rescue – The Words Of David C. Frampton

God and His People (Part Two)

Psalm 30:1-3

I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up and have not let my foes rejoice over me. O Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me. O Lord, you have brought up my soul from Sheol; you restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit (ESV).

We all need God to rescue us. Some of these might be very dramatic. Others might be like a parent acting quickly to intercept their child before they get into dangerous situations. We daily require the help of the merciful God (30:1b-3).

In his mercy (cf. 30:10), God answered David’s prayer for help. We act very wickedly and foolishly when we leave God out of our problems, including our physical problems. We ought to pray before we visit the doctor. Think about King Asa of Judah and what happened to him (2 Chronicles 16:12). “As the writer reflects on his experience, the one thing he seems to recall most vividly is how earnestly he fell back upon prayer in his extremity, and how effective prayer proved on this occasion. The entire experience may be said to be summarized in this one verse” (Leupold).

What help did God give David? He gave David physical healing (30:2b-3). David had been in danger of dying, but the Lord restored him to health. He gave David victory over his enemies. They wanted to gloat over his ruin, but God did not permit that to happen. We still have spiritual enemies who would gloat over our destruction, fall or disgrace. But remember the happy truth of 1 John 4:4. You are from God, little children, and you have conquered them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world (CSB).

God lifted David up (30:1b). There is a great and mighty army of people whom God has lifted up, though their problems seemed beyond hope.

God lifted up Noah, when the whole race faced destruction
God lifted up Jacob, when he was a penniless refugee
God lifted up Joseph, when he was sold into slavery
God lifted up Gideon, when he hid in fear
God lifted up Ruth and Naomi, when they were poverty-stricken widows
God lifted up Elijah, when he was a downcast prophet
God lifted up Jeremiah, when his enemies had placed him in a well
God lifted up the woman at the well, when all despised her
God lifted up Peter, when he was a weeping apostle
God lifted up Paul, when he was a violent persecutor

How great is the grace of our God! As an old song says, “It is no secret, what God can do! What he’s done for others, he’ll do for you. With arms wide open, he’ll pardon you. It is no secret what God can do!” (Stuart Hamblen)

The God of grace has lifted us up as well! He has lifted us from the pit of hell, from the sewer of sin, from the swamp of depression, and from the slavery of doubts and fears. O brothers and sisters, will you glorify the Lord with me? Come; let us exalt his name forever (Psalm 34:3).

Grace and peace, David

God and His People (Part One)

Psalm 30:1-3

What should we think of the relationship between God and his people? Do you experience God interacting with you? Do you think that God gets involved in your life? Do you get involved with God? How does this happen? The exact occasion of this psalm cannot be determined. Even the heading of the psalm can be read in various ways (compare the NIV footnote). But this psalm does show the interaction between God and his people during his people’s difficulties. This psalm discloses the boldness of a saint (that is, a true believer) before his covenant God. We should learn how God’s children should approach him during troubles with the pure confidence that agrees with the saint’s position by grace before the Lord.

Consider the desire of a rescued person. I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up (30:1). The person whom God has delivered from difficulties desires to make known the truth that God is great and glorious. This desire is the response of gratitude. For example, a student who has been helped by a teacher will defend that teacher though other students despise him or her, if there is gratitude in that student’s heart.

This desire is evangelistic in spirit. The rescued person wants others to praise the God who saves (30:4). When people have been helped by someone (like a doctor) or by something (like medicine), they do tell others. The deeper the sense of help, the more fervent desire to tell others. The woman at the well went back into the city to tell everyone she met that she had found the Messiah (John 4). Here is the church’s purpose of evangelism. How are we doing in fulfilling this purpose?

This desire is determined in this course of action (cf. 30:12b). David has one goal—to always praise the Lord (cf. Psalm 27:4-6). We live during a time of distraction rather than focused action. People see too many things to do, and so they endlessly flit from one thing to another. But a sense of what is truly worthy of our lives leads us to life goals, like we see in this verse.

The person whom God has delivered rejoices in exalting his Lord (cf. 30:11). David is careful to point out that God’s deliverance ended in joy for him. It is like David is saying, “Yes, my God did correct me during this time of my life, but he meant it for my good (cf. Gen 50:20; Rm 8:28). For this reason, the product was his joy in God. When we travel through a “long dark tunnel” of our life’s journey, we can lose sight of this much too easily. Then we must believe that God will work for our ultimate joy. Someone might ask, “How can I do this?” You need to think and meditate on God’s holy character and then rest on him. There is no substitute for humble faith in the Holy God.

David was stirred deeply in the inner person of the heart. Notice his repeated “O Lord” throughout this psalm. True spiritual experience of the Lord and his grace overflows into an intense verbal expression like “O”. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation (Romans 5:11 ESV). Let us draw near to the Lord our God. In him we find restoration and refreshment for our souls.

Grace and peace, David

Jehoshaphat’s Prayer Request

2 Chronicles 20:10-12

The Lord communicates with his people through the Holy Spirit using his word. He opens up the word to us, makes us feel the power of God’s word, and applies it to our minds and hearts, so that our thoughts, ideas, attitudes, and actions are transformed by it. God’s people communicate with him through prayer, praise, and worship. We express our delight in him and share our lives with him. Since we are dependent created beings, part of sharing our lives with God involves making requests of him. We must be clear about this, because some contemporary Christians assert that God gives them messages during prayer. If this wrong idea was true, it would have been recorded on numerous occasions in the Scriptures. Please don’t form your doctrines from wrong ideas that you suppose make you feel good and spice up prayer. Communicating with the living God is all the “spice” that anyone needs!

