Today we’re going to talk about the security and joy, of knowing God as your shield.  Verse 7 “The Lord is my strength and my shield; My heart trusted in Him, and I am helped; Therefore my heart greatly rejoices. And with my song I will praise Him!”

A few years ago, while I was struggling with a problem, I heard this verse read out loud on a podcast, along with some background music.  I was deeply moved by it. It infused such strength into my heart that I didn’t want to forget it. So I looked it up and found that it was Psalm 28:7 in the NKJV.  It is one of my favorite statements of faith in the Bible and one that I use often for my own times of need. 

A shield is a weapon of protection. It assumes we are under attack, in some way, and need a defender. In the words of a song, the Lord says to you, “I will be your shield in the fiercest battle, I’ll defend you from all these arrows, and the sword I wield will keep you from danger, let me be your shield.” 

Of course, you can try to be your own shield. You can trust some strategy, or person or psychological gimmick. OR you can live in the security, joy and peace, of trusting in the Lord as your shield. 

The revelation of the Lord as our shield, is all through the Psalms. Psalm 3:1“LORD, how my adversaries have increased! Many are those who rise up against me..3But You, LORD, are a SHIELD around me, my glory, the One who lifts up my head.”

Psalm 33:20-22 “Our soul waits for the LORD; he is our help and our SHIELD. Our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name”.

Psalm 84:11 For the LORD God is a sun and a SHIELD. O LORD of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you.”

But my favorite is right here in Psalm 28:7 “The Lord is my strength and my SHIELD.” 

If you are assaulted by fears and anxieties (and who is not), by people and problems, or by demons and powers of darkness, you need a shield. I read something recently where a person said, “I was dealing with a spirit of fear. I was feeling vulnerable, defenseless, unsafe, unprotected, and abandoned. Like a soldier without a weapon. Basically, I was in constant “self-protection” mode.” Those are all signs of NOT having a shield. Or not trusting in the Lord as your shield. The Lord IS a shield, but you can live without the joy and security of that if you don’t TRUST Him to be your shield.

We need to trust in the Lord as our shield in our ordinary problems and attacks of everyday life. We also need to do that to be prepared for the days ahead. Paul said, “Difficult times will come”, and “Put on the full armor or God so that WHEN the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand.” In Revelation 13:7 the beast is allowed to make “war on the saints”. The day may come when the enemy is knocking at your door. Putting some in prison, or worse. We desperately need to practice daily trusting the Lord as our shield in all things.

*We need the Lord as our strength and shield because we actually ARE inadequate for life, in ourselves. There isn’t a person alive who doesn’t feel, deep down inside, “something is lacking in me”.  And you’re not the only one who feels that.

The reason the contemporary world constantly says, You ARE enough. Is because we feel like we’re not enough.  IF we were enough, we wouldn’t constantly have to bolster people up with that kind of psychological help.  

Kobe Bryant, one of the best basketball players of all time, said, "I have self-doubt. I have insecurity. I have fear of failure. I have nights when I show up at the arena and I'm like, 'My back hurts, my feet hurt, my knees hurt. I don't have it. I just want to chill.' We all have self-doubt” 

His answer to these feeling is basically You believe in yourself in spite of those feelings. But his comment is unusually honest, for a big time athlete. 

The popular cultural answer right now to our fears and inadequacies, is “self empowerment”. The message is “you ARE awesome”, just strip away the negative self talk, ignore your critics. Right within you is an inner goddess, a superhero. Just believe in yourself.  

But when real evil comes, when real problems come, that rings hollow.  Because intuitively we know it’s just not true.  Allie Beth Stucky said, “If we are insecure, we are not going to be able to find the antidote to these things in the same place our insecurities and fears are coming from. Self can’t be the answer to self.”  The Bible truth is more like you are not enough, but that’s okay because God is.

Paul was one of the greatest people in history. Yet he said, “We are NOT adequate in ourselves….BUT God made us adequate.  That’s the paradox of a Christian: weak but strong.

