Lost

Lead me in Your truth and instruct me, for You are the God of my rescue.  In You do I hope every day.  Psalm 25:5  Robert Alter translation

Rescue – When Michael W. Smith sings, “I’m lost without You,” I don’t think he has Torah in mind.  But he should.  Our popular Christian culture is myopically focused on the experience of God.  We long for His presence, by which we mean some warm, overwhelming feeling that sweeps us off our feet (literally in some services).  Our praise and worship music is the tonal equivalent of love songs, designed to create ecstasy in an effort to recapture the moments of infatuation that comes with relationship infancy.  In a word, modern Christian religious fervor is about one word: feelings. 

I don’t think David saw it that way.  In fact, even though emotional expressions are at the heart of the Psalms, I don’t think feelings are the goal of David’s poetry.  The purpose of the Psalms is rescue, not rapture.  Feelings are merely the vehicle that brings us the truth about God’s deliverance.  They are not the end of the story.

The Hebrew word used here is the nominative form of the verb yasha’, “to help, to deliver, to save.”  Since the name of the Messiah is a form of the same verb, we might even say that the purpose of the Psalms is to direct us to the Savior, Yeshua.  There is an important insight here.  Emotions are God’s way of moving me toward Him so that I may experience His steadfastness.  When I make emotions the goal of my religious experience, I become vulnerable to their intrinsic fluctuations and I mistakenly believe that God’s absolute reliability is subject to my emotional state.  In other words, I miss the whole point of feeling His presence.  It is not the feeling that matters but rather the reality that He never changes in His care for me even when I move up and down the emotional staircase.  In the end, every emotion should lead me to my Savior.

Yasha’ draws a picture of wide-open spaces.  To be rescued is to be removed from the confined and narrow.  Rescue is the liberating experience of knowing the way in front of me is safe.  This is accomplished by “the God of our salvation,” a very common phrase in the Tanakh.  God is the only empowering agent of this kind of rescue.  This rescue is never theoretical.  It is deliverance from real threats and real enemies, although they are not always perceptible threats and enemies.  Interestingly, even in the New Testament, the power of salvation is attributed to YHWH.  Yeshua himself is rescued from the grave by the power of God.  Salvation itself is the prerogative of God.  This is the reason why the Pharisees objected so strongly to Yeshua’s declaration, “Your sins are forgiven.” 

But David was not confused about any of this.  YHWH is his rescuer, and that rescue comes about because YHWH leads David in ‘amitteka (Your truth).  Rescue is intrinsically tied to God’s direction and instruction.  You can’t have one without the other.  Yeshua essentially says the same thing.  “Until heaven and earth pass away” is still a long time off.  In the meanwhile, David hopes every day.  We know this Hebrew word (qawa’) is both “waiting” and “hoping.”  David perseveres—every day.  That is the sign of faith—to continue day after day while it is still day.

Feel all you want!  Just let those feelings take you to the truth of the Rescuer whose emotional commitment toward you does not change.

Topical Index:  feelings, emotions, rescue, yasha’, Psalm 25:5