If you would, open your Bibles to Psalm 114. We see eight short verses, a reference to the power and presence of God. These words, what we'll discuss here, should not be new or unknown. These are words that give us a bit of a history lesson, if you will. And so I'm going to read them in their entirety, the entire psalm, all eight verses. We're going to consider a few things this morning with regards to what happens when God speaks. Alright. Psalm 114, verses 1 through 8. When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language. Judah was his sanctuary and Israel his dominion. The sea saw it and fled. Jordan was driven back. The mountains skipped like rams and the little hills like lambs. So again, as we think about what God is doing as He moves and speaks and acts, We see the power and the presence of God. We've referenced Martin Luther's comment before, it bears repeating, that our thoughts of God are too small. We've talked about this, the minimization or the pulling down of God into being like a buddy of ours, like we're sitting on a tailgate with Him, drinking a beverage, enjoying the day, which there's nothing wrong with doing any of those things, but when we remove God from the throne and minimize the fact that He is wholly, completely, totally, distinctly other than us, and magnificent in a way that we can't possibly truly fathom. Most holy, most wise. Right? Our catechism tells us that He is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, and we are anything but. We are finite, we are temporal, and we certainly are changeable because God can change us. So we are not infinite, We are finite. There is a shelf life to our lives. He is eternal and we are temporal. We live and then we die. Now we talk about being born again and living forever, of course. But that flows from the fact that He is unchangeable. He is the Lord. He changeth not. But we are rebels and He can change us. He has the power to do that. So we are malleable. We are changeable. But He's all of those things in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. He's infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in all of those things. He gives us those things in Christ for a season of time, but he is the giver of the gift. He is the one with the power, and we are not. And when we talk about Jesus being our homeboy, we minimize a key component of who Christ is. We understand the good intentions of our friends that use that language. As potentially third commandment violation-y as it could be, Jesus certainly presents himself as approachable in the Gospels. People are coming to him. In fact, he commands them at the end of Matthew 11 to come to him. So we get that side of things. But the danger in being a little bit too familiar with the second person of the Trinity is that we minimize how different God is. And Luther said our thoughts of God are too small. It's one of the things that we have in mind from a modern standpoint. But we need to pay attention to who God is as the psalmist presents Him in Psalm 114. He's the one that brings His people out of bondage. He shakes the earth with His holiness, and He provides spiritual nourishment and refreshment. And that ultimately speaks to what He provides for us in Christ. Psalm 114 is a poetic celebration of the Exodus, as the historical manifestation of God's power, His presence, and His purpose in how He redeems His people. We see references to this. We can see it, especially when we know our Bibles. It's more than just a memorial to Israel's past. It is a foreshadowing, a foretaste, if you will, of God's ultimate redemption for us in Christ. And it is that redemption that leads His people out of spiritual Egypt and into freedom and worship. We've talked about that before. When we think about the preface of the Ten Commandments, and we think about what Christ does for us, it's the same work. The redemption that God provides the Israelites that he then references in the preface of the Ten Commandments, I am the Lord thy God which brought thee out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. It's the same thing that Christ does for us in the spiritual sense. We are slaves to sin and He frees us from the spiritual bondage in which we find ourselves. So we're going to think about a few things this morning. The first couple verses, we're going to look at God's presence among His people. We're going to talk about God's presence among His people. Verses 3 and 4, his power over creation. God's power over creation. Verses 5 and 6, we're going to talk about how God's majesty confronts and humbles. God's majesty confronts and humbles. And then in verses 7 and 8, how God's presence brings redemption. How God's presence brings redemption. So these things build on themselves. So yes, in an atypical, un-Presbyterian fashion, we are going to deal with four particular points this morning. I say that with tongue firmly planted in cheek. We're going to break these things down, two verses at a time, and take a look. So please look at verses 1 and 2. When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language, Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion. When Israel went up out of Egypt, it's a deliberate going out under divine leadership. This is exactly what the Lord did for the people of Israel, the Israelites. They weren't the people of Israel then, per se. But they left under divine leadership. The house of Jacob, we have that other reference to God's people, from a people of strange language. It's a cultural and spiritual alienation. Let's go to Deuteronomy for that. Deuteronomy chapter 28. Turn with me in your Bibles. Just a quick reference. Deuteronomy chapter 28. I'm going to read a portion of this, Deuteronomy 28. I'm not going to read the whole chapter. Remember that 28 has blessings and curses, a discussion of covenant faithfulness versus covenant unfaithfulness. Verse 49 of Deuteronomy 28 says, "...the Lord shall bring a nation against thee from afar, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flyeth, a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand." If we go down a little bit further, a nation of fierce countenance, who shall not regard the person of the old, nor show favor to the young." So when we talk about cultural and spiritual alienation, that's