God Is Our Help

January 4

Genesis 7-8

Psalm 3

Proverbs 1:8-9

Matthew 4

God Is Our Help

“Then God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark; and God caused a wind to pass over the Earth, and the water subsided.” 

Genesis 8:1 LSB

“But You, O Yahweh, are a shield about me, my glory, and the One who lifts my head.  I was calling to Yahweh with my voice, and He answered me from His holy mountain.” 

Psalm 3:3-4 LSB

Noah had just experienced the most devastating natural disaster the Earth has ever known.  He and his family were the only survivors of this cataclysmic flood.  They had survived, but everyone they knew, family and friends, and life as they had known it had all been completely and utterly destroyed.  There was no going back.  Life was not going to return to normal.  Noah trusted God and obeyed Him and as a result, he and his family had been saved, but what now?  God had not given him instructions about what was going to happen after the flood.  He warned him that a flood was coming and that he needed to build an ark, but we are not given any indication that God told him what was going to happen next.  After they had been in the ark for months, they must have begun to wonder how long this was going to last and if God had forgotten them.  In the back of their minds, they must have had questions.  “Is the water ever going to go away?”  “What are we going to do when we run out of food?”  Are we going to have to live in this boat forever?” They didn’t know the plan.  But God knew.  God had it all figured out from the beginning.  Genesis 8:1 tells us that God remembered Noah and the waters receded.  This verse is not suggesting that God had forgotten Noah and He remembered him, but rather that He knew Noah and his family were there.  He had the details worked out all along and at the right time, He sent the wind to make the waters recede. 

David was running for his life from his son who was trying to have him killed.  He was scared and alone when he wrote Psalm 3.  By this time, David was an old man.  He had been in this situation before and he knew where to turn for help.  He knew that his power did not come from his fame, wealth, or position.  He knew that his only source of help was the same as it had been when he was a shepherd boy running from Saul.  God was his source of salvation from Saul and would be his source of salvation from Absalom.  He turned to God because he understood that God was his only hope.  Both of these men understood the most important truth available to man:  God is our only source of help.