Bible Commentaries

‘THE GOD THAT DOETH WONDERS’

‘God which turned the rock into a standing water.’

Psalms 114:7-8

I. I consider the promises and the victories of the Bible, and I see that they are occasional, called out often by what men might describe as accident, like those needs of ancient Israel, which appealed irresistibly to the mercy and the might of the God of Jacob. But, occasional as they are, they are commemorated in the Book of books, and they go down through all time with a perpetual and world-wide application.

II. The Psalms, in which David and Asaph poured out their complaints and uttered their songs, express my complaints and my songs.—The Epistles, written to answer the questions and to scatter the difficulties and to allay the fears of the Church in the changeful and troubled first century, are as priceless and essential to-day as they were then; in the late autumn of the Christian year they keep the value they had in its blossoming spring.

III. Therefore let me make known the love of God to me.—How for me He turned the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a fountain of waters. My recital, like the Psalmist’s hymns and the Apostle’s letters, may prove to a multitude which cannot be numbered a well of refreshment, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.

Illustrations

(1) ‘The deeds of God at the time of the Exodus are here brought together to form a picture in miniature, which is as majestic as it is charming. There are four stanzas of four lines each, which pass by with the swiftness of a bird as it were with four flaps of its wings.’

(2) ‘Dante read the 114th psalm as the voice of thrilling joy, fitted for the lips of all who are emancipated from the bondage of sin, and therefore especially of those who, delivered from the bondage of the flesh, are passing into rest.’