Psalm 31 to the Choir Master, a Psalm of David. 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. For you are my rock and my fortress. and for your name's sake you lead me and guide me. You take me out of the net they have hidden for me, for you are my refuge. Into your hand I commit my spirit. You have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God. I hate those who pay regard to worthless idols, but I trust in the Lord. 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. 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 have become a reproach, especially to my neighbors, 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. and 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 hand. 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 shield. 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." So Psalm 31, A psalm that we see is a psalm of David, and there is the superscription to the choir master, so a directive given for the one that would lead in worship. Now, when we look at the psalm, and maybe a good assignment for you guys would be to see if you can outline the psalm. Like, what would the logical order of this psalm be? And when we look at it, and we try to really find a central thesis or an outline or anything that really helps us in our Western sensibilities, we have a lot of difficulty in finding what the order of the psalm is. One commentator said that there is no logical or literary order. I don't know if I agree with that. There's not one that I see, but it doesn't mean that there's not one. Another scholar actually from Fuller said, could it be that the psalm only looks confused to post-Enlightenment Western culture? That could be it. It could be that the psalm has in order in a structure that is something that is beyond at least my abilities of pinning it down. But as I look at the psalm, I see it more like a river that meanders rather than something that has a logical forced order that we're able to move in a single direction, but it feels more meandering than anything. The psalm, as we look at it, and you might think, well, if it's meandering and if it doesn't have a clear logical order that we can understand, or at least that I can understand, maybe the psalm just isn't very important in the history of redemption. You know, there's plenty of psalms as well as other portions of scripture that are never repeated again in the Word of God. You can think of Isaiah as a major portion of that which is quoted in the New Testament, and really it's very little of Isaiah that's quoted. There's certain sections that are repeated time and time and time again, but there's giant chunks of Isaiah that are very difficult reading and that find no place of quotation in the New Testament. And so you'd look at the psalm and think, well, maybe this is that sort of psalm. Maybe David would consider this one of his B-sides for his musical abilities. But I don't think that's the case either, because we see that the psalm is quoted in the scriptures, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. In the book of Jonah, Jonah looks at this psalm and incorporates some of it into his own prose, into his own poetic thoughts as he works his way to the depths of the sea in the belly of the whale. Jeremiah quotes the psalm on more than one occasion when he is reflecting on the lamentations over Jerusalem and the way that the wicked, who at that time even were among the people of God, have come against him and were whispering on every side. The psalm is quoted among what we call the crosswords of Christ in the words that he spoke on the cross, the cross words being those last sayings of Jesus from the cross before he gave up the ghost. We see verse 5 quoted, into your hand I commit my spirit. And then also Psalm 71 opens with a quotation from Psalm 31. The first three verses are are taken into Psalm 71 as well. So looking at that, we see that despite its meandering character, it's a psalm that does play a role in the history of redemption as both minor and major prophets as well as the Lord Jesus and David himself picks up on it again. So it's a psalm that's used in a variety of ways and is a psalm that is able to help us in In a variety of ways as well Now despite its meandering character. I've tried to divide it up some to help us and I'm starting with verses 1 through 6 1 through 6 and I'm calling that rescue now we see that the psalmist begins with calling out to the Lord and asking for him to be a refuge and a place of deliverance and one who hears him and and rescues speedily, one who is a rock of refuge and a strong fortress. All of this language of the Lord coming around the psalmist in rescue, deliverance, being a rock, being a fortress, and the Lord is called upon to do this. Now, it's not because of the character of David that he's able to call upon the Lord. This is something really important in in this opening portion of the psalm, but it's because of the Lord's righteousness. It's because of your namesake as the psalmist cries out to the Lord. So he's crying out for help and because of the Lord. Notice that in verse three, for your name's sake, you lead me and guide me. This isn't the psalmist just saying, I'm in trouble. I need somebody to help me. This is the psalmist saying, this is your character. This is who you are. This is what you do. This is covenant faithfulness, asking that the Lord would redeem him. In verse five, where it says, into your hands, I commit my spirit. That word in Hebrew is breath or it's wind. It's a word that has a lot of depth of meaning in both the Old and New Testament. I mentioned already that it's a word that is spoken from the cross as Jesus quotes the psalm and then in Acts 7, Stephen also commends his spirit unto God and for In the Old Testament, there isn't so much that connection between spirit and longevity of eternal life as it is clearly in the New Testament. I'm not saying it's not there. I'm saying it's not as clear in the Old Testament as it is in the New Testament. In the New Testament, the idea of the spirit is that part of the person, when separated from the body, goes into the presence of God. where the body goes into the ground. And in the Old Testament, that language isn't used so much. It's breath connected to life, connected to the body, the breath that's connected to the body. But we see that in the way that it's used in the New Testament, that it's not just the breath of life. that is in view but it's that part of the person and of course we don't totally separate body and spirit because we're one body and spirit but we know that at death those things are separated and the spirit is that which goes and spends eternity with the Lord until the day of the resurrection when the body is raised. Now verses 7 and 8 talk about rejoicing so we've seen rescue and now rejoicing And this is God answering the prayer that is prayed in verses one through six. I will