2021 Looking Back | Song from a Cave

Today's reading is from Psalm 57.

The title of the Psalm is To the Choir Master, according to Do Not Destroy, one of David's first albums, A Mictim of David when he fled from Saul in the cave.

Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge.

In the shadow of your wings I will take refuge till the storms of destruction pass by.

I cry out to God most high, to God who fulfills his purpose for me.

He will send from heaven and save me.

He will put to shame him who tramples on me.

Selah.

God will send out his steadfast love and his faithfulness.

My soul is in the midst of lions, I lie down amid fiery beasts, the children of man, whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongues are sharp swords.

Be exalted, O God above the heavens, let your glory be over all the earth.

They set a net for my steps, my soul was bowed down.

They dug a pit in my way, but they have fallen into it themselves.

Saila.

My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast.

I will sing and make melody.

Awake my glory, awake, O harp and lyre, I will awake the dawn, I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples, I will sing praises to you among the nations, for your steadfast love is great to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.

Be exalted, O God, above the heavens, let your glory be over all the earth.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathran.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

Uh, if you would like to become a member, and what that means is we mutually commit to one another in the Lord uh and you submit to the authority of our church, that is really the foundational way to uh participate here at R C D.

Uh, then just reach out to info at redemptiondenver.com.

Now, this is a great way to just start a dialogue and a process with us, no matter where you are in your faith.

So if you've got a lot of questions and you've got uh concerns or whatever it is, wherever you are um in exploring Christianity, we want to join you as a part of that.

And a great way to start is just inforedemptiondenver.com, and we can begin that dialogue.

Also, another announcement.

Uh, it's the beginning of 2021.

Whoa, and we made it.

And then it was the you know, January 1st, and it was like, okay, nothing really changed, but it's still nice to not be in 2020 anymore.

Um we uh it that means that our Bible reading plan that we do each year has begun.

So each year we uh uh uh do a Bible reading plan for those that are interested in our church.

And the plan that we do, it's called the McShane Reading Plan.

And it takes you through the Old Testament, the Gospels twice, the Psalms twice, and the rest of the New Testament once.

Uh now, this a friend was texting just yesterday, and they're like, hey, where do I find that reading plan?

Where do I get it?

And what do we do?

And I texted back and I was like, we do the McShane reading plan.

I've done it for years.

This plan is like a blanket for my soul at this point.

And it's really true.

Like just starting again in Genesis and in Ezra and where we begin the year, uh, it's like a blanket to my soul to be back in these parts of scripture again that I haven't been in since last year.

Uh and I just want to welcome you into that.

It's great to sit down with your Bible and have a plan to know how you're going to be engaging God's word.

And to systematize that is just a great help.

So whether you do this reading plan uh or another one, I recommend finding something to be able to uh systematize your time in the Word.

Otherwise, making a decision every morning of what you're gonna read is just like you're just not gonna read anything.

You're gonna look at Instagram.

Right?

Yeah.

Uh okay, so to get the reading plan, you can download our app and it's built into the app.

Uh it'll give you each day.

Just tap the little Bible icon at the bottom of the Redemption Church Denver app.

Or you can get a hard copy, if you want to stay away from your phone for that time, on the welcome table in the lobby.

There's a hard copy of that plan.

Also, uh, it is after Christmas and look around.

What do you still see up?

Christmas decorations.

If you would be so inclined, we could use some help taking down the decorations today, right after church.

If we all just get after it, these will be taken down and uh the decorations we can just set in the hallway that our offices are on, right next to the welcome table, right behind the welcome table.

And uh we'll take care of putting them in boxes and things, but we'll just need help taking them all down.

So we'll have ladders and stuff like that, if you could help for that.

Uh my wife just gave a thumbs down for taking down Christmas decorations.

Uh okay, let's pray.

And then we'll get into today's text.

Father, thank you for bringing us all together today.

I ask that you would use this time this morning as a reset for our hearts, that we would see your word and be inspired by these words that David wrote down by your Holy Spirit, that we would take them as our own and that we might live from them.

Lord, would you awake us today?

