Psalm 60: From Vanquished to Victory

                                               1. Apparently Vanquished                 Psalm 60:1-5

Text: “O God, Thou hast cast us off, Thou hast scattered us, Thou hast been displeased; O turn Thyself to us again.”

Psalm 60:1.

Good morning, Under-the-juniper-tree Christian!  Like the prophet Elijah - after receiving a vicious death-threat from the evil queen Jezebel (1 Kings 19:1-4) - today you and I may also be ‘lying asleep under a juniper tree’, feeling vanquished, and desperately low in faith and hope; ready to give up on all things Christian and all things Godly and good.  

If this describes how you feel as you read this Bible Lesson, then read on, beloved friend in need, for there is new hope and encouragement for you in this message.

From my own personal forty years of experiencing the Christian life, by God’s free grace, I can usually recognise a pattern of events that will most definitely bring our Christian spirits down into grief, and further down into an ‘under the juniper tree’ depth of depression.  When we, as genuine, Spiritually regenerate, Christians commit sin – sin, and our grief for it, pulls us immediately down, and will not just go away, until we confess our failing, and seek God’s renewing grace and forgiveness.  There are no sinless Christians, just a sinless Christ.

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins (to God alone!), He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  If we say we have not sinned, we make Him (God) a liar, and His Word is not in us.”  (1 John 1:8-10)

The Lord lifts our spirits up again, when we exercise faith in His Word, and sincerely seek His forgiveness for sins we commit as true Christian believers – the Holy Spirit Who lives within us when we are born again, is no longer grieved, and we have full fellowship with our Holy Lord God once more.  We must, of course, seek to also forsake the sin we committed.

However, there are also times when we are being our most faithful to the Lord God, and seeking to serve Christ fervently – in witnessing to others concerning Salvation; in preaching and teaching God’s Word; in successfully living out our Christian faith for all our neighbours to clearly see and glorify our Father in Heaven – that we can feel ourselves under a most vicious, and totally ruthless attack from the world, the flesh, the Devil, and even from members of our own close family and friends!

“Think not that I (Jesus Christ) am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.  For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother-in-law.  And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.”  (Matthew 10:34-36)

I have personally experienced such times of ‘under-the-juniper tree’ depression of spirit, and can honestly tell all readers that I would not wish such a hell of inner mental and Spiritual grief upon any true believer!  It is a real nightmare of anguish and frustration; a pit of unwanted, and often unwarranted, stress and grief!  A time when the Heaven’s seem as brass, and the besieged Christian heart feels that the Lord Whom he loves has turned His Holy face away, and is not even hearing his/her prayers for Holy Ghost relief!

Verse 1. “David found himself the possessor of a tottering throne, troubled with the double evil faction at home and invasion from abroad.  He traced at once the evil to its true source and began at the fountainhead.  His were politics of piety, which after all are the wisest, most profound.”  (C.H. Spurgeon, Treasury of David, page 266)

Verse 1. “O God, Thou hast cast us off.  The word here used means properly to be foul, rancid, offensive; and then to treat anything as if it were foul or rancid; to repel, to spurn, to cast away.  It is strong language, meaning that God had seemed to treat them as if they were loathsome or offensive to Him.”  (Albert Barnes1798-1870)

Elijah had felt this way when he fled in terror from Jezebel’s wrath and lay down under a juniper tree and, “...requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers.”  (1 Kings 19:4)

King David had felt this way, as expressed clearly in the first five verses of Psalm 60. 

No doubt the apostle Peter had felt this way too, after openly and publicly denying his Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, some three times in a row!  

Think it, therefore, no new event that lesser mortals like you and I, while suffering such deep anguish of soul and spirit, should sink down so low as to begin to believe that God has taken away the joy of His Spirit; turned His Holy face from even looking at us; and thrown us, like discarded waste, unto the dunghill of complete rejection!  We feel totally ‘cast off’.

Verse 2.  “...Heal the breaches thereof. The very rock of our faith’s foundations feels shattered and broken!  Help, Lord God, my faith faileth!  Cast me not away, O Lord! ‘Heal the breaches thereof’!

