EXPOSITION OF PSALM 31 (3)
Verses 5-8

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This psalm may be divided into six divisions: 1. prayer for help (vv.1-4); 2. encouragement to self (vv.5-8); 3. causes of trouble (vv.9-13); 4. another prayer for help (vv.14-18); 5. praise to God (vv.19-22); 6. exhortation to fellow-saints (vv.23f). Having expounded the first division in the preceding message, we here continue:

II. Encouragement to self (vv.5-8). In the preceding section (vv.1-4), the saint acknowledges Christ as the object of His trust (v.1a), his "rock of refuge" (v.2c, 3a), his "fortress of defense" (v.2d, 3a), and his "strength" (v.4b). He is therefore confident Christ will "never let me be ashamed" (v.1b), "deliver me in Your righteousness" (v.1c), "bow down your ear to me" (v.2a), "deliver me speedily" (v.2b), "for Your name's sake, lead me and guide me" (v.3b), and "pull me out of the net which they have secretly laid for me" (v.4a). He therefore here encourages himself:

1. Here are words of commitment to God, not of a mere trial of Him: "Into your hands I commit my spirit." When I was associated with so-called "Jesus People" many years ago, we distributed literature that read "Try Jesus". We would say, "You have tried drugs, alcohol, free love, and all kinds of other things in the hope of finding satisfaction in life. But all these have failed you. Why not try Jesus!" In so saying, we were peddling the Son of God as though He were some marketable commodity being made available to men in a trial offer. "If you try it and like it, you may afterward commit yourself to it. If you try it and find it to be unsatisfactory for your needs and desires, try something else."

But these are not words of saints! We do not make a mere trial of God with the intention of afterward making a commitment to Him if we find Him satisfactory. Rather, we from the beginning make a whole-hearted and complete commitment to Him. We without reservation entrust our spirit to Him, depositing it in Him for all eternity.

2. Here are words of trust in God, not in self: "Into Your hands I commit my spirit." Unbelievers trust in their own hands to save and preserve their spirit. These are those who have "worshiped the works of their own hands" (Jeremiah 1:16) - not only their physical idols they have manufactured to be their saviors, but also their spiritual works they have performed and in which they trust for salvation. Jehovah tells them "you provoke Me to anger with the works of your hands to your own hurt" (Jeremiah 25:7; 44:8).

The saint is not so foolish and rebellious. We may see him as saying to God, "I am incapable of keeping my body from the ravages of a common cold, much less my spirit from eternal damnation. I will not try to save my spirit with my own hands. Neither will I try to preserve with my hands my soul that You have saved. Here, Lord, my spirit is in my hands in order to commit it into the only hands I know are able to keep it, and the only hands I trust to do so. I am confident that no one is able to snatch anyone from Your hands" (John 10:28-30). He may say with Paul the apostle in the face of all earthly adversities, "I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day" (2 Timothy 1:12). When we hear religionists confess that they may be "saved today but lost tomorrow", we assume they lack confidence in their god, and that their god is not worthy of full commitment.

3. Here are words suitable for the hour of death. This we know because Jesus Christ our Exemplar uttered them in His own death (Luke 23:46). (Interestingly, Christ quoted from Psalm 22 in the beginning of His agony, but from this psalm in His final victory.) These also were the final words of Stephen the Martyr in saying, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit" (Acts 7:59). There also were the dying words of the martyr Polycarp in Smyrna (c.155), the Bohemian reformer and martyr John Huss (1415), his associate Jerome of Prague (1416), the German Reformer Martin Luther (154), his "Jonathan" Philip Melanchthon (1560), and many others. Luther said, "Blessed are they who die not only for the Lord, as martyrs, not only in the Lord, as all believers, but likewise with the Lord, as breathing forth their lives in these words, 'Into Thy hand I commit my spirit.'"

4. Here are words suitable for all the days of our lives. The psalmist who spoke them here did not wait until the hour of death to do so. We have little confidence in the commitment of the man who utters these words in death but does not live by them in life.

5. Here are words of total commitment to God. The "spirit" that the psalmist here commits is not merely his immaterial part, as distinct from his body. Rather, the Christian commits all that he is and has to His God. He will obey the exhortation to "present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God" (Romans 12:1), and to "Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth" (Colossians 3:2), and to confess here with the psalmist "My times are in Your hand" (v.15). When a professor of Christ departs from the truth, he denies ever having made a true commitment to Him. Such would include Judas Iscariot, Demas (2 Timothy 4:10), and Simon the sorcerer (Acts 8:9-23).

"... You have redeemed me, O LORD God of truth." Here is a good reason for committing all to Christ. And none will commit all to Christ but those who are redeemed by Him. Christ has redeemed His people from sin and all its effects: "from going down to the Pit" (Job 33:28), "from the power of the grave" (Psalm 49:15), "from death" (Hosea 13:14), "from the curse of the law" (Galatians 3:13), "from every lawless deed" (Titus 2:14) - all with His own precious blood (1 Peter 1:18f). Although this redeeming work was yet future when the psalmist spoke these words, he could speak of it as though it was in the past because of the certainty of it, as also did the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 53:3ff).

31:6 "I have hated those who regard useless idols; ..." These are all who have refused to believe the gospel, all who have not "turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God" (1 Thessalonians 1:9). All such people are haters of God. They manifest their hatred of Him by exchanging the truth for the lie, exalting the creature over the Creator, worshiping their freewill while denying His, and so forth (Romans 1:22-25). They hate God (Exodus 20:4f), and God hates them (Psalm 5:5f), and saints hate those who hate God and those whom God hates. And we do so with "perfect hatred" (Psalm 139:21f; cp. 119:113). To do otherwise results in the wrath of God (2 Chronicles 19:2): "Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the LORD? Therefore the wrath of the LORD is upon you." (This truth does not contradict the commandment from Christ in Matthew 5:44f to "love your enemies ....")

"... But I trust in the LORD." This is the diametric opposite of the first part of this verse. You are either for Christ or against Him (Matthew 12:30), either regarding useless idols or trusting in the Lord, either an idolater or a Christian. If you are an unbeliever, you regard idols and refuse to trust in Christ. If you are a Christian, you have deserted idols for Christ. There is no middle ground in this regard. Of which sort are you?

31:7 "I will be glad and rejoice in Your mercy, ..." He who trusts in the mercy of God will afterward be glad and rejoice in that same mercy. The psalmist elsewhere says, "I have trusted in Your mercy [in the past]; my heart shall rejoice in Your salvation [in the present and in the future]. I will sing to the LORD [both now and forever], because He has dealt bountifully with me [in the past]" (Psalm 13:5f). And especially the saint will be glad and rejoice in Christ, for Christ Himself is "the mercy promised to our fathers" (Luke 1:72). Singing praises to Christ is one of the best ways to fulfill the promise "I will be glad and rejoice in Your mercy."

"... For You have considered my trouble; ..." How blessed it is to be considered by friends in times of trouble. How infinitely more blessed it is to be considered by God!

"... You have known my soul in adversities, ..." God knows these things because He Himself has entered into them in the person of Jesus Christ (Hebrews 4:15): "For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are."

31:8 "And have not shut me up into the hand of the enemy; ..." He who is shut up into the hand of God, as all believers are, will never be shut up into the hand of his enemies (John 10:28-30; Romans 8:35-39).

"... You have set my feet in a wide place." This "wide place" is that of salvation in Christ (Psalm 40:2): "He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my steps."

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