Latest / Reformed Thinking / If the Lord Had Not Been on Our Side (Psalm 124) | Charles Spurgeon

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If the Lord Had Not Been on Our Side (Psalm 124) | Charles Spurgeon · Reformed Thinking

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Imagine surviving a war. Yeah, a war where your own
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family tried to slaughter you and you are walking back into
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your city, right? You're covered in dirt,
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completely breathless, and your heart is just pounding against
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your ribs. You definitely wouldn't stand at
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the city gates and recite polite, polished poetry.
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Not at all. You would be gasping for air.
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You would speak in broken fragments.
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Absolutely. Well, welcome to reform
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thinking. Glad to be here.
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Today we are looking at an ancient survival anthem.
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It's a text that translators have spent centuries trying to
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clean up. Honestly, they really have.
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And we are going to look at why. The raw, broken grammar of Psalm
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124 is what makes it so incredibly authentic.
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Spot on. We are spending this session
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unpacking excerpts from Charles Spurgeon's massive commentary
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The Treasury of David. It is a massive resource, yeah.
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We are zeroing in on this specific intense song of
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deliverance, and we're bringing in the historical theologians he
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references. Mines like Martin Luther,
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Matthew Henry, Thomas Manton and Daniel Dyke.
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Right. And if you were listening to
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this right now, and you feel overwhelmed by your
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circumstances, you will find immediate practical comfort in
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these ancient metaphors. Yeah, the beasts, the floods,
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the traps. The goal today is to unpack a
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very short, very intense song for you.
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And these commentators we were looking at, they were not
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sheltered academics sitting in ivory towers.
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No, not at all. Charles Spurgeon himself, you
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know, ministering in 19th century London, he suffered from
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debilitating physical pain. And severe crushing depression.
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Right. Yes, and Martin Luther faced the
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wrath of an entire empire. He lived for years under the
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very real threat of execution. That changes how you read
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things. Completely.
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When these men looked at a text about violent life or death
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survival, they were reading it through the lens of their own
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intense suffering and vulnerability.
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That gives their analysis such a striking weight.
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It does. We are dealing with real trauma
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here, real threats and absolute last second rescue.
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So to understand the sheer emotion of this text, we have to
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look at the historical backdrop first.
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Right before we even touch the verses.
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Yeah, the title calls it A song of Degrees of David.
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The common John Mason good gives us a highly specific visceral
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scene for this. I love the context he brings.
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He suggests this was sung as a triumphant March, but not like A
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March following a glorious foreign conquest.
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Right. It wasn't a standard military
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victory, no. This was a loyal army returning
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to Jerusalem after surviving an absolutely terrifying rebellion.
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Led by David's own son, Absalom, Yeah.
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This was a massive, bloody civil war.
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Neighbors turned on neighbors. David's most trusted advisor
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betrayed him. The king had to flee his own
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capital city, weeping. Crossing the Kidron Valley into
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the wilderness. And the great mass of the
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population had been whipped into a frenzy to overthrow the
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Kingdom. They wanted to wipe out David's
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followers. So the song we are unpacking
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today is literally the sound of survivors walking back into
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their homes. Realizing they were inches away
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from total annihilation. With that scene set, an
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exhausted, victorious army returning, the opening lines
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make complete sense. They really do.
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It does not begin with a peaceful preamble.
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No, it launches right into the action almost abruptly.
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The text starts with the sentiment.
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If it had not been the Lord who is on our side.
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And Spurgeon points out a really interesting linguistic anomaly
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about the original Hebrew text here.
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He notes that it is essentially A fragment.
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It burns with poetic fire. Poetic fire and broken grandeur.
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Translators over the centuries tried to patch it up to make it
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read smoothly. Adding italicized words to fill
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in the grammatical gaps. Yes, but Spurgeon argues that
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the raw text reads much more like someone physically gasping
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for air. I love that literal translation
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it reads. Had it not been Jehovah, he was
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for us. Yeah, just totally breathless.
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I am trying to picture this. A song this messy does not
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happen in a quiet, serene setting.
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Not at all. It makes me think of a friend
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bursting into your living room, completely out of breath, eyes
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wide open. Right.
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And they start telling you a story right in the middle of the
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climax. Because the adrenaline is still
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surging, they do not give you background information.
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They just yell if he hadn't been there.
