Broken Down Hedges

  1. The psalmist in Psalm 89 is remembering God’s beautiful covenant promises that He made with David. He will be established. God Himself will strengthen him. His enemies won’t outsmart him or afflict him. God’s mercy and faithfulness will be with him and God will give him honor. He gave the promise that His mercy would keep David forever and that his covenant promise would stand firm.
  2. But, as always, sin gets in the way and destroys the beauty of it all.
  3. The psalmist then speaks of a king who did not walk in God’s ways. He declares in verse 40: You have broken down all his hedges; You have brought his strongholds to ruin.
  4. In Psalm 139, David talks about how God has hedged him in on all sides, built a protection around him. A stronghold is a fortress of protective strength. God hedged in David. God Himself was David’s stronghold.
  5. What does that verse 40 say? It says “his hedges” and “his strongholds,” not God’s.
  6. We aren’t meant to save ourselves. We aren’t to try and protect ourselves, building up walls around us to prevent attack or disaster. We’re not to hedge ourselves, building a cushion of protection around ourselves to try and prevent anything touching us.
  7. Rainy-day savings, insurance, peace-of-mind warranties, and so forth are the world’s ways of trying to prevent disaster from touching us, instead of trusting God to be our wall of defense and our provision. Blocking people from our social media, refusing calls, and other such ways to protect ourselves from our own flesh, are the world’s ways of dealing with strife.
  8. It’s God in His goodness that He tears down our hedges and strongholds. We need God to be our Savior. He alone can do it. If we rely on ourselves, we’re endangering ourselves.
  9. And, as believers, we’re given just one command to fulfill the entire law, according to Galatians 15:13. It’s “Love your neighbor as yourself.” We need to fulfill the law. Hiding from our duty isn’t cutting it.
  10. God will help us come into His salvation because His will is our salvation. It’s what He’s always working toward.