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This morning, returning from our Sunday morning service, I was driving through West Boylston into Holden, and happened to see a car that was turned over. I was on the road. There was a crew that was riding it up, and we waited.
They pulled it over, and then you could see that there was pretty extensive damage. We were praying that no one was hurt, and if they were, that this would be an event that God would save them, or if they are a believer, that it would strengthen their faith.
Many of us see people suffering all around us. In fact, if you paid a little close attention to some of the songs we sing, almost every single one of them had something about suffering. And for a believer, how we can draw on the strength of our Lord as we go through trials.
And even as I was driving in this evening, there were rumbling sounds of thunder, there was a little bit of rain, and then there was a little bit of sunlight through that rain, and then finally there was a glorious rainbow.
Of course, it was playing hide-and-seek as we were driving into church, so it was fun trying to find where that rainbow was. Sometimes it was bright, most of the times it was a little faint. Today's message comes from Psalm 61, and we're going to examine what kind of a response a believer can have when going through trials.
All kinds of trials, but specifically we will be looking at the life of David as he goes through a really intense period of struggle. And the example that he gives us, and the inspired words of scripture, and how a believer can walk through these times.
I think as a Reformed Calvinistic Christian, I personally sometimes fall off the main path. Sometimes I have this view that God is sovereign, and don't view God rightly. And I can sometimes get a little more fatalistic, instead of faithful in the trial.
I can just think, well, God is in control, the trial is from his hand, and whatever happens, happens. Is that the right response? Or sometimes I can get a little stoic and say, well, I know God ordains everything, the flesh avails to nothing, and therefore the trial that I'm going through, let me just ignore it, because I have an inner peace and that's sufficient.
Is that the right response? Today we will see what a faithful response of a man of God is from the Psalms. And we will study what the Lord has to have in terms of a right response to trials. If you open up to Psalm 61, Simon had read this for us earlier, you will see, as with all the Psalms, that it is a beautiful poetry.
It's written with couplets, it's got parallelism, it's got same themes repeated multiple times. If you look at verse 1, hear my cry, O God. And then he repeats that again a little differently and says, give heed to my prayer.
He's crying out to God and he wants God to listen to him. If you look at verse 4, let me dwell in your tent forever. He's looking forward to staying with God, and then he says it again a little differently, let me take refuge in the shelter of your wings.
This is like from the Old Testament hymnody. This was written so that we could sing these Psalms to God. And we will look at some of the beauty of this Psalm as we study it this evening. But there is a strain that is there in this Psalm that I hope I can bring out this evening.
If you look at the first four verses, you hear the heart of a saint who is broken down and pleading earnestly before his God, because he is in a trial that he sees no hope, no light out of. And then as you see the second half of this Psalm, you see that something has changed, and this pleading to God becomes a full-blown praise for his answering.
In his time of need. Verse 1, it begins with this for the choir director on a stringed instrument, a Psalm of David. As you can see, it is a poetry. It was written out. It was meant to be sung. And poetry, as always, we need to kind of slow down to get the essence of what it means.
If you love poetry, you know you read it, and then you just think about it, and then you let that settle in. And for us, this Psalm has a story behind this, I believe, which I think will help us to relate to this life of David.
You know, sometimes when King David wrote a Psalm, he would say this is what was happening when I wrote this Psalm. So we can look back to those times of specific trials that David was relating to. In this particular Psalm, David does not specifically tell us this particular event happened.
But knowing the life of King David and the words of this particular Psalm, it seems quite likely that the events that happened in King David's life are found in 2 Samuel 14 -19, in that range. So I would like us to just take a quick review of those chapters.
I'll just give you the outline so you have it fresh in your mind as we come back and examine Psalm 61. So if you can just turn to 2 Samuel chapter 11, and we'll start there. You know, David was the king of Israel.
He was a man after God's own heart. But if there was anything that he could redo again, these would be the chapters from 11 -19. These were one of the darkest moments of his personal walk, his family walk, and his national walk.
In 11, the most infamous sin of David, he commits adultery with Bathsheba. And then he sends her husband to the death. He murders him. Chapter 12, he thought his sin was hidden, but the prophet of God comes and publicly confronts his sin before the whole nation.
So what he did in secret is now public. And in the end of chapter 12, he loses the child that was conceived through that sin. Chapter 13, you have an even more heinous sin of incest in his own family.
Brother committing sin against his sister. And then in the end of chapter 14, you have murder within the family. One brother rises up against another, executing private justice. And then in chapter 14, you have the son who is estranged because King David as a king would not execute justice the way it should be done.
And you have a son that is separated from the father, and then we see him restored, although not biblically. And then in chapter 15 is where this particular event starts to kick in. You have King Absalom, the son of the king, who now has risen up in revolt against his father.
He conspires, he misleads the people of Israel, and he now wants to take over the throne. And what happens in the end of chapter 15 is that King David is told that his son has announced himself king. He's coming to Jerusalem from Hebron, which is in the south, where he has called all the people to himself.
And King David now is forced to leave Jerusalem in a hurry. He and a few trusted men leave the city in order to avoid a bloodshed. And then his son Absalom commits further crimes in the city just to alienate his father away from him.
Chapter 16, you see the shame publicly as King David is forced to leave. People throw sand on him, abuse him, and he's got his head bowed down as he leaves. And in chapter 17, you see that he still has some who are on the side of David and frustrate the counsel of Absalom because right in chapter 17, if the Lord would not have turned Absalom's heart, King David would have perished right there.
