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The Pilgrim Path (4-16-2020)

The Pilgrim Path---Psalm 7: 1--12

Please read the entire Psalm...

Tim Keller calls it, "Smear Campaign"

Spurgeon calls it, "Song of the Slandered Saint"

O LORD my God, in you do I take refuge; save me from all my pursuers and deliver me, lest like a lion they teat my soul apart, rending it in pieces, with none to deliver. O LORD my God, if I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands, if I have repaid my friend with evil or plundered my enemy without cause, let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it, and let him trample my life to the ground and lay my glory in the dust. Arise, O LORD, in your anger; lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies; awake for me; you have appointed a judgment. Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you; over it return on high. The LORD judges the peoples; judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me. Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end, and may you establish the righteous---you who test the minds and hearts, O righteous God! My shield is with God, who saves the upright in heart. God is a righteous judge who feels indignation every day. If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword; he has bent and readied his bow...

---The Lord's servant (David) has been betrayed---it not only hurts---it has become dangerous. The hurt: this was a friend---whom he had helped previously...

---The Lord "knows" David's plight. He finds great satisfaction in this---because the Lord loves His own...David lets us know that his conscience is clear in the matter at hand. He is actually "not" guilty as charged...

---The Lord is the One---David "calls" on to "rise" against his adversaries (very Romans 12). The Lord does say that "vengeance" is His alone...never our business...

---The Lord vindicates the righteous and, "feels indignation every day" ---Let's face it---we don't typically like that---or we try to explain it away. But remember, God is Holy and must stand against what stands against Him...we have to be moved to pray that the, "evil of the wicked come to an end" (Psalm 7: 9). As my buddy Ralph Davis puts it: There are loads of people who will say that is not or cannot be true. But if you say that God is not like that, you take away any hope his wronged and suffering people have...

---The Lord can make the pit the evil man digs---become the pit ---the evil man "falls" in (Psalm 7: 15). The Sovereign Lord is the Master of such plans. He made Haman hang on his on gallows...

From Tim Keller: Evil carries within it the seeds of its own destruction...Haters are hated, deceivers are deceived, gossips are gossiped about...

---The Lord is ready to "pull" His sword and bow for the unrepentant...What an image! It is meant to trouble...

You may witness from this Psalm...certainly people are aware that quite a few have met the "authorities" for overcharging, price-gouging--hoarding---during the COVID-19 pandemic...But do souls exist who have never lied? Never taken "anything"? Never thought a lustful thought? But one sin---makes a sinner. And God has a, "sword" He is prepared to use against the unrepentant...a bow...And God never misses a target...Think about that...Learn this text--- Second Corinthians 5: 21 "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." We are the sheep who went astray---but the Lord laid on Him (Jesus)---our sin (Isaiah 53:6)---It was the "will" of The Father to use some of His deadliest weapons "upon" the Son (Isaiah 53: 10)---that we might be accepted in the Beloved....just amazing!

No wonder this Psalm ends, "I will give to the LORD the thanks due to his righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the LORD, the Most High." ---David realized that he could trust the LORD with everything...

Bowed down beneath a load of sin,

By Satan sorely pressed

By war without, and fears within,

I come to Thee for rest.

Be Thou my shield and hiding place

That, sheltered near Thy side,

I may my fierce accuser face

And tell him Thou hast died.

O wondrous love! to bleed and die,

To bear the cross and shame,

That guilty sinners, such as I,

Might plead Thy gracious Name!

John Newton (1725-1807)

Grace & Peace in Jesus Our LORD, Pastor Jason