Psalms 27:1 “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”
Light has many different meanings for different people and religions. The New Age movement has latched onto the word light to such an extent that we Christians tend to avoid any discussion on light for fear we will cross that line that separates us from the New Age. Yet David said something so profound in Psalms 27:1 that we must pause and consider just what He meant by saying the Lord is his light. David is telling us that since the Lord is his light and his salvation, he has nothing to fear.
The word used for salvation here in the Hebrew is yeshua which means to deliver, to set free, to help, to rescue and all other such like words. In this context it is a rescue from all that is not in harmony with this Light. Its root, Yod, Shin, Ayin, is the root for many different names from Isaiah to Misha to the name for Jesus. During the day of Jesus, Yeshua was a very popular and common name like George or Frank is to us. During the time of Jesus one is six men were named Yeshua. There is good reason for this for you see Yeshua is a relationship word and the Semitic people were very much into relationships, much more than we in the Western world. If you think about it, our modern Western society is destroying relationships. When we travel we drive alone in cars, children play with video games alone, people stay home at night and watch TV alone, restaurants have separate private tables, very few have a communal style or just one long table that everyone sits at. To have to sit at a table with a total stranger to eat is almost repulsive to the Western man. One hot button item in our technological society today is invasion of privacy. The Western man is cloaked in secrets, they are self-absorbed, shut in, and private. This is not so with the Eastern mindset. You go to a funeral in the Western world and everyone is quiet and soft spoken. In the Eastern world they don’t hold back. They loudly wail, weep and express their grief and if not enough loud vocal grief is shown they will hire professional mourners just to get the ball(ing) rolling. They are more open to others than we in the Western world are because they need relationships to survive. With our technology and cultural system we can survive quiet well alone.
It is for this reason that we in the Western world have extreme difficulty wrapping our minds around the words light and salvation. Both are highly charged relationship words and if relationships are not natural to us, we just won’t understand what David is talking about. When David said that God was his light and salvation, he was speaking this in the context of a relationship with God, a give and take with God, not just a getting from God. In the Midrash the sages taught that “God cloaked Himself in a white shawl, and the light of its splendor shone from one end of the world to the other” Genesis Rabba 3:4
What the sages were saying in the Midrash is that light is an emanation from the other side of reality, the spiritual or supernatural to the natural word. It points to an essence that contains all that is holy, pure, good and beautiful. In the beginning God did not create light, He merely calls it into the existing natural universe. Light is sort of a bridge between the natural and the supernatural. Jesus in John 1:1 declares that He is that Light, that bridge between the natural world and the supernatural world. So light in one of the strongest relationship words in the Hebrew language for it is light that creates a relationship, a connection between the natural and supernatural world. David is saying that God is his light or his connection to the supernatural world and light in the supernatural world is all that is holy, pure, good and beautiful. God is his connection to all that is holy, pure, good and beautiful. If you have that connection you will be delivered, rescued or saved from the darkness of this world. For you see, all fear is rooted in only one thing, darkness or anything that is not in harmony with God. In Matthew 8:11 Jesus tells us that the unbeliever will be cast into outer darkness. In the Aramaic the word outer is bria which has the idea of being on the outside of something. Literally the unbeliever will be cast outside into darkness. It is a place totally devoid of the presence of God of what is beautiful, pure, holy and good. That does not leave room for anything that one would consider to be desirable.
In Genesis 1:3 we read, “And God saw the light, that was good:” Actually, that word Ki (that) is often translated as because so God saw the light because it was good (tov) or in harmony with him. God cannot see anything in darkness so He then separated the choshek (darkness) from the light. Choshek (darkness) is everything that is not in harmony with God. God then began to create or call into being the natural world. After each creation he declared that is was tov (good) or in harmony with Him
So when David said that God is his light and salvation he is really saying that God is rescuing him from darkness or all that is not in harmony with God. If we are totally in the Light which is manifested in Jesus Himself, we need never fear. So why do we as Christians often live in fear? Well there is such a thing as twilight. In the Hebrew twilight is nashaph which is a mixture of light and darkness. You have a twilight in the morning and in the evening. In the evening the light fades into darkness and in the morning the darkness fades into light. God gave us both morning and evening to teach us that we can either be moving into darkness or into light. When death comes twilight ends and we are either in darkness (totally removed for God) or in Light, which is in the complete presence of God. We need that bridge, Jesus the Light, to enter into the presence of God. Without him we will end up in total darkness for eternity, a chilling thought.
It is interesting that Rabbi Israel Ben Elizer pointed out that the word light (‘or) has the same numerical value as the word secret (raz). The closer we move from the twilight to the Light, the more the secrets of God are revealed to us. When in the very presence of the Light, we no longer have any fear for the Light is perfect in love and of course in I John 4:18 we learn that there is no fear in love for perfect love cast out all fear. When we know the secrets (raz) of God how can anything in darkness bring fear upon us?
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