*So we seek to gain our adequacy, security, confidence in the Lord as our strength and shield. Verse 7The Lord is my strength and my shield.”  This is a personal statement of faith. It expresses personal confidence in the Lord. It’s like Psalm 27 “Though an army encamps against me, my heart will not fear!  Though a war breaks out against me, in spite of this I shall be confident.”  

Real faith is a kind of audacious, bold confidence in God that rises to the level of boasting in God!  Psalm 44:8 In God we have boasted all day long.” Boasting in the Lord is SO different than focusing on and talking about how hard or bad your life and circumstances are. 

You get up in the morning and say out loud, “I WILL face all my problems and responsibilities today without fear, because the Lord is my shield. I will face my future without fear because the Lord is my shield and the defense of my life.” 

This kind of confidence is a crucial element of Christian faith that we MUST understand!  Hebrews 3:6 We are Christ’s house, if we hold fast our confidence AND THE BOAST OF OUR HOPE, firm until the end”.  

Sometimes we believe God through our tears.  Sometimes we barely hold on.  But we can’t live there all the time.  Faith has to blossom into this bold robust confidence in God.  When I am weighed down with something, I don’t get free of that  until I come to this kind of boast in God. 

We love Luther’s hymn A Mighty Fortress because most of it is a boast in God!  “And though this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us we will not fear for God has willed his truth to triumph through us”.  “Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also. The body they may kill.  God’s truth abideth still.  His kingdom is forever”  We like that because those lines express real faith. Real faith has this kind of big confidence, to it. And this is the most important attitude Psalm 28:7 can give you.  This is a disposition, a way of coming at life, that God wants us to have.  

*Alright let’s start at the beginning of this Psalm. 

Verse 1 “To you I call, O Lord my Rock.  David knows he needs help outside himself. He has a problem, he feels under attack, He knows he’s not enough in himself 

But David knew exactly where to go for help. He knows God is his rock, his source of strength, his place of safety! And we need to compare our heart with this! Where do you go to find inner strength, to deal with your fears and weaknesses? We say we trust God, BUT then in practice, do we go somewhere OTHER than the God to be our rock? Hebrews 4:16 tell us where to go in time of need.  “Let us come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help us in time of need.”

*Then David prayed, “Do not be silent...Hear the voice of my supplications When I cry to You, When I lift up my hands toward Your holy sanctuary. Hear my plea for mercy”. This prayer is so real, so honest. This kind of honesty with God is part of an authentic prayer life, an authentic relationship with God. At times we all have felt God was silent. David said, I really need your help. Don’t not answer me!  

He calls upon the Lord with a cry, a plea, and with lifted hands. We lift hands in worship, but most of the times hands are lifted in the Bible, are in prayer.  Paul said, “I want the men to pray lifting holy hands”.  It’s a posture showing our attention and trust is toward the Lord. That’s what you do when you are in trouble. 

Spurgeon said, “Uplifted hands have ever been a form of devout posture, and are intended to signify a reaching upward towards God, a readiness, an eagerness to receive the blessing sought after. We stretch out empty hands, for we are beggars; we lift them up, for we seek heavenly supplies; we lift them towards the mercy seat of Jesus, for there our expectation dwells.” 

*Then he said, verse 3 “Do not drag me off with the wicked. Don’t treat me like your enemies.” “I’m one of Yours!”  So take care of me!”  They are “Workers of iniquity, who speak peace to their neighbors, but evil is in their hearts”. AND “They regard not the works of the Lord, nor the operation of his hands.” They refuse to acknowledge God even those they see his works in creation. 

Verse 4 “Give them according to their deeds, And according to the wickedness of their endeavors; Give them according to the work of their hands; Render to them what they deserve.” 

A lot of people have problems with a God who judges the wicked. But judgment is a moral necessity. God could not be just OR good, if evil were NOT judged.  There could never be a future restoration of all things; there could never be heaven, there could never be a place where righteousness dwells, things could never be set right, if God did not judge.

