October 28thPsalm 124
The odds were all against us
What are our expectations of God? Do we believe God is on our side and thus will keep us from trial and difficulty? Our life experience, even as people of faith, tells us differently. Our psalm reminds us that life is difficult. All week long we get news of family crises, of career disappointments, of pessimistic news of world events. The life of discipleship is hazardous work.
Some worshipers claim that following Jesus solves all believers’ problems. If faith is only deep enough, they at least suggest, God takes all problems away. By contrast, the poet implies that following the Lord doesn’t guarantee an easy life. People do sometimes attack and threaten God’s sons and daughters’ well-being. Were God not on our side, those assaults might destroy us.
The psalmist uses three vivid illustrations to describe the hazards of the life of faith. First, the people were in danger of being ‘swallowed up alive.’ (vs. 3).Perhaps this was a remembrance of when the people were ‘swallowed up’ (Jeremiah 51.24) by the Babylonian empire, her sons and daughters shipped off the empire’s capitol there to serve the empires wishes (see Daniel 1-6).
The second image (vs.4-5) is of dangerous flood-waters threatening death by drowning. In ancient Palestine water-courses are connected by an intricate gravitational system. A sudden storm fills the gullies and in moment a torrential flash flood ensues. There seems no escape. One minute you are happy and content making plans for the future; the next minute your entire world is disarranged by a catastrophe. (The recent hurricanes in the U.S.’ East Coast illustrate this vividly).
The third image (vs.7) emphasizes the narrowness of worshipers’ escape from their assailants. Israel has escaped by the “skin of her teeth.” Like a bird that escapes a hunter’s trap because the trap has broken, so worshipers have escaped their enemies’ trap because God freed them.
The grammar and imagery of the first 5 verses is crucial here. There are two “if’s” and three “then’s” in those verses. “If the Lord had not been on our side… if the Lord had not been on our side….” The repetition suggests a shudder of horror at the thought. Given what we were facing, we would have been absolutely defeated.
And then the psalmist highlights the three “then’s” and the vivid imagery help us understand Israel’s certainty that God was indeed on their side. “If Yahweh had not been on our side when men attacked us, when their anger flared against us, then they would have swallowed us alive; then the flood would have engulfed us, the torrent would have swept over us, then the raging waters would have swept us away.”
This Psalm can be said by all God’s people, no matter what their circumstances. We all face times of intense hostility from others, moments in which we feel swept away by a flood of pain, grief, or betrayal. It is the stuff of life in the world.
And then the great affirmations of faith: ‘Blessed by the Lord who has not given us as prey…we have escaped.’ And then the triumphant final verse, ‘Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.’
It may be in our private devotions that we do not know how to begin. This psalm shows us that we can always begin by gratefully acknowledging what God has done. And supremely what God has done for us in Christ is to resurrect us from the power of evil and recreate us in the likeness of Christ. A robust Christian theology affirms that theology should not start from the Fall and human sinfulness, but from human’s creation in God’s likeness and image. What God loves, God will not abandon!
As the popular songs says:
No guilt in life, no fear in death
This is the power of Christ in me
From life's first cry to final breath
Jesus commands my destiny
No power of hell, no scheme of man
Can ever pluck me from His hand
Till He returns or calls me home
Here in the power of Christ I'll stand [Keith Getty]
In Christ Alone (Official Lyric Video) - Keith & Kristyn Getty ...