What are you doing? Okay, fine. I'm trying to practice. Well, I think some of you know, I do kind of like the classic Broadway musicals of yesteryear and occasionally like to revisit them to either watch them in the film version or see them on stage. And this is a little scene you may know from their great musical, The King and I. And if you know that story, The King and I, you know it begins with the mother, Anna, singing this song to her son, who is afraid. They're about to move into a whole new country, a whole new culture, and he is afraid. And she sings this song to him and teaches him to whistle a happy tune. Whistle a happy tune, and every single time, she says, the happiness in the tune will convince you that you're not afraid. Well, that is such a delightful, cheerful, happy song. We sang that in elementary school chorus growing up. I don't know how many times, I think if I had a dime for every time we sang that in elementary school chorus, and I put that in a retirement fund back when I was a kid, I mean, I could be sitting pretty right now. It was a very, very prevalent popular song then. But you know what? It is such an impractical, it is such an ineffective way of handling your fear. I mean, how many really, has anyone here ever whistled away their fear? I don't think so. In a recent article in the Atlantic Magazine, there was a summary of the way that fear permeates the lives of many Americans. The article says, fear is in the air. Fear is surging. Americans are more afraid today than they have been in a long time. Polls show majorities of Americans worried about being victims of terrorism and crime, numbers that have surged over the past year to highs not seen for more than a decade. Overall, crime rates may be down, but a sense of disorder is constant. This pervasive sense of fear and anxiety drives much of the conversation it describes, drives much of the discussion, the decision making that goes on both in politics and in many other institutions, many other settings. And whether it's a physical, emotional, or a spiritual battle, all of us fight fear on one level or another from time to time. So what do you do? How do you pray when you are overwhelmed with fear and anxiety? This summer, we've been learning to pray the Psalms with Jesus. We've reminded ourselves that the Psalms are words that Jesus inspires, so these are words that Jesus gives to us, but they're also words that Jesus prays back to his father during the years of his life and ministry on earth. And now these are words that Jesus wants to hear coming back to him from us as we pray the words of the Psalms back to Jesus. We're going to be looking at Psalm 55 this morning. I want you to have your Bibles open and ready for Psalm 55. If you want to use one in the seat rack in front of you, it's on page 475. Psalm 55 is another Psalm of David. And in Psalm 55, David gives us a practical pattern for prayer that provides us with a how-to primer on entrusting our fears to God and learning to manage those things that may tend to keep us awake at night. Now, before we read God's word, we should just recognize among ourselves that fear is a natural reaction to certain situations, and in and of itself, fear is not necessarily a negative thing. There are things you should be afraid of. For instance, jumping out in front of a moving car, jumping off a high building. You should be afraid to do that. You shouldn't do that. But the question in front of us this morning is what do you do with your fear? What do you do with that? Do you manage your fear or do your fears manage you? In Psalm 55, David shows us how to pray and how to find peace when we are scared, as it teaches us to call out to God, to surrender to him all that is beyond our control, and choose to walk with him in faith. Let's read God's word together. Psalm 55. To the choir master, with stringed instruments, a masculine David, Give ear to my prayer, O God, and hide not yourself from my plea for mercy. Attend to me and answer me. I am restless in my complaint, and I moan because of the noise of the enemy, because of the oppression of the wicked, for they drop trouble upon me, and in anger they bear a grudge against me. My heart is in anguish within me. The towers of death have fallen upon me. Fear and trembling come upon me, and horror overwhelms me. And I say, oh, that I had wings like a dove. I would fly away and be at rest. Yes, I would wander far away. I would lodge in the wilderness, Sila. I would hurry to find a shelter from the raging wind and tempest. Destroy, oh Lord, divide their tongues, for I see violence and strife in the city. Day and night they go around it on its walls, and iniquity and trouble are within it. Ruin is in its midst. Oppression and fraud do not depart from its marketplace. For it is not an enemy who taunts me, then I could bear it. It is not an adversary who deals insolently with me. then I could hide from him. But it is you, a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend. We used to take sweet counsel together. Within God's house, we walked in the throng. Let death steal over them. Let them go down to Sheol alive, for evil is in their dwelling place and in their heart. But I call to God, and the Lord will save me. Evening and morning and at noon I utter my complaint and moan and he hears my voice. He redeems my soul in safety from the battle that I wage. For many are arrayed against me. God will give ear and humble them. He who is enthroned from of old, Selah. Because they do not change and do not fear God. My companion stretched out his hand against his friends. He violated his covenant. His speech was smooth as butter, yet war was in his heart. His words were softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords. Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you. He will never permit the righteous to be moved. but you, O God, will cast them down into the pit of destruction. Men of blood and treachery shall not live out half their days, but I will trust in you. This is God's living holy word for us today. Now as we read this psalm, we see that long before the science of psychology came on the scene, David pinpoints for us what neurobiologists today identify as the fight or flight response to trouble. Oftentimes when we come face to face with circumstances that threaten us or experiences that are negative, we will somehow experience this fight-or-flight response in our brains. And here's how it works. When we're afraid, our minds start welcoming, and they start entertaining all sorts of possibilities. All of the what-ifs, an endless parade of scenarios that might take place begin to bombard our brains. And as we get ourselves all obsessed about these possibilities and we get all tied up in knots over them, we begin to strategize. How can I get myself out of this? Or should I? Should I get myself out of this? That's flight. Or can I conquer this? Can I overcome this? That's fight. Now, notice how as David begins and he starts thinking about all of these what ifs, he's overcome with an oppressive sense of restlessness. All these what ifs bombarding his brain. Do you know what David is talking about? Do you get that? You've been there? Most of what we imagine in the midst of these kinds of circumstances is counterproductive, and most of the possible scenarios that we come up with are so far-fetched that if we weren't already all worked up and already in the grip of fear, we'd be able to take a step back and see how silly these things are that we're imagining, and we might even be able to laugh at ourselves. I know when I get myself worked up like this, and don't doubt it, I do too, I always try to grab hold of myself and remind myself that of the hundred or more horrible, tragic, painful outcomes that I can envision taking place, God will inevitably step forward with a 101st option that never crossed my mind. And more often than not, God's resolution is not nearly as drastic as all of the drama that I have been dreaming up in my head. As we look at Psalm 55 and we see that fight or flight response, there's also a third possibility for a reaction that I want to call your attention to. So there's actually three distinctly different reactions or patterns of behaving we can find in this Psalm that give us an idea of how we're naturally wired to respond to adverse circumstances. The first, we already mentioned it, is the flight response, running away. It's, take me away, Calgon, right? Okay. The second one is digging in our heels and fighting. Oh yeah, I'll show you. Just wait till I give you a piece of my mind that I could ill afford to lose. Well, there's a third response in the Psalm too, and that is to develop a deep distrust of others. Such a deep distrust of others that all our defensive walls go up. The drawbridge to our interior castle is in its upright and locked position, and there ain't nobody getting in, no how. Nobody's gonna touch me. I've got my fortress up. Psalm 55 is so true to life, isn't it? A few heads are nodding. Yeah, yeah, it is. Well, if you don't believe me, it is. It is so also remarkable that in the first five verses of Psalm 55 that David uses almost every Hebrew word there is for fear. David says he has anguish within him. He says the terrors of death have fallen upon him. Fear and trembling have come upon him. Horror overwhelms him. And all these fearful responses, they're precipitated by the noise, by the chatter of the enemy. There are threats in the air. It's the buzz, buzz, buzz of gossip just swirling around David. Hey, David, do you know what so-and-so said about you? Do you know what so-and-so said they were gonna do to you? Oh, of course, I can't possibly repeat what they said, but boy, it was really nasty. It was really, really bad. It was so unkind. Or perhaps David is hearing what I think every pastor's favorite phrase is. David, people are saying people. David the warrior David the giant killer is undone by all that noise all that Chatter of the enemy David describes it as being the oppression of the wicked the oppression of the wicked These people are dropping trouble on David like little bombs in anger. They're also holding grudges against David Have you ever had someone hold a grudge against you? Have you ever held a grudge against someone else? You know, there's really not much you can do when someone holds a grudge against you. You can't reason with someone like that. You can't convince them to look at things from a different perspective. You can't convince them maybe the time, circumstances, people have changed, they've moved on. No, once the grudge is in place, it is almost impossible to move beyond that unless God breaks it. By the grace of God, He destroys that. Now we have the three different reactions, fight, flight, or become so distrustful of other people. And of those three responses, we see in the psalm that David's top choice for dealing with his current problem is what? His top choice is flight. Given a choice, David would just like to turn tail and run. Oh, verse 6, oh that I had wings like a dove. I would fly away and I would be at rest. Yes, I would wander far away. I would lodge in the wilderness. I would hurry to find a shelter from the raging wind and tempest. I'll fly away. Oh glory, I'll get myself out of here. Now my guess is that probably more people than not are predisposed to this kind of a response when they're frightened or scared. And if that's who you are, well, you're in good company. You're right up there with David, king