A friend has recently taken to posting quotes on his website on a somewhat regular cadence, often adding his thoughts, related scripture or additional context. Shamelessly jumping on that bandwagon, I would like to start a series in this space, examining hymns and songs while also adding my thoughts, scriptures and at times, prayers of response. I hope this will an encouragement as you read these words, and that they will prompt you worship and cling to our God.

O Lord, My Rock and My Redeemer is a song written by Nathan Stiff and published by Sovereign Grace Music. We often sing it at Seaford Baptist Church, and each time we do I am strongly pulled to Psalm 71:19-20, as we lift the words to our God in worship.

Psalm 71:19-20

19 Your righteousness, O God, reaches the high heavens.
You who have done great things, O God, who is like you?
20 You who have made me see many troubles and calamities
will revive me again;
from the depths of the earth
you will bring me up again.

I’ve turned to time and again to this passage to remind me who God is. Maybe that sounds strange to you – God is God, you may be thinking – and dear friend, you are right. He is. But I can so often forget the immense magnitude of who He is – and find myself needing to preach the truth of this to my soul: “O God, who is like you?” And, the words of the song O Lord, My Rock & My Redeemer capture this so perfectly that as I sung the words this morning with my church family, I was moved to tears with gratitude for what my Rock and my Redeemer has done for my weary soul.

O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer
Greatest treasure of my longing soul
My God, like You there is no other
True delight is found in You alone
Your grace, a well too deep to fathom
Your love exceeds the heavens’ reach
Your truth, a fount of perfect wisdom
My highest good and my unending need

O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer
Strong defender of my weary heart
My sword to fight the cruel deceiver
And my shield against his hateful darts
My song when enemies surround me
My hope when tides of sorrow rise
My joy when trials are abounding
Your faithfulness, my refuge in the night

I need His grace to be that well too deep – deep enough to be applied to my sinful life. Deep enough, to extend to every rebel part of my stubborn soul. Deep enough to match His great mercy, and for both that grace and mercy to intertwine divinely to make me His own.

And you do as well, my friend.

And night after endless night, when my mind is attacked by nightmares and fear, my God’s steadfast, unwavering faithfulness becomes my refuge in the dark, dark night…even when I may not sense His presence in the moment, I know I can grab hold of Psalm 19:20 with a white-knuckled grip: “You who have made me see many troubles and calamities, will revive me again.” He is my hope when the ever present tides of immense sorrow threaten to drown my soul. He is my Rock & my Redeemer, the greatest treasure of my longing heart.

But it is verse three of this worship song, that points to why the grace and refuge and and love and faithfulness can be proclaimed and sung in verses one and two. It is verse three, the crescendo (and I do love a good crescendo, don’t you?), that points to why we have a God who the Psalmist is able to cry out about in Psalm 71:19 – “You who have done great things, O God, who is like you??”, because nothing is greater than what was accomplished on the cross for me, and for you.

O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer
Gracious Savior of my ruined life
My guilt and cross laid on Your shoulders
In my place You suffered bled and died
You rose, the grave and death are conquered
You broke my bonds of sin and shame
O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer
May all my days bring glory to Your Name

He is the Gracious Savior of my ruined life.

He is the Gracious Savior of my ruined life.

He is the Gracious Savior of my ruined life.

And He is the Gracious Savior of your ruined life.

Without His resurrection, there is no hope. No redemption. No salvation. Without his resurrection, I can not – and you can not – voice the final words of Psalm 71:20 – “From the depths of the earth, you will bring me up again.”

He has broken the bonds of MY sin and shame – thick bonds, titanium bonds. Bonds that threatened to completely unravel not only my soul but also my mind. I need that reminder often. The bonds are broken. They are no more.

Several years ago now, I wrote the following prayer, in response to this passage. I share it here with you, not because it is an eloquent prayer – it is far, far from it. But I hope that it will encourage you to interact with scripture as you truly consider your Rock and Redeemer.

