“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.” Psalm 18:2-3

The Lord continues to draw my attention to the subject of salvation. Specifically, not saving ourselves but trusting in Him instead. I talked about this in the previous article but I feel moved to stay on this subject for a little while longer.

Taking Refuge

There are many verses throughout scripture that refer to God as a refuge, just like the one above. Many of the saints of old clearly sought God as such, but I wonder if most of us today in our independent-living culture truly grasp and live out what they were talking about. I talked about in the previous article about how salvation comes from God and not from the strength of our own hands. And the examples I gave clearly exemplified the point: Gideon fighting Median, Joshua fighting five kingdoms at once, and Joshua’s name change and his battle against the Amalekites. However, all three of these examples have to do with men fighting in actual warfare. And the fact is that most of us are not facing actually combat situations or even life or death situations in the same manner as they were.

So I felt a need to talk about this in a way that is more relatable and practical. The Lord has been teaching me this over the last couple of months. My life lately has been full of all sorts of conflicts and issues and just bad experiences in general. God has brought my attention during this time to a few different moments in scripture. The one I would like to talk about today is the story of David and Nabal.

So I was reading the story of David and Nabal in 1 Samuel 25. A wealthy man by the name Nabal,  which means “foolish”, refused to help David’s men and spoke insultingly of David. David’s response was to call all of his men to arms and march on Nabal’s land and kill him and everyone within his household.! I know what Nabal said and did was wrong but David’s response in this situation seems very extreme. He didn’t just want to kill Nabal but every male that Nabal had in his family.

At no point does it say that David consulted God about this. Instead, he responded out of his anger and pride. He was insulted and he moved to vindicate his hurt pride. But Nabal’s wife Abigail came out to David and convinced him not to kill Nabal and blessed him with a gift for his men. After pointing out that her husband is a fool she says this: “Now then, my lord, as the LORD lives, and as your soul lives, because the LORD has restrained you from bloodguilt and from saving with your own hand, now then let your enemies and those who seek to do evil to my lord be as Nabal.” (1 Sam 25:26) Abigail shows through her words that she understood the importance of not saving oneself and credit’s God as being the one who prevented David from doing this thing. In other words, the Savior saved David from himself!

She goes on to say: “And when the LORD has done to my lord according to all the good that He has spoken concerning you and has appointed you prince over Israel, my lord shall have no cause of grief or pangs of conscience for having shed blood without cause or for my lord working salvation himself.”(1 Sam 25:30-31)

This discourse shows us that there was no need for violence and bloodshed and that David was in the wrong for trying to fix his problem with his own wisdom and strength. He hadn’t consulted God on what to do, he didn’t approach God at all! Yet, in verse 38 it says: “And about ten days later the LORD struck Nabal, and he died.” David could have gone to the Lord and received guidance on what would come of Nabal. But more importantly, he could have approached God and found peace and emotional stability so that he could handle the situation with wisdom.

Everyone these days seems to behave as David did. We are reactive. Were I work, we have a chemical that is called a ‘reactive agent’. You wouldn’t know by looking at it that the chemical is dangerous. But if you cause it to come into contact with another chemical or other substance, this ‘reactive agent’ catches fire. That is what happened with David and that is whats happening too often with us as well.

David reacted with murderous rage and maybe some of us share that struggle with him. But for many others it’s not necessarily anger. When things are going badly for us; when we’re falsely accused, betrayed by friends, fired from work, get insulted, made fun of or robbed in some way, we respond. Poorly. There are so many things, too many things, for me to list out here, that go wrong in our lives. And they go wrong all the time. Our responses can often take the form of anger, depression, entertainment to distract ourselves such as watching TV, playing video games, or social media. It can look like surrounding ourselves with as many ‘friends’ as possible, burying ourselves in work, or living in a fantasy world so we don’t have to face what is happening. Sometimes we react in a way so that we may forget what is happening, such as with drinking and drugs. We smoke weed or cigarettes or resort to sexual gratification so we don’t feel the pain that has been brought into our lives.