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Yes, and Spurgeon mentions superfine critics who try to
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dismiss David's authorship because the style seems too
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rough. Or different from his other
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psalms? But doesn't this fractured
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grammar feel like the strongest evidence that a real person
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survived a real trauma? Absolutely.
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The lack of Polish proves the authenticity of the emotion.
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When a person is experiencing the immediate aftermath of a
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near death situation, they do not speak in perfectly crafted
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paragraphs. No, they speak in desperate
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exclamations. And Martin Luther provides a
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brilliant psychological insight into why the writer repeats that
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opening exclamation. The singer says If it had not
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been the Lord who was on our side, now may Israel say, if it
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had not been the Lord who was on our side.
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It's repeated for a specific reason.
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Luther explains that when we are in the middle of danger, our
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fear is massive. It's almost beyond measure.
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We see the threat clearly in the moment.
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But the moment the danger passes, human beings have this
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built in psychological tendency to minimize how bad it actually
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was. Oh, that is so true.
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We imagine the threat to have been much less severe.
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We tell ourselves we could have handled it.
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Or that our own ingenuity got us out.
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Luther calls this a delusion of Satan to obscure the grace of
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God. Wow.
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So the repetition in the song is a deliberate psychological tool.
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It forces the singer to look directly at the sheer scale of
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the threat. It prevents them from forgetting
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the absolute necessity of divine intervention.
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Stopping us from trying to claim any credit for our own survival.
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That is a keen observation of human nature.
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It really hits home. We survived something awful and
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a week later we rewrite the history in our own minds.
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We say it wasn't that close. I had a backup plan.
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I would have figured it out because if we admit we were
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completely helpless, it is terrifying.
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It is, and this song refuses to let the singer use that self
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soothing lie. That transitions us into the
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specific cause of the singer's terror.
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Verse 2. Moving from the breathless
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delivery into the description of the adversaries.
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The text says when men rose up against us.
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On the surface, that sounds fairly standard.
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Right. But Daniel Dyke, writing in
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1617, points out a detail that changes the reading entirely.
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What does he say? The text calls them men, but
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according to the historical reality, they acted with
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absolute inhumanity. Yikes, says they were beasts.
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Yay, devils in the form and fashion of men.
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Yet the writer restrains himself.
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He uses the moderate term men and leaves the judgement to God.
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That restraint is highly significant.
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I mean, think about it, he's not resorting to name calling.
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Even though the attackers possess nothing of humanity
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except their outward physical shape.
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This ties directly into the theological view of human
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nature. Yes, when the restraining grace
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of God is lifted, humans are entirely capable of becoming
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monsters to one another. Civil wars like the Rebellion of
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Absalom demonstrate this vividly.
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The writer does not need to call them demons.
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By simply stating men rose up against us, it makes a chilling
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statement. A statement about what human
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beings are naturally capable of doing to the righteous it.
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Reminds me of a survivor of a horrific event giving a
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statement to the authorities. That's a great analogy.
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Sometimes the most terrifying accounts are the ones where the
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victim gives a completely flat clinical description of the
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violence. Yeah, there is no hyperbole, no
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exaggeration. They just state the facts.
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The lack of hyperbole actually makes the description of the
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attackers far more chilling men. Rose up against us.
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It highlights the cold, calculated reality of human
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malice. You are not fighting mythical
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Dragons. You are fighting your neighbors.
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And the commentators we are referencing, specifically the
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rabbins mentioned by Spurgeon, viewed this phrase as having
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massive collective weight. They read this not just as a few
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isolated individuals attacking David.
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No, but as mankind collectively rising against God's chosen.
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The word used represents humanity as a whole, a race that
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has set itself against the righteous.
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That amplifies the danger exponentially.
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You are not fighting a localized small scale gang.
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You are facing the combined malice of the many.
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And the survival of the few against this massive collective
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hatred highlights the absolute necessity of Jehovah taking
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their side. If the Creator had not stepped
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in, the sheer numbers and the beastly disposition of these men
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would have erased the righteous entirely.
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The sheer mathematics of the conflict made survival logically
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impossible. Right, without divine
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intervention. Because these enemies were
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acting less like men and more like monsters, the song shifts
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gears. We move into verse 3.
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It moves from that flat clinical description into its first major
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visceral metaphor. The imagery here is startling.
