Taking Refuge in the Lord

Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress. My eye is wasted from grief, my soul and my body also. For my life is spent with sorrow and my years with sighing. My strength fails because of my iniquity and my bones waste away. Because of all my adversaries, I've become a reproach, especially to my neighbours, and an object of dread to my acquaintances.

Those who see me in the street flee from me. I have been forgotten like one who is dead. I have become like a broken vessel. For I hear the whispering of many, terror on every side, as they scheme together against me, as they plot to take my life. But I trust in you, O Lord.

I say, you are my God. My times are in your hands. Rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors. Make your face shine on your servant, save me in your steadfast love. O Lord, let me not be put to shame, for I call upon you.

Let the wicked be put to shame. Let them go silently to Sheol. Let the lying lips be mute, which speak insolently against the righteous in pride and contempt. Oh, how abundant is your goodness, which you have stored up for those who fear you and worked for those who take refuge in you, in the sight of the children of mankind. In the cover of your presence, you hide them from the plots of men.

You store them in your shelter from the strife of tongues. Blessed be the Lord, for He has wondrously shown His steadfast love to me when I was in a besieged city. I had said in my alarm, I am cut off from your sight, but you heard the voice of my pleas for mercy when I cried to you for help. Love the Lord, all you His saints. The Lord preserves the faithful, but abundantly repays the one who acts in pride.

Be strong and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord. Thanks, Phil. Let's pray together before we dig into that Psalm. Heavenly Father, we ask that by your Spirit, you would open the eyes of our hearts so that we might see wonderful things in your word. Father, we pray that you might incline our hearts towards you and that by your word you would shape us into the people that you would have us be.

And we pray in Jesus' name and for His sake. Amen. Well, I'm not sure if you've heard the quote before that goes like this. It says, let me make the songs of a nation and I care not who makes its laws. Let me make the songs of a nation and I care not who makes its laws.

In other words, the songs that we sing, the music that we listen to, shapes us in profound ways. It impacts our lives arguably even more than the laws that we live under. The songs we sing affect us profoundly. They shape our thoughts and our attitudes and even some of our deeply held beliefs. And of course, when it comes to the church, the people of God, the most widely used songbook throughout history for the church has been the book of Psalms.

We don't sing psalms straight out of the Bible nearly as much as we used to as a church, and you could argue that we are worse off for it. I love hymns and I love modern worship songs. I'm constantly adding new songs to a Spotify playlist I've got on the go. But you could say that as good as those songs are, they are marked by perhaps a bit of a lack of variety. The same themes, the same wonderful gospel themes are touched on again and again and again, and that's great.

It's great to remind ourselves of the gospel over and over and over, but sometimes it can be to the exclusion of other important themes. Not so much with the Psalms. There are 150 Psalms in the Bible and they cover a wide range of themes and life circumstances. You might say that there is a Psalm for every season. That is, no matter what life circumstance or season or situation you're going through, you can find a psalm that speaks to that in some kind of way.

There are psalms which major on kind of joyful praise towards God, psalms that emphasise the importance of thanksgiving and gratitude, there are psalms of wisdom and meditation, psalms that highlight how good God's word is. And of course there are Psalms of lament. Psalms of lament, and lots of them. Around 70 of the 150 Psalms could be categorised as Psalms of lament, which tells you something about what it means to be human, doesn't it? Nearly half of all the Psalms in the Bible are expressions of grief or sorrow or pain or regret or disappointment or suffering. These are Psalms which speak to us in our darker seasons of life.

And the reality is that for each of us here in this room, we might not be going through a dark season at the moment, but we will, and we have faced seasons of suffering and hardship, dark nights of the soul. I have no doubt that pretty much every person in this room has been touched in some way by grief or sorrow or sickness or pain or fear or anxiety or doubt or confusion or conflict or betrayal or rejection. And the good news is that there are psalms for these seasons of life. Psalms that speak to us in our pain and in our suffering. But not only do these psalms speak to us, they also have a way of speaking for us.

They give us words to express our pain. But not only that, they give us words to express deep trust and thankfulness to God even in the middle of that pain. Words that remind us of His goodness towards us and words which ultimately point us to Jesus. Psalm 31 that we just read together is that kind of psalm. We're gonna dig into it this morning and we're gonna see how it gives us a five D approach to taking refuge in the Lord.

