Prayer: Lord God, our saviour, open our hearts and our minds, as we study your word today.  Amen.

Psalm 91 follows Psalm 90 where the psalmist tells us that life is short, full of misery and we should seek the Lord’s compassion.

All our days pass away under your wrath; we finish our years with a moan. Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them, are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away. Psalms 90:9-10

Relent, LORD! How long will it be? Have compassion on your servants. Psalms 90:13

In Psalm 91 the psalmist picks up where Psalm 90 stops. He declares that the way to seek the Lord’s favour is to truly turn to Him in trust, making Him our refuge. By doing this the faithful will be protected from the fear, misery and suffering of a short brutish life. Indeed, the psalmist suggests, no harm will overtake those who make the Lord their dwelling place.

For the psalmist the harms are myriad –pestilence, pandemics, plagues and, arguably, most cruel, the fowler’s snare: the traps of those of evil intent, including the manipulations of Satan and his satanic mills.

Nevertheless, the psalmist says the Lord will command his angels to guard all the ways of those who truly trust Him. Indeed, the angels will go so far as to lift the faithful up so that they are protected even from striking their feet against a stone.

Adding even more weight to his argument, the Psalmist brings in the voice of God saying “because he loves me, I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. He will call on me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honour him. With long life, I will satisfy him and show him my salvation” (Psalms 91:14-16).

These are astounding claims! They have led many Christians, including some preachers, to declare that becoming a true Christian brings protection from all the threats and harms of earthly life.

But does it, really? Are true Christians really protected from harm during all the days of their short residence on earth? I find the claim perplexing because it is not my experience. Before I became a Christian I danced with anxiety and depression. After becoming a Christian, the dance continued; even got worse for a time. But perhaps this is not saying much. Perhaps I am not a true Christian.

However, if I look beyond myself, the perplexity remains. Most, if not all, of the Christian brothers and sisters I know tell me they often hurt and suffer. If I look at the world news, I see that many Christians are being persecuted, maimed, and killed. If I look back in history, I see the same thing.

Are or were none of these people true Christians?

Also, as covered in Acts, Paul faced many hurts, including execution. And remember Stephen. While being stoned, he prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Then he fell on his knees and cried out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” (Acts 7:59-60).

Were Paul and Stephen not true Christians because they did not receive protection from all the harms of earthly life?

Of course, Paul and Stephen were true Christians. Luke wrote a God-inspired record of their lives because they were saints – holy and close to God. They suffered and they were true Christians.

Moreover, Christ himself in Luke 21:10-19 tells us that Christians will be hated, betrayed, seized, persecuted imprisoned and put to death precisely because they are Christians. While Paul in Romans 5: 3-4 suggests that we should glory in our sufferings because suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And as Ruth said in her message last week when Jesus came to earth to live and work, he made friends and he laughed, but he also cried, and he also hurt.

I think we can confidently assert that our historical brethren and our current brothers and sisters overseas, across Australia and in Tasmania are not, not true Christians because they suffer.

And I reckon even I can claim that though I sometimes dance with the black dog, I may nonetheless be a true Christian.

Indeed, surely, it’s foolhardy to assume that true Christians will not be hurt? I imagine a good number of folks in the American Appalachian Mountains, those who take Mark 16:18 a bit too literally, have learnt that picking up snakes and drinking poison doesn’t always work out for the best. And perhaps Jesus was making something of a similar point when in the wilderness he told Satan, ‘It is said, do not put the Lord your God to the test (Luke 4:12).  This was his response to Satan who, quoting Psalm 91, suggested that God’s angels would lift Jesus up so that he would not even strike his foot against a stone.

Further, the assertion that true Christians will never experience harm can itself cause terrible harm. Unfortunately, some folks, unintentionally, use the claim that God protects true Christians from harm to spiritually abuse people. For example, I knew a man who had very aggressive brain and lung cancers. He was paralysed down one side of his body, and without morphine every breath was agonising. His wife, friends, and the pastor prayed over him, asking for God’s healing. However, when his health continued to fail, his wife and his friends led by the pastor told him his decline was in truth his fault. His faith, they said, was imperfect; he needed to accept his victory in Christ, stand up and walk. Surely this was abuse and not of Christ, who himself saw through all the devil’s attempts to snare him.

