The Song of Faith, Part 1

Sharon Hardy Knotts: Greetings, friends, and new listeners. Welcome to our program. I am Sharon Knotts, thanking you for joining us today because we know faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. I think you will truly be blessed, maybe even tickled by our message today, The Song of Faith. I know I had fun ministering it and the congregation was right there with me, including the children. We found out that not only does faith speak, but it also sings. So be blessed by The Song of Faith.
Guest (Female): Amen. I came to worship the Lord. I came to bless His holy name. Amen. And I have never, ever seen the Lord fail to respond to a heart that is filled with worship and thanksgiving. Amen. And we are going to start off today by reading the words to a song written by Moses. Now, we all know that David was the sweet Psalmist of Israel, and we all love to read his Psalms. But not many people realize that long before David, there was another songwriter. And we all know Moses as the lawgiver. We know Moses as the one with the rod. It causes fire down from heaven and turns water into blood and sends frogs and lice and all kinds of bad stuff to God's enemies. That parted the Red Sea. But he wrote a song, he wrote more than one, and we are going to read that today. That is where we are going to start in the book of Exodus, Exodus 15. And we are going to read all of his song together. And I would like you to pay attention while we are reading. Kind of just click it over in your mind. You do not have to do an actual count because then you will get distracted and you will not be paying attention to what you are reading. But notice all of the past tense verbs in this song. Notice all the times you will see "TH" on the end of a word, like "hath" or "ST" on the end of the word, like "didst." You know, we do not say, "You, I didst that" anymore. But this is King James English, and they said "didst," and it was past tense. And of course, we all know that "ED" on a verb means past tense. So kind of kind of notice that as we go along. Exodus 15. Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord and spoke, saying. Here is the song. "I will sing unto the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously. The horse and his rider has he thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation. He is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation. My father's God, and I will exalt him. The Lord is a man of war, the Lord is his name." Now, so far, we are seeing a lot of present tense because that is the thing about God, he is. He was, he is, and he ever will be. He exists in the great now. But let us see now what he is rejoicing about, verse 4. "Pharaoh's chariots and his host hath he cast into the sea. His chosen captains also are drowned in the Red Sea. The depths have 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, has dashed in pieces the enemy. And in the greatness of thine excellency, thou hast overthrown them that rose up against thee. Thou sentest forth thy wrath, which consumed them as stubble. And with the blast of thy nostrils, the waters were gathered together. The flood stood upright as an heap, and the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea." "The enemy said," this would be Pharaoh and his guys, "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, and the sea covered them, and they sank as lead in the mighty waters. Who is like unto 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 up." "Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed. Thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation. The people shall hear and be afraid." Talking about all the other nations when they hear this report. "Sorrow shall take hold on the inhabitants of Palestina." In other words, on the other side, when they get into the land of Canaan, they are going to hear about this report. And if you go into Joshua, you find that after 40 years, 40 years later, when Joshua was sent in the two spies to go in and they they went to Rahab's house to see what did she say? She said, "We have heard of what your God did at the Red Sea, and our heart melts within us." 40 years later, they were still afraid of what happened here. "Then the dukes of Edom shall be amazed, and the mighty men of Moab." These are all God's enemies. "Trembling shall take hold upon them, and all the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away. Fear and dread shall fall upon them. By the greatness of thine arm, they shall be as still as a stone till the people pass over, O Lord, till the people pass over which thou hast purchased. Thou shall bring them in and plant them in the mountain 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." And now he is talking now the future blessings, but he goes back and finishes the song with verse 19. "For the horse of Pharaoh went in with his chariots." And we want to catch this. Even the horse, well, if the horse went in, I am assuming that what? Pharaoh was sitting on the horse. "For the horse of Pharaoh went in with his chariots and with his horsemen into the sea, and the Lord brought again the waters of the sea upon them, but the children of Israel went on dry land in the midst of the sea." Let us stop there. So now we have the Song of Moses. And you know, we have to probably assume that written in Hebrew, it probably had rhyme and a meter because, you know, when we write our songs, we like to do that. We either if they do not exactly rhyme, they at least have a meter that is that matches the bar before. Amen. And that is how we write songs. And you will remember that as we get as they got later on into the wilderness and God began to give them his law. How did Moses teach the people how to remember the law? They made them songs. He said, "Especially with the children." Especially with the kids. I mean, it is not easy to teach the kids the Ten Commandments. Little ones are like, "Thou shall not," and, "You know, have no other gods before." It is hard to get into that. But if you put it in a song, they will catch on to it. That is why we teach them our ABCs. A B C D E F G. That is why we teach them because they get it in the song and it gets into them. And I am sure everybody in this place, I will not make you sing it right now, but I bet you if someone put you on the spot and said, "Sing the alphabet song," I bet every person here could sing it. Even if no matter how old you are, because it got into your little heart and your