Verse 4. “He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust. …” Christ’s wings are both for healing and for hiding; for curing and securing us. The devil and his instruments would soon devour the servants of God if He did not set an invisible guard about them and cover them with the golden feathers of His protection.
Verse 9. “Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation.” The psalmist in these verses assures the man who dwells in God that he shall be secure. Though faith claims no merit of its own, yet the Lord rewards it wherever he sees it. He who makes God his refuge shall find him a refuge; he who dwells in God shall find his dwelling protected. The “dwelling” here intended by the original was only a tent, yet the frail covering would prove to be a sufficient shelter from harm of all sorts. It matters little whether our abode be a gipsy’s hut or a monarch’s palace if the soul has made the Most High its habitation. Get into God and you dwell in all good, and ill is banished far away. It is not because we are perfectly or highly esteemed among men that we can hope for shelter in the day of evil, but because our refuge is the eternal God, and our faith has learned to hide beneath his sheltering wing.
Verses 9-10. “Because thou hast made (etc.) There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come near thy dwelling.” There is a threefold preservation that the Church and the members of it may look for from divine providence: a preservation from, a preservation in, and a preservation by, “dangers”:-
(1st). A preservation from dangers – according to the promise of this psalm, “Because thou hast made … there shall no evil befall thee.” On one occasion when Austin was going to preach in a certain town, some of his enemies waited by the roadside to kill him. Those who had come to guide him to the town lost their way eventually only arrived in the town by another route. Through this apparent “accident,” Austin was able to preach in the town, much good was done for men’s soul, honour brought to God and frustration to His enemies as He had kept His servant “from” the dangers.
(2nd). A preservation in dangers - as the widow of Serepta’s store was made to hold out in the time of famine – as the providence of God was with Daniel in the lion’s den, and with the men in the fiery furnace. The church has always been “a lily among thorns.” This bush is far from consumption, although it has seldom or never been out of the fire.
(3rd). A preservation by dangers. That is, there is a preservation from greater evils by lesser evils. There is poison but providence doesn’t know how to make an antidote by it. So, Jonah was swallowed by a whale, and by that danger kept alive, and Joseph by being cast into a pit and sold into Egypt, became a nursing father for the church. Faith is endangered by security, but secure in the midst of danger. God preserves us – not like we would preserve fruits, in sugar, to keep them for a year; but like meat for a long voyage, in salt, because our heavenly Father is resolved to keep us for ever – from dangers, in dangers, and by dangers themselves. Paul’s thorn in the flesh, which had much of danger and trouble in it, was given him on purpose to prevent pride, which was a greater evil.
Verses 11-12. “For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.” The verses which the devil took up in his temptings of Christ in the wilderness, and which he, in fact, misquoted for his own purposes by leaving out the “conditional” phrase – “to keep thee in all thy ways.” The divine pleasure of God was upon His Son who had come to do all the Father’s will and to walk in all the “ways” that God had mapped out for Him. It was from those very ways that the devil now sought to turn Him by tempting Him to presume on the goodness of God while turning from those ways. The most glaring omission, however, is seen in the devil’s failure to complete the total context of the psalm in the next verse – verse 13: “Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.” The one truth that Satan, who is that old dragon, and the roaring lion, and the serpent of Eden, couldn’t abide was the thought that the woman’s seed had come to tread upon him and trample him under His feet. But we may praise the Lord that our Lord Jesus perfectly kept to all His ways – that He set His face steadfast as a flint to go to Jerusalem, and by the cross pinned Satan to the ground.