HAVE YOU EVER FOUND yourself in trouble and in desperate need of rescue? It happened to me once when I was at the beach. I had ventured out a tad too far and was surprised to find that I couldn’t feel the ocean floor beneath my feet. At first, my situation seemed under control. I began calmly propelling myself toward the shore, convinced that in next to no time I would touch down on the sandy base where I had been standing moments earlier. I soon realised, however, that I wasn’t making any headway. With increasing alarm, I intensified my efforts—but my struggle was proving futile; I was getting nowhere. Worse, I was becoming tired; my arms were dead weights and my breathing was laboured. I was in difficulty and I knew it. I started to panic.

Thankfully, help was close at hand; all I had to do was ask. I called out to a long-limbed mate who was in the water nearby. He realised the seriousness of my predicament and immediately came to my aid. ‘Here,’ he said with reassuring confidence, ‘hold on to me and I’ll take you closer to the shore.’ I could see that he was able and willing to get me out of trouble, so I put my trust in him and did what he said. In not much more than a minute, I was standing comfortably on the solid seabed, breathing steadily in and out and taking notice of the gentle sea breeze. Phew. I had been saved!

THE DIFFERENCE A SAVIOUR MAKES

If you have ever been helped out of a place of critical need, you know the value of a saviour. When all hope seems lost, the very person who can rescue you turns up and is happy to help, no payment required. Hooray! Someone has come to save me! I’m going to be okay! Perhaps you cried tears of relief as the tension of your situation released its grip on you? Sighs. Smiles. Laughter. Declarations of gratitude. Fresh optimism about the future. A new appreciation of life as a gift. Thank you so much! You’ve saved my life! You’re a godsend!

That’s the difference a saviour makes. When you are trapped, oppressed or in difficulty, he rescues you from harm and carries you to a place of safety. When you are broken and wounded, she nurses you back to wholeness. When you are lost and in the dark, he shows you the way home. When you are empty and hungry, she feeds and nourishes you. When you are crushed and in despair, he gives you meaning and hope. When you are rejected and out in the cold, she invites you in to a place of warmth and belonging. When you are fallen and in disgrace, he advocates for you and restores you to a place of dignity.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF THREAT

Most of us need to be saved from adverse circumstances at least once in our lifetime. Yet it isn’t only our circumstances that can turn against us. The day may come (if it hasn’t already) when you or I face a more personal, unsettling, menacing kind of threat.

 Imagine: Someone in your circle is trying to bring about your ruin. Toxic rumours are being spread about you. Traps are being set for you. Accusations are being hurled at you. Your words are being twisted. Your friends are being turned against you. Your work is being undermined. Your bosses are using their power to torment and humiliate you. Who will rescue you now? Your enemies are as ruthless as a shark coming in for the kill.

DAVID

Three thousand years ago, there lived a king by the name of David who knew what it was to be hunted. He spent the better part of fifteen years running from his jealous predecessor—a crazed despot named Saul who ached to see him dead. On many occasions, David had to hide or flee to avoid being slain (1 Sam 19:10-12,18-20; 20:1,24,42; 21:10; 22:1; 23:13-25; 26:1-4; 27:2; see also 2 Sam 15:13-17; 17:9). At times, he felt overwhelmed, like he was drowning (Ps 69:1-2,14-15; 144:7). He could easily have given up hope—if not for the fact that he had a mighty Saviour to put his hope in. When the wolves were snarling at David’s door, when the tongues of his accusers were wagging, when the cords of death were entangling him, who did he turn to?

David turned to God in prayer. Take a look at these snippets from David’s many prayers for rescue (often referred to as salvation). You may wish to read them aloud, as if you are appealing to God Himself. Put some oomph! into it.

LORD, how many are my foes! How many rise up against me! Many are saying of me, ‘God will not deliver him.’ … Arise, LORD! Deliver me, my God! Strike all my enemies on the jaw; break the teeth of the wicked (Ps 3:1-2,7). … Save and deliver me from all who pursue me, or they will tear me apart like a lion and rip me to pieces with no one to rescue me (Ps 7:1-2). … LORD, see how my enemies persecute me! Have mercy and lift me up from the gates of death (Ps 9:13). … Awake, and rise to my defence! Contend for me, my God and Lord (Ps 35:23). … Break the teeth in their mouths, O God; LORD, tear out the fangs of those lions! (Ps 58:6). … LORD, save me! (Ps 116:4).

Can you hear, or rather, can you feel the anguish spilling out of David’s soul? He is fearing imminent death, teetering on the edge of the abyss, grappling to know God as his saving Helper in the midst of trouble. He is throwing himself down before the LORD of Mercy and pouring out his unsanitised innards as if his life depends on it. He has no vanity; He is covering nothing up and holding nothing back. And what’s wrong with that? He isn’t a religious professional putting on a polished performance; he is a child who desperately needs his Father to hear his cry and spring into life-saving action. LORD, save me!

