Promised Believers: Part 7

To open up, we're going to look at a different passage to give some context.

And that's 1 Samuel 24, 1 through 7.

1 Samuel 24, 1 through 7.

Just to set the stage, have you ever been in a place where you have felt like God has good for you?

You know from reading the Bible, I think your your and my experience should be when we read the Bible that hope is stirred.

That there is a sense that the God of the Bible is the God who brings about good ends.

Now, that doesn't mean that everybody is healed or that you become uh wealthy or you have a Ferrari at the end of your life necessarily, but God is generally a good storyteller and he brings about good ends.

He brings about good through difficulty.

So the Bible never presents the life of faith or following Jesus as if your life were free of trials, but it does present this idea that those who follow God are guided through the valley of the shadow of death, seated at a table with their enemies.

But what is the end of that psalm?

You know, I will dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.

Now, sometimes there's this temptation to say, well, I know everything is going to be all better when we get to heaven, but there is this sense, and what we're going to see from our story today, that God loves to display his glory on the earth through your victory in the midst of the trial that you're facing.

So you may feel like I know God has promised good to me.

I even feel like I have vision for what God wants to do.

And then this threat, it calls into question everything that I believe about God.

Is he really good?

Is he strong enough to rescue me?

Does he know what is going on?

Right now I feel crummy.

I feel anxious and afraid.

I'm upset.

How long do I have to wait?

It's into that kind of setting that our Psalm 57 invites us to just take up that mindset, to have, to reflect on that situation and to see how it is resolved for the psalmist.

So to give us some context, let's start in 1 Samuel 24.

This is in the middle of David running away from Saul.

Saul returned from pursuing the Philistines.

He was told David is in the wilderness near Engedi.

So Saul took 3,000 of Israel's fit young men and went to look for David and his men in front of the rocks of the wild goats.

When Saul came to the sheep pens along the road, a cave was there, and he went to relieve himself.

David and his men were staying in the recesses of the cave.

So they said to him, Look, this is the day the Lord told you about.

I will hand your enemy over to you, so you can do to him whatever you desire.

Then David got up, secretly cut off the corner of Saul's robe.

After David's conscience afterwards, David's conscience bothered him, because he had cut off the corner of Saul's robe.

He said to his men, As the Lord is my witness, I would never do such a thing to my Lord, the Lord's anointed.

I will never lift my hand against him, since he is the Lord's anointed.

With these words, David persuaded his men, and he did not let them rise up against Saul.

Then Saul left the cave and went on his way.

So David is already in a place where he has been anointed as the future king of Israel by the prophet to Israel, Prophet Samuel.

David has already had the experience of David and Goliath.

He's already led victories on behalf of Israel as this great general.

But his very real experience in this moment, in that is he is an enemy of the state on the run from the king, King Saul, who is out to destroy him.

He is probably in this position for nine years, running away.

There's two different times that he is in a cave.

We see it in verse chapter 22 and also in chapter 24.

The similarity to this, imagine for a minute that Edward Snowden had been anointed to be the next president of the United States.

You remember Edward Snowden is the one who divulged kind of all these secrets that he had found while working for the NSA, and he is considered an enemy of the state, and he is somewhere in Russia.

That is about as similar to the place that David found himself in.

I mean, you couldn't be in a worse position than where David was at.

He had a bounty on his head, and the most powerful figure at this time was chasing him down.

And it says in our psalm that this is where David wrote from.

In fact, in the intro, before we get to verse 1, it says this is from the choir director, for the choir director.

It's set to the tune of do not destroy.

I believe there's four other psalms that are set to this melody.

It's a miktam of David as he fled before Saul into the cave.

And so let's see what he says here in these eleven verses.

I know Marvin read it already, but I want it to be fresh in our minds.

We'll read it a couple of times this morning.

He says, Be gracious to me, God, be gracious to me, for I take refuge in you.

I will seek refuge in the shadow of your wings until danger passes.

I call to God most high, the God who fulfills his purposes for me.

He reaches down from heaven and he saves me, challenging the one who tramples me.

Saila.

God sends his faithful love and truth.

I am surrounded by lions.

I lie down among devouring lions, people whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongues and arrows, whose tongues are sharp swords.

God, be exalted above the heavens.

Let your glory be over the whole earth.

They prepared a net for my steps.

