THE SONGS OF ASCENT – PART 6 – PSALM 124 – THE LORD IS ON OUR SIDE FOR HE IS OUR HELP
Psalm 124 - A Song of Ascents, of David
[A]. INTRODUCTION
We are moving steadily through the Psalms of Ascent and today we do Psalm 124. This collection of 15 beautiful Psalms was sung by the Hebrew pilgrims as they made their way in representative groups from over Israel to attend the Feasts of the Lord (three of them) in Jerusalem. It happened three times a year and the Feasts were as described in this verse – {{Deuteronomy 16:16 “Three times in a year all your males shall appear before the LORD your God in the place which He chooses, at the Feast of Unleavened Bread and at the Feast of Weeks and at the Feast of Booths, and they shall not appear before the LORD empty-handed.”}}
The Psalms (songs) intensified as they made their way up the ascents as Jerusalem is in a mountainous area and they sang them with great joy and expectation. The Psalms deal with different aspects of a believer’s life (the life of a Jewish man). Psalm 124 is one of three of these Psalms written by David. Let us carefully go through the verses.
[B]. KEPT AND DELIVERED BY THE LORD GOD
Psalm 124:1 “Had it not been the LORD who was on our side,” let Israel now say,
Psalm 124:2 “Had it not been the LORD who was on our side when men rose up against us,
Psalm 124:3 then they would have swallowed us alive when their anger was kindled against us.”}}
David knew conflict and deliverance. Repetition is used in verses 1 and 2 to acknowledge the Lord’s part in a deeper and meaningful way. The Lord is on their side. This is all about deliverance from enemies.
Israel is a curious nation in regard to enemies. Sometimes enemies attacked without provocation, inspired by the devil to try to destroy the nation. More often than not though, enemies were allowed to attack because of the sin of Israel.
If you recall the times of the judges, we have the recurring theme where an enemy invaded and caused hardship because of Israel’s sin. Then the people cried to the Lord for deliverance promising to serve the Lord. God raised up a judge who delivered the nation but after that the people reverted to their sin as bad as before. This happened over and over through the time of 13 judges over 400 years. Samuel was the last judge of Israel.
The Jews were promised by God blessing and cursing; blessing if they walked in God’s way and cursing if they did not. They were promised enemies would come if they sinned. Let us look into some of those verses. The following are all selected from Deuteronomy chapter 28. This first one is what happens when Israel walks righteously before the Lord -
{{Deuteronomy 28:7 “The LORD will cause your ENEMIES who rise up against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and shall flee before you seven ways.”}}
The following verses promise what happens when Israel turns to sin and departs from the Lord and will know then only the Lord’s cursing.
{{Deuteronomy 28:15 “It shall come about, if you will not obey the LORD your God, to observe to do all His commandments and His statutes with which I charge you today, that all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you.”
Deuteronomy 28:20 “The LORD will send upon you curses, confusion, and rebuke in all you undertake to do until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, on account of the evil of your deeds because you have forsaken Me.”
Deuteronomy 28:25 “The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your ENEMIES. You shall go out one way against them, but you shall flee seven ways before them, and you shall be an example of terror to all the kingdoms of the earth.”}}
{{Deuteronomy 28:47-48 “Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joy and a glad heart for the abundance of all things, therefore you shall serve your ENEMIES whom the LORD shall send against you, in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in the lack of all things, and He will put an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you.”}}
Those righteous Jews who trekked up to Jerusalem singing these songs, knew the truth of Deuteronomy chapter 28 and sang those songs with clear consciences. They knew what obedience was.
However Israel never learned. They never, ever learned. Even today they have not learned. Time after time they were ravaged by enemies and hostile nations; and for almost 2 500 years up until 1947 they have never owned their land, and even today it is only partly theirs, for God has promised them the land from the Nile River to the Euphrates.
{{Genesis 15:18 On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I have given this land FROM THE RIVER OF EGYPT AS FAR AS THE GREAT RIVER, THE RIVER EUPHRATES:
Exodus 23:31 I will fix your boundary from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the River Euphrates for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you will drive them out before you.”}}
When God makes a covenant He does not break it. When God fixes the boundary it remains fixed. It is not realized today but it is fixed and it will happen when the Lord returns at the Second Coming.
There is an acknowledgement that Israel would have been swallowed up by enemies if God had not been their help. God was so gracious to Israel over the centuries for He preserved them, and at times a remnant of them when they did not deserve even that. You see His great covenants given to the Old Testament patriarchs will always stand. It is so very wrong to say God cancelled out the covenants because Israel sinned.
