God, Our Help

The fifth of the Songs of Ascents, Psalm 124, contains a striking meditation on what it means to confess, “our help is in name of the LORD, Who made heaven and earth” (v.8). This confession rightly has formed the basis for calls to worship from Old Testament times until the present. But what are you confessing about God when you call Him your “help”? Is it the expression of some naïve, “pie in the sky” view of the Christian life? “God is our help and therefore our lives are free from the cares and obstacles that others face.” Absolutely not! The psalm rehearses Israel’s deliverance from the mouth of the dragon, the waters of the flood, and the snare of the fowler. Just like Job, the fact that Israel was God’s chosen people and had God as their help, didn’t mean that difficulty and distress would never come their way. In fact it was their experience of difficulty and distress that gave meaning to their confession of God’s help. God’s help comes in the midst of difficulty and distress and can only be understood and confessed against that background. But God’s help, His promised way of escape, is a way through the difficulties and distress that you experience. Beloved it is your experience of the dragons of cancer and job loss, the floodwaters of financial pressure and marital stress, and the snare of anxiety, that fills out your confession of God’s help. And just like the Israelites we shouldn’t pretend that these difficulties don’t exist. Rather, we bring our dragons, floods, and snares to God in prayer and song in the confidence that the maker of heaven and earth, and our redeemer in Jesus Christ, will deliver us from all our fears. David actually pauses after the first line to call Israel to join him in rehearsing God’s deliverances. Even so I call upon you now to join me in the confession of our sins that we too might know his deliverance.