Psalm 57 - Living Life With God
October 25, 2020 Speaker: Reid Strahan Series: The Psalms
Topic: Gospel Living Passage: Psalm 57:1–11
David was in a cave when he wrote Psalm 57. Saul was hunting him down, trying to kill him. And David was hiding from him. This morning I want to use this psalm and some verses from other psalms to show how we are called to live life with God, around the clock, in every circumstance, without compartments! So keep David’s situation in mind as we read this Psalm. Then consider your own situation this morning and use these words to express your own heart to God. “Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, till the storms of destruction pass by. I cry out to God Most High, to God who fulfills his purpose for me. He will send from heaven and save me; he will put to shame him who tramples on me. God will send out his steadfast love and his faithfulness! My soul is in the midst of lions; I lie down amid fiery beasts— the children of man, whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongues are sharp swords. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens! Let your glory be over all the earth! They set a net for my steps; my soul was bowed down. They dug a pit in my way, but they have fallen into it themselves.
My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast! I will sing and make melody! Awake, my glory! Awake, O harp and lyre! I will awake the dawn! I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples; I will sing praises to you among the nations. For your steadfast love is great to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens! Let your glory be over all the earth!”
Being a Christian is not only admission to a future place called heaven. We are saved to live with God here and now. Jesus Christ died to bring us near to God, so we could LIVE life with God. We have no business being anywhere near God because of our sin and his holiness. But God himself loved us and opened the door wide, into his presence, through the offering of his Son. This grace is the big story of the Bible.
But we are to use this grace to draw near. We must choose to move into the presence of God and live there. We actively choose to experience God, to commune with God, to enjoy God. We choose to “live in” fellowship with God, through the open door Jesus made for us. We draw near to him in our heart. Isaiah said “these people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me. Walking with God is keeping your heart near to God, as a way of life.
It is hard to break this false idea that relationship with God is only for certain times and places. We “give” God an hour, now and then, perhaps on Sundays, as though we give God “his time”, and then we are on our time. We think of God as someone to whom we do our “duty”, by saying a prayer, or reading the Bible, attending a meeting, or doing a good deed, then we are kind of done with God till the next time. We think there is a time to be our spiritual selves and a time to be our real selves! Nothing could be farther from the truth!
We are to LIVE LIFE with God. And why would we not want to! In Psalms, God is a river of delights, his love is more satisfying than anything else in life, one day with God is better than a thousand days lived out of his presence. It feels good to walk with God! Not that our circumstances are always better, but it feels good in your heart! When you taste God you want more of that! David said, “My soul thirsts for you, my flesh longs for you!”
The Psalms deal a death blow to ritualistic and compartmentalized Christianity. The psalms reveal a life, totally immersed in God! They reveal a life of communion with God, around the clock, in every place, in every kind of circumstance, and through every kind of emotion. If you want to know what living with God looks like read the Psalms. It is talking to God, listening to him, crying out to him, praising him, worshiping, trusting, enjoying God, finding deep soul satisfaction in his love.
Being a Christian is so much more than better behavior, and more information. It is knowing and experiencing God in our mind and soul at all times day and night, in all situations.
Jesus said, “Abide in me”. (Or remain, dwell, live IN ME) Paul said (Since) we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. We are called to live with God’s Spirit as a way of life. No rooms in our life are closed to him. No activities in our lives are separated from him. No time, day or night is shut off from his presence. We work through every inner thought, and attitude, and emotion with him.
*Perhaps nothing in the Psalm shows living our whole life with God like night time prayer, communion, and crying out to God. David said, “I remember You on my bed, I think of You through the watches of the night. For You have been my help, And in the shadow of Your wings I sing for joy.” (Psalm 63:6,7 NASB) At night, on your bed, there is no formality, no pretense, no performance for others. It is just you and the Lord in the aloneness and darkness of the night. And you fellowship with him!
In Psalm 119 David said, “I will rise at midnight and give you thanks.” Someone who does not know God would think this sounds crazy, or simply overly religious. Why would you get out of bed and talk to God? You do that because you love God and appreciate him, and love his word. You do that because you have found something in God you desperately need!
Night time fellowship with God is all through the Psalms! One of the important ways you walk with God is to open your heart to God in the night.