what the reference is. Israel was being removed from a people that did not care for them, whose gods were not like the God of Israel. We did not have, at its core, the same instruction that the people of God had. We have in chapter 2 the reference to Judah being a sanctuary and Israel his dominion. It's the holy dwelling place. Israel his dominion, that reference to God's sovereign rule. God chose to dwell and reign among his people. He always has. Right? The cloud by day, the pillar of fire by night. The reference in the New Testament that the dwelling place of God would be with man. Christ came down to walk among His people. We've always had, as the people of God, access to the Lord who was among His people. It's always been that way. This is just a reference to that. Judah was His sanctuary. Judah was the holy dwelling place of God. Israel was His dominion. That realm, like I said, that realm of sovereign rule, it was the nation that God chose. Because God chose it. There was not in anything inherently righteous. Remember, we go all the way back to Abraham. Abraham was called out of something. He did not have it all together. God chose him. Abraham believed it was that belief that made Abraham righteous. Not the righteousness that got God's attention. That's not how this was at all. So we talk about God's presence among His people. It is literally the presence that we need to focus on, because as we are followers of Christ, we have God's presence dwelling among us, dwelling in us. The third person of the Trinity abides in us. It's the only way that we can see this book as God's Word. We can know academically it purports to be the Word of God. but to know it as God's Word. To know like Peter knows that Christ had the words of eternal life. To know that these are the words of eternal life. That is something that the Holy Ghost, the third person of the Trinity, does for us. Because we are dead in our sins and our trespasses. So, the dwelling place of God being with man has an element of, we don't want to put too fine a point on this, an element of the third person of the Trinity abiding in us. to unite us to God the Father and God the Son. Jesus said this in his high priestly prayer as well. So this isn't language or an understanding or a concept that we don't necessarily know. We see this portion of the text as something that is rooted in redemptive history. God didn't free Israel from Pharaoh only in a literal sense. He made them His holy dwelling place. The nation of Israel was going to go out, depart, so that they could worship their God rightly. But what do we have? Even in the 10 plagues, it's God dwelling and abiding with His people. We see it in the Passover. He passed over His people. The blood of the Lamb was the sign of the covenant. That's language that Christians should understand in the fullness of as it unfolds in redemptive history. So the Exodus narrative, and I'm going to call it the Exodus story, The Exodus narrative is just another reminder for us that God has always promised to be with His people and has maintained that, even in the most difficult times. God made Israel His holy dwelling place, and that's a foreshadowing of what we have in the fullness of what Christ has done for us. So, for God to dwell with His people in the Old Testament kind of speaks yet again, in another way, to how God dwells with his people here in the New Testament era. So this should be a concept that we can look back on as we read our Old Testament. And say, okay, yeah, this is what all of the types... this is another example of the types and shadows from the Old Testament. The Exodus narrative is one of those things as well that kind of prefigures what God was going to do for us in Christ. And it speaks to the larger role that God plays as the deliverer of his people. God moves his people from bondage to communion. From bondage to communion. They were slaves in Egypt. They were free to worship and dwell with him. We are slaves to sin, we are free to worship and dwell with Him in Christ. And in fact, we are freed from sin, and the Spirit abides in us to unite us to Him by faith. This is spoken of elsewhere in Scripture, in Exodus chapter 29. "...I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will be their God." Verses 45 and 46 speak to that. He says it again in Leviticus 26.12, "...and I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people." And Peter references this. This is language that we heard. I do want to read this in its entirety. We see God telling His people in the Old Testament that He was going to be with them. Think about that. This is Exodus and Leviticus. First five books of the Bible. The first five books of the Bible Moses writes to reintroduce the people of God to the God who existed and made promises to their ancestors. Because these people were coming out of Egypt, out of bondage. Sometimes we don't think about the logistics of what was actually going on. But if you read in the beginning of Exodus, the people cried out to God, and God heard them and remembered His covenant. So in some form or fashion, God preserved His word, even when the Egyptians were enslaving the Israelites. You say, well, it may have been written down somewhere. Yes, exactly. Might have been. It might have been orally transmitted. Somehow, God preserved the things that Moses documents as happening prior to the Israelites being enslaved in Egypt. You following that? Because they had to have known about that God and that covenant in order to cry out to Him. And sometimes we don't think about that. Just somehow God just swoops in. No, God doesn't just somehow swoop in. He certainly can. But that's not what he did. Let's go back to the beginning of Exodus. We can take a look at that. Exodus chapter 1. Because I think we need to recognize just how far God is willing to go to preserve His Word and just what it means when we talk about God preserving His Word. He's not just preserving it from the Roman Catholic Church in the 19th century who persecuted the saints and put people to death in torture chambers. We're not talking about the Reformation era. We're talking about all the way back in history, God has always taken care of His people. Let's take a look at this. Let's track it down. We're looking at Exodus chapter 1, and I'm trying to track it down because it's not in my notes. But we have... In verse 8, chapter 1, Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we. Come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land. Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Ramses. But the more they afflicted him, the more they multiplied and grew, and they were grieved because of the children of Israel. And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigor. They made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field. All their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigor. The king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of the one was Shifra, the name of the other Pua. And he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools, if it be a son, then ye shall kill him, but if it be a daughter, then she shall live. But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive. And the king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said unto them, Why have ye done this thing, and have saved the men and children alive? And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women, for they are lively and are delivered air, the midwives come in unto them. Therefore God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and waxed very mighty. And it came to pass, because the midwives feared God, that He made them houses. And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive." So that's a reference to one attribute there. I'm going to go to the end of chapter 2 for what I was actually talking about. The Hebrew midwives had an understanding of what was acceptable before the sight of God. Somehow, God's word was preserved. When we think about it, we think, well, of course you would save lives. But why? Because the Hebrew midwives understood in some form or fashion, whether it was oral or whether it was written, what the Word of God, what God's commands actually were. Something was preserved and kept pure. So when the divine say pure in all ages, it includes the Exodus. We're going to go to the end of chapter 2 for my point. This is verse 23 of chapter 2, And it came to pass, in process of time, that the king of Egypt died, and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage. And they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, and with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them. God preserves His Word, God makes promises to His people, and God fulfills His promises. And so now we get the Exodus reference, the Leviticus reference, and 1 Peter 2. Verse 9, Peter says, But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of the darkness into his marvelous light. Why does this matter? Why am I pounding on God preserving His Word, and preserving His people, and living with His people, and dwelling with His people? Spurgeon said the deliverance out of Egypt was the birth of the nation. The Lord Himself was midwife and monarch. William Swan Plummer said that God's sanctifying presence among Israel mirrors the spiritual presence among His people under the Gospel. because God has saved by dwelling with His people from the beginning, from the beginning of this process. Moses, as he reintroduces that Exodus generation to the God that they thought they never knew, they had access to, but they didn't really know, know. And they're introduced to Him by way of saying, He's always been here. He's made promises to our ancestors. And He's always dwelt with us. He's always been here. And if we can recognize that even during the Exodus, even when Israel was enslaved, there's a reason I read some of that stuff. Because when you see how wicked the circumstances were, under which the Israelites lived, and God still hadn't forgotten. We talk about God remembering His covenant. We don't think about it in terms of God forgetting. God's not going to forget a promise that He made. We think about that in terms of being in the fullness of time, certain things happening. We have that Galatians 4 mindset as it applies to the Lord Jesus Christ. We can apply that concept back, that in the fullness of time God hears the groaning of His people and He sends the Deliverer. He brings Moses into the mix because Exodus chapter 3 begins with a discussion of the birth of Moses. So in the fullness of time, God's people cry out. God hears the covenant and He brings in Moses, who is going to be the mediator of the old covenant. A type of Christ. One that would point to the sort of work that Christ would do perfectly and in full for His people. So the Old Testament types and shadows have value to us. We understand who God is and that He's always acted with regards to His people's well-being. John Gill said, Judah was set apart for his worship, a figure of gospel churches wherein Christ dwells. And that's what we are today. The godly churches might not be large, might not be influential, but faithful godly churches are the place where God dwells. People will say, well pastor, I've seen churches that are hundreds and thousands of people and surely God has blessed them. Remember what Jesus said about people that seek out the praises of men. And I'm not trying to judge a large church in and of itself. I'm not trying to say that by definition a large church doesn't have the blessing of the Lord. That's not what I'm saying at all. We cannot, however, apply man's reasoning to what God has said in His Word or what God could be doing. We say, well, if it were me, I would bless a godly church with tons of people. Possibly. But God's not us. His ways aren't like us. His thoughts aren't like us. And His plans aren't like ours. either. Just because a church is large, just because a building is big, just because there are a bunch of people that show up on Sunday morning, it doesn't mean that the Lord has blessed that church. For the one who seeks the praises of men, you might get a financial windfall, you might get influence on the internet or on TV, you might have thousands of people patting you on the back saying, hey, great job pastor, but that might be the only blessing you get. And that's straight from Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. They've received their reward, those who would seek after the praises of men. But we're to seek first the Kingdom of God, because the dwelling place of God is with