Regardless of the problem and regardless of our reaction, all of these are stemming from the same root issue. We read the psalm’s and quote the phrases “God is my refuge” but we don’t actually go to Him for refuge. We go to others. We go to drugs. We go to porn and sex. We go to entertainment. We seek refuge in the false salvation of worldliness. Nabal means ‘fool’ and we keep reacting to the foolishness of this fallen sinful world. Refuge is the condition of being safe from pursuit, danger, or trouble. When we turn to these things we seek refuge in lies, which is foolish. We fight the foolishness that opposes us with foolishness of our own. And then get upset when the exact same problems rise up against us once more!

We need to learn as David did that our refuge is in God. For in ten days, David’s issue with Nabal was resolved. God struck down the foolish, and it never got up again. How many of our problems would we never have to suffer from, never react to again if we would only learn to seek God as our refuge. If we could only stay our hands and resist the urge to work salvation ourselves. It is imperative that we learn to rest in the Presence of God so that we might dwell in His peace. In His Presence we can take our eyes off of the problem and put them back on God, and in doing so we find rest from our troubled thoughts and disturbed emotions. I know in our society that refusing to defend yourself or to confront things immediately looks like cowardice. But as it says in 1 Corinthians 2:14 “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.”

Next time you need salvation turn to the Lord. Retreat within the Presence of God, submit your problems to Him and then trust Him to work out your salvation. Trust Him enough to relinquish your troubles so that you may be calm and unmoved, just as our Savior was as He slept on the boat in the midst of the storm. Always go to God first. Train yourself in it. So that in time, your reaction to trouble is to go rest in the Savior.

God, teach us how to rest in You in the midst of conflicts. Open our eyes to Your faithfulness, so we might see that You are trustworthy and able to save. For You are and always have been able to save but our doubt has gotten in the way. Help us so that we may let go of control over our issues and sit back in rest as we confidently watch You work out our salvation. Amen.

Salvation belongs to the LORD; Your blessings be on Your people! Selah (Psalm 3:8)

The fact that God is our Savior is kind of a no brainer among Christians. After all, it’s sort of the main role that Jesus walked out during His earthly ministry, culminating with His death and resurrection. If I asked a group of Christians “what is Christ to you?” the Savior would probably be one of the first responses given. The new testament is dominated by Jesus’ work of salvation. Because of this, I’m actually going to avoid talking about the new testament in this article. The reason for this is that I want to show God as our Savior before the coming of Christ. I want to show you how this aspect of His character is found throughout the old testament and even beyond, so that you can see that the role of Savior is given to Him because of who He is and always has been. (This in no way diminishes what Christ did.)

God Scares Gideon

“The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand…”

So if you don’t know the story of Gideon, basically Israel has rebelled against God and He has allowed their enemies to afflict them. In this specific instance, the Midianites are ravaging the lands of Israel, stealing their crops and livestock. God calls Gideon to deliver the people of Israel from their oppressors. Gideon, however, is a little uncertain about his own abilities and tests God twice with a fleece. (Judges 6:36-40)

Now, once Gideon responds to the call God has on his life and has acquired an army of 32,000 men, God throws him a curve ball. He tells Gideon that he has too many men for God to give the enemy into their hands. Normally, this would be really bad logic. Because typically, the larger the army the easier it should be to overcome your opponent. But with God, well, what constitutes as logical doesn’t look the same to us. God tells Gideon to send home all who are afraid and just like that an army of 32,000 is reduced to only 10,000. Then he reduces the number again down to only 300!

But why does God say they are too many? “lest Israel boast over Me, saying, ‘My own hand has saved me.'”(Judges 7:2) God taught a timid Gideon an extremely valuable lesson: bravery that is rooted in numbers or in one’s own might is foolish. True bravery is trusting in God to save you. As it says in Judges 7:7, “And the LORD said to Gideon, ‘With the 300 men who lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hand,…”. Take note that God says “I will save you”, not “they will save you”. Gideon was still scared at this point and entered the enemy camp only to find that they were afraid of him! He hadn’t even done anything yet but God had spoken to one of the Midianites in a dream which led to the people becoming afraid of Gideon.

God saved Gideon from his own fear and then saved all Israel from Midian through an emboldened Gideon. God revealed Himself to Gideon as a Savior on a personal level. Then through him, God revealed Himself as the Savior to the whole nation.

