A picture paints a thousand words. I’m sure you know that phrase, and that you get what it’s saying. One picture is worth a thousand words - to see something helps to understand it in a way that it would take about a thousand words to explain.
Or think of a subject like English Literature. Students read, learn and memorise a poem of say, a hundred words, but then have to write an essay of two thousand or three thousand words on it. The poem is so simple, so concise, so well-written, but the explanation of it seems to be so much larger.
The Psalm that we’re focusing in on tonight might seem a bit like that. (Consider this your warning!). In 97 words, the writer packs in so much more, that the sermon will take a few more than 97 words to convey its sense and its meaning. (In fact, we’re already well over 97 words). Or to take the pictures - if each is worth a thousand words, then there is much to say on each of these word pictures. But don’t worry, we’ll be briefer than that.
Before we dive into the Psalm, just one brief introductory comment, particularly if you’re joining us tonight for the first time in our Psalms series. Psalm 114 is one of six Psalms that were set Psalms for the time of the Passover feast. So every year, when the Jews came to Jerusalem, these were the songs on their lips - the Passover praises. And so these were the songs that Jesus sang with his disciples on the night before he was crucified.
Now, all 6 Psalms were set for Passover, but it’s only our Psalm tonight, Psalm 114, that explicitly mentions the events of the Passover. We see that in the opening line of the Psalm:
‘When Israel came out of Egypt,
the house of Jacob from a people of a foreign tongue.’ (1)
In terms of the timeline of the Bible, we’re towards the start of it. In Genesis 12, God had called Abraham to be the father of a great multitude, in whose offspring all nations would be blessed. And so his family grew - Isaac, Jacob, and then his twelve sons. One of them, Joseph, of the amazing technicolour dreamcoat fame, went down into Egypt as a slave, sold by his brothers, only to rise to become Prime Minister - God having sent him for the saving of many people, including his own brothers. So the family of Jacob (also known as Israel), went down into Egypt.
That’s where Genesis finishes. By the time the book Exodus starts, they’ve been in Egypt for 400 years, and they are slaves. Back-breaking labour. Facing oppression. Calling for God to hear and help them. And he does. God calls Moses by the spectacle of the burning but not consumed bush, and sends him to Pharaoh saying ‘Let my people go.’
Pharaoh says no, and God sends a series of plagues on the land of Egypt. The last of the plagues is the death of the firstborn. In every home, the firstborn son would die. But for the children of Israel, the Passover Lamb died in their place - the blood sprinkled on the doorposts and lintel meant that God would ‘pass over’ that house.
So the events of the Passover are in view, and also the effects of the Passover. And we see the parallelism of Hebrew poetry - the two lines saying the same thing. Israel are the house of Jacob, and Egypt was the people of foreign tongue. And what happened when Israel came out of Egypt? We see in verse 2:
‘Judah became God’s sanctuary,
Israel his dominion.’
Both Israel and Judah are ways of speaking of the people of God. But it may well be that Judah refers to the tribe of Judah, from which king David came, and in whose territory the temple was eventually built (by Solomon). Sanctuary and dominion may well refer to the same idea of territory, saying it’s all God’s. but it might also be saying that Judah was God’s special sanctuary, his inner dwelling, while the whole nation was his dominion, his possession - kind of in the way that behind the Communion rail is the sanctuary, but the whole church building is dedicated and devoted to God.
In the next group of two verses, 3 and 4, we find a record of some of the big things that happened when Israel came out of Egypt. And again, what the writer says in five or four words might take a few more! Verse 3:
‘The sea looked and fled,
the Jordan turned back;
the mountains skipped like rams,
the hills like lambs.’ (3-4)
The sea looked and fled. That’s what we heard about in our first reading, from Exodus 14. The people have fled from Egypt, but in their way is a huge barrier - the Red Sea. Behind them, the Egyptians are in hot pursuit, having just let their entire slave labour workforce leave. And what happened? God made a way through the sea. It ‘fled’ to enable the Israelites to walk through on dry ground. They made it safe to the other side, and then the sea resumed its place, drowning the pursuing Egyptians.
