unknown: This is the colour.
SPEAKER_00: My name is Ben, if you don't know me.
SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, just keep your passage, keep your Bibles open or your phone app there, ready to go with that passage there.
SPEAKER_00: We'll be taking a look at Psalm 57 here.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Psalm 57, we like to talk about Psalms being part of different genres, right?
SPEAKER_00: There's Psalms of Lament, and there's Psalms of Thanksgiving, and there's Psalms of prayer and wisdom and all of that good stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 57, however, um as as we saw from the superscription, was written during a time of great crisis.
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna we're gonna have some sense that this is gonna give us an idea of a Christian's response to crisis.
SPEAKER_00: So if you know anything about crisis management, I mean this is this will be a great psalm for you to think on, but uh just because all of us are gonna go through crisis this morning.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if any of you heard it, but there were there was a major uh car accident just right here at the top of the street.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think any of those folks uh who were involved in that had the sense this morning when they woke up that you know there was gonna be an accident that they were gonna be involved in.
SPEAKER_00: So we just never know.
SPEAKER_00: That's that's life.
SPEAKER_00: But psalms give us a window and a lens to view the experiences of the human life.
SPEAKER_00: So that's what we're gonna try and do this morning.
SPEAKER_00: So let's uh let's go to the Lord and and ask his help as we do.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Father God, we thank you for your word, we thank you for the psalms and just the just the ways in which they help us to contextualize all these different experiences that we have as as people, as human beings.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you that uh as we begin to see crisis as you see it, and as uh as as it works out in your in your word, we can see that you are uh working your purposes in all of these things.
SPEAKER_00: Help us as we listen as and as we uh as we see from your word uh what you have, that uh you would be using it to shape us and to change us and to grow us up.
SPEAKER_00: I pray this in Jesus' name.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: 21st of January, 2012, uh, in the middle of the night, my parents were in their house sleeping, and they woke up and found that their house was on fire.
SPEAKER_00: Um I think we'd agree that's a crisis situation.
SPEAKER_00: Um it was very traumatic, obviously, and you figure through that we can see some of the different stages of crisis management.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll see.
SPEAKER_00: So we'll be referring back to my parents' fire as well as the uh as well as the psalm here, but um we're gonna look at three main stages of crisis management uh in the sections of this psalm.
SPEAKER_00: So when my folks woke up and found out their house was on fire, you know, smoke alarms blaring and you know, smells and sounds and everything going on, that's the reaction phase, right?
SPEAKER_00: So this is this is fight or flight, this is reflex, this is immediate, this is you know, surviving for the next 30 seconds kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: The next day, after the flames were out and they were started to sift through the ashes, I suppose.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we call the response phase.
SPEAKER_00: So this is where you're really taking a taking a hard look at what's going on and trying to get a sense of what's been lost, mourning, grieving, celebrating as appropriate.
SPEAKER_00: And then at some point you get to a third phase, which is called resolution.
SPEAKER_00: Resolution is where you've kind of started to move beyond the crisis, and you know, it's still there's still pain and there's still difficulty with it, but you're starting to look forward to, you know, what are you gonna change now?
SPEAKER_00: How is this crisis gonna have a long-term impact on you?
SPEAKER_00: What have you learned?
SPEAKER_00: And how maybe would the crisis open up new opportunities?
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna look at those, the the three sections of the psalm in front of us here.
SPEAKER_00: Let's start with the first one, uh, which will be verses one to three.
SPEAKER_00: We'll look at reaction.
SPEAKER_00: But before we dive into that, let's just take a look real quick at what the actual crisis was, because we have a sense from the from the superscription up at the top of what was going on.
SPEAKER_00: So let me let me read that.
SPEAKER_00: It says a micdom of David.
SPEAKER_00: But it says, when he fled from Saul in the cave.
SPEAKER_00: Now that sounds very uh compelling and interesting, but if you're not familiar with the story of David and Saul, you can go back to the Old Testament uh book of 1 Samuel, of 1 Samuel.
SPEAKER_00: These are events that took place about a thousand years before the time of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But uh I'll just I'll just give you some bullet points to be thinking about here.
SPEAKER_00: Um Saul was the king, Saul was on the throne of Israel, and he had all the resources and all the manpower that a king would have.
SPEAKER_00: And he had ultimately begun to go his own way.
SPEAKER_00: See, he was he was meant to be God's king.
