“Pain of Betrayal” – FBC Morning Light (5/6/2024)

Well, a good Monday morning to you, starting the first full week of May, aren't we? Well, I hope your week is getting off to a good start, and it started well yesterday on the Lord's Day. I hope you were able to gather with God's people and enjoy the fellowship of worshiping the Lord together.

And I hope that God in his grace spoke to you through his word, encouraging you, maybe challenging you and convicting you, but all of which serves to grow us in grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus.

I hope that was your joyful experience yesterday on the Lord's Day. Well, today as we begin this new week, all through this week we're going to be looking, reading the Psalms of David. We're reading this chronological schedule through the Bible this year, and the compilers of that chronology have decided to put the Psalms of David together at the end of what's been the chronological life of David.

Some of the Psalms are identified as where they fit in David's life, but there are other Psalms of David that we can't be sure where exactly they fit, so they put them all together. Today we're reading Psalms 40 and 41, Psalm 53 and Psalm 55.

We'll look at Psalm 55 here in just a minute. First I read this Psalm and I thought back of an experience I had when I was a freshman in high school. Our family had moved to this community about a year and a half earlier, and right away we got plugged into a church.

In this church, there was another family that our dads worked in the same place. We got to know each other pretty quickly and got to be friends very quickly. He's a year older than I, but we did a lot of stuff together, spent a lot of time at each other's homes, and just friend stuff, typical 8th grade, 9th grade high school kid friend stuff.

But then this one incident happened in my freshman year that just blew me away. I didn't understand what was going on. It was after church on a Sunday night of all things. We're walking out of the church, and I don't know if I said something or what, but somehow for some reason, and I can't remember the thing, my friend got mad at me, got upset, and he just hauled off and punched me once, right in the jaw.

I'm like, what? I got mad. I didn't fight back or anything. I was just so stunned and angry that my friend would do this to me. I just turned around and went back inside the church and stayed away from him.

I thought, this really hurt. I'm not talking about my jaw. I'm talking about the fact that a friend would do something like that. I had never thrown a punch at a friend in my life, and I never had a friend do such a thing to me.

It just totally blew me away. The odd thing was, a couple days later, he was like, nothing ever happened, he never apologized and never said another word about it. But from that time on, we still were friends, we still did stuff together, but there was always this reservation that I can't trust this guy, I can't trust this guy.

One of life's most painful experiences is the betrayal of someone who was considered to be a close friend, someone with whom you shared intimate conversations and details of life, and then they turn on you, they betray you, maybe even taking some of the things that you said together in confidence and then using those things against you.

This is a deeply painful thing. This is what David experienced. When you read what he says in Psalm 55, in verse 4 and following, he says, my heart is severely pained within me, and the terrors of death have fallen upon me.

Why? He says in verse 3, the voice of the enemy, because of the oppression of the wicked, they bring down trouble upon me and wrath, they hate me. Well, who? Who is it? Who is this enemy that's so fierce and so fearful, creating such fear?

My heart is pained of terrors of death fallen upon me. He says, fearfulness and trembling have come upon me and horror has overwhelmed me. This must be quite the foe, quite the enemy that's come against David, right?

Well, actually, in verse 12, it's not really an enemy at all, at least not one he thought of as an enemy. He says, there's not an enemy who reproaches me, then I could bear it, nor is it one who hates me who has exalted himself against me, then I could hide from him.

But he says, it was you, a man my equal, my companion and my acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together and walked to the house of God in the throng. We were friends, and yet you've done this to me, you've treated me in this way.

How do we respond in such circumstances as that? Well, David said, what I would like to do is fly away like a dove. He says in verse 6, oh, that I had wings like a dove, I would fly away and be at rest.

Indeed, I would wander off and remain in the wilderness. That's what you'd like to do. You'd like to just run away, hide, go on a deserted island somewhere where nobody can ever hurt you again, which you feel like, but that's not possible.

So what do you do? He gives us counsel by his example in verse 16. He says, as for me, I will call upon God and the Lord shall save me. And then reflecting on his own experience, he counsels us in verse 22, he says, cast your burden on the Lord and he shall sustain you.

What do we do? What do we do? We go to the one, the friend who will never betray us, the friend who will never, never break his covenant, his word, never forsake us or leave us as he's promised. We go to the Lord.

We cast our burden on him. So if this has been your recent experience and you're still smarting over it and the pain is really deep, let me just encourage you, cast your burden on the Lord. Find that he will sustain you because he, he will not break his covenant.

He will never leave you or forsake you. It's great to have such a friend as this, isn't it? Father, we thank you today for the friend that we have in the Lord Jesus and therefore because of our friendship with Jesus, we have this unbreakable covenant that you have established with us.

We thank you that we can cast our burden upon you. We thank you that you do sustain your people in their times of heartache and trouble and trial. So, Lord, those who are listening today and are feeling some pain and anguish over a sense of betrayal, may they find, may they find you to be the one whom they can trust and who will sustain them.

And I pray that you shall. We ask this in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen. All right, well, listen, have a good rest of your Monday and hope your week gets off to a great start. May the Lord bless.