Thoughts on Psalm 91 from T. Austin-Sparks
Now, I have said that the life of the Lord Jesus will correct our misconceptions of spiritual things: and that is certainly true with relation to all the troubles and trials which are described in this Psalm. For it is a part of our foolishness that we vainly imagine that the closer a man is to the Lord, the easier, the freer from difficulties and trials will his life be. We are completely mistaken; that is quite a misconception. And so the Psalm will now stress the adversities that beset the path of the man who begins where Psalm 91 begins: “in the secret place of the Most High.” Look down the chapter. What a list is given to us here: “the snare of the fowler . . . the noisome pestilence. . . the terror by night . . . the arrow that flierh by day . . . the pestilence that walketh in darkness. . . the destruction that wasteth at noonday . . .” On and on the story goes! You say, Who is this?? And the answer comes back: This is the Son of God. What a long and varied list of every kind of assault upon this Man! We go back to the Gospels, and we have to confess that this is true. Men did not say, ‘This is the Son of God’, because they saw some majestic person sweeping on easily through life, with no difficulties and no enemies. No, they found a man in the fires of affliction; they found a man beset — these are figurative descriptions of troubles, but they are very vivid ones if you look at them — by night and by day, with lions in their fierceness and serpents in their subtlety. But the amazing thing about the Psalm is that it is a picture of a man who walks through it all unmoved, unaffected, delivered, maintained. And what is the secret? The secret is not because HE has ability to deal with all these troubles, but because the LORD has said: “I will be with him in trouble”. ‘He is with Me; I will be with Him.’ What a story of triumph, deliverance, and victory — the story of our Saviour’s life.”