But King David is now away from the city. He is going northeast across the Jordan, and he's away from his country and from his land. And then chapter 18 and 19, you will see that the battle goes on and the result of this rebellion that happened against King David.
That's the background. That's what's happening in King David's life as Psalm 61 is written. And we will look back at those events to see how David relates to those specific trials that he's going through and the specific response that he must have, even though it is a trial where there is no real clear path out of it.
So today's title of today's message is Pleading to Praise the King. So David is, we're going to see, in an abject place where he has no solution to his problem, and he's going to start begging and pleading with his father, God himself.
And that begging and that pleading is going to propel him to praise. So if you are in a place of trial, I'm sure all of us have gone through trials. This is the attitude of a Christian prayer warrior.
What should you do in the midst of your trial? No matter how diverse they are, we will see how the Christian must pray on his knees before God and how that prayer must necessarily be transformed into praise.
So the first four verses, I will just call this, will you plead with your sovereign king? Will you plead with your sovereign king when trials get down to you? When trials get down to you or when they get you down, will you plead with your sovereign king?
Verse 1 says, Hear my cry, O God, give heed to my prayer. Hear my cry, my cry. That's the only word that David uses here to express his begging, his pleading, his entreaty before God. And that's the tone of verses 1 through 4.
And this second Samuel that we just read, what were some of the trials that were in David's life? It was a family situation, a relationship that was broken. But it wasn't just a broken relationship. It was like the equalizer was turned to full high.
It was full blast. Not only was there just a rift in a family, not just was somebody not talking with him, he had his own son intent on getting his head. I mean, I'm used to people here, you know, even suing within the family, you know, because I want the rights, inheritance, this, that.
But very rarely do we have somebody going out with a gun, you know, to kill you within the family. But that's the extent of this trial that David is. And if you look at the, go back and read second Samuel, you will see that it wasn't two-sided.
It wasn't like David just wanted to shoot him back and whoever shot first won. King David loved Absalom, his son. And you will see in chapter 18 how he cries when some evil befalls his son. But his son was out there.
He had led the people against the king, and he was an open revolt. King David was also far away from his land. He was the king, the highest man in the nation. He was in a palace. He was ruling this nation of Israel.
And now he is in the wilderness, separated from all the comfort of home and familiar places. And in fact, his job as a king, he was away and in the desert, separated from his city, Jerusalem. He was also not just far from his palace, so it's not like you just lost your home.
One thing that was very dear to King David was the Ark of the Covenant, the tabernacle, so he could go before the Lord's presence and worship. And here he is away from the tabernacle, and you will see in the psalm how his heart cries out.
And then there are two things, two elements to this trial which make it exceptionally hard. The first one is, you know, sometimes you're in a trial where you know what you need to do. This is what I need to do.
It takes some time, and I'm going to be at it until I get out of it. But David here is chased by his own son. What should he do? Should he go back and fight his son? He loves his son. He doesn't want to kill him.
He leaves because there is really nothing he can see he can do. It's a very complex circumstance in which he is in. He does not know exactly what the right way out of this trial is. And the second aspect of this trial that makes it even harder is he had a role to play in what has come about.
It's his own sin that has laid the seeds to what has actually come to pass. And sometimes our trials where we have ourselves caused those circumstances are often the most difficult to deal with because it's not as straightforward as saying, I'm just going to do this and get away with it.
What we have done sometimes comes back, and we have to pay the price for our sin. So as we go through the Psalm, you want to think about some of the trials that maybe you are going through right now. No matter how intense, no matter how small, there is a certain path that a faithful child of God must take, and it begins with a cry.
What you have here from David is a stark call. Look at the way in which the Psalm just opens. Hear my cry, O God. No other preface to it. He says, I am crying out to you, and I need you to listen to me because this is a trial, this is a trouble, this is a problem that I see no solution out of, and you need to hear my cry.
And I began by saying that we as Calvinists, as Reformed people, need to be thinking right about God in the midst of our trials. Sometimes I get to talk to a lot of charismatics or people with charismatic leanings, and often talk to them about what not to do in the midst of their trials.
Sometimes people just do this name-it-and-claim-it thing and say, I'm in a trial, I need to get out of it, and I'm just going to ask God, and He has to answer me. And I tell them that's not the sovereign God of the Bible, the God who is the King, who ordains and executes exactly according to His purpose.
However, there is something that I think we need to learn from our friends in terms of practice, because we know that God is King, we know that He is sovereign on His throne, but He is also our Father and, the Bible says, our Friend.
He, just as much as He is King and ruling over the throne, He is also our Father in the midst of our trouble. He not only brings those trials into our lives, but He wants to walk with us through those trials.
Those trials have a purpose, but it is not that God just ordains them and says, well, I've given you everything and you just walk through this. He wants us to plead with Him, to go before His throne. We know that God will bring us through, but how do we come through those trials?
Do we plead? Do we beg? Do we fall before this great God, who is also our Father and Friend? An example of this would be as a child. Sometimes when we learn cycling or skating or skiing, whatever it is that you learn when you're young, you fall down.
It seems to be a necessary part of learning any skill, and when you fall down, you say, well, I will fall down this time. When I've recovered enough, I'm going to try back again. I'll fall a little less, and eventually I will master this art of balancing on two wheels or one wheel or whatever else people balance on these days.
But a part of growing up is getting hurt, and part of our sanctification that we have is you go through trials. 1 Peter talks about how trials shape the life of a believer, and there is a growing up that happens in the midst of our trials, and there's another aspect of trials.