O God, I can not fathom how far your righteousness extends. I can not. It reaches the highest heavens, of which I have no concept of. But I do know – at least, I have some awareness of this: You have done great things. Like Thomas who needed to see the nail prints in your hands, I am a first hand witness to the great things you have done in my life.

O God – who is like you? Who is like you? You are God, and I am not. You are God, and I am not.

I have seen many troubles and calamities God. Oh God – the things I have seen, the things that I have known – the things that still, to this day, threaten to cut off my oxygen in an avalanche of fear and grief, pain and sorrow. But Psalm 71:20 reminds me of the story of Job…you made him to see many troubles and calamities – yet your love never departed from him. And Job, in 19:25-26 declares this, as do I “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God.“

Therefore God, I am coming to you with my shame, with my grief, with my nightmares and with my sin – I am coming yet again, yet again, yet again, to borrow the words of the Psalmist and say revive me again, revive me again, revive me…again.

May all my days, bring glory to Your Name.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Ps 71:19–20). (2016). Crossway Bibles.

Saturday.

That hollow, grief-filled day, standing between the utter despair of Good Friday, and the salvation and joy-soaked Sunday that had not yet come.

Saturday – when they sat in stunned silence, tumbling over in their minds all that their friend and teacher…the one who claimed to be the Son of God…had taught them about who God is.  The one who turned their world upside down, with teachings of love so vastly different than they had ever been taught before.  Revolutionary love.  Love that encompasses not only friends and family…but enemies.  Love that requires a man lay down his own life.  Sacrificial love.

Images of the grotesque, scandalous slaughter they had witnessed the night before, when their teacher had been mocked, beaten, spit upon, pierced and hung on the cross till he died….those images must have assaulted their minds on that silent Saturday.  Why had the one whom they had watched heal the sick, cause the blind to see, still the storm, and multiply the loaves…and who had even raised the dead!…..why had he not also performed the miraculous and saved himself?

Why had he abandoned them?

This world has seen so many days wrapped in anguish…and we, as individuals, have had such days…but I can’t imagine much more hopelessness than what the disciples and followers of Jesus must have felt, in that Saturday Silence.

Grief…missing their friend…his laughter, his companionship, how he seemed to be able to see into their souls.

Confusion…had what Jesus taught them not been truth?  Had they been duped?

And anger….maybe even anger.

At his killers.
At themselves, for not defending him.
At themselves, for denying they knew him.

And, maybe even anger at Jesus, himself.

They did not know, that Sunday was coming.

The disciples and followers of Jesus, do not have what we have today.  We have God’s word that tells us that Jesus did not remain in that tomb.  We have scripture that shouts to our often despairing hearts, that our only hope is found in our resurrected Savior – the one who sacrificed His life upon the cross to pay the price for our sins – a price that was required of us, but taken upon the beaten back of Jesus, as he hung on the cross and cried out to his Father “Forgive them; they do not know what they are doing!”

But Peter, John, Andrew…Jesus’ mother, and Mary Magdalene….Thomas…and even those who a week before had been crying “Hosanna!”…they did not have what we have.

The only thing they had, was the silence of Saturday.

In church and Christian circles, we don’t talk about that Saturday much.

We attend Good Friday services, observing communion and reflecting on the propitiation and sacrifice-wrapped cross.  We repent and lament and give thanks for what was accomplished through the death of Jesus.

On Sunday (and, every Sunday) we gather with our church families and worship our risen Savior – we sing, loudly.  We greet each other with exuberance – “He is risen!  He is risen, indeed!”

But often, we do not take the time to observe…and remember…that Saturday in-between.

However, we have all been there.

We who know “how the story ends”…we, too, have Saturdays, in between despair and joy.

We have days-months-years when our lives are shattered, and there are no answers to our “Why’s?” Moments when the seemingly silence of God is so deafening that it snatches the breath from our lungs.  Moments when we do not sense hope, even though we have scripture that the disciples did yet have, on their Saturday…..hope-soaked verses and chapters and psalms and commandments and stories that tell us who God is, and what He has done for us through the death and resurrection of Jesus – scripture that we can grasp with white-knuckled death grips as we search the horizon for a light in the darkness.

