Oh give us help against the adversary,
For deliverance by man is in vain.
— Psalm 108:12
The cry David makes to the Lord here is meant to put things into perspective — and it does so by first acknowledging a reality that most of us share: he had adversaries.
David’s Adversaries
David’s adversaries took many forms throughout his life. There was Saul, from whom he had to flee repeatedly. There were the Philistines, against whom he had to fight. And later, there was his own son, who rose up to take his throne and his life. But beyond these human enemies, there were also spiritual adversaries — the devil knew that David was God’s appointed king over Israel, and took every available opportunity to attack him.
This is not so different from our own lives. We have adversaries from multiple directions. Some come in the form of people who wish us harm or want to see us fall. But there is also the adversary we all share:
Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
— 1 Peter 5:8
Peter identifies the devil specifically as the adversary — the enemy — and paints a vivid picture of a lion on the hunt, looking for prey. For believers especially, we are always being stalked by an enemy who wants us to stumble, to fall, and to be destroyed by his devices.
Help From Man Is Vain
David does not only cry out for help — he also tells us why he is directing that cry to God rather than to man. He looks at the help that men can offer, and his conclusion is plain: deliverance by man is in vain.
This is something we all need to understand more deeply. There is a constant temptation to turn to human help when we face adversaries. The help of men is attractive because it is immediate and often predictable — we can see it, measure it, and rely on it in tangible ways. There is nothing inherently wrong with receiving help from others.
But the danger lies in what happens when we begin to depend on human help as our primary source of deliverance. We slowly sideline God. We begin to make idols out of the people and systems we lean on. And ultimately we find ourselves trusting in something that, as David rightly observed, is vain — not because people are without goodwill, but because human strength has a ceiling that no adversary worth the name will respect.
The psalmist says it well elsewhere:
I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; from where shall my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.
— Psalm 121:1-2
Looking to God First
May we be a people who arrives at the same conclusion David did. While human help can be meaningful and is not to be despised, our ultimate resolution must always be to look to God for the help that actually matters — the help that no adversary can overcome.
He is the one who made heaven and earth. He is the one who knows our adversaries better than we do. And He is the one who has already secured our final deliverance through the finished work of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
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