When you're a little one, all the little ones here, if you can listen to me, you know there's one thing you do not wish your parents would do to you, which is spank. And one thing the parents wish you would never do, which is disobey.
But that's part of growing up as a child. There is this thing inside us called sin that we just want to do those things that are not right, and the parents' responsibility is to spank and correct us so that we would obey them, right?
And likewise for us as grown-ups, sometimes the Lord brings chastising into our lives. Those are painful, and we don't want them. But when you can recognize them as a result of your sin, that God is doing something in your lives, it is good.
We can see the purpose that God has, but in the midst of those chastisement, in the midst of those trials of growing up, we want to recognize that God is still our Father who loves us. He hasn't just spanked us and said, you know, go time out.
He is with us, and His arms are underneath us. And the response that God expects of us is to cry out to Him in the midst of our trial. And how do we want to cry out? Sometimes I have this image of God sitting on the throne.
I go before His presence, and I say, you know, you've got to have protocols of the royal throne. I don't want to say something unsophisticated or uncultured that would be unacceptable. You're probably thinking in your mind, well, I probably don't do that.
I'll tell you what I mean by this. Sometimes we have this view of what God has in the end so much that He as a king has ordained all these things, and you know it is wrong to question God for what He is doing, that sometimes we just bypass the process of going through those trials.
What God expects from us is the same response that every child has when he is in trouble. When the child is in trouble, it goes before his father and says, Dad, I need help. You are falling down. You are hurting.
You haven't actually figured out how this is all going to end, but you know that when you cry out, your dad is going to come and pick you up and hold you in his arms while you cry. And that kind of a response is what God expects when we are in the midst of our trial.
What pleases God more than when you would say, my first response in my trial is to look up and cry to God? I'll tell you that it reflects the love that you have for God as your father. Because if I were to...
Most men, we are guilty of this. We have a trial. We get our spreadsheet out, our pros and cons, and write things out and say, okay, this is how I'm going to solve it. Nothing wrong with that, with trying to address the trial.
But if God is foremost in my thoughts, the first response should be like that of a child and say, I cry out to you, God, because you are the hope that I have. It's not just my own strength, my own ability.
Sometimes you will see that the trials will flow you because God sometimes takes our legs out beneath us so we will recognize our full and utter dependence upon God. But no matter how big the trial is, your love for God must be manifested by a full, stark, complete dependence upon him.
Now, King David, the Bible calls, was a man of God's own heart. He was a warrior physically. He actually fell Goliath. He fought many battles for King Saul. He won over territories that seemed impossible.
The Philistines were terrified of him. But he was not just a warrior in the physical sense. He was also a warrior in his prayer. He modeled for us many of these heartfelt cries to God in the midst of a trial.
He just showed what it means to pray earnestly, fervently, faithfully. And when I talk about prayer, I want to just caution you on something. Sometimes I see people just praying just so people can see them.
Sadly, it's not just from the New Testament times of Jesus. But the prayer that I'm talking about when I talk about crying, when I'm talking about fervent pleading with God, there's nothing wrong with praying in public.
But what I'm mostly referring to is that time in your closet when you're alone, when you are praying to God in private, how do you pour out your hearts before him? And one example we will see at the end if we have time is Jesus himself.
And the one specific event in Jesus' life we will look at is Jesus in the garden. Just imagine the agonizing prayer that Jesus, God himself, prays. When you think about God knowing the end and he knows the trial, the extreme difficulty that is ahead of him a few hours away, separation from God the Father, drinking the cup of his wrath, and he here pours out his heart before him.
And we will learn from Jesus Christ and from King David here how we must do that and why it pleases God the Father. So the first thing that we look at is this cry, this heartfelt cry before God the Father showing our utter dependence upon him.
The second verse we have here is from the end of the earth I call to you when my heart is faint. And David here is just articulating the need that he has. What is this particular trial that he is going through?
Let's just go back to 2 Samuel for a little bit. Where is King David? We already saw that physically he is separated when he is talking about end of the earth. He is no longer in his capital city Jerusalem.
He is not even in his country. He is crossed over the Jordan. He is literally from the end of the earth as he can see it when he is calling out to God. But it is not just a physical separation. Here he is at what we would call his wits end.
He has come to a point of mental extremity where he really doesn't see a way to plan his solution. He is literally at the end of his wits. And for him figuratively also he is away from the tabernacle.
Spiritually the center of his worship was in Jerusalem. It is not that he didn't think God was with him. That is why he knew God was with him which is why he prays to God while he is separated from the tabernacle.
But he wants to go back and worship God in the tabernacle and he does not know if he can do that yet. And he is at the end of the earth. And again inwardly he is in an emotional turmoil. His family has risen up against him.
One whom he loves. There is absolutely no way that he can see that he can reconcile his son to himself. And he does not know how to even approach this problem. And he is literally at the end of the earth as he calls out to God.
He is separated and torn from all that he considered stable. Sometimes when you go through trials the question I want to ask you is what are times when your ability or your will is near its end? What kind of trials tire you out and take the fight out of you?
Many a time when I think of trials I think of those trials that I have already walked through. Those trials where I have learned my lessons. Where I know when to get my shield out and be ready before it starts to pick up intensity.
Was anybody here? No, I don't think we have any Mozambique people. The example I like to give is we were in Mozambique and we were in this tent group gathering. And it was just our break before we were.
