What Can Man Do?

When I am afraid, I will trust in You. In God (I will praise His word), In God I have put my trust; I will not fear. What can flesh do to me? 

Psalm 56:3-4 

Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ So we may boldly say: The LORD is my helper; I will not fear. What can man do to me? 

Hebrews 13:5-6 

David had hope in Christ. Christ referred to this understanding when He challenged the Pharisees regarding His identity. He asked them how Christ could be the Son of David, and David still refer to Him as Lord. This is one instance of David’s evangelical knowledge. In the four verses which form our text, we find the language is very similar. David repeats the key phrase even more specifically in the eleventh verse of the psalm when he says, ‘What can man do to me?’ The verses from Hebrews use that same phrase. We see there is a direct relation between David’s expressed confidence in God and the depiction of Christ from Hebrews. If David’s confidence was in Christ, so much so that he could say, ‘What can man do to me?’ we have every reason to believe that Christ will be as much with us as He was with him. We are the Body of Christ. We are the spiritual inheritors of the same faith David had. We believe, as David did, that nothing can happen to us that falls outside of the providential plan of God for us in Christ. If Christ will never leave us or forsake us, we may also boldly say, ‘What can man do to me?’  

Our Gracious God and our Savior, 
we rejoice that You are always with us. 
We praise that, because You are,  
no one can touch us apart from Your will and plan. 

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning