God with us.
This psalm, which is so full of fine poetry, is also charged with spiritual suggestiveness. In the few verses of which it is composed, it brings before us the nearness of God to us, and the power he is exerting on us. We have—
I. HIS DWELLING-PLACE IN US. "Judah was his sanctuary" (Psalms 114:2). God dwelt in Judah in a sense in which he dwelt nowhere else. There was his manifested presence, and thither the tribes came up when they wanted to offer sacrifice, to make supplication, to hold high and happy fellowship. It was the place of his abode. Now God dwells not merely with, but in, his people. We are "the habitation of God through the Spirit." Our human hearts are his earthly home. To the pure, obedient, believing heart that seeks his presence (see Luke 11:13) God will come, and in that heart he will abide. "If any man love me … we will come unto him, and make our abode with him" (John 14:23).
II. HIS INHERITANCE IN US. "Israel was his dominion" (Psalms 114:2). The kingdom of Israel, i.e. the people who dwelt within it, were God's inheritance (see Psalms 94:5; Jeremiah 2:7). If God "rejoices in his works," in those things which he made and "pronounced good," much more does he rejoice in his own children—in those who know, who worship, who trust, who love, who serve, him. More precious than all fruitful fields, than "all the cedars of Lebanon," is one human heart that, redeemed by his Son and renewed by his Spirit, reciprocates his Fatherly affection, is gladly subject to his will, and labors heartily in his cause. How great, then, is his inheritance in all his people, in all those of every age and beneath every sky who have returned to him, and who are rejoicing in him! Are we such, in spirit, in conversation, in life, that our God can find a part of his Divine heritage in us.
III. HIS ENERGIZING PRESENCE. (Psalms 114:3-7.) What was it that moved the mountains, that rolled back the river that made the waters of the sea to stand up like a wall? It was the operative presence of Cod himself; it was the working of the unseen hand. What is it now that makes the tides of the ocean to keep their time, the streams and the rivers to fertilize the soil through which they flow, the seed to germinate in the soil, the corn and the fruit to ripen in the sun? When we have reached the ultimate physical cause, we have not obtained the explanation that we seek. We come finally to the great fact of God's presence, of the energizing power which he supplies, without which there could be no life, no growth, no motion, no result. What the psalmist says in fine poetic language, our intelligent piety confirms; the answer to our questions How? and Whence? is this—The presence of the Lord, "without whom nothing can be made that is made." "The Lord of hosts is with us;" "My Father worketh."
IV. HIS CONVERTING POWER. (Psalms 114:8.) The "turning of the rock into standing water" was a Divine, a wonderful action. But the spiritual and the supernatural are as Divine as the miraculous. Equally wonderful as, and more gracious and more benignant than, such physical transformation is the changing of the flinty heart into the water of penitence, into the fountain of piety and purity. God is doing daily, through his people, in his Churches, that which "calls for loudest songs of praise." But this, his greatest work, is not on rock, or soil, or sea, or river: it is on the hard tablet of the human heart, and on the sinful habits of the human life.
HOMILIES BY S. CONWAY