HALLELUJAH! WEEK 5 THE HARD-FOUGHT HALLELUJAH

This past week, with the Olympics just behind us, Pastor Ethan brought up one of the greatest sports movies in history: Miracle, about the true story of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team and their player-turned-coach, Herb Brooks, who led them to victory over the seemingly invincible Soviet squad.

That truly is one of the best. I think that victory spawned the idea to make another pretty good hockey movie, The Mighty Ducks. Again, great movie about the underdog achieving the seemingly impossible. The clip you just saw was from the sequel. And though it wasn't as good as the first, I do believe this scene at the end is one of the most joy-filled I can think of.

The championship game is over. The pressure gone. The fight is finished. And as they gather around the campfire, relishing in the victory, notice no one gives a speech. No one organizes a party. There's just that one kid who begins singing softly, "We are the champions, my friend..."

And slowly — one by one — the rest of the team joins in...Not because it was planned. Not because it was rehearsed. But because sometimes, when you’ve fought hard for something, singing is the natural reaction.

And consider this: nobody sings like that before the game, typically. There's too much focus on the task ahead. And rarely will people sing like this in the middle of the third period (that's how hockey works for those who don't know 🙂), especially when you're down by two.

But AFTER the victory? "We are the champions, my friend..."

And that's Exodus 15. Israel is on the other side of the Red Sea, protected from Pharaoh's chariots and horsemen. God has rescued them from the impossible - or we could even say from the impassable. And what do they do? HALLELUJAH!

If you've been following our series on Hallelujah, you've seen that there are different kinds of hallelujahs.

There’s the hallelujah you sing when the worship team plays your favorite song. There’s the hallelujah you sing when your week was good, the coffee was strong, the kids behaved.

But then there’s the hallelujah you sing when you didn’t think you were going to make it.

The kind that comes out cracked, tear-stained, a little shaky. It's truly a Hard-Fought Hallelujah.

But there is this amazing period we experience from time to time when after we get through the sea or the storm, and we look back and - WOW! - we can see more clearly what God has done.

And though praise is praise, I can see how this kind of Hallelujah sounds a bit different. And that's what we're seeing here in Exodus 15.