Godly Confidence - Psalm 27:3

Text:  “Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the Wicked, when it cometh.  For the Lord shall be thy confidence, and shall keep thy foot from being taken.”

Proverbs 3:25-26.

Good morning, Christ-confident Christian!  What makes you indomitable, ‘…not to be overcome, unconquerable‘.  (The Chambers Dictionary, page 819), is the fact that your complete confidence is not in your puny, too fallible, self.  No!  Your full confidence and mine is placed securely and exclusively in the Christ of God; Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living Lord God and His Cross Atonement Sacrifice for sinners such as we.  Hallelujah!  We have no real and lasting confidence in any other person or any other power on earth or anywhere else.  Our only confidence is in the unconquerable Jesus; our faith is in His war cry from the Cross, ‘It is finished!’  Salvation for you and for me is complete in Him, and completed fully and Eternally by Him. Wow!  What a Saviour!

“Where there is no confidence in God, there will be no continuance with God.  When the wind of faith ceases to fill the sails, the ship of obedience ceases to plough the seas.”  (William Secker 1660)

Verse 3.  “Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident.  The encamping host often inspires greater dread than the same host in actual affray.  Young tells us of some ’who feel a thousand deaths in fearing one.’ “  (C.H. Spurgeon, Treasury of David, page 136)

So, let me ask the difficult questions, my dear Christian friend: What ‘host’ is encamping against your precious soul and mine this day?  Think about it with me.

Is it the ‘host’ of unemployment?  Is it the ‘host’ of incoming medical bills?  Is it the ‘host’ of some blatant personal failure, or the fact that you have let someone down badly?   Is the ‘host’ of slanderous accusation besieging your Christian mind?  Is a ‘host’ of hypocrites from the ‘religious fraternity’ sniping at your forthright, Bible-based heels, with their politically correct ‘niceness’ and their totally unconscious self-righteousness?  Is it the very ‘host of Hell’, the Devil and all his vile demons, seeking to oppress your steadfast soul and mind with relentless blasting to wear you down?  If so, read on and regain your Christ like confidence.  In Christ, you have overcome!

To immediately combat all of the above ‘hosts’ of opposition and slander, think for one moment of this:  Did the Lord God Himself ‘elect’ you in Eternity to receive His Salvation?  Has the Lord God Himself ‘chosen’ you, and ‘ordained’ you; and redeemed you with His own sinless and precious Blood, shed for sinners at Calvary’s Cross?  Then, who else - human or demon; temporal or ‘Spiritual’; religious or irreligious - can “…lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?  It is God that justifieth.  Who is he/she that condemneth?  It is Christ that died (for us and for our sins), yea rather, that is risen again, Who is even at the right hand of God, Who also maketh intercession for us.”  (Romans 8:33-34)

“What shall we say then say to these things (all ‘hosts’ of opposition mentioned)?  If God be for us, who can be against us?”  (Romans 8:31)  Victory in Christ Jesus!  Glory to His Almighty and all-Holy Name!  Amen. (John 15:16)

Now ask yourself, and I will do likewise, my true Christian friend: Do we believe the above statements from Holy Scriptures, or do we doubt the Word of God?  Simple as this!  If we believe God’s Word, then we are indomitable and confident.  If we do not believe the revealed Word of God - then we are of all people lost, and without hope.

“Happily for me, ye cannot blacken me before God, and His esteem alone makes amends to me, and rewards me, for all your contempt.”  (Jean Avrillon 1652-1729)

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, of famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?…Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.”  (Romans 8:35;37)

If you and I are justified by faith in Christ Jesus and in His onetime Sacrifice for all the sins of ‘His people’; then we remain justified, we do not lose our Salvation, for we did nothing to possess it in the first place!  Salvation is the gift of God, by grace through faith, or it is not true Eternal Salvation at all!  In Christ, we are fully justified. 

Verse 3:  “…In this will I be confident.  ‘…If a man is not right with God, he is not right anywhere.  The first thing the Gospel does is to tackle this, man’s foundational need.  It reveals and proffers to the sinner a perfect righteousness (or rightness with God) wholly acceptable to God Himself, for He is the One Who has provided it.  It is called the righteousness of God because it is in contrast to the righteousness man has been trying to achieve for himself.  But God is willing to reckon His righteousness to the penitent sinner solely on the ground of his faith in Jesus, and not on the ground of his works; He ‘righteousifies’ him by faith.  This is the basic message of the epistle to the Romans and this is the basic blessing of the Gospel, referred to as justification by faith.” (Roy Hession, The Power of God’s Grace, page 129, Rickford’s Hill Publishing www.rhpbooks.co.uk)

Thought:  With our confidence in Christ renewed, and in His full justification of us, let us further renew our efforts to live Christ and to seek to serve Him forthrightly by His grace and power.  “The Lord is my light and my Salvation; whom shall I fear?  The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”