A King in a Cave | Psalm 142

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

nor are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways,

and my thoughts higher than your thoughts."

Isaiah 55, verses 8 and 9.

Isaiah 55:8

You and I believe that that passage of Scripture is true

because we trust the Lord and because we believe in his word.

And yet, I think we can all identify this,

when trials come our way, we are quick to complain.

And we are quick to doubt.

And we often find ourselves asking the proverbial question,

why me?

Why is this happening to me?

And this is a very normal human idea,

especially when you're young in the faith.

We tend to think that if we love God,

if we believe the gospel, if we study our Bibles,

if we serve in the church,

then trouble is not going to come our way.

And then it does.

And it sort of knocks the wind out of us.

And if we're not careful, it can cause us to doubt,

to doubt the goodness of God,

to doubt the trustworthiness of God.

We can find ourselves asking the question,

well, how can I trust God

when I'm never going to fully understand him

down here on the earth?

How can I have faith when God's ways seem to my eyes

to sometimes be unfair, even cruel?

When we look around at the world that we live in today,

we try to comprehend it, it can be confusing.

We always say God is in control,

but then we still look around,

and so much of what we see does not make sense

to our limited, earthbound minds.

So as one author put it,

we beat on heaven's door with our demand for answers,

but no answer comes but this.

Trust me, God says, my ways are higher than your ways,

and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts.

And the key for us to find peace in that answer,

it's not easy, but it's not complicated either.

We remember that God is our Father,

a Father who loves his children.

And we know this from our own earthly lives.

No child fully understands the reason

his or her father does what he does.

We know this as children once ourselves,

we know this as parents.

Children don't understand why they just don't get

everything that they want.

You try to explain that to your toddler,

but it doesn't work very well.

Children don't understand why they have to go to the doctor

and get those shots.

Children don't understand why they have to eat

those yucky vegetables rather than donuts.

Doesn't make sense to them.

Children don't understand that the discipline

that their father gives them is for their good,

and will benefit them in the long run.

And if you're a parent, you've thought this many times,

maybe you didn't even said it out loud,

child, just trust me, I'm your parent.

I love you, and everything I walk you through,

even the painful things, is because I want the best for you.

Do you see the parallel that we have with God?

I'm convinced that this is why God gives us the privilege

of being parents so that we can understand

that relationship just a bit more.

That's what we need to do in our years on the earth.

Trust what God has said through Isaiah.

My ways are higher, and by higher,

that doesn't just mean different,

it means much, much better.

It means far superior, more superior than you can even

imagine in these days on the earth.

God invites us to strive to see life

from a much bigger perspective,

and to recognize his unfolding plan in the world

each and every day, to see it unfold.

He says to us, I am God, and there is no other.

I am God, and there is none like me.

I make known the end from the beginning,

from ancient times, what is still to come.

My purpose will stand, and I, the Lord,

will do all that I please.

We call that sovereignty.

So there are no random accidents in life.

God superintends everything, and he weaves it all

into the fabric of his plan so that ultimately

all things work together for the good of those who love him,

those who are called according to his purpose.

As we talked about over the last couple weeks in Psalm 139,

God sees everything all at one time,

because he's outside of time.

He sees it all at one time, and even now,

right now as we sit here this morning,

he sees how his sovereign decree is gonna be

completely fulfilled down to the detail

and exactly on which day.

Who's glad about that, by the way?

In the meantime, to help you and I faithfully endure

the troubles of life and to deal with all those questions

that we have, God has given us a very precious gift

in the Psalms of lament.

Songs that give voice to our troubled souls

down here on the earth.

They're songs that help us learn how to complain to God

while still honoring him, and that's exactly what David

is gonna do in our passage for this morning.

If you think about it, David's life is an excellent model

for us as we look at what it means to lament well,

because based on all the ups and downs of David's life,

and it was really bumpy, wasn't it?

Based on all of that, I can't help but think,

and maybe I'll get a chance to ask him someday in eternity,

I can't help but think that he was often confused

about what God was doing in his life.

And we're gonna see that this morning.

Now the superscription that we're gonna see

in today's Psalm reads like this,

a maskele of David when he was in a cave, the cave.

Picture that for a moment.

A king in a cave, imagine that.

Here is the young man that God himself chose

out of all the men of Israel to be king over his people,

so why is he in a cave?

It makes no sense.

Now many of us know the story of David.

I won't go into a whole bunch of detail,

but we sorta know David's life by a series of snapshots.

