In a Time of Need

God is to us a God of deliverances; and to God the Lord belong escapes from death. Psalm 68:20 NASB

God of deliverances – Characterize God’s actions toward men with one word. Go ahead. Try. One word only. The psalmist uses the Hebrew noun mosha’ot, a plural feminine noun derived from a familiar verb, yasha’ – to save, to deliver, to preserve. Notice that the psalmist does not use the singular. God is not a God of “salvation.” He is (as Robert Alter translates) a “rescuing God.” This is active, continual, repetitive demonstration, not a once-for-all-time promise of heaven in another realm. The Hebrew God is the rescuing God, a verbal form of continuous action. Again and again He shows Himself ready and willing. Every new day is the time of salvation. Do you think that Paul, a man seeped in Hebrew thought, had a one-time view in mind when he wrote, “Now is the day of salvation”? Try reading that in Hebrew rather than Greek. “Now is the day that God rescues, and, by the way, now is everyday.”

Let’s put this into practice. Stop waiting for God to take you to heaven. If you’re going to get there, then you will—sometime. But that moment isn’t up to you anyway, so why be concerned about it?  Rather, focus on God’s rescuing action now. Look for His hand of deliverance in this moment and the next. Recognize that every single minute God is actively orchestrating your deliverance. Salvation comes in tiny doses. Start reading the Bible as a book of verbs rather than a list of nouns.

When do you need rescuing? Ah, if you’re Greek enough, you might think that this is an eternal question. It goes along with the constant diatribe of the evangelical world: “If you died today, where would you go?” Getting to the noun is the most important question of life, according to this way of thinking. But if you’re a Semite, you might ask a different question. “How many times did God rescue me today?” Oh, and just imagine how long that list really is.

You weren’t hit by lightening when the storm passed. You didn’t get injured in a car crash. Your bank didn’t collapse. Your children all came home. You still have a job. You didn’t fall and break your hip. The toilet didn’t overflow. The electricity stayed on. The sun still shined. You didn’t freeze to death.

Why not add a few dozen more. Rescuing—it’s something God is doing all the time. Maybe we have quite a bit more to be thankful about. Maybe the place to look for the hand of God is in the simple, ordinary things of life that we so often take for granted. But they are really the results of mosha’ot.

Topical Index: deliverances, rescuing, mosha’ot, Psalm 68:20