Psalm 28
Our reading is Psalm 28, verses
one through nine. This is a Psalm of King David,
and he says, to you, O Lord, I call. My rock, be not deaf
to me, lest, if you be silent to me, I become like those who
go down to the pit. Hear the voice of my pleas for
mercy. When I cry to you for help, when
I lift up my hands towards your most holy sanctuary, Do not drag
me off with the wicked, with the workers of evil, who speak
peace with their neighbors while evil is in their hearts. Give
to them according to their work and according to the evil of
their deeds. Give to them according to the work of their hands. Render
them their due reward, because they do not regard the works
of the Lord or the work of His hands. He will tear them down
and build them up no more. Blessed be the Lord, for he has
heard the voice of my pleas for mercy. The Lord is my strength
and my shield, and him my heart trusts, and I am helped. My heart
exults, and with my song I give thanks to him. The Lord is the
strength of his people. He is the saving refuge of his
anointed. Oh, save your people and bless
your heritage. Be their shepherd and carry them
forever. Amen. Well, when you’ve got a mighty
big problem, what do you do? If you’re a Christian, you look
to God’s character. You look to his past actions
and his future promises. And you fully rely on God for
those true things that you know. Now, in our modern society, what
do we do when the going gets tough? We eat ice cream. What’s that? We get going. The
tough get going. Yeah, thanks for that. We eat
ice cream. We have a little retail therapy.
We have certain coping mechanisms that we employ in order to help
us ease through. Have y’all noticed how therapeutic
our culture has gotten? How therapeutic our society has
gotten? We don’t want to hurt. We don’t
want to go through pain. We don’t want to go through difficulty.
But what’s the fact of the matter? Life is hard. Life has its aches
and pains, it has its ups and downs, it has its thorns and
its thistles. And so, how does a Christian get through hardship?
Well, this Christian does eat ice cream sometimes. This Christian
does go through the emotional retail therapy at times. We all
do those things. But ultimately, what do we do?
We rely on God’s character, his actions, and his promises. And this psalm helps us see that
a little bit is David relies on God. There are four parts
of this we want to look at. This is yet another example from
David’s life where he’s in a bad way. Now, between now and about
Psalm 50 something, you’re gonna say, is David ever not in a bad
way? Is David ever not in hot water? Is David ever not being pursued?
Is David ever not being chased? Is David ever not in a cave or
under something? Well, here we are again. Another
example from David’s life, and guess what his only solution
is? It’s God. But you look through several
of these Psalms where David’s in a difficult spot, and it tells
us never the same thing about God. God is so great and so wide
and so huge, his mercies, his character, his actions, his promises,
that you could never exhaust them through many examples of
Psalms. Everything else in life will
fail, but God never will. Have you ever been in a spot
where that’s all you had to hang on to? Have you ever been in
a spot where things were so bad, maybe you woke up in the morning
and you peeked open one eye and you thought, if I pull these
covers off, if I stick a toe out from under these covers,
it’s gonna be bad, I just know it is. and you felt so crushed
in spirit, you felt so low in your emotions that you knew that
it was only gonna be bad or worse. Well, David’s in that kind of
spot again. We think that maybe the setting of this psalm is
similar to some of the others we’ve looked at where maybe this
is Absalom who’s committed great treachery. He’s trying to steal
the kingdom from David. We’re not sure, but at any rate,
we see in verses one to two, David’s plea. And look at what
he says in verses one to two. He says, to you, O Lord, I call. To no one else, just to you.
To you, Yahweh, I call, my rock. Be not deaf to me, lest, if you
be silent to me, I become like those who go down to the pit.
There’s another way of saying, if you don’t talk to me, I’ll
be as though dead. Hear the voice of my pleas for
mercy. When I cry to you for help, When
I lift up my hands towards your most holy sanctuary. So here’s
David making a plea. And notice just very quickly,
if you look at verses one and two, what are the characters
of God, characteristics of God he speaks to? What are the actions
of God? What are the promises of God?
Do you see any of those in there? To you, O Lord, I call. Simply
the name of Yahweh. To Yahweh I call. How does he
describe Yahweh? His rock. And he says, if you
don’t answer, I’ll be as though dead. I’ll be like the dead who
are in the pit. Hear my cries when I cry to you
for help.” But he also appeals to God’s presence, the most holy
sanctuary. Have you ever been in a spot
where you said, if God doesn’t do something, I’m just gonna
die? You felt that in your emotions. You felt that in your heart.
You felt that in your situation. Things couldn’t get any worse.
The next worst thing that can happen to me is I just die. I dry up. I fall over. I’m crushed. Well, that’s where David is.
If you don’t answer me, God, it’s that bad. I’ll simply die. But what’s his posture? Does
he just lay down and die? No, his hands are lifted up to
the sanctuary. We don’t think too much about
church architecture anymore. It used to be that you might
find somebody in need of help coming where? Coming to the sanctuary. Where do God’s people run for
refuge in the Old Testament? Particularly if you committed
a crime or you accidentally killed someone, you went to the sanctuary. In the Bible, you often find
people in the Old Testament, they’re hanging on to the altar.
