All right, brethren, Psalm 114.
So we'll go right along with our hymns
and right along with the scripture reading. This psalm gives God all the
glory. Everything in this psalm is declaring
what God did. what he does for his people.
So every bit of it is speaking of God. God gets all the glory.
You know, when we go through the scripture, in the Old Testament,
over and over again, it doesn't take very long, wherever we look,
you hear the children of Israel looking back to their redemption
out of Egypt. And you hear them speaking of
their redemption across the Jordan River into the land of Canaan.
And you hear them singing of it and rejoicing in it. This
was one of the Psalms that speaks of that. It was one of the Psalms
they would sing at their feasts. And it's just like us in our
day. In our day, we're looking back
to Christ on the cross, what he accomplished for his people,
how God has dealt with us in mercy and grace all our days,
and we're singing of his glory. We're singing of his power and
his presence and what he's done for his people and giving him
the glory, just like they did. This is how This is why God gave
them the Passover feast was to keep them remembering the redemption
accomplished for them by the Lord. And our Lord showed us
He's the true Passover and He's given us His table to keep us
remembering His broken body and His shed blood by which He brought
us out of Egypt. So this whole Psalm is declaring
what the Lord does for His people. And it's particularly declaring
what He does by His presence and His power. by His presence
and His power. Look here in verse 7. This is
the verse that it all hinges on right here. He says, Tremble
thou earth at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of
the God of Jacob. Now, verses 1 through 6 is going
to show how the Lord calls out and protects His people. In verses
1 through 6, He delivers, redeems, calls, and protects His people.
And then verse 8 is going to declare how the Lord provides
for His people. And verse 7 is warning every
enemy to tremble before His people due to the presence of the Lord,
the presence of the God of Jacob who is with His people. The subject
is protection and provision. That's how the psalm is divided. Protection is the first six verses
and provision is the eighth verse. And verse seven tells us it's
by God's presence. It's by God's presence. By the
Lord's presence, by His power, He protects and provides for
His people. That's what He does. It's God's
presence and power that the children of Israel were brought out of
Egypt and it overcame every enemy they faced. By His presence and
power, they were supplied with every provision as they went
through the wilderness. This is how they were supplied. And so it is with us today. This
is the same is true with us today. Now first of all, let's look
at protection. We'll just have these two main
points, protection and provision. But let's look here at protection.
It takes up most of the song. It's God, by His presence and
power, that protects his people. He said in verse 1, when Israel
went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange
language, Judah was his sanctuary and Israel his dominion. Now
Israel was in bondage, the house of Jacob They could not deliver
themselves. They were completely in bondage.
But God had told Abraham, over 400 years before they even went
to Egypt, that they were going to go to Egypt and they were
going to be enslaved in Egypt. God told Abraham this. This was
all in God's purpose. But God also entered into a covenant
with Abraham, promising Abraham that God, at a set time, would
deliver them out of Egypt. God promised that. Well, all
of God's elect, Jew and Gentile, that God chose before the foundation
of the world, we were His even when we fell into bondage in
Adam. Just like they were God's when they went down into Egypt
and came into bondage. We were God's when we fell in
Adam. God knew it, it was His purpose, and He used that to
show His salvation just like He did with them. But God had
entered a covenant with His Son, with the Lord Jesus, to deliver
us at the set time. Christ would come and redeem
us, and then He would call us out at the set time. And the
Lord delivered Israel through the Passover lamb, and that's
how God our Father delivered us, through Christ our Passover.
That's how He delivered us, through Christ our Passover. And as the
Lord separated the children of Jacob out from a people of a
strange language, He brought them out of Egypt. He didn't
leave them in Egypt. He brought them out of Egypt. And just like
He did that, so the Lord separates those He redeemed when He calls
us in the new birth and brings us out, and brings us out of
the darkness, and out of unbelief, and out of our sin and rebellion,
and brings us to cast all our care on the Lord Jesus Christ.
