He who made the hills and the mountains to skip,
can when He pleases dissipate the strength and spirit of the proudest of His enemies and make them tremble.
Psalm 1
1 When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language;
2 Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion.
3 The sea saw it, and fled: Jordan was driven back.
4 The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs.
5 What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back?
6 Ye mountains, that ye skipped like rams; and ye little hills, like lambs?
7 Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob;
8 Which turned the rock into a standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters.
Psalm 1 – J. Vernon McGee
Psalm 114 – The Mighty God Uplifteth the Lowly
In Psalm 114 Egypt represents the tyranny of sin; but we have been redeemed. Like Israel we have gone forth. We belong no more to the present world with its strange tongue. Ours is the language of Canaan, our home. This exodus of ours has made us the temple and sanctuary of God. If once the Church realized that she is God-possessed, she would become irresistible. Seas would divide, rivers would start back, mountains would cleave, and the hills would remove. “Impossible” would be blotted from our vocabulary. The power that made Sinai tremble gave earth water-springs. When the soul finds its all in God, the world ceases to affright or attract it, and the rocks yield refreshing streams. —Through the Bible Day by Day
Psalm 114:8—Which turned the flint into a fountain of waters.
This is a miracle which we all need to have wrought in our experience. Our heart is flint, our eyes are dry, our souls fail to respond with tears and regrets to the love of the Pierced One, and to the indictment that charges us with his death. There is little brokenness of heart among God’s children; and it is a sad fact that conviction of sin is a comparatively rare experience among the ungodly. This used not to be so. We have read of whole communities being swept with paroxysms of grief and compunction under the preaching of a Finney. His look on one occasion at a scoffing girl smote her to the soul, and led to so deep a work of grace that a whole factory, and then a village, were filled with mourning. I was told of a revival breaking out in a church, and many hearts being made soft because a band of godly elders confessed their unfaithfulness and shortcomings.
Moses struck the rock of flint at the commencement of the wanderings; and was to speak to it, at their close. But in either case the effect was identical; the water gushed from its heart of rock. Use thy cross, O Son of God, Lord of the House in which Moses was but a servant, and smite these hard hearts, that tears may flow freely forth; or speak the word. It is said that every building has a chord, to strike which makes it tremble to its base. Surely there is a chord, a note, a tone, before which our hearts would rend, giving Him tears for his sorrow, anguish for his pain!
“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Psalm 51:17).
“A broken heart, a fount of tears,
Ask, and it shall not be denied.” —Our Daily Homily