Psalm 114
April 9, 2023
Lord God, how truly awesome was your deliverance of ancient Israel! How it displayed your greatness and goodness! You are Lord—Lord of mountains, hills, and rock; Lord of seas and rivers and springs. You split the sea, you held back the Jordan River, you caused mountains and hills to quake. Sea and river and mountain and rock were no match for you. Truly the whole earth ought to tremble before you. Teach us to tremble—in holy fear, in tender fear. You are the God of Jacob, the God of power and patient covenant love and faithfulness.
All this power and faithfulness, Lord, you directed toward blessing your people. You made them your sanctuary, the place where you dwell uniquely; you made them your dominion, the unique sphere of your desirable rule as King. And truly we are your sanctuary today, Lord, with your presence among us in your Holy Spirit; we are your dominion by your rule over us through our risen Head and King, Jesus the Messiah.
On this Easter morning we praise you for raising him from the dead and for what that says about his life, his teaching, his death. All were true, all were right, all were successful. As you delivered Israel from bondage in Egypt by your great power, so you have delivered us from bondage to sin, to death, and to the devil—through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Thank you for such a great deliverance! Thank you for exhibiting your power in his resurrection—a power greater than that which you showed in delivering Israel. How blessed we are!
You, Lord, protected your people from waters that were life-threatening; you provided your people with water that was life-giving. And as you brought water from the rock so long ago, the rock that you tell us in the New Testament was a picture of Jesus, so you have brought to us, through Jesus, living water—life-giving, abundant, refreshing, transformative, everlasting. So much power, so much goodness, so much blessing—how great you are, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God of Israel’s freedom, God of our freedom, God of resurrection.
May the realities we celebrate at Easter grip us throughout the year. May the victory of Jesus be our joy and confidence from day to day. May his resurrection life, connected to us through your Holy Spirit, be influential and visible in our lives from day to day. May we choose, from day to day, to live on the basis of, to operate from the framework of, to adopt the perspective of, to lean into the reality of, and to stand confidently on, the resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord.
As we confront the realities of our world, Lord, far and near—war, disasters, tragedies, crises, tumult, change, and evil, as well as comfortable affluence—as we consider and respond to these realities, we confess our sins of attitude, word, and action. We repent; we turn; we embrace your resurrection life with a view to representing you, reflecting you, displaying you to the world around us. Have mercy, Lord. May many in the unreached people groups of the world, many who do not yet have the written Scriptures in their own language, many in our own turbulent society, many in the networks of relationships represented by our own lives—may many hear and believe the good news of Jesus’ resurrection. May they enter into the life and the victory of the joyful cry, “He is risen!”
In the name of our risen Lord Jesus, all God’s people said, “Amen!”