God was angry with the nation many times and they endured His punishment over and over but they did not learn. There was one occasion when God declared he would wipe the people out who came out of Egypt. It is here – {{Deuteronomy 9:13-14 “The LORD spoke further to me (Moses) saying, I have seen this people, and indeed, it is a stubborn people. Let Me alone that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven and I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.’”}}
Was there a possibility of that happening? Could it have happened? The answer is an emphatic “NO”. God could not break His covenants. This is what Moses said of that incident – {{Deuteronomy 9:19 “I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure with which the LORD was wrathful against you in order to destroy you, but the LORD listened to me that time also.”}} Moses pleaded with the Lord to spare the people but what prompted Moses to do that? Okay, what God was saying was that Israel is so polluted it must be destroyed, BUT at the same time He gave Moses the intense desire to plead for the nation against their destruction. Of course the Lord God was going to honour the covenants and He stepped back. There was nothing inconsistent about that. Great is the work of the intercessor and Christ is our great Intercessor who stands in the breach for us time after time with the Father.
[C]. OBLITERATED BY THE RAGING WATERS
{{Psalm 124:4 “Then the waters would have engulfed us, the stream would have swept over our soul.
Psalm 124:5 Then the raging waters would have swept over our soul.”}}
In these two verses we have strong parallelism, a poetic device we spoke about in the introduction to this Series earlier. Just to remind us, this is the way verse 3 looked at their overthrow by their enemies – {{“then they would have swallowed us alive.”}} and verse 4 is parallelism for verse 3. The parallelism in verse 4 talks about the waters swallowing them and verse 5 talks about the raging waters sweeping over their souls.
This is poetic language meaning they would have been utterly overcome and trampled underfoot if it was not for their God being on their side. Of course God was on their side, even in wrath. He would not allow them to be utterly destroyed.
[D]. THE EXPERIENCE OF HOSEA
Hosea is a remarkable prophet and in chapter 3 he gives a great prophecy down through 2 500 years. The unfaithful wife Hosea was told to love, was to stay with him for many days and not play the harlot with idolatry any more. This is all a type of Israel, the unfaithful wife being Israel, and Hosea a type of the Lord who loved her. This is the FIRST great prophecy – {{Hosea 3:4 “for the sons of Israel will remain for many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, and without ephod or household idols.”}}
When Hosea wrote this it was utterly impossible to think of Israel being separated from its idols for she was married to idols (joined to idols). Once Judah was taken to Babylon the Jews have never taken up idolatry again. That prophecy speaks of their continuing without idolatry and today they still continue that way. What a great prophecy.
Then comes the SECOND great prophecy – {{Hosea 3:5 “Afterward the sons of Israel will return and seek the LORD their God and David their king, and they will come trembling to the LORD and to His goodness in the last days.”}} The last days are upon us now but for Israel these last days begin after the Church has been raptured. Then the items of this remarkable prophecy will happen; they will return to the Lord; they will seek the Lord Jesus Messiah (He descended from David); they will come trembling to the Lord and all Israel will be saved – {{Romans 11:25-26 “Brethren, I do not want you to be uninformed of this mystery, lest you be wise in your own estimation, that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, and thus ALL ISRAEL WILL BE SAVED just as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion. He will remove ungodliness from Jacob.”}}
The “fullness of the Gentiles” ends when the Rapture happens and then God’s attention turns to Israel in the 7 years of the Tribulation. This is soundly taught in the Old Testament and in Revelation.
God is not going to allow the raging waters to sweep over Israel to exterminate them as the PLO wants to, and Syria and Russia and some of the UN.
There is one more point I want to make. God will not allow the raging waters to sweep over Israel but He did allow it to sweep over two men on two occasions - Jonah and the Lord Jesus. First Jonah – {{Jonah 2:3 “for You had cast me into the deep, into the heart of the SEAS, and the current engulfed me. All Your breakers and BILLOWS passed over me, Jonah 2:5 Water encompassed me to the point of death. The GREAT DEEP engulfed me. Weeds were wrapped around my head.”}}
Jonah in fact was a type of the Lord Jesus on the cross where all the waves and billows of God’s wrath washed over him and the great deep of our sins engulfed Him. Christ is the second Man. That is clearly set out in the Messianic Psalm 69 that is Christ’s prayerful cry from the cross. You see it in the description here -
{{Psalm 69:1 “Save me, O God, for the WATERS have threatened my life.
Psalm 69:2 I have sunk in deep mire and there is no foothold. I have come into DEEP WATERS AND A FLOOD overflows me.”
Psalm 69:14 “Deliver me from the mire, and do not let me sink. May I be delivered from my foes and from the DEEP WATERS.
Psalm 69:15 May THE FLOOD OF WATER not overflow me and may THE DEEP not swallow me up and may the pit not shut its mouth on me.”}}
[E]. THEY/WE HAVE ESCAPED FROM THE HANDS OF THE TRAPPER/FOWLER
{{Psalm 124:6 “Blessed be the LORD Who has not given us to be torn by their teeth.”
Psalm 124:7 “Our soul has escaped as a bird out of the snare of the trapper. The snare is broken and we have escaped.”}}
Who has escaped from some horrible tragedy what was going to swallow you? Who can recount a time in your life when the Lord rescued you from danger, or an imminent crushing of your life? I can. I had no help except the Lord. There was no one to stand in the gulf to hold me and stop me from sinking. Praise the mighty name of the Lord.
