In the Old Testament there is talk of salvation. Quite often, this salvation isn't the kind that we typically speak of in 2012. These days we tend to speak of being saved and having salvation in a strictly 'spiritual' sense. However, for the ancient Israelites salvation was more tangible.
When we read the Psalms we repeatedly see David crying out or giving thanks for God's salvation. He does this not because he is afraid of hell but because he is afraid of Sheol (the grave) and he wants to live. He is afraid of his enemies. He doesn't want to die and lose the life he is currently living. Salvation for David is a rescuing from a troubling or threatening times. It's a very literal and physical saving. God saves David from enemies, from death, from violent and wicked men.
We rarely speak of salvation in this way nowadays. Unless we're preaching a prosperity gospel or immensely reformed theologically we shy away from talking about God's deliverance from hardships and the power he has in this world and in our lives. Privately we pray about it, but a lot of our congregations don't talk about it. Yet, salvation is multifaceted. We need rescuing from a great many things.
What strikes me as beautiful about David and the Old Testament is that we repeatedly see God delivering his people (saving them from evil or some type of destruction) throughout the scriptures without the people doing much of anything to help. Millard Lind writes about this in his book Yahweh is A Warrior. God fights for his people and saves them. He does it in unique and mysterious ways. He brings down entire city walls with trumpets and nothing more. He splits seas, steals away the sun, gives an abundance of insects and amphibians, and so on. God does not need the strength or violence of his people to help him.
David knows this, in a sense. He often praises God for being his all in all, everything he needs. When he has trouble he goes to God for salvation, for rescue. When God helps him out he praises God for being the one who saved him. Even when he does the killing he praises God for making him a good warrior. It comes back to his Creator, Provider, Defender, Salvation.
In Psalm 18 David writes, "I love you, O Lord, my strength.The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies."
The rest of the psalm is fascinating and poetically beautiful. It gives us a real glimpse of who David was and how he saw God. I love this song because when I read it I don't think I need to pick up arms and lay waste to nations like David, rather, I remember all the times God delivered his people without the use of armies, or with the use of small and inadequate armies.
So often God proves to us that we don't need anything but him for our deliverance, be it spiritual or physical or whatever. He gives us life, both now and forever. He gives us refuge, now and forever. He gives us strength, now and forever. What's even greater is that he is himself our strength, refuge, and life. I have only to rely on God for everything. Must I still act? Yes. When it comes to my trouble, to violence, to threats on my well-being, I should begin with prayer, move in faith, and see God work the way he has worked in the past for Israel and the way he has worked through Christ.
I once wrote an article about how nonviolence is more about faith in God and the reality that he says we live in (as opposed to faith in weapons and the reality that humans say we live in). The article was called Reality vs. The Nonviolent Dream. In it I lay out the idea that we can be nonviolent because we have a God who doesn't require our violence and possibly even calls us away from it. The scriptures we adore show us a God who is more than capable to be our salvation in times of trouble with our having to act unloving towards our enemies.
When I read David's words they remind me that God is my strength, my rock, my refuge, my fortress, my deliverer, my shield, my stronghold, the horn of my salvation. He protects me. Nothing else does (be it nonviolent tactics or violent tactics). He wins my battles, I do not. Even if he equips me, he does the work when I cry out to him and honor him with my life. He enables me to love and to live.
It's easy to find our strength, refuge, fortress, deliverance, shield, stronghold, horn of salvation, in anything but God. We fool ourselves a lot into thinking our weapons, our hands, our brains, our friends, our money, our anything can save us. We think we can save ourselves. Whether we be afraid of hell in eternity or hell presently on earth, God is our salvation and will pull us out of death's dark waters and place us on a rock (Christ). David knows better than to think he is his own salvation. May we love our Lord as David did, declaring who God is and in so doing declaring that nothing else can be what God is to us.
By T.G. Blankenship at The Gethsemane BlogIn the Old Testament there is talk of salvation. Quite often, this salvation isn't the kind that we typically speak of in 2012. These days we tend to speak of being saved and having salvation in a strictly 'spiritual' sense. However, for the ancient Israelites salvation was more tangible.When we read the Psalms we repeatedly see David crying out or giving thanks for God's salvation. He does this not because he is afraid of hell but because he is afraid of Sheol (the grave) and he wants to live. He is afraid of his enemies. He doesn't want to die and lose the life he is currently living. Salvation for David is a rescuing from a troubling or threatening times. It's a very literal and physical saving. God saves David from enemies, from death, from violent and wicked men.We rarely speak of salvation in this way nowadays. Unless we're preaching a prosperity gospel or immensely reformed theologically we shy away from talking about God's deliverance from hardships and the power he has in this world and in our lives. Privately we pray about it, but a lot of our congregations don't talk about it. Yet, salvation is multifaceted. We need rescuing from a great many things.
