Psalm 56

To you, my name is Mark.

I am one of the leaders here at City Church.

Great to have you with us.

Please keep Psalm 56 uh open in front of you as we uh uh look at this together.

As was mentioned by Cameron, we go through Psalms in the summer as a way of helping grind ourselves in the in the emotional range of humanity and have God speak to us and inform us about uh how to think and how to feel and uh to uh process the various circumstances of of life.

And so please keep Psalm 56 in front of you.

Let's uh pray together as we as we look at it.

Uh Father, we thank you as David does for your word.

We praise you that as it is read, uh your voice is heard.

Speak to us now, uh we pray in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Uh it's not a particular secret to those of you who uh who know me, and uh for the rest of you, you now are going to have a little bit of information that I hope you will treat with uh some generosity, care, and compassion.

I'm gonna tell you my greatest fear, um, or perhaps what you might call my most irrational fear.

I don't think it's irrational.

Uh I think that it is uh truly uh logical.

Uh when I interact uh with these things, uh I get sweaty palms and I look away and I seek to escape.

I will never let my children uh interact uh with these beings, which is why I will never take them to a circus.

The thing that creeps me out and grips me with fear more than anything else are clowns.

They are wicked, evil things with their painted on smiles.

Maybe it was because uh I watched a scary movie involving a clown when I was far too young.

Maybe it was the ghost train that used to be in Newcastle, County Down, um that I was taken on when I was probably again a little bit too small.

Uh let me just uh uh go into a therapy session for a moment and tell you about that experience, which involved you know what a ghost train is, you go in and you know there's uh there's skeletons and things that go boo and lights that go on and like screams and things like that.

And that was fine, the new the Newcastle ghost train.

But uh at the end of the ghost train in in Newcastle in County Down, uh the big scare uh wasn't a uh wasn't an animatronic, it was an actual person.

And this actual person, when I was doing it, was dressed in a scary client mask, and I'm about eight years old, and he's clawing at me, trying to get me out of the cart.

I'm over it, okay?

Stop bringing it up, it's fine.

Uh maybe you uh have similar irrational fears.

I say irrational because mine is not irrational.

Whether it's uh spiders or large places or heights or flying, uh, we uh probably all have those those things that give us the creeps.

And they're fun to kind of talk.

Look, hold on.

I say they're fun.

People think that it's hilarious to WhatsApp me pictures of clowns.

I don't do that, please.

Beneath uh these fears, we probably actually can all remember those times, those situations and seasons when we have truly been gripped by fear.

That is the context in which David is writing.

He's been seized by the Philistines.

The Philistines are the folks of uh Goliath fame.

Uh, they are the arch enemies of the people of God, and they've captured David, and he's fearful.

Uh when I was growing up, when I was young, the thing that seized me with fear, the thing that I used to run from, apart from clowns, is that I hated conflict.

I hated having to have difficult conversations.

And so I remember whole years of my life just avoiding having those hard conversations.

Nowadays, most of my fears involve my children.

Uh, because when you become a parent, that's the that's the thing that you become most scared of.

So when you become a parent, your highest highs and your lowest lows all involve your kids.

I don't know, you know, when Owen was small, when he was nine weeks old, he landed in hospital with um RSV with bronchiolitis.

And that sense of just being gripped by that kind of helpless fear.

It's it's awful.

That's the context of this psalm.

The David is seized and is afraid.

That's what he says in verse 3.

I mean verse 3, when I am afraid, I put my trust in you.

What makes you scared?

And not just not just horror movies scared, not ghost train scared.

I mean, what grips you with fear?

Maybe it's failure.

Maybe it's death, maybe your own mortality is often in in view.

Maybe it's loss.

Or being exposed.

Somebody kind of seeing you for who you are.

Or maybe the the thing that you fear most of all isn't a thing, it's a person.

Little children often become fearful.

Maybe it's because uh they're watching a movie and a tense portion has uh has come on and they kind of begin to quiver and they snuggle in a little bit tighter, or they they pull up the the cushion.

Or in the playground, yeah, yeah, that uh your kids can be full of bravado when they're climbing up the steps to the tallest slide, but then they get to the top and they look down and go, okay.

Um I didn't realize what I've got myself into.

It can be really tempting to say, don't be scared.

But the thing about fear is that it can sometimes be necessary.

Sometimes it's a good thing to be scared because being scared keeps you safe.

Being scared helps you to make informed decisions about the situation.

It helps the choices that you make.

And so I'm not going to say in this, don't be scared.

C.S.

Lewis said that the tranquil heart has no need of hope.

The tranquil heart has no need of hope.

