#DailyDevotion Jesus Is The LORD On Our Side
Psalm 124 “If we didn’t have the LORD,” Israel should say, 2“If we didn’t have the LORD when men attacked us, 3then they would have swallowed us alive when their anger blazed against us; 4then the water would have swept us away, a torrent going over us; 5then the proudly raging waters would have gone over us.” 6Praise the LORD who didn’t give us up as a prey to their teeth. 7We escaped like a bird from the hunters’ trap – the trap is broken and we got away. 8Our help is in the name of the LORD Who made heaven and earth.
So nice they had to say it twice? Or, are they trying to drive the point home? Perhaps, it is both. We need it driven into our thick skulls that we need to have the LORD with us. Verses 3 and 4 make me think he is alluding to the victory over the Egyptians in the Red Sea. Certainly, their anger, Pharoah’s in particular, blazed against the Israelites. They would have overran them had the LORD not come between the two camps. With the LORD on their side, they walked on dry land between the two walls of water. When the LORD saw the Israelites were safely on the other side, He let the Egyptians pursue the Israelites. Once there would be escape for them, the LORD brought upon them what the Egyptians intended for His people. The LORD’s fury fell upon them. The torrent of water as the walls of water crashed down upon them swept the Egyptians away.
Jesus is Immanuel, God with us. He is the same LORD who delivered His people as depicted here. Jesus is Immanuel in the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel. He is Immanuel at the end of Matthew’s Gospel–“I am with you always, even unto the end of the ages.” We have the LORD with us at the beginning and at the end. Jesus has stood before our enemy as He was baptized. He stands for us as we pass through the waters of baptism in and with Him. He has brought us through the waters and by these waters He defeats our enemies, sin, death and the power of the devil. The LORD through the author of Hebrews reminds us in chapter 13:5, “’I will never leave you or desert you.’ 6And so we have the courage to say: ‘The Lord is my Help. I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?'”
As the psalmist called for praise to the LORD who saved the Israelites from the teeth of their enemies and escaped the trap set for them because He had broken it up, so too, we are called to praise our LORD Jesus Christ who has saved us from the teeth of our enemy the devil. He, by His death on the cross, has smashed the trap of the enemy. He entered the trap and the trap could not hold Him. Through our baptism into Jesus (Rom. 6) we have become participants with Him and commune with Him in His death, burial and resurrection, in truth and in reality.
The psalmist then lets us know who this LORD is. He is the maker of heaven and earth. He goes all the way back to Genesis chapter one. Our help is in His name. Paul identifies Him for us in 1 Cor. 8, “6yet we have one God, the Father: from Him comes everything, and we live for Him. And there is one Lord, Jesus Christ: He made everything, and we live by Him.” The Father has given us a name to call upon as Paul says in Phil. 2, “9That is why God also exalted Him up on high and gave Him the name above every other name 10that at the name of JESUS everyone in heaven and on earth and under the earth should kneel, lland everyone should confess, “JESUS CHRIST IS LORD!” and so glorify God the Father.” Let us then in every trial, trouble, tribulation, and the like call upon the name of our LORD Jesus Christ and trust that He is with us to deliver us from our enemies.
Merciful God and Father, You have given us Your Son, Jesus Christ, to be LORD, to be with us as our conqueror and savior from sin, death and the power of the devil. Grant us faith to call upon Him in the day of trouble so we may be rescued by His power so we may give praise to His name. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.