Psalm 61
Reading from Psalm 61, the title
or the address says to the choir master with stringed instruments.
And then it simply says of David. This psalm has no historical
marker or context. And David says, hear my cry,
O God. Listen to my prayer. From the
end of the earth, I call to you. When my heart is faint, lead
me to the rock. Lead me to the rock that is higher
than I. For you have been my refuge, a strong tower against
the enemy. Let me dwell in your tent forever.
Let me take refuge under the shelter of your wings. For you,
O God, have heard my vows. You have given me the heritage
of those who fear your name. 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. So will I ever sing praises to
your name as I perform my vows day after day. Amen. This is God’s holy word. About a year or two ago, my kids
were over at Gene McKinnon’s house, and Gene still has the
telephone on the wall. Right, Gene? And my kids looked at that
and said, what’s that? Well, just that one too, but
they’re also the same children that said, who is Michael Jordan?
And so times are changing. The telephone on the wall is
no more, except in a few places. Most of us have a phone in our
pocket. But I remember the day when you had to call outside
your area and it cost money. And every month, the bill would
come and it would go something like this in our house. Who have
you been calling on the other end of the world? And you know,
you get a $20, $50, $60 long distance bill, not just
the phone bill with the long distance bill. It was a day of
reckoning in the household and we had to raid the couch and
Dig through purses and find money But long distance was not a thing
that was looked upon as a blessing in our house And you know now
we have unlimited minutes. We can call around the world.
It’s just very different Yeah, that’s right, that’s right who
used all the data, but there was always that phrase who has
been calling to the ends of the earth and Right? And that’s a
euphemism. Nobody’s been calling to Timbuktu,
wherever that is, or to the jungles of South America. But we use
language like that. Or it goes like this when the
car is on empty. You didn’t stop and put gas in
the car. We’re going to be out in the middle of nowhere and
we’re going to run out of gas and we’re going to be left for
dead. We say things like that, don’t we? Well, this is a psalm
where David uses a little bit of language like that. We don’t
know the historic context of this psalm, but we know he is
far, far away physically or spiritually, we don’t know, but he’s far away
from the presence of almighty God at the temple. And he says
in verse two, from the ends of the earth, I call to you. Now,
you know, in most Bible stories, they take place in the ancient
near East and There’s not a vast amount of land, really until
you get to the missionary journeys of Paul, where a lot of terrain
is covered. I mean, maybe 500, maybe 1,000
miles is traveled in most Bible stories. It’s not that big of
a geographic region where travel takes place. And so from the
ends of the earth, we understand to be some sort of exaggeration. But David is not at Jerusalem. David is not near the tabernacle. The temple’s not yet built. David
is not in the holy city. David is not near the ark of
the covenant. David is not near the presence
of God. And so he says at the beginning,
hear my cry, oh God, listen to my prayer from the ends of the
earth. I call to you when my heart is
faint and lead me to the rock that is higher than I. When I was a kid, we used to
have a good bit of a good number of Elon students. in our church
and I think it was on Wednesday nights we sang before a prayer
meeting and we used to sing a lot of the little songs from the
Calvary church movement out in California. I forget the preacher’s
name. Smith. Yeah, something Smith.
He’s passed away, I think, in recent years. But we used to
sing a version of Psalm 61. And so for 30 some years, I can
remember it in my head. I won’t sing it for you. That
would be painful. But it’s still memorable. Very good psalm to
sing. But David is far away from the
presence of God. And so he cries out to the Lord.