SPEAKER_00: He was meant to be ruling as God would have him rule, but he had he'd gone his own way, and so God had ultimately rejected him and said, You're not going to be able to be king anymore, Saul, because you your heart is not for me.
SPEAKER_00: And David was the guy that God had chosen to be king in Saul's place.
SPEAKER_00: So, as you can imagine, there was there was tension between the two men.
SPEAKER_00: And um a lot of the chapters of 1 Samuel talk about David fleeing from Saul, who was seeking to put him to death.
SPEAKER_00: So, highly recommended, check it out, uh, read that in your spare time, uh, 1 Samuel.
SPEAKER_00: But uh, if we put ourselves in that circumstance, if we think about what that's like, what that might have been like to be pursued by the most powerful man in the country, and also if he's hiding in a cave, right?
SPEAKER_00: Hiding in a cave is different from hiding in a lot of other places.
SPEAKER_00: He's not hiding in a house, he's not hiding on a farm, he's not hiding with friends or family or in a city or in a town.
SPEAKER_00: His his uh situation is desperate enough that he is out in the wilderness hiding in a cave.
SPEAKER_00: So that's definitely a crisis situation.
SPEAKER_00: We may not find ourselves in that sort of crisis situation this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think it gives us a lot that we can see on how to how to respond to the crises that we may face.
SPEAKER_00: So our first point, there are gonna be three points this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Our first point, which we will look at in the reaction phase, is that God is our refuge.
SPEAKER_00: All right, so if we look at at verses one to three, we'll really get a sense of this.
SPEAKER_00: God is our refuge.
SPEAKER_00: When you read these, read these verses, you can really just imagine them being prayed and almost like a rough whisper, you know, very, very eagerly, very, very uh acute moment of crisis.
SPEAKER_00: You know, this is this is when it's it's all come down.
SPEAKER_00: There's no turning back, there's no getting out of this crisis.
SPEAKER_00: In the example of my parents and their house, this is when you wake up in the night and you find out that your house is on fire.
SPEAKER_00: This is the moment.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't the time to be philosophical.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't the time to kind of figure out, oh gosh, I wonder why there's a fire right now.
SPEAKER_00: I wonder what happened.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't this isn't the time to lament, oh, woe was me, what's gone wrong that our house is on fire?
SPEAKER_00: This isn't the time to wonder about what might happen tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00: This is this is survival.
SPEAKER_00: This is reflex.
SPEAKER_00: This is you know, fight or flight.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what does what does David's example show us?
SPEAKER_00: What kind of reflex does he have?
SPEAKER_00: Well, he cries out to God right from the very first.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 1, he says, Be merciful to me, O God.
SPEAKER_00: Be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge.
SPEAKER_00: Now we say God is our refuge.
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of a Christian-y kind of word, the kind of phrase that we that we use.
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to take refuge?
SPEAKER_00: Well, a refuge is really a place of safety.
SPEAKER_00: And we might be tempted to think David thought of the cave that he was hiding in as his as his refuge, right?
SPEAKER_00: He's he's in this cave, he's he's hidden in it for a reason.
SPEAKER_00: He might be thinking, well, this cave is my refuge.
SPEAKER_00: But if you think about hiding in a cave, it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be a long distance from going to this cave is a safe place where I'm protected to, I am stuck here, I am trapped here.
SPEAKER_00: The difference between a cave and a grave is only a couple of letters, right?
SPEAKER_00: So you would have really felt, would have really felt trapped after a very short time.
SPEAKER_00: So the cave David recognized was certainly not his refuge, not in any meaningful sense.
SPEAKER_00: He recognized this and he put his hope and his trust in God.
SPEAKER_00: If you go on with verse one, it says, In the shadow of your wings I will take refuge till the storms of destruction pass by.
SPEAKER_00: So David is actively trusting.
SPEAKER_00: He's actively trusting God, but he's not relying on his own efforts to get through.
SPEAKER_00: He's not saying, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take refuge in the shadow of your wings until I sort out my next move.
SPEAKER_00: He's not saying, I will take refuge in you until I figure out a way out of this.
SPEAKER_00: No, he's saying, I'm gonna hang here until the storms of destruction pass me by.
SPEAKER_00: This means that David was not looking at taking refuge in God as some kind of backup plan or, you know, second, second place or anything like that.
SPEAKER_00: This was his only plan.