I was despondent.

They dug a pit ahead of me, but they fell into it.

Selah.

My heart is confident, God.

My heart is confident.

I will sing, I will sing praises.

Wake up, my soul, wake up, harp and lyre.

I will wake up the dawn.

I will praise you, Lord, among the peoples.

I will sing praises to you among the nations.

For your faithful love is as high as the heavens, your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.

God be exalted above the heavens.

Let your glory be over the whole earth.

Here's the premise that I want to lay out for us, and that I'm going to argue for in this from this passage.

The follower of Christ, who turns their fleet fear of conflict, or you could say your trouble, over to the Lord, as Psalm 57 models, will find themselves moving from hiding in the Lord to praising the Lord.

While David is our working example of this, Jesus makes this concept nearer, broader, surer, fuller, and gives it longevity.

The context, as we've seen here, is that David is on the run for his life.

He has been promised the kingdom.

And he talks specifically about his enemy.

He says that they're using their words as weapons and is planning an entrapment.

The context is also a moment when the author needs an internal resolve and boldness.

He sounds afraid from verse 2, where he's talking about I need to literally, I need to hide under the shadow of your wings, God, until danger passes by.

Imagine in your life a priest who would take a sacrifice, kill the animal, put it on the altar, and the smoke ascends up to God.

We relate to God with our life.

Things go on in our life.

We have problems at work, we have problems in our families, we have different conflicts that arise.

There's sicknesses that occur.

And we take those things.

We're called to take those things as the basis for a conversation with God.

And the beautiful things about the Psalms is that the emotional story, the emotional place of the psalmist is there for us to see.

There are four ways in which the psalmist speaks in this particular psalm.

The first is that he's David is making specific requests of God.

He's making specific requests of God.

The second thing that we find throughout the Psalm is that he's recounting what God has done, or what he rather, the actions that David has taken or that he will do.

And I'm going to point these out as we go through it.

The third thing that we find in this Psalm is that he's stating what is true about God and God's activity.

Here's what's true about your nature, and here's what you do.

And the fourth thing that he says is he states the facts about his enemy.

Now these things are mixed together in a structural way that gives momentum or tracks the kind of emotional development of David.

Let's start in verse one.

He says this, Be gracious to me, God, be gracious to me, for I take refuge in you.

I will seek refuge in the shadow of your wings until danger passes.

What of the four, what of these four types of communication are found here in verse one?

First of all, we see that he's making a specific request.

It's be gracious to me, be gracious to me.

That's it may like I think when Marvin read it, it's have mercy on me, have mercy on me.

Literally, it's the word with the root word han in Hebrew, literally means show me favor.

It's the root word for my daughter's name, Hanalei.

It's Lord, look at me and favor me, right?

You maybe had a teacher or you felt in some relationship growing up that you were you're favored, you are blessed.

And that's what David is asking for in this place of fleeing for his life.

Show me favor.

So he makes the specific request, but he also is recounting his own actions.

And this is important.

As we relate to God over our own issues, it's kind of like this mental checklist of like, have I, because when you're going through stuff, you're like, like, am I doing the right thing?

Am I acting how God wants me to act in this particular scenario?

And so he says, I have taken refuge in you.

I will seek refuge in the shadow of your wings until danger passes.

So this is a prayer.

He's talking to God, but he's saying, God, here's what I'm doing.

I am doing the right thing.

I'm looking to you as the safe place to be.

You're literally my hiding place.

You're my haven.

You are my refuge.

In verse 2, he says, I call to God most high, to God who fulfills his purposes for me.

And again, which of the four types of communication are here?

We see that he's recounting what he has done.

So he's saying, Here's my action, which is I call to God.

But who is God?

He says he begins to state what is true about God, that he's God most high, God who fulfills his purposes for me.

If you're going through it, it's healthy to recall who you're praying to, that he's most high.

Because when you have an enemy who is the king, and you're an enemy of the state, you want to appeal to a higher power, something that is higher than King Saul.

And he's saying, You God are God most high.

But not only that, you fulfill your purposes for me.

That you have a plan, that your purposes are not thwarted by what I can observe right now.

Anytime you're going through it, anytime you're going through it.

The temptation is to just take in what's observable.

And yet those of us that follow God and walk by faith, we're called.

There is this idea in 2 Corinthians where we do not walk by sight, but we walk by faith.

