Psalm 114

Reading for August 23, 2012      Psalm 114

Psalm 114 is a celebration of God’s presence with His people, the Israelites.

For almost one thousand years, Israel was blessed with the presence of the LORD in her midst. God’s presence was manifested through Moses when he pleaded with Pharaoh to release the Israelites from slavery. After the Israelites were released and crossed through the Red Sea, God was made manifest as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. The Israelites constructed the Ark of the Covenant as a depository of the stone tablets, whereon God had inscribed the Ten Commandments. The Ark represented the presence of God wherever the Israelites traveled. When Solomon built the Temple, the Ark was placed in the Holiest of Holies of the Temple. When the Temple was destroyed in 586 BC, the abiding presence of God in the midst of Israel was lost. When the Israelites returned to Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity, they longed for the coming of God’s Messiah, knowing one of the missions of the Messiah was to restore the presence of God in the Temple.

What has distinguished the people of God from every other form of religion in the world is the actual, abiding presence of the Living God. In Psalm 121, the psalmist asked a rhetorical question, “I look up to the mountains—does my help come from there?” Looking to the mountains was his way of contrasting God with the worshippers of the pagan god Baal, who believed Baal lived in the mountains. The psalmist answers his question with “My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth!” (Psalm 121:1-2) The best illustration of Israel’s Living God and Baal, who was worshipped by the Canaanites, is in the great story of Elijah and the Prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:17-40).

Jesus, the Messiah of God, did restore the Temple of God. However, it is no longer a building of stone: “Don’t you realize that all of you together are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God lives in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16). Still today, the followers of Jesus are not distinguished by our church buildings, liturgies, or good deeds. We are distinguished through justification by faith and thus, the presence of the Living God is with us: “For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them.” (Matthew 18:20).

How different would our lives, our churches, our worship be if we believed this?

Sē’lah

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What word or phrase in today’s reading of the Psalms

 attracts your attention?

Reflect on that word or phrase.

What insights come to you?

How does this passage touch your life today?

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

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Reading for August 24, 2012      Psalm 115