of Israel. But more than anything else, I think most of us would just wanna get ourselves away, escape from the trouble, run away to a place where there isn't any trouble. You know, I think if the Bible were a musical, David would just now start singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow. I think that's it, that's the heart of what he's saying here. Now yes, of course, there are people who have a personality style that they love a good fight, and they can't wait to get in there with somebody and knock heads together, and they comfort themselves even by imagining the worst possible outcome for their enemies, and David does give us a little taste of that in the Psalm. Look at verse 15, for instance. Let death steal over them. Let them go down to Sheol alive. Yeah, David does wish, yeah, his enemies would just die. That would be another way to get out of this. So David kind of calls a curse down on his enemies. He has a death wish about his enemies. In scripture, this is known as the imprecatory prayer and for many of us with our modern 21st century western sensibilities, these sorts of prayers are very troubling to us because they seem so hateful. They seem so downright unchristian. At their best, these sorts of prayers are prayers that ask God to dispense justice as he sees fit and to balance the scales of justice against all those who oppose him, all those who oppose God's agenda. That's at their best. But at their worst, these prayers remind us of how wildly out of control we are often tempted to think and maybe act and speak and behave when we feel scared or threatened by others. At such moments, putting our enemies in God's hands and reminding ourselves that God and God alone is the just judge and that vengeance belongs to Him and Him alone, that's our best course of action. Indeed, Jesus tells us we are to love our enemies. We are to pray for those who oppose us and persecute us. Our hope for our enemies is not eternal destruction, but that God will be gracious to them and save them. And we're gonna look at another psalm that takes us down this path in a little more detail next week. So if that kind of gets your mind going, Lord willing, you can be with us and we'll look together at those themes next time. But today, we're looking at flight, fight, or becoming intensely distrustful of others. Now I don't want to overlook with you the fact that David has been betrayed by a close friend. Don't want to minimize that. Don't want to ignore it. Look at verse 12. For it is not my enemy who taunts me. Then I could bear it. It's not an adversary who deals insolently with me. Then I could hide from him. But it is you, a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend. We used to take sweet counsel together within God's house, and when we walked in the throng, and then down in verse 20, my companion stretched out his hand against his friends. He violated his covenant. His speech was smooth as butter. yet war was in his heart. His words were softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords. Proverbs 18 tells us, the tongue has the power of life and death. It's just a matter of how you're gonna use that tongue, which is a sword. reminded in reading these verses of a pastoral colleague I had many, many years ago, and he was a very wise man, and he had a great way of bringing things down, boiling them down to their simplest, and he would often remind us as his staff that, you know, you cannot be betrayed by an enemy. An enemy can't betray you. Only a friend can betray you. Only somebody that you trust can betray you. You don't expect anything else from an enemy, but when a friend betrays you, that's a very serious, a very painful wound, and I'm sure that many of you know that wound all too well. David uses some very graphic word pictures to describe that pain of betrayal. He says, their speech is as smooth as butter, but war is in their heart. Soft, oily words serve as a cover-up for the pain of stabbing someone in the back. It's a picture of a St. Bernard, a St. Bernard dog leaping up, putting its paws on your shoulders, licking your face while it's peeing on your shoes. That's it. That's a betrayal. That's what's going on here. You won't forget that. All right. It's impossible to consider the issue of betrayal and what David is describing here now without being reminded that Jesus experiences the same exact thing at the hands of Judas. Judas is someone whose feet Jesus washes. Judas is someone with whom Jesus breaks bread, literally, just a few moments earlier. But within an hour, within an hour or two, Judas delivers Jesus into the hands of the temple guard for execution. Perhaps the most well-known, the most incredible act of betrayal in all of history. So again, I don't overlook and I don't minimize the pain of what David is going through and yet at the same time it is possible, perhaps, that David is allowing his anxieties to escalate to the point of paranoia. David envisions a scenario in which he imagines that the entire city is plotting against him. David sees violence and strife in the city on a 24-7 basis. Day and night, he says, he sees iniquity and trouble are in the city. Ruin is in its midst. Oppression and fraud do not depart from its marketplace. Perhaps David lets a betrayal by a close friend snowball into an imagination that everyone is out there, everyone is out to get him. Now, before we dismiss all that and we think of David's reaction as being, well, a little quaint, maybe it's some sort of primitive response from an unenlightened era, we should take a good hard look in the mirror and just remember how often this same sort of thing happens to us just as easily. When we grow afraid, We grow distrustful. And sometimes our fears and our