Psalm 124
I have specific memories of particularly difficult times in my life. I have never experienced the horrors of war or famine or natural disasters, but nevertheless, the emotional stress I have experienced in certain times of my life has been intense.
I remember a time in seminary when I was completely overwhelmed. I had finals to study for and papers to write. It seemed that these alone would be too much for me. But, as I recall, a girlfriend had just broken off our relationship and I was feeling very much rejected. In addition, there were issues with ministry in a new church that had been started. All of this mounted together to make me feel quite lost.
Later in life, when I was working in the business world, I was in the process of selling my business and the negotiations became very intense. I was at a trade show in Chicago and tying down the last details was incredibly difficult. I had to read through the 10 centimeter thick document multiple times, seeing if there were any last minute changes to be made. I had to get the agreement of some key employees to help with the transfer of technology to the new company or the deal would fall through. And on top of this, my extended family was gathered for a family wedding and a memorial service for my mother’s sister. My mother and her sister were very difficult women and the service was painful as ugly family dynamics came to the surface and cruel accusations were made. I was hanging on by my fingernails during this week.
More recently, in 2010 when the Moroccan government deported 150 foreign Christians, including the parents of the children at the Village of Hope, I went through a very difficult time, grieving the loss of these people and fearing that I too would be suddenly deported without due process. That year might be the most difficult year of my life.
Our stories will be different, but I am certain that each of us could talk about very difficult times in our lives when we have been overwhelmed, anxious, and fearful.
Psalm 124 is a psalm of David, written when he reflected back on a difficult time in his life.
Let me paint the background for the scene of the psalm. King Saul was jealous of David’s success and popularity and wanted to kill him. So for four or five years, David had to hide in the desert and hills, being chased by Saul and his army. Being on the run was wearying and David wanted to be more settled, so we come to 1 Samuel 27:1–3
But David thought to himself, “One of these days I will be destroyed by the hand of Saul. The best thing I can do is to escape to the land of the Philistines. Then Saul will give up searching for me anywhere in Israel, and I will slip out of his hand.”
2 So David and the six hundred men with him left and went over to Achish son of Maoch king of Gath. 3 David and his men settled in Gath with Achish. Each man had his family with him, and David had his two wives
David was now living with the enemies of Israel under the protection of Achish, King of Gath, one of the five Philistine cities. Achish was a young king at the time because forty years later he was still king when Solomon was king of Israel. I suspect he admired David, who was about ten years older than he was. And it is obvious that David was quite an actor. He convinced Achish that because Saul was trying to kill him, he was now the enemy of Israel. This was not an easy task because Goliath, whom David had killed ten or so years earlier, had been living in Gath.
But David was able to pull this off and for a year he lived in Ziglag, a small town outside of Gath, where he had some independence. He began raiding cities to the south but convinced Achish that he was raiding Israeli cities. To keep up this pretense, David took a pragmatic approach and killed all the eyewitnesses. In each city he raided, he killed all the men, women, and children. This makes 1 Samuel 27 one of the worst chapters of the Bible for me. There is nothing of God’s judgment in this to soften the harshness of what David did. This was simple expediency. David killed innocent people to make his life easier.
Because Achish thought David was raiding Israeli cities, he was more and more convinced that David was cutting his ties to Israel and could be trusted. David thought he was in fine shape until the kings of the cities of Phillistia decided to go to war against Israel and then David was trapped. Achish came to David to tell him he had to come with him to battle against Israel, and now what was David going to do? He had been telling lies and now he was caught by them. David, for whom lies came so easily, bought time for himself by agreeing to go into battle against his own people.
Fortunately, when they set out to battle, the other Philistine commanders questioned the loyalty of David and told Achish he had to be left behind. Achish was young and impressionable, but the other kings were older and wiser and wanted nothing to do with David.
David got out of this jam but got back to Ziglag to find that the Amalakites had raided Ziglag and taken everything with them, including the women and children. So while the Philistines set out for battle against Saul and Jonathan, David set out for the Amalakite raiding party. David was successful but the army of Israel was defeated and Saul and Jonathan were killed. This was a terrible defeat for Israel and a great victory for Phillistia. From the Philistine perspective, they had squashed this Israeli thorn in their side and were now in control of the region.