Verse 3.  “Thou hast showed Thy people hard things.  God will be sure to plough His own ground, whatsoever becometh of the waste; and to weed His own garden, though the rest of the world should be let alone to grow wild.”  (John Trapp 1601-1699)

“I am the true Vine, and my Father is the Husbandman (gardener).  Every branch in Me (Jesus Christ) that beareth not fruit He taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, He purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.  Now ye are clean through the Word which I have spoken unto you...Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be My disciples.”  (John 15:1-8)

You and I, under-the-juniper tree, Christians, by these verses just quoted, must fully realise that, first, we are proven to be genuine, Spiritually regenerated, Christians.   And, secondly, that we in such testing times are being ‘pruned’ by God, that we might indeed bear Him much more Spiritual fruit from among His predestined harvest of precious souls.

Verse 4. “Thou hast given a banner to them that fear Thee. The Lord has given us the standard of the Gospel; let us live to uphold it, and if needful die to defend it.  To publish the Gospel is a sacred duty, to be ashamed of it, a deadly sin...As surely as God is true, He will give success to His own Word.”  (C.H. Spurgeon, Treasury of David, page 266)

Thought: Our prayer today: “That Thy beloved may be delivered; save with Thy right hand, and hear me.”  Take heart, Christian!  God’s angels are on their way to help you.

Urgent: Change for Reception of Weekly Bible Lessons!

22nd August 2022

Dear Recipient of Weekly Bible Lessons from Ulster Christians:

 Please note that from this point in time, and due to computer problems encountered by me in forming/sending Bible Lessons directly to your inbox email service - I would ask you to please go on my website/blog www.ulsterchristians.org to access the weekly Bible Lessons.  

Thank you for your faithful reception of my free Bible Expositions for over two decades, and I trust you have benefitted Spiritually from my writings, but the technology has moved on, and I find I am not technically wise enough to keep up with the required changes.  

I shall endeavour to put the weekly Bible Lessons on my website/blog as usual, but I must ask all who may desire to continue receiving them to go onto my website/blog directly from now on.

Every blessing be unto each of you faithful Christian Readers, I know you shall continue to '...grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ...', and for His continued glory. 

Calvary grace and love,

Dr C.K. McClinton

Ulster Christians Ministry

www.ulsterchristians.org 

3. Jehovah: The God of My Mercy! Psalm 59:10-17

Text: “Unto Thee, O my strength, will I sing: for God is my defence, and the God of my mercy.”

Psalm 59:17.

Good morning, Christian recipient of God’s mercy!  God the Father elected you and I to be His gift for Salvation to God the Son – Jesus Christ.  God the Son took on the incarnate body of one of His creatures, lived a sinless life; suffered and bore the sin and punishment we deserved for it on the Cross; died a death that He alone could die as our Substitute; and, praise God, rose again from the dead on the third day, to justify you and I as His righteous people. 

In time, God the Holy Spirit quickened us from a dead sinful spirit, and we were ‘born again’, Spiritually regenerated by God, to be members of His Eternal Family.  Wow!  All this was done by Great Jehovah Lord God, the God of our mercy.  Hallelujah!  What a Lord God we love and serve!  Praise and thanks be to His Holy Name!  We love you, Three-Personed Creator, Lord God!

The Lord Jesus Christ teaches us: “All that the Father giveth Me (in Eternity, before the foundation of the world!) shall come to Me; and him/her that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out. For I came down from Heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.  And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which He hath given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.”  (John 6:37-39)

It is of great wonder that true Christianity has survived for so long, in a world that hates God, that seems to just LOVE religion, has often some form of ‘godliness’ – but in daily evidence, totally denies God’s Persons and His Almighty Holiness and power.  Fact.