If you're a notetaker, here are your five D's. Direct, describe, deepen, depend, and dwell. I must confess that I got these off an article I was reading a few years back as I was researching the Psalms. I thought that was so good. I'll bring them into a sermon one day, and that day has come.

So the first D of Psalm 31 might actually be so obvious that we miss it, but this Psalm teaches us in the midst of our suffering to direct our gaze, our thoughts, our prayers to God. The opening line of the Psalm simply says, in you Lord, I take refuge. And verse two, incline your ear to me. Verse three, you are my rock and my fortress. As we'll see, King David from Israel, ancient Israel, was in a season of great sorrow and hardship when he wrote this psalm, but he didn't try to face things alone.

His response in the face of suffering was to look up, to talk to God, to direct his complaint to God. And again, it might be an obvious thing to say, but we do well to follow David's example. We need to confess sometimes that when painful things cross our path, we can often be slow to take our burdens to God. We find ourselves fretting or panicked or overwhelmed or scheming, trying to find a way to get out of the situation, trying to carry things on our own. Perhaps we're so conditioned in our culture to think that we are autonomous, independent people who can figure stuff out on our own that we can be slow to bring stuff before our Father in heaven, and we're worse off for it.

As the song goes, oh, what peace we often forfeit. Oh, what needless pain we bear. Why? All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer. The great news of Psalm 31 is that it shows us that we can carry everything to God in prayer.

We can freely talk to Him about our pains and about our sorrows. We can hand our burdens over to Him. We can direct our gaze to Him, look to Him for strength or deliverance or peace. No matter what you're going through, you can take it to God and find refuge in Him. You can even come before God and say the words of this Psalm to Him.

You can say to God, Lord, I take refuge in you. You are my rock and my fortress. I'm looking to you for strength and comfort and everything else I need. Please hear my prayer. In hardship and suffering, be quick to direct your gaze to God, to cast your cares and your burdens and your troubles onto His strong shoulders.

That's the first D in Psalm 31. The second D is simply to describe your suffering to God. Notice how in this psalm David spends a fair amount of time just describing to God exactly what he's going through and how he's feeling. Look with me again at verse nine and onwards. David writes, be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress.

My eye is wasted from grief, my soul and my body also. For my life is spent with sorrow and my years with sighing. My strength fails because of my iniquity and my bones waste away. Because of all my adversaries, I've become a reproach especially to my neighbours and an object of dread to my acquaintances. Those who see me in the street flee from me.

I've been forgotten like one who is dead. I've become like a broken vessel, for I hear the whispering of many, terror on every side, as they scheme together against me, as they plot to take my life. I wonder, have you ever spoken to God like that before? Just kind of poured your heart out before Him, described exactly what's going on and how you're feeling. Psalm 31 tells you that you can.

You can tell God exactly how you feel. Come to Him and say, Father, I am doing it tough. I am beset by all these fears and doubts. I feel sad all the time. I'm weighed down by my grief.

I can't seem to get over it. My health is a mess. My body's a wreck. Feels like I've got pain in every joint. I'm sick.

I can't sleep. I'm constantly worried about the future. Feels like I'm barely hanging on. You can describe to God exactly how you feel, and you can describe to Him why you're feeling like that. Describe to Him your circumstances.

You can say to God, Father, it feels like my own family hates me. My marriage is a mess. My husband ignores me. My wife treats me like dirt. My kids don't want anything to do with me.

I'm lonely. I never see anyone. I don't have any real close friends. I'm still single. I'm still childless.

Things keep going wrong. My work situation's a nightmare. People are against me. I'm broke. I don't know how to make ends meet.

In your pain and your suffering and your hardship, describe to God exactly how you feel and why. Even if you feel like your suffering is self-inflicted. Notice again in verse 10, David writes these words. He says, my life is spent with sorrow, my years with sighing. Why?

Because of my iniquity. We're not 100% sure if this is what David's referring to, but we do know a few things about his life. Don't know if you remember that David was a man who committed adultery with another man's wife, then he tried to have it covered up. And when the cover up didn't work, he murdered the man whose wife he had slept with. And then Nathan the prophet, he came to David and confronted him with his sin.

