MY STRONG REFUGE

The psalm is an expression of trust in God by someone who has reached old age, vv. 9, 18. In our modern world, a premium is placed on youth that is not recognized in scripture. God has a purpose for the grey-headed saint that cannot be fulfilled by the inexperienced youth, ‘Forsake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come’, v. 18.

If David was the writer of the psalm, he well understood the importance of having a ‘strong refuge’. Saul had sought every day to kill him but ‘David abode in the wilderness in strong­holds’, 1 Sam. 23. 14. Perhaps he learned through those experiences that there was a greater place for refuge than he had found in the mountains of the wilderness of Ziph. The refuge that God provided could not be assailed by any enemy; He was as a fortress on a rock, v. 3.

The psalmist looked back over a life-time of trust in his God. He had come to a personal experience with God in his youth, v. 5. Now, as an old man, he realized that before he ever thought about God, He had thought about him, v. 6. The truth of individ­ual election is being undermined in our day but David found it a source of continual praise that God had known and upheld him from the womb, v. 6. The believer today has all the more reason to praise the ‘God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’, as we have been chosen in Christ ‘before the foundation of the world’, Eph. 1. 3, 4. One day, this world, and everything that men have built up and depended upon, will be destroyed but the believer’s blessings and standing in Christ will remain, as they were never connected with this world in the first place.

The death of Christ is the source of all blessings, whether to Old Testament saints, the nation of Israel, or the believer in the church. The experience of the psalmist would be fulfilled in a greater way at Calvary. For just as David had learned that to trust in God will bring reproach from men, the Lord would at Calvary become a ‘wonder unto many’, v. 7. But the day will come when those who wondered at His suffering in the past will be startled by His future manifestation in glory, Isa. 52. 14, 15.