This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

(upbeat music) Welcome to our week of looking at Psalm 26 to 30. We're going to
look at Psalm 28 today, day three of this week. And it's a Psalm that answers
the question for us, what do you do when you're desperate for help?

Psalm 28 is David praying, asking for help from God. The most powerful one word
prayer just might be help, because God is willing to help those who ask him.
Psalm 28 begins in verses one and two.

To you I call, O Lord my rock, do not turn a deaf ear to me, for if you remain
silent, I will be like those who have gone down to the pit. Hear my cry for
mercy as I call to you for help, as I lift my hands towards your most holy
place. One of the things that the book of Psalms teaches us to do again and
again is to picture God in the right way.

The wrong picture of God makes us feel alone and afraid. The right picture of
God helps us to see our hope. And in this Psalm, as David is praying for help,
he pictures God as his security, his strength, his shield, and his shepherd.

Let's look at how he does that. First he says, God is my security. In 28 verse
one, to you O Lord I call my rock.

God is our security. He is our rock to stand on. So you're looking at your life
right now and everything is shaky around you right now.

And you're not sure what's next. You stand on him. Stand on him.

You know that old song, that old rock standard, Stand By Me. You might remember
some of the lyrics, if the sky should fall and mountains should crumble into the
sea, darlin', stand by me. I'm here to tell ya, if the sky has fallen, your
darlin' is not going to be able to help you.

You need someone more. And as important as relationships are, stand on him beats
darlin', stand by me, every time. You need God as your security.

If you're making some human being your security, some circumstance or money your
security, it is not enough. When you're desperate for help, you need the one who
can help. You call on God.

God is my security. Also he pictures that God is my strength. In verse seven,
the Lord is my strength.

In verse eight, the Lord is the strength of his people, a fortress of salvation
for his anointed one. If it feels like you just can't bear the burden of life
right now, God will be your strength. The truth is, there are a lot of things
that we're not meant to lift on our own.

If you're tired of trying to lift it, it may be, it may be that it's because God
wants you to call upon him for strength, to recognize you don't need to, you're
not called to, he doesn't expect you to lift it on your own. We need God's
strength. And in verse eight, as he talks about God's strength in our lives, he
gives us this picture of a fortress of salvation.

Now, our physical bodies, they are not our fortress. They're not going to stand up
against anything in this planet. Our time on earth, even as long as we get to
live or not live on this planet, that's not our fortress.

Our money, our circumstances, that's not our fortress. Our salvation, that's an
impenetrable fortress. Nothing can defeat it, nothing can take it away.

That's where your strength is. So God is my strength. And then as he goes on to
give us pictures, he says also, God is my shield, in verse seven.

The Lord is my strength and my shield. That verse goes on to say, my heart
trusts in him and I am helped. My heart leaps for joy and I will give thanks to
him in song.

You need a fortress when the enemy is attacking you, but you need a shield when
you go out to fight against the enemy. You've gone out to do what you sense God
wanted you to do, was asking you to do. And it feels like the arrows and the
attacks are coming at you from every direction right now.

You should not be surprised. Of course the evil one is going to attack you if
you're out doing God's work. That's what's going to happen.

You should be more surprised when there are no attacks that you're facing. And
God is saying, when you go out to do my work, I will be your shield. David says,
my heart trusts in him and I am helped.

You know that old phrase that some people think is in the Bible, God helps those
who help themselves? That's Ben Franklin, not the Holy Bible. The Bible has
nothing to say about that.

It says the exact opposite of that. God does not help those who help themselves.
God helps those who trust in him, who depend on him as their shield.

Now of course we have to act. Of course God has things for us to do. Of course
God as our shield doesn't mean we sit in our easy chair at home and just expect
him to do it all.

He's going to call you to act in ways that are above and beyond what you thought
possible. But we don't act on our own, we act in trust. God will be your shield.

So God is my strength, he's my salvation, he's my shield. And then the final
picture, God is my shepherd. Verse nine, save your people and bless your
inheritance.

Be their shepherd and carry them forever. For many, many years, actually decades
now, I've told my kids and now my grandkids a story about a little lamb named
Wooly. And I won't tell you the whole story here, but it's the story of a little
lamb that gets lost in a hole and the shepherd thinks that Wooly maybe went back
to the sheepfold so he takes all the sheep home at night and finds that Wooly
isn't there.

So he has to go back out and find Wooly. And meanwhile, Wooly is in this hole in
the ground and begins to think about wolves and begins to listen for wolves that
might come to attack this lonely sheep and begins to hear these footsteps come
closer and closer and looks up at the top of the hole and sees the shepherd, not
a wolf, but the shepherd. And the shepherd reaches down and picks Wooly up in
his arms and holds Wooly close and takes Wooly back home.

Now, the reason I love telling that story to my kids and grandkids is every
single time I say the shepherd reaches in and picks Wooly up, there is this
smile on their face. Their faces light up when the shepherd picks up the lamb.
Well, you're his lamb and he's your shepherd.

And whatever you're going through right now, he wants to pick you up, he will be
their shepherd and he will carry them forever, forever. Why in the world would
God allow us to get into situations where we feel like giving up? Because he
wants us to look to him for strength rather than to ourselves.

Because he wants us to look to him to pick us up. Because he wants us to stand
on him rather than standing on ourselves. Because he knows that when we do that,
we will find a power and a purpose to live for that's far above and beyond our
human hopes and dreams.

Let's pray together. And Father, we take a moment right now in our hearts, our
minds to picture you for who you are. To see in our hearts who you are.

You are the security that we need. Forgive us for looking to other things for
our security. They're so close to us.

They seem so secure in the moment, but you're our rock. So right now in our
hearts, we stand on you as our rock. You're our strength.

You're the fortress that we need. Not anything else or anyone else. And when the
burdens are too great, you're the strength that we need to carry us through.

You're our shield. When we go out to fight against the enemy, we know that we
will suffer attack. But we also know that we're not alone.

That you will shield our hearts and our minds. You'll be with us. And God,
you're our shepherd.

You're the shepherd who picks us up, who carries us forever. Recognizing that,
we can face anything. No matter what we're facing right now, God, we know that
you are going to be with us.

And in that trust, in that trust, we stand. In Jesus' name, amen. Tomorrow,
we're going to look together at Psalm 29, which is a Psalm that talks about who God
really is.