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The sense of Israel's obligation to Jehovah fully expressed. God, we have noticed, is lifted up in this song. We now proceed to observe how he is lifted up in the midst of his people, whom he encompasses with his protection, whom he cheers and illuminates with his favour. His destruction is not mere destruction; his supremacy is not only over his enemies, but also as the guide, the comforter, and the portion of his own. Hence we discover almost immediately on breaking into the song, how Israel is found expressing complete dependence on Jehovah.

I. THERE IS THE EXPRESSION OF INDEBTEDNESS. God has come to Israel in its suffering, need, and helplessness. Israel is weak, and God gives the strength it needs. Israel is sad-hearted, and God enables it to burst forth in songs of gladness. Israel is in peril, and God has interposed with effectual and abiding salvation. He has not only supplied some needs, but all needs wherein Israel was able to receive his aid. More needs would have been supplied, if more had been felt; more causes of gratitude given, if more could have been brought into operation. God is now felt to be a guide (ver. 13), and the land that was thought to fasten the people in, now takes its right place in the memory of the devout as an evident part of the highway of God's holy ones. What expressions of indebtedness could be more complete? It was impossible to exaggerate the debt, and God took care that the words of the song should not fall short in acknowledging it. Thus let it ever be our aim to thank God for his goodness to us, in such words as he supplies, and fill his forms full with the devotion of meditative and observant hearts.

II. THIS EXPRESSION IS A PERSONAL ONE. The word "I" stands out prominently. The song was not only for a delivered nation, but for a nation in whose deliverance every individual was blessed. It was emphatically a song for every Israelite. God had done all this for Israel, not that he might have a nation for his own to be looked at in the mass, averaged over the whole, the good along with the bad; it was to be a nation made up of holy, obedient, and grateful individuals. Even already, God is indicating that his true people must be bound to him by personal attachment and service. Pharaoh had said in his haste and thoughtlessness, "I and my people are wicked" (Exodus 9:27). Here Jehovah gives something for each one of his own people to say; and if each of them labours to say it with a feeling corresponding to the words, then indeed there will come an outburst from the nation such as could not in any other way be produced.

III. THIS EXPRESSION BEING PERSONAL, IS ALSO AN EXPRESSION AS TO THE SOURCE OF PERSONAL ABILITY. "The Lord is my strength." The strength of a believer just amounts to that which God puts into him according to his need and according to his faith. Bring to God as many vessels as you will, and if it be wise to fill them, then God can fill them all. Learn that the natural strength of man, even at its best, is inadequate for some purposes and uncertain for any. It breaks down, often without warning and without recovery. Therefore it is a great matter for me to feel that "the Lord is my strength." He himself comes in, not to supplement human efforts, nor to fill up human defects, but rather to make his presence felt with men in the choosing of right purposes, and the carrying of them out to a full and satisfying attainment. The Israelite had been nothing in himself; nothing as against the tyranny of Pharaoh in Egypt; nothing as against the pursuing chariots by the Red Sea. And now all at once he is able to sing as if he were a portion and a factor of Omnipotence.

IV. THIS EXPRESSION BEING PERSONAL IS ALSO AN EXPRESSION AS TO THE SOURCE OF PERSONAL GLADNESS. "The Lord is my song." From him comes real and abiding gladness, such gladness as becomes man at his best estate. The world has its great singers, and what it reckons imperishable songs. Each nation has its own patriotic effusions, and excited and often half-drunken crowds will roar themselves hoarse over national anthems. There are love songs, drinking songs, war songs, and all that great number besides which elude classification. It would be foolish indeed of the Christian, in his haste, to despise these productions, for many of them are very beautiful, and they have an unquestionable and not astonishing hold on the general heart. But after all, we must escape into higher and holier associations, and dwell in them, if we would have gladness, such as will satisfy. The Lord must be our song. He, in his attributes, his actions, and the history of his dealings with the children of men, must be the topic of our praise. The great thing to make each of us glad must be that our minds are kept in perfect peace because they are stayed upon him. All other gladness, sweet as it may be in the beginning, will prove bitter, perhaps very bitter, in the end. Nor was Jehovah any less the song of every true Israelite here, because he was shown acting in such a stern, uncompromising way. The people had to praise God for an actual, present, and overwhelming mercy; and if they had to sing of destruction, that was a necessity not to be escaped. True, there is no word of pity all the way through this song for the destroyed host of Pharaoh, simply because it was not the place for such an expression. The thing to be here expressed and dwelt upon is praise to Jehovah, because of the greatness and completeness of the Divine action. And what an impressive contrast there is between the conduct of these Israelites when delivered and the conduct in the hour of victory, which only too many pages of history record, indeed, such conduct is not absent from the pages of the Old Testament itself. It was, of course, impossible, that any scene of butchery, pillage, and violation, could be presented to us here; but there is not even any tone of savage, revengeful exultation over the destroyed. Israel stands by the mighty waters, looks on the corpses of the Egyptians, and sends up this volume of undiluted, unqualified praise to Jehovah. Let us, for the moment, forget the personal unworthiness of the singers, their past unbelief, their future lapses into idolatry, rebellion, and self will. The words of praise here were the right words to speak; and at the time, we may be sure, many of them felt them. The words were true, the feeling real; the fault was that the singers did not continue to live so as to not the feeling more deeply in their breasts.

V. THIS EXPRESSION BEING PERSONAL, IS ALSO AN EXPRESSION AS TO THE SOURCE OF PERSONAL SAFETY. "He has become my salvation." There is thus an experience to dwell on that peculiarly inspires grateful acknowledgment. We are grateful to those who provide for us, who instruct us, who supply us with comforts and pleasures; but there is a peculiar tie to him who saves us in any hour of peril. God himself cannot but look with peculiar interest to those whom he has delivered; and the delivered should look with peculiar devotion to him. If it is much to create men and to provide for them in their natural existence, it is more still to save them from death and to give them eternal life in Christ; and thus God must look in a special way on those who believe and are being saved. And so also, if it is much to be created and much to be provided for, it is even more to be saved; to have the sure feeling that beyond this changing, corruptible scene, there is the house of God, not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. There are untold millions who owe existence and all their power of enjoyment to God, yet not one syllable of real thankfulness has ever passed their lips. But as to those who are saved, if they be truly in process of salvation, thankfulness is part of their life. Of this be perfectly sure, no salvation is going on if thankfulness for it be not in the heart and some sort of praise on the lip and in the life.

VI. In view of all that has thus been considered, it will be seen as a fitting consequence that JEHOVAH SHOULD BE DISTINCTLY SET FORTH AS WORTHY OF ADORATION AND HONOR. "He is my God and I will glorify him, my father's God and I will exalt him." My father's God. Here is the response, more or less appreciative, to all declarations in which Jehovah speaks of himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. True praise of God takes in the great historic past, yes, and also the past which is not historic; a past none the less real, none the less contributory to the present, even though there be no record of it such as we can read. Jehovah was deliverer to Israel that day by the Red Sea, because of what he had been to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob centuries before. What God is to each of us to-day, is possible because of what he was to our fathers long ago. Explore then and discover how present blessings are rooted in the past. This will not only be an interesting study, but will increase gratitude, and fix it more surely in the regions of the understanding. - Y.

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KJV: 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.

WEB: Then Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to Yahweh, and said, "I will sing to Yahweh, for he has triumphed gloriously. The horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.