That was at the start of their escape from Egypt. The next line comes at the other end of their wilderness wanderings, forty years later. By this stage, the people are on the brink of entering the promised land, the land that God had promised to give to Abraham and his descendants. But again, there’s a big barrier in their way. The river Jordan was in full flow, flooding its banks with the melted snow of springtime coming down from the mountains. Impassable. But what happened? ‘The Jordan turned back.’ It stopped flowing. And again, the people passed over on dry ground. (Joshua 3&4)
Verse 4 pictures something that happened in between those two miraculous events. ‘The mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs.’ What’s in view there is the earthquake on Mount Sinai, when Moses was given the Law, the Ten Commandments. The mountains skipped, the hills also.
Now, it might seem that, having covered those events, telling us what happened in poetic language, that the writer is now just repeating himself. But notice what is happening here. Creation is being questioned. They’re being interviewed. So imagine a chat show, and you have four seats for the interviewees - the sea, the Jordan, the mountains, and the hills. And the question? ‘Why was it that you did what you did?’
‘Why was it, O sea, that you fled,
O Jordan, that you turned back,
you mountains, that you skipped like rams,
you hills, like lambs?’ (5-6)
The sea is normally in its place. The Jordan normally flows down hill, following its course. The mountains and hills normally stand still, not jumping and skipping. So what happened? Why was it you did what you did?
The answer comes in verse 7 - although we could have anticipated it from verse 2. ‘Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Judah.’
It is because God was with his people, in bringing them out of Egypt, and in bringing them through the wilderness, and bringing them into the promised land, that the creation acted in these weird ways. God’s presence cleared the way for his people through the sea, and through the river. God’s presence at the top of Mount Sinai caused it to quake and skip.
But verse 7 isn’t just the answer to the question of verses 5-6. In fact, the phrasing of verse 7 suggests that this is a command to the whole earth (both the land itself, and also the people who live on the land). It’s because the creation has already reacted in these ways to its Maker’s presence, that now the whole earth is advised to tremble at the presence of the Lord - his majesty and glory, his power and might, his holiness and his grace, his love and his mercy.
It can sometimes be that we emphasise God’s love, and grace and acceptance, but forget about how awesome God also is. The command to tremble is to be heeded. There is a proper fear and respect and honour due to God.
In the Book Revelation, we see the enemies of God trembling in this way, kings, princes, generals, rich, mighty, slave and free, when they call for the rocks and mountains to fall on them, to hide them from the face of God and from the wrath of the Lamb. (Rev 6:15-17) They tremble, because they fear God, but too late for mercy.
But we also see the creation itself trembling in our second reading. As Jesus sang these words with his disciples, he would have known what would happen the next day as he died on the cross. The sun refusing to shine, darkness over the land. The earth quaking and the rocks splitting, and even the curtain of the temple torn from top to bottom. (Matt 27:45-51). Creation trembling at the presence of God, at the death of the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Did you notice how verse 8 seems to be tacked on at the end? It’s another picture of what God did for his people in the wilderness, another sign of creation trembling at the presence of God - water from the rock, which happened twice (Exodus 17 and Numbers 20). A hard rock becomes a pool, a spring of water, a place of refreshment.
Paul, in 1 Corinthians 10 tells us that the people ‘drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.’ (1 Cor 10:4). And what was it that Jesus offers us through his death on the cross? ‘The water I give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’ (John 4:14).
Jesus is our Passover Lamb, the one who died to bring us freedom. He is the presence of God, who died to save us, causing the earth to tremble. And he offers us the river of the water of eternal life, flowing through him to satisfy our thirst.
Will you tremble now, filled with awe and wonder at the amazing, wonderful, free gift of salvation that Jesus offers? Or will you be brought to tremble eventually, in fear of the wrath of the Lamb?
Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob.
This sermon was preached in St Matthew's Church, Richhill on Sunday evening 24th March 2019.
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