“Lord, who is like you among the gods? Who is like you, glorious in holiness, revered with praises, performing wonders? You stretched out your right hand, and the earth swallowed them. With your faithful love, you will lead the people you have redeemed; you will guide them to your holy dwelling with your strength.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I once had to do a report on Thomas Edison. I read several books (this was pre-internet and in grade school, so reading some books in the library was about all I could do) and wrote a nice little biography to go along with it. I did really well on the project. But I didn’t really know Thomas Edison at all. I just knew about him. It’s one thing to read about someone. It’s another thing to have a personal experience with them. In crossing the Red Sea on dry ground, Israel had a personal experience with God. The next stanza of their song of praise reflects some on what they learned from it. Let’s take a look at this and see what we can learn with them.

As we talked about more than once on our journey through the plague sequence, one of the most significant reasons God took that particular path to freeing the Israelites from their enslavement in Egypt was so that they could get to know Him and the kind of God He is. He wanted Egypt and the rest of the world to learn about Him too, but He was particularly keen on making sure Israel did. After all, He was establishing Himself as their God. Why wouldn’t He want them to know Him?

Believe it or not, though, this was a unique idea in the ancient world. The various gods worshiped by other people groups in the region and around the world didn’t care if their people knew them. They weren’t interested in a personal relationship with them. All they wanted was for their people to obey them. As long as you did what the gods commanded and regularly made the required sacrifices to feed the gods and keep them happy, that was all that mattered. There was nothing personal about it. The gods didn’t care about you.

But the God of Israel was different. He went to great lengths to reveal Himself to His people so they could know and understand His character. He took great pains to clearly distinguish Himself from the other gods in the neighborhood. This is why Israel opens this third stanza by asking: “Lord, who is like you among the gods?” The expected and intended answer to that question is that none of them are like Him. He is in a category all to Himself.

They don’t simply assert that He is different, though. They go further than that to point out what some of these differences are. Specifically, they describe Him as glorious in holiness, revered with praises, and performing wonders. Now, many different gods in the ancient world were described in these kinds of terms. These descriptions of His character do not themselves make God different from all the rest. What makes Him different is that the people were able to point to specific things He had done to back up His character. No other ancient (or modern) god could point to such a thing. They had witnessed God defeat their enemies without their having to even lift a finger. No other ancient god had done that. When other militarily victorious nations celebrated the victories their god helped them to win, they were the ones who did all the work. They were active participants (because their “gods” couldn’t have done anything without them).

With Israel’s God, though, He could actually do things. They watched the waters divide. They walked through them on dry ground. They watched the waters slam back down on the Egyptian army. They had witnessed all of these things firsthand. They knew He was different. No other god was like this. And because of this experience, they were ready to follow Him. He was going to lead them, and they were going to follow Him. They were going to follow Him because they knew Him.

Here’s the point for us: God still wants to be known. More than that, He wants you to know Him. He will move in your situation in such a way that you can experience His holiness and power. The only thing it is going to require of you is to look through eyes of faith. Israel could have witnessed all that they saw and started coming up with “rational” explanations for it all. We are perfectly capable of denying what our eyes have seen such that we imagine we saw something entirely other than what played out before us. We are rather adept at witnessing God’s action in the world around us and passing it off as chance or coincidence. When we allow ourselves to see with eyes of faith that are conditioned by our willingness to accept the reports we have about Him in the Scriptures and from other faithful believers over the centuries, though, we will be able to see His working. And when we do, we will know Him for ourselves. May you know God for yourself today, and commit to following Him in light of that knowledge.