WWUTT 1049 He Puts Our Tears in His Bottle?

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The Lord does care about what you're going through. He's not so high above us looking down going, hey, have

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I not told you how this is all going to end? What's the matter with you? No, He wants you to cast your anxieties upon Him when we understand the text.

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This is When We Understand The Text, a daily study in the word of Christ for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness.

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Find all our videos and other ministry resources at www .utt .com.

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We return to the Psalms. Picking up where we left off last week, that would put us in Psalm 56.

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I'll go ahead and start out reading all 13 verses. To the choir master, according to the dove on far off Terebinth, a mictum of David, when the

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Philistines seized him in Gath. Be gracious to me, O God, for man tramples on me.

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All day long an attacker oppresses me. My enemies trample on me all day long for many attack me proudly.

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When I am afraid, I put my trust in you, in God, whose word

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I praise. In God, I trust. I shall not be afraid.

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What can flesh do to me? All day long, they injure my cause.

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All their thoughts are against me for evil. They stir up strife.

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They lurk. They watch my steps as they have waited for my life. For their crime, will they escape?

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In wrath, cast down the peoples, O God. You have kept count of my tossings.

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Put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book? Then my enemies will turn back.

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In the day when I call, this I know that God is for me. In God, whose word

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

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What can man do to me? I must perform my vows to you, O God. I will render thank offerings to you for you have delivered my soul from death.

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Yes, my feet from falling that I may walk before God in the light of life.

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So before we get into the body of this text here, let's start with that opener, the header on this psalm to the choir master.

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According to the dove on far off Terebinth, what on earth does that mean? Well, a

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Terebinth is a tree. A dove, of course, you know, is a bird. But what would that have to do with the header to this psalm?

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According to the dove on far off Terebinth. Well, that would have been the tune that this psalm would have been set to.

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And the tune could have been, it could have been composed as an instrumental by those musicians that were in David's court, or it could have been just some common

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Jewish folk tune, a tune that was common to Israel. And then they took that instrumental piece and added these lyrics to it, or they wrote these lyrics according to the meter that that music was set in.

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That's not unusual for us even today to do that sort of a thing. You take, for example, the

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Star Spangled Banner. Oh, say, can you see by the dawn's early light what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?

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You know the song, right? Especially if you live in America, you know the Star Spangled Banner.

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Well, Francis Scott Key, who wrote the poem to that song, like he wrote the lyrics that became the

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Star Spangled Banner, but he did not write the tune. The tune he borrowed from an old bar song, and it's called

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To Anachreon in Heaven. And I'm not gonna tell you what it's about because the lyrics are actually quite inappropriate.

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But that was the tune that Francis Scott Key used to put his poem,

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Star Spangled Banner, to. Was it Francis Scott Key that did that? I don't know if it was him that put the lyrics to that tune or if somebody else did that later on.

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But anyway, nevertheless, the Star Spangled Banner is from an old bar song, the tune of it anyway, while the lyrics were written by Francis Scott Key.

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Another song, one that you would even have in your own hymnal that is common to this trick, is

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What Child Is This? Well, the tune is Greensleeves. The lyrics, of course, were written to the old

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English folk song, Greensleeves. So anyway, we do that even now. And as it so happens, 3 ,000 years ago, they were even doing it in Israel.

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There was this instrumental piece called The Dove on Far Off Terebinth. And this particular psalm would have been set to that tune, a mictum of David, when the

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Philistines seized him in Gath. We actually returned to the events in 1

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Samuel 21 here. We did this a couple of weeks ago when we were in Psalm 52, which was the psalm that David wrote after Doeg the

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Edomite had struck down the priests at Nob. And we read about that in 1 Samuel 22.

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But when we went to that story, when we were in Psalm 52, I went ahead to chapter 21 to keep all of those things in context.

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And after David had fled Saul, after he encountered Ahimelech in the tabernacle, he fled to Gath.

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Remember, he was carrying the sword of Goliath from Gath. So it's not like David can walk into Gath without being recognized, without being noticed.

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He's kind of carrying a form of identification with him. Hey, that was Goliath's sword, and you're the guy that killed him.

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So David gets to Achish, the king of Gath. And the servants of Achish said to him, this is 1

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Samuel 21 11, is not this David the king of the land? Did they not sing to one another of him in dances?

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Saul has struck down his thousands, and David is 10 thousands. And David took these words to heart and was much afraid of Achish, the king of Gath.

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So he changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands and made marks on the doors of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard.

