When Israel departed from Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of foreign tongue, Sermons
I. FROM WHENCE THE SOUL WAS SET FREE. 1. From Egypt, the true type of the world. At first so pleasant, so prosperous, so Goshen-like, so free from care, life so easy and secure. 2. But at length its true character is revealed. They are a strange - a barbarous, or tyrant, so the word is variously rendered - people. And the redeemed soul has found that out. II. WHAT HAPPENED AT THIS EXODUS. (Ver. 2.) 1. There was the indwelling of God. The soul became his shrine. He was worshipped, beloved, trusted day by day. 2. There was willing obedience. God was the Lord of their life. The soul becomes the dominion, the domain, of God. 3. Things beforehand impossible, happened. (Vers. 3, 4.) The sea, symbol of the whole power of spiritual death, saw and fled. "You hath he quickened who were dead," etc. It is a true picture of what takes place at the real conversion of a soul. Old things pass away. The stream and course of life are turned in an opposite direction, as was the Jordan. On and on, rapidly flowing downwards to the Dead Sea, so was it with the Jordan; so is it with the soul till its redemption comes. But then there is a conversion, a complete turning round, in the aims, principles, and motives of the life. The fixed habits and propensities - fixed like the mountains and hills of Sinai - the pride, unbelief, selfishness, love of sin, all which seemed firmly settled in our nature, are shaken, plucked up by the roots. The rock-like heart, so hard and barren and lifeless, becomes transformed as into a standing water, a very fountain of waters (cf. John 7:37, 38). The soul is blessed, and becomes a blessing. III. HOW IS ALL THIS TO BE EXPLAINED? Men will ask this, and no answer will they find save that it is the presence of the Lord (vers. 5-7). It is the standing miracle of the Christian Church. - S.C.
He makoth the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children. The psalmist must have been thinking surely of the many modes in which the powers are called out and the affections exercised. The guidance of the household, the care of children, — these are certainly the commonest ways in which the affections and the powers of one half the human race are brought into free and full play. But there may be no house to guide, and no children to love and tend and educate; and yet the words may be made true, "He maketh the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children." I take the words, then, as telling us, first of all, this: That no powers and no affections were intended by the Giver of all to lie fallow and waste. He, from whom these, as well as all other good and perfect gifts, come, has, we may be sure, in His view also a field for their exercise — a field, into which He is prepared, by His providence and His Spirit, to guide the owner. There is room and need, depend upon it, for every power and every affection that the Creator has implanted in us. Now, I may be speaking to some who have not yet found their place in the world, and who suffer from the heartache and the restlessness which come of unused faculties and dormant affections. It is to such cases as these that the words of the psalmist should come home with a special message to rouse and comfort and invigorate. The matter is really in their own hands. They have but to look around them, and they will soon perceive that the literal meaning of the psalmist's words is not the only, nor in many ways the most satisfying, meaning. It will be strange if they cannot find, within the circle of their own acquaintance, more than one life which looks at the first glance very lonely, very dull, very uninviting; in which the nearest and dearest ties of husband, wife, and children have no place; and yet which on closer inspection turns out to be full of interests, full of affections, full of duties, full of good works and heavenly charities. It may be the life of some poor widow living amidst a crowd of neighbours as poor as herself, of whom she is the loved and trusted friend, counsellor, and comforter. Or it may be the life of some daughter and sister at home, who is the link between all the widely-scattered members of the old household. Or it may be the life of some poor helpless and hopeless sufferer on a sick-bed, whose couch of pain is the meeting-point of many hearts, which are cheered and elevated by the sight of Christian endurance, and soothed and softened by the warm tide of Christian affection.(D. J. Vaughan, M.A.). When Israel went out of Egypt. Homilist. God has a will. He doeth all things after the "counsel of His own will." The universe is but His will in form and action. It is the primordial, the propelling and presiding force of all forces and motions. The psalm leads us to look at this Eternal will in two aspects —I. As acting on MORAL MIND. In the deliverance of the Jews from Egyptian bondage, it acted both on the Egyptian mind and on the Hebrew mind. 1. This will acted on the Egyptian mind disastrously. Whose fault was this? Not God's.(1) Man can resist the Divine will. Herein is his distinguishing power. This binds him to moral government, and renders him accountable for his conduct.(2) His resistance is his ruin. To go against the Eternal will is to go against the laws of nature, the current of the universe, the eternal conditions of well-being. Acquiescence to the Divine will is heaven, resistance to the Divine will is hell. 2. This will acted on the Hebrew mind remedially.(1) It brought Israel out of Egypt,(2) Into blessed relationship with God. II. As acting on MATERIAL NATURE. 1. Its action on matter is always effective. God has only to will a material phenomenon, and it occurs. "He spake, and it was done." Nothing in material nature comes between His will and the result purposed. Not so in moral mind. 2. Its action on matter is philosophically exciting (vers. 5, 6). The motions of matter are constantly exciting the philosophic inquiry. Would that philosophy would not pause in its inquiries until it traced all the forms and motions of matter to the Eternal will! It was that will that.was now working in the mountains, in the hills, and the rocks. 3. Its action on matter is sometimes terrific (ver. 7). (Homilist.) People Jacob, PsalmistPlaces EgyptTopics Egypt, Foreign, Forth, Jacob, Language, Strange, TongueOutline 1. The miracles wrought by God, when he brought his people out of Egypt, 7. are a just ground of fearing him. Dictionary of Bible Themes Psalm 114:1 4963 past, the Library February the Third Transforming the Hard HeartThe Lord "turned the flint into a fountain of waters." --PSALM cxiv. What a violent conjunction, the flint becoming the birthplace of a spring! And yet this is happening every day. Men who are as "hard as flint," whose hearts are "like the nether millstone," become springs of gentleness and fountains of exquisite compassion. Beautiful graces, like lovely ferns, grow in the home of severities, and transform the grim, stern soul into a garden of fragrant friendships. This is what Zacchaeus was like … John Henry Jowett—My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year Rhapsody To Pastors and Teachers Exegetic. 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