And from that day forward, He leads us, and guides us, and
directs us, and He's teaching us continually, using everything
about us and everything about His creation, that He is the
power by which we're saved. It's His presence by which we're
saved. Now, when God delivered them
out of Egypt, verse 2, it says, Judah was His sanctuary, and
Israel His dominion. It means all the children of
Jacob, not one of them was left behind. I think the reason it
speaks of Judah and Israel is because at this time that the
psalm was written, they were divided. But when he brought
them out, they weren't divided. But it just means they were all
brought out. He didn't leave any behind. And
God's not going to leave any of his elect behind. He's going
to call every one of them out. And when he brought them out,
Judah was his sanctuary. This is by God's presence. This
is what verse 7 is telling us. This is by His presence. A sanctuary
is a place that's uniquely set apart by God for God's use. It's a place uniquely set apart,
sanctified, that's what it is, set apart by God, by God's presence,
for God's use. Each sinner that God chose, Christ
redeemed. accomplished our redemption.
And they shall be set apart. They shall be sanctified for
God's use by God's presence in the new birth. Every one of them
shall. He's going to quicken them. He's
going to call them. He's going to separate them.
He separates our new man from our old man. That's how he brings
us to believe. And he's going to call us out
of Egypt, bring us out, and have us to follow him. This is how
we're separated from a people of a strange language. That's
what the world is. People of a strange language.
And this is how we're separated from them. And this is how we're
kept separated from them. Remember how the Lord prayed
in John 17, keep them from the evil? And then he prayed, Lord,
sanctify them through thy word. And he declared, he's the truth
by which we're sanctified. He said, I sanctified myself
that they might be sanctified through truth. He is that truth
by which we're sanctified. And that's what he was praying
for, separate them and keep them separated, keep them from the
evil. And when God makes us his sanctuary,
we're sanctified, we're set apart for God's use by God's indwelling
presence. He brings you to tremble yourself
and bow before the Lord and cast your care on him when he makes
you see that you're the sinner. And this is so of His church
as a whole. His church is His dwelling place.
And this is so of each individual member that is born again of
God. You are the temple of God, and
the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. Now, verse 2 says, And Israel
was the Lord's dominion. This is His power. This was by
His presence. This is His power. Israel was
the Lord's dominion. The word dominion means His domain. His realm, it's where He ruled. The Lord's church is His domain. It's where He rules. It's where
He leads and guides and protects. And it is so of every believer
in particular. They were formed into a kingdom
and God was all around them. God was, the everlasting arms
were underneath. He went before them. He was their
rear ward. He ruled them in their hearts
and He ruled all around them to protect them. So what does
God do by His presence and His power when He's made us His sanctuary
and His dominion? What does He do? When He's made
you His sanctuary and His dominion, what does God do for you? He's
going to use some poetry here. He's going to personify the Red
Sea and the Jordan River and the mountains and the hills.
He says there in verse three, the sea saw it and fled. That's the Red Sea. The Red Sea
saw it and fled. Jordan was driven back. Verse
four, the mountains skipped like rams and the little hills like
lambs. Now these all represent all the
enemies and all the obstacles that only the Lord can deliver
his people from and deliver his people through. That's what these
represent. The Lord brought them to the
Red Sea. The Lord could have taken them straight into Canaan,
but he didn't. He brought them to the Red Sea and he hemmed
them in on every side where they could not deliver themselves. It was abundantly clear to them
that they could not deliver themselves. Not to the right, the left, Pharaoh's
barreling down on them and they couldn't get through the Red
Sea. and the Lord sent the gospel to him. He always works this
work through the preaching of the gospel. He sent the gospel
through Moses, and this is what he told Moses, and this is what
he told Moses to tell them. Stand still and see the salvation
of the Lord. Stand still and see the salvation
of the Lord. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and trust Him to save you. Whatever the obstacle, whatever
the enemy, whatever the situation, believe God and trust Him to
save you. He says, and the Red Sea saw,
the Red Sea saw they were the Lord's sanctuary. The Red Sea
saw they were the Lord's dominion and it fled. It was the Lord's
presence and power that delivered them. That's what it's declaring.
And then when they went through the Red Sea, then the Lord destroyed
all their enemies and there wasn't one of them left. The Red Sea
saw they were His sanctuary and they were His dominion. And then
the Lord brought them to the Jordan. And again, He brought
them there during the rainy season. Do you think the Lord knows when
the seasons are going to be? He sends the season. So He knew. He did it. He brought them right
there during that rainy season where they saw once again they
could not overcome that flooding river. They could not get across
that flooding river. And the Lord told the priests
to step into that river and hold up that ark. That's what every
preacher of the gospel is doing. He's holding up Christ our ark.
