CHM on the Red Sea Experience

Exodus 15

This chapter opens with Israel's magnificent song of triumph on the shore of the Red Sea...Up to this moment, we have not heard so much as a single note of praise...It was when they emerged from their significant baptism "in the cloud and in the sea"...that six hundred thousand voices were heard chanting the song of victory. The waters of the Red Sea rolled between them and Egypt, and they stood on the shore as a fully delivered people, and therefore they were able to praise the Lord.

In this, as in everything else, they were our types. We too must know ourselves as saved, inthe power of death and resurrection, before ever we can present clear and intelligent worship...The Spirit of God reveals with unmistakable clearness in the Word, that the Church is united to Christ in death and resurrection; and, moreover, the risen Christ at God's right hand is the measure and pledge of the Church's acceptance...It is the privilege of the very feeblest member of the Church of God to know that he was represented by Christ on the cross; that all his sins were confessed, borne, judged, and atoned for there. This is a divine reality and, when laid hold of by faith, must give peace...But there is no other possible way in which to get the sense of sin entirely removed from the conscience, but seeing it judged in the Person of Christ, as a sin-offering on the cursed tree. If it was judged there, once for all, it is now by the believer to be regarded as a divinely and therefore eternally-settled question. And that it was so judged is proved by the resurrection of the Surety.

Many find considerable difficulty in making a personal application thereof...They are looking at themselves instead of at Christ in death, and Christ in resurrection. They are occupied rather with their appropriation of Christ than with Christ Himself. They are thinking of their capacity rather than their title. Thus they are kept in a state of the most distressing uncertainty; and as a consequence they are never able to take the place of happy, intelligent worshippers. They are praying for salvation instead of rejoicing in the conscious possession of it. They are looking at their imperfect fruits instead of Christ's perfect atonement.

God is the object [of this song]. He fills the entire sphere of the soul's vision. There is nothing of man, his feelings, or his experiences, and therefore the stream of praise flows copiously and uninterruptedly forth. How different is this from some of the hymns which we so often hear sung in Christian assemblies, so full of our failings, our feebleness, our shortcomings. The fact is, we can never sing with real, spiritual intelligence and power when we are looking at ourselves... With many it seems to be accounted a Christian grace to be in a continual state of doubt and hesitation; and as a consequence their hymns are quite in character with their condition. Such persons, however sincere and pious, have never yet, in the actual experience of their souls, entered upon the proper ground of worship. They have not yet got done with themselves. They have not passed through the sea; and, as a spiritually baptised people, taken their stand on the shore, in the power of resurrection. They are still, in some way or another, occupied with self. They do not regard self as a crucified thing with which God is for ever done.

May the Holy Ghost lead all God's people into fuller, clearer, and worthier apprehensions of their place and privilege as those who, being washed from their sins in the blood of Christ, are presented before God in all that infinite and unclouded acceptance in which He stands, as the risen and glorified Head of His Church...Is it not evident that a doubting spirit virtually calls into question the perfectness of Christ's work—a work which has been attested, in the view of all created intelligence, by the resurrection of Christ from the dead?...Wherefore, it is the Christian's sweet privilege ever to triumph in a full salvation. The Lord Himself has become his salvation; and he has only to enjoy the fruits of that which God has wrought for him, and to walk to His praise while waiting for that time when "Jehovah shall reign for ever and ever."

CH Mackintosh on Exodus 15. [How Worship arises from the Red Sea Experience]