For those who may wish to ‘study’ this chapter, the following simple resources are provided for you. Each passage has a four-Part approach to help you take in and think further about what you have read.

Passage: Psalm 114

1 When Israel came out of Egypt,
    Jacob from a people of foreign tongue,
2 Judah became God’s sanctuary,
    Israel his dominion.

3 The sea looked and fled,
    the Jordan turned back;
4 the mountains leaped like rams,
    the hills like lambs.

5 Why was it, sea, that you fled?
    Why, Jordan, did you turn back?
6 Why, mountains, did you leap like rams,
    you hills, like lambs?

7 Tremble, earth, at the presence of the Lord,
    at the presence of the God of Jacob,
8 who turned the rock into a pool,
    the hard rock into springs of water.

A. Find Out:

1. To when does the psalmist look? v.1
2. What did the Lord make Israel ? v.2
3. What happened to what waters? v.3
4. What does he say the mountains and hills did? v.4
5. What questions does he ask? v.5,6
6. What does he tell the earth to do? v.7

B. Think:

1. What historical events is he looking back to?
2. How was the physical world affected?
3. So what seems to be the point of this psalm?

C. Comment:

  This short psalm seems a strange psalm when you really look at it. It is all about the physical world, not the people on it. It is like the psalmist is giving the physical world a wake-up call.

  He starts by referring back to the Exodus when the Lord delivered Israel out of Egypt (v.1). Being a very simple psalm, he doesn’t refer to the great events of the Exodus itself which were definitely physical manifestations, but picks up on some of the things that happened along the way of Israel , the land, becoming the place where God ruled, Judah the place where He established His sanctuary, the Temple (v.2). To bring the people from Egypt to the Promised Land required two lots of water to be moved, the Red Sea and forty years later the River Jordan (v.3). Now we aren’t told in the historical record of any earth tremors but the psalmist envisaged the land rejoicing at God’s work of delivering this people (v.4). So he addresses the waters and the hills and asks them why they moved? (v.5,6). The answer of course is because God made them move. So, he says to the earth, you should tremble (v.7) when the Lord comes because you don’t know what He will do with you (implied). He had the power to bring water from the rock (v.8) so realise that He is Lord and He has power over the physical world. That is what this psalm is all about.

D. Application:

1. The Lord created this physical world.
2. The Lord can change this physical world. He is Lord.