We first see him as a young shepherd boy.

He is trusting in God to help him fight off the predators

who wanna kill the sheep, and then of course,

trusting in God to help him defeat

the Philistine warrior Goliath,

and because of that moment,

David gets catapulted into national fame,

and later he has so much military success

that songs are being written about his leadership.

David became the man.

He was feared by his enemies, he was respected by his troops,

but there was one person in Israel

who did not appreciate David's rise to fame,

and that was the current king, Saul.

Saul grew jealous of David.

He nursed a deep-seated hatred for the man.

In fact, he tried to kill David himself,

and when that didn't work, he put a hit out

on the future king of Israel,

and sent his soldiers to find him and put him to death.

And imagine this now, suddenly for David,

just when everything is going his way,

life turns on a dime, and that can happen to us too.

Life can change like that, right?

Now, he's forced to flee the kingdom

that he's supposed to be king over,

and he has to go on the run like a common criminal.

And we know from the Bible that for a time he hid

in the fields surrounding Jerusalem,

and then out of sheer desperation,

he actually went to the Philistine city of Gath,

the very hometown of Goliath, his enemy,

and tried to hide his identity and blend into the population.

It didn't work.

He was recognized by the locals.

He was almost put to death again,

and he had to escape in this very awkward and clever way.

I don't have time for that funny story.

And in 1 Samuel 22, we read this.

So David departed from there, meaning Gath,

and escaped to the cave of Adulam.

So he goes from anointed king to hiding in a cave,

from the heights of glory and power

to the depths of being an outcast.

And you have to imagine,

how often do we talk about this at Oak?

Put yourself in his sandals.

Try to understand what he's going through here.

You have to imagine him saying,

why is this happening to me?

Lord, what have I done to deserve this?

Why would you choose me

and then have me end up here in a cave?

Those are all reasonable questions, by the way,

from a earthly perspective.

Now caves are interesting places,

interesting to visit, but you don't want to live there.

Right?

They're spooky, they're uncomfortable,

and in every corner you just know there's creepy crawlers.

But caves can be effective classrooms

in the school of faith and prayer.

Spurgeon talked about this.

Here's what Spurgeon said.

Caves make good closets for prayer.

Their gloom and their solitude

are helpful to the exercise of devotion.

Sometimes we're actually better off in a cave

than we are in a luxury hotel.

And it's interesting to think about David in the cave

versus David in his palace later in life.

He's gonna have to depend upon the Lord

and the discomfort in the cave,

but when he's super comfortable in the palace,

what happens?

He falls into temptation and sin.

Important life lesson for all of us

to consider the next time we find ourselves in a cave.

Go ahead and grab your Bibles.

Psalm 142.

Psalm 142, man, we're getting close

to the end of the series, guys.

Right?

It's coming.

Before we dive into the text,

I think it is interesting and instructive

for us to stand back and think about

just how much Saul's vendetta against David

affected his heart.

Did you know he wrote eight Psalms about this period

in his life?

Eight Psalms.

Because it so deeply troubled him.

And maybe you have something in your life,

some traumatic event or some traumatic season in your life

that, like David, it sort of follows you around

like a shadow.

I know I have a time like that in my life.

And it's something on occasion

that will come back to my mind.

And I'll react to it in one of two ways.

Sometimes it's hurtful, I feel some of that hurt come back.

But other times, it's quite helpful

because it gives me a chance to look back and say,

okay, Lord, I now realize what you taught me

through that time.

So you might have that type of thing.

And as we go through the text, maybe think about that.

Is there a season or an event in your life where,

man, this thing is just,

it's sort of stuck down deep in my soul.

But this Psalm is encouraging to us for a couple reasons.

First of all, it tells us how we should pray

when things go sideways.

And you're like, I cannot see what God is doing here.

This makes no sense to me.

And second, it's encouraging because no matter

where a child of God is, might be in the belly of a fish

or in a very isolated cave, God hears your prayers.

He sees you, He is present with you, He knows your need,

and He's there to comfort you.

So, a Mascula of David, you see the superscripture

in there in the text.

When he was in the cave, a prayer.

Again, we looked at that term Mascula,

and basically what it is,

it's an artistically structured song

that has the message of biblical wisdom to it.

By the way, we should probably talk about the cave.

And you know what that means.

I get to throw a map on the screen.

Yeah, love it.

So, whenever we, it's good to sort of visualize

where this took place so that you can understand.

We need to get our bearings.

Anytime you look at a map of Israel,

the first thing you want to do is orient yourself

by looking for the two bodies of water, right?

Up in the north, up in Galilee, we have the Sea of Galilee.

Down south, we have the Dead Sea.

And what you see there to the right,

that big blue body of water is the Dead Sea.

So, this is just a map of the southern portion of Israel,

what we call Judea.

The blue dot is always Jerusalem,

and the red dot is Adulam, where this cave is located.

Right?

So, that 18 miles southwest of Jerusalem.

Now, it's interesting.

It's on the eastern end of the Elah Valley,

which ironically was the very place

where David killed Goliath, where that battle took place.

In fact, if you look at the pink dot there, that's Azekah.

When we go to Israel, it's one of my favorite places

to visit because you get to stand on this hill

and overlook where the battlefield was,

where David killed Goliath.

So, David knows this area very well.

He's very familiar with this part of the country.

And then the green dot is Gath.

That's where he's coming from when he goes to the cave.

And then the last thing I'll show you,

just because you should know this,

is those are the five great cities of the Philistines.

That's where they were located.

So, you see where Jerusalem is,

you see where the Philistines are.

That territory in between was where they fought

all their battles in what we call the Shefala.

Okay, so you have Gath, Ekron, Ashdod, Ashkelon,

and we all know Gaza,

the five great cities of the Philistines.

Now, why do we think David chose Adulam

as he was fleeing from Gath?

Well, he couldn't stay with the Philistines anymore,

too dangerous, but he also couldn't get too close

to Jerusalem and expose himself and allow Saul

to perhaps discover where he is.

So, that location and that red dot is sort of a no man's land

between the two nations.

Both countries would come to that place

and then fear to tread any closer

unless they were gonna find themselves

in some type of a skirmish.

So, this was a really good spot.

In David's mind, he's probably thinking,

this is a place where Saul might not want to come to

and look for me.

But, he also knew at the same time,

as he's hiding in that cave,

Saul and his men are out there scouring the countryside

searching for him and if he's discovered,

literally he's a dead man.

You cannot forget this as we read this song.

So, what would it have been like to live in that cave?

Well, archeologists have tried to find specifically

which cave it was.

There's a whole bunch of caves in that region.

We don't know specifically which one,

but I wanna give you an image so that you can feel

the text a little bit more rather than just read it

on a flat page.

This is an actual real cave in Israel today.

This one happens to be in En Gedi,

which I know some of you guys have visited En Gedi.

And by the way, this was one of the places

that David hid from Saul as well.

What I want you to understand as we walk through this,

what the environment would have felt like.

You can see how uncomfortable this would be, right?

You can see how desolate it is, how depressing it is.

And that's during the day, right?

All your nightmares.

Imagine at night time when you have no lamp

and you have no torch,

how difficult it would have been to live in this cave.

Again, this is not what David had in mind

when he was anointed king over Israel,

but this is where he is.

Let's read, verse one.

David says, I cry aloud with my voice to the Lord.

I make supplication with my voice to the Lord.

I pour out my complaint before him.

I declare my trouble before him.

When my spirit was overwhelmed within me,

you knew my path.

In the way where I walk, they have hidden a trap for me.

Look to the right and see,

for there is no one who regards me.

There is no escape for me.

No one cares for my soul.

I cried out to you, O Lord.

I said, you are my refuge,

my portion in the land of the living.

Give heed to my cry, for I am brought very low.

Deliver me from my persecutors,

for they are too strong for me.

Bring my soul out of prison

so that I may give thanks to your name.

The righteous will surround me,

for you will deal bountifully with me.

So we need to dig into this now.

Go a little bit deeper and take a look.

First of all, what is David wrestling with in the cave?

So look back at verse one.

Now again, the superscription told us what this is.

It's a prayer.

It's a prayer of David.

And right out of the gate,

you see how intensely personal this is for him.

Nothing but first-person pronouns

all the way through the psalm.

I cry aloud.

I plead for mercy.

I pour out my complaint, et cetera.

In moments like this, friends,

when you find yourself isolated in a rough place,

that is a time when your faith will be tested.

Not your parents' faith,

not the faith you grew up with,

not your spouse's faith,

well, not the faith of my friends,

your faith, your faith.

That's when your walk with the Lord

will get real very, very quickly.

And while we talk often here at Oak Hill

about always being there to support

and encourage one another,

there could come a time like this,

like David's time in the cave,

when it's just you and God in the darkness.

So learning to cry out to God in the midst of difficulty

is a very important thing to understand,

a very practical thing.

In fact, here's what Spurgeon says about this.

He says, this psalm teaches us principally by example

how to order our prayer in times of distress.

And such instruction is among the most needful,

practical, and effectual parts of our spiritual education.

You believe that?

He who has learned to pray like this

has been taught the most useful of the arts and the sciences.

Friends, this will get you through life.

This is important.

So the first thing we see David do

in the midst of this crisis,

he gets completely honest with God.

He is completely honest with God.

And you guys, when we pray,

this is the only reasonable place to start.

Sometimes, especially if you grow up in the church,

we're taught the how-to's of prayer.

And so often we start with technique

rather than leading with the heart.

This is how I was taught.

Well, what's the technique for prayer?

What's the step-by-step formula?

And we say, well, here's a pattern that we should follow.

We say that.

And then what do we end up doing?

At least what I end up doing.

Hyper-focus on fulfilling the pattern

and sort of miss the heart of prayer.

We do this with Bible study too, right?

We devise great reading plans.

And then we wanna make sure we hit all of our goals,

but in doing so, we risk missing the whole reason

why we're studying God's word in the first place.

Now, I'm not saying that structure is a bad thing

in your devotional life.

For some of you, it's absolutely essential.

Here's the thing.

We have to guard against making our devotional life

mechanical.

Mechanical.

So overly structured that it's missing the heart.

When the structure becomes the focus,

rather than leading with the heart,

actually abiding with Christ,

that's when we've missed it.

Here's the thing.

If your walk gets mechanical like that,

and then a day comes when you find yourself in distress

alone in a cave, for example,

you may realize in that moment that like an athlete

that hasn't trained properly for their event,

you may find yourself completely unequipped in that moment.

Because not all of life is mechanical.

You won't be ready or prepared.

Where there should be faith and resolve

because you've been developing spiritual muscles,

you might actually find yourself in spiritual crisis.

Now, let me go back to that cave picture

because I want you to keep that in mind

as we look at this.

So listen again now to how honest

and how intense David is in his voice.

I cry aloud with my voice to the Lord.

I make supplication, and really a good reading on that is,

I plead for mercy with my voice to the Lord.

I pour out my complaint or my lament before him.

I declare my trouble before him.

So look, David is desperately in need here.

He fully understands the gravity of a situation,

and he says so to the Lord.

And the language in Hebrew is really important.

This is a great example.

I know it's been a while since we started this series.

We talked about synonymous parallelism,

saying the same thing twice,

but with different poetic words.

And the point is to really emphasize this.

So he says, I cry aloud, I plead for mercy.

Same concept.

I pour out my complaint, I declare my trouble.

Same idea.

It's that repetition that tells us in the Hebrew

how intense David is in this moment,

how it reveals the urgency of the moment.

And then you see twice in verse two the phrase before him.

Now in Hebrew, the root word there is panim,

and it literally means face.

So what he's saying is he's poetically emphasizing

how he's appealing to Yahweh face to face,

like you would if there was a friend in that cave with you

and you were shouting for help.

That's how he views this prayer time with the Lord,

face to face.

See, sometimes we, again, we tend to think in prayer,

what we come and we address God

and we just go down our list of prayer requests,

rather than communing with God

as if speaking to Him face to face.

And David's not quiet in his communion, right?

He cries aloud.

And you can imagine the sound of him crying out loud,

echoing off the walls of that cave.

Again, we cannot lose the sight

of what's going on in this moment,

to be in his sandals, to know you're alone in this cave,

that soldiers are hunting you,

and your life is hanging in the balance.

So listen, in that desperate situation,

here's what you would not do.

Oh Lord, I want to give you a nice, measured, polite prayer.

No, you would cry aloud, right?

This wouldn't be measured at all.

You would hold nothing back.

This prayer is, save me Lord, I need mercy,

or I am going to die in this place.

It's a desperate situation.

Now in verse two, you see how he does this.

It says, first of all, he poured out his complaint.

Now a couple things to notice there.

That term poured out is so descriptive.

It's a word that describes something

that just spills over.

Again, he's not measuring his words.

He's not trying to be polite before God.

This prayer, he's in such a bad place,

it just spills over.

It just pours out of him.

And then the word complaint.

Now this is siach in the Hebrew,

and it's a word, it doesn't mean,

when we hear complain, you get a picture in your head,

right, of a whining person.

