By: Isaac Crockett
On December 5, 1839, a boy named George was born to a farming family in New Rumley, Ohio. He grew up in a large family, and from an early age he dreamed of greatness. He eventually made his way to the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he became a rather spectacular failure. He graduated last in his class of 34 in 1861.
Yet that same year, the Civil War broke out, and suddenly this young man who had struggled as a student found himself with an opportunity to prove himself on the battlefield.[1]
He was bold, aggressive, and seemingly fearless. His reputation grew quickly. He became the youngest major general of volunteers in the Union Army at age 25,[2] and he developed a larger-than-life public persona. He wore flamboyant uniforms, cultivated his long blond hair, and even perfumed it with cinnamon oil.[3] He understood the power of appearances and publicity. His name was George Armstrong Custer.
As his fame grew, so did the temptation to believe that the story was ultimately about him. We might call it “main character syndrome.” He had become a celebrity soldier, and his dramatic image was part of his identity.
Custer eventually commanded the 7th Cavalry in the American West. In June 1876, his regiment was pursuing a large Lakota and Cheyenne village near the Little Bighorn River. Custer’s original plan was to conceal his regiment through June 25 and attack at dawn the following day. But his scouts came back with the one thing he did not want to hear. They had been spotted. Custer feared the village might scatter. He threw out the plan and went in that afternoon. He divided his regiment, personally taking five companies, 210 men, toward the village. Those men would all be killed. Exactly what happened during Custer’s final movements will never be known with certainty, but the result is not in dispute.[4]
Custer had spent much of his life becoming the hero of his own story. At Little Bighorn, his determination to write his own script ended in tragedy, not only for himself, but for the men who followed him.
As we turn now to Psalm 119:121-128, we enter the “Ayin” octave, the sixteenth section of this great psalm. Here we find a radically different picture of a man under pressure. The psalmist has been faithful, yet he is surrounded by oppressors. He is weary, yet he does not rebel against his Master or attempt to build his own kingdom. Instead, three times in these eight verses, he identifies himself as a servant: “I am your servant” (v. 125, ESV; compare vv. 122 and 124).[5]
Custer wanted to be the hero of the story. The psalmist understood that he was the servant. And that difference changes how we respond when we are under fire.
First, the servant pleads for protection. The psalmist says, “I have done what is just and right,” not because he is claiming to be sinless, but because he is defending his integrity in the particular conflict he is facing. His enemies are accusing and oppressing him, and he is asking God not to abandon him.
Then he makes a remarkable request: “Give your servant a pledge of good” (ESV). The idea behind that word “pledge” carries the sense of a guarantor or surety, someone who steps in when another person cannot carry the obligation himself.[6] The servant is essentially saying, “Lord, I am out of options. Step in for me.”
And that prayer points us directly to Jesus Christ. Hebrews 7:22 calls Jesus the “guarantor of a better covenant” (ESV).[7] Jesus did not simply promise to help His people. He became our guarantee. He gave Himself for us, bore our sin, died our death, rose again, and now lives to intercede for those who come to God through Him.
When you are under fire, you do not have to pretend that you can handle everything yourself. Your ultimate security is not found in your ability to control your circumstances. Your security is found in Christ, the One who has already pledged Himself to save His people.
Second, the servant pleads for perception. The psalmist says, “Deal with your servant according to your steadfast love, and teach me your statutes.” Then again, “I am your servant; give me understanding” (ESV).
Notice what he does not ask for. He does not ask God to give him a detailed map of the future. He asks for understanding.
Sometimes life looks chaotic, like absolute gibberish. During World War II, British codebreakers at Bletchley Park were intercepting German communications encrypted by the Enigma system. The information was there, but without the ability to decipher the code, it was essentially meaningless. Alan Turing and others developed machines and methods that helped the codebreakers work through the Enigma settings and unlock the messages. The British Bombe was specifically designed to help discover the daily Enigma settings that allowed the intercepted messages to be deciphered.[8]
When life looks like gibberish, we need a Divine Key. God has not promised to explain every detail of His providence to us. He has given us His Word. The servant does not demand that the Master explain everything. The servant asks the Master to teach him.
If you want to know God’s will, become a student of God’s Word. Open it. Study it. Pray over it. Let Scripture shape the way you interpret your circumstances instead of allowing your circumstances to reshape what you believe about God.
Third, the servant pleads for providence. The psalmist looks around and sees God’s law being broken, and he says, “It is time for the LORD to act” (ESV). He knows that God is the One who ultimately controls the situation, and he trusts God’s timing.
But notice what he does while he waits: “Therefore I love your commandments above gold, above fine gold” (ESV). And then, “I hate every false way” (ESV).
The culture around him is moving away from God’s truth, but he does not move with it. That is what true service looks like. When the world says, “Look out for number one. Build your name. Climb the ladder. Break the rules if that’s what it takes to win,” the servant says, “I love God’s Word more than gold.”
And you cannot genuinely love truth while making peace with falsehood. We see this in Jesus. In Matthew 23, Jesus confronted religious leaders who had turned their religion into a platform for their own honor and influence. They wanted to be seen by men. They loved places of honor. They made disciples for themselves. They were supposed to be servants of God, but they had made themselves the center.[9]
And that brings us back to the main character. Jesus was the only human being who ever truly deserved that title. He is the rightful center of history. Yet Philippians 2 tells us that He humbled Himself, took the form of a servant, and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (ESV).[10]
Custer ran into danger because he wanted glory for himself. Jesus entered the ultimate death trap for us. Custer’s self-authored story brought destruction to the men under his command. Jesus willingly gave Himself to secure eternal salvation for people who could never save themselves. So don’t run ahead of the Commander.