man. That doesn't necessarily mean that a small church is faithful by default either. It's the Lord who grants blessing or not blessing, or the extent to which He blesses the faithful. That's His department. Our duty is to believe in the One that He sent, and to be faithful to His Word, and to demonstrate our love and gratitude for Him by keeping His commandments. He'll handle the numbers, He'll handle the building, He'll handle all of that. The influence that He wants us to have, He will raise that up or lower it as He sees fit. Our goal, the same goal we've always had as God's people ever since all the way back in the beginning, is to be faithful. is to trust Him and to obey the words that He's given us to obey. We are reminded from the Scriptures that He has always been that for us. He's always been the Deliverer. He's always been the One to redeem. And He's always dwelled with His people. He may have done it differently in the past. So we look at verses 3 and 4, we see God's power over creation. And we're reminded yet again just how different God is than us. Let's take a look at that. The sea saw it, Israel coming out of Egypt, God dwelling with him. The sea saw it and fled. Jordan was driven back. The mountains skipped like rams and the little hills like lambs. And this is obviously the psalmist using personification, right? We know seas are not people and mountains and waters and the Jordan River. We know that this is personification or anthropomorphism, where we attribute a human attribute or characteristic to something that's not human in a way to understand it. A figurative language is when somebody uses a thing to describe another thing so we can understand it a little bit better. So we understand God, when His presence is with His people, and He delivers them from Egypt, we have things happening, to say the least. Turn with me in Exodus chapter 14. We're going back yet again to the Exodus narrative. Exodus chapter 14. I'm not even going to tell you what I'm going to read. I'm going to start in a particular verse and we're just going to go. Because every time I have something in my notes, I wind up starting further back. In theory, I'm going to read you verse 21. But I'm actually going to go to verse 20, and it came between the camp... Actually, let's go back to verse 18. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I have gotten me honor upon Pharaoh, upon his chariots, upon his horsemen. And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them. And the pillar of the cloud went from before thee, and stood behind them. So the LORD providing protection, the angel of the LORD and the pillar of the cloud providing cover and protection. And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel. And it was a cloud and darkness to them, and it gave light by night to these, so that no one came not near the other all the night. And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night. and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground, and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left." So the Red Sea recoils when God intervenes, when He makes His presence felt in a particular sense there. To say that things happen is an understatement. God has power over creation in a way that we can't fathom. We can't even direct the flow of water in a street very well. If our sewer system doesn't work properly, you get water and a heavy rain just overflowing the gutters and the drains, and you have flooding in places that you shouldn't have flooding. We can't even navigate a rainstorm properly. God intervenes in the Red Sea parts. God intervenes in a cloud during the day and a pillar of fire at night. Keeps His people safe. God intervenes, and as we'll see when I read Joshua 3, He does the same thing in the Jordan that He does in the Red Sea. Joshua 3, verses 13-17. And he gathered unto him, that's Judges 3, Joshua 3. Joshua 3 verses 13-17, And it shall come to pass, as soon as the soles of the feet of the priests that bear the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, shall rest in the waters of Jordan, that the waters of Jordan shall be cut off from the waters that come down from above, and they shall stand upon and heap. and it shall come to pass when the people removed from their tents to pass over Jordan, and the priests bearing the ark of the covenant before the people. And as they that bear the ark were come unto Jordan, and the feet of the priests that bear the ark were dipped in the brim of the water, for Jordan overfloweth all his banks all the time of harvest. that the waters which came down from above stood and rose up upon a heap very far from the city of Adam, that is, beside Zaretan. And those that came down toward the sea of the plain, even the salt sea, failed and were cut off. And the people passed over right against Jericho. And the priests that bear the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the midst of Jordan. And all the Israelites passed over on dry ground, until all the people were passed clean over Jordan. It's a reference to God's control over creation. When we see Jesus quieting storms. When we see Jesus doing things to nature and with nature. Demonstrating His power over it when He's changing water to wine. Transforming things at the molecular level. We see God having a power over His creation that we simply cannot fathom. We don't know how any of this stuff was done. We know how from the scriptures documenting it. but God knows how it was done because He did it. We see the reference back to Exodus as well, the idea of Sinai quaking at God's descent. We also hear, this is Exodus 19, also hear at the end of Exodus 20 that the mountains trembled, the people were terrified, God demonstrating how different He is. So mountains skipping like rams, The earth trembles in submission to God. Now we anthropomorphize this, right? We personify it. We know that the earth, it's not mother earth or father whatever. We're not like the new age folks. These are obviously literary devices that our psalmist is using to help his people understand who God is because we can't fully fathom him completely. But we know that He acts and lives and thinks and engages in a way that's different from us, but is accessible to us because He reveals it to us. Nature responds to the presence