mind and spirit when you were a kid. And so Moses understood this, and getting it into a song, so I am sure that in the Hebrew it probably had a catchy tune. It had a catchy tune and catchy words, and it probably rhymed because even in the English translation, they did not try to make it all rhyme because they could not do that. They had to translate what was said. And if you try to make it all rhyme, you are liable to add stuff and take away. But even still, there is a few places. And I like it. I like where it says, "I will sing unto the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously. The horse and his rider has he thrown into the sea." And I was thinking today, you know, I was trying to think of a tune to put that to, and I could not think of anything. The only thing that popped in my head was the tune to the Star Spangled Banner. You know, "Oh, say, can you see by the dawn's early light?" Well, I was singing, "I will sing unto the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously. The horse and the rider has he cast into the sea." And you can keep going, and it fits. You can get all the way down to verse five, singing the Star Spangled Banner. I love that. Especially when you get to the part where it says, "And the rockets' red glare," you say, and I think there it says, let us see, where did I find that? Oh, verse two. "My father's God, and I will exalt him." Try it when you go home. I am not going to I am going to preach. I do not sing. We all see that. But I just want to tell you, I dare you, go home and try it. You might have to tweak a few things. Instead of saying "he will," you might have to say "he'll" to get the right meter. Try it. I dare you. Go in the bedroom, shut the door, make sure nobody is within ear length, and sing one through five to the Star Spangled Banner. Okay. So, let us see what happens here. They had finally, after God had sent 10 plagues and the tenth one being the hoodee-ra, when he allowed all the firstborn to perish because Pharaoh kept hardening his heart, not letting the people go. But when God touched the thing nearest and dearest to Pharaoh's heart, only then did he let the people go because his firstborn son was dead. And so now he said, "Go, and not only go, get out of here." They were so glad to get rid of them. They were giving them their silver, their gold. They were giving them all kinds of stuff. "Take your cattle, take everything. Do not leave any. Just get out of our sight. You have brought nothing but misery to us." But after they were gone a few days, then these lazy, fat Egyptians who had used to have slaves do all their stuff, said, "Man, now we do not have no slaves. What were we thinking letting them go like that? We need them. We need them back here because we, you know, we need them to get out there in the mud and dig up some mud and make some bricks for us and get in the sun and we need that." So they came after them. And you know that the children of Israel had gotten as far to they were to coming to the place of the Red Sea. When all of a sudden in the distance behind them, they saw dust kicking up, and they realized, "Uh-oh." They began to hear the sound of thunder it sounded like, you know. But they realized very quickly, they were hearing the hooves of horses and the rumbling of the chariot wheels as Pharaoh and his men decided, "You are not getting away. We are going to get you and bring you back." And they knew these people were totally defenseless. These people had no weapons. None at all. And not only that, they were so used to being slaves that they did not even know how to stand up for themselves. How many know if you push around a person long enough? Sometimes people say, "Why do people stay in abusive situations? Why does a woman stay in a house where her husband is smacking her around all the time? Why does not she just get up and leave?" From the outside, you are thinking, "What is wrong with her?" You feel like going and smacking her yourself and saying, "What are you doing? Why do not you get out of here? Why are you putting up with this?" Because after a while, you come under that dominating spirit. You come under it, and you do not know how to stand up for yourself. You need someone to come from the outside and intervene and come in and take you and your kids to a safe place and get the authorities if they need to be gotten because once you come under that that spirit of domination, you do not know how to stand up for yourself. So they knew they were going to be able to get them back. They did not think any twice about getting them back. Amen. And so they went after them. Now here they are. Their backs are to the Red Sea, and here is Pharaoh bearing down on them. But God told Pharaoh, told Moses, "Get your miracle rod, stretch it out over the waters." And when he did, the waters rolled back like two walls of congealed Jell-O. Amen. They were they were just rolled back. I I I just try to imagine what that must have looked like. And it was all night, all night long it took them to cross dry ground. It should have been muddy ground. Amen. But it was not, it was dry ground because when God breathed, it not only caused the waters to split, it dried the ground. They needed to go over on dry ground. They needed to bring their cattle and their donkeys and their sheep and their cows. They needed to bring their little ones, and they did not need to be trumping in three feet of mud. Amen. And they went over on dry ground. And so when they got over on the other side, they realized, "Wow, we are here. We have got the victory." And this is awesome, and can you believe it? And did you see the water and, "Oh my goodness," and they were just having a good time and rejoicing. And all of a sudden, once again, they heard the thunder of horses' hooves and chariot wheels. And they looked and realized that Pharaoh and his men and chariots thought, "Well, if they can go over, we can go over. We do not know how this happened, but we are going after them." I do not know what you think that they would be in such shock that they would just stand there afraid of even put their toe down there and mess with that God that these that these Israelites serve. But the devil is dumb sometimes. Amen. Sometimes he is dumb. He is crafty. Do not ever be ignorant of his devices. But sometimes he just shows how dumb he is. Amen. Because when he is bent on going after a child of God, the people of God, he gets this fury in his spirit. He has revenge in his heart, and he just