We don't look at the things which are seen, but we look at the things which are unseen, because the things that are unseen are the things that are lasting and are eternal.

And that's the place where God is at work.

That's where he's fulfilling his purposes for me.

In verse 3, he says this, he reaches down from heaven, he saves me, challenging the one who tramples me.

Selah, which is a pause.

Then he says, God sends his faithful love and truth.

So here in verse 4, he's stating the facts about his enemy.

He's using poetry to basically say, My enemy feels like a threatening lion, and the weapons that he's using are his mouth.

It's as if his words are intended to afflict harm towards me.

But then in verse 5, or verse and 4, 4, we have the surrounded by lions.

Verse 5, we have God be exalted above the heavens, let your glory be over the whole earth.

What kind of communication is this?

This is a specific request.

In fact, he makes this request in verse 5 and in verse 11 are the same exact request.

He's asking that God would be bigger and taller and more powerful than his enemy.

And he's asking that God's reputation, fame, and beauty would be put on display.

This is where the shift begins.

This is where I think the shift begins to occur in the psalmist as he's praying.

I think all along there's really healthy things that are going on, and that this is a very good model for us as we're taking our trial before the Lord.

But here we see that he's no longer praying just for his own, like God to favor him or rescue him from danger, but he's praying bigger than that for God's reputation to be put on display.

And you would think he's saying, Look, let your glory be known over the whole earth because of what you do on my behalf.

In verse six, he says, This they prepare a net for my steps.

I was despondent, they dug a pit ahead of me, but they fell into it.

Say law.

Again, what kind of communication is this?

He is stating truths about his enemy that they are laying out a plan that will trap him.

They're trying to ensnare him, like you would catch a fish or like you'd catch a bird.

There's a deliberate scheme to destroy David.

And then he says, but they're going to be caught in their own trap.

There is this anticipation that David has as he's bringing, he's importing his understanding of God.

So David knew the Old Testament, the story of Israel very well.

And so when he says, they've dug a pit, but they're going to fall into it, that hasn't happened to Saul yet.

Saul still has the upper hand.

Like David is going to escape this scene by the skin of his teeth only because he gets a special word from God that, like, you need to run away because your position has been, or no, that's that's the first time he's in the cave.

This time he um just so happens to have this encounter where Saul needs to relieve himself and go to the bathroom up in the cave, right?

And it's this crazy incident, but still Saul is in this position where he's threatening.

And yet David has this underlying belief that ultimately the tables are going to turn and Saul is going to be ensnared in his own trap.

Verse 7 says this, my heart is confident.

God, my heart is confident.

I will sing, I will sing praises.

What kind of communication is this?

He's becoming, he's recounting his own condition.

He's now feeling confident.

He's repeating it, using Hebrew poetry to show how emphatic this position is.

I'm becoming confident, God.

My heart feels confident.

I'm ready to start singing the song.

And then verse 8: Wake up, my soul, wake up, harp and lyre.

I will wake up the dawn.

What's he what is he stating?

He's recounting his own um his own activity as the author.

What has he done or what does he need to do?

And he's talking to his own heart.

Wake up, come alive, come alive for this moment.

Where's the music basically?

Let's start them, let's start singing.

Can you see the shift that's happened from being a person who's hiding, feeling like I need to hide under the wings of the Lord, being despondent to now being confident and literally beckoning, like let's let's it's not just me that's gonna sing.

I need the whole band.

Let's go.

Where's the band?

Get up here, let's start singing.

In verse 9, I will praise you, Lord, among the peoples.

I'll sing praises to you among the nations.

This is again the same thing.

He's recounting um what he has done or what he will do, that he's gonna praise the Lord, he's gonna sing praises among the nations, and he's also stating God's activity or who God is, that he is the Lord among the nations.

Verse 10 for your faithful love is as high as the heavens, your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.

This is that when you see the word faithful love, this is um the Hasid love of God.

This is that loyal love of God that we have a difficult time translating over in into English, but probably loyal love is the best translation.

It's this faithful, non ending, I'm gonna stick with you, I'm gonna bear with you, I'm gonna be loyal to you.

And he says, Look, your loyal love is too big for this world.

Your loyal love is it's huge.

If we were gonna put it in like our Vernacular, he would be saying it reaches beyond the reach of the James Webb telescope.