Many times in the Bible, the Lord God asks and encourages us to ask him. We should never feel reluctant to bring our requests to the throne of grace. To draw back because we sense our sinfulness exchanges grace for pride in our performance. Clearly, Jehoshaphat was not a perfect man, but that did not stop him from presenting his needs and the great need of his people to the Lord. So then, let us listen to Jehoshaphat present an important request.

Jehoshaphat spoke about their problem (20:10-11). Yes, God fully knows our needs. We do not pray to provide information to the One who knows everything. We talk with God, because he has graciously brought us into a covenantal relationship with him, and he wants us to share our lives with him. Consider a couple awaiting the birth of their first child… or grandchild. One might ask the other, “How do you feel about this?” The purpose of the question is not find out some information that he or she is ignorant about. Instead, it is to draw out the experience of the other’s excitement about the coming blessed event. It is to share the wonder of new life with each other. God wants us to make known our thoughts and ideas about our problems. It is what prayer does. Read John 17, the great prayer of Jesus, in which he talked with the Father about his concerns as the cross drew near. Jesus knew that joy would come through the cross (Hebrews 12:2), and so he talked about the glory ahead with his Father.

Notice that what Jehoshaphat said is based on his prior worship of the Lord. He expected God to help, because he had given them the land (cf. 20:7, 11). Helping them would be consistent with his gracious gift. God can judge his enemies, because he is all-powerful and no one can successfully oppose him (20:6, 12). They, however, are weak and in desperate need.

Jehoshaphat asked God to judge the enemy and to rescue them (20:12). Here is a request that must be read with an understanding of salvation history. At that time, God’s people were a physical nation that God had promised to protect, if they obeyed him. As we have said before, God does not promise his new covenant people physical protection, but his presence with his suffering people, as they serve God and others self-sacrificially. See how Jehoshaphat threw himself humbly and completely on God’s mercy (20:12b). And in the clash of fear and faith, while his fear assaulted him, his faith looked up to the Lord for rescue!

Have you ever asked God to rescue you? Do you know why you need to be rescued? Let’s think about this. Because Christ has died for sinners and has risen that whoever believes in him may be right with God, we encourage you to ask the Lord Jesus to rescue you today. This is an eternal rescue that meets your greatest need, which is to right with God. If you trust in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, God will declare you right with him. Read Romans 3:21-4:5.

Grace and peace, David

God Reviews His Story

Exodus 5:22-6:12

Our text presents an unsatisfying conversation that the Lord had with Moses. The Lord’s servant presented his complaint to the Lord, and God responded by giving his promise for immediate action. I have no idea what Moses expected the Lord to do, but as the end of the section shows, the answer did not satisfy him. It amazes me how we can act like Moses. For example, people will pray, and God will answer precisely, but doubt lingers, like some still doubted after they saw the risen Christ (Matthew 28:17). Our Father in heaven knows our weaknesses, and he doesn’t stop his plan to wait for us to arrive at full satisfaction about our complaints, questions, or fears. Having answered Moses, God moved on to other matters that Moses needed to learn, so that he could teach others.

Before the lesson, the Lord chose to preface it by setting it in the historical context of the story of his glory. We see two main presentations in the Bible. The first is the narrative of the story of God’s glory in Jesus Christ through salvation by judgment. The second is God’s commentary on or explanation of the narrative. Here, God talks to Moses about part of his story that will set the stage for the next step in his plan for his people. You see, God’s plan was not simply to rescue them from something, but to rescue them for something better. People tend to focus on the “from” part, since no sane person likes to suffer. But the Lord not only wants to end the pain but to increase the joy by sharing his glory and goodness with us. People go wrong by the delusion that they can have an incomplete rescue (the “from” part) without friendship with God (the “for something better” part). But rescue apart from God will only fall back into a deeper experience of bondage and pain (cf. Luke 11:24-26). For this reason, they needed more than an immediate rescue from the bondage and pain of Egypt. They needed a relationship of God that would bring them to a better position as his people.

The living God provided a new explanation of his identity (6:2-3). He had made himself known to the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) by his name “God Almighty”. It made known the ability of God to the founders of God’s people in contrast to the inability of the gods the people among whom they lived. God used another name, the Lord (Yahweh), which is perhaps a shortened form of the name “I Am Who I Am” to declare his character as faithful and dependable as he enters into a covenant of relationship with the nation of Israel. God would be the covenant Redeemer of his people; they could rely on him as the one who set them free from slavery to belong to him.
God reminded them of the covenant that he had made with the Patriarchs, which was the covenant of promise (6:4). The promise covenant, among other matters, involved the plan to give to the people the Promised Land, where the Patriarchs had lived as strangers and foreigners. Their life in the land in this way pointed to something better, as Abraham understood (Hebrews 11:8-16). The covenant that God was about to make would be something that came along (Romans 5:20) as God pursued his plan for the something better. God works out his plans step by step. He still follows this method as his people spread the god news of salvation in Christ to all nations.
The Lord reassured Moses that he knew about the suffering of his people (6:5; cf. 2:24-25; 3:7). He was not ignorant of the suffering of the people that caused Moses’ dismay. He also knew their oppressors. Instead, God reaffirmed that he, the covenant making and keeping God, had remembered his covenant, and was about to rescue his people.

All this information was crucial for the way of life of Moses and Israel through the exodus. All that the Spirit of God has revealed in the Bible is also crucial for our way of life now. Are you in suffering? Listen to God’s word. It is important for you to know how to live with the living God now, while you wait for the day of salvation.

Grace and peace, David