Oh no, Simon is here. Thank you. You remember this thing when we were getting prepared for the afternoon sessions with the men and the women and the children. And I think we were eating lunch maybe. And this guy who walked in, we believe he was mad.
He looked demon possessed. He had mud all over his hair. Walking around spitting, kicking and doing all weird stuff. And when something like that happens, especially when you are in a mission front, such a kind of trial just gears you up.
You want to get up and do something. Here is most likely an unbeliever. Whether mad, whether demon possessed, I don't care. Our responsibility is to bring the gospel and it just gets you and you just go.
I don't know what our response will be if a mad man comes here and starts spitting and screaming and yelling at all of us. But I hope we will do the same response which is praying to God and ministering to whether a crazy man or a man who hates Christians.
But there are certain trials that just get you up. You have gone through them before or you know that you are on the battle front and you just rise up to the occasion. And then there are other trials.
Maybe certain trials that you are going through. Long term trials which just wear down on you. You have been through this for a period of time and you know it is not going away. Like Joseph when he was 14 years in prison.
I don't know how many times he would have cried his heart out before God. Job when he was suffering. Intensity, extremely painful. There are certain trials that And then for me personally, it is okay if somebody gets a hammer and hits me on my head.
Because I know the hammer is coming. It is plain and visible. But sometimes in your family, someone just comes and gives you a hug and counts your ribs and slides that little knife between your ribs when you are not watching.
And those things just deflate you quickly. There are certain trials. I don't know which trials are the ones that you struggle with the most. They will be different than mine. But there are times when you come literally to the end of your rope.
When you think of that mountaineer who is hanging from that rope that has come to the very end. His hands are growing numb, frostbitten. And he knows he can't hold too much longer. And that is sometimes spiritually where we are when our trials have overwhelmed us.
And we know that we can't hold too much. The mountaineer may be thinking of the depth through which he is going to fall and the painful death that awaits him at the bottom. But David here, as he is losing grip on life, he is not as concerned with his bottom that he is going to hit.
But he is more concerned about this God who seems to be fading away from him. He says, from the end of the earth I call to you when my heart is faint. The word faint here is overwhelmed. We could call it depressed.
He is just unable to deal with the circumstance. And he sees God now fading away at the distance. And he says, that is one thing I just can't let go. And I am going to cry out to you. And I am going to call to you in the midst of my trial.
Before we move further, I want to just point out one more thing. When King David is in this terrible, terrible trial and when he writes this psalm I want you to notice how God is pervasive throughout this psalm.
The problem that he is going through is framed completely with reference to God throughout. Verse 1, hear my cry, O God, you give heed to my prayer. Verse 2, I call to you. You lead me to the rock. You have been a refuge, a tower of strength.
Let me dwell in your tent. You have heard my vows. The struggle that he sees, he does not see it in isolation. Just, woe is me, I am having a trouble and I can't solve it. Will somebody just come and comfort me?
He says, I have a trouble and I see this trouble in relationship with God. His problem, the way he defines it is in reference with God. He sees his utter and complete need for God as he talks about his trial and the way he frames it.
Sometimes our problems get to be separated. I go through a trial, especially if it is a new trial. I don't name it a trial. I just see something and I say, what do I need to do with this? I am maybe halfway through it before I realize, I should have started calling upon God right at the beginning.
But it is never too late. Whenever you realize it, I just stop down and say, God, I need your help. Once I can frame it and say this is a trial that the Lord has put me through, it becomes a lot easier for me to say, let me call upon God.
Let me hear for his answer. Scott walked in and is not here. I have a humorous illustration of what happened. There was once when I was walking Scott's dog for a couple of days when he was away. Then he came back.
I called him and said, I forgot to return your key. Can I just return it? I went through his cell phone machine. I said, I will just leave it in anyway. I went inside. I turned the key as usual. But this time I heard beep, beep, beep.
He wasn't expecting me. He had the alarm turned on. I just froze there for a few seconds saying, I don't have an alarm. I have no idea what happens after this. I know the password to our church, but nothing much other than that.
I'm thinking, I know if they come here we have to pay. There must be some consequence to this. Then it just gets faster. I felt like I was in a movie where the bomb is ready to explode. Your brain freezes over.
Thankfully they had the number of that security company. I called them quickly. Why would they listen to a thief who just broke in? I don't know, but they did. They said, what street are you on? I'm drawing a blank.
I tell them the street. They say, what's the number of the house? Run right back. That's what happens in trials, right? I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but I did what I could think of. The end of the story is, no, the police did not come to the house.
Let's say something about the company. End of the day, it all worked out fine. But the point of the story is, this is a funny illustration, but many a time the trials hit us like that. I can't think straight when I'm in the trial.
My first response is just trying to take care of the problem as quickly as possible. But what pleases God the most is our calling out to him in our trial. When we recognize that God put us in that circumstance for a particular reason, we want to always frame our problem with reference to God and be able to look up to God in our trial.
Because what normally happens, sometimes it takes a while before we recognize the trial. Beginning of most trials, most days if you catch me, I'm upbeat, I'm strong, I'm able to deal with different things that come my way.
End of the day, if you normally call me in the evening, you may not get a very good response. I come back home, I'm tired, I normally have dealt with different things, and I just want to eat and sleep.
Some days the trials are a little harder than usual. Those days I definitely don't want to talk, because sin will not be lacking when I speak. But looking for sleep, looking for food, those are okay. But sometimes they can become an escape in and of themselves.