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Comments (4)
The Catholic Mass includes prayers of such nature and opens up the floor to anyone with prayer requests during "the prayers of the faithful" right after the Creed on Sundays and the homily during daily Mass.
The Catholic faith preserves the prayer traditions of the ancients and makes the Psalms the center of its official prayer, The Liturgy of the Hours.
I disagree that salvation to David was a rescuing from threatening or troubling times. He trusted in God, as should all God’s children, during those times, and he pleaded for the mercy of God in every trouble he faced, yet his prophetic passages of salvation show that David was well acquainted with the far-reaching, foreword looking, and all-encompassing salvation of God. Indeed, I believe David was trusting in a salvation that he could only glimpse from a far off and could not even understand as well as we do now because of the revelation of Jesus Christ.
I don’t think David was aware of hell, as we are now, however, to say that David did not fear the wrath of God as he understood it is totally unwarranted (and I know you’re not saying that at all). The word “Sheol” is a highly debated word among scholars, the origins of which are unknown (or not agreed upon). In the NKJV it’s translated 31 times as “hell”, 31 times as “the grave”, and 3 times as “the pit”. All it denotes is a place of death, for both the righteous and unrighteous, where God can (and will) rescue the righteous out of on His day of salvation. So you’re right in saying that David was aware of salvation from the first death (King David would likely not be aware of the 2nd death revealed to us later in Revelation 2:11, 20:6, 14, and 21:8). David was certainly keenly aware of God’s wrath (he even called upon it to be poured out upon his enemies in Ps. 79 and feared it during his sin with Bathsheba).
I think you’re right in pointing out that we need to trust and hope in God’s salvation and look to Him alone in our troubles even here. I know a lot of people understand salvation in theoretical terms and it resides somewhere in the sphere of academia for them. Yet for many people who have been pursued for their life and faced the fires of persecution, their trust in God is even more powerful because they look to Him for salvation both while dwelling on earth and ultimately for eternal life.
We need to remember that the Jews, whose understanding was limited to the revelation that you’re describing, missed Jesus and did not accept Him precisely because His offer is not for the preservation of our flesh on earth, nor of the earthly kingdom, but of our soul eternally in the life and love of God our Father in Heaven.
I think your point that God does not need our strength, nor our violence (perhaps, especially our violence) is exceedingly well put, though. Like you so beautifully put, God is our all in all and we need nothing outside of Him for our deliverance!
More and more I have realized that God is my strength in all I do- whatever He has for me to do, it must be His strength which provides. David, as you mentioned, did destroy and conquer his enemies, but he did so by the strength of God because it was God’s will for the kingdom of Israel at the time. Now, because of the Kingdom of Heaven, we no longer war and wage war against flesh and blood, but we are waring and waging war against spiritual principalities, and in this too, God is our great strength, our stronghold, and our mighty salvation!
@dustysojourner@xanga - Which psalms would you say give a clear impression that David looked at salvation which he often received as an all-encompassing salvation which was both an eternal/soul issue as well as an earthly issue? I don't disagree that his words are prophetic and his salvation is existed in both an eternal form and a repeatedly occurring momentary form but I'm not sure that I see him using the term salvation in the form of eternity like many folks in the New Testament. I think it'd be hard to argue that he is often speaking solely of a situational salvation.
@TheGreatBout@xanga - Psalm 51 is one of my favorite Psalms (actually, I think it is my favorite). I believe this expresses David's belief in an all-encompassing salvation that was prophetic of the salvation we now know- we see that he speaks of his inception in iniquity from the beginning, how God desires truth in the innermost being, his prayers for cleansing and thorough washing, and the creation of a new and clean heart. He begs that he would not be cast away from the presence of God, showing his clear knowledge of what punishment for sin from God partly consists of, and places his faith in the mercies of God because he knows that God is pleased by a broken and contrite heart.
I agree that David wasn't cognitively aware of the salvation that is at long last finally and fully revealed in Christ- he may not have known of some of the finer points, but I think David bore witness throughout all of his Psalms of this kind of glimpse and, at least, a longing for the salvation now revealed to us in Jesus Christ.