To be faithful, one must remember.To do our jobs, we must remember.To fulfil our God-given purpose, we must remember. We are not all equally blessed with memory; but memory can be improved.Something of our character is revealed by the things we choose to call to mind and strive to remember.
This is a psalm of remembrance. In just eight verses the writer dramatically calls to mind the entire trip from Egypt to Canaan.
He also metaphorically indicates how the believer should respond to God’s saving action in our lives.He says nothing of how humans are to respond, but in describing how nature has and should respond he is really calling on us to respond in a parallel manner.
Nature submits to God, it obeys.
The sea looked and fled; Jordan turned back. 4 The mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs. 5 What ails you, O sea, that you flee? O Jordan, that you turn back?
Our relationship with God is not all about getting what we want. It is rather about doing as he has commanded. Strange as it seems to most people, obedience is the right path to happiness. But, unfortunately, “Most people really do not mind serving God, as long as they serve him in an advisory capacity.”1
In light of what he has already done for us, this is a reasonable expectation. In light of the fact that his wisdom greatly exceeds ours, obedience will always lead to happiness, self-will to unhappiness. It is not about what we in our presumption bring to God, but about obedience.
And Samuel said, “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams. 23 For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king” (1 Sam 15:22-23).
It is not about an emotional, romantic kind of love, but about obedience.
“Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. 24 Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me (John 14:23-24).
Nature obeys God. So should we.
Nature responds to God with joy. O mountains, that you skip like rams? O hills, like lambs? (Ps 114:6)
There is a huge difference between grudging and joyful obedience. Ours is to be joyful obedience. Four of five commanded festivals under the Mosaic law were feasts, times of joy. In the New Testament we are told, Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice (Phil 4:4).
We are wrong if we think Christianity is about love wrongly defined or about joy in our own pleasures. But we are equally wrong if we fail to experience the joy that is to be found in Christ. True Christianity produces love and joy (Gal 5:22). Both love and joy are natural coefficients of godly obedience. Nature responds to God joyfully; so should we.
Nature responds to God with awe.
Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, 8 who turns the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a spring of water.
An emphasis on love and joy that removes our awareness of awe is a misguided understanding of the joy. There is always to be a degree of godly fear involved.2
1 Sorry, I cannot recall who said that.
2 I highly recommend chapter 7 of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. In that chapter, titled “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” Grahame has expressed in an imaginative and insightful way, what it means to delight and fear all at once.