It was a word that Nathan brought to him of grace and forgiveness, but also a word of consequence. One of the things that Nathan said to David was, the sword will never depart from your house because of this thing that you've done. In other words, there's gonna be division and infighting and conflict and bloodshed in your own family for the rest of your days. And this came to fruition. Later in his life, it might be the circumstances of this psalm that David's writing about, his own son Absalom tried to kill him and take power off him, waged a campaign of misinformation against him, and turned half the country against him.

It's possible that this is what David's referring to in Psalm 31 when he talks about his enemies plotting against him and how he's become a reproach to his neighbours. And isn't it interesting that in verse 10 he links it back to his own iniquity. He says to God, I'm suffering the consequences of my own actions. We want to be careful here because much of the time our suffering in life, it doesn't come to us as a consequence of our own actions. It comes to us as a consequence of other people's actions or merely under the providence of God.

So we want to be careful. But isn't it also true to say that sometimes we do dumb stuff and we have to wear the consequences? We have to live with the results of our own sinful choices. And even then, even then, we can come to God and describe to Him exactly how we're feeling and look to Him for grace and for mercy. Say to Him, God, I feel so stupid.

I've messed up big time. You told me in your word not to do this thing and I went and did this thing. I knew what I was doing was wrong. I sinned and now I'm living with the consequences. Say, Father, I made a dumb choice all those years ago and I'm still living with regret.

It eats me up. You can say, God, my marriage is a mess, and it's partly my fault. My kids are off the rails, and I feel like I've failed them. Again, we want to take care lest we take the blame for things that aren't ours to take the blame for or carry around with us unnecessary or unhelpful guilt. But even when we do play a part in our own suffering, we can take that to God.

He's not gonna turn His back on us and say to us, you got yourself into this mess, you get yourself out of it. No. God is the God from the parable of the prodigal son who runs out to meet his wayward son with open arms, ready and willing and joyful to receive him back. And so you can always come back to God, describe to Him how you're feeling and what's going on. That's the second D in Psalm 31.

The third D is to deepen your trust in God. How do you do that? Well, you can start by simply declaring your trust in God. There are some beautiful expressions of trust throughout this psalm. Here you've got David who's slandered and under attack from his enemies, even his own son turned against him during his life.

He's worn out from sorrow and yet he says on a number of occasions, verse five, into your hand I commit my spirit. Verse six, I trust in the Lord. Verse fourteen and fifteen, I trust in you Lord. I say you are my God, my times are in your hand. David's saying that in spite of everything that's going on, he trusts in God.

He's committing himself to God. He's acknowledging that the things that have come across his path, even the hard, difficult, painful things are no accident, but that all of his life, all of his circumstances, all of his times are in God's hand. Friends, these again are great truths to be able to express when you find yourself facing hard times. To simply be able to say to God, I trust you. My times are in your hand.

Like the words of Job after he lost everything, his possessions, his wealth, his children. Can you imagine the grief? And what does he say? He says the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

And later his wife, she comes to him and she says to him, why don't you just curse God and die? And he says, no. Can we really think that we can accept good things from the hand of God and not accept hard things as well? You gotta love Job's humility and his trust and acknowledgment that whatever comes his way in life comes from God's hand. Again, perhaps the culture that we live in places such an emphasis on independence and autonomy and being able to go your own way, forge your own path in life, that it's kind of numbed our senses to the fact that really our life isn't as much in our control as we think it is.

So much of life is out of our control and we tend not to live with a conscious sense of that reality. Here's an example or a series of examples. I don't know if you notice on the news these days, but every time there's a natural disaster, whether it's a flood or a fire or a hurricane, the fingers start to point. Some want to blame it on climate change. They say we're doing too much to warm up the planet, therefore the weather patterns are changing and we're getting worse and worse storms.

Others blame it on mismanagement of the dams or the forests or the fire department, whatever it might be. And look, there may be some truth to these things, but by and large, it seems like when things come to us from above, many of us want to spend all our time looking sideways instead of looking up. Recognising that our times really aren't in our hands to the extent that we think they are. We don't get to dictate the terms of our existence on God's earth. Your times are not in your hands, they are in the strong loving hands of God. And it's better that way, much better.