charges and not taking time to think. Do not touch the apple of God's eye. Do not mess with God's peculiar treasure. One time, when I was going through a very severe trial, when I was being physically abused, I mean, I am talking about for real. And I am not going to go into details, but I was being physically abused. And I came through the line one night, and the man that was preaching that night was one of our own people that was ministering. But no one knew, no one knew because when you are going through stuff like that, you hide it. You hide it, you are ashamed because somehow you think it is your fault if you did better, did something, it would not happen. I do not know why the Lord is letting me say this unless somebody in this place is in that circumstance and will not park here, but let us just let it be said that no one knew, this person certainly did not know. And he prayed over me. It was a short word from the Lord, but he said, "Know that he whoever touches you, touches the apple of my eye." And I tell you that one little prophetic word made me realize because, you know, the devil will say, "If God was for you and you are his child, why is he letting all this happen to you?" Well, for one thing, part of it was my fault because I was not speaking up and telling anybody because I was in that spirit that had me in domination. So the devil was dumb, and he went after them. But when he got halfway over, when they got in the middle there, Amen. God just flicked his eyelash. That is all it takes. One blink. And those waters came rushing in. And when that wall of waters came rushing in, it drowned them, and the Bible says, we just read it, they sank like a stone. They sank like lead. Amen. You know, lead will go boom to the bottom right away. Amen. They sank immediately. They went down. And you know, it has been very recently that they have found in the Red Sea, they have found pieces of chariots that date back to this time. In the last few years, they have found it in the Red Sea. Amen. They are there on the other side. And now they see and now it is time to shout and sing and dance all over again. And Moses gets the party started. He starts singing this song that we just read. And I asked you to notice all the past tense verbs in this place. You know, all the times I think I saw "hath" seven times and plus you have "had." I saw "eds" on the word at least eight times. And I saw a lot of past tense verbs that had the past tense in them, you know, like "didst" and "sent." And then you have things like "cast" and "thrown." These are all past tense. Amen. Well, you say, "Well, why do I care about that? Why did you tell me to pay attention to that for?" Because I want to make the point that they sang the victory song after the victory. After the mighty victory, they sang the victory song. Amen. And they ought to sing a victory song. When God gives you the victory, you owe him a song of Thanksgiving. You owe him a song of victory. You owe him a song of celebration. When you come through a a really severe test, you need to get it, well, do not wait until you get to God's house, dance in your living room, shout in your bedroom. Amen. You need to shout the victory shout. You need to sing the victory song and dance the victory dance. Amen. So they sang this song, Moses and the people, and we stopped at verse 19. Let us look at verse 20. "And Miriam," now she would be Moses' sister, 10 years older than him. "And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron," as well as Moses, "took a timbrel in her hand." Sister Miller, do you have that timbrel here? Come on up here with your timbrel. Come on, she is going to be Miriam. Come on, Sister Dolores, aka Miriam. And all the women. I got a couple women that want to join Miriam. Come on, Ronda, get up here. I heard you say, "Amen." Come on. Who else wants to get up here? I need two more women. I got Terry and I got Debbie. All right. So here comes Miriam and the women. Okay, I do not know who this stuff belongs to, but I borrowed it, okay? I will put it back when I am done. Amen. And listen what verse 20 says, "And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out with her with their timbrels and with," you have to act this out now, "dances."
Guest (Female): Come on, move it. All right, that is good. I like it. All right, pause. Pause.
Guest (Female): And Miriam answered them, and this is what she said, "Sing ye to the Lord," everybody, "Sing ye to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously. The horse and his rider has he thrown into the sea." Come on, ladies! All right! Give them a clap offering.
Sharon Hardy Knotts: Amen. I trust you are being blessed by this delightful message, The Song of Faith. In Old Testament times, God instructed Moses and later David to put his word to music. This made it easier for the people to remember. Even today, we teach our kids their ABCs in song. The Song of Moses was sung by the people after their glorious Red Sea crossing. Miriam and the women sang and danced, "The horse and the rider are cast into the sea." You know, it is easy to sing when you have just won a huge victory like that. But unfortunately, the Israelites fell into chronic murmuring each time they faced a hardship, such as having no water. In one incident, it resulted in God sending fiery serpents that bit them, and some died. This left an indelible mark on their memory, and the next time they needed water, they began to sing before they received their answer. While the men were digging, the women were singing, and the water burst forth. There is a great lesson here for all of us. Do not wait until the battle is over. Sing now. Shout now. Dance now. God will send angels to chase the enemy like the chaff before the wind, like he did when Jehoshaphat and the choir went out to face the enemy. They sang the victory song while the angels won the battle. Do not miss out on an anointed blessing for yourself and others. Why not order The Song of Faith on CD for a love gift of $10 or more for the radio ministry? Request offer SK168. That is SK168. Mail to R.G. Hardy Ministries, PO Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland 21203 or order online at rghardy.org where you will also find many other anointed sermons by my father, Brother Hardy, and myself. But to order by mail, send a minimum love gift of $10. Request offer SK168 to PO Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland 21203. Till next time, this is Sharon Knotts saying, "Maranatha."