When I'm just tired, let's say, I've had a couple of days of intense trial, I've been working on something, it's okay to go get a nap. Because if you haven't slept, if you haven't rested, you can't think straight through your problem.
But we don't want to look up to this food or sleep or a movie or anything else to just keep distracting us from this trial. We don't want to make them our secondary help. We want to make sure that our primary source of help is God and God himself.
So no matter what trial comes through us, we want to be looking to the source of our solution, which is God. Let me just read something for you very briefly from Calvin. We think of Calvin as a scholar, highly intellectual, very logical, very precise, and he is all of that.
But he was something more than that. If you've read some of Calvin's works on institutes, and especially on prayer, you see the heart of this man who just throbbed, not just with the knowledge of this high and mighty God, but with this intensely personal God with whom we must make do.
He talks about prayer. He says, when we come to prayer, put aside all your distractions. Focus on God and pray, because that's the hardest part for most of us when we start. But then he says something.
He says, I do not here insist on a mind so disengaged as to feel none of the gnawings of anxiety. On the contrary, it is by much anxiety that the fervor of prayer is inflamed. Thus we see that the holy servants of God betray great anguish, not to say solicitude, when they cause the voice of complaint to ascend to the Lord from the deep abyss and the jaws of death.
All of us can recognize those periods of intense trial where our prayers become a lot more personal, a lot more intense, a lot more fervent. Now what exactly does King David pray in this psalm? In the end of verse 2 he says, lead me to the rock that is higher than I.
Lead me to the rock that is higher than I. The Bible calls us overcomers. The trials that you go through, sometimes you may not physically overcome. You may sometimes be under that trial for a very long period of time.
But are those trials, what are those trials there for? Sometimes I have this attitude. Should I even look for help in the midst of this trial? I mentioned earlier about fatalists and stoics. I can sometimes see the trial and say, well, this trial has come into my life.
I'm just going to have my inner peace like a stoic. I'm going to say, well, this can do its job as long as it wants and I'm just going to go about my own business. Is that the right response to the trial?
King David, if he thought that way, he could have said, well, my son is following me. I'm just going to take a stroll along the river Jordan and if Absalom decides to follow me, well, that's the end of my life and I will just stay here.
That's not the response King David had because we will see in a little bit. He had a purpose that God had called him to. He was the king of Israel and he had a duty to execute and here was a rebel who had stood up against him and yes, King David did not want to fight him but there was something that King David needed to do and he did not know exactly what.
But at this moment in time, he needed God to lead him because the way this verse is written out when he says, lead me to the rock that is higher than I, he is saying, I am unable on my own to pick up myself and climb this rock that is ahead of me.
I don't know if he was crossing from Jerusalem, coming down over the Jordan and now climbing up to the hills on the other side, whether he was seeing a physical rock and saying, I need to be in a place of safety.
He might well have but he is now, if you read in 2 Samuel 17, you see how the people were throwing dust at him, cursing him and he was dejected, he was depressed, he was weary and he probably didn't have the strength in himself to make that journey through and not just physically but also in terms of how to walk out of this trial and he needs his God to lead him to that rock that was higher than himself that would provide him that help that he needs and this is one of the lessons that we learn through our trial.
When you cannot walk through the trial you can know that God can lead you through the trial. Sadly we come to that point where God cuts off our feet and those are the times we look up to God for our help.
The Bible never says that is the only time you need to call for help from God through all of life especially through trials whether you are able to deal with them or not you ought to rely upon God in all that you do and when you do that you glorify God in the midst of your trial whether it is small or big.
But when you don't learn from those trials that take your feet away from you that when you are in the time and in a place where you cannot help yourself as you fall down before God the next time a trial comes when you think you have it under control remember what pleases God is to ask for his help to rely on his strength as you walk through it.
And that will not just help you through the trial but it will sanctify you the way God intended you to go through that trial. We read about the rock that is higher than I and most of us should naturally think of Jesus Christ in the way in which he is our rock for a believer.
Today we have a lot more of the revelation of scripture than King David had. And one of the things I always think about when I go through my trial is the end of Romans chapter 8. This morning in Sunday school Pastor Steve talked about how all things work together for good to those who love God and have been called according to his purpose.
And for us as believers if God has saved us from sin and death and hell if he has granted us salvation will he not also help us through those times of trial. In verse 32 of Romans 8 Paul says he who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all how will he not also with him graciously give us all things.
And then in verse 35 he says who can separate us from the love of God. And then in verse 37 he says no in all of these things which was tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger or sword in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
So when you have this trial when you look back at the point where Christ was your rock when he saved you from sin and from hell he will continue to be your rock in the midst of your trial no matter how hard they are.
So we've seen so far how you cry out to God how you formulate your need before God and then the way you ask for help in the present. But David doesn't just stop there. He goes back in verse 3 and he says for you have been my refuge, a strong tower against the enemy.
You know when you are in the midst of your trial sometimes the trial crowds all other thoughts out. They come so close that we can't see beyond it. Sometimes the clouds are so thick that you can't see the sun above it.
But in the Bible we are told over and over again we are reminded of what God has done in the past. So David here looks a little back in his own life and says you have been my refuge a strong tower against the enemy.
Israel was told to remember how they were saved as slaves out of Egypt. Remember how God delivered you with a mighty arm and that should make you think of who God is how he is able to save you and how you are to relate to God.
We as believers need to remember what Christ has done for us. We remember constantly this work of Christ on the cross and how we as Gentiles have been grafted in and how we should be eternally grateful for this work of Christ on our past and for us as individual believers.
