August 19, 2023 — Psalm 114 

“When Israel went out from Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language, Judah became God’s sanctuary, Israel his dominion. The sea looked and fled; Jordan turned back. The mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs. Why is it, O sea, that you flee? O Jordan, that you turn back? O mountains, that you skip like rams? O hills, like lambs? Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the LORD, at the presence of the God of Jacob, who turns the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a spring of water.” 

Psalm 114 is still sung with Psalm 113 prior to the Jewish Passover meal — it is a song about the power of G-d in delivering the Israelites from Egypt, bringing them into the Promised Land and preserving them in the wilderness in between. 

We read in this Psalm: “Why is it, O sea, that you flee? 

O Jordan, that you turn back? O mountains, that you skip like rams? O hills, like lambs? Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the LORD…” 

We might wonder why the sea, the mountains, and the earth trembles and skips at the presence of G-d…until we remember that all that is was created by G-d. All things should tremble at the presence of the Lord.  

St. Thomas Aquinas, in his analysis of the five ways G-d’s existence can be explained, says in his first way: 

The First Way: Argument from Motion 

1. Our senses prove that some things are in motion. 

• Things move when potential motion becomes actual motion. 

• Only an actual motion can convert a potential motion into an actual motion. 

• Nothing can be at once in both actuality and potentiality in the same respect (i.e., if both actual and potential, it is actual in one respect and potential in another). 

• Therefore nothing can move itself. 

• Therefore each thing in motion is moved by something else. 

• The sequence of motion cannot extend ad infinitum. 

• Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God. 

It is in this argument that St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us that something had to set everything in motion — that motion was the creation — that creator was G-d. Since the deliverance of the Israelites from the Egyptians, and then their covenantal relationship with G-d, Israel has been singing praises to G-d — and we continue to give thanks for all that G-d has, is, and will do in our lives. 

Let us pray: 

Mighty God, by your power you led your people out of slavery in Egypt, and raised Christ from the dead. Deliver us continually by your power from slavery to freedom and from death to life, for the glory of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. 

Amen. 

Pastor Dave