Word of Encouragement (05/17/2023)
"There is none like God, O Jeshurun, who rides through the heavens to your help, through the skies in his majesty. 27 The eternal God is your dwelling place,and underneath are the everlasting arms. And he thrust out the enemy before you and said, 'Destroy.' 28 So Israel lived in safety, Jacob lived alone, in a land of grain and wine, whose heavens drop down dew. 29 Happy are you, O Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the LORD, the shield of your help, and the sword of your triumph! Your enemies shall come fawning to you, and you shall tread upon their backs."
Having affirmed the eternal God as the dwelling place of His people, Moses goes on to show further how secure they are: “and underneath are the everlasting arms” (v. 27). If the eternal God should be our dwelling place, we should be eternally secure. But we are also told that God’s everlasting arms support us from beneath.
We take a lot of things for granted—the air we breathe, the water we drink, the electricity we use, the cars we drive, etc. We don’t know how much we are dependent on these things until they become unavailable. Another thing we take for granted is the foundation, the ground we walk and play and drive and build on. I was pretty close to the epicenter of the Northridge Earthquake on Jan. 17, 1994. Prior to it, I used to laugh it off when we had earthquakes here and there. But the Northridge Earthquake was different. It went on and on and on—so much so that we all had to get out of the apartment. Other earthquakes just shook the ground and buildings for a short while, but that one had a wavy motion to it, which made it all the more eerie. For the first time, I was terrified by what an earthquake could do. Of course, earthquakes don’t just come and go; they are followed by many aftershocks, which may not be as big as the original one but can still be quite sizable. Those were scary, too!
I was so shaken up (excuse the pun!) by the earthquake and its aftershocks that I couldn’t sleep for several days. Every time I lay down, I was all tensed up and super sensitive to any hint of tremor. Often, I mistook my own heartbeat for an aftershock and got up in a panic. In that mental state, I couldn’t relax when I sat down or lay down. It was exhausting!
How wonderful it is that God’s everlasting arms support the foundation of our dwelling place! But don’t try to picture this—how God can be our dwelling place, and, at the same time, His everlasting arms are underneath Him. God is a Spirit: He is no man that He should have a body like ours. What we have here is an anthropomorphic expression (“the everlasting arms [of God]”), but it is obvious that we are not speaking of a human body and human arms—Moses speaks of “the everlasting arms” that are underneath our dwelling place, which is the eternal God! These images (“dwelling place” and “arms”) and descriptive words (“eternal” and “everlasting”) are there to illustrate the eternal and invincible security we have in God’s presence.
If God should support us with His everlasting arms, what can shake us and make us stumble? But the everlasting arms of God do not just signify His almighty power, does it? It also signifies God’s sacrificial love. For the eternal Son of God opened wide His everlasting arms to destroy the enemies (v. 27); instead, He opened wide His everlasting arms and allowed sinners to crucify Him on the cross. He did this because there was no other way to save us from our sins than sacrificing Himself as the ransom for the forgiveness of our sins. His everlasting arms are to us an emblem of His almighty power and unbreakable love, the combination of which spells eternal and invincible security for His people! That security is yours if you are in Christ Jesus! Let it be the source of your peace in times of tumult and courage in times of challenge!