The Bible Study Hour

Announcer (Male): While Psalm 90 is somber and stately, Psalm 91 is bright and simple. Spurgeon says that there's not a more cheerful Psalm in the Bible and that it portrays faith at its best. In fact, Psalm 91 has given us some of the best-loved hymns of the faith.

Announcer (Male): Welcome to The Bible Study Hour. A radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. Psalm 91 is filled with comfort and promises and many have turned to it in times of trouble and tragedy.

Let's join Dr. Boice as he examines Psalm 91 and shows us that only God can calm our troubled hearts and provide the satisfaction we desire.

Dr. James Boice: All of the Psalms that we have in the Bible are from God, of course, and they're wonderful in their several ways, but there are some Psalms that stand out above others as commending themselves to God's people. With the result that they turn to them again and again for comfort and strength and guidance in the living of the Christian life.

Psalm 91 is one of those. It's probably been memorized by thousands upon thousands of people and there are additional thousands, over the course of the years, probably millions, who have turned to it for consolation in the midst of life's calamities.

It can be compared in some ways with Psalm 46. Psalm 46 is that Psalm that begins by calling God our refuge and our strength, a very present help in trouble. Martin Luther loved that Psalm because he had so many troubles and he needed a refuge in the middle of them.

Well, Psalm 91 is like that. It can also be compared with Psalm 90 that comes immediately before it. Both of the Psalms call God the dwelling place of his people, which may be why the two are put together. There are also other verbal similarities between the two. Some of the older commentators assumed that because the first is by Moses, this is by Moses as well.

There's no real reason for thinking that, but it could have been written by Moses. Certainly the kind of things that are said here follow on in a natural way from the Psalm that we were studying before this. But the tone is different. One of the commentators says, Psalm 90 is somber and stately. It's dealing with death and sin, which has caused death, and seeking stability in God in the establishing of the works of our hands.

Psalm 91 is quite different. It's bright and simple. Loppold says, the one breathes deep insight, the other cheerful trust. Here's something Spurgeon said about Psalm 91, I don't think he was overstating the case. In the whole collection, there's not a more cheerful Psalm. Its tone is elevated and sustained throughout. Faith is at its best and speaks nobly.

Well, the Psalm has given us some great poetry, and also some of our best known hymns. Edmund Spencer, the early English poet, wrote a poem on it called "And Is There Care In Heaven." Horatius Bonar, who's given us a lot of hymns, wrote one called "He Liveth Long Who Liveth Well."

And then there are the hymns we sing. The best known are the hymns beginning "Under The Care Of My God The Almighty," which comes from The Bible Songs Hymnal of 1927. And then "The Man Who Once Has Found Abode," which comes from The Reformed Presbyterian Book of Psalms of 1940.

Here in this service, we began our service by singing one of those hymns, perhaps you noticed it, based on Psalm 91, and we're going to end our service by singing the other one.

Now, one striking feature of this Psalm that helps us begin to get into it, is the fact that there are three distinct movements marked by a change in pronouns. The first movement is marked by the pronoun 'I'. The psalmist is speaking, verses one and two. He's expressing his own personal faith in God.

And then there's the second movement, which is much longer. It's marked by the pronoun 'you', and it fills verses three through 13. It's a word from the psalmist to the reader or the listener. So it's a direct word to us. In other words, in the first of these movements, first two verses, he expresses his faith. Now he says, you should have the same faith as well.

And then finally, in the third section, the pronoun goes back to 'I' again, but now it's not 'I' the psalmist, it's the divine 'I'. It's God who is speaking. And what God does here is declare to those who trust in what he's going to do for them. So that's a nice movement, isn't it? It's from my faith to your faith and then the word of God saying what he'll bless.

You may notice that in the new international version, that middle section, which is long, three through 13, is divided into two sections, and I think probably wisely, because there are two different emphases. The first speaks of God's protection from any kind of dangers, and then the second expresses the conditions for such protection, namely that we have to rest or abide in God.

