Psalm 124: Like a Bird in the Bracken

Preacher: Douglas Wilson

When you consider the peril our nation is currently in, and you reflect on the fact that this psalm came up as the text for this Lord’s Day purely by happenstance, your conclusion needs to be that it is almost as though a higher power were at work.

In 1582, in Edinburgh, an imprisoned minister named John Durie was released from prison. He was welcomed on the edge of town by several hundred of his friends, and as they walked along, that number soon swelled to several thousand. Someone began to sing—Psalm 124—and they all, much moved, sang it together in four parts, much as we will be singing it later in the service. "Let Israel now say in thankfulness..." One of the chief persecutors was said to have been more alarmed by this spectacle than anything else he had seen in Scotland, which is very likely saying something.