The soul's exodus.
The psalm is a wonderfully vivid and beautiful description of the deliverance of God's people from Egypt. In all ages of the Church this has been looked upon as the pattern and type of the soul's deliverance by the redemption of Christ. Much of that history is suggested here. We are shown—
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. (Psalms 114:2.)
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. (Psalms 114:3, Psalms 114:4.) 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, John 7:38). 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 (Psalms 114:5-7). It is the standing miracle of the Christian Church.—S.C.