After the death of Saul and Jonathan, David returned to Israel and was enthroned as king. When the Philistines heard about this, they gathered their army and set up a strategic assault against David. Their thinking was probably that they had defeated Israel and now it was better to crush David, who they knew from when he lived with them. He had deceived them and now it was time to deal decisively with him before he gathered strength.
So the army that had defeated Saul and all his troops now came against a weakened Israel with David as leader. This was a very difficult moment and it is the difficult time that David is remembering in his psalm. The odds were against him. Would he too be defeated? David had been anointed king fifteen years earlier by the prophet Samuel but was this to be the extent of his reign as king? Running from Saul and then being defeated in his first real battle? This was David’s defining moment.
The Philistines strategically placed themselves in the Valley of Rephaim where they cut David off from reinforcements from Judah. I can imagine the Philistines felt pretty confident and perhaps they did not come against David with all of their strength. They had defeated a larger army and did not think it would be very difficult to defeat David with his ragtag army. But David did defeat them and they went home with a determination to return with everything they had. They placed themselves, once again, in the Valley of Rephaim. They were not taking victory for granted this time and were stronger and better prepared. This time they would not be defeated. And in this second battle God gave David some strategy. He told him to take his army around and come from behind them and wait for the sound of marching in the trees. When they heard the sound of marching, they attacked and the Philistines were defeated a second time. The detail of a sound in the trees like marching troops is a clear indication that God was fighting for them against the Philistines.
With these two victories, David was firmly established as King of Israel. David looks back at that moment in Psalm 124 and reflects:
1 If the Lord had not been on our side—
let Israel say—
2 if the Lord had not been on our side
when men attacked us,
3 when their anger flared against us,
they would have swallowed us alive;
4 the flood would have engulfed us,
the torrent would have swept over us,
5 the raging waters
would have swept us away.
You can picture David reading this psalm to a large crowd gathered to celebrate this victory. David read the first line If the Lord had not been on our side, and then the crowd shouted back, If the Lord had not been on our side.
Israel had been crushed in a major defeat and had lost Saul and Jonathan as well as much of the army. Many families were grieving the loss of their fathers, husbands, and sons. Were they optimistic when David went out into battle? I would guess there was not a lot of hope to be found.
But then, to the delight of Israel, David and his army decisively defeated the Philistines. The loss had been avenged. They would be able to protect themselves in the future from raids. There was good reason to celebrate and to David’s credit, he did not claim victory for himself. If the Lord had not been on our side David began his psalm, but it is the last verse that is the key to this psalm: verse 8:
Our help is in the name of the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
David gave the glory for the victory to God and rightly so, because it was God who directed him and gave him the victory.
But I want to turn our attention to the question of how it was that God directed David.
When David was made king the Philistines set out to destroy him. David heard about this and retreated to the stronghold he had recently conquered – which later became known as Jerusalem. When the Philistines came and spread out in the Valley of Rephaim, (2 Samuel 5:19)
David inquired of the Lord, “Shall I go and attack the Philistines? Will you hand them over to me?”
The Lord answered him, “Go, for I will surely hand the Philistines over to you.”
What does inquired of the Lord mean? The system used by Israel to hear what God was telling them to do was to have a bag, what was called an ephod, in which were two objects, perhaps a white stone and a black stone. A question was asked that could be answered by yes or no and then the stone was pulled out of the ephod to see how God answered the question. This system was given by God to Moses: (Exodus 28:30)
Also put the Urim and the Thummim in the breastpiece, so they may be over Aaron’s heart whenever he enters the presence of the Lord. Thus Aaron will always bear the means of making decisions for the Israelites over his heart before the Lord.