Where We are at NOW:  This, which follows, is the evidence of what we, in British society today, see with our own eyes, and has been prophesied clearly for us, for hundreds of years: “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.  For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent (no self-control), fierce despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God: having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.”  (2 Timothy 3:1-5)

I challenge any Reader to deny that British society - and many other nations - is closely described in these prophetic verses from the second epistle of Timothy!  Our nations stink with this sin!  The watchman cries out the warning: turn, turn from your wickedness and repent!  Seek the mercy of Christ Jesus, before it is too late!  Turn from all wickedness!

“Thus, saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein (John 14:6), and ye shall find rest for your souls.  But they said, We will not walk therein.  Also, I set watchmen over you, saying, Hearken to the sound of the trumpet.  But they said, We will not hearken.  Therefore hear, ye nations, and know, O congregation, what is among them.  Hear, O earth: behold, I will bring evil upon this people, even the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not hearkened unto My Words, nor to My Law, but rejected it.”  (Jeremiah 6:16-19)

Biblical Warning:  God’s Word cannot be more clear, Reader!  He has given all clear and proper warning; those that will not listen, and that will not seek repentance from sin and forgiveness, better get ready for what is surely to come: the fearful judgement of a Holy and rejected Lord God!  These are the very last of the last days, and the signs of Christ’s Second Coming are clearly at work as you read this Christian message!  Take heed and seek Christ!

With all this terrible evidence of sin and opposition to the Gospel message of Salvation in Christ alone – how can the true Christian believer continue amid such powerful opposition?  How has true Bible-believing, God-fearing, Christianity survived thus far?  There is only one answer to such profound questions – we fully believe in the God of our mercy!

Verse 9. “Because of His strength will I wait upon Thee: for God is my defence.  How weak soever the believer finds himself, and how powerful soever he perceives his enemy to be, it is all one to him, he hath no more to do but to put faith at work and to wait till God works.”  (David Dickson, 1583-1662)

Take Heed: Today, throughout our sin-laden world, Australia is on fire; China is wracked with a deadly, epidemic virus that is now a global pandemic; earthquakes are creating havoc and death in Turkey; floods are reported in many lands; plagues of locusts are devastating the crops in Africa; there is continual war and rumours of war throughout the Middle East, as Arab nations glare with seething anger at Israel – even the very environments in which we live are continually being polluted by human waste, oil spillages at sea, and drastic climate changes!  This is plain for all nations to see!  Human Government has failed humanity!  The end is indeed near!

“Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye KNOW that summer is nigh: So likewise, ye, when ye shall SEE all these things, KNOW that it is near, even at the doors.”  (Matthew 24:32-33)

America and Iran, Russia and the Ukraine – are at war, and stand almost ready to enter nuclear warfare!

“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers (various) places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginning of sorrows.”  (Mark 13:8)

“Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the Master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning...and what I say unto you I say unto all, WATCH.”  (Mark 13:37)

What then should genuine, Bible-believing Christians do in this terrible time of persecution and anti-Christian unbelief?  We must continue steadfastly looking to the Lord for His mercy and His grace, seek strength to persevere in shouting out God’s warning to the world - while it is still the day of His Sovereign grace to sinners.

Verse 10.  "The God of my mercy shall prevent me with the blessings of his goodness and the gifts of his mercy, prevent my fears, preserve my prayers, and be better to me than my own expectations."  (Matthew Henry’s Complete Commentary on the Bible - Psalm 59:)

Verse 14. “Let them return...and let them make a noise like a dog. Those that repent of their sins when they are in trouble, mourn like doves; those whose hearts are hardened when they are in trouble, make a noise like a dog.”  (Matthew Henry 1662-1714)

Note the contrast in the Psalmist, David’s expectations, as hardened heart unbelievers ‘wander up and down’ in their dissatisfaction and increasing fear of God’s coming wrath:

Thought: Verse 16. “But I will sing of Thy power...sing aloud of Thy mercy.  Christian believers have God’s own Word as to His ever-given mercy towards us, ‘His people’.  Oh that all readers would turn from sin and seek peace with God – through the only Saviour, Jesus Christ.  This simple message is God’s own Word on the signs of the times.  Take heed!

