Turn back to Psalm 59. Psalm 59. The title of the message, God is my strength and my refuge. Almighty God, Creator of Heaven and Earth, the God of my salvation, is my strength. He enables me to stand up under all trials, that He sends my way, and He's my refuge, He is my hiding place. No one else and nothing else. And God is enough. He is a sufficient refuge, and He gives us sufficient strength in our times of trouble. As He says in verse 16, Thou hast been my defense and refuge in the day of my trouble. Whatever trouble a day brings forth, God is my strength and my refuge. We couldn't have a better refuge, could we? Just when you go home, sit down and think about who God is. Who God is. He speaks. He speaks and a world is created. He speaks in the earth that hangs upon nothing but His Word. It hangs upon the power of His Word. There's nothing over top, I mean at the bottom, nothing over top. It's hanging there out in space by the power of His Word. One of the things that's amazing is that those who believe not God, that they don't lose their mind. When you look at this earth spinning out in space and nothing holding it. And they don't believe God, they don't believe who God is. How do they keep from going... I guess if you're dead, you can't go crazy. I guess that's the answer to that question. If you're dead, you can't go crazy. Men and women are spiritually dead, they don't even consider what it is to not believe God. But to us who believe, what a comfort. What a comfort to know that all things are of God. They are upheld by the power of God. They are upheld by the word of God. What comfort you and I have. And this God is our strength and our refuge. Now David knew what it was to have many enemies. He knew what it was to mourn over sin. And he knew what it was to have a rebellious child, Absalom, trying to dethrone him. He knew the pain of that. But more importantly, our Lord, He had His enemies. Listen, He had and He has. He still has His enemies. This world hates Him. This world hates Jesus Christ. Now, the Christ of this Bible, they hate. The Christ of their imagination, they don't hate. As Paul said, they'll come preaching another Jesus. They don't hate another Jesus. They hate this one, that the Word of God sets forth as the sovereign Christ. He is the sovereign Christ of God. No man knows the Father save the Son, and He to Whomsoever the Son will reveal Him. They hate Him. And our Lord had His enemies, and He has His enemies. He knew these things that David knew by experience. Now, he knew no sin. He knew no sin. We know that. But he was made to be sin for us. when he was in the garden of Gethsemane, I think part of the great pain that he suffered there in the garden, the great agony that was being made sin. He's holy. This is one who's holy. This is one who knew no sin. Being made sin? You and I can't even imagine what that is. He was tried by men. He was tried by Satan. He was tried by God. Listen, in ways that you and I have never been tried and never will be tried. When our Lord was tempted in all points, He was tempted and tried to the very nth degree. I mean, to the fullest of it. You and I, the Lord removes it. He just lets it go so far that He puts a stop to it. But now He was tempted to the fullest degree. Tried by men, tried by Satan, tried by God. Scripture, he was tempted in all points as we are, yet without sin. He was opposed by the Pharisees and the scribes and the Sadducees. Everyone who should have received him rejected him. Turned thumbs down on him. Said he was a nobody. We know you. You are the carpenter's son. My soul." Well, this is God's Son. God's Son. No one has ever been hated as much as Jesus Christ. Scripture says He was hated without a cause. He didn't need a cause. Because there's a natural born enmity, there's a natural born hatred in everyone that comes into this world of God. of God, God who feeds them every day, God who gives life and breath, God who gives us our jobs, our employments, He gives us all things. He's hated by His own creation. Our Lord knew this. Now, this psalm is based around 1 Samuel 19.11. This is where Saul found out where David was. He was in a house. And Saul commanded his men to surround the house. They surrounded the house. And Saul gave orders to kill him. Get David. It's like dead or alive, you get him. But they were given orders to kill him. And David's wife, which was Saul's daughter, Michael, She told David about it and she let David down through a window and he escaped, just like Paul. Remember Paul, recently Paul was put in a basket, let down by the simplest of things. God, there is no temptation that has taken you, the scripture said, but that God will make a way of escape. And here David is surrounded by an army. He's surrounded by Saul's army with orders to kill him. Here's one man in a house. One man in a house. God's man. All the difference in the world. All the difference is God's man. It's God's