“The Lord lives! Praise to my Rock! May the God of my salvation be exalted! He is the God who pays back those who harm me; he subdues the nations under me and rescues me from my enemies. You hold me safe beyond the reach of my enemies; you save me from violent opponents.”
Psalm 18:46-48 NLT
David is coming to the end of his song written to the Lord. A song of deliverance from all his enemies. A song full of lyrics about all that God has done for him. And in verse 46 David bursts out in a declaration of praise with a verse that has since formed the chorus of the song “I Will Call Upon The Lord”, popularised in the early 1980’s, and still sung in our churches today.
David expressed that “The Lord lives“. David knew this as a fact because time and time again God had been there for him when he was in a place of danger, saving him from his enemies in a land of violence, intrigue and political instability. The nations around Israel worshiped “gods” of their own making, idols designed to pander to their evil ways, but powerless to offer their worshipers any form of protection or the ability to, as David wrote, “pay back those who harm me” and “rescue me from my enemies”. And the problem for the Jews, God’s chosen people, was that they too had a tendency to abandon the one true God, and join in the worship of these idols as well. But not David. He stood tall and true, never abandoning the Lord who protected and saved him from his enemies.
We pilgrims know that the Lord is real, alive, and always there for us. For many of us, John 3:16 is a verse that describes why we are believers in the living Lord. A dead “god” would not be interested in taking the initiative and providing an escape route for mankind out of a life of evil and sinful ways, and expressing an eternal love for those that an idol could not have created. God warned the Israelites about idolatry and we read in Deuteronomy 4:28 what would happen if they abandoned Him. “There, in a foreign land, you will worship idols made from wood and stone—gods that neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell“. An idol is a dead manmade object that has no power within it at all, and many idols are worshiped even today. Not perhaps objects that we imagine to be like statues or some inanimate object in a shrine, but belongings such as cars or similar that cost us money to buy, and take up our time to maintain, time that would be more productively spent in the presence of God and His purposes.
We pilgrims offer our praises to the One who has saved us and delivered us from a life of sin through Jesus the Son of God. Instead of heading for a lost eternity we will instead find ourselves in God’s presence, forever saved from our enemies. And we too sing a song of deliverance, exalting the God of our salvation. Near the end of his life, the Apostle Paul wrote to his protégé Timothy, “ … the Lord will deliver me from every evil attack and will bring me safely into his heavenly Kingdom. All glory to God forever and ever! Amen” (2 Timothy 4:18). And so it is with us. We too can proclaim as Paul did the certainty that God, the living God, the only true God, will bring us home safe and sound. To some it won’t be long before they experience God for real. To others it will be what seems to be a lifetime away. But happen it will as we continue to trust in the God who lives.
Dear God. You are the living God and we used to sing a song proclaiming “Jesus is alive today”. Be exalted in our praises we pray. Amen.
Being a Pilgrim 