And the Lord told the people, look to the ark. Look to the
ark. That's a picture of believing
on Christ, looking to Christ, trusting Christ to deliver us
to the preaching of the gospel. That's what we have pictured
at the Jordan. He says, and the Jordan saw that they were the
Lord's sanctuary. And the Jordan River saw they
were the Lord's dominion. And it was driven back. It was
driven back. And they went across on dry ground
again. But think about this now. The Red Sea and the Jordan River
were events that took place 40 years apart. Why does he put
them together in this verse like they're just one event? Well, our deliverance, beginning
to end, is by the presence and power of the Lord. That's what
he's declaring. From the Red Sea to the Jordan,
beginning to end, is by the presence and power of the Lord. Get this
picture now. The Red Sea is a picture of baptism. They were baptized unto Moses.
Jordan is a picture of deliverance from death. And really, in our
baptism, in water baptism, what are we declaring? What are we
picturing? By one event. By one event. In Christ, all God's elect, when
we were in Christ, mystically in Christ by God putting us in
Christ from the foundation of the world, we were in Christ
and we were baptized into the judgment and justice of God when
it rained down on Him. That was that baptism. Christ
said, I have a baptism to be baptized with and I'm straight
until it be accomplished. We were in Him. It's like the
rains came down on the ark and came up from beneath the ark
of Noah. We were in him and we were buried
in the grave then. We were in Christ. We were buried
in the grave. We already have died and gone in the grave before
God. That's what God said. Because
we were sinned. That's all we are. We had to
die. We had to be buried out of sight. We've already died
and been buried before God in Christ. But we passed through
that grave. The Jordan represents death. We passed through that grave.
We came out of the grave. We went up into eternal life
into heaven's glory in Christ and sat down at his right hand
ever to live with our Lord. It was finished by one event.
One event. Christ's death, burial, and resurrection. Just like we see here the Red
Sea and the Jordan River. And from God calling us, from
the day He calls us and makes us His sanctuary and His dominion
throughout this wilderness that we're traveling through, we're
kept and we're protected by the presence and power of our God,
just like the sons of Jacob were, beginning to the end. beginning
to the end. The mountains and the little
hills here, there's a bunch of different disagreements on what
this means. Some thinks it means Mount Sinai.
Some thinks it means the mountain Caleb wanted and the land of
Canaan to have all the enemies on it. But it probably means
every other enemy they faced along the way. Every obstacle
they faced. It's like mountains and hills,
immovable to us. But beginning to end, they were
all conquered by God's presence and God's power. Do you remember
what the Lord, Zerubbabel is a picture of Christ building
the temple, building his people up stone by stone, making us
living stones and building us up together. And when the Lord,
I quote it to you a lot, when the Lord told Zerubbabel, not
by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of
hosts." He said this next, Who art thou, O great mountain? What
immovable mountain is there that's going to try to stand in God's
way and stand in the way of God's people? They're put there by
God. Why are the mountains put there?
