Psalm 31 Sermon 3rd draft
The passage of scripture we are looking at this morning is a lament Psalm of David. David may have written it about the time he faced Goliath. David could have been talking about the time when he was on the run and hiding out from King Saul. It might be a prayer that David prayed later in his life when his own son leads a rebellion to take David’s throne. We know for sure that David is crying to the LORD for help. And then when we get the end of the prayer, he is commanding all God’s people, love the Lord. So, the Psalm focuses on two things, facing stress and loving the LORD.
Stress is an in big problem for most of us. Many of you have already experienced stress today, it getting ready and making your way to church. There is stress related to time, money, work, and relationships. We continually have more to do that we have time to do it. I don’t need to convince you that we live in a stressful world. Whether you think of the financial downturn of the past two years or the recent catastrophe in Haiti, we need to know how to deal with stress because it is pervasive and inevitable.
Stress is blamed for problems at school, at work, and at home. Stress causes high blood pressure which can lead to heart failure. And stress causes a host of other problems due to how we try cope with it: over eating, drinking problems, and host of other addictions common and strange are motivated by our trying to find relief from our stress and pain.
Some years ago, when our second child was an infant, I started having pretty serious back pain. I went to the doctor, he gave me some medication, told be to get a stiffer mattress. I did, and then my stiff mattress started giving my wife pains of her own. Still, my back is hurting. Finally, I get a MRI and go to the doctor and he diagnosis me with three degenerative discs. I ask him what caused it. He said it was largely genetic but also due to posture and that probably I had had this condition for a long time already and just did not feel any pain. I asked why? Then he asked me if I had been under any stress? I started my own lament…job stress, time stress, house stress, new born baby not sleeping through the night stress…
Stress can have an effect on our faith. Is there a possibility that fear or anxiety is keeping you from loving the LORD as you should? There is in all of us something that does not love the Lord. And sometimes we develop ways to either avoid stress or avoid God.
If you are not sure where you are spiritually and you still exploring the Christian faith, this discussion will give you a very good existential test of the Christian faith. Does the Christian faith stand up to the stress test of reality? So, I hope insights we gain from Psalm 31 will help you if you early or unsure of where you are on your spiritual journey.
There is another reason this passage is important for us today that is more external reason. What if we tend to avoid tough things because we feel we can’t afford any more trouble? Like the busy doctor who cannot take on any new patients. Are we in a place in our ability to deal with stress and how we love the LORD that we have something to offer others? The world we live in needs people who can afford face stress because they are not clinging to something finite and transient. Our world needs people who grasp, better yet are grasped by, the love of God, and as a result are able to help others in distress.
The Big Idea
Here is the point of this passage: Because the LORD always and ultimately preserves those He loves, you should always and ultimately love the LORD.
Do we really love and trust God today in a way that will hold up if tomorrow falls apart? What if things are going really bad in your relationships or career or health? Are we growing in our love for the LORD or are you mainly trying to make life work?
We are going to listen to this Psalm, like music writer listens to a new album, and see if we hear a line of reasons and examples how we should love Lord in a load of stress. Then I am going to bring them back together until we have built a strong case for why and how you can love the LORD. Let’s reflect on Psalm 31 and see what can learn from David’s song about loving the LORD in a load of stress.
1. You call on God first: There is no one David can turn to but God himself. He calls on God with vivid images or picture language.
He refers to God as a place where he takes “refuge” in verse 1. A refuge is a special place of safety and rest. David does not run to friend or family, he runs to the LORD.
Then he describes the LORD as having an “inclining ear verse 2… So we are reminded that God is personal and caring like a patient parent to a distressed child.
He calls God “my rock and fortress” in verse 3. God is by nature and design an impenetrable. You may have heard there are no atheists in fox holes – that is because fox holes are meager fortresses on the frontlines of conflict, but we do tend to forget to call on God first in seemingly secure fortresses like boardrooms, universities, hotels, and comfortable homes. David calls on God first to be his security. God is able and willing to be called on as a rock and fortress. But he is not completely like a fortress. The LORD is much more active and moving than a rock. He is mysterious and incomprehensible. Many times in David’s life God was his fortress when David was very exposed and vulnerable. You only have to think of him facing Goliath as teen. God is both, dependable and steady like a rock and living and active like a person.
