Hear and view the devo:https://bit.ly/4xc8tUj
1 If the Lord had not been on our side— let Israel say— 2 if the Lord had not been on our side when people attacked us, 3 they would have swallowed us alive when their anger flared against us; 4 the flood would have engulfed us, the torrent would have swept over us, 5 the raging waters would have swept us away.
6 Praise be to the Lord, who has not let us be torn by their teeth. 7 We have escaped like a bird from the fowler’s snare; the snare has been broken, and we have escaped. 8 Our help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. (Psalm 124 NIV)
Dear FRIEND, Happy Thursday! Sorry about the multiple emails I sent yesterday. I thought I had added the audio and video component to the devotional and I hadn't. I sent the email without realizing that I hadn't attached it. It may have been that all of yesterday I spent in completing the major exam to continue selling Medicare Advantage plans; the AHIP, an exam that requires a 90 or higher in order to continue to pass. There are modules to explain each of the 5 components and then an exam on each; then the actual major exam. The process is mentally exhausting and thank God I passed and I am almost ready for the Annual Enrollment Period (Oct 15-Dec 7) if I get re-certified in each of the insurance carriers that I represent. And this morning (Wednesday) I did a required Anti-Money Laundering course required by most life insurance companies. I also took an exam for one (1) hour of Continuing Education credit required for my license as an agent in Texas. My good friend Ricardo Gonzalez has shared this Prayer Request: "Dear Church Family, please pray for me and my wife Maridol as we travel to San Antonio tomorrow. I am scheduled for a spinal injection on Friday morning. Please pray for safety on the road, wisdom for the physicians, and a smooth, successful procedure that brings healing and long lasting strength. Thank you for your continued support and prayers. God Bless." May the Lord bless the Gonzalez' with all they need for this trip to be a success and a blessing to Ricardo and Maridol. In Jesus' name, amen!
Remember in the olden days when for fun you would find yourself waiting to be chosen to play a particular sport and once you were on a side the coach would decide which team would be shirts and which side would be skins. Skins means no shirt. The pain was the doubt that some teams might not want you or the humiliation that we might be picked last; but all that aside, once you were on a side, that was your side and you played and fought hard to win. This psalm is about sides and the side God takes.
David opens this psalm with a thought experiment that is equal parts sobering and clarifying — "If the Lord had not been on our side" — and then immediately repeats it, as if once isn't enough to really let the weight of it land. If the Lord had not been on our side. Say it slowly. Think about whatever it is you've come through — the thing that could have swallowed you, the thing that nearly did — and then ask yourself honestly: how did that actually turn out the way it did? Because David is suggesting that if you trace it back carefully enough, you'll find a presence at work that has nothing to do with your own sufficiency.
The imagery he reaches for is vivid and almost cinematic. If God had not been there, he says, the flood would have engulfed them, the torrent would have swept over them, the raging waters would have swallowed them whole. He's not being poetic for the sake of it — the people of Israel had faced genuine existential threats, the kind that should have ended them by any reasonable calculation. The Egyptians at the Red Sea. The wilderness that should have been a graveyard. The enemies on every side who were bigger, better armed, and considerably less anxious about the outcome than Israel was. And David looks back at the whole catalogue of should-have-ended-us moments and draws the only conclusion that fits the evidence: we are here because God was there.
Then the image shifts from water to a trap — a snare that has been broken, and the bird that was caught in it is now free. This is a different kind of threat than the flood. The flood is overwhelming and obvious; you can see it coming. The snare is subtle, concealed, designed to catch you before you know it's there. And yet both of them have the same result when God is on your side — the flood doesn't swallow you, and the snare doesn't hold you. The bird has escaped, and the point is not how clever the bird was or how carefully it navigated the trap. The point is that the trap is broken. Something outside the bird's own capabilities did the breaking.
There's something wonderfully democratic about this psalm. David doesn't say only the especially faithful will be saved from the flood, or only the particularly discerning will escape the snare. He speaks in the first person plural — we, us, our — because the help he's describing is not a reward for the best performers but the character of a God who has consistently, persistently, sometimes inexplicably been on the side of a people who had done nothing to deserve it. The snare was broken not because the bird was exceptional but because the Lord is who He is. Our help, the psalm concludes, is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. Not in our strategies. Not in our resources. Not even in our faith, though faith matters. In His name. In who He is.
This is the testimony that runs through the entire biblical story, and it reaches its fullest expression in a garden tomb that couldn't hold what was placed in it. The ultimate flood — death itself — should have been the end of everything. The ultimate snare — the cross — should have held its captive. And the ultimate testimony of the Christian faith is that the flood was turned back and the snare was broken and the bird flew free on Easter morning, because the Maker of heaven and earth was on our side in a way that not even death could contain. The help that Israel needed from their enemies is the same help that every human being needs from the enemy of death, and it came in the person of Jesus, who walked into the worst the flood and the snare could do and walked out the other side carrying the keys.
So when we say "our help is in the name of the Lord," we're not being vaguely optimistic or reciting a religious phrase that sounds good on a Sunday morning. We're making a claim about something that actually happened, in history, in a body, with empty grave clothes left behind as evidence. The snare is broken. The bird has flown. And the same God who was on Israel's side in the wilderness is on your side in whatever flood you're navigating and whatever snare you're trying not to step in right now.
If the Lord had not been on our side. Finish the sentence with your own story. And then let the second half of the psalm be your response — the exhale of a bird that just realized the trap isn't holding anymore.
PRAYER: Lord, make us a people who remember clearly enough that You have been on our side to praise You loudly enough that the world around us hears it. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.
Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! Make it such for those around you, too! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Tell one person today about a specific time when the Lord was on your side in a way that should not have worked out — and let your testimony be the psalm you sing this week.
I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me.
Let's win the world for Jesus!
Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.