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Then Achish said to his servants, behold, you see the man is mad. Why then have you brought him to me?

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Do I lack madmen that you have brought this fellow to behave as a madman in my presence?

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Shall this fellow come into my house? And so then David was delivered from Achish and he fled to the cave of a dulem.

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And that's likely where David wrote this particular Psalm. Psalm 56, prayed this unto

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God after he had fled from the Philistines intact. They did not kill him and they did not put him to death.

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Now, as David is praying here, man tramples on me and all day long, an attacker oppresses me.

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This would not have been the Philistines in Gath that David was referring to. He was referring to Saul because Saul was pursuing him and those men who were faithful to Saul, in particular, we know of Doeg, the

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Edomite. So in Psalm 56, verse one, be gracious to me, oh God, for man tramples on me.

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All day long, an attacker oppresses me. My enemies trample on me all day long for many attack me proudly.

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When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise. In God, I trust.

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I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me? Now, this is obviously a

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Psalm of individual lament, but as this Psalm would have been sung by the entire choir of Israel, all the people together as it would have been done as a congregational hymn, then this

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Psalm is speaking of a future deliverance. It is the hope of the person who is being oppressed by an enemy that God is going to deliver them.

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And even in the midst of their oppression, man cannot separate us from God. And we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

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According to what Paul says in Romans chapter eight, in fact, what can flesh do to me?

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What can man do to me? It's very likely Paul had this particular Psalm in mind when he said such things as he did in Romans eight.

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All day long, they injure my cause. All their thoughts are against me for evil.

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They stir up strife. They lurk. They watch my steps as they have waited for my life. For their crime, will they escape?

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In wrath cast down the people's oh God. Now that question that's asked there, for their crime, will they escape?

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That might be rhetorical. The understanding is a person who's done wickedness is not going to escape the judgment of God.

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Though we may see that judgment delayed, judgment upon wicked men will most certainly come.

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So then the Psalmist adds on in the next line, in wrath cast down the people's oh

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God. Let your judgment not be delayed. Deliver the righteous and judge the unrighteous.

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Verses eight and nine, you have kept count of my tossings. Put my tears in your bottle.

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Are they not in your book? Anytime that we read in the Psalms about God's book, it is in reference to the fact that God has written certain things down beforehand.

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Well, he's written everything down beforehand. Now, it's not that there is a literal book in heaven that God is writing all these things down.

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You might think of this in terms of the scribes that would have been in a king's court. So there would have always been writers there in the throne room of the king, any sort of dealings that the king had with somebody else, there was somebody writing all of that down.

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So you would have the royal registry. And it's that kind of imagery that someone like David would have in mind when he's talking about the things that God writes down in his book.

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Only those things that he writes down are not things that have transpired, they are things that will transpire.

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David prays in Psalm 139, all the days for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

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So David recognizing God's full sovereignty has had this situation in his hands even before it happened.

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Therefore, we have nothing to fear of our circumstances. We know that God will deliver us.

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And I've had those times in my life when I've felt oppressed or someone was coming against me, and I cannot see the end of it.

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There have been occasions in my life I've fallen into depression, not to the point that I fall into despair, but it's still a great weight that is upon my heart.

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In the moment that I am in, it seems like there's not going to be an end to it. When am

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I going to get relief and deliverance from this trial that I am feeling?

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But in those moments, I remember Psalms such as this and other places in the scriptures where the faithful of God pray unto the

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Lord as one who holds all moments in his hands. He has determined the end from the beginning because he has created all things, including time and space.

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And in those moments, when I am praying, I express my angst unto the Lord, God, here's what's happening to me.

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Here's what I'm feeling. Here's what I would like for you to do. But no matter what happens,

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I know that God has all these things in his hands. Therefore, I don't need to fall into despair.

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And even if someone were to take over my life or maybe the depression that I'm feeling would eventually take my life.

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Charles Spurgeon was a guy that experienced a grief like that, a melancholy that was so deep, he died at a young age.

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He was in his fifties when he died. And it was because of the emotional burden that he had on himself in the things that he witnessed and what he endured and went through.

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So depression was probably the thing that eventually claimed Charles Spurgeon's life.

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If that were to happen to me, if in my depression, it would be something that would eventually claim my life.

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I still have nothing to fear of this because I know that my soul is eternally in the hand of God.

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Man can do nothing to me. Jesus said to his own disciples, do not fear him who can destroy the body.

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And after that, can't do anything with the soul, but fear him who after destroying the body can also destroy the soul in hell.