distrust become every bit as irrational as what it seems like David is going through. I mean, think of, in recent history, think of the way people of Middle Eastern descent were perceived and treated in the wake of the attacks against America on September 11th, 2001. Suddenly, everyone in a certain class looked like an enemy. Irrational. Our defenses go up. David is no different than we are. Well, how does David work his way out of all of this? Read verses 16 and 17 again with me. David says, but I call to God and the Lord will save me. Evening and morning and at noon I will utter my complaint and moan and he hears my voice. David shows us how to handle our fears and how to find peace by surrendering what we can't control to God. There's three things here, David calls out to God in prayer, David makes his issues known to God, and then finally David is confident that God hears him. Now by and large, That's nothing radical. That's nothing that most of you don't already know a little something about, and you won't find the idea of calling out to God, making your issues known, or being confident that God hears you as some kind of shocking new information this morning. The problem is, David's pattern of behaving and relating to God is not usually our default pattern. All too often, instead of crying out to God, God who has all the answers, we turn to our friends and sometimes our friends wind up validating and maybe even magnifying our fears. Trouble hits and we run right to our friends. We pick up our phone and we call someone. We start texting, did you hear? Did you hear what happened to me? Did you hear what so-and-so said? Or did you hear what the doctor told me? It's terrible. It's terrible. What if this happens? What if that happens? Oh, and the friends, our friends, so supportive, so kind, oh yeah, that is terrible. I know someone who got that diagnosis and well, they wound up paralyzed and in a wheelchair for the rest of their life. Oh, yeah, yeah, I know, that happened to another friend of mine, and, well, they wound up losing everything, and now they live in a cardboard box under the bridge in Danielson. Yeah, friends, friends, that's sometimes what friends do, they magnify our fears, so, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'd be scared if I were you. Well, don't do that, don't do that. Before you do anything else, before you go to anyone else, take it to the Lord in prayer. And if someone does come to you with their fears and their anxieties and their needs, don't you offer them your version of the worst case scenario based on your own experience or what you know happened to someone else. Whatever you do, don't validate their fears. Point them to God. Why, you could even take them to Psalm 55. But I call to God and the Lord will save me. Evening and morning and at noon I will utter my complaint and moan and he hears my voice. Now David. who just happens to have a throne of his own, he knows that God occupies a much bigger throne. Look at verse 19 again. God will give ear and humble them. He who is enthroned from of old, Selah. Now again, we don't know exactly what Selah means. Many people just think it means stop and think about this, meditate on that. This Selah comes essentially right in the middle of a verse. Stop and think about the fact that he who is enthroned from of old, God is on his throne. God is on his throne. Even in the very worst of what life has to serve up, David knows that God is on his throne despite Whatever circumstances David or you or I face, God is on his throne. So cry out to God in prayer. Cry out with these beautiful words of Psalm 55. And look at how David continues to move beyond fear to faith. Verse 18. He redeems my soul in safety from the battle that I wage. For many are arrayed against me. God will give ear and humble them. He who is enthroned from of old. Look at the wonderful promise we're given in verse 22. This verse would be worth your while to memorize. Oh, pastor, I can't memorize scripture. You could memorize this in a minute. Cast your burdens I'm sorry, cast your burden on the Lord. You can remember that. Can you say it? Cast your burden on the Lord. And what? And he will sustain you. He will never permit the righteous to be moved. David gives us three reasons here why we should cast our burdens on the Lord. One we just read, he will sustain you. He will hold you up. He will grab hold of you. Song we sing, he will hold me fast. The second one is he will never permit the righteous to fall. He's got the whole world in his hands. He's got you in his hands too. He's not gonna let you fall. And then third, God will bring down the wicked. That's in verse 23. God will bring down the wicked. Evil may succeed for a time, but it is the promise of God as well as the judgment of history that those who are evil soon perish and are destroyed in just the same way that they have worked so hard to destroy other people. cast your cares on God. God will not let you be moved. God will not let you be shaken. God will not let you be upended. God will never let you slip. God will not let you fall. All of us have concerns, burdens, cares. We have something we're gonna talk about for just a moment here that I got from Stephen Covey in his wonderful book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Covey talks about a circle of concern. The circle of concern, the circle of concern represents the people and the situations that you're concerned about, but over which you have no control, or at best, very little control. So here's a diagram. And the red part is your circle of concern. I know the writing is a little small, probably can't read it from your seat, but in your circle of concern, you might have such things as the price of gas. You