SPEAKER_00: We see it, we see this very clearly if you jump down to verse 3 here in the section.
SPEAKER_00: He lists out three things that he expects uh and trusts that God will do.
SPEAKER_00: It says, He will send from heaven and save me.
SPEAKER_00: He will put to shame him who tramples on me, and God will send out his steadfast love and his faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: So these are all things that he is he is anticipating, that he is expecting God to do.
SPEAKER_00: The last one there is especially powerful, I find, uh, this idea of God's steadfast love and faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: This is God's character.
SPEAKER_00: This is this is who God is.
SPEAKER_00: This this uh steadfast love is a is something that we see in the Old Testament a lot.
SPEAKER_00: It's a term in the Hebrew, and it has this connotation of being a very fervent, very passionate, very active love.
SPEAKER_00: And this is this is God's character.
SPEAKER_00: So of course David recognizes that God is going to act.
SPEAKER_00: To do otherwise would be inconsistent with who he is.
SPEAKER_00: We can look into the New Testament, we can see in the book of Acts, uh, Acts chapter 12, I think it is, uh, the apostle Peter has been, you know, arrested and he's about to be put to death by Herod, and it's gonna be this big public spectacle.
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be a huge thing.
SPEAKER_00: And we and we find Peter in the narrative in Acts 12, the night before this is all supposed to go down.
SPEAKER_00: And what's he doing?
SPEAKER_00: Well, he's sleeping, right?
SPEAKER_00: He's got such a trust that uh Jesus is not done with him.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, he he was told by Jesus when he was when Jesus was on the earth that he would live to old age.
SPEAKER_00: So he didn't really have anything to worry about there.
SPEAKER_00: We see this idea echoed in verse 2, which we skipped over there in the middle there.
SPEAKER_00: It says that God fulfills his purpose for me.
SPEAKER_00: So David knew.
SPEAKER_00: David knew God had a purpose for him.
SPEAKER_00: David knew that God had anointed him to be king over Israel.
SPEAKER_00: You can't be king if you're dead.
SPEAKER_00: So he he was fairly confident there that God would work that out, that God would sort out what that needed to look like.
SPEAKER_00: We might look at this and say, gosh, we don't always know what our specific purpose is.
SPEAKER_00: We know the same chapter in Acts that I was just talking about, where Peter got delivered, uh, the apostle James was put to death.
SPEAKER_00: So how do I know in any crisis, any situation, am I the Peter in this story or am I the James in this story?
SPEAKER_00: But really the hope that we have in the gospel is that God's purposes are worked out, whether we're the Peter or the James.
SPEAKER_00: God is working in all circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: We see Romans chapter 8 might be familiar to a lot of us, but uh the Apostle Paul wrote that God works all things, all the circumstances of our lives, together for the good of his people.
SPEAKER_00: To those who love him and are called according to his purposes.
SPEAKER_00: See, God is not some kind of distant, cold taskmaster kind of moving people around like pawns on a chessboard.
SPEAKER_00: That's that's not the God that we serve.
SPEAKER_00: We we see this idea of this steadfast love, this faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: So God is at work for the good of his people in all of these different difficult circumstances that we face.
SPEAKER_00: We see in the in these first three verses of this psalm that God is our refuge right at the very point of our need.
SPEAKER_00: Now, how might this apply in our lives if we think about God being a refuge in our lives?
SPEAKER_00: Well, David gives us a really great example because from verse one, he's praying.
SPEAKER_00: He's calling out to God, he's going straight to him.
SPEAKER_00: This is his instinct, this is his reflex.
SPEAKER_00: And my challenge for all of us, myself perhaps most of all, how often is it our response?
SPEAKER_00: How often is it our reaction when things go south, when things are challenging, to go to God in prayer, to trust that he's got it worked out?
SPEAKER_00: How often do we only cry out to God after one or two things we're trying haven't worked out?
SPEAKER_00: Or after we've gotten down the road and been thinking it through in other in other contexts.
SPEAKER_00: For David, there was no other option.
SPEAKER_00: There was no other plan.
SPEAKER_00: God is his refuge and his kind of first point of call.
SPEAKER_00: The second uh thing that we can see here is we all have caves in our lives, things that we would maybe think to put refuge, put our refuge in, find our refuge in.
SPEAKER_00: We can challenge ourselves by answering, you know, by filling in the blank here.
