I Shall Not Be Greatly Shaken

Psalms 62:1-2 ESV

 

“For God alone my soul waits in silence;

    from him comes my salvation.

He alone is my rock and my salvation,

    my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken.”

 

Amen! There are so many different people and ideas and theologies and religions and philosophies and theories out there in the world and in the church which may tempt us to go after them and to put them in the place of God in our lives to where we follow them and not God.

 

There are so many different ways of thinking about God and the Bible and the gospel. There are so many different “remedies” for our problems, too. And all these are calling out to us to follow them, to believe them, to put our trust in them instead of believing God and his word, and instead of trusting the Lord alone with our lives.

 

So, we need to be people of God who find our salvation, our hope, our healing, our answers, our remedies, our thinking, and our believing in God and in God alone, and not in the philosophies and remedies that this world and the people of this world are offering to us.

 

Psalms 62:3-4 ESV

 

“How long will all of you attack a man

    to batter him,

    like a leaning wall, a tottering fence?

They only plan to thrust him down from his high position.

    They take pleasure in falsehood.

They bless with their mouths,

    but inwardly they curse. Selah”

 

This word “attack” means to “imagine mischief.” And to imagine mischief means to conceive, to plot, and to devise harm, damage, injury, malice, and naughtiness. It is to plot evil against others with the intention to cause them harm. And the evil intent is to try to bring them down, to lower them morally, or to remove them from doing what God has called them to do.

 

And they will do this via lies, via slander and false accusations. Or they will do this via some kind of trickery, like setting a trap for them to walk into so that they would have cause to accuse them in some way. They will use flattery or false confessions or false cries for help or whatever works to lay the trap for the unsuspecting to walk right into.

 

For, they are those who are following after the lusts of the flesh and the pride of life instead of following after God and his holiness and righteousness. So, they hate all those who follow the Lord in sincerity of devotion to him, and so they devise ways to destroy them and their ministry in hopes that no one will listen to them.

 

These are also those who are teaching a diluted gospel which lures the unsuspecting to continue living in their sin, according to their fleshly impulses and desires, and which leads them to follow after the false god of sexual idolatry and fleshly desires. For they convince them that good is evil and that evil is good and so it is good to keep on in their sins.

 

They lie to them and tell them that God doesn’t say that they have to turn from their sins and walk in obedience to him as part of believing faith. They tell them that obedience and repentance are “works” which they are not to do. So, they leave them still in bondage to sin, still headed to hell, but on the false promise of heaven when they die.

 

They serve the devil and the flesh so their goal is to turn people away from pure devotion to the Lord, and to turn them away from sharing the truth of the gospel so that people will look to the flesh and to sin to solve their problems rather than looking to God to save them from their slavery to sin.

 

And so these people who are on the attack against the godly are those not only who are luring people into sin but who are fiercely attacking those who are walking in obedience to the Lord in holiness and in purity of devotion to Him. They are attacking the truth of the gospel to attempt to bring it into disrepute, but they are also plotting evil against those who are teaching the truth of the gospel for the purpose to silence them and to destroy them.

 

But we are not to let them intimidate us into backing down from the truth of God’s word. We are to not let their attacks and their evil plots against us destroy us and discourage us from speaking the truth in love. We are not to join in with them in their cheap grace gospel which gives permission to keep on in sin, either, just so we aren’t attacked and so we aren’t rejected.

 

Right now, in America, we still have the freedom to share the gospel, so while we still have that freedom we need to be out there sharing the truth, for far too many people are teaching lies and they are attacking the truth and they are leading people away from Jesus to follow after the lies.

 

Psalms 62:5-8 ESV

 

“For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence,

    for my hope is from him.

He only is my rock and my salvation,

    my fortress; I shall not be shaken.

On God rests my salvation and my glory;

    my mighty rock, my refuge is God.

 

“Trust in him at all times, O people;

    pour out your heart before him;

    God is a refuge for us. Selah”

 

We need to make the Lord our only trust. He needs to be our only hope. He alone is to be our source for salvation from sin, but that salvation message must be what Jesus taught and what his NT apostles taught (in context). We must study the Word of God in context to get the full gospel message.

 

For, these people who are on the attack use Scriptures removed from their context to try to spread their lies in the hopes that people will continue living in sin on a false promise of forgiveness of sins and eternal life with God. So, we need to know what the Scriptures teach so we don’t believe the lies.

 

Jesus taught that if anyone would come after him he must deny self and take up his cross daily (daily die to sin and to self) and follow (obey) him. The apostles taught that Jesus died that we might die with him to sin and live to him and to his righteousness, and that Jesus died that we might no longer live for ourselves but for Him who gave his life up for us.

 

The apostles also taught that if we walk (in conduct, in practice) in sin that we will die in our sins. We will not inherit eternal life with God, no matter what we confess with our lips or think we believe in our hearts. If sin is what we practice, it ends in death, but if righteousness is what we practice, it ends in eternal life with God.

 

So, this is what we must teach, and we must not be discouraged from teaching the truth out of fear of being attacked or falsely accused. We must stay the course and keep on sharing the truth of the gospel so that people can be delivered from their bondage to sin and can now live holy lives pleasing to God.

 

We must surrender our lives to Jesus Christ and trust in God’s sovereignty over our lives and not fear what man might do to us.

 

[Lu 9:23-26; Jn 6:35-58; Jn 15:1-11; Rom 6:1-23; Rom 8:1-17; Eph 4:17-24; 1 Pet 2:24; 1 Co 6:9-10, 19-20; 2 Co 5:10, 15; Tit 2:11-14; Jas 1:22-25; Gal 5:16-21; Eph 5:3-6; Gal 6:7-8; Rom 2:6-8; Matt 7:21-23; Heb 10:26-27; 1 Jn 1:5-9; 1 Jn 2:3-6; 1 Jn 3:4-10; 1 Pet 2:9; Matt 5:13-16]

 

Shine On

 

By Ann Aschauer

 

So shine on through the darkness;

Be the salt and light for all your world.

Live for Jesus, 'til you see Him,

And your faith has its reward;

Shine on through the darkness;

Let His love shine through you all your days.

Go and win your generation for the Lord.

 

c 1990 Ann Aschauer

https://cfservant.files.wordpress.com/2020/10/06-track-6.mp3