It's beyond what we can see.

That's how big your love is.

And on top of that, you are faithful, consistent, unchanging, and never wavering.

Don't you need to recall that when you're going through it, when life is difficult?

Those are the things that need to be coming to mind.

We need to talk to ourselves about those things and be telling God and ourselves at the same time, this is who you are.

And he closes out with a final request, which he already stated.

God be exalted above the heavens, let your glory be over the whole earth.

It's just such a beautiful teaching on how to pray through a difficult circumstance.

In summary, through a rotation of four types of statements, David brings his troubling situation to the Lord and he makes amazing requests.

And this fixes his perspective as he is praying.

I'm sure you've had this experience.

I just would commend you in your own circumstance to consider the trouble you face, whether it is immense or it is small, to offer it to the Lord.

Again, the premise that I want to defend is this the follower of Christ who turns their fear of conflict or their trouble over to the Lord, as Psalm 57 models will find themselves moving from hiding to singing or praising.

While David is our working example, Jesus makes this concept nearer, broader, surer, fuller, and gives it longevity.

Maybe you are feeling the threat of a personality at school or at work or at home.

Interpersonal conflict causes us anxiety in our lives.

And here we see a psalm where anxiety dissipates before our eyes.

Literally, as we're reading the psalm, we see this man who is afraid and needs to hide and wait for this trouble to pass to saying, I am confident.

Let's go get out the music.

We're ready to sing.

The God of this psalm is the God who is among the peoples, among the nations.

He sees what is going on.

Now, sometimes we wish he didn't.

Some things we're ashamed of.

But he's in the midst of our past week.

He knows the threats that we encounter.

And he is the God who wants to be in the midst of the nations.

It's on us.

A couple weeks ago, I was talking with my daughter as we were out on a drive, and we were somehow we were talking about being upset.

And she just had this fascinating kind of depiction, explanation about kind of how she processes her own anger.

She said, first, when I'm angry, I'm angry at everyone.

Then I feel sad, like I want to cry.

Then next I feel super guilty and I'm mad at myself for what I did.

And then I play some music and I feel better.

That was her progression.

And I do think that God wants us to bring us to a place where we feel better, where we have God's peace reigning in our hearts, where we're anxiety free.

But more important than that, we also want the circumstances to change.

I want to say that again.

We want the circumstances to change.

Yes, we are followers of Jesus, and there is this part of being a follower of Jesus where we can experience an unburdened life, where we are experiencing the peace of God in our life.

But the God of the Bible is the God who can change circumstances.

God is glorified by our perseverance through difficulty, but he is also glorified as we have victory over our enemies.

I don't know about you, but my perception of Christianity and what I grew up in oftentimes was an inner strengthening and a uh a Christian Christianity that was really good for self-improvement to be a better human, which it is.

But I also believe that the psalmist praise two times, two of his requests are this that God would be exalted above the heavens.

Let your glory be over the whole earth.

Just think for a second, like practically, how does that prayer request get answered?

If it's not God bringing about a victory in your life and my life.

Just for a minute, I know it's easy to kind of think about our lives like a car contract that you sign where there's all that, you know, pages and pages of small print, right?

Where it's like there's got to be the small print of the Bible, and really I'm just a follower of Jesus and I'm hunkered down until I get to heaven.

But no, when when that's the request that God would be exalted, and yet Jesus is not on the earth, but He given us, He's given us His Holy Spirit, and there's God's glory is at stake.

Like, how does that happen?

It it happens through a very real like self-improvement, and we have a better attitude, we're able to be at peace in our life, and like doing the compassion center stuff, right?

There's like there's a kindness, but the what's happening in the compassion center and giving away two million dollars worth of food in two months, that is glorious to the Lord.

That's like crazy.

And nobody in this room, especially not me, had that plan, right?

That's like God just decides, like, yeah, I want to do something cool, and he can.

Like he's allowed to, right?

And there was no, yeah.

And so I would just encourage you, and have you ever gotten up in the morning and kind of looked at a field where the dew is on the grass and there's all those little like sparkling dewdrops?

Like, I imagine that the glory of God is like that, that we're each one, like these little dewdrops, where the light is just refracted off of our life, and there is changes that are occurring where God's just rescuing us from calamity.

It isn't just about feeling better and having a positive outlook, but the God of the Bible is glorified when he wins.