SPEAKER_00: You know, all I need is blank and I'll be okay in life, right?
SPEAKER_00: All I need is this relationship and I'll be okay.
SPEAKER_00: All I need is this job and I'll be okay.
SPEAKER_00: All I need is my kids to turn out the way that I think they should, and I'll be okay.
SPEAKER_00: Any of those things may look like great things, and they may offer, you know, this sense of refuge, but they crumble and they quickly go from being a cave to being a grave.
SPEAKER_00: When things don't work out the way that we expect them to, we can really feel like our sense of self is really crumbling.
SPEAKER_00: But when we put our hope and our trust and we seek our refuge in God, God is unchanging.
SPEAKER_00: And because God is unchanging, and because we can trust that he is at work for his purposes, for our good, in all of the circumstances, we can we can recognize that that steadfast love is ours, even if we don't understand why.
SPEAKER_00: So to take to take that first point back again, yes, God is our refuge.
SPEAKER_00: Second point, we're gonna go to the next section here.
SPEAKER_00: We'll look at it in terms of the response phase.
SPEAKER_00: And this is that God is bigger than the crisis.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this does not mean that the crisis doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_00: This doesn't mean that the crisis is something that we should ignore or minimize or pretend that it's not there.
SPEAKER_00: But this is the phase where you're sizing things up.
SPEAKER_00: Alright?
SPEAKER_00: You take a look at verses four to six.
SPEAKER_00: You there's there's a rhythm there.
SPEAKER_00: Verse four, the crisis.
SPEAKER_00: Verse five, God.
SPEAKER_00: Verse six, the first part is a reflection on those causing the crisis, and the last part is a reflection on God's work to resolve it.
SPEAKER_00: There's a sense where David is kind of weighing out these opposing forces and trying to see what's what.
SPEAKER_00: If we go back to the example of my parents and their house, right?
SPEAKER_00: I remember this phase because this was after the fire had been put out, and now it's just time to take a look at it in the cold light of day.
SPEAKER_00: And it was really, it was probably the hardest phase for them because it was just digging and searching, and you know, here's a here's a bunch of old family photos that are destroyed.
SPEAKER_00: That's terrible.
SPEAKER_00: Here over here, there's something else that we didn't expect to make it, but it has.
SPEAKER_00: That's great.
SPEAKER_00: So there's joy and there's sorrow, and there's all those things mixed together.
SPEAKER_00: How does David size up his situation?
SPEAKER_00: Well, once again, he doesn't omit the difficulties.
SPEAKER_00: We see in verse 4 it says, My soul is in the midst of lions, and I lie down amid fiery beasts.
SPEAKER_00: He's not kind of squinting at the situation or, you know, trying to block out seeing what it really is.
SPEAKER_00: If you look at verse six, it says, My soul was bowed down.
SPEAKER_00: So everything, everything that's happening is just like a weight on his inner self.
SPEAKER_00: But in between those two thoughts, you have verse five.
SPEAKER_00: And verse five comes out and it's it's almost jarring.
SPEAKER_00: It says, Be exalted, O God, above the heavens, let your glory be over all the earth.
SPEAKER_00: So David is taking a breath here and he's looking at all that's going on, but he's also recognizing that God is there and God is worthy, God is exalted, God is above the heavens.
SPEAKER_00: This is that idea of the lens that I was talking about.
SPEAKER_00: David is choosing to look at his problems, but to look at them through the lens of God's faithfulness, through the lens of who God is.
SPEAKER_00: So he's letting God speak into how he sees his experience.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: It's very easy for us to let our experience shape the way that we see God.
SPEAKER_00: You know, this terrible thing is happening, God must be awful.
SPEAKER_00: But to recognize and start with the fact that God is good.
SPEAKER_00: And so whatever's going on must also be good.
SPEAKER_00: So that's that lens.
SPEAKER_00: So we're looking at this God who's exalted above the heavens, right?
SPEAKER_00: So the highest, most powerful, most great, most worthy of praise.
SPEAKER_00: And we're looking at this God whose glory is over all the earth, right?
SPEAKER_00: So he's both big enough and near enough to speak into these crises.
SPEAKER_00: And this idea is really paid off.
SPEAKER_00: It's really, it's really fulfilled in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: When we look ahead to the New Testament, we can see uh Jesus coming, Jesus himself, fully God, right?
