“Because he has loved Me, therefore I will deliver him;
I will set him securely on high, because he has known My name.
He will call upon Me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble;
I will rescue him and honor him.
With a long life I will satisfy him
And let him see My salvation.”
I must admit that I am sad to be finishing our study of Psalm 91. But what a blessing it has been! And if you will notice, God is now talking, personally, to each one of us! God is speaking to each of us from His shelter that He has invited us into. We now have a deep, personal relationship with our Sovereign God who has promised us protection from the emotional and physical attacks of the Enemy (the snare of the trapper), as well as protection from illnesses and diseases (the deadly pestilence). He promises that we can conquer all of our fears (whether man-made or spiritual). He promises that no evil will befall us, and that angels will be charged to guard us.
Now, here at the end, He pulls us in close and gives us seven amazing promises of protection. But notice that they are predicated upon our response .... Because we have loved Him. These protection promises rest upon our deep and personal encounter with God's only Son, the Risen Christ. It's not enough to acknowledge that there is a God. You need to know Him! And when you truly know Him, you show your love for Him by obeying His commandments. Then these promises are for you.
The first promise is one of deliverance. This deliverance is all-encompassing; from both the internal and external forces in your life that separate you from God. When you love Him, you seek His shelter and He delivers and preserves you from trouble.
The second promise is that He will set us securely on high because we have known His name. This means that He pulls us up to His level, which indicates a close, intimate relationship. This promise is not for the casual Christian! Only those who have clearly discerned God's majesty and glory are called to this promise; they have a personal knowledge of the Sovereign God. The Psalm indicates that we know God's names; those names by which He identified Himself in the opening verse of Psalm 91: the Most High, the Almighty, the Lord and My God. This means we accepted His invitation to dwell in His shelter and rest in His shadow.
The third promise is this: Because we have this close, intimate relationship with God, and dwell within His protection, we can call on Him and He will answer -- with one proviso .... if what we are praying and asking for is in line with God's Word and His will. This should keep all of us continually searching Scripture so that we understand His will and His promises, and therefore, know how to pray (ask) accordingly.
The fourth promise is perhaps the most comforting to me. I know that, in my lifetime, I will see and endure many kinds of trouble. But this verse doesn't limit the kinds of troubles from which God will rescue me. He is there for them all! I just have to remember to trust Him -- He will not always rescue me in the way I want to be, or the way I think He should. He knows I'm in trouble and He knows the best way to set me free. I have to call out in faith and trust in an answer through submission to His will.
And that answer is the fifth promise: He honors us by responding to and rescuing those who love Him. It's as simple as that. God honors us by keeping His covenant promises with us; it is a privilege extended to those who dwell in His shelter.
The sixth promise revolves around our willingness to let God fill our empty souls. If we will come to Him (and dwell in His shelter); let Him fill all those empty spaces within us; allow Him to fulfill His call on our lives, then He will give us a long life in which we will be well satisfied. But we need to know that it will be a fight! The Enemy will do everything within his power to entice us to give up on this precious life. There may be days when it is actually preferable to accept Death over Life. But God wants us to break free from this temptation, persevere to victory, and claim the covenant promise of a long, satisfied life. He also wants us to live that life for Him!
That leads us to the final promise of Psalm 91 ... to see His salvation. The fact that this promise comes at the very end of the Psalm tells us that we will see salvation face-to-face during and after our long, satisfied life. This promise secures our future in heaven, but we must start now. Salvation is more than our ticket to heaven! Salvation is offered to us in the forms of health, healing, deliverance, protection and provision. But note that the Psalm says we will see God's salvation! He is giving us His health, His healing, His deliverance, His protection, His provision. What more could we ask for?
Now that we've finished this most awesome Psalm, I hope that you can see that the choice is ours; the choice to accept God's protection in all these areas of our lives. He wants us to dwell within His covenant promises and rest in His amazing love for us. The next time you feel fear creeping in, just stop it in its tracks and recite this Psalm; believing His Word with all your heart, mind, body and soul. These are not idle promises --- they are the very intimate bond we have with our loving Father and Creator.
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