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It reads then they had swallowed us up quick when their wrath was
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kindled against us. We are introduced to the image
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of a gluttonous beast. Joseph Carroll unpacks this
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specific metaphor with a linguistic distinction that
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changes the visualization completely.
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He notes the difference between an eater and a swallower.
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Right, yes, an eater choose their food, they savor it, or
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they slowly break it down the. Glutton, however, swallows eat
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whole without chewing. Think of a massive serpent
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swallowing its prey in one continuous motion.
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Carroll points out that the enemy described here did not
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want to conquer the righteous or assimilate them into their
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culture. They didn't even want to slowly
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break them down overtime. No, they wanted to annihilate
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them in a single insatiable gulp.
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They wanted a clear riddance, leaving absolutely no trace
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behind. The goal was total instantaneous
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erasure. I want to clarify the specific
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word there because modern English can make it confusing
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for you if you're just reading it.
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Today the text says they would have swallowed us up quick.
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Today we use quick to mean fast or rapid.
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Yeah, like how? Speed.
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Right. Did the translators mean the
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enemy was moving with high speed?
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In the context of this historical translation, quick
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actually means alive. Alive.
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They would have swallowed us up alive.
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William S Klumar and other commentators reference specific
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historical judgments to illustrate this.
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Looking back at the Book of Numbers, right?
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Yes. In chapter 16, the earth
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literally opened up and swallowed followed Kora, Dathan
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and Abiram alive because of their rebellion.
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The ground split apart and they went down alive into the pit.
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The imagery the psalmist uses brings that sheer terror to
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mind, but applies it to the wrath of men.
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The enemy is described as a famished wild beast.
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Or a monster of the deep taking its prey hole while the life is
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still in it. It conveys A wrath that is
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kindled like a furnace. Spurgeon notes that human anger
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is never more fiery than when the people of God are its
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objects. It is a furnace heated 7 times
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hotter than normal. The cruelty is absolute.
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But one terrifying image is apparently not enough to capture
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the peril. The writer feels that the
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gluttonous beast does not fully cover the scope of the danger.
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So the song immediately shifts to an entirely different
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scenario. We move into verses four and
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five and suddenly we are dealing with rushing waters.
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The text says then the waters had overwhelmed us.
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The stream had gone over our soul.
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We are no longer running from a monster.
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We are drowning. It feels like describing a
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nightmare where the threat constantly morphs.
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You dodge the beast, turn the corner, and a tidal wave is
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crashing down on you. It captures the psychological
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terror of an adversary that you simply cannot conquer.
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Martin Luther provides A vivid illustration for this shift in
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metaphor. Luther compares the church or
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the righteous people to a fragile little boat tied to a
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riverbank. Or a tiny shrub growing near the
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water. And he compares the enemy to the
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massive Elbow River, overflowing its banks with unstoppable
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force. He says we are like a withered
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leaf holding lightly to a tree. And the enemy is a fierce north
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wind. The contrast in sheer physical
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mass is staggering. You cannot reason with a flood.
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You cannot negotiate with rushing water.
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You cannot fight a torrent with human strength or swords.
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It sweeps away cattle, crops, houses and men alike.
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A beast can be fought, perhaps, but a flash flood simply
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overwhelms everything in its path.
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Wait, so the text specifically refers to these waters with a
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very strange adjective? Oh yes, it says.
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Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.
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Why call water proud? Water is just a physical force
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normally, right? But Spurgeon and the other
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commentators spend a lot of time on that exact word.
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This flood is not just physical destruction.
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No, the opposition of men is usually embittered by a haughty
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scorn. It carries disdain.
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The enemy does not just want to destroy you physically, they
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mock your efforts. They treat your faith as
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obstinate ignorance. This contempt, this disdain,
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crushes a person's courage and hope long before their physical
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assets are touched. By an entire culture, to have
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your beliefs treated with absolute arrogance is uniquely
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devastating. The proud waters go over the
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soul. It buries the victim beneath
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insults and arrogance. The physical attack is the
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water. The mockery, the sheer arrogant
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disdain is what makes the water proud.
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And that is what drowns the soul.
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So we have the singer feeling entirely suffocated by the
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imagery of beasts and floods. But right at verse 6, the tone
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of the song pivots dramatic medically toward rescue.
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The text reads, Blessed be the Lord who had not given us as a
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prey to their teeth. The commentator and McMichael
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offers a dramatic visualization of this verse.
