Friday, January 14, 2022

Psalm 16 - He is Our Refuge

Psalm 14 is famous for its opening line, "The food says in his heart, 'There is no God.'" From there the Psalmist goes on to describe the troublesome outcome of living as if there were no God - no authority, no good. 

They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good. 2 The LORD looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. 3 They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt, there is none who does good, not even one. 4 Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers who eat up my people as they eat bread and do not call upon the LORD?

In verses 5-6 the Psalmist introduces the collision that comes when the wicked who profess there is no God interact with the righteous who know and love God: "There they are in great terror, for God is with the generation of the righteous. you would shame the plans of the poor, but the LORD is his refuge."

There are two points of encouragement for the Christian (the righteous) that I would like to point out from these verses. 

First, even though we live in a world filled with those who do not fear God, God is with the righteous. When the Psalmist declares that God is "with" the righteous he means that God is "for" the righteous or you could say God is on the side of the righteous. 

Second, when the wicked rise against the righteous, attempting to "shame the plans of the poor" verse 6 teaches us that the LORD is our refuge. That is, Yahweh protects the righteous from the attacks of the wicked.; Yahweh protects the righteous from the attacks of the enemy. HE is OUR REFUGE. 

These are beautiful and comforting promises to consider today. He is for us. He will defend us. This brings us to the final verse where the Psalmist hopefully longs for Salvation to come. With this coming Salvation the LORD will restore the fortunes of his people. Jacob will rejoice and Israel will be glad. 

The hopeful longing of the Psalmist was fulfilled with the coming of Jesus. In Jesus fortunes are restored, we can rejoice and be glad. 

Yet here we - the righteous (who are righteous only in and because of Jesus) - like the Psalmist are waiting for the completion of our Salvation. We wait among people who do not know our God; people who reject his authority and sometimes, somedays this can be hard. We get discouraged. We feel beat down. We may even want to give up. But in those moments we must remember he (our God) is for you and he (Yahweh) will defend you. 

In this we rejoice and are glad.