When you look back at the faithfulness of God how has God been your rock in the past. How has he been your refuge and your fortress. That should help you remember that same God who helped you in the past.
The same God who is true in the scriptures does not change. We as a people are forgetful people. I am a forgetful person. Sometimes I don't even remember the things God has done for me this past week enough to keep thanking him the next week.
But the Bible tells us we ought to remember what God has done and that helps us as we face this trial that you are going through which may be different than the ones you have gone through before. David uses two attributes of God here.
One he calls God his refuge. A definition of the word refuge is a place of safety a place to resort to. It could be a city if you were hounded you could go there and be protected. But most of the time the word refuge talks about God himself how he is a place of safety.
So children when you are playing a game of catch there is a place where you can go and be on base. Nobody can touch you. That is the concept of refuge. No matter what problem assails you or chases you or comes after you God is our refuge.
He is also called a fortress. So you have come to a place of safety but the volley of arrows has not stopped yet they are coming at you. But God is your fortress he is your protection. No matter how fiery the darts of the enemy might be they cannot pass through the protection that God gives in Christ.
And if you go back to David what do you think he could be imagining when he thinks of God as refuge and a fortress. I don't think he is thinking of the cities of walled cities that he hid from King Saul because some of the walled cities that he protected and thought they would protect him decided to give him up to King Saul.
The fortress that he is thinking of is God himself. The verse says you have been my refuge you have been my fortress. I can think of no other example in King David's life than the time when he was in the cave when King Saul was chasing him with all these men and a scant few inches separated King David from King Saul.
All King Saul had to do was turn around. And David had sworn not to kill Saul so he could have just turned, taken his sword and cut David's head off at that time. But God was his refuge. The distance was probably just a few inches.
But God had protected him at that time and many other times. And David knew that God who protected him through those times is still the same God who will protect him through the time that he is going through.
So when we go through times when trouble seems just too intense we want to think of this God who has been our refuge and our fortress. What kind of trouble is there that God cannot protect us from? What is there?
Financial problems, relational problems the worst kind inner temptations, fears. What is there that God cannot protect us from? Absolutely nothing. Because God who has demonstrated himself as the most powerful sovereign king who has saved his people in the past.
The God who has saved you from sin and death and hell. The God who has proven himself time and again in your past is the same God and he is able to save you through the time of trial that you are going through.
And you as a believer as you go through the trial you want to look back at what God has done because that will give you great confidence in terms of praying in the time of your need. And how does David continue to pray?
Look at verse 4. He says let me dwell in your tent forever. Let me take refuge under the shelter of your wings. See when we go through trials most of us want the trial to go away because trials are not a fun thing.
And we don't want those trials. If you really are looking for trials maybe there is something wrong with us because trials are not good. We don't want to say well Lord I am done with one, give me one more.
He knows when to give you the trials. But when you want the trials to go away how do we look for those trials to go away. What is our ultimate solace the ultimate comfort in the midst of the trial. See the problem.
Just going away is not sufficient. Look at the way King David prays. He says let me dwell in your tent forever. Let me take shelter or refuge under the shelter of your wings. We don't exactly know where King David was in this whole situation in 2 Samuel.
Maybe Absalom the battle is going on with Absalom and Joab. Maybe he is thinking of walking back towards Jerusalem. He is not thinking my palace the cool place where I can sleep where I can take a bath out of this dust where I can once again see my family and be in a place of comfort.
That is not what King David is talking about. When he is talking about tent he is most likely talking about the tabernacle and the wings is probably talking about the cherubim that are on top of the ark of the covenant where he can be in the presence of God.
And he can worship God when the problem is beyond. So let's look at this a little more closely. When he is talking about the tent and the wings of God he is actually thinking of the covenant of God the protection of God that God has promised to his people and the place of God where he is to be worshipped.
And he wants to go back and stay, dwell, rest, find refuge under him. But it is not just this covenantal God has promised this protection upon me and therefore I just rely upon him in an impersonal way.
He is also looking while he is still away from Jerusalem that he would find his comfort and rest in the presence of God under his immensely personal and favorable comfort that comes from God. Likewise, you and I when we look through a problem we ought not just be looking at ok, how do I get through this problem.
How do I overcome it and get over it. I've got the new ways of looking at this problem and I can deal with it. That's not the point of sanctification through a trial. The point of every trial is to make us conform more and more into the image of Christ.
But that we would come closer to our God through those trials. If trials, for an unbeliever trials can very easily take them down the path of bitterness. And even for believers sometimes it is very hard when you go through trials to have them take the focus away from God.
But the right response, a faithful response is to say, through this trial I need to be dwelling in your tents, I need to find that refuge under the shadow of your wings. Let me just read a few verses from Colossians 3 it says, if you have been raised with Christ seek those things that are above where Christ is seated at God's right hand and set your minds on things above and not on things of the earth.
For you died and your life has been hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ who is your life appears you also will appear with him in glory. You see, when you go through your trials and instead of having your mind and your focus, attention all upon the trial if you are looking up to Christ in the midst of your trial it does two things for you.
Firstly, it gives you great, great confidence to pray in the midst of your trial. Let's just go back to David for a moment. What do you think he could have prayed for? He could have prayed, God kill my son.
He could have prayed, God just let me go to another country just make me a king in another land. None of those make sense, I mean how should King David pray. But there is one sure way he can pray in the midst of the trial when he doesn't see the solution to his problem.