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We return to the beast metaphor, but look at the timing.
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The beast was not hiding in the bushes.
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It had not merely sprung at them from a distance.
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According to the imagery, the prey was already between its
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bloody jaws. A single seconds delay would
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mean certain death. The teeth were prepared to tear.
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But God steps onto the scene. He walks right up to the
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ferocious beast, pries open the jaws and takes the trembling
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prey out of its mouth. I am looking at that mental
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image and it brings up a massive theological question.
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What's that? Why does God wait until the prey
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is literally in the teeth? If he has the capability to stop
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the beast, why not stop it while it is miles away?
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Why let the jaws close around the victim before stepping in
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it? Seems terrifyingly late.
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Thomas Stint, writing in 1621, addresses this directly.
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And what does he argue? He argues that God waits until
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the last possible moment so that no one can attribute the rescue
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to a second cause. And second cause is any human or
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natural means. Right.
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Yes, like human army, a doctor, a sudden change in the weather,
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a strong bank account. God uses second causes all the
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time. He does, but if the rescue
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happens early, we tend to credit our own wisdom or our own
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defenses. We trust in the second causes.
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Precisely when we are most ready to perish, when we are literally
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in the teeth of the threat and all second causes have failed.
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We realize our complete inability to save ourselves.
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The rescue at the final microsecond proves definitively
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that enemies have no jurisdiction over the righteous
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unless God grants it. It forces the survivor to
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recognize the first cause. It strips away all illusions of
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self-sufficiency. God gets the total glory because
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human strength was entirely exhausted.
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Escaping a beast at the last second is a dramatic, loud,
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violent rescue. But the Psalm introduces 1/3
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metaphor in verse 7. And this one represents a much
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quieter, more deceptive kind of danger.
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The text says our soul is escaped as a bird out of the
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snare of the Fowlers. The snare is broken and we are
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escaped. This is a totally different
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situation from the flood or the lion.
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A lion roars, a flood crashes, but a snare is completely
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silent. It requires a different type of
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vigilance entirely. A snare, as the commentators
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point out, operates on deception.
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Fowlers, the people who hunt small birds, know their prey
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intimately. They use hunger for dainties, or
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they use fright to drive the bird into the net.
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In historical times, Fowler's used line twigs.
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Those were branches coated with an extremely sticky substance to
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capture birds. The bird lands expecting rest or
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food, and its feathers become glued to the branch.
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And the more it struggles, the more stuck it becomes.
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This analogy speaks so accurately to human
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vulnerability. It does.
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A bird does not know it is in a trap until the net falls or the
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feet stick. I think about modern traps you
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and I fall into today. We do not usually walk into a
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lion's den on purpose. No, we don't.
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But a snare might look like a digital algorithm designed to
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keep you dooms crawling. Feeding off your outrage or your
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anxiety. You.
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Willingly engage because you think you're just staying
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informed. And suddenly you're entirely
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trapped in a cycle of despair. Or it might be getting caught in
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bad habits. Or toxic corporate cultures that
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offer a great salary but slowly destroy your soul.
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You walk into the snare willingly because because the
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bait looks good. That is the insidious nature of
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it. George Barlow identifies these
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snares as worldliness, selfishness, and unbelief.
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These are quiet compromises. Thomas Adams provides A stunning
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visual to expand on. This.
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I love his description here. He says the lime twigs are the
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world and our affections are the feathers that get stuck to them.
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Our own desires are what betray us.
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We get caught because we want the bait.
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But look at how the deliverance happens.
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In the text it says the snare is broken.
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Notice that God does not meticulously untangle the bird.
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He does not carefully peel the sticky lime off the feathers
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while leaving the trap intact for next.
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Time. No, he shatters the trap
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entirely. The rescue from deception is
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just as decisive as the rescue from the beast.
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Our affections are the feathers. That is a brilliant way to
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phrase it. Our desires stick us to the very
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things that destroy us. And this ancient song of escape,
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with its beasts and floods and broken snares, has been a
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literal soundtrack for real people experiencing historical
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liberation. We have a remarkable historical
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account in our sources from 1582 in Edinburgh.
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Documented by Andrew A Bonar. The historical record shows this
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text being used in a highly literal way during the Scottish
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Reformation. An imprisoned minister named
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John Durie was set free. The political tension in
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Edinburgh between the Cook and the Crown was incredibly high at
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that time. As Durie began walking up the
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High Street, he was met by 200 of his friends.