That's not the picture here, okay.

It doesn't mean griping.

It doesn't mean grumbling.

Do you remember how Yahweh condemned the Israelites

in the wilderness for grumbling against his leadership,

Moses and Aaron?

Completely different word.

Here David is simply talking about laying his distress

before God, laying his troubled thoughts before the Lord.

He's not griping about the fact that he's there.

He's not pointing a finger.

Blame it God.

This is a good type of complaint.

This is the type of complaint that God wants us

to bring to him.

First of all, he already knows it,

but he wants us to come openly and honestly

with this type of complaint.

Remember that grumbling in the wilderness

as they pointed fingers of blame at Moses,

that was out of unbelief, right?

That was out of a lack of faith.

This is complete, in fact, this is the complete opposite.

This is David just telling God everything

and saying, Lord, you're my only hope for rescue.

It's the opposite of unbelief.

It's actually a great expression of faith

for us to come to God and say,

here's all my stuff, Lord, I'm hoping only in you.

Does that make sense, the difference there?

Now in verse four, we hear more

about the depths of David's despair.

He says, look to the right and see,

no one regards me or no one takes notice of me.

So in the ancient world, if you look to the right,

what that meant poetically was,

that's the place where your closest friend

would be standing, your protector and your defender.

But when David looks over there, there's nobody.

It's just silence.

There's no reassuring smile, there's no comforting words,

there's no encouragement.

The isolation of that cave was suffocating him

in this moment.

There's no escape for me, he says.

And then he utters what has to be the saddest

and most disheartening cry of all.

This is King David, remember.

He says, no one cares for my soul.

Today we would say, nobody in the church reaches out to me.

Nobody seems to even wonder if I exist at all.

He's overwhelmed, isn't he?

And the fact is, people can endure an awful lot in life

if they know that they're not alone,

if they know that somebody actually cares.

But David has hit rock bottom here.

I can't even imagine anything worse

than sitting in this cave all alone, isolated,

rock bottom, thinking this might be your last hour,

your last day, right?

You cannot let your guard down for a minute.

You couldn't sleep, every sound would wake you up.

And then realize, you know what?

This is it, this is where I die.

Drop down to verse six now.

David keeps pouring out his heart.

Give heed to my cry, Lord, for I am brought very low.

Or really what that word means is I'm extremely weak.

Deliver me from my persecutors,

these men who are pursuing me,

for they are too strong for me.

Now that's quite a statement

from a strong man like David, right?

Remember, he's no coward.

This is an experienced military commander and soldier.

He's seen bloodshed.

He is not whining like a baby here.

He's just acknowledging the reality of this situation

and he's saying, they're too strong for me.

He's admitting his insufficiency here.

There is no way he escapes from this cave

without divine help and he acknowledges it.

And you know what?

Sometimes the Lord is gracious to put us

in desperate situations like this.

This is where sometimes we have to be overwhelmed

to force us to depend on him alone.

If it hasn't happened in your life, it will someday.

Where you're in a situation where you're like,

I have no escape, I can't do this.

If I don't get divine help, I'm in trouble.

So this is what keeps us humble, right?

This is what stretches our faith.

And again, I love this example

because David could be sitting in that cave

beating his chest and going, I'm David, King of Israel.

I took down Goliath.

I'm fine, I'll get out of this.

I'll figure out a way, but he doesn't do that.

He doesn't pretend before God.

And how dare we do that, right?

I'm gonna pretend before God that I'm just fine.

David doesn't do that.

He confesses his weakness before God's face.

And for me, this is what I see really

is the big idea of this Psalm.

David shows us here the heart of a true worshiper

who comes before his God deeply and honestly

and with great intimacy, not holding back

but laying his heart out before the Lord.

And I know I've said this multiple times in this series,

but we need to do the same thing.

In fact, maybe the best thing that you can do this week

is not read another article online

or not go on some social media site,

but carve out some time, some quiet time with God

so that you can talk to him

and do some examination of the soil of your heart.

Talk openly with God.

Talk honestly with him about all that's going on

in your life.

He longs for this.

He invites us, abide with me.

Talk to him about your thoughts.

Talk to him about your fears and your frustrations

and your desires and your goals, all of it.

The things that you wrestle with,

the things that you keep falling into sin,

talk to him about it.

And use David as an example.

Abide with Christ.

Slow down long enough to dwell with Jesus.

Admit for your heart.

Admit your weakness.

Admit your insufficient.