That is, if everything's just fine and you're never scared, you've no need to kind of think outside of yourself.

You don't need to trust outside of yourself, you don't need to hope in something else.

It's when things that are uncertain that that really clarifies what it is that you're holding on to.

The tranquil heart has no need of hope.

So I'm not going to say don't be scared.

What is intriguing about this psalm, and one of the things that I want to point your attention to, is that every time David talks about being scared, he then immediately talks about trusting God.

Look at verse 3.

When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.

Verse 4, in God whose word I praise, in God I trust, I shall not be afraid.

What can flesh do to me?

Or down in verse 11, in God I trust, I shall not be afraid, what can men do to me?

Fear and trust in our lives, like in this Psalm, often coexist.

It is not a case of it's one thing, fear, and then you move to trust.

No, they actually walk hand in hand in our Christian experience where you're fearful and trusting.

And that's the rhythm of the Christian life.

Fear and trust coexist.

There are times and situations when you are fearful, and so you press into trust.

You fight for hope.

And God uses fear in your life to build these things in you.

The goal of all of this, the goal of your life isn't to avoid fearful situations, it isn't never to be scared again.

The goal is to become braver, to build God-given, gospel-centered courage, to feel the fear and to continue to trust.

That's what we see in the Psalm.

David is fearful, he's been seized by the enemies of God, and yet he is continuing to press in and to trust.

The question is, how?

And what David draws our attention to in this Psalm is that there are a couple of things that give him courage that are the basis of his trust.

Let's look at the first one.

Courage for David comes from God's revelation, from his word.

That's the uh the repeated uh phrase that's in verse 4 and then 11 and 12.

It kind of becomes fairly central to our understanding of the Psalm.

Verse 4, in God whose word I praise, that is his self-disclosure, his revelation, in God I trust I shall not be afraid.

What can flesh do to me?

Then cast your eye down to verse 10.

In God whose word I praise, in the Lord whose word I praise, in God I trust I shall not be afraid.

What can man do to me?

David begins by praising God's word, what he has revealed about himself, because that helps David to trust when he's feeling fearful.

It gives him courage.

How does God's word do that?

What does God's revelation, what does God's word give to the believer, to the Christian, that allows him to have or her to have courage?

That allows him or her to say, at the end of verse 4, what can flesh do to me?

And that's parallel with the end of verse 11, what can man do to me?

How does God's word so change your perspective that you say in the midst of fear, what can man do to me?

So often our fears are people driven.

Driven by their thoughts of us, by what they say about us, the actions they take against us, the circumstances that they put us in.

And the thing that can happen in those situations when fear seizes us is that the people who are causing this, they get bigger and bigger and bigger and loom more and more over the horizon of our life.

And what happens is that God gets smaller and smaller and smaller.

They get stronger and stronger and stronger, and God gets weaker and weaker and weaker until he is completely, in our minds anyway, impotent.

This is where God's revelation, where God's word comes in and helps us.

See, David praises God's word, verse 4 and verse 10, because it is only God's word that can give him a perspective that switches those things around, that makes God bigger and the people smaller.

That is not something that we can divine and think through ourselves.

That is something that has to be revealed to us.

The gospel gives us this new perspective.

It helps us to think in Christian, godly ways about situations and circumstances, about people.

And we need this.

That's why David praises his work.

He tells you this.

People think that sin is it's either an outside thing that uh that attacks you from time to time and derails you and puts you into uh into sin, or they think that it's it's just the things that you do.

As Rico Tyson describes it, a little bit of adult naughtiness.

Sin is actually an all-pervasive thing that affects every area of your life.

And one of the ways that it affects you is it affects how you think.

It affects how you think about situations, it affects your evaluating faculties.

And so you look at a situation, and all you see are the people who are acting against you, and they get bigger and bigger and bigger because you're not thinking in a gospel-centered way about the situation.

And so we need God's word to retrain us, to help us to think Christianly, to feel Christianly about people and circumstances.

And so God's word trains us, and that's why David praises it.

God's word trains us by telling us that God has given us our life.

Nature would tell us that our life is our own to try and preserve by our own strength as best we can.

God's word says, no, no, you are you are not your own.

Your only hope in life and in death is that you were uh made body and soul by God.

We need God's word to inform us, to train us.

God's word assures us further that the Lord Jesus died for us, that sin-bearing death, to forgive us, to redeem our life eternally, that we have nothing in eternity to fear.

Our natural state would believe that there are greater things, created things, to be fearful of, that there are greater things to fear than facing a holy God unforgiven.

And so we need God's word to retrain us, to help us, to have a different perspective, to think differently.

