(upbeat music)
- Hi, this is Pastor Tom,
and I want to welcome you to our look at Psalm 59 today.
The title of this Psalm is "When David Had Sent Men."
Let me start from the beginning.
Hi, this is Pastor Tom,
and I want to welcome you to our look at Psalm 59 today.
The title of this Psalm is "When Saul Had Sent Men
to Watch David's House in Order to Kill Him."
You can read about the circumstances
in which this Psalm was written in 1 Samuel 19.
Verses 11 and 12 say,
"Saul sent men to David's house to watch it
and to kill him in the morning.
But Macaul, David's wife, warned him,
if you don't run for your life tonight,
tomorrow you're gonna be killed.
So Macaul let David down through a window,
and he fled and escaped."
This is one of those moments in life
when David must have felt the weakest.
He had to sneak out of the window of his own house
to save his life.
As you read Psalm 59,
you see that in the face of his weakness,
this Psalm is all about God's strength.
It's a Psalm about how to watch for God's strength
when you're confronted by your own weakness.
When you're confronted by your weakness,
it's easy to start watching for weakness.
It's easy to start watching
for what's gonna go wrong next.
Have a couple things go wrong,
and you think, well, what's next?
It's easy to start watching
for who's gonna let you down next.
Have a couple people let you down,
it's who's gonna let me down next.
Your life is built on what you watch for.
If you're watching for something bad to happen,
you're gonna live with this constant sense
of tension and dread.
But if you're watching for God to show his strength,
you're gonna live with a constant sense
of security and of faith.
And even if something bad happens,
and something bad does happen usually in our lives,
you're gonna face even that with security and faith
because you know that God will keep showing his strength
because you've been watching for God's strength.
So in this Psalm, we see, we learned from David,
three ways to watch for God's strength in your life.
Three practical things you can do.
Number one, you picture the truth of God's strength.
In verse one, David writes, deliver me from my enemies,
oh God, protect me from those who rise up against me.
That word protect in Hebrew,
it has the idea of set me on high.
There's this picture of I'm being set above,
set me higher than those who rise up against me.
That's the picture.
You picture yourself above the circumstances of your life.
You picture yourself above those who are trying to hurt you.
It's not you who's brought yourself there,
it's God who's brought you there.
God can bring you to that place of strength.
Now in the ancient world, if you were above someone,
you could defend yourself.
That was the best defensible position.
God wants to set you above
those enemies of your circumstances.
In verse nine, he says, David writes,
oh my strength, I watch for you.
You, oh God, are my fortress, my loving God.
That's the word fortress, it means stronghold,
it means high tower.
Once again, we're being set above,
but here we're being set above in a place of safety.
You picture yourself with God in a place of protection.
Remember, this attack, it came upon David in his own house.
When evil has a stranglehold on your house,
you need a stronghold of strength.
And that stronghold is God is your fortress.
So he says, oh my strength, I watch for you.
What are you watching for?
One of the ways to watch for God's strength into your life
is to picture yourself as being in that high place with him.
Picture yourself as being in that protected place with him.
You might want to do that right now.
Just close your eyes and do that right now.
Picture yourself as being there with him.
That's the first thing you do.
The second thing you do is this.
You anticipate the truth of God's strength.
First you picture the truth of God's strength,
then you anticipate the truth of God's strength.
And in this, what you do is you recognize
that God is going before you.
Verse 10, the last half of that verse says,
God will go before me and he'll let me gloat
over those who slander me.
David recognized that God was going
before him into his future.
And so my question to you is this.
What fills your future?
Who fills your future?
Is your future filled with thoughts of anxiety?
Is it filled with thoughts of what might go wrong?
Thoughts of doubt and uncertainty?
God will go before me.
Even when you seem to have no future,
you need to remember that God is going before you.
Wherever you're going, God is already there.
Remember, he's timeless.
He's without time, so he is already there.
The God who promised he would never fail or forsake you,
he's already there in your future,
everything you're gonna face.
The God who promised to give you a peace
that passes understanding,
he's already there in your future.
The God who gives hope above anything
that this world has to offer,
he's already there in your future.
He fills your future.
You anticipate the truth of God's strength.
That's one of the ways that you watch for God's strength.
And then a third thing you do is this.
You sing, you sing the truth of God's strength.
In verse 16, but I will sing of your strength.
In the morning, I will sing of your love,
for you are my fortress, my refuge in times of trouble.
Oh, my strength, I sing praise to you.
You, oh God, are my fortress, my loving God.
You know, sometimes it's easy to forget
that we're studying a song book when we study Psalms.
These were all songs of the people of Israel.
And so when you read about anything in the book of Psalms,
you can apply the principle we're talking about right now,
that we need to sing these truths to God.
That enables these truths to go past just our logic,
into our heart, into our soul.
What songs do you know about God's strength?
What songs do you need to be singing?
There's an old song about God's strength
that I can remember singing to myself
many, many times when I felt weak.
It's from Psalm 73, Psalm that we'll look at after a while.
Whom have I in heaven but you?
There's nothing on earth I desire but you.
Lord, you are the strength of my heart,
of my life, and my portion forever.
I can't tell you how many times I sang that song
to myself in the car when I was feeling weak
and reminded myself in that song of God's strength.
If you want to sing a hymn, you can sing Martin Luther's
A Mighty Fortress is our God.
You are my fortress, my loving God.
You can sing that.
If you want to sing a praise song,
you can sing the lion and the lamb.
Our God is the lion, the lion of Judah.
He's roaring with power and fighting our battles.
Or you can write a new song.
Write a new song just for yourself or write one for others.
Sing of God's strength.
That's one of the most powerful ways
that you watch for God's strength.
So in prayer for just a few minutes right now,
I want to encourage you to join me
in a time of watching for God's strength.
Our Father, we turn our hearts to you
and we recognize that far too often we watch for our worries
or we watch for what's gonna go wrong
or we watch for what we want and desire.
Instead, we want to watch for your strength.
We want to do what David taught us to do in this song.
So right now in our minds, once again,
we picture you as that high place that you've taken us to.
We picture you as that fortress that keeps us safe.
Right now, we anticipate your strength in our lives.
Instead of looking forward to the future as an empty place
that we don't know about, we see that it is filled with you
and your promises for us.
You're already there, God.
And out of that, in our hearts right now,
we bring to our minds a song.
A song that reminds us of your strength.
And even as you're praying, you might want to put that song on
after this time of prayer and listen to it for a few times
just to remind yourself of the strength of God in your life.
Thank you, God, that you are strong.
Oh, God, our strength, we turn to you.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Join us tomorrow, we're gonna look at Psalm 60.
It's about how to move from defeat to victory in your life.
(upbeat music)