For the righteous will never be moved. He will be remembered forever. He is not afraid of bad news. His heart is firm trusting in the Lord.
– Psalm 112:6–7
Oh, I really want to camp out on that second verse. But the first verse is really important for context.
Psalm 112:6–7 Is a Promise to the Righteous
Verse six says, the righteous will never be moved the picture of someone who lives blamelessly before God. And we obviously know none of us is righteous in and of ourselves. The Psalms make that clear. Romans 3, quotes from the Psalms saying, there’s no one righteous, not even one. None of us is righteous in and of ourselves, but this is the beauty of the Gospel. Jesus righteousness is credited to all who trust in him as Savior and Lord of our lives. We become righteous in Jesus. God sees all who have trusted in Jesus as righteous before him, accepted before him, and then we live by the power of His spirit in us and the righteousness that Jesus has made possible for us.
And as we do, verse six says, the righteous will never be moved. And then verse seven, he is not afraid of bad news. Just think about that. All the potential bad news that we could hear today that someone could share with us, that could come into our lives. I don’t really even want to think about it. There’s so many examples of bad news that could happen in any one of our lives today, and if you think about it very long, you’ll start to be worried, anxious, afraid. But that’s the beauty of verse seven. He is not afraid.
The righteous one is not afraid of bad news. His heart is firm is steady. Verse eight says, trusting in the Lord. Ah. When you are trusting in God, you don’t have to be afraid of anything including bad news because you know your life is held by the God who has now put it all together, made you righteous by His love for you in Jesus who has secured your eternity in Jesus, who loves you enough to send his Son to die on a cross for you, to make you righteous before him, to forgive you of all your sin, to restore you and to relationship with him, to redeem your life.
Psalm 112:6–7 Encourages Us to be Fearless in the Face of Adversity
When you are trusting in this God, your heart can be firm and you don’t have to be afraid of anything. Oh God, we praise you. We praise you for taking our unrighteousness and by faith in Jesus crediting his righteousness to us, her Him who had no sin, becoming sin for us in order that we might become your righteousness, the righteousness of God.
God, we praise you for the salvation, the forgiveness, the security we have in you and your spirit in us. So God, we pray, deliver us from all fear, from all fear of anything, including fear of bad news. God, I pray for every single person listening to this right now that you would save and deliver them from worry, from anxiety, from fear of a diagnosis, from fear of test results, what they might say from fear of what could happen in this situation or that circumstance.
God, we pray, deliver us from fear. Help us to live in Psalm 112, knowing the righteous will never be moved. We don’t have to be afraid of bad news. Our hearts are firm because we are trusting in you. Our hearts are steady and we will not be afraid because you are our Lord. We praise you for this truth and we pray you to help us to live in it today. And even as we pray that in our own lives, God, we pray for people who do have reason to be afraid of bad news because they don’t have the security that’s found in Jesus. Many of them have never even heard God.
Praying for the Intha People
We pray for the Intha people of Myanmar, over a hundred thousand of them. Very few, just a couple of followers of Jesus. God strengthen them. Help those brothers and sisters not to be afraid of bad news. And God, we pray for the spread of the greatest news in the world, the Gospel among the Intha people of Myanmar. Please, oh God, that their hearts might be firm trusting in you that they might be made righteous before you. God, we pray for the spread of the Gospel among Intha people of Myanmar. We pray all of this according to your good word, which we love, especially here in Psalm 112:6–7. And Jesus’ name the one who makes all this possible. Amen.
