There is something about good news that makes you want to sing. You know what I am talking about: a “Yes” to your proposal of marriage, the realization that your wife is going to have your long-hoped-for baby, a job offer you simply cannot refuse, etc. Those are the kind of moments in life when Robert Browning’s poem puts it best:
The year’s at the spring;The day’s at the morn;Morning’s at seven;The hill-side’s dew-pearled;The lark’s on the wing;The snail’s on the thorn:God’s in his heaven…All’s right with the world!
That is the kind of sentiment we read about in Revelation 15.2–4, where “those who had conquered the beast…sing the song of Moses…and the song of the Lamb.” It is a song of good news, of divine victory over the forces of evil, of the sheer goodness of the being of God himself. It is a song that proclaims, in Browning’s words: “God’s in his heaven… / All’s right with the world!”
Why does John call this song the song of Moses and Jesus? Because it is the song of victory snatched from the jaws of defeat, of what J.R.R. Tolkien called eucatastrophe—“the sudden joyous ‘turn.’”
You remember the moment when Moses led the children out of Israel to the shore of the Red Sea. Pharaoh, who had grudgingly consented to this exodus, changed his mind and pursued them with his armies. The children of Israel, trapped between the Pharaoh and the deep red sea, began to complain: “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?” (Ex. 14.11). But Moses replied, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord…” (14.13), at which point God parted the Red Sea with a strong east wing, and the children of Israel marched through. On the other side, safe and saved, they sang: “I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously” (15.1).
You remember the moment when Jesus hung on the cross, desperately crying out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15.34). Then he died, a defeat, it seemed, until God raised him from the dead on the third day and made his life yet another victory. There is a song for that event too: “Death is swallowed up in victory. / O death, where is your victory? / O death, where is your sting?”
And now, with the saints in heaven, it is our turn to sing too: “Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty!” Through Jesus Christ—who by his death and resurrection enables us to conquer the world, the flesh, and the devil—we have received incomparably greater news than that of engagement, childbirth, or dream job. Through him, God has offered us heaven.
How, then, can we do anything but sing? For God is in his heaven! And all will be right with his world!
GeorgePWood.com 