of His Creator. We should do the same. God uses His control over creation to set the stage or pave the way, if you will, for our redemption. Paul would say it in Romans 1 that the creation kind of speaks to the nature of a creator, that somebody has the power over this. And it should cause us all to think, okay, if there's someone with the power over this, then obviously He has the power over me as well. If creation demands that there is a Creator, then the fact that we exist demands that we were created and that there is a Creator. And we ought to pay attention when He says who He is to us and how He would have us live. That's the overall point that Paul is making in Romans chapter 1. He says everybody knows that. Many. Most. Hold on to that information unrighteously. In that, they know that God exists. But in their sin, worshipping the creature rather than the Creator, they hold on to the truth that they know God exists. Unrighteously, they don't do anything with it. They don't submit to the One they know exists. That's why people go to hell. It's not that they don't know that God exists. They know. The fact that God can do something that reverses how nature works is a bit of a reflection, a bit of a mirror to what God does with regards to the reversal of our own slavery to sin. If God has control over creation, and God has control over setting the Israelites free from their bondage, then God also has the power to set us free from our own bondage to sin. Whatever those sins are, it doesn't matter. We can't out-sin God's power. He demonstrates power over creation so that we understand that He also has the power over our sin and our salvation. And we can put our trust in Him and our faith in Him. Because when we call ourselves our people, I say God's faithful in the past had the experience of seeing God at work. We have the experience in Christ of seeing God at work. It's experiential, it's experimental in its application. We haven't put God to the test in the sinful way. We've tasted and seen that the Lord is good, and now we're learning more about how He's always been that way for His people. He's always demonstrated His power and His control over the elements, over creation, so that we can know that He has power over our bondage to sin and He can set us free. So when He sends His Son to say, I'm setting captives free, We can believe that he can do that. Otherwise, Christ was just a lunatic. But we know he's more than that. He's not that. He's Lord. He's God. The same God that has the power in the Old Testament, has the power in the New, because it's the same God that divinely inspired in to Amen, Genesis to Revelation. We see these references to God's power over creation, and we're reminded of what Matthew Henry says. He says, the God of nature has command over nature. The elements are weapons in the hands of their maker. He can do what he wants with nature. He can make water whine. He can make a storm go away. He can cause fish to get into a net. He can put coins into fish. He has power over nature. He can do with it what he will. It's his. Paul would reference this as well. He's the potter. He can do what he wants with the clay. He says it in terms of the fact that a lot of times we as the clay start wagging our figurative finger in the face of God and saying, no, here's how I'm going to be used, potter. Here's how I demand that you let me be used. And in fact, I don't even care about your opinion, I'll be used the way I want." And all too frequently, that's exactly what the rebel does. If it wasn't for God's grace, we would all be that way. Just like in Judges, there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in their own eyes. Just like back in the days of Noah, thoughts of man were evil continuously. And then the flood came to judge the world. And now we see Christ talking about when the Son of Man comes again, it's going to be like in the days of Noah. Well, what was going on in the days of Noah? The thoughts of men were evil in their heart continuously. We wag our finger in the face of God and tell Him how we're going to live instead of realizing, hey, this is the one that has the power over the mountains. I can't even keep a pile of dirt. under control. Can't even keep my leaves from falling in my yard. And He has the power to breathe and oceans and seas and rivers part. Things happen in nature that shouldn't happen. Maybe I ought to pay attention to that one who's telling me how He would have me live. Maybe He knows something I don't. God's power over creation helps us see that He has the power over our redemption as well. And we would do well to pay attention to that. So let's look at verses 5 and 6, we see what God's majesty actually does, how it confronts and it humbles. Because when we're confronted with God's majesty, when we're confronted not only with the reality that our thoughts of God are too small, but when we see God, at least revealed in the scriptures, for who He actually is, we're confronted with the fact that He's different, and we're humbled by the fact that He's different. We'll talk about that momentarily. Let's look at verses 5 and 6. The psalmist goes on, and it's a bit of a rhetorical question. This is the psalmist being a little bit dramatic. Right? Because verses 3 and 4, we see what creation did. We see that the sea saw the Lord's actions in his presence and fled, that Jordan was driven back, the mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs. Have you ever seen or been a part of a situation where your presence caused somebody to stop doing something and they went in a different direction? Think about it in terms of like this, maybe Maybe if you've been in a public school bathroom and you've been the authority figure and you walk in and there's all kind of goofiness going on. People are laughing and joking around and they're just sitting around talking and weird things happen. And an administrator or a teacher walks in and confronted with the reality of the authority of that person, everybody just scatters. If you've been that person or if you know somebody that's been that person, if you have somebody that maybe has done that, ask them what happens. What has been known to happen is that administrator or that authority figure, as everybody's scattering to try to get out of the