want us to notice a couple of things from this passage. As
we think about David’s distance, uh, there’s, there’s a couple,
well, a handful of metaphors. They’re very interesting. And
the first we bump into in verse two, the places of refuge. Look at what he says, uh, from
the end of the earth, I call to you when my heart is faint,
lead me to the rock. And then he’s going to go on
to say, you’ve been my refuge, strong tower. When you dwell
in your tent, let me take refuge under your wings. He’s gonna
get into some refuge language. We’ll look at that in just a
moment. But think about places of refuge. When we think of places
of refuge, we think about shelters. You ride by a fire station and
there’s a little sign out front that says it’s a safe shelter. Children are taught in school
to learn that’s a place you can go if you get lost from mommy
and daddy. You can run that place and find
safety. We go to some ball games during
the fall time of the year. We don’t do this, but you can
get a little bracelet in case you lose your kid and people
can read the bracelet and they can text you or call you. I still haven’t figured out how
you lose a kid, but I guess it’s possible. But anyway, there are
Refuges. There are shelters. We go to
West Tennessee, where my wife’s family’s from, and people have
tornado shelters in the little town where her parents live.
You can go to the center of town and there is a building that
is a tornado-proof building. A lot of the neighbors have shelters
in their backyards. You can go down a little set
of stairs into the ground. Some people have them under their
garage floors, but you can seek shelter from the storm. And so
David has in mind here his different places of refuge. Now we know
from the Psalms that we’ve studied in recent weeks that David’s
been on the run. He’s been hiding from Saul and so he sought shelter
in a lot of rocky places. And so when we read in verse
two, lead me to the rock that is higher than I for you have
been my refuge, we understand David knows how to hide, because
David has had to hide. We don’t exactly know the historic
setting of this psalm. It doesn’t tell us, but we have
to guess based on some of the things that are said. It’s probably
later in his kingship. It’s after he’s become king.
It’s the Saul situation is over. Maybe this is the Absalom situation. David has other issues come up
in his life. We just don’t know the specifics,
but it’s very interesting Look at verse two, it says, lead me
to the rock that is higher than I. Who is David? David is the
king over all Israel. And he says, lead me to the rock
that is higher than I. This is David. who has not only
battled and killed his 10,000, this is David who has horses
and chariots, he has an army, he has Joab, he has everything
at his disposal, and yet he still submits to God as his rock, as
his place of refuge. And so it’s a good lesson to
us. He’s the king of Israel. He still needs the help of Yahweh.
We can be rather self-sufficient. We can depend upon our checkbook.
We can depend upon what we’ve got put away. We can depend upon
the Kwikset locks on our house or the pistol we have hidden
away in our safe. You know, if we’re ready for
anything, we can weather any kind of storm. I mean, some of
us may still have our cans left over from Y2K. Wouldn’t recommend
eating them at this point in time. But we can be rather self-sufficient. And here is David setting an
example for us. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I, David,
king of Israel, submitting to the God of the universe. We’ll
need God’s help. And so he gives us a wonderful
example of asking for it. Now notice in verses two through
five, the metaphors that David uses to reflect the character
of God when in need. Very often when we read the Bible,
particularly the Old Testament, we can learn about the character
of God. Well, there’s four pictures here that show us a little bit
about God’s character. He says, you’re a rock of refuge,
you’re a strong tower, you’re a tent, and I can hide under
your wings. Now, I want you to think about
this in a couple of different ways. First of all, the character
of God. God is his rock of refuge. The
righteous know it. And what do they do? They flee
to it. What do we sing? The old Ira
Sankey tune, under his wings, under his wings, under the wings
of the almighty. We sing Psalm 91 in that way. We sing Psalm 64 as well. And we remember that God is our
rock of refuge and he is the one we can flee to. But God is
a strong tower. What is a strong tower? Well,
it’s a fortification. It’s part of the city. It’s built
into the wall. You can run in there and you
can lock the door. You can drop things on people’s heads from
the windows. You can defend it. You can shoot arrows. You can
do a lot of things from a strong tower. So God is a rock of refuge. God is a strong tower. Now, you
get to this third one, the tent. That sounds a little weak. I
mean, who wants to be in a tent when somebody’s shooting bows
and arrows at you? That’s not gonna work out too well. But
what does a tent picture? It gives us a picture of hospitality.