man. And he's let down. He escaped. How many times did our Lord, as a man, escape? when they surrounded him and they wanted to kill him. And yet he would escape. Because he said, my hour has not yet come. He had an hour set by God, as he speaks of in John 17, now my hour has come. He had an hour set before creation. that he would die, that he would suffer and die and pay for our sins, the sins of all his elect. But until that hour comes, nothing can touch him. And the same can be said of me and you. I don't know what hour I will die, and I don't want to know. Honestly, I don't want to know. I thank God He has not made that known to me and to you. I'll leave that in His hands. But I know this. You and I cannot die until that hour comes. Until that hour comes. that God has set for us before the world began. He set the time of our birth. He has set the duration of it and the hour, the very second we will leave this life. Isn't that comforting? That's so comforting to me. That's, you know, you can walk out the door and not be scared to death somebody's going to do something. My times, David said this, my times are in your hands. My times is not in the hands of a robber, a thief, or you know, my times are in God's hand. I was reading Ecclesiastes before coming down here. There's a time to be born and there's a time to die. You know who set that time? God did. Our Father did. Our Heavenly Father did. Now, everything David says and speaks of here in this chapter, in this Psalm, he speaks of trust, mercy, strength, and refuge. It's applied to him. He applies it to himself. It is applied to our Lord as a man. He trusted in God. Is that not what they said of him? They accused him of this when hanging on the cross. He trusted in God. Let's see if God will have him. They knew he trusted in God. His life, he lived out his life in front of them. They knew that. Now, they're doing it like out of derision. They're saying, well, he said, you know, he claims to trust in God. But they knew he did. They knew it. Never a man spake like this man. Scripture says he went about doing good. He did nothing but good. He's the only man that ever did good. The only man. And this can be said of every believer here and every believer from the beginning to the end. We trust in God. We trust in His mercy. He is our strength. And the older you get, the more you appreciate that. I tell you, when I was young, I had more confidence in my strength than I did in God. But now that I'm old, I'm like, I look back and I can see what a nutcase that is, trusting in your own strength. We don't have any. Why is everybody wearing a mask? If we're so strong, why are we wearing a mask? Tell you why you're wearing a mask, you're scared to death of that little germ, a microscopic thing you can't even see. There's your strength. God's our strength and He's our refuge. It's our hiding place, our resting place. And as I said, this is applied to David, it's applied to Christ, it's applied to us, but especially to Christ because of this. Without his faith and faithfulness, he trusted God. God was his strength. As a man, this is over my head and over your head, but we can believe it. As a man, he trusted God, and yet he's God. But he trusted God. God was his strength. God protected him. His Father protected him. He did not physically protect himself. His Father protected him. He was not a brawler. He was meek and lowly and very approachable. But listen, without his faith and faithfulness, we wouldn't have a righteousness and wish to stand before God. He trusted God. He walked before God. He kept the law. He walked in righteousness. You know, before I heard the gospel, I heard about Jesus Christ dying on a cross. They had Him dying on a cross for everybody. I heard about Him dying, but I never heard about Him living for me. I never heard about Him for 33 years working out a righteousness for me. I never heard that. I heard about Him dying, but I didn't hear about Him living. His life and His death go together. You can't have one, not the other. You can't have righteousness without Him living for me, and you can't have righteousness without Him dying for me. That is the complete fulfilling of the law of God. His life, for 33 years, He lived for everyone whom He saves. He lived for you. And then at the end of that, he died for you. And then he rose for you. And he said, let God's right hand for you. Everything is for you in Christ. Now, here we have in this prayer, a prayer for deliverance. He says, deliver me, defend me, and save me in those first two verses. Now, I want to ask you this question here. David starts out and he says, deliver me from my enemies, oh my God, defend me from them that rise up against me, deliver me from the workers of iniquity, save me from the bloody men. Now, who's in real trouble here, David or Saul? When I read that, I thought, now who's really in trouble? David in that house praying. Saul is in