What do we do, in those moments?

We wait.  In anguished silence, we wait.

And, God is there, even in that silence.

Why was there a Saturday, in between that so very awful Friday and that empty tomb Sunday?  Jesus not only could have saved himself from the cross-death, but God could have resurrected him immediately.  He could have walked right out of that tomb, the minute he was laid in it.  Why put the friends and followers and disciples of Jesus through that agony?  Why did God not roll that stone away, the very moment it closed?  Why place a silent Saturday between destruction and resurrection?

I think it is because God gives us that room…that space…to wait.  To lament.  To sit in our grief.  To weep….to cry out to Him from our pain.  To wrestle with our own doubts and fears and anguish…and to take those to the feet of God, who we know is our only hope…even when we can’t sense that hope.

I think Saturday is there, to allow us to come to the knowledge that there is no suffering that we endure, that Jesus himself hasn’t endured.

And – that painful, silent Saturday, sweetens the thunderous, pounding joy of hope found on Sunday….when the two Mary’s found the tomb empty, and “…with fear and great joy, ran to tell his disciples.” (Matthew 28)

So Jesus Christ defeats our great enemy death not by proclaiming His invincibility over it but by submitting Himself to it.
If you can find this Jesus in a grave, if you can find Him in death, if you can find Him in hell, where can you not find Him? Where will He not turn up?
~ John Ortberg

We are, indubitably, a fickle people; easily pulled here and there.

We run from one thing to another, to whatever we think, in the moment, will save us.

Or, to whatever the world tells us will save us.

The flaw in this is that we think we possess the knowledge to know what will save us in any given moment.

We want salvation in the form of a larger bank account.  We want salvation in a president or other political leader; and preferably one that stands for the things we think are important.  We want salvation in the form of the latest movement.  The latest trend.  The latest skin care product.

Or, the flashiest, most sensational “thing” we can grasp.

Or even in good and right things, such as a vaccine to end a pandemic.

Take Easter, for example.  We brand it.  We market it.  Some churches dress it up; try to “out-do” last year’s service.

And yet, isn’t the resurrection something we should remember every.  single.  Sunday.?

And, in a way, isn’t that what the crowd was doing on Palm Sunday?

We read the story in John 12–often sub-titled “The Triumphal Entry” (even that word….”triumphal”….good grief…)

The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. ¹³ So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!”

They waved their palm fronds, and laid them in the street, and cried out in a frenzy, for salvation. In the words of the Pharisees, “Look, the world has gone after him.”

There was nothing wrong with their words, per se.  “Hosanna” is a beautiful word.  It was originally used as an interjection of appeal for deliverance and used in praise of the deliverer.  A word that should be shouted at the sight of Jesus.

It was their understanding that was wrong.

It was what they were chasing after that was wrong.  They were not longing for salvation of their very souls, but salvation from their circumstances.

What they did not–could not–know in those frenzied streets was that this God-man they were prodding, begging, pleading, hoping would become King of Israel and topple the Roman Government was actually setting His face toward death for their souls.  Death as the only acceptable sacrifice for their sins.

They were, o, so short-sighted.  And fickle.

Because their cries of “Hosanna” quickly turned into “Crucify Him”.  

Not even a week later.

Not even a week later.

Not even a week later.

Am I not also like the crowd?  Do I not also seek after a substitute-salvation?  Do I not also turn to Christ and dictate what I want Him to look like, how I want Him to save me, what I want this thing called “being a disciple” to look like?

And then, when following Christ does not look the way I want it to look, am I not just as quick to turn away?  Even in spite of the fact that I have a tremendous advantage over those who lined the streets on that day so long ago, because I sit on this side of history, with scripture that they did not have.  Scripture that tells me of the purpose for His death.  And beyond that, the purpose of His resurrection.  They did not know these things.

I do, and yet I still am so quick to turn away.

Prone to wander, Lord I feel it.  Prone to leave the God I love.

Prone to wander, when really it is “Hosanna!” that I should be shouting.

“Hosanna, Lord, deliver me.  Deliver us.”