Our scripture reading tonight is from Psalm 57. Pastor Gordon has been preaching through the section of 1 Samuel on David in the wilderness. And this is one of two Psalms that David wrote in light of time spent in the caves in the wilderness. Psalm 142. is a psalm reflecting that cave experience in a very intense sort of way, maybe as if he had actually written it in the cave. Psalm 57 is perhaps a little more reflective of that experience, maybe a little bit after that time. But that's our text for tonight, Psalm 57. So let us hear God's own word. To the choir master, according to, do not destroy, a mictum of David when he fled from Saul in the cave. Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge. In the shadow of your wings I will take refuge till the storms of destruction pass by. I cry out to God Most High, to God who fulfills His purpose for me. He will send from heaven and save me. He will put to shame him who tramples on me. God will send out His steadfast love and His faithfulness. My soul is in the midst of lions. I lay down amid fiery beasts. The children of man whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongues are sharp swords. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens. Let your glory be over all the earth. They set a net for my steps. My soul was bowed down. They dug a pit in my way. But they have fallen into it themselves. My heart is steadfast, O God. My heart is steadfast. I will sing and make melody. Awake, my glory. Awake, O harp and lyre. I will awake the dawn. I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples. I will sing praises to you among the nations. For your steadfast love is great to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens. Let your glory be over all the earth. So far the reading of God's Word. Well, David had a conversation with Jonathan, you remember, recorded for us in 1 Samuel 20. And David said to Jonathan, as the Lord lives and as your soul lives, there is but a step between me and death. David knew his life was at risk. David knew that Saul hated him. David knew that Saul was out to get him. And so David fled for protection, for refuge, fled to find a safe place in the wilderness and found himself in a cave. a cave in the wilderness. And this didn't happen just once. We often think primarily of David in the cave of Adalom described for us in 1 Samuel 22. But in 1 Samuel 24, we're told about other caves in which David had to hide. And David must have thought somewhat about the fact that being the Lord's anointed but finding refuge only in a cave in a desert wasn't very palatial. wasn't very exciting, wasn't even very safe. In fact, who would want to be in a cave in a wilderness, with the possible exception of Josh Finney? I mean, it's just, it's crazy. Nobody would want to be there. We have to enter into the Low point, this marks in David's life. Yes, he has a measure of safety, a measure of protection, but this is a very low place. It's not much of a refuge. But clearly this experience made a great impression on David and led him to reflect on what it meant to need a refuge, on what it meant to find a refuge. and on what would be a better refuge than the one he was able to find. And this poem then is a poem of prayer. He appeals to God, be merciful to me. I find that kind of intriguing. Sometimes we think mercy is a prayer that we utter just in relation to sin, but here David is teaching us that the plea for mercy, the plea for compassion, the plea for the Lord's favor is a prayer that can be offered in any of the miseries of life, not just the misery of sin. And so he's asking for God to remember him. for God to be kind to him, for God to care for him, for God to visit him. And he's reflecting on that because his misery was very great. He writes about finding himself in the storms of destruction. That's what he felt. Death was at hand. And here he is in a wilderness fleeing from Saul and from those who supported Saul, those whom he describes as children of men with teeth like spears and arrows and tongues like sharp swords. But here he is in a wilderness where there are literally lions and fiery beasts to oppose him. And he is bowed down. He is struck by the misery of the world that surrounds him. He describes himself as being hunted, hunted with nets, hunted with pits that they've dug for him to fall in. And his soul, he said, is bowed down. He's troubled by this. But in the midst of this misery, In the midst of this suffering, David is led as the man after God's own heart, as the great singer of Israel, to reflect on what real refuge looks like, and how God is for him his real refuge, his real hope, his real point of safety. Because that's what a refuge ultimately is. A refuge is a place of safety. And what David saw in his misery is there is no safety in this world except God Himself. A cave is a temporary safe place, a kind of safe place. And all who have suffered in this world have often looked for safety within this world, and sometimes we find it. Sometimes we're sick, we find doctors. And sometimes if we're homeless, we find homes. And sometimes if we're lonely, we find family or friends. But we realize that those refuges, as important as they are, as valuable as they are, as much a blessing as they are when the Lord provides them, those refuges which we can pray very earnestly for can never be an ultimate refuge. They're all at best temporary. They're all at best fleeting. And David in his misery now is led to give voice in this really quite wonderful poem to his faith. That's one of the realities of life, that misery in life often is most revealing of the reality of our faith. When the temporary refuges give way, What do we trust? Where do we look? What is our safe place then? And David gives voice to this reality, this truth, as he expresses his own faith here. And David, first of all, expresses his faith in God's presence for him. And he does it really in a most wonderful way here. Verse 3, David writes, God will send from heaven and save me. He will put to shame him who tramples on me. God will