might have concern about other people's reactions to you or their opinions of you, your finances, your health, your job, your children, your grandchildren. All of those things are inside of our circle of concern. And those are the very things that often cause us to worry. But inside that circle of concern, there's a smaller circle, Covey says, and this is your circle of influence. Your circle of influence. Your circle of influence represents things over which you do have some measure of control, and three primary things in there are your words. your actions, your behavior. Let's take your behavior for just a second, and since most of the young people have gone downstairs, we'll pick on young people for a moment, because it's easy to pick on them, but it applies to us at any stage of life. So say you're a student, and you're in school, and it's Sunday, and you have a test coming up on Wednesday. That test, on Sunday is still in your circle of influence. Because you can study for it. You can prepare yourself for it. But the minute you take that test on Wednesday, it's over. And it's no longer in your circle of influence. There's not a thing you can do about that test. It's now outside of your control. It's like the student we heard about in our Alpha presentation a few weeks ago, who after taking a test prayed, oh Lord God, please make Paris the capital of Bolivia. No, you can't really change things like that after the test is over. So, things we're concerned about and that we have some measure of control of are in our circle of concern. Things over which we have little or no control are in our, I said that backwards, I'm sorry. Our circle of influence, we have some measure of control. Our circle of concern, no control. David urges you to take everything that is beyond your circle of influence and hand it over to the Lord. Cast your burden on the Lord. Because God's circle of concern and God's circle of influence are always one and the same. They're identical. God has the power to intervene in any circumstance. We find peace. We find release from fear when we hand our burdens and our concerns over to the Lord. Cast your burden on the Lord. Walk by faith, not by sight. Look at the very last sentence in this psalm, at the end of verse 23. But I will trust in you. But I will trust in you. That's David's testimony. Is it yours? Can you say that? Can you say, I will trust in you? When you believe that God has the power to do anything, when you believe that God has the character to do the right thing, when you believe that God's love means that he cares about you, when you believe that, when you act like that, when you respond like that, then you will find peace. But if you get yourself stuck on focusing on the evil around you, you're not gonna be able to say, but I will trust in you with any degree of confidence. When you cast your cares, when you cast your burdens on the Lord, you will find the peace that comes from confidently declaring, but I will trust in you. Now think of how Jesus must have prayed this psalm. Jesus knows all that lies ahead. He knows the plan. He knows the end from the beginning. Jesus knows that he's going to be betrayed. He knows Judas will betray him. Jesus knows the plots that the Jews are hatching against him. And when Jesus prays in Gethsemane and drops of blood mingle with the sweat on his forehead and drop from there, Jesus' heart must have been as fully filled with anguish as David's is in this psalm. Do you think the horrors of death fell on Jesus? Do you think that Jesus was overwhelmed with the terror of death as he contemplated not just taking the penalty of your sin, my sin, on himself and absorbing God's righteous wrath against sin, but in actually becoming sin for us? Do you think Jesus experiences the same sort of temptation to fly away? As David, when he prays, Father, if it's possible, take this cup away from me. In the end, Do you think Jesus echoes David's words, but I will trust in you, as he offers himself to his father, to his father's plan, his father's purpose, and submits himself in praise. Nevertheless, God, not my will, but yours be done. I do. I think this psalm reflects perfectly the experience of Jesus, and Jesus gives us a perfect picture of how we can pray Psalm 55 when we're scared, when we're overwhelmed with anxiety and fear. Remember, fear is natural. Fear is a psychological and physiological response that God hardwires into our brains in order to protect us. But despite our physical reactions to scary situations, we have a choice about how to handle our fear. We can allow our fear to paralyze us, or we can pray with Jesus and ask God for his help in surrendering what we cannot control to him. We can move forward in faith, we can trust in him, but I will trust in you. As I was working through these wonderful words, and especially the promise of verse 22, the Lord brought to mind a beautiful, beautiful piece by the German composer Felix Mendelssohn, who was a God-fearing man, a lover of Christ, converted from Judaism, and wrote much devotional and church music that's still used in many settings today, and I thought, This beautiful setting of Psalm 55, verse 22, you should hear this. This may not be your preferred style of music, and the pictures that go along with what we're about to listen to may be distracting, so I'd say just close your eyes, but I want you to listen to the beautiful setting of these words, and let the peace of God just overcome you as you wait upon Him, as we prepare to meet at His table. Cast your burden on the Lord, and He will sustain you. ♪ And he shall sustain me ♪ ♪ He ever will suffer the righteous to fall ♪ ♪ He is at my cross ♪ By mercy, Lord, is raised, and from all the heavens, A shepherd that weeps not,