Psalm 120

I love the abruptness of the Hebrew in the opening stanza of this psalm. The original wording of the verse goes like this: “To the Lord in my trouble—I called and He answered me.” (vs 1) The psalmist’s trouble is stressed in the first half of the verse, and then the two actions come like staccato thumps (only two words in the Hebrew) in the second half of the verse: Called. Answered.

When we wait upon the Lord, we can expect this kind of “get-it-done” experience.

Need. Fulfilled.

Desire. Satisfied.

Enslaved. Rescued.

That, of course, is what the rest of this psalm is about—being rescued. “Save me, LORD, from lying lips and from deceitful tongues.” (vs 2) And there may indeed be nothing more important that God does than rescue us from lies. Mostly, the lies come in the form of a subtle attempt to remove God from His rightful place in our lives.

Eugene Peterson, in his book, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, sums this up rather well: “Rescue me from the lies of advertisers who claim to know what I need and what I desire, from the lies of entertainers who promise a cheap way to joy, from the lies of politicians who pretend to instruct me in power and morality… from the lies of pastors who ‘leave the commandment of God, and hold fast the tradition of men’ (Mk. 7:8).

“Rescue me from the person who tells me of life and omits Christ, who is wise in the ways of the world and ignores the movement of the Spirit. The lies are impeccably factual. They contain no errors. There are no distortions of falsified data. But they are lies all the same because they claim to tell us who we are and omit everything about our origin in God and our destiny in God. They talk about the world without telling us that God made it. They tell us about our bodies without telling us that they are temples of the Holy Spirit. They instruct us in love without telling us about the God who loves us and gave himself for us.”

Fortunately, God is not the kind of God to sit back and let us be deceived. Whenever we call, He answers. Whenever we’re in darkness, He sends light. Whatever our need, He gets it done. Boom, boom.