They're there by God's appointment to show you and me that God's
the only one that can deliver us through. Who art thou, O mountain,
O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel, before the
Lord Jesus Christ, thou shalt become a plain. And he'll bring
forth the headstone there with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace
unto it. All of these enemies we're looking
at, from the Red Sea to the Jordan, and every enemy in between. These
are enemies that God's people cannot conquer ourselves. This
is why we say salvation is of the Lord. We can tell people
to be sanctified. We can tell people to separate
themselves, but there ain't a sinner that can do it until God works
it, until He makes you His sanctuary and He has the dominion. We couldn't
satisfy justice. We couldn't make ourselves righteous
before God. Nor could we make ourselves be
born again. Nor could we free ourselves from
the bondage of our sin nature and believe God. Nor can we make
the gospel effectual in others. Nor can we make it through this
life. We cannot make it through this life. Our Lord said, without
me you can do nothing. We can't make it through this
life. We can't make it out of the grave. we can't make it up
into heaven's glory except by God leading us and making us
overcome every enemy and every obstacle by His presence and
His power. He who has begun a good work
in you at the Red Sea, shall perform it to the day of the
Lord Jesus Christ, and bring you across the Jordan, and bring
you into the promised land. And so God warns all our enemies. He warns every enemy in this
earth to tremble before his people. Look at verse 5. He kind of,
it's a little humorous here. He says, What e'er thee, O thou
sea, that thou fleddest? and thou Jordan that thou wast
driven back. Ye mountains that ye skip like
rams, and ye little hills like lambs, tremble thou earth at
the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob. Did you notice when that hurricane
was coming? a day or two before, and you
started seeing all the people leaving Fort Myers and leaving
Port Charlotte and that whole area down there, and they're
leaving out. And they interviewed a man and he said, you can fight
against a lot of things. He said, but you can't fight
Mother Nature. No, that's God. That's God. And what happened? The people
trembled and they got out of there. They left. They took off. And that's what the Lord's saying
He'll do for all the enemies of His people. He's telling every
enemy, tremble, bow down before the Lord, come to Him and cast
a care on Him and He'll save you. But don't try to oppose
Him. He said in Psalm 9.3, let me
read this to you. Psalm 9, verse 3, When mine enemies
are turned back, they shall fall and perish at thy presence. For thou hast maintained my right
and my cause, thou set us in the throne, judging right. Thou hast rebuked the heathen,
thou hast destroyed the wicked, thou hast put out their name
for ever and ever. This is our Lord. You know, Moses
knew God's presence. was what they needed. He knew
that. He knew that God's presence was their protection. Remember
Exodus 33, 14. Let's look at Exodus 33, 14.
I'll be very short on my second point. Exodus 33, 14. This is
what the Lord said. The Lord promised Moses, He said,
My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest. That's
rest in itself, just having His presence with us. He said, And
Moses said unto him, If thy presence go not with me, carry us not
up hence. For wherein shall it be known
here that I and thy people have found grace in thy sight? Is
it not in that thou goest with us? So shall we be separated,
I and thy people, from all the people that are upon the face
of the earth. And the Lord said to Moses, I
will do this thing also that thou hast spoken, for thou hast
found grace in my sight, and I know thee by name. And right
after that is when the Lord showed Moses His glory. And as the Lord
is making His presence known with us and leading us and showing
us how He is delivering us and protecting us through this whole
journey, that is how we see His glory. That is how we see His
glory. So that is our protection. Now
here is the second point, our provision. by His presence and
by His power, the same God who provided for His people and protected
them the whole way, He also provided for them. Just like He protected
them, He provided for them. Verse 8 says, God turned the
rock into standing water and the flint into a fountain of
waters. You know Paul said that rock,
that smitten rock is Christ. Now there's three things I want
to show you from this verse, and I'll be very brief. One,
As far as our provision, Christ is that rock, and God will keep
His child knowing Christ is the one thing needful. If you have Christ, you have
every provision for this life and for the life to come, if
we have Christ, if we believe Him. The Lord Jesus is our rock
who was smitten in place of His people. so that we're justified
in Him, made righteous in Him, so every provision that we're
going to need and every provision we're going to give for eternal
glory with God, acceptance with God, and for this life is coming
through the blood and righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ. Everything
God's doing for us, He's doing for the sake of His Son. So Christ
is our wisdom at God's right hand. He's the one who saved
us justly and in mercy and gave us discernment to know and trust
Him. Christ is our righteousness with God. That's the one in whom
we're complete, is at God's right hand. There's my righteousness.
Christ is our sanctification at God's right hand. He's the
Holy One who's perfectly holy, for whose sake and by whose Holy
Spirit we're separated in a new man and kept separated unto the
Lord from the beginning to the end. True sanctification is being
made to see that He's our sanctification, and He keeps us separated, and
it's His holiness we're partaking of. We're not made holy by ourselves. It's His presence in us. It's His keeping us separated
from the evil. And our redemption was provided
by God in Christ. He redeemed us from the curse.
He redeemed us from our sin nature. And He redeemed us from every
enemy and from death, the last enemy. Every enemy He's redeemed
His people from. So Christ is the preeminent provision
we need. If we have Him, we have all.
believe on him, trust him, at all seasons, whatever he's bringing
you into, it is to make us trust the Lord Jesus Christ. Without
faith in Christ, it's impossible to please God. We can't come
any other way but in Christ. And two, our Lord will provide
for us using things that we would never expect are for our good. Do you see that in this verse?