SPEAKER_00: Uh Philippians 2 says that Jesus has the name that is above all other names, right?
SPEAKER_00: Exalted to the highest.
SPEAKER_00: But we also see that Jesus became flesh, right?
SPEAKER_00: He came near to us that he might save.
SPEAKER_00: We see this idea in John chapter 1, a similar language to what David's using here.
SPEAKER_00: David's talking about, you know, your glory be over all the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And uh John talks about it and says that Jesus is a manifestation of the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: It says in Jesus we saw glory as of the only Son from the Father.
SPEAKER_00: Paul writes in Colossians that in Jesus the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.
SPEAKER_00: So this same God who is exalted above the heavens, whose glory is over all the earth, came near.
SPEAKER_00: This is the best fulfillment, the best example of how verse 3 pays off, right?
SPEAKER_00: Where it says that God sent from God will send from heaven to save, right?
SPEAKER_00: God sent from heaven, sent Jesus to save us.
SPEAKER_00: Take a look at verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: It says, They dug a pit in my way, but they have fallen into it themselves.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this isn't this isn't karma, okay?
SPEAKER_00: This isn't irony.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't an Alanis Morissette song.
SPEAKER_00: This is the work of a loving God to bring forth his purposes.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we talked about this in the last section that the difficulties that we face in life, they're not wasted, they're not meaningless.
SPEAKER_00: By them, God is shaping us, helping us to see that he's faithful and we're learning to trust him in all these circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: We also see that all the all the bad things that happen in the world, all the evil is not throwing off God's plan.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_00: God's plan is moving forward despite and even including all the bad choices that people make, including our own bad choices.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that a relief?
SPEAKER_00: Even where I am unfaithful, and I'm unfaithful a lot, guys.
SPEAKER_00: But even where I'm unfaithful, it's not a match for God's faithfulness in my life.
SPEAKER_00: Don't forget where the psalm began.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse one again, just real quick.
SPEAKER_00: It says, Be merciful to me, O God.
SPEAKER_00: Mercy means, you know, help me even though I don't deserve it, basically.
SPEAKER_00: David was not coming to God as a perfect, perfectly moral man who God owed a favor to.
SPEAKER_00: David himself was flawed.
SPEAKER_00: And if you read the whole 1 Samuel narrative and into 2 Samuel, you'll see he was flawed profoundly.
SPEAKER_00: Did a lot of bad stuff, but his heart, his heart was God's.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says he was a man after God's own heart.
SPEAKER_00: So he approached God based on God's grace, not on his moral perfection.
SPEAKER_00: So we can see this in our own lives.
SPEAKER_00: God is bigger than the crisis, though, friends.
SPEAKER_00: And the way that this pays off for us, the way that this applies in our lives, is that it changes how we see the crisis.
SPEAKER_00: If we see God as kind of, you know, this well-intentioned friend in the sky who really is pulling for us, but is, you know, impotent, then he's not much comfort in time of crisis.
SPEAKER_00: If he's not able to save, if he's not able to help, then there's not a lot of comfort for us in our time of crisis.
SPEAKER_00: But David's weighing all of this out, and he's seeing it that there is this power to save.
SPEAKER_00: And in our moments of reflection, may we see God's power.
SPEAKER_00: May we let him speak into our understanding of the crisis.
SPEAKER_00: Finally.
SPEAKER_00: Final point here, guys.
SPEAKER_00: We've talked about how our reaction to crisis is to remember that God is our refuge.
SPEAKER_00: Our response is to affirm that God is bigger than the crisis.
SPEAKER_00: And now we come to the third and final point, which we'll see in the last section.
SPEAKER_00: God is worthy of our praise.
SPEAKER_00: To put this in the context of crisis management again, this is where we're into the resolution phase.
SPEAKER_00: This is where we're starting to focus on the aftermath and how we're moving forward.
SPEAKER_00: In my parents' example, they they looked and found out what caused this fire.
SPEAKER_00: Well, it was a problem with the wiring.
SPEAKER_00: So they got the wiring fixed.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the change that came out of it.
SPEAKER_00: But more than that, they looked at ways that they could turn the crisis into an opportunity.
SPEAKER_00: And they found things that they probably never would have done.
SPEAKER_00: See, when they bought that house, when we moved into that house, I was 13.
SPEAKER_00: My two younger brothers were seven and eleven.