So, with all this in mind what are we to make of Psalm 91?

A fair amount of ink has been spilt over the perplexity posed by Psalm 91. Based on my reading of commentaries and following Ruth’s reminder to meditate on the Psalm myself, I offer the following.

First, as I said earlier, Psalm 91 picks up from where Psalm 90 stops with the psalmist declaring that the way to seek the Lord’s favour is to turn to Him in trust, making Him our refuge. He then, it can be argued, uses the beauty of poetry to engender in Christians a conscious desire to seek refuge in God —a yearning to rest in Him when facing events like Covid 19, the war in Ukraine, growing homelessness, floods, and even mobile phone and internet outages here in Tasmania.

That is, poetry is often symbolic and figurative. Maybe the intent of the psalmist was to instil confidence in our hearts, rather than communicate literal facts. From this Old Testament perspective, perhaps the great promises of Psalm 91 are designed to give us the courage to step out in faith and attempt great things for the Kingdom of God, despite the threats.

Second, it is worth repeating verses 14 to 16 in Psalm 91

 “Because he loves me,” says the LORD, “I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. He will call on me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honour him. With long life, I will satisfy him and show him my salvation”.

Looking at this from a New Testament perspective, we can agree that God’s protection is found and experienced by those who trust in Jesus Christ. Jesus came to rescue us from our enemies: death, hell, Satan, and the judgment of a holy God who loves us but cannot abide sin. Jesus accomplished this rescue through his perfect life, his death on the cross, his bodily resurrection and his glorious ascension to heaven. All who have faith in him—all who run to him for refuge—are safe and will live long lives. This is because when we turn to Christ in faith, all that belongs to him is ours. All the favours he enjoys at the hands of the Father are ours. Through faith, Christ becomes our shelter, our refuge, our fortress, our salvation.

But before we take this to mean we are completely safe from all harm here on earth, perhaps we need to look at the rescue Jesus offers us from his perspective – the view from eternity. From his perspective, God’s perspective, we Christians are foreigners and strangers on earth (Hebrews 11:13). Our time here is infinitesimal, yet our lives are eternal. Our time here may be full of troubles, sorrow, and hurt, but it passes mercifully fast, and then we live with Christ for eternity.

Meanwhile, our task here and now is to advance the Kingdom. We will be hurt along the way, but we don’t have to cope with the pain on our own. Not only do we have each other to lean on, the Holy Spirit is also with us in our troubles, helping us endure them until we get to go home. I, for example, know that my dance with anxiety and depression will go on – it is the nature of the beast – but I also know that God is with me and loves me. To quote Jesus in John 14:15-18

“If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.”

For me, this makes a very real difference.

Third, perhaps we should be careful not to lose our humility. I really don’t think we can unravel every perplexity. Wrapping God up too tightly in paper designed by systematic theologians is fraught with danger.

As God said to Job: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?” (Job 38:4).

Ultimately, we cannot know fully with mere human reasoning or science how the presence and protection of the father, the son, or the holy spirit are working in our lives. Many Christians can speak about the miracles they have experienced in their lives. Talk with each other about this, I’m sure you will be amazed. Moreover, I suspect we are largely unaware of the many other forms of providential help that God showers on the creatures he loves. After all, for the moment we see through a glass darkly (1 Cor 13:12 KJV).

So, these are my reflections on how to understand the perplexing poetry of Psalm 91. I’d love to know what you think.

In sum, for me, it is a poem of exhortation to strangers in this strange and hostile land. We have a task to complete but will soon be called home to our saviour, who himself came to earth to show us what to do, to die for our sins and to rise again so that we can ultimately rest under the shelter of his wings. And this wondrous God is also with us here and now sheltering us from storms, the full wrath of which we will never experience.

Amen to that!

For great commentaries see:

Platt, David; Mason, Matt; Shaddix, Jim. Exalting Jesus in Psalms 51-100 (Christ-centred Exposition Commentary) (p. 390). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Tucker, W. Dennis; Grant, Jamie A. Psalms, Volume 2 (The NIV Application Commentary) (p. 358). Zondervan Academic. Kindle Edition.