So in hard times, painful times, say to God, even these times are in your hands. Deepen your trust in Him. One of the families that we've gotten to know through our son's school up in the Western suburbs of Brisbane has been a family from Sudan. The father of that family was living in a village in South Sudan when Islamist government soldiers from the North came through his village and started shooting basically. They killed his father and one of his brothers, but he managed to escape, ran out into the fields and joined a group of boys which became known as the Lost Boys of Sudan.

They walked hundreds of kilometres across the country until they came to a refugee camp in Kenya. On their own, being exposed to the cold and all sorts of difficulties and trauma. The horror of what he and many of the people with him went through is incomprehensible really. But it's interesting, as he was telling me his story, there was no sense of self-pity and quite a few times he looked at me and just shrugged his shoulders and said, it was God's plan. It's God's plan for my life.

Amazing humility, I thought, and deep trust from this man who had been through so much, that his life, the way things had panned out, really wasn't in his own hands, but in the strong hands of God. How we could all do with this deep trust and deep, almost resignation if you like, to the plans that God has for each of our lives. In hardship, deepen your trust in God, but also depend on Him for help and express that dependence by asking Him for help. That's the fourth D of this psalm, depend on God for help. We see it all through Psalm 31, verse one and two.

In you, O Lord, do I take refuge. Let me never be put to shame. In your righteousness deliver me. Incline your ear to me. Rescue me speedily.

Be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me. And then verses fifteen and sixteen. Rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors. Make your face shine on your servant. Save me in your steadfast love.

David says again and again, deliver me. Rescue me, save me. All these requests for help that express a deep dependence on God, a recognition that it's up to Him to work and to act on David's behalf. And again, David's a model for us, isn't he? In your own suffering and pain, depend on God.

Ask Him for help. You might depend on God by asking Him to intervene and change things for you. Father, please heal me of this disease. Please heal the person that I love. Please make a way for me to get out of this hard situation.

Please deliver me from my fears and my doubts and my depressions. Or you might depend on God by asking Him for the grace and the strength that you need to endure hardship. Father, please be my refuge and strength today. Please give me all the grace that I need to cope. In the middle of this storm of life, please be my anchor and give me peace that passes understanding.

Please comfort me in my grief and my sorrow. By your Spirit, please give me all the grace and the wisdom and the patience and the endurance that I need to get through. I can't do this alone. I'm in desperate need of your help. Have you ever prayed like that before?

In a way that just expresses your deep dependence on God to deliver you or give you what you need? That's the kind of prayer that Psalm 31 encourages us to pray. The fourth D is to depend on God, and the final D is to dwell on God's goodness. Again, it's something that we see a lot throughout Psalm 31. It's a psalm of lament and complaint, but scattered throughout it are these great expressions of trust in God's goodness.

David writes in verse seven and eight, I will rejoice and be glad in your steadfast love because you have seen my affliction. You have known the distress of my soul and you have not delivered me into the hand of the enemy. You have set my feet in a broad place. And verse 19 onwards, oh how abundant is your goodness, you have stored up for those who fear you and worked for those who take refuge in you in the sight of the children of mankind. In the cover of your presence, you hide them from the plots of men.

You store them in your shelter from the strife of tongues. Blessed be the Lord for He has wondrously shown His steadfast love to me when I was in a besieged city. I had said in my alarm, I'm cut off from your sight, but you heard the voice of my pleas for mercy when I cried to you for help. David's facing great hardship and trouble, but he's able to look back and see what God has done for him in the past. He's heard his cries for help.

He's delivered him from his enemies. He's rescued him and protected him and shown His steadfast love towards David. And so throughout this psalm we find David dwelling on the goodness and the love and the faithfulness of God. And so friends, in hardship and trials, dwell on God's goodness towards you. The question might be, how can you even do that when everything seems to be going wrong?

How can you really believe that God is actually good towards you? And the answer really lies in doing what David did. He looked back and saw God's goodness towards him in the past. And like David, we have the great blessing on the other side of the cross to be able to look back and see a great demonstration of God's goodness and love towards us in and through Jesus Christ. Jesus is one who suffered all the kinds of sorrows and pain that are described in this psalm.

