Psalm 124
“If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, let Israel now say — if it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when men rose up against us, then they would have swallowed us up alive, when their anger was kindled against us; then the flood would have swept us away, the torrent would have gone over us; then over us would have gone the raging waters.”
This Psalm is an excellent example of the Hebraic tradition of using repetition for emphasis. It says one thing, but several times over: if not for the Lord we would have been swept away. And it’s true, if not for the Lord, there would have been no Israel, there would have been no Christ, in fact, there would be no universe. For all that is around us is the Lord’s doing, all the beauty and majesty of creation, every little animal, or big animal, “every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of His own will He brought us forth by the Word of Truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of His creatures.” What God created, on earth, was heaven, for man and beast was in perfect accordance with His will, until the serpent, the great deceiver Satan, confounded the woman Eve, who, in turn, deceived Adam, and brought sin into the world. They disobeyed a direct command from the Lord of Hosts, one that could not have been more clear, for their own personal selfishness. Now, I don’t like to throw too much blame on Adam and Eve, because they were innocent, the concept that someone would try to lie to them was probably completely unknown, and they were rather trusting, because they had little reason to fear deception. It was completely foreign to them, so what is our excuse? We know that sin and deception is all about us, and yet we fall into the same pitfalls time and time again. Is there a sin that controls you, dear Christian? A particular sin that seems to cling to your ankles, and no matter how much you shake it off, it always seems to return? These are the worst sins, the hardest to shake, because sometimes we enjoy them and do not really try our hardest to eliminate them. We may put up a show of hatred for it, but we know, deep in our hearts, that it is only that, a show; that we will return to it soon enough. This must not be! We cannot tolerate this, we cannot enjoy any aspect of any sin at all. There must be complete humiliation and atrophy of this sin. I cannot use language strong enough to emphasize that this sin, whatever it may be, must be eliminated. All sin must be eliminated, but there are certain sins that cling to us more strongly than others, and those must be ripped off. If it takes a part of our flesh, if it hurts, then that is a tiny price to pay, indeed it is no price to pay at all for the Lord. Does it hurt? Good, that means the devil is clinging tightly to your back, and to pry him away would be to pry away the sins that entangle you. We, as humans, do not really desire, in our natural sinful way, to eliminate sin in this way, but consider the Lord, all that He has done for us. He has created us, He has given us a beautiful world in which to live, a majestic universe, billions of light years across, with hundreds of trillions of planets and stars, He has made a planet that sustains life, He has given you and I life, and the ability to worship Him, He has made Himself known to us. Most importantly, He has given Himself as a perfect sacrifice so that we might know Him through eternity, He went through a horrible, gruesome death, so that we can be rescued from our sins. At the last, He rose from the grave, He defeated death, so that we no longer have to fear its power. Ask yourself, after all that He has done, why should I go on sinning? For He is selfless, He gave Himself for you, and sin is nothing but selfishness, it is almost self-worship, idolatry. We should earnestly desire to give our all for Him, to annihilate sin from our lives, to cast the work of the devil away from us, we do not want it. Lord, give us the strength to overcome the devil, give us the power to wipe his filthy stain from our backs so that we might live in holiness before you.
“Blessed be the Lord, who has not given us as prey to their teeth! We have escaped as a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we have escaped! Our help is in the Name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”
The Lord has broken the snare of the fowler. We can be free as a bird, from the power of sin and death, because He has broken their nets, “He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; He burns the chariots with fire.” Satan has never triumphed, he has never overcome the Lord, much as he would like to think that he has. The Lord of Heaven’s Armies is always in control, the lies of the devil are nothing to the Almighty Power of the Lord God. For Satan has nothing but words, nothing but lies, it is the Lord who has real power in the universe, He is the one who has made us, may we earnestly desire to walk in His paths! “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” We no longer need fear the whispers of the devil, for there is someone greater who has a much stronger voice who will give us the strength, and the battle armor, required to fend off the attacks of the evil one and live in blessed righteousness before Him. It is a blessing indeed to be allowed to live in righteousness before the Lord, to live in holiness as the Holy Creator of the Universe lives. Think about that! We can be holy as God is holy, although, of course, not to the same extent. He is everlastingly holy, righteous above all else, and we can only be a simpler form of righteous. We can have the holiness of Christ imputed to us, for as He lived a holy life, He will represent us and lend to us His holiness so that we might be seen as innocent before the Great Judge. For our sins have been wiped away, we have been made whiter than the purest of snow, cleaner than the cleanest water, through the sacrifice of the Lord who has saved us. Praise His Holy Name!
