God is Alive

“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.

“The wicked are too proud to seek God. They seem to think that God is dead. Yet they succeed in everything they do. They do not see your punishment awaiting them. They sneer at all their enemies. They think, “Nothing bad will ever happen to us! We will be free of trouble forever!””
Psalm 10:4-6 NLT

‭‭The statement “God is dead” is claimed by many for often simplistic reasons, the result of what they call rational thinking, or quoting a lack of scientific evidence to prove His existence. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was famously quoted for making this statement in one of his books, written in the late nineteenth century. But it is the arrogance of man that is really behind statements such as this. Modern thinking is that religion was acceptable for more primitive people, but those who were, and are, more “enlightened” know better, and the arrogant “God is dead” brigade attribute the physical world around us to chance happenings that have taken place over a very long period of time. Such people even concoct their own physical laws to fit their flawed observations.

Of course, once the idea of God has been taken out of people’s lives, then the whole basis of moral behaviour loses its foundations. As David wrote, “The wicked are too proud to seek God. They seem to think that God is dead” (Psalm 10:4). It was pride in David’s day, but add arrogance into the mix in our 21st Century world. People then, and still do today, believed that because God doesn’t immediately zap them when they do wrong then He cannot exist, and so they carry on in their sinful and evil ways. David was perplexed because such people even seemed to be highly successful in spite of their wickedness. 

Such short term thinking is extremely sad, because once the God-deniers find out that God does exist, they have two problems. The first is that they suddenly realise that they have been living a lie all their earthly lives, giving them a nasty shock now they know differently. Secondly, they find that they won’t have long to mourn over their evil ways and thinking, because as the first shock is still reverberating in their minds, a book will be opened, and their whole lives will be displayed before everyone. A Heavenly video of their every moment will be played, showing wrong thinking, evil behaviour, every wicked occasion, and eventually it will come to end with them standing before God Himself, waiting, but not for long. The judgement will be announced and their eternal sentence in hell commenced. David wrote, “They do not see your punishment awaiting them“.

For those people today who think that there will be just blackness awaiting them when they die, perhaps they should read Philippians 2:10-11, “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father“. ‭‭There will not be blackness but, instead, eternal life awaits those who believe God is dead in a place they don’t want to be.

It’s a grim topic, not heard much from the pulpits these days. In fact, when did we last hear a sermon preached about hell? The preachers of old used to dangle their congregants over the fires of hell, frightening them into believing in God. But today? Our churches contain people who believe that God is alive and well, but what then? If we have a God who is alive then this must be transformative for us. If we believe that God is not dead, then there is only one alternative, that He is alive. Can we not get our minds around the thought that the Creator of the Universe is not only alive but He knows you and me personally? Jesus, who died on a Roman cross at a place called Calvary, taking on Himself the punishment for our sins, is the very God that many people say is dead. Helloooo!! …. The fact that God is alive must make us turn our lives around, even if we are believers. We can’t just be pew warmers, thinking nice thoughts about a loving Saviour. He gave up so much for us, that we cannot do anything but respond to Him and say as Isaiah did, “Here I am. Send me” (Isaiah 6:8b). Our living God imparts life to His followers – we must never play dead.

Dear Father God. You are the living God, not an idol made of dead objects. We are willing, Lord, to do Your work in this world, as You guide us day by day. We worship You today. Amen.