They know that if God will come and be present there, they might
find some safety. And that’s what David’s plea
is here. His hands are up towards the
sanctuary. We don’t pray directionally anymore. Used to be the old covenant
people prayed towards Jerusalem. They put their eyes toward Jerusalem.
Our neighbors in this world who are of other faiths pray to their
holy cities. They look that way. They get
on their mats and pray in that direction. We don’t do that.
We don’t have to do that. God’s direction, in fact, is
up. But it’s also down. He’s with us. But that’s David’s
posture. His hands are up towards the
most holy sanctuary. And so he asked for God. He asked
for God to be merciful and hear him. lesson for us in this. What will happen to you if God
is not present with you? What will happen to you if God’s
word is not in your life? What will it be like for you?
as though dead, right? Yeah, he’s not. He’s gone. He’ll be as if you’ve dried up.
And so you see his plea here in verses one and two. The next
thing we get in verses three to five is his petition. What
does David want? Well, he says, don’t drag me
off with the wicked, with the workers of evil. This has some
echoes of Psalm 1. He doesn’t want to sit, walk,
or stand in the presence of evil. So don’t drag me off with the
wicked. Don’t lump me in with them. with the workers of evil.
They speak peace with their neighbors, but evil is in their hearts.
Give to them according to their work, according to the evil of
their deeds. Give to them according to the work of their hands. Render
them their due reward, because they do not regard the works
of the Lord or the work of his hands. God will tear them down
and he will build them up no more.” What’s David praying for
here? He’s praying for judgment. He’s praying that God will judge
and avenge all the evildoers, all the workers. But he’s also
saying, don’t sweep me away with them. You know, if you were to
get caught in a torrent and rushed downstream in a rainstorm, you
would inevitably end up downstream with all the trash, all the debris,
and all the other stuff that was swept away. And what’s David
saying? Don’t sweep me away with the debris of wicked men. but judge them. Judge those who
attack me as the king and the kingdom. Remember, David here
is king, so he’s not just praying for David. Oh, yes, he is, but
he’s also praying for Israel because he represents them. So
he’s saying they do evil and he wants it judged. And we live
in a time where we’re not supposed to be too judgy, are we? I mean,
even in the Christian church, what do we say? Judge not. Or what else do we say? You’re
being judgmental. Or who are you to cast the first
stone? We say that. Or you have a speck
in your eye and so and so has a log. Or you have the log and
they have the speck. That sort of thing. But the Bible also
says there are times when we judge. We judge the times. We
have discernment. We look at what is good and right
and true. And we look at what is wrong and evil and false. We determine things. We make
friends. or we don’t make friends, we
make associations or we don’t make associations. We remove
ourselves at times from these things and we need to be careful
in this neutral world we live in. We need to be careful not
to be swept away and to forget that God tells us to make judgments,
to make discernments, to make judgment calls. We’re called
on to pray, thy will be done. We’re called on to pray, Judge,
what is evil? We just prayed tonight. What’s the evil of the
last 45 years now? Is that right? Abortion. We call
it evil. That is what it is. But how long
have we been calling it evil? For years and years and years.
And how prone are we to be persuaded by the world and say, well, it’s
really not that bad. It’s a choice. or it’s a woman’s
right, or it’s a women’s health issue, or it’s not a baby, it’s
a fetus. You see, we get worn down over
time. And what is God calling us to do here in this passage?
To call evil, evil. What happens, as the old saying
goes, when evil is allowed to flourish because good men, good
people just sit by and allow it. So here’s David the king.
Now remember David’s responsibilities as king. He’s supposed to be
king over a kingdom, and it’s a kingdom of holiness. And so
within the camp of Israel, what is supposed to be the nature
of the people, the nature of the practice of their daily lives,
it’s to be holy. And remember in Israel, think
about in the wilderness in particular with the laws, what were they
supposed to do with evil? They were supposed to put it
away, put it out to take care of evil so that their camp so
that their nation would be pure. So David most likely has that
in mind. We’re talking in the confession
of faith class this morning about capital punishment, about the
death penalty for certain crimes. And one of the things we talked
about is it’s a deterrent. It’s a deterrent for others not
to do evil. Patrick and I were talking the
other day about how, was it back in Puritan times? You got the
death penalty for stealing bread. And he was asking about that.
Dad, they kill people for stealing bread. And I said, yep, nobody
stole bread. It’s a deterrent. So we pray
that evil will be exposed, that God will judge it. And we’re
thankful that our evil has been judged in Christ. Yes, we’ll
have some temporal judgments for our sin and wickedness, but
ultimately we will be judged and declared righteous. So there’s
this petition. After his prayer is answered,
where do you think that leads him next? It’s gotta start with
a P, right? We’re on a roll here with his
plea and his petition. Well, six and seven give us his
praise. He’s pretty low in the early
verses, but here he just jumps up for joy. Blessed be the Lord,
for he has heard the voice of my pleas for mercy. The Lord
is my strength, he’s my shield, and in him my heart trusts, and
I am helped. My heart exults, and with my
song, I give thanks to him. Notice in those couple verses
how he speaks of God’s active work on our behalf. When you
get in a hard place, and you’re tempted to sort of get yourself
down, and get down in a hole, and feel sorry for yourself,
and say there’s no way out, and feel like Eeyore, What can we
say? God is good. God has been good,
and God will be good. We look at His character, His
actions, and His promises. He says, blessed be the Lord.
