(upbeat music)
- Hi, this is Pastor Tom,
and I'm glad you're with us again for Drive Time Devotions.
We're gonna look at Psalm 55 today.
The attacks in this section of Psalms,
the attacks have been coming at David again and again
in Psalms 52 to 55.
In Psalm 52, it was a foreigner who attacked him,
Doeg, the Edomite.
In Psalm 54, it was the people
who were from his own tribe, the Ziphites.
And now here in Psalm 55, we're gonna see
it is someone who is his close friend.
Psalm 55 13 says, "But it is you,
"a man like myself, my companion, my close friend,
"with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship
"as we walked with the throng in the house of God."
We're not sure who this was, there were many guesses,
but it was obviously someone who was very close to David.
So this is a Psalm about those times
when your closest friends might betray you,
when something you thought would hold you up
ends up letting you down.
And if this has happened in your life,
and it has for most of us,
it may have happened recently,
but it may have happened a long time ago.
But even as I talk about it now, it comes back to mind,
because it was you, my close friend,
a man, a woman like myself, you would say,
my companion, someone I worshiped with.
It's a Psalm, Psalm 55, it's a Psalm about the feeling
that you just want to run away.
You just want to run away when you've been that let down.
Listen to verses one to eight.
Listen to my prayer, oh God, do not ignore my plea.
Hear me and answer me.
My thoughts trouble me and I'm distraught
at the voice of my enemy, at the stairs of the wicked,
for they bring down suffering upon me
and revile me in their anger.
My heart is in anguish within me.
The terrors of death assail me.
Fear and trembling have beset me.
Horror has overwhelmed me.
I said, oh, that I had the wings of a dove.
I would fly away and be at rest.
I would flee far away and stay in the deserts.
I would hurry to the place of shelter,
far from the tempest and storm.
Warren Wiersbie in writing about Psalm 55
writes about four places that we look to when trouble comes.
It's a good look at this Psalm.
One place we can look to is we can look within
at our feelings.
Sometimes I feel like David.
Psalm 55 too, my thoughts are restless and I'm confused.
And that's the way we are a lot of times with our feelings.
We're confused.
Now you need to tell God your feelings.
Verses 16 to 18 says, but I call to God
and the Lord saves me.
Evening, morning and noon I cry out in distress
and he hears my voice.
He ransoms me unharmed from the battle waged against me,
even though many oppose me.
You need to tell God your feelings,
but the answer that you need is not in your feelings.
This is not just about feeling better.
You need a truth, you need a reality in your life.
It's not just that you're feeling bad about what happened.
You need a new strength from God.
So it starts with telling God your feelings
so he can release you to look to where
your true strength is.
David tells us what we're looking for in verse 18.
Did you notice what he says?
He says he ransoms me unharmed from the battle
waged against me.
In that day, a ransom would be paid
to someone who'd been captured by a foreign,
for someone who'd been captured by a foreign enemy.
The enemy would capture someone,
you would pay the ransom,
and that person would be delivered back
so that they wouldn't be killed,
they wouldn't be put in prison the rest of the battle.
Well, Jesus paid the price for your release on the cross.
He paid the ransom for your soul.
So we have been released, freed from our sins
because of what Jesus did on the cross.
And when it comes to the battle that you're in right now,
you're looking to God,
that ransom that Jesus paid for you,
to remind you of the fact that you can trust in him,
his forgiveness, his power,
that's above and beyond what anybody else could do to you.
You tell God your feelings,
and then you trust in the fact that he has ransomed your soul.
You can look within at your feelings,
or you can look beyond for a safe refuge
as if that's the answer.
This is the powerful feeling that you just need to escape.
And as we read those verses, you might've thought,
oh, that's what the Bible's telling me to do.
No, no, no, David was heading the wrong direction
when he wanted to run away.
David just wanted to escape the battle,
to flee into the desert.
Who wouldn't want to escape the battle?
And one day we will, but while we're in this world,
we're mostly in the battle,
the battle for faith, the battle for life.
So as David writes,
oh, that I could escape on the wings of a dove,
we've all felt that way, but it's not what we need.
You don't need to escape on the wings of a dove.
You need to rise up on the wings of an eagle.
You need hope.
You don't need to run away.
You need hope.
In this place of great panic,
with real threats facing him that caused that panic,
David found peace, not in escape,
but in his trust in God.