Consider verse 5. David mentions the hand of the LORD. This portrays God as a father, protector and provider. David believes that God is willing and able to help him. That is why he is not only his first call, but his ultimate trust. If God had not demonstrated this to David, this might feel like a risky thing to pray, he prays, “my life, my every moment is in your hands.”
My wife is the resident doctor in our home. So anytime anyone gets a splinter, she turns our home into an ER, grabs a needle or tweezers as her scalpel and asks us to commit ourselves into her hands. Admittedly it is a little scary…partly due to lack of anesthesia, but partly because she has a degree in journalism and experience in campus ministry, not medicine. David calls on God because who else can you trust not to let go, not shake with the knife.
David even calls to mind things about the LORD that remain still in the future, in verse 19, “how abundant is your goodness which you have stored up for your people…” This is a wonderful picture of God as a wise and generous farm owner. Story of Joseph…grain stored up for seven years in order to supply for God’s people during seven years of famine. God is a God of abundance. If David lacks anything in the moment he takes that to mean God has something even better stored up. This is brought to light even further in the NT. Jesus promise, “I have come that they might have life, and have it to the full.” And 1 Peter 1:4, we are told of an inheritance that is kept in heaven for us.
Let this encourage you. If you are struggling with discouragement or even depression, ask the Lord to help you put your hope and expectations on him and his goodness. Let this challenge you. If you are enjoying some good thing in a way that you should be looking to God and his goodness, then ask the Lord to help you call on him first come what may.
2. You plea to God for help: in verse 2 and again in verse 17 David cries, “let me never be put to shame, rescue me…” David acknowledges his need before God and he asks for help. This is basic to prayer. John Piper defined prayer as asking God for things. Someone accused Piper’s definition of dangerously allowing prayer to self-centered. Piper replied that the reason this is not a dangerous definition is that it puts people in their rightful position of dependence on God and God in his place as provider. It displays his grace and our need for help.
So, the second thing we learn about loving God and dealing with stress is that we should plea to God for help.
3. You Complain to God when you are in trouble, this is what motivated him to pray and write the Psalm.
As I mentioned before, we are not sure of the exact historical instance when David made these complaints. But here are few things we can learn about David’s trouble:
David mainly complains about what others are doing to him:
David describes the pressure of his persecutors as “net they have hidden for me…” In the New Testament we are warned of “schemes of the evil one.” Some of our temptations and conflicts take us by surprise. We can get entangled, caught up in doing too much or the wrong thing. This is very stressful.
David complains to God because he is “in distress” in essentially all dimensions of life. He experiences Physical stress, v. 10 “my body and my bones waste away…” He feels emotional stress, verse 9. “eye wasted from grief, my soul…”
It is most clear in verse 11 that his trouble is due to what others are doing to him where he complains that his “adversaries” have made him a reproach, to his neighbors, even his friends.
How do you identify with these complaints? Are you experiencing physical distress, headaches, trouble sleeping? Are you faced with conflicts with your neighbors or friends? If so, David is showing you that you can honestly bring your complaint before the LORD.
I hope you that can see that loving the Lord does not require you to deny your problems. In fact, honestly praying to God about them is an essential process of loving the LORD.
There is another feature to the Psalm that will help us learn to love the LORD
4. You express Confidence in God. Confidence in God is always a surprising feature in laments like Psalm 31. David complains, often more boldly than we would feel comfortable doing, but he also shows impressive confidence in the LORD.
