PRIDE COMPASSETH THEM ABOUT AS A CHAIN; VIOLENCE COVERETH THEM AS A GARMENT

This psalm deals with a problem that has perplexed saints in every age and one that the psalmist Asaph was willing to admit caused him to well nigh slip from the path of faith. His mind had been occupied with the peace and prosperity of the foolish and wicked. He was conscious of his own integrity before God and yet he was plagued all day long and chastened every morning, while they were going on without a sorrow or a care. They openly displayed their pride like an ornamental chain and their violence was casually worn like a garment. He could not under­stand it, until he went into the sanctuary of God and it was there that he understood the end of the wicked, v. 17.

It is all too easy for the believer today to be caught up with the daily news that tells of the pride and violence of men both at home and abroad. The sanctuary is made available to us in a way that Asaph could never experience, as we have, ‘boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus’. And it is in the calmness of the sanctuary that we obtain encouragement to continue assembling together, to ‘exhort one another’ and learn about the ‘judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries’, Heb. 10. 19, 25, 27. God desires to reveal His thoughts to His people. John could very well have spent his last years in perplexity and despair, but he wrote, ‘I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice’, Rev. 1. 10. Was there ever a man who understood the end of the wicked as he did?

As we think of the outward displays of man’s pride and violence, it is good to remember again those scriptures that describe the ornaments and chains that we can wear to bring pleasure to God and bear testimony to men. ‘Let it be the hid­den man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price’, 1 Pet. 3. 4. ‘My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother: for they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck’, Prov. 1. 8, 9.