2. Merciless Spiritual Conflict! Psalm 59:5-8

Text: “Thou therefore, O Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel, awake to visit all the heathen: be not merciful to any wicked transgressors.”

Psalm 59:5.

Good morning, Christian showing too much mercy to transgressors!  It is a strange and most perplexing thing today, in this 21^st Century of ‘politically correct’, insipid, and luke-warm ‘churchianity’ period – to watch so many professing to be Christians, who think that they themselves are more merciful than the Lord God; more concerned for stubborn and intransigent sinners; more willing to include openly disobedient Sodomites and those teaching gross doctrinal error into church pulpits, etc. etc.  

Is the Lord God not the righteous judge of the whole earth which He alone has Created?  Does He not reveal in a clear enough fashion His Holiness and His wrath against all sin?  Are there some today in clerical gowns who believe themselves to be more ‘Christian’ than the sinless Christ?  

How can you and I show mercy to ‘wicked transgressors’, when the Spirit-inspired Psalmist, David, here in Psalm 59, is praying for God Almighty to "...visit all the heathen: be not merciful to any wicked transgressors."? 

The 21^st Century Christian church needs to wise up and begin to teach/preach God’s standards of Holiness and Christianity!  Beware all those ‘hirelings’ who water down God’s pure Word of admonition and condemnation of gross sin and disobedience!

Verse 5. “Awake to visit all the heathen: be not merciful to any wicked transgressors. What a forceful petition is contained in these words!  Actively punish, in wisdom, judge, with force, chastise.”  (C.H. Spurgeon, Treasury of David, page 262)

Verse 5. “Be not merciful to any wicked transgressors. Be merciful to them as men, but not as transgressors; if they continue hardened in their sin, do not wink at their oppression. To wink at sin in transgressors will be to leave the righteous under their power; therefore do not pass by their offences, but deal out the due reward.”  (C.H. Spurgeon, Treasury of David, page 263)

If there was no law in a city, no rule of law, no police force, no courts of judgement – our cities would be even more places of wicked and evil transgression of God’s Holiness than what they already are today. 

Wickedness, and breaking God’s Holy Laws must be punished without mercy, just as civil laws and temporal violations of the rule of law are punished by fines and imprisonments.  Edmond Burke once said, ‘For evil to abound, it only takes good men to do nothing.’, or words to that effect.  Evil and transgression of laws only grows more and more gross and wicked, when law enforcement grows weak and toothless.  Fact.  Evil must be punished.

Verse 6. “They make a noise like a dog, and go round about the city.  I watched a programme on television one evening about the duties of the police personnel within many of our inner-city streets.  It was appalling to see the crowds of drunken, drugged, young people, and not so young people, roaming around the streets in various states of drunken chaos.  They were in fact ‘making noises like dogs’; wild, lawless, uncontrolled dogs, lashing out at one another in mindless, and vicious conflict.  They were indeed, ‘wicked transgressors’ of everything that is Godly, and everything that defines Christian society.

“Wine is a mocker; strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.” (Proverbs 20:1)

Verse 6. “They make a noise like a dog, and go round about the city.  David compares his foes to Eastern dogs – despised, unowned, loathsome, degraded, lean, and hungry, and he represents them as howling with disappointment because they cannot find the food they seek.  Saul’s watchmen and the cruel king himself must have raved and raged fiercely when they found the image and the pillow of goat’s hair in the bed instead of David.  Vain were their watchings, the victim had been delivered, and that by the daughter of the man who desired his blood.  Go, ye dogs, to your kennels and gnaw your bones, for this good man is not meat for your jaws.”  (C.H. Spurgeon, Treasury of David, page 263)

British cities, once made strong and prosperous by the adherence of the British nation to the Holy Bible, are now clearly seen to have become cesspits of gross sin and its attendant immoral filth.  The ‘spirit of political correctness’ provides a mask for the face of all things anti-Christian – it is almost impossible to listen to a radio, or watch a television programme, or see a movie, without some character using the very Name of Jesus Christ as a swearword, or a filthy curse.  What a dangerous and sinful practice! 

“Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him/her guiltless that taketh (takes, and continually takes) His Name in vain.”    (Exodus 20:7)

“Wherefore we receiving a Kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: for our God is a consuming fire.”  (Hebrews 12:28-29)

“Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him (Jesus Christ), and given Him a Name which is above every name: that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow...and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”  (Philippians 2:9-11)

Verse 7. “Behold (see, and fully understand), they belch out with their mouth.”  Bible-believing Christianity, which is, of course, the only genuine Christianity, is currently under the most severe and ruthless attack by Satan and his legions of unrepentant helpers throughout British society.  All degrees of vileness and oppositions are ‘belched out’ from the mouths of anti-Christian oppressors, whose hearts are full of rebellion to the Lord God.

Verse 7. “...Swords are in their lips. They speak daggers.  Their words pierce like rapiers and cleave like cutlasses.  As the cushion of a lion’s paw conceals his claw, so their soft ruby lips contain bloody words.”  (C.H. Spurgeon, Treasury of David, page 263)

Verse 7. “For who, say they, doth hear?  They are free from all restraint, they fear no God in Heaven, and the government on earth is with them.  When men have none to call them to account, there is no accounting for what they will do.  David called them dogs, and no doubt a pretty pack they were, a cursed, cursing company of curs.”  (C.H. Spurgeon, Treasury of David, page 263)

The Lord God Who created the heavens and the earth hears every word we speak, and knows every intention of our very hearts.  Not one anti-Christian word will go unpunished at the Great White Throne judgement seat.  Oppressors be warned, God is not mocked!

Thought:  On Judgement Day, many will remember this verse as, too late, they plead for God’s mercy: “But Thou, O Lord, shalt laugh at them; Thou shalt have all the heathen in derision.”  Oh, that men would turn in repentance, while there is still time.

“Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near.”

Psalm 59: A Golden Secret of David

1.  God’s Preservation of ‘His People’!                       Psalm 59:1-4

Text: “O love the Lord, all ye His saints: for the Lord preserveth (preserves, and continues to preserve) the faithful, and plentifully rewardeth the proud doer.”

Psalm 31:23.

Good morning, God-preserved Christian!  If left to ourselves and our own puny strengths, you and I, as born again, Bible-believing Christians – would not last a day.  However, we are not left to our own puny strength, will, or directions, we are completely preserved, guided, directed, and protected by a truly Sovereign and gracious Lord God Almighty.  Praise God it is so, beloved Christian friend, give God thanksgiving and praise.  Amen.

“...For He hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.  So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me.”    (Hebrews 13:5-6)

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, ‘the prince of preachers’ said: “Whom God preserves, Satan cannot destroy.  The Lord even preserves the lives of His prophets by the very ravens that would naturally pick out their eyes.  David always found a friend to help him when his case was peculiarly dangerous, and that friend was in his enemy’s household; in this instance it was Michal, Saul’s daughter, as on former occasions it had been Jonathan, Saul’s son.  ‘Michtam of David’.  This is the fifth of the Golden Secrets of David: God’s chosen people have many such.” (C.H. Spurgeon, Treasury of David, page 262)

One thing the true people of God have today is a very real presence of anti-Christian opposition: opposition to the Gospel of Salvation in Christ Jesus alone; opposition to preaching God’s truths in public places; opposition to the King James Version of the Bible; oppositions to the very Name of Jesus Christ – which is being used throughout British society increasingly as a swear word, and intentionally written into television dramas and film scripts in the vilest manners.  All this is blatant and provocative opposition to our Holy Lord God, to His people’s Christian practice; and to obedience to God’s written Law.  

This 21^st Century is a time of vile and more and more blatant anti-Christian opposition.

You and I, as Bible-believing, Spiritually regenerate Christians, can well pray Psalm 59 to the Lord God as a constant and daily prayer for Divine preservation.