The problem with escape is you keep running
into the same problems again and again.
It feels okay for a little while,
but then the problems come up again, because guess what?
The problems are coming out of my own heart.
The pain is in my own heart.
So there it's back again.
As soon as the fact that the place I've escaped to
becomes an old place rather than a new place,
I start feeling the same way again, same old feelings.
So you don't look beyond to a safe refuge.
You look to God for the hope that you need.
Sometimes when we are under attack like this,
we can look around at our circumstances.
And we think if just my circumstances would get better,
then everything would be okay.
Well, David's circumstances were bad
and they were getting worse.
And this happened for many years in his life.
Now, eventually they did get better.
Eventually he does become king.
But for a long time, he was on the run.
For a long time, he was escaping from Saul.
Our God of hope often gives us better circumstances
as we trust and we pray and we follow him.
But never let that cause you to lose sight of the fact
that he's the one you trust,
not the circumstances that he's given.
You don't trust the circumstances.
You trust the Lord.
So if you're waiting for better circumstances to come
before you can trust him,
I encourage you to trust him today
'cause he's above and beyond your circumstances.
Let the example of David encourage you
who was able to trust God in bad circumstances
so that when the good circumstances came,
he knew it wasn't the circumstances he was trusting,
it was his God.
And that leads us to the fourth thing you can do
when the worst happens,
when even those that you love the most deeply
seem to be walking away from you,
not holding up as you hoped that they would.
The fourth thing you do is you decide
that we can look above to trust the Lord.
You see, David's throne was threatened,
but God's throne was secure.
He could look above and trust the Lord.
And your job may be threatened,
but God's purpose for you, it's secure.
You can keep looking above to trust the Lord.
Your health might be threatened right now,
but God's future for you, it is secure.
You can keep looking above to trust the Lord.
And there are two powerful truths
for looking above to trust the Lord in verses 23 and 24.
Listen to these verses.
Cast your cares on the Lord, and he will sustain you.
He will never let the righteous fall.
But you, O God, will bring down the wicked
into the pit of corruption.
Bloodthirsty and deceitful men
will not live out half their days.
But as for me, I will trust in you.
So these two truths, cast your cares,
and the second truth, but as for me.
First, you cast your cares on the Lord.
You might recognize this from 1 Peter 5:7.
It's repeated there, cast all your care upon him,
for he cares for you.
This is where it comes from, cast your cares on the Lord.
That word cares in the Hebrew language, it means a burden.
It literally means that which has been given.
When I look at that which has been given
in my life in this world, much of it is a burden.
And you would probably agree with that.
Much of what has been given,
there have been a lot of blessings given.
But in this fallen world, much of what has been given
is a burden.
So you cast that on him right now.
You let it go to him right now.
You cast your cares, your burdens on him.
He can carry them.
That's what it means to trust the Lord.
God, carry this with me.
I don't want to carry it alone any longer.
Cast your cares.
That's looking above to trust the Lord.
And then this phrase, but as for me.
You, O God, will bring down the wicked,
but as for me, I will trust in you.
He's saying, others may turn against me,
but as for me, I'm gonna trust in you.
The circumstances may be falling apart around me,
but as for me, I will trust in you.
The person who I loved the most,
who I believed in the most may have let me down,
but as for me, I'm gonna trust in the Lord.
Some people's trust in God is emotional.
It's based on their feelings.
When their feelings are up, they trust God,
and they go to church, and they read his word,
but their feelings are down.
They're trusting themselves,
and they're looking for more money or something else
to make themselves feel better.
And that leads to some people's trust in God
as circumstantial.
It's based on their situation.
Situations are good, God is good.
Situations are bad, where is God, they think.
I invite you to have a but as for me trust in God,
no matter what the emotions,
no matter what the circumstances today,
but as for me, I'm gonna trust in God,
a trust that is real, based on God's character and promises.
And so Father, right now we say that to you,
but as for me, today, I will trust in the Lord.
And I may have to say that many times today,
'cause circumstances are gonna cause me
to want to trust in them, and my feelings
are gonna try to get me to go astray,
and other people are gonna disappoint me,
maybe even today, but as for me,
I'm gonna trust in you, God.
Thank you for your word to me.
In Jesus' name, I praise you, amen.
(upbeat music)