SALVATION HISTORY

David wasn’t asking for a theoretical salvation or for pie in the sky when he died. His need was NOW and his enemies were real; life itself was in the balance. His prayers, though, weren’t simply an outlet for his desperation. He had faith—faith founded on God’s proven record as a Saviour. In the centuries gone by, God had saved:

• Noah and his family from a worldwide flood (Gen 6:17-18; see also 1 Pet 3:20; 2 Pet 2:5);
• Lot and his family from a deluge of burning sulphur (Gen 19:15-22; see also 2 Pet 2:7);
• Jacob from the wrath of his brother Esau (Gen 32:11-21; 33:1-4);
• many lives from famine through Joseph (Gen 45:5-11; 50:20);
• the Israelites from slavery in Egypt (Ex 13:31-41; 14:10-31);
• Rahab and her family from destruction in Jericho (Josh 2:1-21; 6:17,22-23);
• generations of Israelites from foreign raiders in Canaan (Judg 3-16);
• David’s great-grandmother Ruth from poverty and alienation (Ruth 2:14-17; 3:1-4:17);
• Hannah—the mother of the man who would anoint David as king—from the disgrace of childlessness (1 Sam 1:1-20).

God responded to David’s prayers by saving him from Saul’s hand again and again (see 1 Sam 18-21; 23). Even as David was fleeing from Saul, he was being used by God to save others (1 Sam 17:1-51; 23:1-5; 2 Sam 3:18). Eventually, God saved David from his pursuer one last, decisive time (1 Chron 10:14) and installed David as king. God then continued in the same vein, saving Israel from the Philistines (2 Sam 5:19-25), the Arameans (2 Sam 8:5-6), and the Edomites (2 Sam 8:14). Indeed, Scripture says several times that God ‘gave David victory wherever he went’ (2 Sam 8:6,14, 1 Chron 18:6,13).

It was a pattern that would endure long after David died. As the Israelites’ wayward history dragged on, God saved them from:

• the Egyptians (2 Chron 12:7);
• the Cushites (2 Chron 14:11-15);
• the Arameans no less than four times (1 Kings 20:13,19-21,28-30; 2 Kings 7:6-7; 13:5);
• a combined force of Moabites, Ammonites, and Meunites (2 Chron 20:5-12,22-24);
• the Moabites a second time (2 Kings 3:16-26)
• the Assyrians (2 Kings 19:35-36).

Yet God’s salvation after David’s time didn’t just play out on a national scale. He also saved individuals who were commonly thought to be nobodies:

• a prostitute whose baby was about to be killed (1 Kings 3:16-28)
• a woman and her son who had virtually nothing to eat (1 Kings 17:7-16)
• a widow who was on the brink of losing her two sons to a merciless creditor (2 Kings 4:1-7).

The evidence in history is clear: saving helpless victims from adversity and adversaries is God’s core business. Perhaps this is why theologians use the term ‘salvation history.’ It is a truth that the LORD Himself once thundered from the pulpit of heaven:

TURN TO ME AND BE SAVED, ALL YOU ENDS OF THE EARTH, FOR I AM GOD, AND THERE IS NO OTHER.

(Isaiah 45:22)

DAVID’S SAFE REFUGE

Yet, to David, God wasn’t just a Saviour in the classic sense—a fearless warrior who rescues defenceless souls from evildoers. God was also his Saviour in a more personal way—a way that found expression in his prayers:

LORD my God, I take refuge in You (Ps 7:1)… The LORD is my Rock, my Fortress… my God is my Rock, in whom I take refuge, my Shield… my Stronghold (Ps 18:2)… You are my Hiding Place; You will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance (Ps 32:7)… Be my Fortress against those who are attacking me (Ps 59:1)… You have been my Refuge, a Strong Tower against the foe. I long to dwell in Your tent forever and take refuge in the shelter of Your wings (Ps 61:3-4).

David wasn’t always shielded from his enemies in such a way that there was no physical danger. The recurring sight of hundreds of sharpened spears gleaming in the sun, all of them intended for him, was a constant reminder of his human vulnerability. But as he drew near to God, he recognised that he was nonetheless being shielded from evil in a much more profound way. David discerned in prayer that he was being hidden by God in the secure Sanctuary of God’s own presence, which surrounded him and filled him. He wasn’t alone; he would never be alone. By voicing to God the eternal truths that were welling up from God’s Spirit within him—‘In peace I will lie down and sleep, for You alone, LORD, make me dwell in safety’ (Ps 4:8)—David was choosing to make his home in God rather than in his trouble. He knew God to be the ultimate Reality, his permanent Safe Haven. Nothing else was as real; nothing his enemies could throw at him—spears, accusations, complaints, the kitchen sink—would separate him (Rom 8:35,38) from the One who Himself was a Shield around him (Ps 3:3; see also Ps 18:2,30; 144:2). ‘In God I trust and am not afraid. What can man do to me?’ (Ps 56:11; see also Luke 12:4)…