Verse 1. “Deliver me from mine enemies, O my God. He was to be taken dead or alive, well or ill, and carried to the slaughter.  Unbelief would have suggested that prayer was a waste of breath, but not so, thought the good man, for he makes it his sole resort.  Note how he sets the title, My God, over against the words mine enemies.  This is the right method of effectually catching and quenching the fiery darts of the enemy upon the shield of faith.”  (C.H. Spurgeon, Treasury of David, page 262)

Verse 1: “Defend me from those that rise up against me."  I believe the Psalmist has left ‘those that rise up against me’ as an undefined group of oppositions for a very real reason.  So often we define ‘those that rise up against me’ as oppositions from agencies outside of our selves, while all too often ‘those that rise up against me’ are oppositions that can quickly arise and twist us from within our own hearts!  Unbelief, lack of faith, depressions of spirit; defeatist attitudes when oppositions from without arise.  All these can most definitely be defined as ‘...those that rise up against me.’  All must be defended against with help from a precious and caring Lord God Almighty.  Thus, we cry out to Him, ‘Defend me from those that rise up against me!’

Verse 2. “Deliver me, defend me, deliver me, save me. Saul had more cause to fear than David had, for the invincible weapon of prayer was being used against him, and Heaven was being aroused to give him battle.” (C.H. Spurgeon, Treasury of David, page 262)

The Psalmist, David, was praying hard for God’s deliverance, defence, and preservation for one reason: because he was being pursued relentlessly by God’s enemies, and the enemies of the Sovereign will of Almighty Lord God. 

God had ordained and anointed David to be king of Israel – mankind’s will had imposed Saul upon Israel’s throne.  Nothing has changed today, dear Reader!  You and I, as genuine Spirit-inspired and regenerated Christians, are seeking to do and fulfil the Sovereign will of Jehovah Lord God, as revealed in His written Word.  The majority of our fellow humans are Hell-bent on imposing their own humanistic and Satanically inspired will upon all of God’s Creation.  We do well to cry out to the Lord for His Divine help and perseverance!  Help us, dear Lord God!  Amen.

“That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit (capital S!).  For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.  For to be carnally minded is death; but to be Spiritually minded is life and peace.  Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.  So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.”  (Romans 8:4-8)

Verse 3.  “For lo, they lie in wait for my soul.  Note, it is not merely our mortal bodies that the unbelieving world seek to harm, no, it is our very immortal souls they despise, because, by God’s Salvation grace, we are no longer of the world, merely living in it.

Verse 3. For lo, they lie in wait for my soul.  While the enemy lies waiting in the posture of a beast, we wait before God in the posture of prayer, for God waits to be gracious to us and terrible towards our foes.”  (C.H. Spurgeon, Treasury of David, page 262)

Verse 3. “The mighty are gathered against me.  Take note that it is not the ordinary folk in the streets that are gathered against God’s servants, it is ‘the mighty’; those in power; those who are in temporal authority and who too often exercise such power and authority to ‘...frameth mischief by a law.’, in other words, they legislate laws that promote evil, in clear opposition to God’s Law and Word.  (Psalm 94:20-21) Sodomy is vile and unlawful!

Verse 4. “They run and prepare themselves without my fault. To a brave man, the danger causes little distress of mind compared with the injustice to which he is subjected.”  (C.H. Spurgeon, Treasury of David, page 262)

“Note, 1.  The innocency of the godly will not secure them from the malignity of the wicked.  Those that are harmless like doves, yet for Christ’s sake are hated of all men, as if they were noxious like serpents, and obnoxious accordingly.

“Note 2. Though our innocency will not secure us from troubles, yet it will greatly support and comfort us under our troubles. The testimony of our conscience for us, that we have behaved ourselves well toward those that behaved themselves ill towards us, will be very much our rejoicing in the day of evil.  If we are conscious to ourselves of our innocency, we may with humble confidence appeal to God and beg of Him to plead our cause, which He will do in due time.”  (Matthew Henry 1662-1714)

Thought: ‘Michtam of David’. Golden Secret of David, number 5: God’s Preservation of us, ‘His people’.  The Lord God reveals His secrets to those who study His Word.