EXTOLLING GOD

Meditations in Psalm 138

GOD PRESERVES MY LIFE

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"Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life; you stretch out your hand against the anger of my foes, with your right hand you save me."
Psalm 138:7

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IT IS wonderful how the Old Testament saints, even though they did not have the full revelation of God which we have in the New Testament, still showed the spiritual experience of the full salvation in Christ, and expressed the same saving faith in the Lord as the people of God in the New Testament. David expresses this in the verse before us in Psalm 138, and praises God for the blessing and glory of God's saving love for him which he knows, in the same way as the redeemed today feel they want to do. This is why the Old Testament is such a wonderful place of spiritual blessing.

David in this seventh verse expresses the full assurance of the salvation of God, and praises God for this assurance of life and favour. This is the theme of our meditation that God preserves the life of the believer. It is the great and assuring doctrine of the perseverance of the saints.

GOD OUR SAVIOUR

That God is our Saviour is the great subject of our praise now and for eternity. How well does David express this here. It is not a doctrinal statement from his understanding in the mind or from learning in a seminar, but the expression of the assured experience of his heart and life. This is an expression of praise for the truth he has found proved so many times in his life, and which he now has complete assurance of. It is the truth of God for eternity towards him. So he says "Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life." This was his assured faith for the future, and the rest of his soul.

In fact he is expressing the great fruit of salvation in Christ which is that being redeemed we have the right to be called the children of God. He is expressing the work of the Spirit who gives the redeemed the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father in our relationship with God. God has redeemed us by the precious blood of his Son, Jesus Christ, so that we might be his redeemed children, and co-heirs with Christ. Jesus expressed this truth in the prayer he taught us which we call the Lord's Prayer. He taught us to pray 'our Father, who art in heaven'.

Now God is our Father, he is our Father for eternity, and watches over us now and always. He has pledged his word that he will preserve our life into eternity, and bring us safely through all the troubles and difficulties of life. Because God is our Father he will never let us go, or give us over to Satan.

GOD PRESERVES OUR LIFE

It is the very essence of redemption that it is complete. God our Father's purpose in the work of Christ was to provide a salvation which was fool proof, and had nothing left undone, so that his redeemed children are sure of glory. This is the root meaning of God preserving our life.

The redemption in Christ Jesus has brought us from death to life, and this life is eternal. It can't be lost. This preservation is totally sure and complete, because in Christ all that brings death has be satisfied. When Jesus died, he was taking our death for ever. Because he has died, we can't die. Jesus met in his body all the death for all the sins we have committed and will ever commit. On this basis God justly pronounces us righteous for ever. Sins we commit every day are already covered and forgiven through the complete sacrifice of the Saviour. We also know this justification by God, because the righteous life Jesus lived, he lived not for himself, because he was totally righteous already. He lived it in our place and for us.

God preserves our life because this was and is the purpose of God for his believing people. It is purpose which completely assures that we are saved by the might of Jesus, and we are left nothing to do ourselves. We gratefully receive what the Lord in grace has provided for us. God who has done so much and at so great a cost, now will never let us go, because to let us go would be unjust. The fact that Jesus has met all God's demands of righteousness means that God is obligated to keep us in life or deny the virtue of the work of his only begotten Son. How gracious is God to bind himself in this way. But how glorious is God seen in this gracious redemption, because all the glory is his. No wonder praise filled the heart of David.

GOD DAY BY DAY

We are in the midst of trouble day by day. There is no time Satan is not active against us, because to harm the redeemed is to harm the treasure of God. We are to be jewels in the crown of Jesus in eternity. When we come to read the experiences of Job we see that even temporal calamities are in the hands of Satan, and he uses them to depress and overcome the saints. In this way he gets at God whom he hates also. As Satan sought by the calamities he brought upon Job to make Job deny God, complain against God and sin against God, so Satan seeks the same in our troubles. Satan uses the world around to seduce and trouble the believer, apart from the direct assaults of temptation, which we see illustrated in the most subtle and devastating way in the temptations of Jesus in the desert.

God preserves our life in all these troubles. He preserves our physical life until our work on earth is done, and he preserves our spiritual life, so that nothing Satan can do will ever cause us to be severed from the love of God, and his justifying and saving grace. In the case of Job, we read so often that in all this Job did not sin. This does not mean that Job was sinless during these trials, but it means that he remained faithful to God, and never lost faith, and never denied his God. God kept him in this faith, and brought him through all his trials to the blessings that God poured on him after they had been completed. The final blessing of Job is no doubt a picture of heaven, but they do not exclude the promise of temporal blessings, such as David described when he talked in Psalm 23 of being led in green pastures, and having his soul restored.

These experiences we read in the Bible are meant to teach and encourage us in troubles to know the Lord preserves our life. David spoke from his heart. As a boy God had delivered him from a lion and a bear. Later God kept him safe from the evil might of Saul, so that he realised the promise of kingship.

