“Into thine hand I commit my spirit: Thou hast redeemed me, O LORD God of truth.” (Psalms 31:5)
It’s believed that David wrote this psalm when being pursued by King Saul. Those were harrowing times for David, escaping each time he found a place to hide. There were traitors and spies everywhere. In this psalm he places his life, his soul, his spirit in the Lord’s hand. David had a relationship with the Lord and depended on the Lord. He knew God was faithful to His Word. His heart didn’t condemn him because he had done nothing wrong to King Saul. Saul’s actions were a demonic attempt to keep God’s plan from going forward.
God had ripped the kingdom from King Saul and had given it to David although David hadn’t ascended to the throne as of yet. The prophet Samuel told Saul that God had another king for the kingdom. “And Samuel said unto Saul, I will not return with thee: for thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, and the LORD hath rejected thee from being king over Israel. And as Samuel turned about to go away, he laid hold upon the skirt of his mantle, and it rent. And Samuel said unto him, The LORD hath rent the kingdom of Israel from thee this day, and hath given it to a neighbour of thine, that is better than thou.” (1Samuel 15:26-28) And although Saul was never told who it would be, he had an idea. His son Jonathan was very close to David. Saul suspected David would be the next king instead of his son Jonathan. (1Samuel 20:30-31)
We remember that David, and maybe he was not aware of it at this particular time in his life, but when he penned his psalms, he was prophetic. The words, “Into thine hand I commit my spirit...” were the same words Jesus used right before He died. “And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, He said, Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit: and having said thus, He gave up the ghost.” (Luke 23:46) We can make a correlation between the distress in spirit, soul and body Jesus went through and the distress David went through that David penned in this psalm.
The Lord had redeemed the Hebrews from slavery and many trials. And they were well aware that there would come a Messiah to redeem them and establish an eternal kingdom. But David had revelation knowledge of how God operated. He states “...Thou hast redeemed me...” as a done thing. This he states without any doubt and as a fact. David didn’t ask for the Lord to redeem him. He didn’t write that he hoped or prayed for redemption. He knew that the Lord had already done it.
This is true of all of God’s promises. God has promised and it is done in heaven. Jesus taught us to pray, “...Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven...” because God’s will is already done in heaven. (Matthew 6:10) Yet we pray and beg God for things He has already established in heaven. If there is a promise from God, then our prayer should be “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Sometimes we may feel there is a need for which there is no promise, but this is really impossible because the Lord has provided for every need. But there may be something of a very specific nature. There are two Scriptures which might help us understand what we are to do. “The LORD hath prepared His throne in the heavens; and His kingdom ruleth over all. Bless the LORD, ye His angels, that excel in strength, that do His commandments, hearkening unto the voice of His word. Bless ye the LORD, all ye His hosts; ye ministers of His, that do His pleasure. Bless the LORD, all his works in all places of His dominion: bless the LORD, O my soul.” (Psalms 103:19-22) This doesn’t need to be said, but in order to get clear understanding, David in this psalm doesn’t pray to the angels nor does he command them to do his bidding except to praise the Lord. This Scripture gives us insight on angels. They do God’s bidding, not ours. They do God’s commandments and obey the voice of His Word. I will repeat. They obey the voice of His Word. We get insight into the importance of speaking God’s Word. Angels hear the voice of God’s Word and do it. For example, don’t say, “I’m sick” say, “By Jesus’ stripes I am healed.” We must be very cautious and understand that they do God’s bidding. When we speak God’s Word, they obey God’s Word, not ours. We do not pray to angels. No where in the Bible is this suggested.
Paul wrote, “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” (Hebrews 1:14) They do this at God’s command.
Let’s recap some very important things we’ve learned. David had revelation of the Messiah’s redemption as an already done deal in heaven and to be accomplished in the future here on earth. We deduce that all of God’s promises are a done deal in heaven also. We don’t need to beg God to do what He’s already promised is ours. It’s already established in heaven. It would be more appropriate to pray “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” and offer a prayer of gratitude and thanksgiving. Through Scripture we learn that angels do God’s bidding and obey the voice of His Word. We don’t communicate with angels, but they hear God’s Word in our mouths and obey it. This implies how careful we need to be with the words of our mouth. With this understanding, we would properly offer more gratitude, thanksgiving and praise to the Lord than pleading.
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