The greatest rejoicing often follows deliverance from the greatest perils. Nearly three-and-a-half millennia ago, the children of Israel were trapped between an impassable sea and an invincible army (Exodus 14:9). The recently emancipated slaves had no army, no boats, and no plan. Within hours, God had helped them pass through the sea and annihilated the opposing army (Exodus 14:21-29).

What an unexpected reversal of fortunes! Few of us can imagine the giddy elation of those Israelites, who had escaped their impossible predicament without so much as a wet foot. Moses their leader commemorated the triumph in song (Exodus 15:1-18). His song was instructive and taught reasons for thanksgiving not only for the Israelites who were there, but for all God’s people who read it, 3,470 years later.

Here is a collection of five reasons for thanksgiving from Moses’s song of the sea, which American Christians living in 2024 can apply to their own situation and sing praises to God.

1. God Defeats His Enemies

Fully half the song is devoted to retelling God’s triumphant victory over Pharoah and his army. The cruel enemy could make mighty boasts (Exodus 15:9), but God held the mightier right hand (Exodus 15:6). God controls the wind and the sea (Exodus 15:10). God “is a man of war” who defeats his adversaries in the greatness of his majesty (Exodus 15:3, 7). God not only defeated Egypt, a technologically advanced superpower, on the battlefield, but he also embarrassed their false gods in the process.

That same God still laughs at his foes (Psalm 2:4) as he establishes his promised Messiah (Psalm 2:6), who will also defeat his enemies (Psalm 2:8-9). God’s chosen Messiah also controlled the wind and the sea (Mark 4:41). He also procured a shocking reversal of fortune, triumphing over death — “the last enemy to be destroyed” (1 Corinthians 15:26) — by dying and then rising again.

Whether it’s Benjamin Gates outwitting the sinister Ian Howe to save the Declaration of Independence or Aslan slaying the White Witch, something within human nature loves to see good triumph over evil. Here is God, the one whose essence defines goodness itself, laying the ultimate beat-down on a scornful enemy. (God’s enemies expose themselves to be evil by the very fact that they set themselves in opposition to his goodness.) If we could find a vantage point to watch the conflict as a spectator, God’s victories would bring ultimate satisfaction.

2. No One Can Compare with God

A logical extension of God’s victory over mighty Egypt is God’s incomparability. “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?” confessed Moses. “Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?” (Exodus 15:11).

Who, indeed? This is the point God intended to drive home by allowing the Israelites to become slaves in Egypt, humbling the mighty kingdom through 10 devastating plagues, and by finally annihilating their army in a watery grave. He is the only God “in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other” (Deuteronomy 4:39).

Therefore, God is the only being worthy of our worship and trust. However much we enjoy good things God created — family, relationships, work, sex, nature, rest — he is the only one who can truly give us satisfaction. Amid a world of disappointments, this is something to thank God for.

3. God Redeems His People

I earlier hypothesized about the satisfaction of spectating God’s cosmic bouts as a neutral, third-party observer. But the truth is, no one can be neutral with God. We can either side with him or against him. And all of us, by our many sins, have sided against him. But God’s glorious victories are only good news for those who can confidently declare, “This is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him” (Exodus 15:2). For us, as his enemies, God’s triumph means our tragedy — unless, somehow, we can switch sides.

Once again, God comes to the rescue, orchestrating salvation for those who believe his word and act accordingly. Moses describes God’s preservation of “the people whom you have redeemed” (Exodus 15:13) and “the people … whom you have purchased” (Exodus 15:16). These are references to the Passover, when God struck down all the firstborn of Egypt, but he passed over the Israelites who obeyed his command to sprinkle lamb’s blood on their doorposts.

For new covenant believers, Christ is our Passover lamb (1 Corinthians 5:7). For anyone covered by Christ’s blood, God sees the blood, and his wrath passes over him. So now we can give thanks that we have been reconciled to God. God’s triumphs are once again good news for us.

