Psalm 91:1, 3, 7, 9-10 (NIV)
Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. Surely he will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence. A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. If you say, “The LORD is my refuge,” and make the Most High your dwelling, no harm will overtake you, no disaster will come near your tent.
A family member of ours is battling Alzheimer’s right now. A single mom I know is hardly able to get by financially while at the same time having to battle her own cancer. A local college student who loved the Lord and had an amazing impact recently died from a complicated medical condition. ALS is slowly but surely taking the life of two Believers I know. Jesus not only suffered tremendously but died as a result. Given the difficult and discouraging things that can happen to us physically on this broken world, what are we to do with this most cherished Psalm 91?
Many have noted the wonderful character of this Psalm: “This psalm is one of the greatest possessions of the saints.” (G. Campbell Morgan) “In the whole collection there is not a more cheering Psalm, its tone is elevated and sustained throughout, faith is at its best, and speaks nobly.” (Charles Spurgeon) “It is one of the most excellent works of this kind which has ever appeared. It is impossible to imagine anything more solid, more beautiful, more profound, or more ornamented.” (de Muis, cited in Spurgeon) There is no doubt that this psalm offers hope in the darkness, but what good is that hope if people still get sick, suffer, and die? This psalm surely promises deliverance…but deliverance from what?
Many scriptures, the experiences of many saints—biblical and otherwise—and our own experiences, make it clear that Christians do suffer. There are two kinds of people this psalm addresses, and therein lies the key to understanding the promises it contains. One group is delivered from destruction while the other group is destroyed. The bible declares that all people…both groups…will face physical death, but only one group will be delivered after death. It is helpful to look back on Psalm 90 as you work through Psalm 91. As we saw in that Dose, with God, a thousand years is essentially nothing. For man, 70-80 years is a long life, and even these years are filled with sorrow and labor. People of all ages get sick. Cancer comes for the young, the middle-aged, and the old. Accidents take the up-and-coming as well as the nearly done. The world itself groans under the pressure and awaits the return of the Lord (Rom. 8:22). This is behind the logic of Psalm 90 and undergirds the promises of Psalm 91.
One commentary on Bible.org really handles this well as it reflects on Psalm 90 and then explains the hope found in the lofty promises of Psalm 91:
“This brevity and painfulness of life is explained by Moses as the result of God’s holiness and man’s sin. The solution to this problem of pain, and the hope of the believer is not in this life, but in the next. It will come with the return of the Lord. It will come ‘in the morning’. It will come in the future. The solution is not to be found in the deliverance from death, but in a deliverance after death. While it is not clearly stated in this psalm, it would be correct to say that death itself is a kind of deliverance for the Christian, for it removes us from the effects of sin, from pain and suffering and sorrow, and it takes us into the eternal joy of the presence of our Lord.”
Amen and Amen.