He’s heard me. He’s heard the voice of my pleas
for mercy. God is my strength. At the beginning,
He was His rock. He’s His strength and His shield.
God has protected Him. God has supported Him. In Him my heart trusts. I am
helped. God’s His helper. And so his heart is overwhelmed,
no longer with grief, no longer with uncertainty, no longer with,
where are you? I feel like I’m dying. He says,
my heart is overflowing with joy. And with my song, I give
thanks to him. So here’s a God who’s been actively
at work in the life of David, and he praises him. What is it
we sing in amazing grace? His grace has brought me safe
thus far. And it’s grace that will lead
me home. We forget that sometimes. We get into the moment by moment
details of life. We get into the hard moments
of life. And we say, all has failed. I’m like those who go
down to Sheol. God hadn’t heard me. I’m dead.
Might as well lay down and die and give up now. But our faith
is what makes us strong. And here’s a man, David, who
gives praise to God, but he gives praise to God for the confidence
that he had and the prayer that he had. I’ll go to God and he’ll
take care of me. I’ll go to God because I know
who he is. I’ll go to God because he can help. And so his praise
is full of reminding himself and others God has been good.
So it’s good for us to give thanks. It’s good for us to sing praise
God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him. All creatures here
below praise him. Above the heavenly hosts, praise
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. We give thanks to God for all
that he’s done. My wife just figured out what
TY means in text messaging. She told me her great epiphany
yesterday. What is TY? It means thank you,
right? Maybe some of you wrote thank
you notes after receiving some Christmas gifts. We thank others. We have to thank God. We’re not
a very thankful people anymore. We, moment by moment, want, want,
want. But moment by moment, we’re not a very thankful people. So
it’s good to praise the Lord. It’s good to recount God’s blessings
one by one. Well, there’s a last little piece
of information here. It’s in verses 8 and 9. And simply for the sake of going
with the peace, we’re going to call it patriotism. Because David
turns from looking at himself to looking at the whole nation
of Israel, looking at the church. And the ending of Psalm 28, I
think, is one of the sweetest ones. He starts in verse 8 by
saying, The Lord is the strength of His people. He is the saving
refuge of His anointed. So he’s saying, God is the strength
of Israel. He’s the strength of the people.
But who else is God the refuge of? He’s the refuge of the anointed.
Who is the anointed? What does the word Messiah mean?
It means the anointed one. Who’s the anointed one here?
It’s David. And who’s the great anointed
one? It’s Jesus, the Messiah. God is the strength of his people,
but he’s the saving refuge of the Messiah. Then he ends there
by saying, oh, save your people, bless your heritage, be their
shepherd, carry them forever. I love that ending to that psalm.
It’s one of the sweetest endings. But you see the patriotism there.
He loves Israel, and he knows God loves Israel. And he loves
the people. That’s a good challenge to us.
As Christians, we want to pray for ourselves. We want to pray
for others. As Christians, we want to pray for our family,
but we also want to pray for our church. And so it’s good
for us to expand our prayers this year in the life of the
church. We’ve studied prayer a pretty good bit in the elective
Sunday school class. On Sunday nights, we’ve considered
prayer some. We’ve done a lot of praying.
But we adore God, we confess sins, we give thanks, we offer
our supplications or petitions, and it’s good to pray for ourselves,
but it’s also good to pray for others. Our catechism, when it
speaks of prayer, encourages us to pray with and for others. And that’s what David’s doing
here, not only as the king, but as one of the people of God. And notice in verse 9 how sweet
it is. What a sweet prayer that is.
Oh, save your people and bless your heritage. And he’s thinking
about Abraham and how God told Abraham, from you, and your offspring,
there’ll be children of Israel that will outnumber the sand
of the seashore. So save your people, bless your
heritage, and be their shepherd and carry them forever. That’s
a sweet prayer that God would carry our loved ones through
surgery, God would carry our loved ones through facing loneliness
after the loss of a spouse, through One of our members this week
will undergo a brain scan to make sure cancer is still on
the on the run. What a sweet verse to pray, save
your people, bless your heritage, be their shepherd and carry them
forever. Let’s pause and pray for just
a moment. Lord, we thank you for how sweet it is to be part
of your family. to be loved by you, to be saved
by Christ, and to have you as our rock and refuge. We can always
rely on you when all else around us fails, even when our own bodies
give way, when the greatest of medical technologies can’t save
us, when our finances are spent and moth and rust have destroyed
our wealth. We have you to rely on. And we
thank you for King David’s example of calling on you when all around
seemed hopeless and death seemed to be the only inevitable next
step. He relied on you, so help us,
we do ask, that when the going gets tough, that we might rely
on you and that our faith in your grace that has seen us this
far will see that same faith that can get us all the way home.
And we thank you in Christ’s name we pray, amen.