And ask the Spirit of God to strengthen you

and to grow you.

That should be a regular exercise in our lives.

That's how you develop those spiritual muscles

for the cave.

As you start doing it now when you're not in the cave.

Here's the next step in this process.

David's acknowledgement of his weakness

is not the end of the story,

it shouldn't be the end of our devotional life either.

We start with that, we're like,

okay Lord, I'm gonna get honest with you,

but the second piece to this is essential.

Listen now, David starts,

and you see it woven through here,

he starts to remember his theology.

He starts to go back to what he knows about God

and begins to remind himself about what is true about God.

So catch this now, he doesn't neglect his feelings,

he doesn't neglect talking about his fears and his worries,

his lowliness, he pours all of that out,

but he doesn't stop there and just sit in the weeds

and go, oh woe is me.

He starts thinking about truth.

He starts speaking truth to himself.

And this is woven into the fabric of the Psalm.

Look at verse three for example.

He says, when my spirit was overwhelmed within me,

look at this phrase, you knew my path.

David is now recalling a time in the past

when he was overwhelmed by something,

his spirit was weak, but he remembered God's sovereignty.

He says, Lord, you knew my path.

Man, remember that time when I was just,

I was getting smacked around, but you knew my path.

You knew the journey was on.

You knew the end from that beginning.

And you carried me along.

You knew how it was gonna turn out.

So why did I worry back then?

You knew my path.

So at times in life,

we might look around with our human eyes and say,

you know what, nobody cares about me.

I feel very alone right now.

But God's always there.

Always.

And he always cares.

And we can't forget that.

He's working all things for his glory and for your good,

even the hard stuff.

And that is so key to remember when trials come.

Our problem is, so I'm warning you,

because this happened to me so many times,

I can't even count them.

Our problem is we tend to forget these truths.

We get so emotionally wrapped up in the trial

that we forget.

I've literally done this in my life,

and God is just like a mirror.

I'll stand up here and preach a sermon

about this very subject.

And if I'm not guarding my heart and renewing my mind,

I can walk out the door the very next day on Monday morning

and something really difficult hits me in the face,

some type of trial, sometimes a trouble,

somebody in the church, something's going on,

and what do I do?

I quickly forget everything I just preached

on the day before.

It happens to all of us.

So what this is, it's a matter of exercising your faith

and getting stronger in this, right?

We build up our spiritual muscles

with regular honest prayer,

and then we apply the truth of God's word to it,

so that when that trial comes,

we go, I recognize this, and I respond well.

But you gotta train for this.

You gotta build up those muscles.

Does that make sense?

We all do this, right?

We get, look, we all have the best of intentions

when we walk out the door in the morning,

and then we get hit by stuff.

Like all this external stuff comes at us,

and we have a choice in that moment,

then that crossroads to say,

okay, what do I remember about God?

And how should I respond now?

Or I can just get all wrapped up in my feelings and emotions

and spiral off into sin.

Look at verse five as well.

David says, I cried out to you, O Lord.

I said, you are my refuge,

my portion in the land of the living.

So even if every other refuge that we trust in fails,

and I'm talking about friends and family and church members,

even the hiding place in that cave,

David knew at the end of the day,

Yahweh will not forsake me.

Amen.

He's speaking that to himself.

You are my portion, he says.

So he's acknowledging this cave is really not my shelter.

God, you are.

And really, King David isn't going to determine my fate.

Only you will, Lord, because you're sovereign.

So he says, look, you are my portion.

Now, what does it mean?

We sometimes say that, my portion.

What it means is, you, Lord, are my prize.

You are my inheritance.

You are the source of all of my peace and joy.

You are all that I need.

That's what David is saying when he talks about portion.

You're my prize.

You're everything.

All this other stuff, it could go away,

but you are my portion.

And when God is truly your portion,

then no matter what circumstances come at you,

you realize nothing can take that away, right?

This is what the Christian martyrs

throughout church history trusted in and said clearly.

Said, look, as they're burning at the stake,

you can take everything from me.

You can even take my physical life,

but you cannot take away my Jesus.

You cannot take away my Jesus.

Because he is my portion.

He is my reward.

So David is remembering his theology

in the midst of this low point,

and he's falling back on it.

So just to recap, so that we understand

how we can apply what David shows us here,

I pour out my heart before the face of God,

even if it's ugly, right?

Sometimes we record, we're like,

I want to pray this morning,

and the report I'm going to give God

is really an ugly one.

He knows.

Not surprising him.