In v. 5 we see it as David prays, “into your hands I commit my spirit…” And v.6 in contrast to those who trusted Idols, David expresses emphatically, “I trust in the Lord, I will rejoice and be glad in your steadfast love, because you have seen my affliction; and have known the distress of my soul”
You too can experience some real relief from stress just by being sure that God sees and knows what you are going through. David probably did not go immediately from complaining to confidence, but it makes sense when you compare your stress to God’s love for you, then you can gain some real confidence.
In v.14 we see another expression of confidence, David prays “I trust in you, O LORD, I say “You are my God.” Finding confidence in the LORD in the face of distress is one of the most basic expressions of what it means to know and trust in God.
I was recently asked in an email by a student from Swaziland if he had to stop smoking to become a Christian. I emailed back and said, “No, you need to stop trusting in yourself, and starting trusting in Jesus Christ.” God confidence instead of self-confidence is at the heart of the Christian faith, confidence in the LORD, rather than confidence in yourself. The student from Swaziland emailed back overjoyed, that he could put his faith in Christ as his lord and savior. I don’t know if he has quit smoking.
So, even in the midst of loads of stress and while complaining passionately to God, David expresses confidence in God. And we should too so that we will grow our love for the LORD.
5. You love the LORD by praising Him in the midst of stress.
When you turn to God in times of stress and get a glimpse of what God can and will do for you, it might naturally lead you to praise God – even before circumstances have changed. The clearest statement of praise in Psalm 31 is in verse 21 “Blessed be the LORD for he has shown his wonderful love to me when I was in a besieged city!” Even while surrounded by the threats of his enemies, David, in response to what God had done for him and for who God is, praises the LORD.
David praised the LORD when he was in a “besieged city.” We cannot be sure he if meant this literally. Seige warfare was a very particular thing in ancient times and continues today. Siege warfare is where the enemy surrounds a city, cuts off supplies, makes threats, inflicts terror with sporadic bombing, with the design that the people inside will finally give up without full conflict.
Our campus ministry has a mission’s strategy of adopting unreached and strategic universities overseas. The church as whole has also been a part of sending short term missions and now long term missionaries. For the past ten years we have been going to Sarajevo, Bosnia. Serbian forces sieged Sarajevo from 1992-1995. The city is surrounded by mountain ridges. The enemies established their guns on these ridges, and with the help of 18,000 troups afflicted the city with a constant siege for three years. They never mounted a frontal attack, but they tested the resolve of the people of Sarajevo but
Similarly our challenges are not always frontal immediate attacks. We are besieged with stress, half truths, and discouragement. One of the best defenses to this kind of stress is to pause and praise God.
Part of our mission work in Sarajevo, Bosnia is simply to go and offer prayers of praise to God. Sarajevo is a place that still seems surrounded by despair and deception. But, God is showing his wonderful love to our Campus Crusade and ChristChurch missionaries, and already young people have come to know the Lord there.
So another way you can come to Love the LORD or grow in that love is to praise, pause to worship Him even when you feel bombarded by threats.
And last we learn that:
6. You love the Lord because he commands you.
In this Psalm, there is not only assurance of help but command to all believers.
Verse 23, “Love the Lord all his saints!” This is one of the most surprising features of the text. An imperative or an imperative in the conclusion of a lament. And by this point in the process, after calling on the Lord first, crying for help, honest complaining, expressing confidence, and offering praise, I think we are now more able.
Let me summarize what we have seen: The most obvious reason given to us here by a man who has seen over and over God preserve those who trust in Him through stress and strain is that we love God for what he has done for us. It is a grateful love. David, in his own grace based relationship with God, recounts God deeds of love toward him and is moved to great love and trust.
A portion of this Psalm is sung again the in Bible by Jesus himself as his last words from the cross. He cried “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” Because Jesus loved the Lord and endured the ultimate stress on the cross for us perfectly, we can now love the LORD in our temporary distress sincerely.
Another reason we find in the passage for loving the Lord is for who He is. This kind of love is simply a delight in the LORD. It part of what true worship is. The images of this Psalm portray vividly that the LORD is lovely, adorable, and Blessed. He is good in his being and character. So, even apart from anything he has done, though these are never really entirely two different things, we should Love the LORD for who HE is.