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As they walked up the cobblestones, the crowd began to
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organically swell. It grew from 200 to 2000 people.
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And spontaneously, without a choir director, they all began
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singing Psalm 124 in four part harmony.
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Imagine the sheer acoustic force of 2000 voices echoing off the
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stone buildings. Singing now, Israel may say, if
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it had not been the Lord who was on our side.
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Bonar notes a specific detail from that event.
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One of the chief persecutors of the church at that time, the
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Duke of Lenox, was looking out a window or standing on the
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street. And he was reportedly more
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terrified by the sight and sound of that song than anything he
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had ever seen in Scotland. He was not looking at an army
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with swords, he was looking at his singing crowd.
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But there is sheer, undeniable strength in a unified voice
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realizing its own deliverance. A singing crowd is far more
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intimidating than an armed mob. Because an armed mob relies on
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its own strength, which can be defeated.
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The singing crowd relies on the Maker of heaven and earth.
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The persecutor knew that if these people truly believed God
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was breaking their snares, no prison he could build would ever
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hold them. The singing of the Psalm moved
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the truth from an abstract theological concept into an
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undeniable physical reality in the streets of Edinburgh.
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It was a public declaration of the final verse of the song.
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The verse that looks upward and outward to the cosmos for final
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assurance. Verse 8 says our help is in the
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name of the Lord who made heaven and earth.
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Having looked back at the terror of the beasts, the floods and
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the traps, the writer lifts their eyes to the ultimate
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source of their rescue. Thomas Manton's commentary on
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this verse brings the scale of God's capability into sharp
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focus. Manton points out that heaven
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and earth are standing monuments of God's capability.
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He created the universe X nihilo out of nothing.
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Manton writes the God did not need a trowel to arch the sky.
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And he did not need a spade to dig the oceans.
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He had absolutely zero materials to work with.
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If I can use is a modern analogy for you if your car's engine
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completely fails on the highway, smoking and sputtering.
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You do not want a random passerby to try and fix it.
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No, you want the engineer who designed the engine in the first
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place. Because God engineered the
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entire cosmos from scratch, resolving your personal crises
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is well within his skill set. Whether they are physical
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threats, financial ruin or relational collapse.
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If the Creator can fashion the cosmos out of nothing, he can
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certainly manage the floodwaters of human opposition.
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The French Protestants understood this so thoroughly
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that they began all their public worship services with this exact
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verse. They started every gathering by
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declaring who their helper was. Edmund Calamy noted a beautiful
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contrast regarding this. What did he say?
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He said that while the Spartans use Spears for their walls, the
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Christian uses prayers as walls. They trust the maker of the
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universe to be their defense mechanism.
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The Spartans trusted second causes the believer trusts the
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first 'cause. Every time you look at the sky
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or the ground, you are looking at undeniable physical proof of
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your helpers capability. The same God who holds the stars
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in place is the one who pries open the jaws of the beast.
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We started today with the breathless, adrenaline fueled
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realization that survival was not guaranteed.
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We saw that the threats in life are undeniably real and
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terrifying. Whether they are violent beasts
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looking to swallow us whole and leave no trace.
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Or overwhelming floods of opposition and haughty scorn
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that seek to drown our souls. Or subtle deceptive snares that
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catch our affections like sticky twigs.
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We are as fragile as a withered leaf or a silly bird.
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Yet the maker of heaven and earth is personally involved.
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He steps into the flood. He pries open the jaws of the
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beast at the very last microsecond.
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And he shatters the snares to set us.
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The Psalm praises God for breaking the snare after the
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bird was already caught. He praises him for the rescue
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after the prey was between the teeth.
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We so often panic when we realize we are stuck when the
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net falls over us and we feel the lime twigs on our feathers.
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But what if the specific trap you find yourself sitting in
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right now? The one making you feel
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completely helpless and terrified.
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What if that is the precise setting for your own future song
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of deliverance? What if the snare hasn't been
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broken yet, simply because the climax of your story is still
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arriving? The waiting is the setup for the
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rescue, the snare is just the stage for the deliverer to work.
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That is something to keep in mind when things feel the
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darkest. Thank you for joining us for
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this session of reformed thinking.
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As you step out the door today, take a hard look at the sky and
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remember exactly who made it.