Psalm 114:1-4

When Israel came out of Egypt,
the house of Jacob from a people of foreign tongue,
Judah became God’s sanctuary,
Israel his dominion.
The sea looked and fled,
the Jordan turned back;
The mountains skipped like rams,
the hills like lambs.

All day, I just wanted to get out. The park across the street beckoned. On sunny days it only seems natural to want to get outside—at least for part of the day. In January sunny warm days are a rarity in Ottawa, and this particular day was a real gem. There was no snow on the ground—an unheard-of phenomenon for this part of the country—at what is normally the coldest time of year. The thermometer was on the plus side of the ledger, and from dawn onward, warm sunshine was pouring down. Best of all, this January gem had landed on the weekend.

But a variety of chores and obligations kept me indoors. Finally at three thirty in the afternoon I was able to escape the confines of our home. But it was too late. Only moments before I stepped outside, the sun disappeared behind a thick cloud. Within an hour it sank below the horizon. My much-anticipated sunlit stroll through the park never happened. Actually, the stroll took place, but it transpired in an ever-deepening midwinter gloom.

Time works that way; it always works that way. If we don’t seize the moment, the moment escapes, never to be recaptured. We can try to make amends, or rearrange our schedule, but time is an unforgiving tyrant. It marches on, the sun sets. We will never have that day, hour, minute or moment again. We seize it or lose it. We catch the sun’s rays, when it shines, or we reap the gathering gloom.

Furthermore, events that occur in time can affect all of eternity. Catch the right moment and you change the course of the world. Seize the apex moment with God, and all of human history will be transformed. That familiar old maxim is true. Timing is everything

Here in Psalm 114 we find an apex moment. Moses seized that apex moment—the ideal instant in time—and as a consequence a nation was set free. Israel, the nation, was born in that apex moment.

“When Israel came out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of foreign tongue, Judah became God’s sanctuary, Israel his dominion.”

Moses was first summoned by God at the burning bush, and despite his hesitance, he responded to the LORD’s call. His full obedience to that call resulted in his people’s deliverance from the yoke of cruel oppression. There was a perfect timing—a divine timing—in all this. Deliverance did not come a moment too soon or arrive a moment too late. The LORD is always right on time.

We are the ones who are impatient, who miss the moment, who come too early or show up too late. Young Moses suffered from this problem too. His timing was off. He harboured ambitions of delivering his people. He wanted to rescue them. And why not? He saw their desperate need. He wanted to help. He was both a son of Pharaoh’s daughter, and a son of Israel. Moses bridged these two communities. Surely, as a man of position and influence raised in Pharaoh’s household, he could use that influence to bring about change. But unfettered ambition can be impetuous. After murdering an Egyptian taskmaster, Moses fled in fear for his life.

Moses had jumped the gun. On his own strength, he had raced ahead of God. He was fuelled by good intentions, but his ill-conceived attempt at helping his people ended in disaster and disgrace. For forty years he lived as a guilt-ridden fugitive in the Desert of Sinai. His self-generated efforts were out of sync with God. Forty years is a long time. Sometimes it takes a long time to get right timing—to get into God’s timing.

Finally, when the time was right, it was God who got Moses. Now that is a strange reversal. Typically, we see a need, and we then go and enlist God to help us rectify the situation. But here it was God who initiated the project. This rescue mission was the LORD’s idea, and it would be done His way, on His timetable, under His leadership. The LORD made this perfectly clear in his introductory remarks to Moses at the burning bush. Speaking of the suffering Israelites He says, “I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up and out of that land into a good land, a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8).

Unlike Moses’ earlier clumsy attempt at national deliverance, this time, this was solely the LORD’s rescue mission; it was His project. Moses was invited to join the operation, or he could sit on the sidelines.

The formerly eager Moses almost chose the sidelines.

Take a moment to consider this. How many needs do you see? How many well-intentioned projects do you take on? And now ask yourself, how many of these projects are first conceived in the heart of God? How many are initiated by Him? There is a vast difference between what is self-initiated and that which is God-initiated. Has the LORD summoned you to the burning bush? Or are you busy trying to enlist Him to your well-intentioned causes?

There is no room for personal ambition at the burning bush. Perhaps that was the reason for Moses’ reluctance to sign on for this divine rescue mission. He had already tried and failed to bring deliverance, and now the LORD wanted him to take up the cause again. But this time Moses would not be in charge. The LORD would be calling all the plays. Personal pride would need to be sent to the sidelines.

I doubt that among the descendants of Israel, the LORD could have found a more reluctant leader than Moses. Moses spent a full chapter and a half in the Book of Exodus trying to wheedle his way out of this divine assignment. Finally, in Exodus 4:13 we read: “Moses begged, ‘LORD, please send someone else to do it'” (CEV).

If I was Moses and the LORD had tapped me for this assignment, I too may have been reluctant. I might have had a few choice questions for the LORD. I think the first question would have been, “Where have you been for the last eighty years? It’s nice for you to show up now, LORD, but this suffering has been going on for a very long time. My people have been whipped and mistreated, and their babies have been tossed in the Nile. Where have you been, LORD? I think your timing is off.

And where were you, LORD, when I tried to get something going forty years ago? I could have used your help back then. Now you show up forty years after the fact. Suddenly you’re a convert to the cause—a late comer. Welcome on board. But aside from your heavenly status, I am not sure why you should be the one in charge of this Hebrew rescue mission?”