And your life story is a context for the winning glory of God.

And he's looking for us to cooperate with him.

You see, we can go and try to solve our problems on our own.

And a lot, that's how most of the world does it.

Like they use books about how to solve your own problems, right?

And how to do it.

And you go read articles on the internet, and you can pretty much read an article about any problem that anybody's ever had now, with as much as on the internet.

But the God of the Bible wants to, he's allowed you to face that thing so that he can be glorified.

The re the God requires the hearers, the hearers of this passage, to turn to him when they face a threat.

They need to ask God for help, encourage their hearts with specific insights on what God has done.

Run through a list of the good responses that they have taken and what actions they will continue to do, right?

So you're telling yourself, I'm holding my ground.

This is what it's practically going to look like for me to walk by faith.

And fourth, let God know what the threat looks like.

Be honest, God's not afraid for you to call your enemies out and to say, this person feels like a lion.

Their words feel like sharp teeth that are about to destroy me.

This psalm builds towards a position of praise.

A concert breaks out by the time this psalm is done.

What happened with David?

He persevered.

It was a mess, but he persevered, and sure enough, without David taking vengeance on his own, without killing Saul, God allowed a spectacular early demise of Saul.

And David was exalted as the next king of Israel.

Keep going.

Don't put your head in the sand.

Don't be paralyzed by the trial you're facing.

Don't put on rose-colored glasses and try to talk yourself into how it's going to be all right.

Return to the Lord.

Process it with the Lord.

The psalm moves towards music.

He goes from hiding in God to a renewed confidence in the Lord to a call to worship.

Come, praise the Lord with me for what he has done.

But the final part of my premise, my working premise is that David is the example, but Jesus makes this concept nearer, broader, surer, more full, and gives it longevity.

And to argue that point, I just want to read through Ephesians chapter 1, 14.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

1 through 14.

So a little bit of a chunk of Bible reading here.

But look what, look if we fast forward over to Paul's summary statement about what has occurred for humanity because of Jesus.

Look at what he says.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, to the faithful saints in Christ Jesus at Ephesus.

Grace to you.

That's this is what David prayed for at the beginning of our Psalm.

Be gracious to me.

Paul says, Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Blessed be, blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens in Christ.

It's in Christ.

That's where we're at.

We're in Christ.

For he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.

He predestinated us to be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ for himself.

So do you see God's activity to bring us near through Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glorious grace that he lavished on us in the beloved one?

So here we have grace poured out, and it's glorious grace lavished on us.

In him we have redemption through his blood.

Not just victory over enemies, but we have redemption, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace.

That he richly poured out on us with all wisdom and understanding.

He made known to us the mystery of his will.

Remember how David talked about God as the one who fulfills his purposes?

In Ephesians, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure that he purposed in Christ as a plan for the right time.

To bring everything together in Christ, both things in heaven and things in earth, right?

So we're not just waiting for a future glory in heaven, but they're brought together even on earth.

In him we have received an inheritance because we were predestined according to the plan of the one who works everything in agreement with the purpose of his will.

So there he is.

He's still the God who's accomplishing his will and his purpose, so that we who had already put our hope in Christ might bring praise to his glory.

In him you also were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and when you believed.

And the Holy Spirit is the down payment of our inheritance until the redemption of the possession to the praise of his glory.

So all of these things have kind of come out in like neon vivid colors because we are in Christ.

We are those that have this rich inheritance because of the work that Jesus did.

In a minute, we're going to take communion together and we're going to recount that work that Christ did on our behalf on the cross.

So it's not just a victory over one enemy, but it is the victory over death and sin itself to give us a new life, to literally redeem us from all destruction, and to give us a new life that is heading towards an inheritance, and along the way, the Holy Spirit there is bearing witness to this inheritance that we have in Christ.

Lord, we thank you for your work on our behalf.

We are so grateful that we are a people that can hide ourselves in you, and that you, as we walk through and lift up our own trials and tribulations, lift them up to you.

You can pour your life into us and give us such hope.

As we are the ground zero for your victory in the world.

And people are against us, and the outcome of those relationships are somewhat out of our control.

And we we look to you for help.

We pray that you would be our defense.

Thank you for loving us and taking care of us and going before us.

We ask that you would make these things true in our life this week, that it would be the living experience that we have this week.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.