bathroom as quickly as possible, sometimes that person might go, hey, where are y'all going? It was all laughing and joking earlier. Where are you going? Why not hang out a little bit more? Why are you leaving? It's the same principle that we have going on here. Our psalmist is using a bit of a dramatic rhetorical question to help us understand some things. He's not asking out of ignorance. Let's take a look at the text. Verses 5 and 6, the psalmist goes, It's like our psalmist is asking creation, Hey, y'all were powerful. What happened? What happened was they were confronted with the One that made them. They were confronted with the One that had authority and power. And they submitted to His will. They did His will. They did what He was expecting them to do. When confronted with God's majesty, the right response is humble submission. Not rebellious submission, because that's actually not submission at all. If you do something on the outside, but in your mind or in your heart you're grumbling and growling, and wishing ill on the person that's made you, you're actually not obeying. You're actually in rebellion to the Lord and to whatever authority to whom you're rebelling. Or against whom you're rebelling. But no, when confronted with God's majesty, the proper response is exactly what creation did in verses 3 and 4. It's submission. It's humble submission. Okay, Lord. This is what the creation is saying. You have the power. You have the authority. I'm going to do as you request. I'm going to submit to your will. Many of you may have seen this on social media, a brief video with a large pack of dogs, and they're snipping and biting, and they're barking at each other, and they're running around. And as you're watching this play out, you're thinking, Chaos is about to reign in this yard because there's probably like a dozen dogs. I think it's a shelter situation. So you've got a bunch of different dogs, you know, kind of snapping and barking. You're like, alright, one, why is this person filming this? And two, what are they going to do when it all kicks off? And three, when is it going to kick off? But then the pack leader shows up. And it's an interesting thing that happens because the pack leader doesn't really look like you would expect. He's not the biggest. In fact, if you track this video down, what you see is one of the bigger, more aggressive looking dogs immediately cowers in his presence. Because he knows the presence of the pack leader. And the pack leader kind of glances at him and he goes to the dogs that are kind of scrapping a little bit. And he puts that dog, he doesn't fight. There's not a bite that takes place. But he puts that dog on his back. That dog rolls over and submits. If you know dog psychology, if you know the body language and posture of submission with dogs, you know that's exactly what this dog is doing. And that pack leader stands over him. I think he's got his front paws on him. But it's not violent. He's just looking at him. He's just projecting that authority, the lowercase m, majesty, if you will. And the right response when confronted with that was those dogs that were acting a whole fool submitted to that pack leader. And everything settled. And why did it settle? Because it was as it should be. The pack leader handled the rest of the pack. Now, creation, when confronted with the majesty of God, submitted because it saw, if you will, to use the personified language, it saw the power of the pack leader as it were. The power of the creator. Now, why don't we do that? We're confronted with the reality of God's existence. We're confronted with the power of the creator. We can look at nature and see how awe-inspiring it is. The problem though, and I mentioned this earlier, is that we fixate on the creation, just like Paul mentioned in Romans 1. We see the rushing water, we see the mountains, we see the beauty of creation, and the beaches, and all of these things, and animals, and all of these things, and we stop too short. We're confronted with the majesty of God's creation, but we don't go far enough in recognizing and being humbled by it. We say, oh, creation's beautiful. I'm going to be humble in the face of creation. And that's actually sin. What we should be saying is, creation is magnificent. I am humbled by the fact that a God made this and He made me. We don't go far enough in our humble submission. We are humbled by the creature, if you will, and not the creator. The creature in this case being creation itself. When we don't go far enough, when we don't say, this creation is beautiful. The God who made this is amazing, because I don't have the ability to think about how all of this stuff fits together. There's no way I could do it. When we're confronted with God's majesty, humble submission, recognizing the power and the authority If creation trembled in the presence of God, how much more should we fear and worship the Lord? Fear being that reverential awe that we talk about. If creation can do it, why not us? We know why. Because we don't need Him in our natural state. We're doing just fine without Him. All the religion stuff is just for fools. Marx, said religion is the opiate of the masses, an opiate, something that drugs us, keeps us numb, causes us to check out of reality. He said that's what religion is. So in our natural state, we don't see it. The problem is we are indifferent to God's majesty, which is to say that we hate it. But if creation submits to it, then the nations and the church ought to submit to God's majesty as well. And this is where I go back to the Jesus is my homeboy mantra. You see it on t-shirts and on bumper stickers and stuff like that. It minimizes God's majesty. He created it all from nothing by speaking. And he upholds it by the word of his power. And we think he's just a fishing buddy. What are we doing? What are we doing? as the church has 80 billion Bible translations in the demographics, and you get a 13-year-old girl's Bible, and a 15-year-old boy's Bible, and a recently divorced Bible, and a soon-to-be-widowed Bible. I'm not dismissing any of those people, but my point is, when we make things so silly with no gravitas, It's easier to dismiss and to minimize the one who made God's Word, who spoke and creation sprung into existence. When we make everything