Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Calm in the Crisis | The Writings | Psalm 114

Episode Date: November 12, 2024

Are you in a crisis? Are you giving your oxygen to things that God is control of? How can we be grounded in peace when our lives are shaken? In today's episode, Tanya shares how Psalm 114 encourages us to remember that God is in control, even in our crises. Prepare your heart this Advent with the 2024 TMBT Advent Calendar! Each day, receive a new prompt for Scripture, prayer, and reflection—designed to help you slow down and reflect on the Hope, Love, Peace, and Joy that Jesus offers. Sign up now to receive your free Advent calendar! Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Psalm 114

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmuth. As I'm writing this, there's a public relations crisis in the U.S. centered around McDonald's quarter-pounders. See, sources believe that it's the slivered onions and not the beef on the burgers. They gave people E. coli and unfortunately caused 49 illnesses and one death. Now, we know that the public relations team at McDonald's is working overtime right now. Their job is to focus on what's getting the most oxygen, and today it's the onions. But you know what a public relations professional's greatest gift is? A new crisis. A new crisis that pops up and takes the oxygen elsewhere.

Now, a classic example happened in the 2017 United Airlines passenger dragging incident. In April of that year, a video surfaced, and it showed a passenger who was forcibly removed from an overbooked flight. So the footage quickly went viral. It drew widespread outrage. There was a call for boycotts, questions about United's policies, customer treatment. And United's initial PR response was widely criticized as being insensitive, which just escalated the backlash. However, within a week, media attention shifted to other issues. See, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization issued an urgent warning about a hunger crisis affecting 20 million people. They reported that

Without intentional intervention, millions would face our vision within the next six months. In addition, they were growing global security concerns surrounding North Korea's nuclear program, which had escalated significantly since the beginning of 2017. So these concurrent events rapidly shifted public and media attention away from the United Airlines crisis and underscored how quickly intense public scrutiny can be redirected. What about you? What about in your life? What's soaking up all of your oxygen right now?

Maybe you're in the middle of a crisis, and a large amount of your attention and mental energy is taken up by it. Maybe you're anxious about something you can't really control or predict. Maybe that is stealing your joy. Maybe you're worried about a change that you have looming ahead. Maybe you're worried about a person in your life that's on a bad path. The good news is most of us aren't PR folks. And we don't have to always be chasing the oxygen.

We can live more peaceful, more joyful, more intentional lives instead of playing whack-a-mole. But how and why this is possible? In Psalm 114, the psalmist praises God for the way he completely turned to the tables when three seeming crisis situations threatened to take over the Israelites. What seemed like absolute barriers were no match for God and his power. I'm going to read you this short Psalm. It's only 16 verses. And I want you to listen to the way the psalmist describes the sea and the mountain and the rock.

Then we're going to talk about how these events relate to three of our greatest internal crises. Fear of change, fear of opposition, and fear of death. Psalm 114. When Israel went out from Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of a strange language, Judah became his sanctuary. Israel, his dominion. The sea looked and fled. Jordan turned back.

The mountains skipped like rams. The hills like lambs. What ails you, oh, sea that you flee? Oh, Jordan that you turn back. Oh, mountains that you skip like rams. Oh, 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. See, the psalmist is using personification to illustrate how when Israel escaped from Egypt, things that seemed like absolute barriers were removed by God. I wonder what the people were thinking, when Moses led them around and toward the Red Sea. This seems to be a point of no return for Israel. First, how are you going to cross it?

And second, how are you going to get back after you do cross it? There were many times the Israelites would grumble and tell Moses they wished they were back in Egypt. Not only was to see a mighty barrier in front of them. but the Egyptians were hot on their heels. In Exodus, the scene unfolds like this. Moses stretched at his hand over the sea, and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land and the waters were divided. The Israelites walked across on dry land, but once they were safely across, God made the sea cover the Egyptians. Pharaoh's chariots and his chosen officers were sunk, drowned in the Red Sea. The floods covered them and they went down into the depths like a stone.

See, the Red Sea wasn't an actual barrier. It was created by God. It was used by God. And it reported to God. Like the psalmist says in 114. Oh, see, why did you turn back? Oh, yeah, because of God. Then when the people were in the desert and they were tired and thirsty,

they were afraid of death. They complained to Moses. They said they'd rather go back to Egypt and live as slaves for the rest of their lives than die of thirst in the wilderness. And God provided a rock. that spewed water for them to drink. Again, when Joshua was leading the people out of the wilderness, they had to cross the Jordan River, and this time, the fear was about the opposition on the other side. See, the Palestine army was on the other side, and they were reportedly much bigger and stronger than the Israelites.

But when they got to the banks of the Jordan, it wasn't a barrier either. The psalmist asks, Oh, Jordan, why did you turn back? And Joshua, chapter three explains how the water coming down from above stood and rose like a heap while the people cross the Jordan on dry land. But we, we get shaken when we give all of our oxygen to things that seem like barriers, when we give all of our attention to things that rattle us. Deadlines. Change. When we worry about what people are thinking, when we're rocked by fear of failure, when we don't get what we want. But the psalma says God's care for us causes the whole earth to shake. The ultimate example of this comes when the whole earth shook at Jesus' death and resurrection, indicating God's power to save us from our

greatest crises, sin and death. To get us to our eternal home with him, he will shake and destroy death itself. First Corinthians 15 talks about the resurrection and repeats from Josea, Oh, death, where's your victory? Oh, death, where's your sting? Now, I'm not. I'm not. going to tell you that singing a psalm that personifies the sea and the mountains is going to change your life in an instant. But I do believe that building our lives every day on God's Word and his care that endures through all earthly obstacles will change our lives. We are easily shaken, but God's Word grounds us and it roots us in his love that never fades. In 1 Corinthians, Paul writes, therefore be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the

Lord, your labor is not in vain, knowing he will shake and defeat death. Let nothing else take your attention and devotion away from him. Keep your eyes on the prize, and let the other things find their rightful place in God's bigger story.