Psalm 18: Rescue Is Real
In Psalm 18, we have a collision between a seemingly other-worldly mysticism and the decidedly this-worldly arena of despair. From the outset, David is exuberant in praise, like a preacher listing off different names for God: rock, fortress, deliverer, refuge, shield, salvation, fortress. David recounts his own experience, standing on death’s door, in the grasp of the reaper. He had no recourse but to call upon the name of the Lord, and so in his despair he cried out. Yahweh, is then depicted in the heavenly sanctuary filled with the billows and smoke of God’s holiness. For the first time in the psalter, we are given a detailed theophany—that is a story of God appearing[1]vv.7-15. Here the language is consequent with God’s ineffable qualities. Darkness, thunder, brightness, and fire highlight the scattered depiction of the throne room of God. But in the midst of all of these images that would seem to make God unapproachable and distant, there is a key point that is first foreshadowed in v. 6 and then brought to full fruition in v. 16. The Lord hears David’s cry for help: “From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears.”[2]v. 6 But he not only hears David, he does something about it:
Ps. 18v16-He reached down from on high, he took me; he drew me out of mighty waters.
It is understandable when our presuppositions about God make him seem removed from our present realities. But Psalm 18 maintains that God is immanent even in his indescribable otherness. David’s plight leads him to a prayer of last resort. But God in all his thunderous glory is not above the cry of a dying man. He is near. He reaches down to save. God’s actions are not confined to the heavenly temple but heaven and earth overlap because God is both transcendent above and immediately present to all people and all things.
Psalm 18 is creating a dialectic that is crucial to our work in the world. God acts within the world to rescue us, to provide for us, and to sustain us. Because we are finite and imperfect (i.e. not God) there will always be this otherness to God that we cannot contain in our minds or our language. But God’s otherness does not remove him from the realities of our world, God’s otherness makes him sovereign over that world. And God overcomes his otherness through revelation. He reveals his heart, his nature, his will in concrete ways that we can understand. He reveals himself as rock, redeemer, shield, fortress. Salvation then is not some abstract concept but holistic, bodily rescue.
If you are drowning in this life in oceans of sin, in addiction, in brokenness, God will not throw you a water bottle, he will drive the lifeboat to where you are and scoop you out of the waves. If you are dying of thirst, God will not send a lifeboat, he will carry you to cool springs where he will satisfy your thirst and restore your strength. Rescue is real.