silly and small and light, we don't see God for who He is. We don't see our sins for what they are. We don't see our desperate need to have those sins forgiven, to have our iniquities covered, to be set free from the bondage that those sins create in our lives. When Jesus is just somebody to hang out with... And again, I'm not trying to say that He's not fully human as well as fully God. That's not what I'm saying at all. But we need to be serious-minded about the nature of our standing with the Lord. and who God is and who we are. And the psalmist is trying to help us understand it. William Swan Plummer said, If the sea and mountains obey, what excuse have men for disobedience? We're made in God's image. We're the pinnacle of His creation. If the dirt and the rocks and the water and the wind and the air and the leaves and the trees Bow to God's majesty and submit. Why don't we? We don't have an excuse. We don't have an excuse. We are the problem. Our sin and our pride make us think that, oh, everything's fine. I don't need God. I've got my own reasoning. I've got my own way. But the way, the end of that way is the way of death. That's what Solomon reminds us in Proverbs. Spurgeon said, if nature trembled, shall man be stout-hearted against the Almighty? If nature trembled and submitted, why are we so stubborn to be stout-hearted? Moses would call us stiff-necked. Of course, we know the answer. We shouldn't. When confronted with God's majesty, the only right response is to submit. Just like when that pack leader came into that yard. Those rebel dogs, those wayward little hounds submitted in the presence of the authority of that tiny little dog pack. When we're confronted with the majesty of the creator of the universe, the right response, yes, Lord, I'm sorry, please forgive me. That's what should have happened. We talk about our reading from earlier in John chapter 19, and how the Jews rejected Jesus. Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, the God-man, came onto the scene in the fullness of time, and the rebels did not submit. There were many who did, and we praise the Lord for that, because it's the process that God used to build and grow the church, and we benefit from that today. So the right response is demonstrated in Scripture just as much as the wrong response is. The Jews said, we have no king but Caesar, but there were many in Christ's ministry who said, no, this is the king. I do see His Majesty, and I do humbly submit." So we have those demonstrations from Scripture as well. There were godly Israelites who did the same thing. The last two verses in our psalm kind of speak to where we're headed. God's presence brings redemption for His people. Verses 7 and 8, I'll read those. At the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, which turned the rock into a standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters. The presence of the Lord, God's covenantal presence, how He engages with His people, how He presents them with mercy and washes their sins away and gives them power and authority to be His witnesses. Like Jesus said in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, to the very ends of the earth. Acts 1, verse 8, we see the last thing Jesus said before He ascends to heaven is He tells His disciples that they're going to have power when the Holy Spirit comes upon them. The third person of the Trinity. God's presence brings redemption. It brought redemption to the Israelites. It brought redemption to the godly Israelites in the post-Exodus narrative. And we have it in Christ because the Spirit, the third person, God the Holy Spirit, abides in us. It's the Holy Spirit that applies God's Word that tells us that we're sinners, that we need Christ's work for our salvation and not our own. It's the Spirit that brings us under the conviction of sin. It's the Spirit that converts us from rebels to redeemed. It's the Spirit that comforts us as we're brought to just how badly we've sinned against God and we're despondent. It's the Spirit that comforts us when we struggle and we stumble. It's the Spirit that applies the Word and reminds us that there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, even though we may be dealing with the consequences. It's God's presence that brings redemption. It's God's presence that caused the rock. We see that which turned the rock into a standing water. Obviously references not only in Exodus but in Numbers as God provides water from the rock. As God miraculously provides for His people. What has He done in the Bible other than miraculously provide for His people? Go all the way back to Genesis 3.15. God is miraculously intervening for His people. If we talk about a miracle, God intervening in the creation order that He Himself established to say something about Himself and His Son. God can do that. He has no standard to which He submits. He is the standard. So His intervention is to say something about Himself or His Son. We see it all the way back in Genesis 3.15 where God says, look, this is bad, but it's not as bad as it could be and it's not always going to be this way. The seed of the woman is going to come and crush the seed of the serpent. And so we do have God miraculously providing. He provided miraculously in the Exodus narrative. He provides all the way through the scriptures because God doesn't have to intervene in any one of our lives. And we would all rightly burn in hell for eternity. That's what we can't wrap our minds around. We get so caught up in secular humanism and open rebellion against God's Word, we think, well, God could send the tiny little baby or the infirm old person or that little old lady down the road that's never done anything, never had a cross word for anybody that I know of, and we think, well, you know, Why do I need God to intervene in my life? Everything's going pretty well. I mean, it's just the nature of life. See, this is what we do. We set a standard for how God should be, and then we apply it, rather than letting God set the standard for Himself. Because if God set the standard, then we might have to submit to it. And if we have to submit to it, that acknowledges that maybe we don't have it all together. And we do not want to acknowledge that we don't have it all together. That's our problem. That's our