David’s point is, do not take me away with the wicked, or treat me the same. Guzik said, David knew that his life was different than the workers of iniquity, and he asked that God would treat him differently than the wicked. 

*Then verse 6 “Blessed be the Lord, Because He has heard the voice of my supplications!” Though we have doubts, we need to come to the place where we believe God has heard us.

1 John 5:14 This is the confidence we have before God, if we ask anything according to his will we know that he hears us...” A good way to end your prayer is by saying, “Thank you, Father for hearing my prayer.’

*Verse 7 David proclaims “the Lord is my strength and my shield”.  The Lord is not merely A shield, He is MY shield. He is the defense of MY life. You can know a lot about God, but if you don’t trust that He is YOUR God, it wont make a difference in your life.

Someone wrote this testimony about how this verse changed their life: “Instead of trying really hard to be my own shield, my own protector, and not living the life I have been blessed with, I am now thankful to say I have learned that God can be trusted with my safety. That doesn’t mean something bad cannot happen to me. It means that no matter what happens to me, I know my God is in control and He’s got me.” 

*Then David said, “My heart trusted in Him and I am helped”. Trust is a deliberate choice you make in your heart. You can trust or not trust. Jeremiah 17 Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind, who makes the flesh his strength. Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him. He will be like a tree planted by the water. And will not fear when the heat comes.”  Trust matters!  Whatever you are going through in your family, or work, is your heart trusting in the Lord?  

*Trusting in the Lord as your shield is the secret to joy. “Therefore my heart greatly rejoices. And with my song I will praise Him.” NIV “My heart leaps for joy.”  ESV “My heart exalts”.  REAL trust in God, brings joy. When we are so preoccupied with protecting our lives, we lose the joy of living each day in the safety of the Lord.  Psalm 63:7 “Because You are my help; I will sing for joy in the shadow of Your wings.”  

You sing for joy because of the security that comes from believing you are under the Lord’s care and protection!  So trust the Lord as your shield and go live your life, with boldness and confidence. AND with singing! 

This is to encourage, to remind us this life of trust is possible for each of us! But the path to that life MAY require  repentance. In the Navigators, when someone had a bad attitude or grumbled or said something they shouldn’t say, someone would call out, “attitude check”. It was a way to call people to repentance.  If you are speaking or exuding insecurity, unhappiness, or living a lot of the time in anxiety, this verse is like an “attitude check”.  It calls us to repentance.  Where fears and absence of joy are dominating us, we need to repent of our LACK of trust and confidence in the Lord.  

*Verse 8 is a declaration that God is a shield for all His people. “The LORD is the strength of his people, a saving refuge, (or a fortress of salvation) for his anointed.”  Issac Ambrose, “If Christ be our strength then we can bear whatever comes upon us.” So our focus is not on the problems that come upon us, but on Christ as our strength! 

Then David ends with a prayer for God to intervene for His people based on that truth. Verse 9 “Save your people and bless your inheritance! Shepherd them and bear them up forever.” The ESV: “Be their Shepherd and carry them forever.” The Lord is not only our defender but he shepherds every aspect of our lives and carries us through life. There is such security, peace and joy, in that! 

Applications:

*Make Psalm 28:7 your own personal confession of confidence in the Lord. Put your trust in this specific truth about God, that He is your shield. Believe it enough till it affects your confidence and sense of security Believe it till it makes your heart rejoice and sing for joy. 

*Learn to boast in the Lord, not your problems. Confront your problems with this boast in the Lord. Confront your fears with this confession! Confront your inadequacies. Out loud!

*Encourage others with this message. Remind a brother or sister, or your spouse, your children or grandchildren “the Lord will be your strength. He’ll be your shield and defender. You don’t need to fight that battle. The Lord will be there for you.  You don’t need to be afraid. God will walk with you through that. He’ll carry you.  He’ll be your shepherd.”