He brought water out of a rock. out of the rock. He turned the
flint into waters. Moses would have never expected
the Lord to give water out of a hard rock a flint. And yet
from it came the water of life. God uses two things to show us
this continually. His providence and the preaching
of the gospel. That's how he's providing for
us. Sometimes his sovereign hand's going to lead us to places where
he's going to shut us up just like he did them at the Red Sea,
just like he did them before Jordan. He's going to shut us
up. He's going to make us get between a rock and a hard place
where we just can't deliver ourselves. This is going to happen from
beginning to the end. The last time it's going to happen
is when you're laying on your back in the bed and you're about
to take your last breath. And just like He's going to deliver
you from that one, He delivered you at the beginning. He's delivering
you from every enemy through every trial and the purpose of
them and all His provision is to show us that, that He is our
salvation. He puts floods before us like
Jordan, like they're experiencing in Florida right now. Or He brings us to bitter waters
like He did the children of Israel, bitter waters that are hard to
go through and they're painful and they're sorrowful. And sometimes
he's gonna make us hunger like he did the children of Israel. We don't see how any good could
come from it. But in each of those trials in
that wilderness, you know what the remedy was? In each one of
the trials, the remedy, the salvation that God provided for them typified
the Lord Jesus Christ. Every one of them. Every one
of them. Christ sweetens the bitter waters.
He sweetens the bitter waters. Christ is the manna from heaven
that's going to satisfy your hunger. Christ is the ark who
delivers and dries up every flood. On and on you can go. It was
God's providence. Remember this. Next time you're
brought into some providence and you say, I just don't see
how this could work for my good or if the church is good or anything.
Remember, it was God's hand of providence that brought Christ
to his enemies and gave his enemies leave to do with him what they
would and nailed him to a curse tree and accomplished our eternal
redemption. Would you have looked at that
if you didn't know the scriptures and said, how can good come out
of this? I'm persuaded. I know this is
so. All of God's providence, everything
that's coming to pass in your life and in mine, is to make
us stand still and see that Christ is our salvation. Everything.
It's not just to make you separated from other people and that ain't
what it's about. It's to, if we're not separated
unto Christ, to see He's everything and we're nothing, we haven't
been sanctified. That's what it's for, brethren,
is to make us stand still all the time and be constantly reminded
Christ is our salvation. He is. It keeps us remembering
we're being saved by His presence and by His power, and it keeps
us remembering He is the one thing needful. And it keeps reviving for us
using this foolish means of preaching the gospel. By this, He keeps us looking
to Christ alone. This is foolishness to the world.
God's going to use people that are going to stain the pride
of every man to preach His gospel. He's going to use men who are
foolish men, who are nothing but sinners saved by His grace,
being saved by His grace. And He's going to overrule every
error and all of our mistakes, and He's going to bring us into
submission to Him to keep preaching the gospel, and through that
gospel, He's going to save His people. You think about it, most
of those that the Lord used, the prophets and the apostles,
by general rule, they were from a lower class of people. They
were poor fishermen. But remember this, our prophet,
priest, and king came from Nazareth. What do people say? Can any good
thing come out of Nazareth? There was no former covenant
that didn't make men desire him. But through this gospel, the
Lord made foolish the wisdom of this world, and he made us
wise unto salvation. He made us know Christ is our
salvation. And he separated us by this gospel,
and he's going to keep us through this gospel unto the end. We
need the gospel. It's through his hand of providence,
and then him declaring the gospel to us, and making us see what
he's doing for us in providence. That's how He grows us in the
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. And that's how He grows us in
the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. So that we trust Christ
and put no confidence in our flesh. Absolutely none. Now lastly,
this provision by Christ, by His presence, is permanent and
abundant. Permanent and abundant. It's
all Christ. That's the first thing we see.