We also learn, in the goodness of God, from our troubles. Job learnt more deeply through his troubles the holiness and the majesty of God, and his own sinfulness, and he learnt to be humble in a way never known before, and to depend only of the grace and mercy of God in a way he had never experienced before.

God also preserves our life in the spiritual troubles that we have. It may not seem so when we seem to fall so easily and grievously into sin, but it is so. We see this in the life of David, who fell so grievously, and yet his life was preserved. David committed adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of one of the officers in his army. When she became pregnant with his child, he virtually committed the murder of Bathsheba's husband, by giving instruction to his generals to place her husband in the fiercest of the fighting so that he would be killed, which he was. The consequences of his sin David could not escape. All sorts of troubles followed as a consequence, which were very hard for David to bear. However in all of them God gave him grace to repent, and to learn from them. God brought him through them all. At no time did God give him up, and always owned him as his redeemed child, and his perseverance to glory was never in doubt.

The question why God allowed David to sin in this way in the first place is impossible to answer. We must believe that God works in the lives of his people with perfect wisdom. We certainly can't blame God for David's sin. It was most definitely an expression of the sin within him. What we do know is that we learn lessons through our falls which we would never learn without them, and so in the end we come out at the other end, by God's wisdom and grace, improved and sanctified. Why Job was allowed to suffer cannot be explained, but we do know that Job came through his terrible troubles spiritually blessed in a way which would not have been possible without the experience of the troubles.

That David could extol God as he does here has no surprises for us. It is similar preservation of our life that fills us with praise to God for his grace, mercy and love, and that his love never has let us down or failed us.

GOD, OUR DEFENDER

This is the other side of God preserving our life. It follows from it, for if God preserves our life he is against our enemies and defends us from their attack and malice. He prevents them from taking our lives or harming us. David plainly had in mind the temporal deliverances of which he had so many examples. In his flight from Saul, David trusted the Lord to defend him because he felt he could not defend himself from the king, who was the Lord's anointed. Twice Saul was in his hands, and his friends encouraged David to kill Saul, but David could not do what he felt was wrong and kill one whom God had anointed to be his leader and the king of his people, and so he had to place his defence in the hands of the Lord. God delivered from the hand of Saul, and honoured his promise that David would be king. Then there were all the battles with the enemies of Israel. David proved that the Lord did defend him and the nation from all their foes.

This is also true for us, but in a different sense. Our enemies are often people and situations that would lead us astray. How often do we hear of those who are not Christians finding their lives ruined because they have allowed themselves to be seduced by friends and their own lusts. God is a fence around his people, and in the midst of traps and pitfalls of life he is there to defend. Even when it seems he allows the enemy apparently to overcome, this is only to bring eventual victory, and greater blessing and strength for his people. God is truly our defender in the world of business, and in the world of society. His people will be defended from their foes, even when they do not discern who those foes are.

The greatest and root enemy, who is behind all the temporal foes that afflict the people of God is the devil. It was the devil who desired to afflict Job, and as we have already said, the ways of the Lord in allowing the devil a measure of power in the life of Job is so difficult to comprehend, yet the Lord was in control. The devil never had any authority or power but from the Lord, and the devil could never go beyond that authority.

The great message of the gospel is that the devil, our great enemy, has been defeated once and for all by the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the great work of Jesus in his life and death. By satisfying all the law of God for his people, the devil is left with no accusation he can bring against the people of God, and no sin with which he can accuse them. Our answer to the devil is that the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin, and through Christ we are justified from all things by which Satan could accuse us.

We have this so powerfully illustrated in the Book of Zechariah chapter three and verses one to 10. There Joshua the high priest, representing the whole nation, stands on one side of Christ, the angel of the Lord. Satan is standing on the other side accusing him, and claiming him for his own. We read "The Lord said to Satan, 'The Lord rebuke you Satan .... is not this man a burning stick snatched from the fire'". Then Joshua has the filthy rags, representing his sins and the sins of the people, taken off him, and new rich garments put on him. If we ask how this can be justly done we read in verse 8 and 10 that God will send his Branch, Christ, who will remove the sin of his people in a single day. It is God who defends his people.

God's people are so precious too him, so precious that he gave his Son to redeem us. This is expressed in Zechariah 2:8 where we read "he who touches you (the believer) touches the apple of his (God's) eye. When David says in our verse that God saves us with his right hand, he is expressing the fact that God is active to defend us. He does not wait or remain passive. He is active in our defence at all times.

CONCLUSION

What a glorious bundle of praise this verse is. How can we not praise God who preserves our life so mightily and effectively, and praise him for his great love in all that he has done for us in Christ in order to gain this perfect victory for us. If we are to praise God from the heart and with all our heart, then let us dwell much and meditate much on the wonder of God preserving our life in Christ.