You do not have to write the script. You do not have to control the timeline. You do not have to understand everything God is doing. You do not have to make your name great. You are His servant.
Trust His protection. Seek His perception. Wait for His providence.
And Stay on Mission.
Reflection
1. Where are you tempted to run ahead of God because you want control, recognition, or results on your own timetable?
2. What is one act of faithful obedience God has already made clear in His Word that you can do today without knowing what He will do next?
Isaac Crockett
Isaac Crockett is the pastor of East Lawrence Baptist Church and a television and radio co-host for Stand in the Gap Media.
FAQs
It is the prayer of a man who is under pressure and has decided he is not the one in charge. He has been faithful, he is surrounded by people who want him gone, and he asks for three things in eight verses: protection he cannot secure, understanding he does not have, and action on a timetable that is not his. Three times he calls himself a servant. That is the whole posture of the section.
The Hebrew behind the ESV’s “pledge” is arab, Strong’s H6148, and it is the language of surety. It means someone who steps in and becomes answerable for an obligation another man cannot carry. The psalmist is not asking God to make things easier. He is asking God to co-sign for him.
Psalm 119 is an acrostic built in twenty-two sections of eight verses each, one for every letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and every verse in a section begins with that letter. Ayin is the sixteenth letter, so verses 121 to 128 are the sixteenth section. The structure is not decoration. It is a man drilling the same conviction from every angle he has letters for.
No, and reading it that way misses the setting. He is not making a claim about his standing before God; he is defending his conduct in a specific conflict against specific accusers. A man can be a sinner before God and still be in the right in the particular fight he is in. Those are two different courtrooms.
Look at what the psalmist does while he waits. He loves the commandments more than gold and he hates every false way. Waiting is not idling; it is holding your position and refusing to drift with the culture while the answer is still out. The obedience God has already made clear is the work in front of you until the part you cannot see becomes clear.
Jesus told the disciples that whoever would be great among them must be their servant, and that He came not to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:43-45). Philippians 2 says the one with the rightful claim to the center took the form of a servant instead. Joseph, Moses, Daniel, and Paul all carried real authority while calling themselves servants. The pattern is consistent from one end of the Bible to the other.
It is the opposite, and the psalm is proof. A servant is the one who stays at his post when the oppressors show up, keeps the standard when the culture drops it, and answers for the work. What he gives up is not responsibility; it is authorship. He does not get to decide what the story is for. Custer kept that part, and it killed two hundred ten men.
[1]National Park Service, “Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer,” Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, https://www.nps.gov/libi/learn/historyculture/lt-col-george-armstrong-custer.htm. The page gives the birth date, entry to West Point in the fall of 1857, and graduation last in a class of thirty four in June 1861.
[2]Custer was promoted to major general of U.S. Volunteers on April 15, 1865, at age twenty five. The rank was a volunteer commission. When the volunteer army was demobilized he reverted to captain in the regular army, and in 1866 he became lieutenant colonel of the newly formed 7th Cavalry, the rank he held when he died. See Jeffry D. Wert, Custer: The Controversial Life of George Armstrong Custer (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996).
[3]The velvet uniform with gold lace, the long hair, and the cinnamon oil are described in Wert, Custer. None of the three National Park Service pages cited elsewhere in this piece carry these details.
[4]National Park Service, “Context and Story of the Battle,” https://www.nps.gov/libi/learn/historyculture/battle-story.htm. The page states that Custer’s initial plan was to conceal the regiment in the Wolf Mountains through June 25, giving the Crow and Arikara scouts time to locate the village, then to make a night march and attack at dawn on June 26, and that the scouts reported the regiment’s presence had been detected. The five companies, C, E, F, I, and L, at 210 men, appear there and on “Lieutenant Colonel Custer’s Battalion,” https://www.nps.gov/libi/learn/historyculture/lt-col-custer-s-battalion.htm.
[5]Scripture quotations are from the ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version), copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Verse 125 reads “I am your servant; give me understanding, that I may know your testimonies!” Verse 122 reads “Give your servant a pledge of good” and verse 124 reads “Deal with your servant according to your steadfast love, and teach me your statutes.” All three identify him as a servant. Only verse 125 carries the clause quoted above. The Ayin stanza is the sixteenth of the twenty two eight verse sections of the acrostic.
[6]Psalm 119:122 (ESV). The verb behind the ESV’s “pledge” is the Hebrew arab, Strong’s H6148. Brown-Driver-Briggs gives the sense of going surety for a person or a debt, standing in as the one answerable when another cannot answer.
[7]Hebrews 7:22 (ESV), in full: “This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant.” The Greek noun is engyos, which appears only here in the New Testament and carries the same legal sense as the Hebrew term in Psalm 119:122.
[8]The National Museum of Computing, “The Turing-Welchman Bombe,” https://www.tnmoc.org/bombe. The museum states that it was the task of the Bombe to discover the daily key, meaning the wheel order, the wheel settings, and the plugboard configuration, so that the thousands of Enigma messages intercepted each day could be deciphered. The British Bombe was designed by Alan Turing, with the diagonal board contributed by Gordon Welchman. See also Central Intelligence Agency, “The Enigma of Alan Turing,” April 10, 2015, https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/the-enigma-of-alan-turing.
[9]Matthew 23:5-7 (ESV). Jesus says they do all their deeds “to be seen by others,” and describes their love of the place of honor at feasts, the best seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the marketplaces.
[10]Philippians 2:6-8 (ESV), where Christ did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself by taking the form of a servant and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Divine pronouns are printed inside quoted Scripture exactly as the translation prints them, which is why they are lowercase in the quoted lines above and capitalized in the author’s own sentences.
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