And that is to be in the presence of God and to find the comfort in God's presence and for God to solve his problem in his own time. And when we look at problems, especially the complex ones when we frame them with reference to God when we say it is God in you that I look for solution in this trial it makes your prayers a lot more fervent.
When you are looking through just the superficial immediate solution you can only pray for so long and say, well God, I need this help me, I need this Lord, help me. I am overwhelmed, Lord help me. Nothing wrong with that, we saw in the beginning we want to cry out to God for those trials.
But when you can frame your problem in the broader picture of what God intends to do through that trial you can just keep praying on and on and on because God will both grow you through that trial and he will indeed deliver as we will see so far.
What we have seen is when you come through an intense period of trial you want to cry out. You want to come like a child fervently before the presence of God. You don't want to bypass that. I think for me that is one thing I need to be careful about.
We know God is sovereign but we want to still come as a child before God's throne demonstrating our utter dependence upon him. We want to talk about our need before this God whom we serve and we want to ask him for help in the present.
And as we do that we want to remember what God has done in the past look at his attributes that you need to rely on in this particular case we saw refuge and the tower of strength that he is. And you always want to formulate your problem especially on the longer term problems in terms of the eternal solution because you can sometimes come over this trial but not gain what God intended for you through that trial.
And in the end of verse 4 King David says Sela and that is normally the pause to meditate on what was already said before. And if you look at the psalm of David until now he has been crushed, he is pleading he is begging, he is remembering and asking God for help.
And as he just stops here and says Sela it just catapults him into a totally different mindset in verses 5 -8 if you think King David was doing well under all these circumstances and praying to God we just need to read verses 5 -8 to see how his mind changes, you see one thing about prayer.
We all know prayer changes things God in his sovereignty has ordained for prayer to be the means by which we ask for God and receive from him the help that we need to receive in our time of need. Why?
I don't know, God just said pray and he loves to hear the prayers of his children and he acts but more than just the trial that God acts upon the chief thing upon which God acts is us. We speak to God in prayer and God speaks to us in the midst of our trial through his word.
If you have not heard from God in the midst of your trial maybe you and I ought to be listening more to God. And I think that is something he changes in the life of King David right here when he says Sela I think we are pretty much out of time but I will give you a very quick outline of what happens in 5 -8 so you can see what changes in the life of David and what ought to change in our lives as we bring our entreaty before God.
The second half would be titled will you praise your sovereign king when God lifts you up internally or sometimes even when he doesn't lift you up the first verse 5 you see how King David praises him for his gift.
In verse 5 it says for you O God have heard my vows. You have given me the heritage of those who fear your name. There is a great confidence that you see in verse 5 while King David was falling and pleading and begging in verse 5 he now says I know that you have heard my vows.
It's not just the hearing that God is omniscient. He knows everything that is heard. This is a specific hearing for believers where God hears with an intent to favorably respond and he knows confidently that God has heard his prayer.
If you look at if you look at 1 John 5 -14 it says this is the confidence that we have toward him that if we ask for anything according to his will he hears us. And it is not just an academic scripture verse.
I'm just going to write it down and God said it and I'm just going to keep repeating it until I believe it. There is this subjective assurance that King David has in the midst of his trial that God has indeed answered his prayer not just as he answered it he has given him something that is extremely weighty.
He has given him the inheritance of those who fear his name. And this is the kind that no matter how this trial turns out how long it takes for him to get out of it he can see what God has given him in and for you in Christ that you can say I know my God has heard my prayer.
I know he has answered it and I know that he will deliver me through this trial in his time and in his way. And I have already received from him all that I need to walk through this trial. And that's the way that prayer changes you.
I don't know how many of you have had this experience where you start praying because you are just broken and then right in the middle of your prayer either God changes the way you think about the problem.
I mean I have had this experience where you pray because someone has hurt you really bad. And as you pray you just are filled with love for this person who has hurt you and you just finish that prayer and go and hug that person and don't hold what they have done against you because God has just done something in your heart that you could not have naturally brought out yourself.
Specific answer to a prayer. But more importantly when King David is talking about an inheritance he is talking about the weighty things that God has already given you and for you in Christ. He has given you salvation.
In Ephesians 1 we talk about all the blessings. Every spiritual blessing in Christ is already given to you is lavished upon you. And that's what we have as children of God in Christ. And that's the sense of confidence that David receives in this prayer as he prays his cry to God.
And now it becomes a praise. It's no longer God give me, it is God you have heard me, you have given me. He is boasting of what God has done for him even though he has not yet been delivered out of this trial.
You see these types of Psalms where David has extreme hope, not the kind of hope that says I wish this would happen but knowing that God will deliver him through this trial. In verse 6 and 7 you see the way he now prays for deliverance, he says Prolong the life of the king, may his years endure to all generations.
May he be enthroned forever before God appoint steadfast love and faithfulness to watch over him. He was grateful for the gift that God has already given to him by hearing his prayer and answering him.
He now says I know what God wants in this trial. How do I mean? Who is the king? Prolong the life of the king. God has anointed King David to be the ruler of Israel. He knows God's purpose in terms of what he ought to do.
He knows even though he as a human being has sinned, failed miserably, brought some of this upon himself. There is a purpose to which God anointed King David as king and God will accomplish that purpose through that office that he has given him.
And he prays now boldly, confidently for God to do that. How he will do it he does not know but he says Lord you prolong the life of the king, may his years endure forever. The enthroned talks about an abiding in God's presence and once again it's mixed not just this temporal rule over the kingdom but that he would stay in the presence of God forever.