There is the case – How and why you should and can Love the Lord even under a load of stress – Because of all that he has done and all that he is for us even in the midst of great distress, we love the LORD.
Now some reflections on what we need to do about it.
1. Does my life demonstrate that I love the Lord in the midst of distress?
· Maybe, but if I am honest, my life does not demonstrate that I living in light of God’s promise to preserve me. I too often try to control my circumstances to avoid stress. For example, I realized that I tend to put off my more difficult responsibilities until all my easy ones are done, often regardless of how important they. I would rather prioritize shopping for cheaper insurance that making an important tough phone call. What have you done when faced with stress? Are you avoiding it, strong arming it, or using something to cope in ways you should be trusting in the LORD?
2. What wrong behavior, harmful emotions, false attitudes result in me when I forget God is this lovely?
· One wrong Behavior that I found in my own life is that I cover the problems of life with self deprecating comedy. It’s an acceptable way to deal with stress, and the bonus is you might look clever and humble. Are you covering with comedy instead of taking shelter in the LORD?
· Another wrong behavior you might see if you are not loving the LORD in the midst of stress, is being greedy with your time and money, in order to be prepared for the future. Is there any sense that you have trusted in your savings, your insurance, your education to provide for your protection and peace of mind in ways that you should be open handed, more generous, and more secure in God’s care for you?
3. What have my experiences of distress revealed besides God that I may be looking to for security or satisfaction?
· One thing I have found tempting to look to in ways I should be looking to God in stimes of stress is what the Bible calls “worldly wisdom.” In the passage we read, there are a number of references to the slanderous and lying words of David’s enemies. David’s enemies were relying on and using their words to oppose David and ultimately God. We might find it easy to want to fight fire with fire. Sometimes the thing that keeps us from relying on the LORD is the litany of other thoughts and solutions that we have in our mind. We can google it. We can call a friend. We can wait until we get more information. But we may be doing this because we are not finding immediate security and satisfaction in the LORD.
4. Why is God showing you these particular things about loving the LORD today?
· Our church believes that we are called to be a growing and multiply church in our part of Atlanta. In order to do this, we need a bigger and better equipped facility. We have a wonderful challenge ahead, building a building for the growth and multiplication of ChristChurch. But it might be stressful for us. We have already purchased the property. Our next step will be an exciting vision campaign. We are modest sized church, growing, but modest. We are young. And we are experiencing one of the worst economies Atlanta has ever seen. But according to Psalm 31 – this is good news. Because we have been reminded that the LORD shows his wonderful love to us even when we are in a besieged city. This in fact is precisely the kind of God he is. So, in light of this we say Love the LORD.
· Here is another timely reason why the LORD may be showing us this today. People in Atlanta are under a lot of stress. This is a strategic place in the kingdom of God. So, if you seek to love and serve the LORD right now in Atlanta, I believe you will face opposition from the LORD’s spiritual enemies. There is no neutral zone to camp out in. We can’t call time out. You are in distress now and your life is part of God’s plan to redeem everything.
· Imagine the impact we can have if we become people who can afford more stress. Just as the LORD is our refuge, we could become a refuge for stressed out young people, professionals, artists, and intellectuals. When they see us loving the LORD in our distress and that as a result we have something to offer them in their distress, they will want to know and love the LORD.
Closing Prayer - What do you need do or to become in light of this? Let’s ask him for it!
O LORD, please make us quicker and more honest to say, “You are my God, I Love you LORD!” LORD, please give us a stronger LOVE for You – Oh Lord, please strengthen our hearts to love you. LORD, we need to commit our lives and times to YOU LORD. please give us an enduring joy that others can enjoy from us even when we experience terrible things. Thank you that in you LORD Jesus we can…Love the LORD, because the LORD preserves the faithful, and he abundantly repays the one who acts in pride, Be strong, and let your heart take courage! All you who wait for the LORD! AMEN
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