4. The Gospel Is Proclaimed to All Nations

After relating God’s triumph over the Egyptian army, Moses meditates on how certain foreign nations would respond when they heard the news. Philistia, Edom, Moab, and Canaan would respond with terror (Exodus 15:14-16) because the host of Israel was headed their way. In fact, this is exactly how the Canaanites responded when Israel entered the land (Joshua 5:1). They were God’s enemies, and they were in the path of destruction.

But terror is not the only possible response to God’s judgment. As mentioned above, God’s mighty power is good news for his people and bad news for his enemies. Even those who are by nature God’s enemies can, through repentance and faith, be joined to his people. Thus, Rahab heard of God’s miraculous victory at the Red Sea (Joshua 2:10) and responded with faith (Hebrews 11:31), confessing that the Lord is the one true God (Joshua 2:11) and taking action to join herself to God’s people (Joshua 2:12). This does not justify flippancy. God’s enemies experience only terror, while those who turn to him and his Messiah should still “serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling” (Psalm 2:11).

The proclamation of God’s glory in destroying the wicked is an integral part of the gospel message Christians are tasked with proclaiming today. The good news we offer provides a solution to the bad news, which we must also tell. We bring news that the almighty, righteous Judge has a day of wrath against all wickedness, but that he also opens a way of salvation to those among his enemies who repent and believe. And God can use both messages to bring souls into his kingdom; even Jonah’s judgment-heavy message provoked the people of Nineveh to repentance (Jonah 3:4-5). Today, this message about God’s glory extends not only to Canaan and the surrounding areas, but even to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:7).

5. God’s People Will Enjoy Eternal Life in God’s Kingdom

The Christian gospel is not only about reconciliation with God in this life, but also about our confident hope that we will live forever in God’s kingdom. Likewise, Moses’s song of the sea ends not with a celebration of God’s victory at the Red Sea, but with anticipation for God’s victory in the conquest of Canaan. “You will bring them in,” he sings, “and plant them on your own mountain, the place, O Lord, which you have made for your abode, the sanctuary, O Lord, which your hands have established” (Exodus 15:17).

This is more than a recitation of God’s promise to give them the land. Moses expresses a confident hope that the Lord himself will dwell with his people in his holy place. Moses’s language evokes an earlier scriptural account where God planted a garden sanctuary, brought in the man he created, and dwelled there himself. He typologically describes Canaan as a New Eden, which means Israel is a New Adam. Israel is invited to live with God in a luxuriant paradise and is commissioned to extend God’s glory throughout the whole earth.

However, like the first Adam, Israel disobeyed God’s commands, lost its privileged status, and was ultimately exiled from God’s presence. The ultimate fulfillment of this hope of God’s people dwelling together with him would await another Adam-like figure (1 Corinthians 15:45) who would not disobey his heavenly Father, by whose obedience “the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19). He will make “a new heaven and a new earth,” unite his people to himself as a wife to her husband, and undo the effects of the curse. “He will dwell with them, and they will be his people” (Revelation 21:1-4).

Adam’s paradise was ruined. Israel’s conquest was temporary. But our future hope is eternal because its security is not in the deeds of man but in the character of God. Moses’s song concludes, “The Lord will reign forever and ever” (Exodus 15:18).

Yes, and those redeemed in Christ will dwell with him there forever. For now, like Israel, we are sojourners in a wilderness (Hebrews 11:13, 1 Peter 2:11). One day, we will reach our eternal home with God.

At the end of the ages, everyone who has “conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name” — the saints who endure by faith — will stand beside not the Red Sea but “the sea of glass” (Revelation 15:2). There, we will all “sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb” (Revelation 15:3), proclaiming God’s mighty deeds, his holy character, and his eternal rule.

From 3,470 years in the past to who-knows-how-long in the future, God’s people have sung and will continue to sing a song of thanksgiving for his wonderful deliverance from death to life.