“What if the Lord had not been on our side?”
(Psalm 124:1 NLT)
There are many ways to interpret our experiences. The lens we choose when we look forward to the future or backward on the past greatly affects the state of our hearts.
The Bible offers us a lens through which we can look at our past. It calls us to consider our past in light of this question: “What if the Lord had not been on our side?”
The Context of the Question
Psalm 124 is a song that reflects on this question. The people singing this psalm had suffered and were looking back on their hardship. Their hardship had been intense. They felt emotionally “swallowed alive,” “engulfed,” “overwhelmed,” torn apart, and trapped (Psalm 124:3, 4, 5, 6, 7). Yet God’s people had dodged all these dangers. How?
The opening question of the psalm poses a possibility: “What if the Lord had not been on our side?” And the end of the psalm reassures God’s people that he had never left them: “Our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth” (Psalm 124:8). God helped his people in their deepest distress and, by bringing them through it all, proved that he was on their side.
What Does It Mean for God to Be on Our Side?
This simple song recorded in the Bible and sung by the Israelite people can lead our hearts to worship God today too. Can you look back on your life, or on a particular season, and ask, “What if the Lord had not been on my side?”
That question implies that God is on your side. What a thought! The God who spoke the world into existence (Psalm 33:9), who holds all things together (Colossians 1:17), and who is all powerful (Jeremiah 32:17) is on my side? How do I know?
The testimony of the Bible is that we are all God’s enemies by default due to sin darkening our hearts (Colossians 1:21), yet God made a way for his enemies to become his friends—at a cost only to himself. God sent his Son Jesus to save us from sin’s power (Romans 6:6), presence (Romans 8:23), and penalty (John 3:16). By his substitutionary death on a cross and his resurrection from the dead, Jesus made a way for us to become friends of God. Apart from Jesus, we remain God’s enemies, even into eternity, where we will be punished for our rebellion against him (John 3:36, Matthew 25:46, 2 Thessalonians 1:7–9). But by believing in Jesus’s sacrifice for us—trusting in him alone for our salvation—we are transferred from the kingdom of darkness into God’s kingdom (Colossians 1:13–14). By faith in Jesus, we enter God’s eternal love, never to experience his enmity again (Romans 5:6–11).
If you have trusted in Jesus, God is always on your side. And “If God is for us, who can be against us” (Romans 8:31 NIV)?
Where Have You Seen God Be on Your Side?
Any person who has trusted in Jesus can say, “If the Lord had not been on my side—if he had not come to earth to suffer the death I deserve and rise from the dead—I would still be lost in my sin, without hope, and in danger of an eternity in hell.”
But every person who has trusted Jesus can also look back on their lives and recount God’s saving help in a thousand ways.
If the Lord had not been on my side, I would have been held hostage by my addiction and eventually destroyed by it.
If the Lord had not been on my side, I would have despaired over the depression and anxiety in my heart.
If the Lord had not been on my side, I would have crumbled under my broken spirit when I was wounded.
If the Lord had not been on my side, I would have never endured that wearisome season where I had no strength, and no way to make ends meet.
So friend, what is your testimony? As you look back, where has the Lord proved to be your help? How would you finish the sentence, “If the Lord had not been on my side…”? Let the answer to that question lead you to praise him!
And if in pondering that question you find that you stand as an enemy of God, receive his extension of forgiveness and friendship offered to you in Jesus Christ today!