These questions may be crudely put, but I suspect that below the surface they were percolating in Moses’ mind. Fortunately for the Hebrews, I was not living in Moses’ skin, or they might still be stuck in the slime pits of Egypt.

But this was a different Moses, than the rash young man, who fled to the Sinai Desert forty years earlier. Perhaps it was time spent in the wilderness that liberated Moses from the tyranny of self. His personal agenda now lay buried under the shifting sands of time. Youthful self-assurance yielded at last to the Master’s plan. When this hard earthen vessel finally removed his shoes in submission, the LORD could use him. The old Moses was dead—dead and buried. The new Moses—the Moses of the burning bush—was at last pliable in the Master’s hands. 

Forty years earlier Moses had buried the Egyptian taskmaster beneath the sands of Egypt. Now the self-confident, I’ll-do-it-myself Moses, the do-it-my-way Moses was finally laid to rest beneath the desert sands of Sinai. 

God is accustomed to using dead men. In fact, it can be argued that they are His preferred instruments to accomplish His purpose in the world. Dead men don’t take credit for the sovereign work of God. They don’t swell with pride. Dead men don’t argue with the Master over His chosen course of action. Dead men don’t frighten easily. They don’t shrink back when they are asked to do the impossible. Dead men don’t give up when the going gets tough. Only dead men are fully in sync with God’s timing.

God can use dead men. He did not use Abraham to become the father of the faithful until the apex moment—until Abraham was “as good as dead … so from this one man … came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore (Hebrews 11:12).

Figuratively, Isaac the son of promise needed to die on the hill of sacrifice. Out of death came life—life in harmony with God. Jacob’s grasping ambition died at Peniel. Joseph’s dreams of glory died a thousand deaths before Israel and his sons bowed before the master of all of Egypt. When at last the strong arm of the flesh is dead and buried, there is room for the life of God to spring forth.

Headstrong, impetuous Peter needed to hear the third crow from the rooster before his heart broke. Only then was he fully ready to yield to the master’s touch. All his self-deceiving, self-aggrandising ambition needed to die. His rancid sinful nature was a stench in the very nostrils of God. The old man—the old egotistical Peter—was finally buried in the tomb right along with the body of Jesus. The old man was dead.

A new life awaited. The resurrected Jesus raised a new Peter to a new life—a life infused with the Spirit of God—a new life moving in God’s perfect timing.

The grave is the best place for our bloated sinful nature. It is always out of sync with God. It loves to dictate to God. The sinful nature, by its very nature, always feels it knows best. Like the pre-Pentecost Peter, our fleshly nature always believes it lives and moves in God’s timing. But the only god it serves is the god of self.

No one understood this truth better than Paul the apostle. The old Paul—Saul of Tarsus—died on the road to Damascus. So, it was this new man—the new Paul—who wrote, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

When Moses died to himself and his worldly ambitions, God could use him for His eternal purpose. He became a vessel of honor, fit for the master’s use. The new Moses was infused with life and power from on high. It was the new Moses who led Israel out of Egypt.

“When Israel came out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of foreign tongue, Judah became God’s sanctuary, Israel his dominion.”

Have you come out of Egypt? Have you left the world and its enticements behind? Or are you still under pharaoh’s jurisdiction, within Satan’s domain? Are you a slave to the same old taskmasters? Have you crossed the Red Sea? In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul likens this passing through the sea to Christian baptism.

Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life (Romans 6:3-4).

When we come out of Egypt, God can come in. When the old man is dead and buried, the new life of Christ can be formed within us. When we have crossed the sea, our hearts become God’s sanctuary, His habitation. We have renounced the world and its ways; we are now citizens in His dominion. When God comes in, everything changes.

“When … Judah became God’s sanctuary, Israel his dominion … the sea looked and fled, the Jordan turned back; the mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs.”

When God is present, He changes everything. When our time is aligned with God’s time, we are in the apex moment. Anything is possible. The seas flee—the sea of worry, the sea of doubt, the sea of guilt. They all flee away at the presence of the LORD. Mountains of heartache and trouble begin to skip away. They skip right out of sight. The God of the impossible casts them into the heart of the sea.

When God is present my needs are met; God’s purpose is accomplished. There is joy. I am God’s dwelling place—His sanctuary. He has dominion here. The old, rancid, sinful man is dead—dead and buried. Christ has arisen in me. I am in God’s timing. It is as Jesus says, “Everything is possible for him who believes” (Mark 9:23).

The Son is shining. The LORD is here.

Bringing Life to the Psalms

1. Have there been instances in your life where you have caught the apex moment with God? Reflect on those times. Were there preconditions of the heart or your attitude that brought you into right timing with God? What is the role of God’s sovereign grace during such times?
2. Many believers have not been baptized. Have you buried the old man—your sinful nature—through baptism? Have you been resurrected with Christ to a new life? Are you still struggling with sin? Baptism can act as a clear break with the old life. Take time to read Romans 6:1-14. New life begins on the other side of the sea.
3. Are you trying to enlist God to your well-intentioned causes? Have you taken on tasks without hearing from God first? Examine your life in the light of God’s calling. Weed out what has not been planted by God. We are all called to fulfill God’s purpose for our lives. Remember, if the LORD is giving you an assignment, He will direct and empower you. It may be your assignment, but it will always be His project—His mission. Be sure to do it His way.

Today’s post is Chapter 20 from the book Psalms Alive! Connecting Heaven & Earth by David Kitz. To find out more or purchase click here.