God's word reminds us that in our weaknesses we have his Holy Spirit with us, in us, by faith, as a guarantee of our new life, that our life is hid with Christ in God, that we are eternally secure with him.

We cannot work that out by nature.

We cannot divine that from the world, from the world around us.

By the world around us, we would believe that we can be eternally lost.

But God's word comes and says, No, you are secure in the hand of the God who loves you.

You cannot move from this fearful perspective to a gospel-shaped perspective without God's word.

And David knows it, and he praises God for his word.

He praises that word that helps him to think differently, to feel differently.

That's why we need to be people of the word.

We need God's word to retrain us, to help us to think aright.

And I know that that's a whole lifetime's journey, right?

There'll be things that we continue to wrestle with and struggle with.

But we press in, we come to God like the Father who comes to Jesus in Mark chapter 9, and in a sense, we cast ourselves on his mercy.

Mark 9 · chapter mention

We say, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.

It's like I'm I'm trying pressing into these things with these things that I'm still struggling with.

Would you help me by your grace to retrain, to recenter myself, to think these thoughts after you, so that I don't just come at these situations, these people, these circumstances from a natural perspective that it would arouse so much fear and uncertainty, but from a gospel perspective that helps me to think differently about who you are and about my life.

Justin Martyr was a Christian leader around the turn of the second into the third century.

And he was speaking at a time when lots of followers of the Lord Jesus were being killed for their faith, and he said this: he says, You may kill us, but you cannot harm us.

What a thing to say.

You may kill us, but you cannot harm us.

Only the gospel will allow you to say that.

And is not the reality that brothers and sisters all across this world are saying similar things in different parts, forgotten by all of us, but not by God.

You may kill us, but you cannot harm us.

That's the essence of what David says when he says, What can man do to me?

From a merely earthly perspective, the answer is plenty.

They can take our jobs, they can take our families, they can take our lives.

But from the perspective of eternity, the answer to that question is very little indeed.

Very little indeed.

And Jesus reinforces this, does he not, in the Sermon on the Mount when he says, Why do you fear those who kill the body but who cannot kill the soul?

Rather, fear him who can destroy both the soul and the body in hell.

And here's Jesus' point.

Jesus' point isn't really so much you need to tremble in fear before God.

His point is more like, yeah, and that God who has the right and the prerogative and the power to destroy body and soul in hell, he is acting in history to save you.

He is a father who loves you, who's lavishing his grace and compassion upon you.

And so if the God who can do that can secure you eternally with him in heaven, adopted as his child, then why would you fear these other things?

Why would you fear these other people?

That's what Jesus is saying.

We draw confidence, we draw courage from God's word because it helps us to think differently about the situations and circumstances and people that are around us.

Secondly, David draws courage from God's.

I wrote down the word attentiveness, attentive attentiveness, attention to detail.

Let me show you.

Verse 8 tells us different.

Look at verse 8.

You, he's speaking to God, you have kept count of my tossings.

Perhaps better translated, wanderings.

Put my tears in your bottle.

Are they not in your book?

Look here in this verse at the at God's presence, at his attention to detail.

God knows every time that David turns restlessly in his bed, or every time he paces his bedroom floor, they have been counted.

When you're up with a sick child, you are present for every cough, every restless turn until that fever breaks.

Because you love that child.

But even we get exhausted and wearied.

Not so our God.

He meets our restless fears with tireless love.

With tireless attention.

David drives this home further.

Not only does David, or not only does God count the wanderings of David, he collects his tears.

How many countless tears have you shed?

How many tears have fallen from your eyes onto stone floors or discarded into tissues or absorbed into pillows?

How many?

How many would you say?

Do you know the number?

God knows the exact number.

Not one of them fell to the ground in vain, unaccounted for, they are all recorded in his book.

He has seen every one of them.

He knows them all.

He regards them as precious.

Such as his love for you.

Your tears matter to God.

Even when it feels like they don't matter to anybody else.

They are precious to him.

He keeps a record of your heart.

He wants you to know that they all matter to him.

Because you matter to him.

Because he loves you.

This attentiveness, this attention to detail.

It gives David solace, comfort, courage.

And so he says in verse nine that he knows that he will be delivered.

Verse 9, then my enemies will turn back in the day when I call.

This I know that God is for me.

And isn't this the cry of every Christian?

That God is for you.

Because of Jesus.

This is Paul's language that he picks up in Romans chapter 8.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

That God is for us.

And that because God is for us, Paul goes on to say, who can be against us?

What can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus?

That rhetorical question that screams the answer, nothing.

In all of these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

That is the confidence that David has.