So that's the way we want to look at it, one, two, three and four. The first verse is really a thematic statement because it expresses what the remainder of the Psalm is going to be about. "He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty." But now no sooner does the psalmist make that statement, that's something any of us ought to be able to make, he goes on and adds his own personal testimony to it.

Because verse two is where the 'I' comes in. He says, "I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust." That's the equivalent of Thomas's confession of faith. It comes at the very end of John's gospel. You recall that Jesus had been raised from the dead. He had appeared to the disciples on one Lord's day. Thomas wasn't present. They told him about it. He said, I'm not going to believe unless I see it for myself.

And then Jesus appeared on the next Lord's day. He presented himself to Thomas, to go ahead and make his test, and Thomas simply fell at his feet and confessed him, "My Lord and my God." Now, that's exactly what the psalmist is doing here. He says, "He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty." And that's a true statement.

But he goes on to say, "Yes, and that's what I am doing." Because before I say anything else, I want you to know that he is my Lord and he is my God. So that's the first application of this Psalm, the way we have to apply it to ourselves. Is Jesus Christ your Lord? Is he your God? Is the God of the Bible your refuge in times of trouble?

The Psalm is going to go on to make great promises to those who rest in God, but the promises are only for those who rest in God. And so the question is, do you do it?

Now, look at the promises. How they come to us right at the beginning. There are four metaphors here for the security that we can have in God. God will be our shelter and our shadow, verse one. He will also be our refuge and our fortress, verse two. And then if you look at those same two verses again, you'll find that there are four names for God. These give substance and strength to the metaphors.

He is "the Most High," "the Almighty," verse one. He is "the Lord," and also "my God" in verse two. So when the psalmist identifies God as his God in the last expression, it's a way of saying that the shelter, shadow, refuge, and fortress are for those who really dwell in him as the psalmist does.

Spurgeon wrote something interesting about this. Here's what Spurgeon said: "The blessings here promised are not for all believers, but for those who live in close fellowship with God." You see, we're inclined to say, when we talk about things like this, these blessings are for Christians only, not for those who aren't Christians. That's true enough. But what the psalmist is saying is something a step beyond that.

Not only for Christians, but for Christians who trust God. Spurgeon goes on, "Every child of God looks toward the inner sanctuary and the mercy seat, yet all do not dwell in the most holy place. They run to it at times and enjoy occasional approaches, but they do not habitually reside in God's presence."

So here's a second application. They come early on in this Psalm. You see, the first is, is this God your God? Is he your refuge? Here's the second, do you dwell in his presence? Do you stay habitually close to God? Do you abide in him? The Psalm is written to urge you to do exactly that and to promise blessings if you do.

Now, having stated his own personal faith in God, the psalmist in the second movement of this Psalm begins to commend it to us. He takes first of all six blessings to explain what God will do for those who trust him. Not just look at the way he uses that word 'you' throughout. "Surely he will save you from the fowler's snare and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his feathers and under his wings you will find refuge. His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. You will not fear the terror of night nor the arrow that flies by day." And so on. Verse seven, "A thousand may fall at your side, 10,000 at your right hand, but it will not come near you. Only with your eyes will you see the punishment of the wicked."

Now, verse three sets the tone for this section because it highlights two kinds of dangers to which the godly are exposed. First of all, there's the subtle snare of enemies. It's described as the kind of trap that a fowler, that is, somebody who catches birds, uses to catch birds, unwary birds. And the second danger is death by pestilence or disease.

Now that doesn't mean that a Christian never suffers infectious diseases or suffers from an enemy's plot. All it really means is that Christians are habitually delivered from such dangers. And any Christian ought to be able to confess that. If you have any awareness of the presence of God in your life and the kind of dangers that face you in life, you ought to be able to say again and again, "Yes, the Lord has delivered me from exactly that."

Now we know that God sometimes uses suffering of one sort or another to develop character in us, so sometimes these things do come. But as a habitual confession, we should be able to say, "Yes, God has delivered me from exactly that."

Now, when he mentions deadly pestilence, verse three, or "the pestilence that stalks in the darkness," or "the plague that destroys at midday" in verse six, it's very easy to think of illustrations of that. We're not so aware of plagues today or pestilence, but they certainly were in times past. And there are several stories that come from plague years.