Awaken our hearts to the reality of you.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Okay, so I've been referencing this book a ton because of it's been a long book, and so I've been living in it for a while, but recently finished it.

It's called The Gulag Archipelago.

And it's by this guy named Alexander Solznitsin who recounts his, I don't know, my mom just laughed at that.

Gulags.

And it's by this guy named Alexander Soltznitson who recounts his time in the 40s and 50s in one of the Soviet concentration camps, which are called gulags.

And uh it's kind of this terrifying description of the terror that people can inflict on one another.

But in the midst of this rock of tyranny that was the Soviet Union, what's been amazing in this book is you find these gems of Christian resistance that are all throughout the book.

It's not a Christian book.

I didn't expect this.

It was just kind of a happy surprise that there's all these sermon illustrations in it.

And so one of them, for example, is this 10-year-old girl.

Her name was Zoya Lashiva.

Uh, and uh Zoya was 10 years old when her family was taken from her for being Christians.

It was because they were Christians that they were uh separated from one another and sent off to different uh concentration camps.

And she was sent to one uh for children, and she refused to take off her cross necklace.

This was a symbol, a religious symbol which was outlawed in the Soviet Union, and she refused to take it off and would tie it tighter and tighter around her own neck and said, You're gonna have to strangle me to take off this cross necklace.

And he writes of hearing of this story of this young girl, Zoya, who stands up to this empire.

But he says, What's more amazing than her not taking off the cross necklace is uh that she refused to give into the survivalist culture of the gulag, uh, of theft and of cursing.

And this is what she said uh when like encouraged to steal in the gulag.

She said, a mother as sacred as mine must never have a daughter who is a criminal.

Ten years old, not taking extra food for herself, because she saw the sacredness of her mother.

I mean, these stories are unreal.

And one of them that impacts the life of the author, Solznitson, uh, the uh the most was this doctor named Boris, Boris Kornfeld.

Now he was a Christian doctor in the camps.

And one night when uh uh Soltznitson was sick, the doctor stayed up all night and talked with him.

And this doctor shared his faith with Solznitson, who's not a Christian.

And what Solznitson noticed about him that stood out so much in the gulag was that uh although he had been in the gulag for years, Boris Kornfeld remained a gentle and well-mannered person.

That's what stood out to him.

In the midst of the gulag, he remained a gentle and well-mannered person.

Incredible.

It was like a miraculous thing for Solzhenitson to see.

For example, the food wasn't distributed like we think of food being distributed in a prison.

It was just sent out in mass to the group, and everybody just fought over it.

And so the gulag was designed to breed a culture of theft and of deceit and of prisoners turned against themselves.

So when they met someone, when Solzenitson met someone who wasn't changed by that, he was fascinated by someone who was able to remain gentle.

And he stayed up and he shared his testimony of faith and how he became a Christian and what that meant for him and his time in the gulag.

And the next day, Boris Kornfeld was executed for it.

The next day.

So this has an incredible impact on Solznitson's life, where he receives this testimony from this kind Christian in the midst of this spark of light in the midst of this incredible darkness.

He's executed the next day.

Solznitson realizes I'm I'm in possession of his last words.

And his last words are about Christ and about God.

And Solznitzen begins this reflection back on his own life.

Do you believe this book ended up being so good?

Solznitson reflects back on his own life, and he begins to realize that he had been fleeing from God for the whole scope of his life, and that here in the gulag, he was being pursued by God.

Isn't that an amazing thing to see?

And his heart begins to change.

Here's the description of how he begins his next chapter, which he calls ascent.

And it's how this place of deep darkness and depth, because God pursued him there, becomes a place of his own spiritual ascent in the gulag.

And here's what he says of this transformation that begins to happen in his heart because of the gulag.

He says, Formerly, you never forgave anyone.

You judged people without mercy, and you praised people with equal lack of moderation, and now an understanding mildness has become the basis of your uncategorical judgments.

You have come to realize your own weakness, and you can therefore understand the weakness of others, and be astonished at another's strength and wish to possess it yourself.

You hear how his heart transformed by his encounter with this Christian friend.

