‘Deliver me not!’ - Psalm 27:12

Text:  “Deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies; for false witnesses are risen against up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty.”

     Psalm 27:12.

          “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil; for Thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.  Amen.”

  Matthew 6:13.

Good morning, ever-delivered Christian!  You and I who are Spiritual children of the Most High Lord God, Jehovah, through the Cross of Christ Jesus, our Saviour and our Lord, are thrice delivered souls; completely delivered from the power and the plague of all evil.  Hallelujah!  What a thrill it is to know that we have been fully delivered!

“But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead; Who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver; in Whom we trust that He will yet deliver us.”  (2 Corinthians 1:10)

This one verse of Holy Scripture, God’s Word, clearly promises us past, present, and future deliverance from death and all evil.  Wow!  Now, that is an exciting reality!

When the enemies of our souls - Spiritual and temporal - afflict us and cause us to become discouraged, we must always seek God’s face; feed upon God’s Word; and cry out to Him as our loving Father and our Saviour King.  He will always deliver us.

“Fear thou not; for I am with thee; be not dismayed; for I am thy God; I will strengthen thee, yea, I will help thee, yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of My righteousness.  Behold (look!), all they that be incensed against thee shall be ashamed and confounded; they shall be as nothing; and they that strive with thee shall perish.  Thou shalt seek them, and shalt not find them, even them that contended with thee; they that war against thee shall be as nothing, and as a thing of nought.  For I the Lord thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not, I will help thee.”      (Isaiah 41:10-13)

Vicious slander and malicious gossip are the preferred weapons of anti-Christian enemies!  Cowards, prefer to strike from their dark and morbid hiding places.

Verse 12.  “For false witnesses are risen up against me.  Slander is an old-fashioned weapon out of the armoury of Hell and is still in plentiful use; and no matter how holy a man may be, there will be some who will defame him.  It is their vital breath to hate the good.”  (C.H. Spurgeon, Treasury of David, page 138)

The true Christian’s greatest ‘fault’, his/her most obvious ‘weakness’, is the fact that we preach and teach perfect Holiness - yet cannot attain that same standard in our lives.  The world around us watch our every move; measure our every word; monitor our every motive - and, because we are mere sinners saved by God’s grace, we will always fall short of the Holy Standard of perfection in Christ Jesus that we preach/teach.  The world homes in on this observable fact and uses our short-comings as a whip to flay us continuously.   I will never forget the day in my life that one such ‘worldly watcher’ flew at me with the accusation, ‘You’re some Christian!’; after I had killed a fly that was continually pestering me.  He was using my swatting of that fly to justify the unreasonable hatred he had for me as a Christian.

Verse 12. “Deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies…”  With the above example in mind, therefore, we can see how plaintive the cry of David is when he asks the Lord not to deliver him over unto the will of such enemies.  Our enemies only need the excuse to cause us harm, and from such enemies we Christians need continual Divine deliverance, if we are to continue to serve the risen Lord Jesus Christ.

Verse 12.  “…For false witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty.  Take courage, fainting Christians: you are encompassed with a great cloud of witnesses! The race that you are running has been run by millions before; you think that no one ever had such trials as yourself—but every step that you are journeying has been safely walked by others; the valley of the shadow of death has been securely passed by a multitude of trembling, doubting ones like yourself. They had their fears and anxieties, like you—but they were not cast away. The world, the flesh and the devil can never overwhelm the weakest person who will set their face towards God. These millions journeyed on in bitterness and tears like your own, and yet not one perished—they all reached their eternal home.  (J.C. Ryle 1816 -1900)

Enemies: The principal fight of the Christian is with the world, the flesh, and the devil.  These are his never-dying foes.  These are the three chief enemies against whom he must wage war.  Unless he gets the victory over these three, all other victories are useless and vain.  If he had a nature like an angel, and was not a fallen creature, the warfare would not be so essential.  But with a corrupt heart, a busy devil, and an ensnaring world, he must either “fight” or be lost. He must fight the flesh.  Even after conversion he carries within him a nature prone to evil, and a heart weak and unstable as water.  To keep that heart from going astray, there is need of a daily struggle and a daily wrestling in prayer.”  (J.C. Ryle 1816 -1900)

You and I as 21^st Century Christians would do well to look back into history, to the testimonies of Spiritual giants like Ryle and Spurgeon, and begin to do fierce battle with the enemies of Christ and our Christian souls. 

Thought: Today is the day, harden not your hearts, up, put the Battle in order against the enemies of our Christian souls!  Victory is ours - in Christ Jesus.