For example, there's a story of an English nobleman whose name was Lord Craven. He was a Christian. He lived in London in the 15th century. Pestilence came to the city of London in his time. People were dying on every side, and so he decided to do what people of his social class often did in those days. They left the plague area, and in his case, he was going to go to a home in the country.

Well, he was walking down the hall of his house about to get into his carriage, which had been loaded up with his baggage, when he heard one of the servants say, "I suppose by my Lord's quitting London to avoid the plague that his God lives in the country and not in town."

Now, we read that and that, that sounds almost like a, a humorous accusation. Apparently, the servant meant it seriously. He didn't understand much about what was going on, but Lord Craven overheard it, and so he canceled his journey. And this is what he said, "My God lives everywhere and can preserve me in town as well as in the country. I will stay where I am."

And so he stayed in London, and he was very helpful in ministering to the people who were the plague victims. And incidentally, he didn't get the plague. The Lord preserved him. Here's a similar story from the life of Spurgeon. I mentioned Spurgeon twice already. In the year 1854, he had only been in London 12 months. Remember, Spurgeon started preaching as a very young man, and he came to London early.

When he had been there just 12 months, an outbreak of Asiatic cholera came into his area of the city, and many in the congregation were affected. He says as he writes about it later that there was hardly a family in the congregation where somebody didn't get sick, and many, many people died. It seemed to him at one period that he was spending part of every single day in the graveyard with the funeral of somebody from the congregation who had died. It began to wear upon him, as you can imagine. He became physically, emotionally exhausted and sick at heart. He was ready actually to sink and collapse under that heavy burden of pastoral care.

He was returning from a funeral one day, and he noticed in a shoemaker's shop in Dover Road a sign in the owner's own handwriting, and it bore these words from Psalm 91, verses 9 and 10 in the King James Version. "Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the Most High thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling."

The man, of course, had written that to be a consolation to people in general, but Spurgeon took it very personally. And here's what he wrote about it afterwards. "The effect upon my heart was immediate. Faith appropriated the passage as her own. I felt secure, refreshed, girt with immortality. I went on with my visitation of the dying in a calm and peaceful spirit. I felt no fear of evil and I suffered no harm. Providence, which moved the tradesmen to put those verses in his window, I gratefully acknowledge, and in the remembrance of its marvelous power, I adore the Lord my God."

Now, I said a moment ago that we don't generally in the Western world face pestilence in that sense today, but we certainly face dangers, and we face them in the cities as well as in other places. Many Christians live by this kind of faith today in our city, in our time. They're faced by it every single day.

But they say, I'll put my trust in the Lord. He's my refuge. He's the God of the city as well as the God of the countryside. And if he's put me here, I'm going to serve him right here. And so they go on and God blesses their witness.

Now, in the fourth verse, we have two appealing images of God's protection. Wonderful how the Psalms do that. They make it very personal. And here we have the image of a mother bird sheltering and protecting her young. It says, "He'll cover you with his feathers and under his wings you'll find refuge." And then, secondly, there's the image of a warrior's armor. "His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart."

I should say the exact meaning of that word rampart is unclear. The word itself has to do with something being wrapped around you for protection, and so it could refer to armor, which is what the King James translators called it. You'll be your "shield and buckler", that is, a protection of a suit of armor. But of course, a rampart, a fortress, also does that. And so the word probably has both meanings. At any rate, it's a richer term than any single English word conveys.

Well, now let's look at those images. As far as the first is concerned, you remember how Jesus appropriated it for himself. Toward the end of his earthly ministry, as he was approaching Jerusalem, we're told on one occasion, he stopped on the brow of a hill, he looked out over the city, and he wept over it. And he said, "Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you. How often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you are not willing."

You see, Jesus would willingly have gathered and sheltered them, but they were not willing. He called them, but they would not come. And as we know, what they actually did was cry out for his crucifixion.