His heart changed.

Now 2020 was not like a gulag, but it was not good.

And as I reflected back on my 2020, and I thought, was I like Boris Kornfeld?

And I that was the name of the doctor.

That's the guy I'd like to be most like.

That's just a guy that I've made up.

No, that's what I call myself.

Was I like that Christian doctor that he encountered?

I read this quote, uh, you know, this same quote, it just it just stuck out to me and it said where it says, uh, mildness has become the basis of your uncategorical judgments.

Throughout 2020, my judgments became far more categorical than they did personal.

I couldn't claim that.

My weakness felt more present than it has well, not ever before, but in a way that I was deeply uncomfortable with.

And instead of experiencing that weakness as a motivation for sympathy towards others' weaknesses, I resented the weakness in myself and I resented the weakness I saw in others.

And that cultivated my heart a spirit that feared the strength that I saw in others.

So I became more categorical in my judgments.

I think that I became uh more fearful of weakness and more resentful of strength.

So what do we do if we've seen a hard thing shape our hearts in counterformative ways?

Well, we need what Solsenitsyn needed.

We need a Christian friend who can sit down next to us in the gulag and show us a different way.

Show us a way that this place that can be a place of deforming our hearts can actually become a place of ascent.

Now, David in the Psalms is that Christian friend.

And this morning, yep, that was just an intro.

We're gonna sit down next to David.

We're gonna sit down next to that Christian friend, and by his word, we're gonna hold his hand, and I think that we can walk out of this 2020, and we can see this can become a place of ascent.

In Eugene Peterson's book on David, he describes David like this.

He says, In David, we see a young man hated and hunted like an animal, his very humanity profaned, forced to decide between a life of blasphemy and a life of prayer, and choosing prayer.

So we're going to follow that choice that David makes this morning.

We're going to see that in following the choice of prayer, at this particular psalm, which is Psalm 57, David is hiding in a cave where King Saul is chasing him and trying to kill him.

And he writes this psalm when he's hiding in that cave.

And I think we can use this analogy, the cave, the gulag 2020.

These are places that are that are places of descent.

But God transforms those into places of ascent.

And we see how that happens in David's heart in this psalm today.

So David does three things.

And he seeks glory, not relief.

Take refuge in the Lord immediately, compare the Lord to your circumstances, and seek glory, not relief.

Okay, first, take refuge in the Lord immediately.

Few of us have a category for this, for this idea that we can just take refuge in the Lord right now.

That's not something that we wait passively to receive, but it's something that we can just take right now.

Immediately, in the midst of your circumstances and the hardship that you're in, you can take refuge in the Lord.

Now, we don't do that.

Many of us think God doesn't offer refuge or God doesn't offer comfort because we've never actually tried to take refuge in the Lord immediately.

And the reason that we haven't is because we don't actually trust the character of God as he has revealed himself to us in Scripture.

But listen to David's first cry in this Psalm.

In Psalm 57, one, this is the way the Psalm begins.

David, remember, hiding in a cave.

This is what David prays.

Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge.

In the shadow of your wings I will take refuge till the storms of destruction pass by.

This is the first thing David does.

He calls on God's character.

Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me.

He repeats it twice.

Now, why does David cry out for God to be merciful to him?

Why does he feel like he has the right to request this from God and that God will certainly provide it?

That he will remain sheltered from the storm of destruction that is passing by.

It's because David understands what the character of God is that God has revealed to us.

In Exodus 34, Moses asks God to reveal his glory to him.

And God says some difficult to translate things that are basically like, hide in a rock and I'll show you my back.

And then God tells him his name.

God tells Moses God's name.

And here's what he begins with.

He says, The Lord the Lord, a God merciful and gracious.

The very first description that God gives of himself to us is merciful.

It is in his character.

It is his very nature to be merciful to us, to see us in difficult situations, and to rush in to help.

That is the nature and the character of God.

It's in the very name that he gives to himself.

Now you finish this.

You put in what you think it is.

How would you introduce God?

God, the Lord, the Lord, what are your adjectives?

I mean, really, what are your adjectives?

