Super-natural

"Mount Sinai" - Artist unnamed

TODAY’S SPECIAL: Psalm 113:1-114:8

TO CHEW ON: “Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord,
At the presence of the God of Jacob
Who turned the rock into a pool of water
The flint into a fountain of waters.” Psalm 114: 7-8

The psalmist has packed years of history into this 16-line poem. It speaks of the time Israel left Egypt and slavery. In the desert, God lived with them – hovering close in a cloud and overshadowing the tabernacle with His glory.

Nature complied with God’s plans. The Read Sea parted to let them cross (Exodus 14:16). After 40 years of wandering in the desert, the Jordan River likewise divided up so they could walk to the other side (Joshua 3:17).

The mountains and hills skipping like rams and lambs probably refers to the rolling and shaking of Mount Sinai when God met with Moses there (Exodus 19:18). The “rock into a pool of water" and “flint into a fountain of water” refer to God supplying their drinking water from rock – at least twice (Exodus 17:6; Numbers 20:11).

Don’t you just love the psalmist’s saucy questioning of these inanimate natural objects: “What ails you, O sea, that you fled? O Jordan that you turned back? O mountains that you skipped like rams? O little hills like lambs?” It’s a type of rhetorical question – to which the answer would have been, “We couldn’t help it. What would you do but comply (tremble) in the presence of God?”

We know, however, that at the time these things were happening the Israelites were anything but confident that God knew what He was doing. It was only in retrospect that His modus operandi became evident.

Does God still intervene in miraculous ways on our behalf? I believe so. I can just see us in heaven, with the benefit of perfect hindsight and insight, thanking and praising God for the stayed storms, the just-missed auto accidents, the at-the-time annoying delays which kept us from being in the wrong place at the right time.

PRAYER: Dear God, thank You that even inanimate nature is under Your control. Help me to have confidence in You as the God of everything.

MORE: In “The Laws of Physics as God” John Piper makes a defense for a God who is behind the laws of nature, and above them.

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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