- Preservation
Psalm 12.7
Thou shalt keep them, O Lord,
thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.
The promise is for the poor and needy: the Lord will keep them and preserve them. All humans are poor and needy, the only difference being that some don’t know it yet. The sooner we admit to being truly poor and needy the sooner we can rest under the shadow of God’s promises: He will keep and preserve us. Those who are physically and financially poor and needy have an easier time seeing and admitting their dependence and helplessness; and for them, the sooner the promises come to pass. Psalm 121:8: “The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth and even forevermore.”
Those who are not physically and financially poor and needy have a harder time recognizing their need for God and their dependence upon Him alone for peace, safety, health and wellbeing. To the degree that we “need” to that degree God helps, keeps us safe and preserves our life. Spiritual poverty and neediness is not so easy to see with physical eyes and with a mind of reason. Seeing our own poverty, emptiness, helplessness and dependency comes to our vision when we repent of pride and self-sufficiency and self-centeredness. Then the Holy Spirit reveals through the gospel that He will meet our real needs and fill the empty with good things.
“Generation” = all the people living on earth at a particular time period. Whenever we lived, or wherever we have dwelt in the world, that particular generation of people who lived then and there is in and of the world, and the world is an instrument of the Enemy to assail the children of God. The Lord promises to preserve us from the destructions that come to us through the temptations of the world. We need this promise to be preserved from going the way of the world.