Great sorrow and grief, being a reproach, a shameful sort of person to the people around Him. Enemies plotting against Him. Terror on every side. Rejection and betrayal that took Him all the way to the cross. I was just noticing as Phil was reading that Psalm for us, the difference between what Jesus said and what David said.

David said, I hate these people, God. Please deal with them. Jesus on the cross, what did He say? He said, please forgive them for they don't know what they do. He also cried out the words of this psalm.

Didn't He? Did you notice that? Into your hands I commit my spirit. Jesus knew that His times were in His Father's hands even when they took Him all the way to the cross. Jesus was cut off from God's sight, forsaken by God so that you and I would never have to be forsaken by Him.

Through His life and His death and His resurrection, Jesus has rescued you from the great enemies of sin and death and Satan and an eternity spent apart from God. These are the biggest problems that any of us will ever face. And in Jesus they are dealt with once and for all. And so if God is for you, who can be against you? No hardship, no grief, no sorrow, no anxiety, no depression, no illness, no relationship breakdown, no rejection, no betrayal, no persecution, nothing. Nothing can ever separate you from God's love towards you in Christ Jesus.

God has been good to you. He remains good to you in and through the person of Jesus. Dwell on that. Also dwell on God's goodness to you shown through the small mercies that come your way, food on the table, people who love and care about you, family and friends, any measure of health and strength that you enjoy, God's faithfulness to you in the past, His provision for you over many years. Dwell on that.

Also dwell on God's promises for the future. A wonderful future that's in store for you. A new heaven and a new earth, free from suffering, with new bodies that don't break down or give you pain or get sick. A place that is free from mourning or tears or pain. Dwell on that.

By faith take hold of that which no eye has seen or ear heard or heart imagined, the things that God has prepared for you. One of the greatest blessings and privileges of being in pastoral ministry actually is being able to walk alongside people through seasons of hardship and suffering. I've been able to, in the context of our local church, walk alongside people who have suffered tremendous grief in recent times. But they've been able to speak powerfully of God's love for them and how He's carried them through. Getting to know dear saints who struggle on day by day by day with all sorts of health issues or life complications, and yet they show great patience and dependence on God in the midst of that.

I often find myself thinking, man, if I was in their shoes I think I would be a wreck. But often not these people. They are buoyed by their deep faith in God and by His goodness towards them. People who have lived through awful tragedy and brokenness. And yet they've been able to testify to how good and faithful God has been to them over the years. How thankful they are for the life that He's given them, even including the seasons of hardship.

It's just a tremendous privilege to walk alongside people who, as no doubt some of you are, living out the words of Psalm 31. Let's hear the final words of that Psalm together. Love the Lord all you His saints. The Lord preserves the faithful but abundantly repays the one who acts in pride. Be strong and let your heart take courage all you who wait for the Lord.

Let's pray. In you, our Lord, we take refuge. Please turn your ear towards us. Hear and answer our prayers. You are our rock and our fortress.

For your own name's sake, you lead us and guide us. We commit ourselves into your loving hands. Father, you know that many of us here this morning are suffering. Some of us are worn down from grief and sorrow. Some of us have bodies which are failing us.

Some of us feel frail and weak. Some of us feel lonely and isolated and unworthy of others' love. All of us sin and wander and stray from you. In one way or another, we live with the painful consequences of our own brokenness and sin. But we praise you that in your grace, you do not turn away from us.

By the work of your Son, Jesus, you have redeemed us from sin and death and judgment. Each and every day, you surround us with your steadfast love. Day by day, you are renewing us by the life-giving power of your Holy Spirit. And so we trust in you, Lord. We say together, our times are in your hand.

And Father, we look to you for help in our time of need. We ask that if it is your will, that you would deliver us from hardship. We ask that you give us the grace and strength to endure. We ask that you give us the eyes of faith, even in our suffering, to see your goodness towards us, to be thankful for small and great mercies, to believe your word, and to hold on to your promises, all of which find a yes and amen in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. It's in His name that we pray. Amen.