God often gives His own people a hard course in this world that they may not take up their rest in the world but may dwell at ease in Him alone.
Psalm 1
2 Thou hast made the earth to tremble; thou hast broken it: heal the breaches thereof; for it shaketh.
3 Thou hast shewed thy people hard things: thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment.
4 Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee, that it may be displayed because of the truth. Selah.
5 That thy beloved may be delivered; save with thy right hand, and hear me.
6 God hath spoken in his holiness; I will rejoice, I will divide Shechem, and mete out the valley of Succoth.
7 Gilead is mine, and Manasseh is mine; Ephraim also is the strength of mine head; Judah is my lawgiver;
8 Moab is my washpot; over Edom will I cast out my shoe: Philistia, triumph thou because of me.
9 Who will bring me into the strong city? who will lead me into Edom?
10 Wilt not thou, O God, which hadst cast us off? and thou, O God, which didst not go out with our armies?
11 Give us help from trouble: for vain is the help of man.
12 Through God we shall do valiantly: for he it is that shall tread down our enemies.
Psalm 1 – J. Vernon McGee
Psalm 60 – Prayer for Help against Foes
This was a national psalm to be taught the people. See title; also Deuteronomy 31:19. A strong coalition had been formed against David at that time. See II Samuel 10:6, 8, 17, 19; I Chronicles 18:12-15. Israel was threatened with disaster. It was as if an earthquake had rent the soil. But the king-psalmist argued that God had given His people a mission in the world, which could not be forfeited. First, Israel carried a banner for the truth, Psalm 60:4. In addition, God had “spoken in his holiness” and had promised that the seed of Abraham should possess Canaan. Standing on a hill-summit, the psalmist sees the Land of Promise outspread before him. Shechem and Succoth, Psalm 60:6, one west, the other east, of the Jordan, indicate the breadth of the land. All had been given over to Israel by covenant, and therefore the surrounding peoples must become subject.
As yet the strong city of Petra, rock-girded, Psalm 60:9, had laughed David to scorn; but he had confidence that God would lead him within its mighty walls, to tread down his adversaries, Numbers 24:18. Man could not, but God could. The question is never, Can God? but always, Can we trust and follow Him? —Through the Bible Day by Day
Psalm 60:1—O turn thyself to us again.
Cast off! There is a sense in which that can never be. God will not cast off from salvation any soul of man that has sheltered under the covert of his Almighty wings. He may withdraw the sensible enjoyment and realization of his presence; but He cannot cast off for ever, in the sense of consigning any fugitive to his foes or to the fate he dreads.
And yet there is a sense in which we are cast off, when we have been unbelieving and disobedient. Allowed to take our own way, that we may learn its bitterness; permitted to hunger and thirst, that we may know how evil a thing it is to seek our supreme good anywhere else than in God; given over to the tender mercies of the gods we have chosen, that we may be taught their helplessness. It was thus that God cast off his people. He showed them hard things, and allowed them to reap as they had sown.
But now they cry for restoration. Put us back, they say, into the old place; be to us what Thou wert, and make us to Thee as we were. Restore us again. He did it for Peter, putting him back to the front place in the Apostolic band; for Mark, allowing him, who had gone back in his first missionary journey, to write a Gospel; for Cranmer and many more, who in the first burst of fiery trial shrank back, but to whom He gave more grace. Believe in the restoring grace of Christ, who not only forgives, but puts back the penitent and believing soul where it was before it fell away. Indeed, it has been suggested that the prodigal fares better on his return than those who do not go astray. It is not really so. But there is much music and song when the lost is found and the dead lives. —Our Daily Homily