A third lesson about God’s power to deliver from Psalm 18 is this: Believe that God is on my side.

In verses 6-19 David gives us a poetic picture of God rallying to his side. David, as you should know, was the Shakespeare of his time. In fact he’s one of the greatest warrior-poets of all time. He’s living proof that real men do like poetry. The arts are not just for the effeminate.

(Quick aside: it’s time for godly men exhibiting godly masculinity to get back into the arts at all levels: dance, painting, acting, writing, poetry.) In these verses we see an example of David at his creative best as he describes God coming swiftly to his aid.

Set your imagination free as we read these words:

“In my distress, I called to the Lord; I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears. The earth trembled and quaked, and the foundations of the mountains shook; they trembled because he was angry. Smoke rose from his nostrils; consuming fire came from his mouth, burning coals blazed out of it.

He parted the heavens and came down; dark clouds were under his feet. He mounted the cherubim and flew; he soared on the wings of the wind…He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes who were too strong for me.”

It’s almost Thor-like, how David describes God coming to deliver him. So what do you think? Did David believe that God was for him?

You need to know that for David, this was not just a clever poem he had written, or just a picture in his head that he made up. David himself may not have experienced earthquakes and dark clouds and smoke, but he had something in mind as he wrote this poem. A real event, a real deliverance where God did use earthquakes and dark clouds, and hailstones and seas parting.

It was the single-most important act of deliverance in all the Old Testament. And time and time again, God told his people, “Don’t you ever forget this” – that miraculous occasion when God delivered the Hebrew slaves from Egypt and brought them through the Red Sea into the Promised Land.

This is what David was describing as he wrote these words.  And for David, how God delivered Israel back then was a picture of how God would come and deliver him out of trouble now. It was this event David must have been thinking of when he stepped alone onto a battlefield with nothing but his sling shot and saw coming his way a seven-foot, 300-pound, armored Philistine named Goliath with his blood-crusted sword raised high.

Every time he led his men into battle facing long odds and larger armies, David remembered how God came to deliver his people way back when, and said to himself, “God, I believe that’s how you’re going to deliver me now.”

For David, how God delivered Israel back then was a picture of how God would come and deliver him out of trouble now.

Do you believe that God is for you? Can you say with the apostle Paul in Romans 8:31 – “If God is for us, who can be against us?” Do you believe that God is on your side?

You say, “Well, I might, I could if only I had some great deliverance from God to look back on. I don’t have any sort of Exodus in my life.”

You’re right. You and I don’t have an Exodus in our past. We have something far better. Far greater. A deliverance from God that blows the parting of the Red Sea away. A deliverance that also came with earthquakes and dark clouds and mighty winds and the rending not of seas but a veil of holiness that had separated men from God.

It was a deliverance God brought about on a hill called Calvary, where the sinless Son of God had his body broken and his blood spilled for you and for me.

The next time you wonder if God is really for you, my friend, look back to that Cross, and stand there in awe at what God your Maker did for you, to rescue you from sin, and shame, and Satan and hell.

You and I don’t have an Exodus in our past. We have something far better. Far greater. A deliverance from God that blows the parting of the Red Sea away.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” 

Don’t you ever doubt that God is for you. Don’t you ever doubt that you matter to God.

And if you call out to him, and believe that he is for you, you will experience his deliverance in your life. Just like David.