That is the confidence of the believer in the Lord Jesus.

Confident of God's presence, confident of God's preserving faithfulness through suffering and through trial.

Confident in God's ultimate deliverance to bring us through those sufferings, refined like gold, as Peter says, gold that is refined in the fire until we see him face to face.

This I know that God is for me.

Every believer in the Lord Jesus can say those words.

Every believer in the Lord Jesus can say, This I know, that God is for me.

That is the cry only of the believer.

The unbeliever would be foolish to say such a thing.

But it is the gracious assurance of our God, because of Jesus, that He is for us, and so that gives us courage.

Courage to persevere, courage to continue in the face of suffering, in the face of lack, in the face of anxiety and uncertainty about what will the future hold?

What will the coming weeks?

What will the coming months hold?

God is for you.

Because of Jesus.

And all of this, thirdly and finally, gives David courage.

It gives him courage to walk, to walk in a life of worship and thanksgiving.

Look down at verses 12 and 13.

I must perform my vows to you, O God.

I will render thank offerings to you, for you have delivered my soul from death, my feet from falling.

Then I will walk before God in the light of life.

David's deliverance fuels his worship and his devotion.

It permeates every part of his life.

This is why he uses the word walk.

The walk in the in the in the Psalms is a way of talking about all of life's journey.

Every part of who you are is your walk.

And he's saying, I'm gonna I'm gonna walk that journey in the light of God's presence, in the light of his life.

That I'm not gonna allow God to inform and transform every aspect of my being because of what he has done for me.

And I am going to persist because of his great deliverance.

This is how past experiences inform us.

We can look back at past experiences where God has preserved us.

We look back at seasons of our life and think, I see where God was acting none.

I didn't in the moment, but now I look and I see his grace and his kindness to me in bringing me through.

And that fuels and that fires future devotion.

But maybe it is that you think, oh, I can't think of anything.

Or as I look back, I'm not able to see anything.

I'm not able to see where God has acted for my good and for my deliverance.

But every believer in the Lord Jesus is able to look not to their own individual experiences simply, but to our deliverance in the gospel.

As David looks back at his deliverance that allows him to walk now in the presence, so we look back to our deliverance.

So we look back to God sending his son into the world to save us.

We look back to that cross and to that empty tomb and see God's forgiving love, see his glory.

We look at that and we draw courage.

Courage for today.

Courage for seasons of uncertainty, anxiety, fear.

It shapes and drives David onward through the rest of his life.

What do you look back to?

Are you looking back to past hurts and griefs, unable to see your deliverance in it?

Look beyond it.

Look beyond that time.

Look beyond those people who acted against you.

Look beyond.

Look beyond it, to the cross, to arms of love outstretched, to death on your behalf.

Look to the empty tomb and see your life made new.

Look at the nail-pierced hands that come and will come to you on that final day and bring an end to all of your tears as he wipes them all away.

Allow that.

Allow the remembrance of that to inform your perspective, to give you courage for every passing day that you might say with David, I know that God is for me.

What can man do to me?

Who can separate me from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus?

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Now, today, no condemnation.

Having the spirit through our life in bed these truths deeper into our soul, and feeling those roots go down into our lives, they help us to persevere, to feel the fear, and to continue to trust.

I won't say don't be scared.

Because there are times when fear will seize you again.

And those are times when that God has so ordained by his good and gracious providence to put you in.

I won't say don't be scared.

But I'll say look at the hero.

Look at the hero in those moments.

Look at Jesus.

What has he done for you?

What does he say about you?

And how does that allow you to move forward with trust?

I won't say don't be scared.

Feel the fear and press in to trust.

If you'll indulge me, I'd like to close by talking about fear and trust in our corporate life, in our life as a church.

Fear and trust, walking together, coexisting together, hand in hand, has been part of our journey, really.

This Christmas will be a church that's been existing for about seven years or so.

And as I've reflected over these last seven years, there have been different junctures, different times when fear and trust have been journey fellows.

Right back at our launch.

You launch a church and you wonder is anybody going to come?

Are people going to become Christians?

Is it going to survive?

Is it going to be able to sustain itself?

So you feel the fear and you continue to trust.

We took the decision after a year to move from our location, to move from our slot on a Sunday evening to launching in this building to have morning services.

And that was another challenge, another step of faith, another step of fear and trust.

Will God continue to grow his church?

And then in 2019, we went to two services.

It was 2019, Jacob, wasn't it?

You were there, yeah, 2019.

Two services.

The place was full.

We needed room to grow.

But the fear was will it grow?

Will we end up chopping this thing in two and both halves dying?

