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\u201cWhy was it, O sea, that you fled, O Jordan, that you turned back, you mountains, that you skipped like rams, you hills like lambs? (Psalm 114:5-6).

Let\u2019s begin with some things Pastor Anthony said yesterday about Psalm 113. That psalm asks: \u201cWho is like the Lord our God?\u201d Answer? No one. Nothing. Our God is utterly unique. And in his Son Jesus Christ, we get an even better look at him. He did not consider equality with God as something to be used to his own advantage but instead became nothing. The highest of the high, the utterly transcendent, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God was born into this world as the lowest of the low: the baby out-of-wedlock of a poor peasant couple from the Podunk frontier town of Nazareth.

Why did our God take such a lowly path? To raise us up to the highest heights with him, that\u2019s why.\xa0 It was Israel who was first brought up from their poverty and need in Egypt: they were set free and made into a people.

Among Jews, Psalms 113 & 114 are recited at the beginning of the Passover meal. Why did God's people choose this Psalm to remember the victory of their God?

Because it puts the eaters smack dab in the middle of the great saving acts of God. With vivid simplicity the psalm proclaims what happens when God shows up.

Showing up in power, his first act is to choose Israel both for His sanctuary and His kingdom. Thus, if anyone else in all the earth wants to meet God or observe life in his realm, all they need do is show up in Israel.

All contrary powers are driven from the field by His appearance. The chaotic powers that put salvation in question must flee before Him. In His presence the mountains- the symbols of all that is solid, durable-quake.

God's mighty salvific work is proclaimed by all the facts that are brought together in this weighty hymn. When Israel is thirsty, God offers her water from the rocks and desert sands. When she is hungry, she can pluck birds out of the air and bread from the ground.

God provides for those who are near Him. The elements of creation react to the powerful appearance of God. Because they move before God's coming, Israel's passage into the Promised Land stretches out before her. All this and more are remembered as the Jews sit down to eat the Passover meal.

Do you know why Christians choose to worship on the first day of the week rather than the Jewish seventh? The early Christians saw Easter as our Exodus. As much as the Exodus from Egypt shaped the imagination, the memory, and the living faith of Old Testament Israel, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, shapes the imagination, the memory, and the living faith of the church.

As much as the Exodus was the birth of Israel, so Easter is the birth of the church. And as much as Israel was God's dominion and sanctuary in the Old Testament, we believe the church is God's kingdom and sanctuary today.

Thus, if anyone else in all the earth wants to meet God or observe life in His Kingdom, all they need do is find the church of Jesus.

There Psalms are recited as the opening of the Passover meal. They helped the eaters enter the story of God, their story. We worship Jesus today to enter the story of Easter, to make it our story.

How does Easter shape your life? How will living in the presence of the God who raised Jesus from the dead, impact your life today?