We can be traveling and weary and need of hospitality, and
we can come to a tent where there’s food and there’s shelter and
there’s openness of home. And so God is pictured as being
a God of hospitality. And then there’s the picture
of the wings, the tender picture. And somehow I got it in my head
about the rock and the wings a minute ago. So just ignore
what I said and translate. You have to do that with preachers.
Sometimes we say things we don’t mean, and you have to figure
out what we do mean. But here it is a picture. This is Psalm
91. We hide in the shelter under the pinions of the wings of God
almighty. And he is like a mother who brings
us under his shelter. And so there’s some little pictures
of God’s character. He’s a rock of refuge. He’s a strong tower.
He’s a tent with open hospitality. We can hide under his great and
strong and powerful, but also tender wings. But I want you
to think of this in a different way, not just the character of
God, but think about it geographically. David is in the wilderness and
he hides in a rock. And then David, moves back to
the city and hides in the strong tower. David is next in the city
and he goes into a tent and it could be the tabernacle. And
then David next, as he goes into the tabernacle, he hides under
the wings of the cherubim. at the Ark of the Covenant. He
goes into the closest and most immediate presence of Almighty
God on the face of the earth. And so he moves geographically
from being at the ends of the earth, at the far reaches of
the earth, and he comes safely from the wilderness to the city,
into its stronghold, into the tabernacle and into the Ark.
And he goes from the ends of the earth into the bosom of Almighty
God. Now that’s a pretty powerful
thought, isn’t it? And we don’t know if that’s what
David intended it very well could be. It’s probably not wrong to
think of it, and it’s not wrong to think of these pictures, these
metaphors, and the sense of the character of God as well. But
either way, we get a wonderful picture when we are overwhelmed,
when we feel distant from God, that God, trusting in him, moves
us closer and closer to himself. Well, what does David speak of
in verses six and seven? little bit of a messianic prayer
here. He says, David speaks of not
only his own days. Of course, David wants to live
forever. He wants to live and be on the throne, he wants his
son as God has promised to him to be on the throne, and he wants
his offspring after him to be on the throne. And who knows
how much David understands here, but he’s speaking ultimately
here of Christ who will sit on the throne of David forever and
ever. Prolong the days of 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. These are prayers for David.
These are prayers for Solomon. These are prayers for the coming
of the Messiah. It’s interesting, if you go back
to our little picture a moment ago, David moves from the wilderness
to the city, to the tabernacle, to the ark. And then here in
this prayer, he’s saying, plant me firmly on the throne of Jerusalem
and as king over Israel. And what’s his response? He goes
at the beginning of the Psalm from crying out to God from the
ends of the earth, from the depths of the sea, from the farthest
reaches. I couldn’t get any more distant from you, oh God. He
goes from there to being in the presence of God, praising him
forever and ever. What does he say? He says, I
will ever sing praises to your name. I will perform my vows
day and night. after day, after such a great
deliverance, after such a great set of promises. He can’t help
but praise God. We have more than David. We know
of a greater rock. We know of that rock who is Christ. We know of that rock who is Christ
our Savior. He’s the king over Israel. And
God is gathering us from the far reaches of the earth By faith,
we come to him and he draws us to himself. And he’s made a promise
when he leaves us that I’ll come again and I’ll take you to be
with me where I am. And where is that? It’s in the
heavenly tabernacle. It’s in the presence of God.
It’s under the sheltering wings of almighty God. What great and
precious promises these are to us. Let’s give thanks to God
and pray. Our Lord God and Savior, we thank
you for these truths that David has communicated to us in your
word. We thank you that these promises
are ours in Christ, that we can rest on them, trust in them,
we can bank on them. And we pray that we would take
refuge not in the shelters of this world or the shelters that
we contrive, but that we would take complete shade and comfort
and refuge in you. And we thank you for this your
truth and pray that it would be written on our hearts, be
etched in our minds and live daily as we feel distant from
you until we are brought safely home. We pray it in Christ’s
name, amen.