A Word in Season: The Righteous Sustained (Psalm 55:22)

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Burdens are not pleasant, and some are particularly bitter. That was the case for the psalmist in Psalm 55, where he was being betrayed by people he'd trusted and assaulted.

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There were people who had war in their hearts, while their words were smoother than butter and softer than oil.

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The appearance was of friendship, the reality was of real enmity.

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Those are not the only burdens that the child of God might bear. As well as the assaults of the enemy from without, there are the sins that we struggle with in our own hearts.

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There may be weaknesses in our body with which we have to contend. There may be temptations which we feel are overbearing us.

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There may be woes in our family. There may be trials in the church. There are all kinds of issues which heap up and bear down upon the soul of a child of God.

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What are we to do with those burdens? They are real, even if they are not always seen.

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Verse 22 of Psalm 55 tells us, cast your burden on the

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Lord. It's the same language that Peter takes up when he tells the Christians to cast their cares upon the

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Lord. To roll the weight of all that grief and distress upon the broad shoulders of the

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Almighty God. To take it to Him who knows us, loves us and cares for us, who can be trusted intimately with everything that grieves us and distresses us.

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To take it to Him with faith and to take it to Him by prayer. Like Hezekiah when he spread the letter before the

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Lord in the temple. To, if you like, catalogue out, to make a list of all the things that are grieving and distressing us, the real challenges and the bitterest problems that we have to deal with.

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We take them to a God who loves us and has our best interests at heart, confident that He will sustain us.

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Now there's an interesting mix here. On the one hand, you're rolling the weight of your burden upon God.

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On the other, God is drawing near to you in order to strengthen you and to sustain you, to ensure that you are not crushed by the weight that you carry.

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So it's not just so much that you throw the burden away and that God takes it. It's that God comes alongside of you as you put your burdens upon Him and by His Spirit He bears your soul up so that these things do not overwhelm.

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They do not carry you before them like a great flood, but that you are enabled to press on in the way.

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God hasn't promised that He will immediately, automatically, invariably take all our burdens away, but we are told that when we bring them before the

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Lord, then He will be pleased to sustain us. And there's a lovely promise with which this verse concludes as well.

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He shall never permit the righteous to be moved. The righteous man here is the man who is trusting in God and walking in His ways.

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He is the man who knows his own sin, but has gone to God for cleansing. He is the man who is looking to Christ in order to save him and to keep him in the path of righteousness.

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He is the man who, by the Spirit's help, is walking closely with God. And when a man is right with God, when he's living before Him in consciousness of God's eye upon him, when he's not the treacherous man, when he's not the deceiver, when he's not the murderer, when he's not the assaulter, when he's not the hater, when a man's way is right before God, the

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Lord will not permit that man to be moved. Yes, he may be troubled. Yes, he may be shaken.

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Yes, he may at times be fearful. But whatever comes to pass, he will not utterly be swept away.

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He will stand even when others fall. He will stay the course, even though he is buffeted about upon it.

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Are you then one of the righteous, righteous in and because of Christ, righteous by the help of His Holy Spirit, righteous as one who knows

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God and walks before Him in the world? Then you will have burdens.

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It is not possible for God's people to go through this world unhindered and untroubled.

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But neither need we be overwhelmed. If we cast our burdens upon the Lord, He shall sustain us.