SPEAKER_00: We were doing our thing.
SPEAKER_00: We were kids.
SPEAKER_00: This was 20 years later, 21 years later.
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, two of us had grown up and moved out and started families of our own.
SPEAKER_00: So there were empty rooms.
SPEAKER_00: My parents said, hey, what if we reimagined the floor plan here?
SPEAKER_00: What if we did something different?
SPEAKER_00: What if instead of having, you know, bedrooms gathering dust, we put together something that we would actually use in our home?
SPEAKER_00: And so we can see this idea in the way that God works in our lives too.
SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes crisis is a time for us to let go of things that were that are not good for us, that are not working for us, right?
SPEAKER_00: Ways that we are maybe relying on self or seeking refuge in other places.
SPEAKER_00: Let those things get stripped away and instead we're we're left with ourselves and God.
SPEAKER_00: And we see that God uses that not to shame us, not to tear us down, not to make us feel bad for having the wrong thinking, but to build us up.
SPEAKER_00: God has this wonderful plan, and it's not just like bad stuff happens and God has to adjust and recalculate and try and find something that'll be okay.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: God's plan for us is so much bigger than we can understand, because it involves all the good and all the bad, and uses it all for his purposes, his glory, and for our good.
SPEAKER_00: So in as we reflect on God here, as we see all of this stuff coming together, we could spend years of our lives trying to figure out why or how or what's God doing, what's the next thing.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not what David does here.
SPEAKER_00: He recognizes that in joy and in sorrow, God is worthy of our praise.
SPEAKER_00: Now we could very easily just take and kind of cover up verses one to six and just pretend that verses seven to eleven are the psalm for the morning.
SPEAKER_00: And this is this is a pretty enthusiastic psalm of praise all by itself.
SPEAKER_00: We might be thinking, gosh, maybe that's what David's doing.
SPEAKER_00: He's looked at all of this, and now he's like, I don't want to deal with that, just let me write this psalm of praise now.
SPEAKER_00: But I don't think that's what he's doing, and I challenge us to look at it in context and recognize that all of this praise comes in light of the crisis.
SPEAKER_00: So it's even more profound in that.
SPEAKER_00: This is not David kind of denying what's gone on.
SPEAKER_00: This is the path forward through and out of what's gone on.
SPEAKER_00: Take a look at verse 7.
SPEAKER_00: It says, My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast.
SPEAKER_00: And this comes exactly one verse after verse six where he said, My soul is bowed down.
SPEAKER_00: But the more he's looking at his situation through the lens of God's faithfulness, the more he's feeling void up, the more he's floating on it.
SPEAKER_00: And the result of this is that he's just bursting at the seams to sing praise.
SPEAKER_00: Take a look at this verse eight awake, my glory, awake, harp and lyre, I will awake the dawn.
SPEAKER_00: I think of somebody just like flipping all the switches and turning all the volumes up to 11 and just getting ready there.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 9, I really think there's uh something here for us as well, because it says that David is thanking and praising God among the peoples and among the nations.
SPEAKER_00: And there's so many Psalms where it talks about I'll praise God in the sanctuary.
SPEAKER_00: I'll praise God in the temple, I'll praise God in Zion, very specific places within the nation of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And there's nothing wrong with those.
SPEAKER_00: You know, certainly the temple was created to be a place where uh where God would be worshipped particularly, but it's almost like David is looking and seeing that God is so much bigger than all of that.
SPEAKER_00: God is not just limited to this geopolitical entity here.
SPEAKER_00: He is Lord of all, every person, every place, everything.
SPEAKER_00: And he really ties it together in the last two verses.
SPEAKER_00: We see ideas that are coming forward from other parts of the Psalm.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 10, we see God's steadfast love and faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: We saw that uh referenced in the middle of the crisis back in verse 3.
SPEAKER_00: And verse 11 is a direct repeat of verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: So we're pulling stuff from the other sections here and we're tying it all together here.
SPEAKER_00: David said it and meant it, and now it's just becoming all the more real as he's working through it.
SPEAKER_00: So all of this praise and worship that we're seeing in here is not out of place.
SPEAKER_00: It's not isolated, it's all in context of what's come before.
SPEAKER_00: So, generally speaking, friends, I'm wrapping it up here.
SPEAKER_00: I know it's quite warm in here.
SPEAKER_00: That's our own crisis for the morning, but we'll get through it.