The Lord, the Lord, strict and perfectionist, waiting to hang me out to dry so that he can demonstrate how faithless I am.

The Lord, the Lord, absent and disinterested.

No matter how I cry out, I know he won't respond because he's got more important things to do.

The Lord, the Lord, lenient but impotent.

Sure, he cuts me some slack, but he's not going to help me when I'm really hung out to dry.

Listen to what the Bible says.

The Lord, the Lord, merciful and gracious.

So when David is in a pinch, what does he say?

God, be merciful to me.

Help me.

I'm hiding in this cage.

God, be a refuge for me.

And why does he feel like he can cry out to that?

Because he knows who God has disclosed himself as.

He knows who God has shown himself to be.

This is David, in a way, just calling upon the name of the Lord.

He's saying, God, be like you've said you are to me now.

Then David provides this picture of what the Lord's help looks like.

He says, In you my soul takes refuge.

In the shadow of your wings I will take refuge till the storms of destruction pass by.

What does it look like for the Lord to be merciful in the way that David is asking?

It looks like a mother bird who's over her nest in the middle of a storm.

And whatever the storm throws at them, she's holding her wings, this is, we'll pretend this is a nest, in a tree of trust.

And she's holding over her wings over the nest so that whatever the storm throws down, the snow, the hail, the rain, whatever is being thrown down on that would have fallen on the chicks, the mother bird is taking instead.

Whatever the chicks would have experienced instead, the mother bird just takes on her back.

How does the Lord intervene for us?

How does the Lord show his mercy to us?

He substitutes himself.

He takes on our burden.

That is the heart of God.

So you can know that and take refuge for your soul immediately in the protection of the Lord until the storms pass.

He will protect me, he will bring me through, he will be merciful to me.

You can know those things in your soul, no matter what storm you're in.

It's what the Bible says.

What is God like?

He is merciful and gracious.

So you can take refuge immediately.

David knows that.

Then he continues in 57, 2 through 3, he says, I cry out to God, most high, to God who fulfills his purpose for me.

He will send from heaven and save me, he will put to shame him who tramples on me, Selah.

God will send out his steadfast love and his faithfulness.

Okay, so in entrusting, in taking refuge in the Lord immediately, we call on the very character of God, which we see just in God's own name.

And then we entrust our souls, we entrust the outcome of our lives to God.

We place the outcome.

And that's exactly what David does here.

He cries out to the God most high.

So that means that David is saying, look, I'm crying out to you because whatever situation I'm in, you're more powerful than it.

You are the most high one here.

So you can bring your rescue.

And I cry out to you, and I entrust the purpose of my life to you, because you are the one that fulfills the purpose of my life.

So what does that mean?

That means that David, who's sitting in the cave, and you'd think, okay, the best thing that can happen to him right now is just getting out of the cave and Saul going away and being like, all right, forget chasing that guy.

But instead, what David says is, look, the outcome here isn't mine.

The outcome here belongs to God, and I'm going to entrust my soul to God with the outcome of the situation that I'm in.

And why is he so confident to do that?

Because he knows that God is most high, which means God is powerful enough to handle the outcome of the situation, which is half the good news.

Secondly, God will send out his steadfast love and his faithfulness.

God isn't like us.

He's not unreliable.

He's not there sometimes, away other times.

He is steadfast and faithful.

His love pursues and it always catches what it pursues.

So God is powerful, so we can entrust ourselves to him.

And we know that when we are entrusting ourselves to him, it is for our good.

Because what are we receiving?

His love.

What does God move in?

Faithfulness to us.

Find your refuge in the Lord immediately.

It's in his very character.

Next, David compares the Lord to his circumstances.

Says in Psalm 57, this is now verse 4, continuing on, he describes the situation that he's in.

And then he makes this comparison between the situation and the Lord.

My soul is in the midst of lions, he says.

I lie down amid fiery beasts, the children of man whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongues are sharp swords.

Look at the condition that he feels like his soul is in.

He's surrounded by fiery beasts.

That's just a way of saying, these beasts are out to consume me.

And the beasts, he's making this analogy, they're people.