Is it gonna feel like two different churches?

What's it gonna do to our servers?

Are they gonna be strung out and busted?

Answers on a postcard.

Peter's nodding.

The answer is yes, but still we trusted.

And now we're at another one.

Where we feel the fear and we move forward in trust and in faith.

The elders have agreed, and at our church members' meeting, there was unanimous consent that in the coming weeks we'll transition out of this building and begin to meet somewhere else.

That we will leave our home over these last seven years and move to the Odeon movie theater at the Point Village.

That is a daunting move for us.

As Dubliners would say, it feels like notions to move from uh to move from here to a cinema.

But the Lord has been very kind in confirming it in a number of ways that I'm not going to go into now.

We have a very positive relationship with the events manager there, and what we'll be moving into is we'll be moving into a screen that seats at least 120 people, and so we'll be going back to one service.

There will be another screen for kids.

I mean, even this morning, the kids' room was full.

We'll be moving to uh a place where they can have their own 65-seater movie theater screen, plus there will be a crash area uh up the stairs out of the way for nursing mothers uh or just strung out fathers where they can continue to watch the service.

It'll allow us to do hospitality with more space, but it is a risk, it's a new area, it's a great opportunity.

There's 32,000 people live there, brand new Trinity Halls, and we're the only church that's going to be in that location.

It's an increased cost, it is an earthly risk.

But we continue to draw courage.

Courage from those past circumstances that I mentioned, of how God has journeyed with us, but courage from God's word, who assures us that he is with us.

And of the Lord Jesus who said that he will build his church.

We don't know exactly when we're going to move.

It's kind of in the lap of the government right now.

As it stands, the 50-person cap applies to both churches and to movie theaters, annoyingly.

And so we are hoping, praying that that cap will be removed.

Our feeling is that the the financial step up is such that uh it is best to move once the 50-person cap is no longer in place, otherwise, all that we're gaining really is kind of 18 extra seats.

So pray uh that that move can happen swiftly.

The hope is that we'll be there from the 5th of September for the new academic year.

So as we move forward with fear and with trepidation and with trust, can I ask some things of you?

Can I ask you to pray?

Can you pray for this transition?

You pray for all of the things that need to take place in order to make it happen.

There's been a lot going on behind the scenes.

I'm very much looking forward to three weeks' vacation from Monday week.

But there's a lot to happen.

Pray for people.

Pray that this new location would be a place where new people come under the sign of the gospel.

And pray ultimately that the Lord would be merciful to them, that more would come to know and to love the Lord Jesus.

Would you pray for those things?

And secondly, would I ask you to plan?

Pray, but then plan.

Plan to move.

Please move.

Don't keep coming here.

There'll be nobody here.

Plan to move.

Think about what's it gonna what's it gonna mean for you logistically?

Like I say, we'll have one service, most likely at 10:30.

And plan to serve.

We're gonna need your help.

Welcoming people.

If you've been in the Odeon, you know that you know we're gonna be at the top of the house.

There's gonna be escalators and mezzanine levels.

Need help?

More people welcoming, stewarding, more people serving tea and coffee with a brand new kind of cafe area.

Doreen's nodding at the back, she's excited.

Uh, that we get to use.

It's an old Costa that uh they've vacated that they've said we can have.

Which is that wonderful.

Plan to move, plan to serve.

And I guess the final thing that I would say is ask your questions.

If this is new information to you, if you're like, what the flip, come and talk to me.

Fill out a connection card, send me an email, marketcitychurchdublin.eu if you've got questions.

We want everybody's voice heard, we want everybody's opinion expressed, we want to hear how you'd be passionate about serving and helping to serve the community that we're moving into.

May our courage, our gospel-wrought, Jesus-centered courage result in more people coming to call upon the name of Jesus.

As soon as I get more information about the logistics, we'll let you know.

But that's where we're going.

A new season, a new chapter.

We're so grateful to DCM for providing this home.

But it is time to go.

And we are grateful to the Lord's provision, and we trust him for the future.

Him who is with us.

Let's pray.

Surround our trepidation with renewed trust.

Speak into our uncertainties with your unwavering love.

Build gospel-shaped courage in each of us.

And for us as a body, as we make plans and move into this new chapter.

We praise you for your faithfulness down the years.

And we continue to trust you and ask for your help.

Would you would you build your church?

Would you cause people who are dead in their sins to come to newness of life?

Would more come to know and to love the Lord Jesus?

And in a time when so many are fearful, so many hopeless, would you by your Holy Spirit build hope and trust and faith in us for the glory of the Lord Jesus?

In whose name we pray.

Amen.