rejoice and be glad in your steadfast love because you have seen my affliction. You've known the distress of my soul. You have not delivered me into the hand of enemies and you have set my feet in a broad place. So the idea is that this psalmist's prayer is answered, and it's answered because God is a God of steadfast love. He is a God of faithfulness to his people. And what he does is he picks up the psalmist and he puts his feet in a broad place, meaning somewhere wide where he's not going to fall. And that's the answer of the prayer in verses 7 and 8. And then he sort of meanders back in verses 9 through 13, where I'm calling this one ruin. So there's rescue, rejoicing, and then ruin coming back as the river meanders. And he says, be gracious to me, O Lord. I'm in distress. My eye is wasted in grief, my soul and my body also. My life is spent with sorrow and my years with sighing. My strength fails because of iniquity and my bones waste away. Because of all my adversaries, I've become a reproach, especially to my neighbors, an object of dread to my acquaintances. And 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 and the terror on every side as they scheme together against me and plot to take my life. So again, it's so strange because he sort of starts with that same language. And then he says, you know, in your steadfast love, you're going to rescue me. You're going to save me. And I know that you're going to put my feet on a broad place. And then he just meanders right back into that discussion of ruin. And he's considering that he is going to end up ruined. But what I want you to think about here as well is that I don't think any of us are able to read these verses and not think on the passion of Christ. Not think of a Christ who suffered and became like this broken vessel for the people of God. Tonight we read Matthew 27 in our evening reading as a family. And there's so many similarities as the Lord suffered for the sake of his people. and really became this one who is forgotten like one who is dead. The disciples flee as the Lord is buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, and there's just a few women and his mom that are left there at the tomb. Throughout the city of Jerusalem, there is the whispering and even the scheming of the Jews who want to take down any ideas of the resurrection even before it happens. So we see that there is something here where we would meditate on the person and work of Jesus Christ. But in that, I want you to notice, where is that word? where he talks about his iniquity. What verse is that in? Yeah, verse 10. My strength fails because of my iniquity. And the question is, where would iniquity be if this was the Lord Jesus? Is there a way to make that connection? And the answer is that the one who knew no sin became sin for us. The iniquity that Jesus takes is iniquity that he takes ownership of. So the iniquity that you have before God in that what theologically we call the great exchange, your sin is exchanged for his righteousness. That means that your iniquity not just becomes something that he pays for, but it becomes his iniquity. And we need to remember that. That's very important for us as we consider what it means to be in Christ. Not only is righteousness put on us, but our iniquity was not just something that He took, but it's something He took ownership of. It became His. He became sin for us. And then verses 14 through 22, which I won't read the whole thing, I would call that repetition and reward. And here the psalmist speaks with the same confident voice that we saw earlier. So it meanders back again in confidence, and we return to those themes of trust and rescue. And as he's crying out for God to rescue him again and trusting in him, he adds this other element that we see for the first time, which is asking that the Lord would act against his enemies. That's verses 17 and 18. Oh Lord, let me not be put to shame for I call on you. Let the wicked be put to shame. Let them go silently to the grave. Let the lying lips be mute, which speak insolently against the righteous in pride and contempt. So here he adds that layer of praying that the wicked would be brought down even for the glory of God. And when we look at this also, we notice that God's refuge that he gives is not something that he just gives as a place of hiding, but we see the very face of God is connected to this as well, isn't he? Isn't it? Being in the presence of the Lord, is the rescue. And this is something that is better than safety. I think several of you read the LA Times. LA Times reported today that one year ago today, the first COVID case in LA was discovered. One year ago. And in the last year, we've heard so much about safety, haven't we? And safety, safety, safety. And there's real good positives to that. There's other things that You know that are just you will never completely have safety as long as we're on this side of eternity But we see something here That is better than safety and what it is is God's covenant faithfulness It's being in the presence of God Face to face that's that's has said that's the word covenant faithfulness or steadfast love or mercy translated several ways And that is something for the psalmist as he's running from enemies and hiding even better than being safe is being in the presence of God. I think that that's a glorious, glorious thought. Psalm verse 22 recalls this time when he has been separated from God and he cries out in fear. God hears him and and restores him. That's the word mercy But you heard the voice of my pleas for mercy when I cried for help that's the presence of God the face to face to face the penuel of the Lord and then verses 23 and 24 I'll call the reminder of verses 23 and 24, a concluding call for the people of God to worship. As we've meandered along this river of the psalmist's mind and wandered between his confidence in rescue and his crying out for help, he ends at this high point where he gives this reminder for every one of us as we've looked upon his experience. He calls the people of God to worship. He says, love the Lord, all you his saints. The Lord preserves the faithful, but abundantly repays the one who acts in pride. Be strong. Let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord. So he ends there. He ends there with all of us looking at him on this experience that he's had. that he's meandered through and we haven't been able to follow the logical flow of it other than the feeling of meandering and he ends on this high point where he looks at each one of us and he says, love the Lord because the Lord preserves the faithful. He repays those who acts in pride going to the discipline that he will give to the wicked but he ends with this covenant language, verse 24, be strong Let your heart take courage, language that's always connected with God's covenant faithfulness, and it's given to all of those who wait on the Lord.