“When the peoples hear, they will shudder; anguish will seize the inhabitants of Philistia. Then the chiefs of Edom will be terrified; trembling will seize the leaders of Moab; all the inhabitants of Canaan will panic; terror and dread will fall on them. They will be as still as a stone because of your powerful arm until your people pass by; Lord, until the people whom you purchased pass by.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I used to love watching chef Alton Brown’s Food Network series, Good Eats. He made really good-looking food, of course, but his big thing was exploring the science behind it. And the series was really creative in doing that. It was quirky, fun, educational, and highly entertaining. There really has not ever been another cooking show like it. One of Brown’s big things throughout the series was that he hated single-function kitchen tools. Everything needed to be able to serve more than one purpose. Although Brown publicly walked away from at least his Baptist faith a few years ago, I like to think that he would have appreciated the fact that God rarely does anything for a single purpose. This next stanza in Israel’s song of praise celebrates this. Let’s talk about what’s going on here.

One of the ideas that I have repeated over and over on this journey and even highlighted again yesterday is the fact that God wanted to be known. He wanted to be known first and foremost by Israel. But Israel wasn’t the only people He wanted to know Him. He wanted Egypt to know Him too, of course, but He was thinking even more broadly than that. He wanted the whole world to know who He is. As He had said to Abraham centuries before, He was ultimately revealing Himself to Israel in order that through them He might be able to invite all the world into the relationship with Him He desired to have with us. Today, we are the living fulfillment of that desire on His part; a fulfillment that began in Christ.

But people generally weren’t ready for that kind of thing in the ancient world here where Israel was still figuring out who they were and who He was. The world was entirely more tribal then than it is today. Well, that’s not entirely true. Our tribalism manifests itself differently than theirs did…for the most part…although we are seeing the world become more and more tribal once again as the Christian worldview is ebbing across the West which doesn’t bode well for our near-term future, but that’s a story for another day. In any event, nations then were glorified tribes. And every tribe pretty much wanted the same thing: to expand their land at the expense of their neighbors.

This desire for land expansion was driven by several things including pride, a zero-sum-game view of available resources, an inherent hatred of all the other tribes around them because they weren’t part of their tribe, and religion. The religion piece was particularly important. They served gods who they understood to be tribal themselves. Their gods regularly needed to show themselves to be bigger and badder than the gods of the nations around them. This was demonstrated by going to war with them and defeating them, enslaving them, and destroying them utterly.

Gods then served a little like a big, older brother might serve today. A nation understood their god to be the one who had their back when some other nation came picking on them. Their god would empower them to defeat their enemies or overthrow their oppressors. A god who did that kind of thing consistently and well soon had a nation that was the biggest dog on the block serving them. Then, they went and started picking on the nations around them, taking their territory to expand their god’s sphere of influence and pool of worshipers, rendering him even more powerful than before.

God’s actions in defeating the Egyptian army the way He did as well as the in the military victories Israel would win in the next part of their journey, established Him as the biggest dog on the block in the ancient world. For Egypt to suffer the kind of defeat they did meant in the minds of everyone around then that their God was bigger and badder than all of the gods of Egypt. But the gods of Egypt had long been considered the biggest and baddest gods on the block. That’s why their empire was so large and powerful. Nobody wanted to mess with them. And then Israel’s God, the God of this formerly enslaved people, showed Himself to be not just a little more powerful, but vastly more powerful. And, if He was that much more powerful than the gods of Egypt were, He was definitely more powerful than everybody else’s gods. If Israel came near to them, that meant He was probably looking to take their territory for Israel, and if that happened, they didn’t stand a chance.

This is all what Israel celebrates here. The people and the leaders of all these nations mentioned were now terrified of their God and His power. Israel was absolutely proud of this. In the mindset of someone in the ancient world, this was about the best news they could hear. This meant strength for them. It meant safety. It served as a hedge of protection. Other peoples weren’t going to mess with them because of the reputation of their God’s strength and power. This meant there was hope their children could grow up and not know warfare. Generations would rise and fall who only knew peace. This was most definitely something for which their God deserved praise.

So then, does this mean anything for us? Well, we still serve a God who has our backs in just the way Israel understood Him to here. He is bigger and stronger than anything else the people around us might worship. The gods of our modern age have certainly taken a different form than the gods of the ancient world, but the people around us are still very much a worshiping people. And some of the modern gods our world worships aren’t all that different from the ancient gods. There are still gods who demand that their people be rich. There are still gods who demand child sacrifice. There are gods who command self-mutilation. There are gods who command and crave sex of all sorts. Some gods are just brutes. Yet our God is still the most powerful that there is.

What is different for us, though, is that we know Him even better than Israel did. We know Him more fully. We understand that He is not just the biggest, baddest God on the block. He is the most powerful and the most loving God on the block. We can see the depths of His humility and compassion and kindness. We experience the strength of His gentleness and self-control. We know Him as the God who has conquered all things, even death.

Because of that, we know Him as a God of hope. More still, we know that His kingdom is coming – indeed it is here – and that it is eternal. Because of all of this, we are able to offer the world something Israel never could. We can offer eternal life and freedom from the chains all those other gods invariably put on their people. We don’t have to conquer them with force; we have the opportunity to conquer them with love. We can offer hope and joy and peace in abundance along with deep draughts of the sweetness of His kingdom. In a word, we can offer them Jesus. What we celebrate is not that the peoples shudder in anguish and fear, but that they rejoice in the revelation of hope and life. We delight in transformed lives, in freedom from sin, in the glorification of Christ. This is all the greatness and glory of our God who purchased us not merely from enslavement to another nation, but from enslavement to sin itself. He is indeed worthy of our lives. Let us make sure we give them to Him.