And in fact there is a prophecy right here about Christ where the king who would come in his lineage will indeed rule forever and ever eternally. And look at the attributes he talks about now he says Lord you appoint steadfast love and faithfulness.
He is no longer looking for just God to be his refuge and his tower of strength. He now wants God his loving kindness, his mercy and his truth or his faithfulness to watch over him and to be guarding him as he will come back and rule as a king both upholding the holiness and righteousness and faithfulness of God and also on the mercy and the love and the kindness.
Those are the two attributes that the king needed in order to rule faithfully and he needed at this time in order to come through this trial. And one thing you want to be thinking about as you formulate your own prayers is there are some times in your trial where what you want to ask for is very straight forward.
There is a biblical command saying this is right this is wrong. And if there is something that is wrong you ask for what is right. That was a tongue twister. What I mean is if you are struggling with a sin for example you can boldly ask God to say Lord help me overcome this sin.
There is no complicated two ways about it and you can know that God would answer that favorably because he wants you to overcome sin. He doesn't want you to stay in sin. There are specific things in the bible that you can just boldly pray knowing in your mind that this is right.
There are other things which you have general principles in the scriptures from goodness is it right to ask for something that is good for health for finances if you are without a job those are good things to ask for biblically and you pray for them.
There are other things like in David's life where the situation is very complex there is not just one sin threading through that you can just walk back and find what to pray for. There are so many things that have just come together and you have absolutely no idea where what began and you don't even know how God should solve this problem.
And that's why he is God and we are not and we just come before God like David does and say Lord I know that you have appointed the king and may he rule forever. How you do it I don't know but I know that you will and I have the confidence that you will carry us through this time.
And finally and this is the end of this psalm. In verse 8 he says so will I ever sing praises to your name as I perform my vows day after day. In verse 1 he cries out to God. And in verse 8 he says I know my God is going to deliver me and I know that I am going to be praising.
And he is already praising in his attitude. But he knows that one day he is going to come back into the assembly and give specific praise before the people for what God has done in delivering him. If you want to compare if you thought in verse 4 he was already doing great let me dwell in your tent forever let me take refuge in the shelter of your wings.
He wanted to come into the assembly. He wanted to be in God's presence and that was the help he was looking for not his palace but here he is not here in the tabernacle just to be resting. He is there to praise and exalt God.
And once again remember he has not yet been delivered out of his trouble. He is still wherever he is. But he says I am going to come back. I am not just going to come there for refuge but I am going to come there to praise and to worship and exalt you.
He says something very interesting here as I perform my vows day after day. The vows in the old covenant those were just a one time thing for the most part. But here David wants to just keep doing over and over again.
And for us as believers it is kind of hard to think about what vows are. I will just leave you with these two final thoughts as we close. Because when God brings a trial into our life it has to change us.
If it doesn't we probably will have the trial a few more times until we learn that lesson. When you come through a moment of crisis it requires a Godward action. What do I mean by that? In the Psalms when you look at vows you will see that the Psalmist is either fearful or in this case overwhelmed.
He is beaten down and unable to rise up. And while he is still in that circumstance when the trial hasn't yet gone away God does something in his heart. And he says I was looking at my trial in its overwhelming sense of oppression.
But I am going to make a commitment to the Lord a vow that I will not let it dominate me. I am going to praise my God in the midst of my trial I may not have the strength yet to do what I think I need to do.
But I know when God helps me through I am going to come out boldly proclaiming and praising God. And that is the concept of vow in the Old Testament which is by all human standards you should still be under the trial you should still be cowering and fearful.
But when God has done something in this prayer to you you will come out and you will be doing something different than what you did before. And you can study this a little more closely. But I think for us as Christians we don't make vows and say I am going to do this.
If you have time I will do this in a Sunday school later. But when you think of vow this is what you want to think of think of again this morning Sunday school we looked at it Romans 12 1 and 2 you and I don't have anything more to vow to God.
Everything that we have we have already given to God. Sadly when we say all I have is yours. Sometimes we just take it a little too lightly as much as I can. But when we go through these trials those should wake us up and say who am I living for when I said I denied myself took up my cross and followed him am I living the way that I ought to live.
Those trials should wake us up and say I am going to live more boldly for God in this particular area. If that is a trial that you went through or I would say what I like to normally say is this sadly if there are no trials in my life and this was a pattern several years back thankfully it is not.
But it still slips into this sometimes if I don't have a trial in my life I watch TV more. When I have trials you can come to my house and see that you can't find that remote. It will probably be thrown somewhere my life is at his feet when the trials are on the full volume.
But when the trials go away like King David will we make a commitment through the trial to say whether trial or no trial will I live fully and completely for my Lord and King. Will I be committed if it is a specific area you are dealing with in this area to glorify my God when the pain goes away and when King David starts with a cry he ends with a praise and a commitment to live his life fully and completely for his God who will save him.
And that is the whole point of this psalm that we would begin with pleading as a child praying to our God our Father who cares for us. But it should always end with praise. Whether the trial has gone away or not we should praise him with all of our being and especially with our action.
Let's pray dear God our Heavenly Father. We thank you for your word. We thank you for your son. And we thank you for your presence through your spirit Lord. We pray that as you bring trials into our lives that we would be faithful that we would call upon you and that Lord we would glorify you in the midst of our trial.
We thank you for your spirit that empowers us to do all these things through the person and the work of Jesus Christ in his name. We pray. Amen.