The Quiet Ones pt6
I wait quietly before God,” said David. To wait quietly is one thing when all is well, but David waited quietly though there was a storm all around him
David was surrounded by enemies bent on his demise. These enemies were not foreigners but those who had access to David. They blessed David with their words, but all the while they were cursing him in their hearts. They took pleasure in lying about him as part of the plan to topple him from his position
Only in Him, not in men of the world (vv. 9, 10), can we find rest from our agitations. The exhortation here, after the assertion that his soul was ‘resting silently upon God’ (v. 1), shows how we need to keep ourselves resting on Him by continually stirring ourselves up to prayer.
Whereas he began by being confident that he would not be severely shaken, he came to the place of being confident that he would not be shaken at all. Quieting his heart before God had changed David
From this psalm we learn the importance of taking the time to be quiet before God when there is turmoil in our lives. Our temptation is to move into high gear to stay ahead of the storm. While there is a time and place for action, our activity is often a form of self-reliance. So our external pace is as hectic as our internal space. Quieting our souls before God and centering on him as the source of our well-being will produce the state of heart and mind needed to take action when appropriate
The idol of misplaced trust is often hard to detect. We think we are trusting God to supply our needs until we are faced with the possibility of losing our job. The anxiety we then experience indicates the presence of a hidden idol, misplaced trust in our job as the source of our security. We think we are depending on God’s approval for our sense of personal well-being, until we come under severe criticism by others. The pain we then feel indicates the presence of an idol, misplaced dependence on the opinion of others as the source of our sense of self-worth. Such painful experiences are in reality a true blessing, as they give us the opportunity to rid our lives of idols and to grow in dependence on God alone for life.
It was right to speak frankly of the traitors and their plots in the first stanza; now it is David’s wisdom to brood on them no longer. He fills his thoughts with God. They are mostly reflections he has already put into similar words; but they hold his mind to its course, and there is one new point to emerge: that on God rests … my honour
Only vanity are the sons of men in general [אָדָם], a lie are the sons of (even) the distinguished man’ [אִישׁ] (Ps. 4:2; 39:5, 11, end; 136:3, 4). The reference is to v. 9; it is in relation to trustworthiness for one’s main hope that they are “a lie”—that is, disappointing to the expectations;
Next after trust in men comes trust in wrong, whereby the world tries to prop up its tottering greatness. Lit., ‘become not nothing in robbery’—i. e., in gain acquired by robbery. ‘Whoever puts his trust in what is nothing will become nothing himself’ (Hengstenberg). In the case of such the insecurity which attaches to all earthly things is aggravated by their lying under the curse of God.