The Rock Throws Rocks

Now, lets go back a little further in history…

After leading Israel into the promised land and succeeding in the conquest of Jericho and Ai, and making peace with the city of Gibeon, Joshua was faced with his greatest test yet. Adoni-zedek, king of Jerusalem, calls together an army made up of five kingdoms! Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish, and Debir have all come out to war against Gibeon for making peace with Joshua and Israel.

As I mentioned before, with God logic and numbers really don’t mean that much. Joshua and the Israelite’s come upon the massive army suddenly, sending them into a great panic! Canaanite soldiers are running everywhere while Israel pursues them. There isn’t enough light in the day to catch all of them so Joshua commands “Sun, stand still at Gibeon, and moon, in the Valley of Aijalon.” (Joshua 10:12) And amazingly, it happened! Israel destroyed the armies and killed the five kings. But while this “day” that was no ordinary day transpired, Israel was not the one who dealt the most damage to the enemy. As it says in verse 11, “And as they fled before Israel,… the LORD threw down large stones from heaven on them as far as Azekah, and they died. There were more who died because of the hailstones than the sons of Israel killed with the sword.”

Gibeon may have used trickery and deception to make peace with Israel and convince them not to destroy them, contrary to God’s original command, but what is most amazing about this story is that Gibeon’s first encounter with Israel after making peace with them is that they are in need of their help. The five kings weren’t attacking Israel, they were attacking Gibeon. And while I’m sure most of us have seen this event as the Lord continuing the conquest of Canaan (which it is), I can’t help but see this as a great introduction for Gibeon to have with the God of Israel. Israel came to Gibeon’s aid and God got directly involved. He killed more of the enemy than Israel did and in doing so, showed Himself as being the one who saved Gibeon.

And so, just like with Gideon, God showed that Israel wasn’t able to save others or themselves on their own. They needed God to fight for them. The people of Gibeon were Canaanites and yet we also see the Lord coming to save them.

Name Change

And since we’re talking about Joshua, I would like to point out that his name was originally Hosea. But Moses called him Joshua instead and from that point on he is known as Joshua. Hosea in Hebrew means Salvation. While Joshua means He is Salvation or God is Salvation. Interestingly, Joshua’s first experience in leading Israel in battle was against the Amalekites. Moses stood on top of a hill, holding up his arms and as long as his arms were up, Joshua and Israel were succeeding but whenever he let his arms down, they began to lose. I believe this was first hand experience for Joshua, as the future leader of Israel, in understanding and living out the difference between salvation and salvation from God. It was the difference between Hosea – salvation acquired on your own and Joshua – salvation from the hand of God.

Before the Foundations

There are so many other stories I could pull from the old testament showing God’s role as Savior. The miracles He performed in Egypt, the work’s of Moses in the wilderness, all of the judges, and the striking down of 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in a day are just a few such stories. But for the sake of time I will end with this. Revelations 13:8 says, “And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship Him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” (Yes, I know I’m using a new testament verse but I need it to make my final point)

The interesting thing about this verse is that it suggests the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world. In other words, before God actually came to earth in the form of Jesus, even before the first man, Adam, walked on the earth, the Son was already the willing sacrificial Lamb. The crucifixion was not a band-aid. God knows everything and so He knew we would inevitably sin. If Adam and Eve hadn’t done it, then perhaps Cain or Abel or you or me. The point is that He was fully prepared and ready to save humanity before we ever even existed.

God is our Savior! God is The Savior! He has always been the Savior and will always continue being our Savior. God is continuing His salvation even now. Don’t just trust that God has saved you from your sins but trust in Him to save you even now from the enemy. Learn to let Him fight your battles for you.

I’ll end with this, one of my favorite chapters of scripture: Isaiah 43. I encourage you to read the whole chapter on your own but here I’ll simply leave some highlights of the chapter.

But now thus says the LORD, He Who created you, O Jacob, He Who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are Mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you. Because you are precious in My eyes, and honored, and I love you.

“You are My witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and My servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe Me and understand that I am He. Before Me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after Me. I, I am the LORD, and besides Me there is no savior.