Deliverance

Paul has faced his Goliaths. “As servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger.”

His weapons are not sling and stone, but “purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left.”

The psalmist sings “The LORD is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble.”

The second 1 Samuel reading also relates to Paul’s message, he earnestly desires the kind of soul-to-soul love from the Corinthians that David and Jonathan shared.

The psalmist joins his prayer. “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!”

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Jesus too brings deliverance to a scared band of disciples in a tossed boat. He stands and rebukes the sea itself. The sea who claims souls and ships. The psalmist says of her,

Some went down to the sea in ships, doing business on the mighty waters; they saw the deeds of the LORD, his wondrous works in the deep. For he commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea. They mounted up to heaven, they went down to the depths; their courage melted away in their calamity; they reeled and staggered like drunkards, and were at their wits' end. Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he brought them out from their distress; he made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed. Then they were glad because they had quiet, and he brought them to their desired haven. Let them thank the LORD for his steadfast love, for his wonderful works to humankind.

“Peace, Be Still” He asks the disciples why they were afraid. They think it pretty reasonable to be afraid, to doubt their survival. They ask, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

God’s answer to Job in his doubt answers the disciples as well.

"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding…Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb?-- when I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, and said, 'Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped’?”

Ours is a God of deliverance, in him we have no fear.