Therefore God is not only willing to help and succour the godly, but to succour them even as a father would his children; even as that gracious promise which is comprehended in the First Commandment, declares “I am the Lord thy God:” that is, I will be the Lord thy God: I will be thy life, thy salvation, thy shield, thy defence, thy eternal strength, thy eternal salvation, and consolation; thy eternal and infinite good, against all the evils that can come upon thee:—For this is to be God! In the first place, therefore, David proclaims with great fulness of expression this unequalled wisdom and power of God,—that God has in his hand all the hearts and thoughts of all men, kings, rulers and potentates throughout the whole world; that he turns them and orders them just as he will; that he governs and overrules all their deliberations and counsels, and directs them all according to his own mind and pleasure. “The Lord (saith David) bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought:” that is, he wonderfully breaks off and disappoints the counsels of the wise, of the kings, of the potentates of this world: and suddenly defeats all the attacks of the enemies against his people and his church, how sure soever of success they may appear, and he turns all their destruction upon the heads of the enemies themselves, so that they cannot perform their enterprises nor accomplish the devices which they plot against the righteous, but they fall themselves into the pits which they have digged, and there perish and rot. This is no small consolation to those that fear God, amidst all that bitterness and Satanic cruelty which the tyrants of this world execute against the godly, when they fearfully threaten that they will fill all things with blood if they do not deny Christ and his gospel. These make no end of their threats, because they are as if they would terrify God himself, and hurl Christ down from the throne of his majesty. Whereas God, all the while, holds in his power the thoughts and imaginations of every one of them, and also their life and the breath that is in their nostrils: and therefore such are subverted and destroyed in a moment before they have accomplished their designs. Only meditate upon all the examples of this since the beginning of the world. What became of all the counsels of the people of Sodom against Lot? Where is that great monarch and terror of the world, Sennacherib? What (to come to our own times) has become of Pope Leo X. and all the other bitter enemies of the word? PSALM XXXIV. _David praiseth God, and exhorteth others thereto by his experience.—They are blessed that trust in God.—He exhorteth to the fear of God.—The privileges of the righteous._ A Psalm of David, when he changed his behaviour before Abimelech; who drove him away, and he departed. I will bless the LORD at all times: his praise _shall_ continually _be_ in my mouth.