Doctrine of His feathers, wings

"Psalm 91: 10-12 is a reference to the Messiah. This is a psalm, not just looking at the life of Moses, or the life of David, but looking into the future about the life of the Messiah and the Believers who are identified with Him and He with them.

"I've said many times, when we study the psalms there's times you read a psalm and say, 'Well, that's Christ,' and then you read a little bit further and you say, 'No, that's Israel.' Then you read a little further and you say, 'No, that's Christ.' You go a little further and say, 'No, that's Israel.'

"What that is is the Lord Jesus Christ was numbered with the transgressors. He came to be identified with His people and He becomes so identified with them in the psalms, which is the cry and the heart of the Believing Remnant, there's times when it's Him and then it's them and it's Him and it's them," explains Richard Jordan.

"They become so identified in the experience of the sufferings that they go through, especially in the tribulation, that it's hard to tell them apart.

"In the Book of Psalms especially, there are three times you'll see God's wrath poured out. One, you'll see it on Christ, then you'll see it poured out on the Jew in the tribulation and then you say, 'Well, that's really what happens in the Lake of Fire.'

"Those are the three times when God's wrath is poured out without any measure--Calvary (that's why it's called the great and terrible day of the Lord) and then the Lake of Fire and the experiences kind of blend together.

"So, when you read this psalm, understand it has to do with Israel and identifying and gathering together a Believing Remnant in Israel and for them to be saying the same thing their Messiah says.

"You got to get in your mind that this psalm, doctrinally, is about Matthew 4. It's doctrinally about the protection of the Lord Jesus Christ by God the Father and the little Believing Remnant in the tribulation.

"Now, preachers for time immemorial have taken the passage and made spiritual applications out of them, but you don't make the application first; you make the doctrine first, because that tells you how then you can apply it.

"There's a whole bunch of stuff in this psalm, if you just take it verbatim out of it like it's used, it's going to get you in trouble.

Verse 1: [1] He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

That's a favorite passage to quote in sermons. If you leave the spiritual application, where you're trying to get some encouragement for you out of it, and just look at the doctrine in the passage, it's not all that hard to see what's happening here.

Verse 2: [2] I will say of the LORD, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust.

"There are four titles for God in those two verses. This is the only place in the Bible that I know of where all those four titles are gathered together in one place with that close proximity.

"The most High God is introduced to Abraham in Genesis 4 as the possessor of heaven and earth. He's the rightful owner of all the universe.

"Again, the Almighty was introduced to Abraham in Genesis 17. You ever heard the song El-Shaddai? That's Hebrew for the Almighty. He's not only the rightful possessor of all things, but He has the power to deliver on His claims. He can take it when He wants it.

'The LORD, in all upper case, is Jehovah. That's the one who's going to provide everything necessary to make His people who He's chosen them and determined them to be.

"He's the one who will take Israel and make them capable, qualified to be who He's chosen them to be, but He has to be 'my God.' He can't just be that guy's--He's my God and because He's mine, He's going to be my experience. 'Here's God who belongs to me and I belong to Him,' and that's why it says 'in him' will I trust. The most High is mine. The Almighty is MY God. This is Him and He's mine; I've trusted Him.

"That's also true of the Messiah, by the way. He's the one who is ultimately trusting the Lord, His Father, completely. Now, I know people get bent out of shape when you talk about the Lord Jesus Christ trusting His Father, the faith of Christ, but that's just because you aren't paying attention to who He is.

"He's not just God, He is God, He can never quit being God because that's who He is, but He's also--in fact, all those terms, most High, Almighty, my God, Jehovah--they all can apply to the Lord Jesus Christ because they can all apply to all three members of the godhead.

"By the way, when it talks about 'the secret place of the most High,' in Revelation 12 where do they go? They go to the secret place in the wilderness.

[14] And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent.

"Isaiah 45 talks about people hiding in the secret place. These are descriptive of things that are going to happen and be done with the nation Israel in the tribulation period.

"In Psalm 91:3, he begins to talk about the dangers, and by the way, it says in verse 1 he 'shall abide.' If you abide under a shadow, it's covering you; it's giving protection. In verse 4 it says He shall cover thee with His feathers:

[4] He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.

"You ever hear anybody when they're wanting to do what they call Christian cussing, say 'Horse feathers!'? I used to wonder, 'Why would you say horse feathers?' But Jesus Christ comes back on a white horse and that verse there says, 'He shall cover thee with feathers.' God's got feathers!

"The doctrine of His feathers and His wings, if you want the doctrine of it, you go back to Exodus 19: [3] And Moses went up unto God, and the LORD called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel;

[4] Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself.

"There's the feathers. God says, 'I brought you out from under that bondage to the satanic control in Egypt and put you on new life ground and made you mine. I delivered you and I did it on eagle's wings.' Now, when Israel is ON the wings, they're being transported.

"But when He put them over here, and the wings that delivered them covered them, now protect them. There's a bunch of places where He does that; another one is in Matthew 23:37 when Jesus looks at the city:

[37] O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!

"God says, 'How often I would have gathered you together under the protection of the purpose that I have the nation and you refused. You wouldn't trust me; you wouldn't believe me.'

"I point that out so that when you read Psalm 91, you're not just reading figures of speech that just can be whatever you want to make it mean.

"I've got a book in my office on the psalms collected together by Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the famous English preacher from the 1800s.

"It is the most fanciful bunch of collection of imaginative nonsense that I've ever seen in one whole book. It's about that thick and pretty much every preacher's got one. It's no more of a commentary on the text than anything you ever saw.

"It's good preaching outlines if you just want to preach little devotional ditties for, you know, little dumb dudes; it will work. But if you want the doctrine in the passages, don't look there.

"Most people don't spend the time studying the doctrine and when they do, and get down to verses 9-12 in Psalm 91, they wind up in a real problem."

(to be continued)