"Behold, God is my salvation"

A closer look at Isaiah 12:2.

² “Behold, God is my salvation;
    I will trust, and will not be afraid;
for the LORD God is my strength and my song,
    and he has become my salvation.” - Isaiah 12:2 (ESV)

“Behold, God is my salvation”

Isaiah 12:2 - with its wonderful reminders and affirmations - is actually given by the prophet Isaiah as a promise of something that will be said later by others. We know this because of what we are told at the beginning of verse 1:

You will say in that day:
“I will give thanks to you, O Lord,
    for though you were angry with me,
your anger turned away,
    that you might comfort me. - Isaiah 12:1 (ESV)

Isaiah spoke to a people who were going through incredibly hard times because they had disobeyed God. Originally, when God’s people entered the Promised Land with promises from God. If they obeyed God, they would be blessed, but if they disobeyed, they were promised curses. We can read examples of these blessing and curses in Deuteronomy 28.

God’s people were not undergoing arbitrary hard times doled out by an uncaring and inattentive God. No, they were experiencing the hard times associated with a lifestyle of willful disobedience of the Alpha and the Omega.

But just because they earned God’s wrath and even though God was angry for a time, this was not forever. Isaiah reminds us that at some point, the people would get the message that was being delivered and their hearts would once again turn to God. In that day, they would be able to say, “behold, God is my salvation.”

This declaration means that whoever utters it would understand that they had been saved by God. Whatever cause or threat of danger, peril or lack of safety is being removed by God. This promise could, of course, be related to specific situations that come up in day-to-day living, but the greatest promise made by God to save is viewed from an eternal perspective. When this live is over we face eternity. We face a fixed forever. Therefore, a problem related to eternal security is our biggest problem. And as Isaiah reminds his audience, it will be able to be said, “God is my salvation.” He has fixed our greatest problem.

“I will trust, and will not be afraid”

If God has fixed our biggest problem - our eternal security - then it makes perfect sense that we should be able to say, “I will trust, and will not be afraid.”

Again, if we need to be saved from something, we have a problem. And it is our problems that cause us to be afraid.

Logically, though if we have a Savior who takes away our biggest problems - i.e. our biggest problem is solved - does it not make sense that this Savior could handle any of the smaller problems that we have? And if our biggest problem is solved, does that not help to put all of our other problems into perspective?

If this logic makes sense to us, then it makes sense to say “I will trust” my Savior. Because of what my Savior has done for me and because of what He has promised me, I “will not be afraid.”

When we recognize our need for a Savior, then we are also recognizing a problem. Maybe we realize that if we die without knowing Jesus that we will spend eternity away from Him in hell. Or maybe we recognize that without a relationship with Him we don’t have the strength to make it through the long days of life. Those types of problems cause us to fear. When we realized our predicament or what could possibly happen to us, it can bring us terror and we can be afraid.

But when we know God, when we know His power and His ultimate plan for us - when we trust Him - then we can rely on this trust and not be afraid.

“For the LORD God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation”

When we know God, trust Him and rely upon this trust so that we don’t have to be afraid, then our thoughts resonate with the words of Isaiah when he writes, “for the LORD God is my strength and my song.” When we are in this position, we know that God “has become my salvation.”

This is a special place when we know that God is our strength, our song and our salvation.

When God is our strength, we know that it is His power, not ours, that carries us along through life.

When we know that God is our song, we know the joy of having a relationship with God and we are filled with praise because of what He has done and is doing for us.

When we know that God has become our salvation, we know, like the Apostle Paul wrote, that our lives are hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3).