We also live with God in the morning. David said, “When I awake, I am still with you”. Psalm 139:18 We are with God when we sleep and we are still with him when we wake up. You don't have to go find him, or work your way to him. We HAVE peace with God, around the clock, through our Lord Jesus Christ! When you wake up, no matter how you feel, no matter where your dreams have taken you, you can say, I am still with you, Lord.
Sometimes we feel our problems most keenly first thing in the morning. Psalm 88:13 says "But to You, O LORD, I cry for help; in the morning my prayer comes before You."
In the morning we speak out our needs and concerns to him.
The morning is a time to especially nourish our soul on God’s unfailing love. Psalm 92:2 “It is good to give thanks to the LORD And to sing praises to Your name, O Most High; To declare Your loving-kindness in the morning And Your faithfulness by night”. Psalm 90:14 “O satisfy us in the morning with Your lovingkindness, That we may sing for joy and be glad all our days”
The love of God brings deep satisfaction. The love of God is the fuel for your day, the fuel for your life! About 6 months ago I started quoting this phrase from Psalm 143:8 nearly every morning. “Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love”.
We go on from night time fellowship, and morning worship to prayer and praise all day long! Psalm 113:3 “From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the LORD is to be praised!” Psalm 35:8 “I will praise you all the day long.” Psalm 55:17 “Evening and morning and at noon I will pray, and cry aloud, And He shall hear my voice.” NKJV We live life with God!
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Now I want to turn to Psalm 57 and see how David “lived life with God” when he was hiding in a cave! The heading in your Bible tells us this psalm is by David, “when he fled from Saul into the cave”! He fled into the cave because Saul wanted to kill him! Yet we see how deeply David experienced God and walked with God and enjoyed God, in that cave.
Living with God means living with him in the midst of whatever we are experiencing. If you find yourself all alone in a cave, that is where you walk with God. If your dreams are shattered, you walk with God through those things.
Wherever we find ourselves, that is where we walk with God. If you just lost your job or your best friend, or even your spouse, or you have a headache, or you forgot something in the recipe and ruined the cake or burned your supper, that is where you walk with God.
*As we live through real problems and real dangers, we tell God what we are going through and how desperately we feel! There is no unreality about this at all. We are living real life with God.
David said, (vs 4) “My soul is in the midst of lions;
I lie down amid fiery beasts—
the children of man, whose teeth are spears and arrows,
whose tongues are sharp swords.
He tells God, “my soul is bowed down”. He called his circumstances “storms of destruction”. In that storm, in that situation he turned to God, he cried out to God.“Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me!” Verse 2 “I cry out to God Most high.” We go to God for help and salvation, in the deep and dark places of life. David cried out to God from a dark and miserable cave. Spurgeon said, “I charge you, if you would come out of your present gloom, go to God at once.” (Craigie) “The hypnotic power of the enemy is broken when you turn your gaze toward God.” So the first thing we do when we are in a desperate situation, we turn to God, we lift up our soul to God.
*But notice that AS David pours out his complaint to God, he also expresses trust in God and confidence in God’s willingness and power to protect him!
“Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in YOU my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, till the storms of destruction pass by.”
2 I cry out to God Most High,
to God who fulfills his purpose for me.
3 He will send from heaven and save me;
he will put to shame him who tramples on me.
God will send out his steadfast love and his faithfulness! God is gonna come after me! He’s gonna come get me! He’s gonna come with love and with faithfulness to save me!
We pour out our problem and our complaint to God. We tell him, “Lord, I feel so desperate!” But it can never stop there! Praying over all our problems can actually make us worse off if we stop there.
As we cry out to God we must push through to a place of trust. We say, “My soul is among lions”, but “In you my soul takes refuge. In the shadow of your wings I will take refuge! In fact...
David vows to completely trust God through this disaster! Verse 7 “My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast!” The KJV says, “My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed.” He repeats it twice to express his determination! Alexander MacLaren said, “...our religion, if it is worth anything, must be a continuous acting force throughout our whole lives, and not merely sporadic and spasmodic fits and starts. We do not have to be at the mercy of our own unregulated feelings. We can control our hearts, and keep them fixed, even if they should wish to wander….A great many religious people seem to think that ‘good times’ come and go, and that they can do nothing to bring or keep or banish them. But that is not so. If the fire is burning low, there is such a thing on the hearth as a poker... If we feel our faith falling asleep, are we powerless to rouse it? Cannot we say ‘I will trust’? Let us learn that the variations in our religious emotions are largely subject to our own control, and may, if we will govern ourselves, be brought far nearer to (consistency) than they ordinarily are.”