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And that is our Lord God. It is him whom we must fear and have a reverent fear of him.

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Not fearing him in the sense that God could judge me at any moment. We know that he is judge and he holds all things in his hands, but we have that reverent fear of him, that holy reverence unto the

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Lord. We have nothing to fear of his judgment if we are in Christ Jesus. We know that when we die, we will be with him forever in glory.

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And that's why we do not need to despair these difficult trials and moments that we go through in this life.

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The Lord will deliver us. He knows our tossings. Even when we're asleep and we don't know the stress that is upon our body,

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God knows all of our tossings. He knows where our mind goes even when we dream. He has put our tears in his bottle.

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I think one of the things that that represents, that that symbolizes is that every tear we cry means something to God.

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It's not like God is looking at us in a state of depression and we're crying and he's like, oh, what are you crying for?

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Come on, cheer up, buck up. I've got all this thing in control, don't I? Your tears that you are crying, do they not demonstrate that you don't trust me?

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That's not the way God is speaking to us in this case. It's showing to us that even the tears that fall from our eyes for whatever reason that we might feel the stress that we feel, the heartbreak, the betrayal, any of these other things, the uncertainty of the future, the difficulty of the present, whatever might cause us to cry, our tears are important to God that he keeps them in a bottle.

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Are they not in your book? You know these things, you knew these things before they came upon me.

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They matter to God. And so he wants us to share our heart with him.

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In fact, as Peter puts it in 1 Peter 5, cast all your anxieties on him because he cares for you and Peter is sure to point out in the same breath, humble yourself before the

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Lord. See, when we don't share our troubles with God, that's actually very prideful.

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It's as though we're saying, I can take care of this matter by myself and you can't.

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You would just fall into a deeper, heavier depression than you're already in if you have yourself convinced that you can handle this on your own.

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Fall on Jesus. Come to Christ, fall into his arms. He is with you.

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As he said to his disciples and says also to us, I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you.

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And at the end of Matthew 28, I am with you always to the very end of the age.

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Then my enemies, I'm coming back now to Psalm 56 9, then my enemies will turn back in the day when

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I call. This I know that God is for me. And again,

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I think Paul has this in mind when he's writing Romans 8, if God is for us, who can be against us?

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No one, no one can be against the people that God is for.

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Romans 8 1, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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Psalm 56 10, in God whose word I praise, in the Lord whose word

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I praise, in God I trust, I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me?

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Now in God we trust or in God I trust might have become somewhat of a platitudinous statement these days.

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It's on all of our currency. It's kind of like a national motto, in God we trust.

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But we who are Christians should truly take a statement like that to heart. I'm glad it's on our currency, at least here in the

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United States of America we have in God we trust printed on our money. I'm glad it's there even though as a nation we probably don't take it seriously, but we should as Christians take that to heart.

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It shouldn't be just some sort of pithy quote, something that we see posted somewhere every day, but we should know that we must trust in the

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Lord. We know that he has our every moment in his hands and he has promised us that he will deliver us even if the trial we're going through takes our life, we still will be delivered by God and be with him forever in his kingdom.

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Verses 12 and 13 now, I must perform my vows to you oh God, I will render thank offerings to you for you have delivered my soul from death, yes my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of life.

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As we've been going through Acts this week, we read in Acts chapter five about when Peter was in prison,

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Peter and the apostles were in prison, the angel came and broke them out of prison, sent them back into Jerusalem to continue preaching the gospel.

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And one of the things that I said related to that is God will free you from this trial for the purpose of giving glory to his name and directing others to him who delivers.

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That's why God would deliver you out of this trial so that you might praise him and tell others of his wondrous deeds.

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Just as David praised the same here in Psalm 56. We got a couple of minutes left, let's go ahead and do

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Psalm 57. To the choir master according to do not destroy, that might be another tune that this

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Psalm is set to, a mictum of David when he fled from Saul in the cave.

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We just continue to the very next event right there at the beginning of 1 Samuel 22. Here's Psalm 57.

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

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

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

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

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God will send out his steadfast love and his faithfulness. My soul is in the midst of lions.

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

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

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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.

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My heart is steadfast, O God. My heart is steadfast. I will sing and make melody.

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Awake, my glory, awake, O harp and lyre. I will awake the dawn.

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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.

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Your faithfulness to the clouds. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens.

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Let your glory be over all the earth. Amen. Thank you for listening to When We Understand the

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Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website, www .wutt

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.com, and click on the Give tab in the top right corner of the page. Join us again tomorrow as we continue our