So even if it's like we go to him,

we don't hold back, we tell him everything,

we confess, Lord, I am weak.

Lord, I am a sinful man.

I'm a man of unclean lips,

and here's all of the ways that that's true of me.

And he goes, I know, child.

But then we don't stop there.

We take that next step.

We apply the truth of God's word

to all of those feelings and emotions and circumstances.

We get our minds straight on what is actually true,

and then as I step out the door that morning,

I commit myself to this important principle,

that as I make choices, as I make decisions,

as I think about things, as I do things,

what's not going to dominate me are my circumstances,

or my feelings or emotions,

what's going to lead me and guide me

is the truth of God's word.

Now that's no guarantee that you're not going to get

whacked in that day by something,

but we keep coming back to that principle.

I'm going to be led by God's spirit and by God's truth.

Amen?

Amen.

So, as I wrap up, let me just share

a brief personal story with you guys.

Because I think it's instructive.

Earlier I mentioned that I have an experience in my past

that has shadowed me ever since I quit the corporate world

and went into full-time ministry.

And it's a story that does have a connection

with this church here at Oak Hill.

This was many, many years ago, so much so that I,

man, yeah, it's a long time.

But it was early in my ministry experience,

I was super green and super naive about ministry.

You know what I thought when I went into ministry

and I just left the corporate world,

everybody's so happy and everybody's going to row

in the same direction, it's just going to be perfect.

I was like this, I was like that little, yeah,

that little sheep bouncing around the pasture.

You picture, like boing, boing, boing, right?

I was that guy, ah, we're in ministry now.

Yeah, it took about five years.

And I experienced a betrayal at the hands of an elder team

made up of what I thought were my closest friends.

This was not at Oak Hill.

And it was devastating to me at the time.

It shattered in my mind everything that I thought

about life in the ministry and why I felt God had called me

out of the business world to do this.

And it was unfair, it was hurtful, it was abusive.

And it was very, very hard on Tanya to have to stand by

and watch as former friends went out of their way

to criticize her husband's character

and to damage my reputation in order to hide

their own failures, to point fingers in my direction.

And I will tell you, at that point in my life,

I was in a dark cave.

It's the closest thing that, look, my life wasn't at risk.

It wasn't nearly what David was going through,

but I felt like we were in a dark cave.

I felt isolated and rejected.

I was very fearful about the dark cave.

I was very afraid of the dark cave.

I was very afraid of the dark cave.

As I would respond, I think today.

Again, I was so naive at the time.

But I will tell you this much, my prayer life

has probably never been more dynamic

than it was in those days.

It forced me to cry out to God

in ways that I can't even describe.

And God allowed that incredibly intense trial

in my life for so many reasons,

so many things that I needed to learn.

Now, at the time, I couldn't see clearly.

At the time, I was just like, what's happening?

And questioning everything.

But wow, do I see it clearly today.

And what came out of that ministry debacle

was this wild idea about planning a church.

And that was something I never dreamed of doing,

something I didn't feel qualified to do,

but through many, many clear signs,

that is where the Lord led Tani and I.

And we walked into that chapter of life

with great fear and trembling.

But ultimately, we said, you know what, Lord?

This is entirely up to you.

Here's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna strive to be faithful.

We're gonna strive to preach God's word.

And then, Lord, you determine the result.

And that was the entire plan that we had

in planting Oak Hill Bible Church.

That was the whole plan.

You know how people go to seminars and conferences now

about all these steps?

We were like, let's just go,

let's just get together with some Christians

and we'll study the Bible.

They'll never ask me to run one of those conferences.

And then, almost 18 years later, here we are at Oak Hill.

And so, guess what?

I was so grateful for that time in the cave.

I needed it.

And because of that experience,

God shaped my heart and formed my heart as a man,

as a husband, as a pastor.

And he used it to drive everything that I think today

about ministry, my philosophy of ministry.

And there have been so many times, this happened,

I know you're all nodding my head,

so I have to tell you how many times I've stood,

oftentimes in the back, among this congregation.

And I'm looking at you, I'm taking note of everybody

that's here because you're so dear to me.

And it usually happens when we're singing.

And...

I see you guys singing.

And I think about that cave

and that difficult time in our lives, I'm sorry.

I think about how God knew exactly

what he would accomplish through this church

and through you guys in my life,

back when I was in that cave.

That he would glorify himself through Oak Hill.

So, I'm not gonna end with that.