And he says, instead of teeth, they have swords and arrows.

And their tongues, they're like swords to me.

They're just using their words to cut me down, and my soul feels surrounded by an incredible vulnerability.

I'm completely exposed.

I'm attacked from every side.

I don't feel like I have a place that I can go where I can find any refuge or any respite.

That is his circumstance.

He's surrounded.

He says of this time in verse 6 They set a fiery net for my steps.

He didn't have any fight left in him.

He was spent.

That's where this cry is coming from in David.

He sees his circumstances, he's surrounded, and he's just spent.

He's used up.

Look, I don't have any energy to keep doing this or to keep engaging with this.

That's the condition that David is in.

But then, in the midst of this circumstance, he interrupts himself.

And it's the strangest verse because it's completely out of rhythm with the text.

I quoted verse 4 and then I quoted verse 6.

His soul's in the midst of lions, his soul was bowed down.

But in verse 5, he interjects this kind of absurd interjection.

It feels like a total non sequitur to what he's in the flow of.

But in verse 5, he says, Be exalted, O God, above the heavens, let your glory be over all the earth.

In the midst of that circumstance that he's describing, be exalted, O God, above the heavens, let your glory be over all the earth.

Now this is David making a comparison.

And the comparison is between God and his circumstances, but not in terms of power.

That's not what, this isn't like when David said, You are God most high.

That's a comparison in terms of power.

The comparison he's making here is in terms of importance.

He looks out at his circumstances.

Then he says, What's it?

There's all these fears in those circumstances.

I'm not going to be able to make it out of the cave.

I'm that relationship that I thought I had with King Saul is definitely gone now.

The support that I thought I had from those people, I don't have anymore.

The people in the cave with me are pissed at me for leading them in here.

All of those fears that are surrounding him, he breaks out of those and he says, But God, you will be exalted.

Lord, your glory will be over all the earth.

In the midst of this circumstance, there's something more important happening here.

There's a deeper and higher story that's taking place.

And David grabs his heart and he makes himself make that comparison.

Be exalted, God.

Lord, you be glorified in the midst of this.

Lord, do your work here in this place.

He basically shouts out, hallowed be your name.

And you see what takes place there is a victory.

In the midst of all that losing, there's this spiritual victory that breaks through in David's heart, where he says, What's important here is the glory of the Lord.

And when that shift happens, it's the same shift that happens in Sultanitson in the gulag, where he shifts, and he said the slogan of the gulag was survive at all costs.

That was the slogan.

But he says it what that really meant was survive at whoever the cost was.

Survive no matter who else bore the cost.

Do you see?

Because it meant survive.

Take food that you have, no matter who else doesn't get it.

And that was the slogan: survive at all costs.

But then he encounters these Christians and he realized it's not survive at all costs.

It's survive and make sure that your soul is preserved.

There's something more important than survival here.

It's that your soul might be preserved through this gulag.

David does that same thing, but even greater.

Because he says it's not just survive anymore, it's not just overcome these problems anymore.

It's God, you be glorified in this.

And he makes the comparison between his circumstances and between God, and he says, what's important here, in terms of importance, what matters, what bears the weight.

It's that God would be exalted in this.

Now all of a sudden, you see, he can't lose anymore.

There's a shift that takes place in this.

One of the commentators that I read, and I loved this, he said, uh, what we see in this text is David begins to approach his problems as an adventure to be met rather than just problems to be solved.

Because all of a sudden, David can't lose.

Because what happens if David, if Saul comes in and kills David in the middle of the cave?

Well, David's goal was that God would be glorified in the situation.

Could God be glorified in that?

Absolutely.

Look, I don't know how.

We entrust our outcomes to the Lord.

But God could be.

And David had rested his heart that God would be glorified.

And this brings us to our third point.

He makes the, so I'll recap for us: take refuge in the Lord immediately, compare the Lord to your circumstances in terms of importance.

And then David begins to seek glory, not relief.

He seeks the glory of the Lord.

He no longer seeks his own relief.

And you know how he does that?

He sings.

He says, I want to participate in the glory of the Lord.