That is the same experience of David who wrote this Psalm. Many times in his life David knew what it was to escape the net of the enemy. Many times David fled for his life but the Lord never abandoned him. He knew from personal experience. That is what makes his psalms so very good. They are not fancy words or words without substance, but they are words fired in the furnace of human experience. That is why, in whatever experience you find yourself, there is always a Psalm just to meet your needs.
As God prepared the earth for our existence by providing coal and oil and other resources, so he has prepared the path for your spiritual life by providing so many wonderful Psalms for your comfort and support, and for those times you need lifting up in your life.
Not only did David know all that truth but the pilgrims making their way to Jerusalem also knew the same truth and they could sing personally to the Lord as they ascended the path to the holy city.
I want to look at some of David’s experiences as he recorded them in the word. God’s own people were not given into the teeth of the enemy to be torn in hate and demonic vindictiveness. This is a horrible world. There are so many vindictive people in society and in high places. This is personal, but I have found nasty women to be the worse and most callous and hateful and vindictive, evil enemies of truth.
I have chosen three passages early in the Psalms that give us a small insight into the problematic times David had. However look at the encouragement of the Lord through it all.
{{Psalm 18:46-49 “The LORD lives and blessed be my rock, and exalted be the God of my salvation, The God who executes vengeance for me, and subdues peoples under me. HE DELIVERS ME FROM MY ENEMIES. Surely You lift me above those who rise up against me. You rescue me from the violent man. Therefore I will give thanks to You among the nations, O LORD, and I will sing praises to Your name.”}} The Lord lifts us above our enemies no matter what the outcome.
{{Psalm 27:1-3 “The LORD is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? THE LORD IS THE DEFENCE OF MY LIFE. Whom shall I dread? When evildoers came upon me to devour my flesh, my adversaries and my enemies, they stumbled and fell. Though a host encamp against me, my heart will not fear. Though war arise against me, in spite of this I shall be confident.”}} This is a great passage of trust and fearless living. We are in the Lord’s hand no matter what surfaces. He saved us and He keeps us.
Psalm 31:1-8 “In You, O LORD, I have taken refuge. Let me never be ashamed. In Your righteousness deliver me. Incline Your ear to me, rescue me quickly. You are to me a rock of strength, a stronghold to save me. You are my rock and my fortress. For Your name’s sake You will lead me and guide me. YOU WILL PULL ME OUT OF THE NET which they have secretly laid for me for You are my strength. Into Your hand I commit my spirit. You have ransomed me, O LORD, God of truth. I hate those who regard vain idols but I trust in the LORD. I will rejoice and be glad in Your loving-kindness because You have seen my affliction. You have known the troubles of my soul, and You have not given me over into the hand of the enemy. You have set my feet in a large place.”}} There is so much in this passage from prayer to confidence, to deliverance, to rejoicing. This passage matches the two verses we are looking at from Psalm 124 (6-7).
Let us look at verse 7 in a bit more detail. {{Psalm 124:7 “Our soul has escaped as a bird out of the snare of the trapper. The snare is broken and we have escaped.”}} David was aware often of the illustration of escaping out of the trapper’s (fowler’s) snare and used it in the Psalms such as in this one – {{Psalm 91:3 “It is He who delivers you from the snare of the trapper and from the deadly pestilence.”}} The AV uses “fowler” as that was the name given to a man who ensnared and trapped birds.
I wrote a poem along those lines way back in 2000 –
BEWARE THE FOWLER
Beware the fowler in the way,
The schemer with his traps adept;
That cunning trickster who will lay
Ensnaring nets where he has crept.
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The fowler knows his craft so well -
Each habit and routine discerns.
The ways of birds expertly tell;
Entrapment plans so well he learns.
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To map his prey so cunningly,
And plan with subtle art his haul,
The fowler works strategically.
An expert he, the best of all.
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Now Satan has his fowlers trained -
His followers in his control,
Whose traps are set, the cords are strained,
To catch God’s children, is their goal.
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Each subtle means will be employed:-
The lust of flesh, the lust of eyes,
To cause God’s work to be destroyed;
To capture saints by wicked lies.
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Beware the fowler’s changing guise;
His trickery is most refined.
On every cunning trick relies
To cause God’s own to be maligned.
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Deliver us from fowlers’ snares.
On every path these nets are laid.
Direct us, Lord, for our God cares.
Our trust’s in Him. On Him we’re stayed.
[F]. WE COME TO THE FINAL VERSE OF THE GREATEST POWER AND SECURITY
{{Psalm 124:8 “Our help is in the name of the LORD who made heaven and earth.”}}
There are two facts here. The first is that our help is in the Lord. The second is that this same Lord made heaven and earth. That second part is added because the almighty power to create the universe is the same power that is available for the people of the Lord. Such awesome power. There is no cause to fear. We are kept in the Saviour’s hand forever. Praise His Name!
The pilgrims must have been almost shouting with joy and confidence as they were singing this on their journey. Amen!
ronaldf@aapt.net.au
