Psalm 114

Psalm 114 continues the Hallel Psalms. And it gives a message of God's delivering power in this Psalm. Because this Psalm is a celebration of the mighty deliverance of Israel, releasing her from slavery. We've had several Psalms before this that talked about God's deliverance of His people from Egypt. Because it was a huge thing to the Jews to remember and to recount this. But what he's... What the psalmist is recounting is, God's deliverance at a time when there seemed to be no way for deliverance to take place. And I don't know if you can think of times in your life when God did that for you. When He delivered you at a time when you didn't think there was any other way that deliverance was going to come. It's interesting, isn't it, how God does that. But He... And this is a short Psalm. Just 8 verses long. And it says,

In other words, He made a people for Himself. And then using very poetic language, he says,

Again very, very poetic language here. And then he asks a series of questions.

And then he gives the answer.

Notice how he repeats that's called, parallelism, and that is Jewish poetry, by the way. You and I think poetry is rhyming because that's what we learned. But Jewish poetry is parallelism. They call it Hebrew parallelism, where they will say something, and then repeat it with different words. And that's what he says there in verse 8, "...turns the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a spring of water." That is the essence of Hebrew poetry right there. Obviously, in highly poetic language, the psalmist just issues forth this, these words of joy as he recalls the deliverance of the Lord. The mighty deliverance of God, that was wrought on behalf of Israel during their time in the wilderness. And as I've said, the Psalms have brought this up many times. And it doesn't get old because it's great stuff. It's the stuff movies are made of, you got to do special effects in Hollywood to show this, these miracles. I guess my question is though, can you recount a time in your life when God delivered you? Could have been something big or something small. But can you think of a time when God delivered you from something that you knew you had no way of any personal deliverance other than the Lord? It's good to recount those. It's good to remember those just like the psalmist is doing here. I would encourage you to write them down. Write down the things that the Lord has delivered you from. He has such an interesting way of delivering, doesn't He? When the Lord brings deliverance into our lives, He allows us into a situation where He very... I got to choose my words carefully because I don't want it to sound like I'm being critical of God. But God has this way of kicking out from under us, all of the support structures that we would place in our lives, that we would put in our lives. Our own insurance, just in case God chooses, or turns out to not be as reliable as I would otherwise think. I'm going to come up with...

And we Christians we do it. I'm going to come up with all these ways that I can get out of this situation if I need to, with my life. Because you never know. Other people's let me down. Maybe God's going to do it too. God, just one by one, knocks all those out. All those things that we've put in our place, to rescue us. And then once we are literally at His mercy, where there's nothing to depend on other than God, we, He waits until we cry out to Him with all of our heart. And we say, Lord, You've given me nothing to rely on except You. And we begin to realize that it's at that point, He has given us everything we need. And that's... It becomes a revelation in our lives. And God will keep bringing us past that marker, that mile post in our lives to continue to remind us, I am all that you need. I am everything that you need. And I will systematically remove all of the things in your life that you set up as the means by which you will deliver yourself from your problems, until you get it through your head, 'I am everything you need. It's interesting. And then God takes away all those things. And then He opens the door. And we... You look at it and you're like, I cannot believe that door just opened. There's no way that could have happened on its own and He makes a way. He makes a way of escape. He makes a way of deliverance. And it's incredible. It really is. Write those things down.