(upbeat music)
- Welcome today to Drive Time Devotions
and our look at Psalm 54.
It's a psalm that answers the question,
what do you do when those who should be your supporters
are acting like enemies?
This is another psalm where the title helps us.
The title of Psalm 54 is when the Ziphites had gone to Saul
and said, "Is not David among us?"
Now remember in Psalm 52, Doeg was a foreign enemy
and Edomite who betrayed David.
The Ziphites here, they're betraying David,
but they're his own countrymen.
They were of the tribe of Judah, David's own tribe.
And in 1 Samuel 23, 19 to 20, here's what happens.
The Ziphites went up to Saul at Geba and said,
"Is not David hiding among us at the strongholds of Horesh
on the hill of Hekala, south of Jashamon?
Now, O King, come down whenever it pleases you to do so,
and we will be responsible for handing him over to the king."
So to get in King Saul's good graces,
they're willing to give up David to him.
They were his enemy,
and they should have been his countrymen.
Now, for us today, the enemies sometimes
are not quite so obvious as they were for David.
He had an army with spears after him.
With us, it's those with other agendas than God's agenda,
or those who are wanting to live a selfish life,
or those who just want to make someone else hurt
because of the hurt in their own heart.
And there's nothing worse than being under attack
from those who should have been a supporter,
been on your side, maybe people in your own church,
people in your own company,
maybe even people in your own family.
Let me walk together with us through this psalm
and look together at six questions it points to.
Six questions you can ask yourself.
They're gonna give you strength when you're being attacked.
Question one, is God stronger than those
who are attacking me?
You just ask yourself that question when the attacks come.
Is God stronger than those who are attacking me?
Obvious answer.
Verse one, save me, O God, by your name.
Vindicate me by your might.
Of course, the answer is yes.
God is stronger than any attacker that can come against you.
So when people are calling you names,
you trust in God's name.
Because it's greater.
When people are pointing out your weaknesses,
you trust in God's might, 'cause it's gonna last.
So you ask yourself the question,
is God greater, is God stronger?
Second question you ask is this.
Do those who are attacking me have any regard for God?
It's a question that comes out of verse three.
Strangers are attacking me.
Ruthless men seek my life.
Men without regard for God.
Are those who are attacking you,
you're asking, are they thinking about God and his kingdom,
or are they thinking only about themselves?
So I'm saying you consider the source.
If they have no regard for God,
you should have no regard for an attack
that's rooted in selfishness.
That's where it comes from and it's not gonna last.
Third question you ask yourself is this.
Who am I looking to help me and sustain me in this attack?
Verse four, surely God is my help.
The Lord is the one who sustains me.
Now I believe that God's gonna bring people around you
to help you when you're attacked.
People in your small group to encourage you,
people in your church to lift you up.
But they're all voices from God.
God is the one who's gonna be your help,
who's gonna sustain you.
When you're attacked, you usually feel very lonely.
And in that place of loneliness,
we can look to our little comforts and plans
to get us through.
Or we can look to the God who is our help.
If you tend to retreat into yourself when you're attacked,
my encouragement is look to God for his help.
I know the word help, it seems so small,
yet it really is everything.
God's help is all that you need.
When God had given a victory to the people of Israel,
David's men are Saul, taught them what to do.
In First Samuel 7-12, after a great victory,
here's what Samuel the prophet told them to do.
First Samuel 7-12, then Samuel took a stone
and set it up between Mizpah and Shen.
And he named it Ebenezer, saying thus far
has the Lord helped us.
Some of you are thinking back right now,
you might remember there's an old hymn,
here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by this far
by thy help I have come.
That's the only place that many of us heard
that term Ebenezer.
We didn't remember this story from First Samuel.
And Ebenezer was a rock.
It's a rock that reminded them
that God had shown up to help.
And so what I'm saying is you need some Ebenezer
in your life.
I know you're thinking Ebenezer's crude right now.
That's the only thing we think of.
But this is from the Bible.
That's why it was named Ebenezer.
It came from this.
And Ebenezer means a place of remembering God's help.
You need to raise up some Ebenezer's.
It might even be some pictures in your house
or some verses on your walls,
some stories in your journals that you go back and read.
And you remind yourself that God is the one
who will show up when I am attacked
to help and sustain me.
The fourth question you ask yourself is this,
am I trusting God to bring revenge?
Or am I trusting myself?
One is a road to praise and trust.
The other is a road to disaster.
Verse five, David writes,
let evil recoil on those who slander me.
In your faithfulness, destroy them.
He put it in God's hands.
You think, well, that's not a very nice prayer.
He trusted God with it.
He was angry and he told God about it
and he trusted God with it.
Romans 12, 19 says, never take your own revenge, beloved,
but leave room for the wrath of God.
Put it in God's hands.
The worst thing that can happen to you
when you're attacked is for you to decide
to take your own revenge.
That is Satan winning the battle.
He's using the attack to make you someone different
than who you were.
No, you put it in God's hands.
And that frees you to continue to love,
continue to hope, continue to be a person of faith.
Am I trusting God to bring revenge?
That's the fourth question.
The fifth question is, have I prayed about the problem?
In verse two, hear my prayer, oh God.
Listen to the words of my mouth.
When we're attacked, I don't know about you,
but for me and I think a lot of us,
we tend to stew about the problem,
to lie awake at night and think about the problem,
to talk to all our friends about the problem,
to sometimes even obsess about the problem.
And then we realize we haven't really taken the time
to pray about the attack, to talk to God about the attack.
You turn every thought of worry into a prayer,
every thought of the attack into a conversation with God.
That's the way you defeat the evil one in the attacks.
He hates that.
When you turn every attack into a prayer, he hates that.
Have I prayed about the problem?
And then number six, have I praised God for the solution?
This is trusting God in advance, praising him in advance,
that he's gonna work someday to bring a solution.
Verses six and seven, I will sacrifice
a free will offering to you.
I will praise your name, oh Lord, for it is good.
For he has delivered me from all my troubles
and my eyes have looked in triumph on all my foes.
One day we will look in triumph on all the foes of God.
That is eternity in heaven, a place of triumph.
Jesus triumphed over them all at the cross.
The end of your story, listen,
the end of your story is deliverance.
The end of your story is victory, guaranteed by the cross
and the resurrection, guaranteed by the presence
of God's spirit in your life.
So have you praised God for that?
Praise God for the solution.
Those six questions again, number one,
is God stronger than those who are attacking me?
Yes.
Two, do those attacking me have any regard for God?
Number three, who am I looking to help and sustain me?
Number four, am I trusting God to bring revenge?
Number five, have I prayed about the problem?
And number six, have I praised God for the solution?
So let's do that right now, let's pray together.
And if you're under some kind of attack right now,
from within or from without, just pray about it.
Say, God, here it is.
It's been going on for a long time or it just started
and so I talked to you about it
and I praise you in advance for the solution
that in the end I will look with victory
in all the foes that are against you.
And I recognize that you are stronger
than any attack that comes against me.
And so I ask for your help.
I ask for your help, the strength that you can give.
And I trust in that help.
Deliver me from trying to make this right on my own.
Instead, I lean into the help,
the strength that you can give.
In Jesus' name, I do this.
Amen.
(upbeat music)