So..We choose to love and trust God with our heart and we SAY SO. Psalm 18:1 “I love you, O Lord, my strength.” Psalm 31:14 “I trust in you, O LORD; I SAY, “You are my God.” That is how you talk, “I love you, I trust you, my heart is steadfast!” Say it out loud!
But we don’t stop there! We don’t stop even with trusting God to help us. *We must push through to a place of praise, to a place of singing and thankfulness!
“My heart is steadfast, my heart is steadfast. I will sing and make melody! …9 “I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples; I will sing praises to you among the nations.”
Praise is the goal of our soul. Praise is the pinnacle of life, the pinnacle of human experience, to praise and exalt and glorify our God. When we are downcast, the goal is NOT to remain downcast but to return to a place of praise. Psalm 42 “Why are you so downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will again praise him, my Savior and my God”. The end goal of life is to exalt and glorify and praise God.
When we descend down into the valley of darkness, we cry out to God in our grief and pain and trouble, but then we climb back up, by faith, to praise, to rejoice, to give thanks to God. Psalm after psalm start with a troubled heart, even a defeated heart, and end up with a joyful heart, praising God again.
Anyone who has experienced the inner exultation and victory of joyful praise and worship, will never be content to live in the lowlands of despair and complaint. When you have tasted the glory of God, and the nearness of God, to live in a lessor state of mind and heart just kills you! You just have to have God! When you have been filled with the Holy Spirit, speaking in songs and hymns, singing and making melody in your heart, giving thanks, you are not content to live, empty again! You want to be filled! And filled again!!!
Verse 8 David said, “Awake, my glory” (meaning “awake my soul, or my whole being”) Awake, O harp and lyre!” This is how we move into worship and praise and joy in God.
David tells his soul to wake up! Wake up to God, to his unfailing love and faithfulness. We live life with God by continually waking up our soul to God, by continually waking up our mind and our emotions to God. David preaches himself awake! He preaches himself into confidence and praise! And you can to!!!
David even tells his musical instruments to wake up! “Awake harp and lyre”. "I will awaken the dawn." Essentially he was saying, I am getting my soul ready and my instruments ready, and I am going to be singing and praising my God when the sun comes up!
The phrase, “I will awaken the dawn” implies that his praise would actually bring in the light of dawn. Of course it doesn’t literally to that, but there is a spiritual sense that our praise DOES awaken the dawn! If you want out of your gloom and darkness, awaken the dawn with your song of praise!
Verse 9 “I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples; I will sing praises to you among the nations.”
He wants everyone to hear him praising God! Why? Verse 10 “For your steadfast love is great to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.” The more we are stunned by the steadfast love and faithfulness of God, the more we are stunned by the immensity of it, the more we want to praise him and the more we want everybody to know that.
Verse 11 “Be exalted, O God, above the heavens!
Let your glory be over all the earth!” His soul is filled with a passion for God to be glorified! And that is the goal of our soul, the goal of our life. Of course we are not always there! But we are always going there, or returning there!
So here is the amazing thing: David had this glorious worship experience in a cave! David Guzik titled his commentary on this psalm, “From a cave to above the heavens”. David was still hiding, still fleeing from Saul, still in danger. And he is praising God, playing his harp, and singing his heart out for God. Don’t you want to be that person! You can be!!!!
We think circumstances rule us but they don’t! We live life in our hearts! David was happier in that cave, than people making seven figure incomes are in their mansions or on their yachts. Real happiness comes from what is going in our hearts, NOT from our surroundings. Even if we are in a cave, if we go to God with complete trust and total worship, then joy comes in like a flood and we are better off than kings!
But Here is the main revelation I want us to see from this Psalm. You can live life with God, wherever you, whatever you are going through! You can worship and enjoy God and be near to God in the midst of whatever is going on. Christ died for you to live near God, around the clock, in every place, in every circumstance. It is a great privilege! We are called to the joy and pleasure of living life with God.
More in The Psalms
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The Curing Power of God's LoveNovember 29, 2020
God Is the Answer To Our Fear