send out his steadfast love and his faithfulness. In misery, how is God present with you? Well, one of the things the Psalms say over and over and over and over again is that he's present with us as the God of steadfast love and faithfulness. He always loves His people. He always remembers His people. He always is faithful to His people. And clearly, that was such a powerful promise, such a powerful hope, that it is repeated over and over again in psalm after psalm. David says it twice in this psalm. It's so important to him. Again in verse 10, David says, Now in the King James Version, which some of you may have known when you were young, this phrase, steadfast love and faithfulness, was translated as mercy and truth. which actually is a fairly literal translation of the Greek translation of the Old Testament, and reminds us that some of these Hebrew words are so rich in meaning they're hard to translate. Steadfast love is God's unfailing love, His covenant love, His caring love, His patient love, His merciful love, His love that will not let us go. And his faithfulness is his truth to his own promise, his keeping his own promise for his people, so that we can rely on what he has said. His word is true, it's always true, because he keeps it when he's made a promise. So whether we translate it steadfast love and faithfulness or translate it mercy and truth, it remains the same reality of who God is with us when life becomes miserable and when He alone is the refuge to whom we can turn. I think, I think, The Apostle John translated this for us in slightly different terms. As we read in John 1.14, John wrote, The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. full of mercy and truth, full of grace and truth, full of steadfast love and faithfulness, full of grace and truth. It's all the same character of the God with us. And the glorious point of our religion is to see how these hopes, these elements of faith that sustain David and guided David comes to us with an even greater clarity in our Lord Jesus Christ. David knew grace and truth, but he didn't know the fullness of grace and truth the way we can know. Because we see the grace and truth of our God in the face of His Son, Jesus Christ. who came to live among us, who came to teach us of the grace and love and covenant faithfulness of our God, to teach us His truth, to teach us His Word. And this is God's presence among us. It cannot be taken away, but surrounds us. As I was preparing the sermon, I thought of that, cannot be taken away. And then I thought of poor Jean Feld, unaware of life going on around her. And I thought, is it taken away for her? I thought, no, it's not. God continues to love her. God continues to be faithful to her. However conscious or unconscious we are of those things, if we Know that God, He never lets us go. His love never fails. His faithfulness never fails. He is our refuge in every circumstance, in Jesus our Savior. That's the promise. That's the hope. That's the glory of what we possess. And David reflects on his response to that, and that response really is so important. particularly as he gives voice to it in verse 7. My heart is steadfast, O God. My heart is steadfast. In light of Your love, in light of Your mercy, in light of Your grace, in light of Your truth, I want to say to You, O Lord, I am committed to You. I am steadfast in my commitment to You. I am straight and unchanging in belonging to You. David might have been tempted at times to think, surely God has forgotten me, and if God has forgotten me, why should I not forget God? If I run away to another country, Saul won't pursue me, maybe. Why not just forget it all? Why not curse God and die? But David says, I will not, I will not walk that path. My heart is steadfast. My heart is committed. I belong to God. And so David's faith in the midst of misery is a faith in God's presence. But it's also a faith in God's purpose. And I think this is critical for all of us in life, particularly, I think, in the midst of misery. That misery has a purpose. We may not see it. We may not fully understand it. But we do not live in a crazy world, an irrational world, a meaningless world. We live in a world where God is always working out His purpose. And that's what we read here at the beginning of this psalm, verse 2. I cry out to God most high. to God who fulfills His purpose for me. God has a purpose for you. And when we think of God fulfilling His purpose, when we think of God filling our lives with meaning, we often think about the future. And what God will do, He will save His own. He will send from heaven. He will trample the enemies. He will cause them to fall into the pit. He will make all things new one day. We know that's His purpose. And we must never lose sight of that. We must be a people of hope. We must be a people looking forward. When Pastor Gordon started his sermon this morning, I thought, uh-oh, this sermon sounds a lot like tonight's sermon. And then he helpfully said that he was preaching about the future and about certainty. And it was great. But I thought, well, my sermon's not exactly the same because I'm preaching about right now and safety. Now, they're closely related, the future and certainty, the present and safety, but they're not exactly the same. God is promising us safety right now because right now, in the misery of life, He also is fulfilling His purpose for us. The purpose is not just future. The purpose is present. And that reality, that faith, I would suggest is one of the great Calvinist virtues. Now other Christians share it as well. It's not unique to us. But that sense that no matter what I'm going through, God has a purpose for it. God is in it now. God is with me now. God is my refuge now. Because there's a purpose to every part of my life. I may not be able to see it clearly. I may very well not like it, but the assurance that he's got an end in view, that he's moving towards, that he's accomplishing, is one of the great sustaining truths of life, particularly in times of suffering. And that purpose of God, the