I wanna end with verse seven,

because this is where David comes back to,

he comes back to worship.

This is what it's about.

Look at verse seven.

David's last request is,

Lord, bring my soul out of this prison.

And that's what he refers to the cave as.

So that what?

I may give thanks to your name.

How many times in this series have we seen

the Psalms leading to this end?

Almost every time the psalmist has cried out for help,

it's so that I can get back to my people.

And back to singing your praises.

It's about worship.

Rescue me from this place, Lord,

so that I can then gather with my peeps

and we can praise your name.

And I love this, because this tells you

something important about David's heart.

His eye is on the prize.

His heart is not set on himself, it's on God.

Because sometimes when we're in trial,

it's just, Lord, get me out of this mess

so I can get back to my comfortable life.

David could have been in prison,

but I want to get back to my comfortable life.

David could have said, Lord, rescue me from this prison

so that I can get back on that path to being king.

But that is not David's focus.

His focus is on thankfulness and praise to the Lord.

It's on worship.

And this is what he says in the final phrase

in verse seven is so interesting.

He says, the righteous will surround me.

They will gather around me,

for I know that you will deal generously with me.

Sitting in the cave, in his mind's eye,

what he sees is the Lord rescuing him,

and then surrounding him with the righteous

as they come together to praise the Lord.

He moves from this deep pain into this confident hope

that this is what God is gonna do.

And listen, I hope you feel like this

every Sunday when you gather.

I know life is hard, getting here can be difficult,

but to be together with the saints,

to sing the praises of God's great name

is such a privilege.

Don't take it for granted.

Now, the PS on the story of the cave of Adulam is what?

Well, guess what?

God actually answered David's prayer.

He did.

And he did, in fact, deliver David

from the men pursuing him for a time.

It's gonna get hairier later on in the story.

But in the process, what God did was,

he supplied David with the friendship

and the encouragement that he needed in that moment.

If we look at the 1 Samuel 22,

it says, David escaped to the cave of Adulam,

and when his brothers and all of his father's household

heard of it, they went down there to him.

God said, David, I know you're alone.

I'm gonna get you some people.

Everyone who was in distress and everyone who was in debt,

everyone who was discontented gathered to him.

And I don't know if David was happy about that.

Like, oh, this is a messy group of people.

Well, welcome to church-planting.

I mean, right?

You go with who God gives you.

And he says, they were gathered to him,

and he became captain over them.

So this becomes the nucleus of David's kingdom later on.

400 men, God sends down to the cave to be with him.

Amazing.

So this absolute low point in David's life

ends up being a turning point for him.

His honesty, his openness, and his faith were rewarded.

And here's what this point says, too,

and this is a truth that I can testify to.

A whole bunch of you guys in this room can.

David's path to Jerusalem required that time in Adulam,

and his path to glory on the throne

required the low point in the cave.

May you and I remember that.

The next time trials come our way,

because this, remember, for my thoughts

are not your thoughts.

It's not gonna go like you want it to go.

It's not like you draw it up.

Nor are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.

By the time you get to be my age,

you've gone through a few things,

you realize, you read that and you go, yep,

this is exactly how God tends to operate with his servants.

Embrace it.

Embrace it.

Friends, there's no cave too deep, no cave too dark,

no cave too isolated for God to know where you are,

to be present with you and to hear your prayers.

So no matter how trapped or alone you might feel,

know that your shepherd is with you,

that his rod and his staff are there to comfort you.

Amen?

Let's bow our heads.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Lord, this is such a great story for us.

I know, Lord, that we often in our flesh,

we prefer more encouraging stories

where we don't have to talk about hardship and trial

and our life at risk and having to trust you

in such difficult circumstances.

But Lord, this is what you have given us to instruct us.

And so we, together, we say thank you, Lord,

for each and every word,

for what David shows us in his life.

David is such a blessing to us,

both so that we can be warned and so we can be encouraged.

And so, Lord, I thank you for what you took David through

in this moment, and I thank you for what you have taken

me through in my life and for all those out there right now

who are thinking in their minds about events

and seasons in their life where things have shadowed them

and it's just hard to shake.

Lord, will you show them the truth

of what you are doing in their lives

through those difficult things,

that your ways are far superior to ours,

that your thoughts are so far above us, Lord,

we just need to trust you and say,

Abba, daddy, daddy, walk me through this.

And as long as you are with me,

as long as your rod and staff are there,

I'm ready to walk with you.

God, thank you for this morning.

We praise you in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Amen.