The prayer for deliverance here is not a desperate plea, as in some of the other psalms, but rather a confident prayer that leads to the vision of future blessing expressed in the last four verses. David is sure that when the deliverance is given, the blessing will be realized.
As we concluded yesterday's study, we observed that the God of Moses, Joshua and David is our God too, and he is the same today as he ever was. He is also our Rock and our deliverer. What should be our response to this, to the fact that this is our God and that he has delivered us also, particularly from sin's penalty and power?
What is happening in these verses is that David is reflecting on God's manifestations of his presence and power in the past and is asking that something of that same power might be demonstrated in God's deliverance of him from his present danger. It also means this: By alluding to these past proofs of God's presence, David is declaring that the God of Moses, Joshua and the judges is his God too, and that he is standing with them in the long succession of God's people within the covenant made at Sinai.
What strikes David as he reflects on the majesty and power of God is the smallness and frailty of man and the astonishing fact that this majestic God actually stoops to help as insignificant a person as himself. “O LORD, what is man that you care for him, the son of man that you think of him? Man is like a breath; his days are like a fleeting shadow” (vv. 3, 4).
Martin Luther used to say that true religion is to be found in personal pronouns. He meant that it is only when we are able to speak of God as “our” God and call Jesus “my” Savior that Christianity becomes more than mere ideas and is truly real for us.
