christ looked at those Pharisees
who said, we have Moses to our Father. He said, if you believe
Moses, you'd believe me. For Moses wrote of me. But if you believe not his writings,
how shall you believe my words? The Lord is our strength and
the Lord is our song. And then the Lord has become,
He said, has become through this experience in the sea. He's become. This was their first great example
of the power of God. And He uses this all the way
through the Old Testament as much as He does the resurrection
of Christ in the New Testament. So you can just put these two
together. That's what He's talking about.
He raised them up out of that sea to walk in newness of life. And He become their song. He teaches us this song. He teaches
it to us. Huddled in Goshen, He was the
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We're talking about Him becoming
our salvation. And over there, He was the God
of Abraham, the God of Isaac. The God of Jacob. That's how
God revealed Himself to them. And then trapped between Egypt
and the sea, He was a distant and an unrelated God. They said, why hast thou brought
us out to perish in the wilderness? Where is God? God was so far
away from them, they thought. But having passed through the
sea with them, and bringing them safely to the other side, and
leaving their enemies dead and awake, He sings, now he hath
become my salvation. That's what a man sings when
he's born of God. He hath become my salvation. He always was your salvation. He just let you in on it. And
that's why you sing. He always was their salvation.
He told Abraham way back in, where was it? Genesis chapter
15. Way back there he told them exactly where they were going
to go. Going to go down into Egypt. They're going to stay
there 400 years. And on the same day, as God told
Abraham and made a covenant with him, that's the day they walked
out of Egypt. When that time was done. But
I'll tell you, that ain't like having experienced this thing. God did it by example to them
personally, and they stood there on that seat. And He become their
salvation. He becomes our salvation as He
establishes a union with Himself in us by faith. It's said in
Hebrews chapter 11, by faith they pass through the sea. It's
as His person and work are applied to the heart in the sweet experience
of grace that He becomes our salvation. And it's our spiritual
resurrection from the sea and a clear revelation of His power
that makes our hearts to sing. Moses sang, the Lord is my strength,
my song, my salvation. And he sang, He is my God. He is my God. He can only be
worshiped as he's perceived in the redemptive work of Christ
revealed to the heart and embraced in the soul. That's how we worship God. Natural
man can't worship God because he's never experienced the grace
of God. He can't worship God. He becomes his God. He is your
God. And then he sang this, he's my
father's God. My father's God. What in the
world is he talking about there? Now I know that's in reference
to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. But there's more to it than that. He's talking here when he says
he's my father's God, he's talking about the covenant God. That's
what he's talking about. He was our covenant God long
before he became our God in the experience of grace, wasn't he?
That's what this experience of grace is all about. This was
the first awakening to them. The first time when God in His
presence come down with them, right in their presence, and
destroyed their enemies and raised them up out of the sea and set
them on the road to Canaan. And they sang. They sang to it. And then last of all, I'll just
say a few words and make this brief, but what is the goal of
the song? If you examine the words in,
what's the goal of the song? Being taught by the experience
of grace, what does my heart long to do with my song? I long
to exalt Him. That's where you find that all
the way through the song. They exalted Him. But now wait
a minute. Exalt God? How does a wiggling
maggot exalt Him who is already perfect? and glorious in all
His perfections." How can you exalt Him? You can't exalt Him.
You can't make Him any better than He is. You can't make Him
any more successful than He is. You can't make Him any more powerful
than He is. So what in the world is he talking
about when he said he exalted God? What is that? Well, it begins in your own heart. through the revelation of this
personal experience of grace, passing through that sea, seeing
God's presence in your own life, raising you up out of spiritual
death and giving you spiritual life. All of a sudden, God is
exalted in here. He never was before, was He?
I mean, we had a general understanding of things. I mean, I believed
before the Lord saved me that He created the world. I didn't
realize that He created the world and everything in it for His
eternal purpose of grace, did you? Uh-uh. No, God was a little,
what Henry used to call, peanut God. That's a little peanut God. But boy, when I seen who God
was, God's sovereignty and God's power and God's holiness, my
soul, how He was exalted in here. And when he gets exalted in here,
you'll start exalting him right here. Sure you will. You're not going to go talk about
that peanut God anymore. You know better. You know better. How can a man exalt God? Well,
first and foremost, in our own hearts. He said, out of the abundance
of the heart, the mouth speaketh. A good man out of the good treasure
of the heart bringeth forth good things, and an evil man out of
the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things. And by thy words
thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned. You can read about that in Matthew
chapter 12. He's first exalted in our own
hearts, and then secondly, God must be exalted in our doctrine. If God be exalted in my heart,
I'm not going to preach unless you're God. A man says, I believe
these things sitting in your living room, and then goes to
church down here where God's name is drug in the mug, that
man's a liar. That's what he is. You can make
all the things you want to make for him and all this kind of
silliness, but I'm just telling you, that man don't know God.
You can't know this God and talk about Him in a lesser thing what
He is. And then thirdly, We do it in
our songs. I've got no desire to magnify
some pretended experience of the flesh or some so-called work
of man. My desire is to praise and exalt
the God of my salvation. And then fourthly, we exalt God
in the way we live. Did you know that? We exalt God. Let me show you what I'm talking
about. You're going to find out that this world will not have
any respect for you whatsoever and your God. We're talking about
the God you represent. They look at your life, and they're
not going to have any respect for your God whatsoever if he
can't produce in you real peace and joy and honor and obedience. Is your God sovereign? Does he
sit on the throne? Then he'll pass you through the
sea. Huh? If He passed you through the
sea, can't you turn the rest of it over to Him? Huh? He who spared not His own Son,
but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him
freely give us all things? We want to talk about a sovereign
God, but don't talk about a sovereign God and then come over here and
act like He's not sovereign. Live like He's sovereign because
He is. Live like He's gracious because
He is. having stated with the utmost clarity that salvation
is altogether the work of God and the work of grace, and that
even the faith of God's elect is not of themselves, but of
the free and sovereign gift of God's grace. Paul says in the
very next line, for we are his workmanship created in Christ
Jesus unto good works, which this sovereign, gracious God
hath before ordained that we should walk in them. And we're
going to walk in them. My friend, God is exalted in
the eyes of others as His strength and power and grace is demonstrated
in the lives of His elect. Paul said this. He said, this
is a faithful saying. This is in the book of Titus.
This is a faithful saying, and these things I will that thou
affirm constantly, that they which have believed in God might
be careful to maintain good works. These things are good. Now, listen
to this. These things are good and profitable
unto men. Unto men. Men don't hear what
you say. They see what you do. They see
what you do. They see how you act. Exalt the
Lord. Well, may the Lord be pleased
truly in our hearts. I don't want to just talk about
singing this song. I want to sing it, don't you?
I want to sing it. I want to sing it from my soul
and from my heart. I don't want to wind up in that
day having him look at me and say, depart from me, you worker
of iniquity. I never knew you. You never sang
my song. What did you know about redemption?
Huh? Oh, I don't want to be there.
I want to sing this song. I want to sing this song of redemption.