You know how we do that as his people?

We sing.

When we sing, it takes the glory of the Lord as this intangible thing, and all of a sudden we're experiencing it.

It's here.

We can hold it.

It comes into our ears.

It comes out of our mouth by our breath.

He begins to sing.

Listen to how this psalm ends.

57, 7 to 8.

My heart is steadfast, O God.

My heart is steadfast.

I will sing and make melody.

Awake my glory.

Awake, O harp and lyre.

I will awake the dawn.

Have mercy on me, O Lord.

Have mercy on me.

That's where he began.

Now my heart is steadfast.

I will sing.

I will seek God's glory in this.

When he seeks God's glory in it, not his own relief, all of a sudden he finds both.

God's glory becomes the highest outcome that he can achieve, and he discovers it in the singing.

Verses 9 through 10 I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples.

I will sing praises to you among the nations, for your steadfast love is great to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.

His heart begins to spill over.

Do you hear it in his words?

All of a sudden he's he's not even out of the cave yet.

And what is he saying?

Thank you, God, praise you, God, because I know I will sing praises to you among the nations.

You see how out of the cave his heart is at this point?

He's out among the nations singing the praises of the Lord.

He's thinking, this isn't even like, God, you've got to piece this together because if you don't, Israel's gonna fall apart.

David's well beyond Israel.

He's in front of the nations of the world saying, God is great, his glory will reign.

That's where David's heart has gone to in this in the song.

It's like if you were to walk up to him in the midst of this and be like, hey, David, I've got great news.

Saul is gone and he's no longer pursuing you.

He'd be like, okay, yeah, cool, that's great.

I'm kind of past that.

His heart is so uh it's so in the glory of the heavens at that point.

He's lifted his face up from his situation to the grandness of the journey that he's on.

I'm so bad at slogans.

I've been trying to come up with a slogan for this church for like four years.

Because I in this, I get this advice all the time.

Like, if you give everybody like a like a statement that we can say together, it can really help build some momentum around something.

It's like that's a great idea.

The best I can do is find your place in the story of redemption.

Let me try and flesh it out a little bit.

That's what David is doing here in his heart.

You see?

The situation that he's in, he's surrounded by terror on all sides.

He's in a cave, he's in a gulag, he's in 2020.

But his place in the story of redemption is that he is about to go before the nations and proclaim the glory of God.

That becomes his highest calling.

That's what he's doing in his heart.

That's my hope for all of you.

That you would find your place in the story of redemption.

You would say, I what am I first and foremost?

What's the most important outcome of my life?

That I would glorify God with it.

That you seek glory, not just relief.

His final verse, be exalted, O God, above the heavens.

Let your glory be over all the earth.

God describes himself, the Lord, the Lord, merciful and gracious.

That's who God is.

How does God glorify himself?

When you hear glory, you immediately think power, and that's a part of it.

He's very powerful.

The most.

But the way that God demonstrates that power is in his mercy and his graciousness towards you.

So when you're seeking the Lord's glory, you are seeking the manifestation of his mercy and graciousness.

David knew it because of God's name.

Because he was familiar with the scriptures and God introduces himself.

Hi, I'm the Lord the Lord, gracious and merciful.

And David's like, great, I'll just go ahead and take that at face value.

He said, you know, you've shown us your character.

You're like a mother bird that takes the pains so that your children can be preserved through it.

Well, what do we know compared to what David knows?

Not just that God would come and take the pains of the trials and tribulations of our lives, the things that come into our lives that we didn't deserve, we know that in the midst of our sin, the troubles that we cause, the pain that we cause others, God comes in and he comes over us to take the pain of our sin and the punishment of our sin.

The Lord, the Lord, merciful and gracious.

Pursue His glory.

Seek His glory, not relief from your circumstances.

What do you know about your circumstances?

God knows about your circumstances.

He will carry you through them.

This is where all of a sudden our lives can have this different flavor.

Christians' lives should have a different flavor in a season like this.

We should be like that doctor.

You sit down next to you and it's like, hey, don't you realize everything's crazy and this is the the world's falling apart?