So David asked, Shall I go and attack the Philistines? Will you hand them over to me?” and the priest pulled the yes stone out of the bag. With this confidence, David set out and was victorious. When the Philistines regrouped and came again to attack David and his army, David once again inquired of the Lord. I’m not sure how the question was asked, but the answer David received was:
“Do not go straight up, but circle around behind them and attack them in front of the balsam trees. 24 As soon as you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the balsam trees, move quickly, because that will mean the Lord has gone out in front of you to strike the Philistine army.”
Once again David was successful and there was a clear sense that God had gone before them, putting fear into the Philistines.
Don’t you wish we had an ephod? If I had an ephod and could give you clear direction from God to every yes or no question you asked, I think I would be very busy. Imagine how helpful it would be to know from God what school to go to, what job to get, who to marry, should we have another child, should I take this vacation? Can I trust this person? Should I move? How could you go wrong with such clear direction? And yet David often went wrong because he did not seek direction from God.
David inquired of the Lord after Ziglag had been raided by the Amalakites (1 Samuel 30:8)
David inquired of the Lord, “Shall I pursue this raiding party? Will I overtake them?”
“Pursue them,” he answered. “You will certainly overtake them and succeed in the rescue.”
But David did not inquire of the Lord if he should move to Ziglag in the first place. When David was hiding from Saul in the desert and hills, (1 Samuel 27:1–3)
David thought to himself, “One of these days I will be destroyed by the hand of Saul. The best thing I can do is to escape to the land of the Philistines. Then Saul will give up searching for me anywhere in Israel, and I will slip out of his hand.”
David was a clever man. He had a good head on his shoulders. He knew how to think quickly in emergencies. So he relied on himself and acted on what he thought was a good idea. David did not inquire of the Lord if it would be a good idea to raid villages and kill all the inhabitants so there would be no eyewitnesses. Later in his life David did not inquire of the Lord if it would be a good idea to find out who it was that was bathing on the roof of a house near his palace. And he did not inquire of the Lord if it would be a good idea to have Uriah killed to cover up his adultery with Bathsheba.
When it came to battles, David inquired of the Lord. But otherwise he seemed to do whatever he thought best, whatever he wanted, and he often got into deep trouble because of that. He inquired of the Lord if he should move back to Israel after Saul and his army had been defeated but he did not inquire of the Lord if he should marry all the women he did.
When David’s son Amnon raped his half-sister Tamar, the full-sister of Absalom, did David inquire of the Lord about what he should do? David did nothing and this led to the rebellion of Absalom against him a few years later. I wish David had consulted God more as he made decisions in his life.
Our help is in the name of the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
The application of this psalm to us is very clear. We need to look to God as we make decisions. Our path will be a lot smoother if we move forward in obedience to the direction we receive from him.
Proverbs 14:12 warns us:
There is a way that seems right to a man,
but in the end it leads to death.
We don’t know what lies ahead of us, but God does. What seems a good decision to us may not take into account future events and may end up being a bad decision. There is not a guarantee that seeking God’s help in the decisions we make will prevent us from making mistakes, but we will have a much smoother path to walk if we do seek God’s help.
A second application is that we need to hang on to Jesus in difficult situations. Regardless of how difficult they are, if we hang on, we will come, eventually, to a place from where we can look back and see how God took care of us. There will always be a point when we can look back and praise God.
In the moment we need to express our pain and sorrow and grief and anxiety and frustration and anger and whatever else we are feeling. David did that in other psalms. But when we hold on, we will inevitably be brought to a place where we can sing, “Great is your faithfulness,
O God my Father;” God will always bring us through difficult situations. God will bring us safely through. That is the message of Psalm 121.
There is, however, one nagging problem. How do we figure out what God wants us to do? Would you like me to come with an ephod next week and take your chance on a yes or no answer? The ephod was used by God to direct his people, but now we have an ephod upgrade, an ephod replacement. It is not simply ephod 2.1, it is a brand new product. At Pentecost the Holy Spirit was sent and we no longer need an ephod to figure out what we should do.
Is this an improvement? Well, in terms of simplicity, it may seem a step back. It was so easy to ask a simple question and get an answer. But now, when I ask God what I should do, the answer is not so immediate and clear cut.