problem. We are our own worst enemies. But God's provision, God's presence brings to mind that we desperately need it. Because otherwise we wouldn't be able to provide for ourselves. We can't provide righteousness for ourselves. We can't provide holiness for ourselves. We can't provide justice or goodness or truth. Those are things that God gives us, and He gives them to us in spades in Christ, in ways that we can't even fathom. We can't bring those things. We can't make ourselves righteous. When we do, they're just filthy rags in His sight. They're abomination to Him. The Israelites couldn't provide for themselves in the wilderness. They were on the run. They didn't know where they were going. God provided them food and drink. God provided them protection. We can backtrack all the way back to Genesis 3. God providing animal skins for Adam and Eve. In their rebellion, God shed blood to provide a covering for His people. Does that sound familiar? It should. God's presence who He is and what He said He's going to do for His people, it brings redemption, protection, provision. We don't see it. Sometimes we take it for granted. And maybe we take advantage of that. We trade on it when we ought not to. We just assume that it's going to be there. We ought to take a long, hard look at how we take for... We just assume, oh, God's going to provide. Well, yeah, He is. But that doesn't mean we can act a whole fool. We can act contrary to His word. Paul told the Romans, we can't sin so the grace may abound. We ought not to do that. We ought not to take lightly God's mercy and His grace. And say, because God saved me that one time, I can act like an imbecile. Or act like an idiot. Or act like an outcast. And He's going to save me because He's not a liar. Well, He's not a liar, but we can lie to ourselves. We can convince ourselves of something that isn't necessarily true. But for God and the psalmist to reference that God turned rock into a standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters, providing that water for his people, the substance that keeps us alive, we can't go three days without, probably less under adverse conditions, even that, should bring to mind something. Let's go to John chapter four. Some of us might know kind of where I'm headed with this. John chapter four. We see references to the living water here in John chapter four. I'm gonna start in verse seven. John chapter 4, starting at verse 7. There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink. For his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat. Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? For the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knowest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. From whence, then, hast thou that living water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle? Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again. But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst. But the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. Our response to that, as we see the reference in the end of Psalm 114, we're thinking of Christ and the living water. The water that we have from Christ, God's provision of everlasting life. The response should be verse 15. The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw. Now why do I mention that? because that answer, that response, is the humble submission. Christ says, I have water that will quench your thirst eternally, because the thirst is something far worse than mere physical thirst. The thirst is a thirst for righteousness and holiness. You have that thirst, I have that thirst. Humanity desperately is dying without the living water that Christ provides. And Christ says, come to me, I'll give you water that will spring into everlasting life. Our response when faced with the majesty of Christ is to say, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw. God's presence in our lives, the water that Christ provides in this conversation with the Samaritan woman, is the redemption that we so desperately need. It's spoken of in a typified state in Psalm 114, it's made perfect in Christ. We need Christ's presence in our life so that we might be redeemed. So what are we to do with all of this? How can we use this? We should trust God's power. He parts seas. He crushes sin. We should revere His presence. The mountains trembled. We should get over our pride and submit. We should drink from the rock. We should drink from the water that leads to everlasting life. Drink from the rock that is Jesus Christ. And we should celebrate that greater exodus. I mean it's fantastic when we read back on the Exodus narrative. Think about the slaves that were set free and the joy that they must have had as they faced walking through the Red Sea on dry ground, getting to the other side and seeing their enemies destroyed by the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and Jacob. Think about that from an earthly standpoint from their perspective and now think of that the reality is that's the same for us in a spiritual sense. We've been freed from the darkness and the pain and the death of spiritual Egypt. God has delivered us. He's done the work of protecting us and providing for us, and giving us the water from the rock, providing for us in ways we can't fathom. Christ leads His people with power and joy. We should see that and celebrate it. So we look at Psalm 114, the redemption discussed in Psalm 114, referenced back in history as the redemption that we have. because of the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ. So let's stand as we call on him in prayer. Father, we thank you for the work of your son. We know he is at your right hand interceding for us right now. We know these things because you and he sent your spirit to abide in us. You've given us living water. Paul told the church in Corinth that the rock was Christ. And we are reminded that he was smitten by you and afflicted once for all to pour out that living water for all who would believe. Father, please remind us that you work in our lives in ways we can't fathom. that Your Majesty is something we cannot fully fathom. We would ask, Lord, that You would increase our humility, help us to submit to You more and more. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.