SPEAKER_00: When we're planning and we're we're thinking about crisis, it's usually dependent upon time.
SPEAKER_00: You have your reaction right at the moment of the crisis, and then you have your response when you're going through it, and then after that you work toward towards resolution.
SPEAKER_00: But what's the story with David here?
SPEAKER_00: Nothing's changed.
SPEAKER_00: He's still in the same circumstance.
SPEAKER_00: We don't, the the heading on the psalm doesn't say when David escaped or when he when the that when there was danger, and then that went away.
SPEAKER_00: It just says in the cave.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing's changed in terms of his circumstances, and yet reading the psalm from the beginning to the end, you get a sense that there is a huge change that's taken place.
SPEAKER_00: And really what we see there is it's David's approach to the crisis.
SPEAKER_00: It's that lens again.
SPEAKER_00: He's seeing it differently.
SPEAKER_00: He lets what he knows about God speak into his crisis, and suddenly he sees it very differently.
SPEAKER_00: This fear, this lament give way to praise.
SPEAKER_00: So, what can we learn from David in this psalm?
SPEAKER_00: Well, we've talked about how, you know, our first reaction should be to cry out to God.
SPEAKER_00: We've talked about seeking refuge, not in the things of the world, but in God.
SPEAKER_00: We've talked about letting God shape our view of the crisis and not the other way around.
SPEAKER_00: We've talked about God being worthy of our praise no matter what the circumstance.
SPEAKER_00: But there's one bit, anybody who's done a crisis management course, you'll you'll you'll know we've we've missed a step, right?
SPEAKER_00: I used to be in, I used to be in business and we talked about crisis management.
SPEAKER_00: And the things that you always know is that you don't plan, you don't prepare in the midst of crisis.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't work, right?
SPEAKER_00: If you're if you have a crisis strike that you're not ready for, you're not going to suddenly become ready for it.
SPEAKER_00: So that's why they always want you to start with step one, which is preparation.
SPEAKER_00: Before the reaction, before the response, before the resolution, you have preparation.
SPEAKER_00: And while that is not explicitly spelled out in this psalm, it is sprinkled all over.
SPEAKER_00: Because David didn't come to these ideas of who God was, of who God is just in the moment.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't stumble upon it and say, okay, well, here we go.
SPEAKER_00: No, we we might say this was part of his emergency response plan.
SPEAKER_00: As we seek God, as we grow in him, we are made ready for the next crisis.
SPEAKER_00: And as we trust God, as we seek refuge in him through the crisis, we come to find that he is all the more worthy of our praise.
SPEAKER_00: It's a cycle.
SPEAKER_00: And as we walk through all of this, uh we just grow.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it's about.
SPEAKER_00: So let us be in prayer together.
SPEAKER_00: Let us be in the word together.
SPEAKER_00: Let us gather in fellowship.
SPEAKER_00: These are like fire drills, right?
SPEAKER_00: This is how we prepare for crisis.
SPEAKER_00: And you'll remember from the fire drills of uh you know primary school, you gotta have a buddy, buddy system, right?
SPEAKER_00: We read in in 2 Corinthians, which we just finished up a few weeks ago, that God has given us his comfort so that we can share his comfort with others in their time of crisis.
SPEAKER_00: May we as a church know this.
SPEAKER_00: May we seek to encourage one another along this walk as we're all going through different crises at different times.
SPEAKER_00: May we know the comfort of God through his word, through his spirit, and through his people.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Father God, we do thank you for your word and we do thank you that you encourage us and you grow us and you shape us through it.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I pray that in this uh in this afternoon uh that you would speak to us and that you would uh just be at work that we might be ready to face crisis in the way that is is uh drawn up here.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for the example of David, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We know he didn't always set a good example, but thank you for this psalm where we can see reaction and response and and resolution uh to your glory.
SPEAKER_00: We ask this in Jesus' name.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Now, part of our preparation, part of the way that we can help to prepare and to be on course is to be reminded of the goodness of our Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And so as we approach the Lord's table this afternoon, um we can think that through.
SPEAKER_00: Because in the Lord's in the Lord's table, in the in the bread and in the juice and the wine there, there's an immediacy.
SPEAKER_00: There's there's it's right here, right now.
SPEAKER_00: And in the same way, that points us to the fact that in our crisis, in our uncertainty, that God is right here and right now.