Why does the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives make it more difficult to figure out God’s will for us? The answer is that God wants us to grow in faith and the clear cut answers of the ephod is not the way faith develops. The development of our faith is more important than getting quick answers to our questions.
It takes more work but God does want us to hear from him. God does want to direct us and lead us to make good decisions. So let me share five ways God directs us. These are taken from the Alpha Course taught by Nicky Gumbel. He calls them the five CS’s: Commanding Scripture, Compelling Spirit, Common Sense, Counsel of the Saints, and Circumstantial Signs.
We are led by Commanding Scripture. Scripture leads us in many cases into what we should do. If I am so angry I want to kill someone, the Bible clearly tells me I am not to murder someone and in fact I need to learn why it is I am so angry and forgive the one who has offended me. There is a lot about my Christian life that I learn from what the Bible has to say.
We are led by a Compelling Spirit. There are many things in life about which the Bible does not speak. Choosing a college or job is not something the Bible speaks about. To take a train or drive to Marrakech is not a choice the Bible will help you with. But the Holy Spirit speaks into our lives and guides us. The tragedy is that most of the time we are not listening. But even so, the Holy Spirit continues to speak to us, encouraging us to follow a path that will lead to God. We can receive a sense that a particular decision is the right decision for us to make.
We are expected to use our Common Sense. God gave us a mind and we are expected to use it to make good decisions. We can make a list of pros and cons for the choices we face and come to good conclusions. God gave us a mind and expects us to use it.
We are expected to seek the Counsel of the Saints, which means asking for advice from other Christians. There is a wealth of experience and knowledge in the body of Christ. Your brothers and sisters in Christ have learned a path of obedience and can help you as you make your way.
And Nicky Gumbel says, we are to pay attention to Circumstantial Signs. God uses circumstances to lead us and direct us. If you think you should marry a certain woman but she says no, that is a pretty clear sign. In less direct ways, circumstances also guide us. Daniel Defoe in Robinson Crusoe said we need to pay attention to the little details of life because that is how God often leads us.
Most often, we will use two or more of these CS’s as we seek to discern God’s will for us. There are many ways God will direct us but the point is that we have to seek his will. Christians can make two critical mistakes. One is to move ahead and make decisions without asking for God’s guidance. This is what David often did. A second critical mistake is to become paralyzed, unable to act, because we are waiting for a supernatural response to our request for direction and we fail to use our common sense and the counsel of friends.
I contend that Christians make decisions like anyone else in the world. We talk with friends, do some research, make a list of pros and cons. The difference is that Christians approach the decision making process in submission to God, being willing to do whatever God wants us to do. Because of our values, what the world considers a pro, we may consider a con. The teaching of the Bible influences what we consider important, but the process of making a decision is not so different from the way the world operates.
The point is that we bring our decisions before God and ask him for his help as we decide what to do. David got into trouble over and over again because he did what he thought right without consulting God. When we move ahead making decisions for ourselves without being in submission to God and asking him what he wants us to do, we can also find ourselves stepping into unwanted trouble.
Are you facing major decisions in your life? Let me ask you, are you willing to do whatever God tells you to do? Or are some options off the table? The first challenge is to submit to God and be willing to do whatever he leads you to do. If you say you are seeking God but are just going through the motions of doing so because you have already made up your mind about what to do, spare yourself the effort. It is time to break your will and submit to God who knows far better what is good for you.
Talk with friends and get their advice. Make a list of the pros and cons of the decision. What does that analysis tell you? Do you sense the peace of God about the decision you are making? Can you sense any direction from the circumstances of your life? As you read your Bible each day, does what you are reading have anything to say about the decision in front of you?
Remember that God does want to direct you. And God wants you to grow in faith in the process. So this is my encouragement to you. Bring your decisions to God and pray he will help you act with wisdom. Use your mind with your will submitted to Jesus.
And when you find yourself in difficult situations, hang on. Keep seeking God’s wisdom and help. You will be led to a place where you can look back and give praise to God who worked lovingly and patiently in your life.
