Salvation All Around

“For God is my King of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.” (Ps 74:12 AV)

Asaph, the friend and chief musician of David is the author here.  This Psalm indicates Asaph wrote this Psalm in his later years.  When he states God is his King of old, he is declaring the length of his relationship to the LORD for the majority of his long life.  In the course of that long life, he has noticed that God often works salvation in various and numerous ways throughout the whole earth.  Not just on his behalf.  But on the behalf of many and all.  It is this observation that will keep a man focused and positive in the midst of difficult times.  God is a God of salvation.  He does not rejoice in the destruction of the wicked.  He desires all to come unto repentance.  God exercises His justice because it is part of His nature.  He must.  His first desire, however, is to show mercy and save.

Those things that we see as failures of grace are merely the natural consequences of actions taken by mankind.  Either directly or indirectly.  God could, if He so choose, to cease those consequences.  But that would require absolute and final judgment.  Which will come.  In the mean time, the God of all grace desires to show salvation.  He desires to save the sinner from his sinful nature that blessings of life might abound.  He desires to save us from our troubles if by doing so, we learn life’s lessons that will keep us from making the same mistake over and again.  Our biggest problem is not believing that God can save.  We see it in the lives of others.  Our problem is believing God will save in the issues that are closest to us.  Our own lives or the lives of others close to us, we often fail the have significant faith to believe God’s salvation can come to us and ours.

Asaph had no doubt that God was the God of salvation because he saw it as a recognizable pattern of God’s hand.  He saw it in David’s life.  Especially in David’s life.  Time and again God saved David from himself.  Time and again God saved David from enemies.  Time and again, as long as the desire of David was to walk with God, God raised him up and set him in a solid place.  Asaph could see the hand of God’s salvation on the lives of all as rejoiced that this God of salvation was also his King.  And, He was so from way back.