How are you able to be so kind and present?

How are you able to discuss so open-mindedly?

How are you able to speak so directly and truthfully?

How see well there there's a different glory that I'm pursuing?

Where everything is being taken from us, well, we can lose nothing.

See, the Christian life all of a sudden takes on this flavor of an adventure.

That's a very different thing than just a series of problems.

The cave becomes a place of ascent.

Okay.

Take refuge in the Lord immediately.

So are you gonna wait to do that?

No?

The the great news about these things, you can do these all before the end of the service.

Take refuge in the Lord immediately.

Compare the Lord to your circumstances.

That'd be a great thing to do after we take communion.

And then seek his glory, not relief.

We're gonna sing.

So seek his glory.

Participate in it.

And you can have this whole thing wrapped up and be in a great spot spiritually.

Have ascended by the time we're out of the service today.

What a value.

Any questions?

Cool.

How do we practically take refuge in Yahweh?

How does God take our burdens and not just our sins?

Great question.

Prayer.

Prayer is how we practically take refuge in Yahweh.

That's what David does here.

His prayer wells up in him and it becomes a song.

Now, many of us don't take refuge in Yahweh because we pray without interacting with the reality of who he has revealed himself to be in his word.

And instead, we pray based on who we think he is.

So David begins his prayer and he's like, be merciful, God, be merciful, be like a mother bird who covers me in their wings until the storm of destruction passes.

If we were in a situation like that, we would pray to who we think God is instead of to who God is.

So we would pray, initially we just try and get God off our case, you know, because like we know that we were a part of the problem anyway, and he's just gonna be strict and angry towards us.

So it's like, God, look, I'm sorry I got myself in this situation again.

I know things have been kind of crazy lately, but if you help me through this, then I'm really gonna commit, I'm really gonna double down.

I don't, you're praying there, and the Holy Spirit intercedes on your behalf, so relax.

But but you're not really praying to the God as He's revealed Himself to us in His Word.

You're just praying to some different, you're praying to something else.

You're praying to something you made up in your mind.

The God who revealed himself to us in his word says, I'm merciful, I'm gracious, I'm abounding in steadfast love.

It's not just he has some, he's got steadfast love to spare.

You want some of it?

Just ask.

I got I got a whole gang of steadfast love.

So we pray to God as he has revealed himself to us in his word.

This is why I'm obsessed with Bible reading plans.

And it doesn't have to be like there's nothing magic about the way that this plan works or anything.

But it's that it it teaches, you get the vocabulary by time in the word to see who God actually is, because it's not intuitive.

It's not what, he's not what you think.

His ways aren't our ways.

Your ways are vindictive and fragile and easily offended and abandoned people because of it.

His ways are steadfast love, abounding in mercy, has grace to spare, substituting himself in your place so that you might be saved.

Those are his ways.

So you pray to him.

And how does God take our burdens and not just our sin?

Oh, that's a good question.

We've got to get two things.

One thing is sovereignty, so that means that God is in control of everything.

The second thing is that God is good to us in Christ.

Both of those have to be held together.

Now, a lot of times we use sovereignty to become like fatalists in our thinking.

But God is not a fatalist towards us.

He's not setting things in motion and then they happen inevitably according to his scheme.

God is loving and kind towards you, immeasurably so.

And you can know it because of Jesus, who gave, who, who loved you and gave himself up for you.

That's what it means to be a Christian, is to see Jesus do that and to put your faith in him for your salvation.

Now, how does that relieve your burdens?

Because they're a part of the unfolding story that is ultimately in his hands.

And so you trust him with the outcome.

You make the outcome his outcome, which is his glory.

All right, let's uh take communion together.

And remember that communion this morning, his body was broken, his blood was poured out.

So much more than a mother bird taking the storms that are passing by, he took the storm of God's wrath, that way we might rest peacefully under him.

And then let us seek his glory in song.

First Corinthians 11, 23 through 26, it says, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.

That the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

I left mine down there.

So we'll peel off the top, and we'll drink from the bottom.

Body of Christ.

We ask that you would be glorified in our singing.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.