That rock is Christ. Secondly, it's in ways we'd never
expect it. He uses providence we wouldn't
expect, and he uses his foolish means of this gospel, declaring
the accomplished redemption of a bloody cross. And here's the
third thing about his provision. It's permanent, and it's abundant. He said He turned the rock into
a standing water. That's permanent. He turned the
rock into a standing water. God changes not and His provisions
for His people do not change. We always have a need. That doesn't
ever change. And God doesn't ever change in
that He's providing for that need. That's a permanent guarantee
for His people throughout this life. But what if I don't feel
His power and His presence providing for me? You ever get there where
you don't feel it? We sing it all the time. We pay
attention to the words we sing. We sing this all the time. When
darkness veils his lovely face, I rest in his unchanging grace. In every high and stormy gale,
that means when the storm's raging, my anchor holds within the veil. My anchor's not in me. It's at
God's right hand. when Israel was old, Jacob when
he was old, and he was blessing Joseph, he was speaking of God,
how God had continually provided for him, and he said, he called
him the God which fed me all my life long unto this day, the
angel which redeemed me from all evil. You can find God's
saints, old saints, saying that time and time again in the scripture,
something just like it. And then, not only is his provision
permanent, it's abundant. He said he turned the flint into
a fountain of waters. It's abundant. He claved the
rocks in the wilderness and gave them drink as out of the great
depths. He brought streams also out of
the rock and caused waters to run down like rivers. We're not
talking about a little water. He gave them a lot of water.
The waters gushed out, the psalmist said. They ran in the dry places
like a river. Now, think about this provision
of everything we need in Christ and everything we need in this
life. I want you to think of it this way. Look at God's abundant
provision for mankind just in creation. Look at it. You got
the air, you got light, you got rain showers, you got the sun,
you got the beautiful landscape, you got the grandeur of the mountains
and the seas, you got all this abundant provision of food and
everything, all the resources that God has provided, all of
it for mankind. And every bit of that's an allegory.
This whole creation and everything in it, everything God's provided
is an allegory of the abundant riches of God's grace for His
people. And the truth is, all these things
you see in creation that's for all man to enjoy, they are just
a drop in the bucket compared to the abundance of God's grace
and riches for His people. That's a lot of grace and riches,
isn't it? This is a big world. We got a
big God with a big treasury of riches. His abundance for his people
is much, much, much more than we see in this world. Paul said
it this way, My God shall supply all your need, now listen, according
to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. They're His. They're in glory. And He's providing everything
here for us by Christ Jesus. Let Israel hope in the Lord,
for with the Lord there's mercy, and with Him is plenteous redemption. We need a lot of redemption.
We need redemption a lot. We know the main points of redemption. We're redeemed at the cross by
our God. We're redeemed when He comes
and gives you life. And we're redeemed when He takes
you out of this earth into glory. But everything that we go through
in this life, He's redeeming us out of it. He's bringing us
out of it, delivering us out of it. He's plenty of sin redemption. So by Christ's presence and power,
He's going to protect us. He's going to provide for us
beginning to end through this wilderness, and at last, He's
going to carry us across the Jordan, and He's going to give
us an abundant entrance into His everlasting kingdom. You believe that? I believe that.
I do believe that. Despite me and all my failures,
I believe that. I believe God's going to do it.
Believe in Him, and believe on Him. Believe in Him, and believe
on Him. rely entirely upon the Lord. I was just talking with somebody
today and I said I wish I could remember these things and they'd
just be at the forefront of my heart and my mind all the time
throughout my day. Because when it is, when you
see Him and you know Him and His presence is with you, temptation
is easy. It's easy to turn from it or
not even be tempted by it. When you look into Him, trust
in Him. When you don't feel His presence,
that's when something can cross you. That's when out of the blue
something will surprise you just like that. And you'll find out
the thoughts you have and you'll find out just that you're a sinner. But trust Him and rely entirely
upon Him. Try to keep your heart and mind
on Him all the time. We can't do that too much. And
obey Him. Just obey Him. Whatever He says,
do it. Everything in this world's good.
Everything in this world's for our good. Just obey Him. Obey Him. He's going to make
His children obey Him. And when He chastens us, and
He's going to do that too because we don't always obey Him. That's what chastening is about. And He's going to chasten you
because He's going to keep you partaking of His holiness. Thank Him for
that. Praise Him for that. That's love. That's love. That's your God
keeping you. And he's going to keep you protected.
And he's going to provide for you. Just keep looking to him. He will. All right.