- Defense and Refuge
Psalm 94:22-23
But the Lord is my defense;
And my God is the rock of my refuge.
And he shall bring upon them their own iniquity,
and shall cut them off in their own wickedness,
Yea, the Lord our God shall cut them off.
God promises several times that He will be my stronghold and refuge, and as such He promises to defend and protect me. I need the Lord my God to be my Defense against my evil spiritual enemies; Psalm 94:21: “They band together against the life of the righteous and condemn the innocent to death.” If sin, death, and the devil could have had their way and carried out their will my physical and spiritual life would have been taken long ago. But the Lord is my Defense. God’s will is Life; their will is Death: “Thy will be done on earth.”
Sin, Evil and Wickedness is far more deadly than we can even imagine. If we could actually see the ugliness and deathliness of Sin we would most likely not sin. But we don’t see it; we are deceived by its deceptively lovely temptations; the end thereof is death, and death is not at all pretty. It seems that Sin and Death win throughout life and at the end of it, but the appearances to physical sight are false; faith sees death being destroyed and life (my life) emerging victorious not only at the end but also each day of this earthly life until the end of it.
Eyesight sees darkness, loss, evil, and death all around; faith vision sees light, victory, goodness, and life all around and over it all. We get faith vision from the Word of God, which tells the truth of the things we do not see, for the things that are unseen are eternal. We believe the Word instead of our sense experience; “walking by faith” is living by the Word of God; truth is in place of deception. What we see when we believe is this promise: “Our God shall cut them off,” or another translation reads, “Our God will wipe them out.”
God is our Defense and He will wipe out everything that is against us. The bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ has accomplished this for us. John 20:29: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” In the face of bold and bald Sin and Death we see and we confess that our God will wipe them out. When you are safe and secure within the Stronghold and Refuge that is your God you can be bold enough to say to sin, death, and the devil, “Jesus, my overcomer, won, and you will be wiped out.