And then how about the second image? The image of God being a shield. Let's take an example of that. You remember the case of Abraham. Abraham had gone out to pursue the kings of the East who had attacked and overthrown Sodom and Gomorrah, carrying his nephew Lot and his family and possessions off in the process. Abraham attacked them by night. He reclaimed the people and the possessions, but he was in great danger, because of course, the kings were far stronger than he was. If they figured out what happened, they could always have moved into the hill country again and have easily killed Abraham.

And it was at that moment that God has a special revelation for him. You find it in Genesis 15, verse one. God said, "Don't be afraid, Abraham, I am your shield and your very great reward." Now then, God is no different today. The God who was Abraham's shield is our shield. And so we can stand protected by God.

Here's an important question. What exactly is it that's said to be the believer's shield and rampart in verse four? Well, it's God, of course, but I want respect. The new international version says his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. If you know the old King James Version, you may recall that it says his truth will be your shield and rampart or buckler.

Now, which is right? Well, the answer is that both are right. Because the Hebrew word there means truth, but it involves more than that. Because it involves more than that, the new international version translators used the word faithfulness. But you have to ask the question, faithful to what? And the answer is faithful to his word, faithful to his promises.

So you see, it really is the truth of God and God's faithfulness to his word that is our protection. In other words, we have to know the word of God. We have to trust it. We have to study it in order that we might stand firm in difficulty. God can be trusted. What God says stands. We don't have to worry that somehow he'll say, "Well, I changed my mind" or, "Oh, I, I just can't live up to that anymore." You and I often can't live up to the things we say we're going to do or don't. But God never fails. He's always faithful to his word.

Verses seven and eight describe thousands falling on either side of those who trust God, and it says, "You will only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked." Now that's important, you see, because it's interpreting the death of these thousands that fall to the right and the left as a punishment for sin. That gives the context in which the promises to the righteous are to be understood.

You see, it's not saying that the people of God never die or even that they will be spared in some military encounter. Christians die in warfare like anybody else, but it does say they're not going to die as a punishment for sin. You understand the difference? We don't die as a punishment for sin because Jesus Christ has died in our place. So even if we do die physically, which we all do eventually anyway, we die in Christ and we go to be in heaven.

Now, we go to this next stanza, verses 9 through 11, and what we find here is much of what we've seen already. It tells us that no harm will befall us, that no disaster will come near our tent. And yet there are also a few new elements. One of them, probably the chief idea, because it comes first, is that there is a condition to this kind of protection that the psalmist is promising, and it is that the individual must make the Most High, that is God, his dwelling.

You see, as I said earlier, that's more than merely believing that there's a God or merely in a certain sense trusting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. It's actually arresting in God constantly or dwelling in God. Martin Luther had some good thoughts on this. He said that this refers to one who really dwells and does not merely appear to dwell or does not just merely imagine that he dwells in God.

So, there's a point of application. Do you really dwell in God? Are you really trusting God day by day? Or are you just imagine that you are or or suppose that you are or hope that you are?

The second new element here is the reference to angels and we know it well because it's used in the New Testament. "He will give his angels charge concerning you to guard you in all their ways. They will lift you up in their hands so you will not strike your foot against a stone." Now that's the verse that the devil quoted in his temptation of Jesus. That temptation appears two places in the New Testament, the first 11 verses of Matthew 4 and the first 13 verses of Luke 4.

The devil said, "Look, if you want to live by scripture, I'm a student of scripture too, and I've been studying the 91st Psalm. And it says in the 91st Psalm, if you cast yourself down from a pinnacle of the temple, he'll bear you up, and you won't be hurt. So let's put it to the test."

Now, what the devil does when he quotes scripture is misquote it. This incidentally is the only explicit case we have in all the Bible of the devil actually quoting the Bible. Probably he does it at other times, but it's the only time it's actually mentioned here. But what's significant is that he misquotes it. First of all, what he leaves out is the phrase "in all your ways". And that doesn't mean just in any old way you might choose to go, but "in all your ways" when your ways are guided by the ways of God.

And so that was the real issue. Was Jesus going to go in the way of God and trust him, or be detoured from that by the kind of temptation the devil was giving? He didn't want to do that, so he responded by another verse of Scripture, quoting Deuteronomy 6:16. "It is also written, you must not put the Lord your God to the test."