scriptures tell us, is always a loving purpose. always a loving purpose. Psalm 138, verse 8, the Lord will fulfill His purpose for me. Your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever. The purpose of God and the love of God are never divided for His people. They are always together. They are always moving to accomplish God's great purpose. It's true for the world at large. And it's true in every one of our lives individually that God has a purpose that He's fulfilling. The purpose for David was not just the day when he would dwell in the palace, but the reality of God's purpose sustained him just as much when he dwelled in the cave, and that needs to encourage us as well. And God's refuge is seen not only in His presence and in His purpose, but in His power. One of the things that we need to meditate on more, I think, is how great and glorious and powerful our God is. We can have more confidence in His purpose when we know that His purpose is linked to His power. The miseries of this world are not because God is too weak. The miseries of God of this world are because God is using His power to fulfill His purpose for us in His love. Often hard to see, but this is how David sustains himself, and he twice meditates in this little psalm on that power of God. It's really the refrain of this psalm, verse 5 and then again verse 11. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens. Let your glory be over all the earth. Who is our God? He is the God that lives over all the heavens and over all the earth. There is nothing that is not under His sovereign control and direction. When we go out tonight after church, if we look up, if the sky is clear and we see the stars spread across the heavens, and we think of what we have learned from the scientists about how far away those stars are, and how we're literally seeing light that has gone through millions of light years of travel. Remember this verse that says, our God is over all of that. Because our God made all of that. And all of that that He has made that we see bear testimony to Him, to His design, to His creation. And that truth, that reality has to permeate us. The God we know is the God in charge. The God we know is the God who is sovereign. And we want to make Him known, so that He'll be exalted, so that others will know His glory. When David writes, let your glory be over the earth, it's not that God's glory actually ever increases in reality. The increase of glory is that more people may know it, so that they will glorify Him, and bear witness to Him, and speak of Him, and rejoice in Him. And so, David has revealed his faith to us about the presence of God, the purpose of God, the power of God, that faith that sustained him in the midst of his misery. And the Psalter is full of this, isn't it? Psalm 46 that we sang, God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in time of trouble. It's beautifully expressed by David in 2 Samuel 22, where we read, God gave David at last peace from the hand of all his enemies. And when at last David experienced some peace in this world, he wrote a poem. And what he wrote was this. At the beginning of it, the poem is this. The Lord is my rock. and my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge, my Savior." For David, rock and refuge were often connected. Refuge is the safe place he could find in God because God was a rock who was so sure, so certain, so unfailing. And that's what we're called to. recognizing God as our rock and our refuge. David sang about that, Moses sang about that in Deuteronomy 32. Ascribe greatness to our God, Moses wrote, the rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice, a God of faithfulness. But then Moses prophesies. about what might happen, about what would happen to God's people. And Moses wrote, but Israel grew fat. He forsook God who made him and scoffed at the rock of his salvation. You were unmindful of the rock that bore you, and you forgot the God who gave you birth. And I think tonight we should reflect on the commitments of our heart. We've looked at David's faith. What is our faith? Especially as we plan this new phase in the life of our congregation. So I was thinking about it. It was probably harder in 1958 to raise $76,000 to build this building. than it was to raise the millions of dollars to build the new building. And I don't believe we've grown fat. Well, I have personally, but I mean, that's another issue. I don't believe we've grown fat as a congregation, but it's the danger that the scripture warns about, that we become satisfied in our own strength and in our own accomplishment. And then God spoke a terrible word to Israel. God said, again in Deuteronomy 32, where are their gods, the rock in which they took refuge, who ate the fat of their sacrifices and drank the wine of their drink offerings? Let those gods rise up and help you. Let them be your protection. See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no God beside me. Our God is a loving God, but He's also a jealous God who asks for the devotion, the steadfast devotion of His people. And we want to honor Him by recognizing His steadfast love and faithfulness to us, but we need also to honor Him by being steadfast as followers of His word, as those committed to His way. because it's then that we find our refuge in Him and in Him alone. May God grant that that always be true of us in the new building as it has been true of us in this wonderful old building. God bless us. Amen. Let us pray. Oh Lord, we thank you for your word. and for the way it presents to us so wonderfully that you are our refuge and our strength, that you in Jesus Christ have come full of grace and truth to bless us and direct us. And so our earnest prayer, oh Lord, is that your spirit would ever work among us in our minds and in our hearts, that we might be a steadfast people. listening to you, turning to you, praying to you, trusting in you, and following you. And so bless us, O Lord, in the future as you have so richly blessed us in the past. Hear us, for we pray in Jesus' name alone. Amen.