So jumping off the temple would have been exactly the opposite of trusting God. It would have been baiting him, as it were, or putting them to the test.

Now, the Lord defeated Satan in the temptation, and that's another part of the quotation that the devil also wisely left out. Because you know how it continues. It says that if you trust God to uphold you, then you will tread upon the lion and the cobra, trampling the great lion and the serpent. Now, those are images the Bible uses for the devil himself. He's called the roaring lion that goes about seeking whom he may devour in First Peter 5:8. He's also called that ancient serpent, the devil, twice in the book of Revelation.

So it is by trusting God, rather than testing God, that Jesus actually defeated him. And there's one more thing about the incident. You see, when Satan was tempting Jesus, he said, "Now, if you, if you do that, if you jump off the temple, then he'll send his angels, and they'll lift you up, and you won't get hurt." Jesus didn't do it, but the angels were still there, weren't they?

Because immediately afterwards, when the devil left him, it says the angels of God came and ministered to him. You couldn't see those angels, but those angels were there anyway. Do you believe that? You believe that God is present with you by the angelic powers to uphold you in all of life's circumstances? You don't have to put God to the test to see that, just live for him. Just go on in the way that he gives you to go, and you'll find that he will bless you.

Well, we come to the last verses of the Psalm, and what they contain is this confirming oracle of God. Here God breaks in and he speaks. The pronoun switches back to 'I'. Only here the 'I' is God speaking, God himself. He promises three things for the one who trusts him.

First, protection for the one who is in danger, verse 14. Now the Psalm has been speaking of many dangers that the people of God face, and maybe you can add some of your own. You can say, "Yes, I face it in my neighborhood, I face it at work." All of those things. Well, the Psalm is promising protection. Those who have trusted God know that he protects them and they praise him for it. They praise him constantly.

Number two. God promises an answer for the one who is troubled and prays to God about it. You see, one of the great blessings of following hard after God is knowing that he really hears us when we pray and that he answers us. He doesn't always answer in the way we expect. We don't always see his answer, but we can know that he does.

It says that God will be with the believer in trouble. That's an answer. And although he doesn't always lift a Christian out of his troubles, he at least accompanies us in them. Sometimes God uses the troubles of life to develop character in us. We're told in Romans that we acquire hope, develop character, and learn perseverance through the things that we suffer. But when we go through those things, God goes with us too.

Number three. God promises long life and salvation for the one who seeks his satisfaction in God. Long life is a blessing that's frequently promised in scripture. It's one of the earliest ones for those who honor their father and their mother. But probably what's involved here is more than that. It's not so much the duration of life, but the quality of life, really living, as we would say, because we live in God. That's why the last phrase talks about salvation, salvation in heaven, yet to come. It's the newness of life and eternal life that really matters.

Now I want to close this way by simply bringing up the point I did earlier, namely, that this is for those who really trust God. The psalmist quotes God as saying that these blessings are for those who love God and acknowledge his name, verse 14, call upon him, verse 15, and seek the satisfaction that only he can provide.

And so I ask, are you really doing that? Are you really seeking your satisfaction in God or are you trying to find your satisfaction in the world? Here we stand at the very beginning of a new year. You have a whole year to work that out. To find out what it really is to seek your satisfaction in God and really trust him.

John Stott reminds us how much this is an echo of Romans 8:28 because he says, "God is the supreme object of the believer's love as well as faith. And it's to those who love God that the assurance is given that in all things God works together for their good."

Let's pray. Our Father, we are thankful for a Psalm like this that has blessed your people so much down through the ages and continues to be a blessing even to us now. We pray that you will help us in this effort that we have made to understand it, not only with understanding, but also by retention of those principles that should guide us indeed every single moment of our lives.

We profess to know you, and most of us do, in the sense that you've saved us from our sin in Christ and we trust him as our savior. We want to learn increasingly what it really means to live in that faith and trust you, dwelling under the shadow of the Almighty, hour by hour and day by day. So Father, give us that blessing, we pray now and in the coming year, to the praise of the glory of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

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