trouble. That army that's surrounding that house, David's not the one in trouble. No, those men are in trouble. The fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. Much. Now in this prayer also, David is very specific. Prayer is not just mumbling a bunch of words. It's not just being religious. Prayer is to be specific. It's a need acknowledged. We acknowledge specifically what we want, what we desire, what's on our heart. Cast all your care upon Him, for He careth for you. We don't pray in generalities. Pray in specifics. David said, Deliver me. There's an army out here going to kill me. I need your help. And then all prayer is directed to God. Our Lord said this, when you pray, say, Our Father, which art in heaven. We direct it to Almighty God. And then in prayer, we acknowledge our Father's ability to meet our need. He says here, He is our strength and refuge. This is what He is to us. This is what God is to us. This is what Christ is to us. He is our strength, first of all, at all times and in all situations. He is our strength. He's the one who enables us to bear up under the load. I have seen some believers go through some very, very hard trials. And I have seen them bear up. And what I have seen is God holding them up. On one hand, God is bringing a heavy trial on them. while at the same time, on the other hand, He's holding them up under the trowel that He's bringing upon them. He's bringing the trowel and He's holding them up under the trowel. And what's going on? What's happening? He's conforming them to the image of Jesus Christ. You know how diamonds are made? They're made under great pressure. They'll take a lump of coal and it's under the earth, and it is made from great pressure. And that's how God conforms us to the image of His Son. Under the pressure of trials, and He holds us up under those trials. You think Job could have stood up under all of that without the invisible hand of God holding him and sustaining him? We couldn't hold up under anything if he didn't sustain us. And then he says here, he's our refuge, our hiding place, our high tower. You know, as soon as it thunders out here outside, and it did this morning, And our dog, that big golden retriever we got, biggest coward in the world. It thunders and he just falls apart. He'd fall apart. But the first thing he does, he goes find him a hiding place. A place where he, at least to some degree, he feels safe. And he'll go find him the darkest place and the tightest place he can get himself into. And there he just trembles and hides. Our hiding place is the Lord Jesus Christ. When the thunder rolls and the lightning crashes, it's to Him we run. It's to Him. He is our hiding place. It says in Isaiah, it says, a man shall be our hiding place from the wind, covert from the tempest of the storm. I was gonna ask you this question. Where do you and I go in times of trouble? the same place that Jesus Christ went to in time of trouble, our Father. He said, I go to my Father and your Father, my God and your God. And then He's my defense. He's my defense. You see it in verse 2 and verse 16. You know, the whole Trinity is our defense. Now the word defense here is high place. He lifts us up above the enemy. He lifts us up above the storm. I said last, we was talking, I don't know who I was talking to, but I was talking about the sun shining, talking about the sun hadn't shined, we hadn't seen the sun shine for what, a week? And then I said, the sun's always shining, it's just you got to get on the other side of the cloud. And I'll never forget my first plane ride. There was a man at 13th Street that had a company. And he had his own jet. And he gave me my first plane ride when I was in my early 20s. Flew to St. Louis. And it was a cloudy, dark day when we left. And this is, I'd never experienced this before, but when we went up, we went up to them dark clouds and we went on up and we got above and the sun was just, it was just as bright and shining. And I realized when I saw that, it just hit me, even as a young man, it hit me. The Son of Righteousness is always shining. Even in my darkest hours and my troubles and my heartaches, the Son of God is shining. It's just that the cloud has it blocked for right now because of this flesh. I can't see it. I can't see Him. But the whole Trinity is our defense, our high place. The Father chose us, the Father loved us, the Father put us in Christ. And Christ, listen, Christ is my defense, as my advocate. You know the court of heaven? That's one court you don't want to stand in without the best lawyer there is. And he's it. He's the best advocate. He's my mediator. He's my high priest, intercessor, righteousness. I thought Christ like the rainbow. You know, there's a rainbow over the throne. And I thought Christ is like, you know, the rainbow. The rainbow is made up of what? Many colors. And Christ is many things to us. Whatever it is we need, Christ is that to me and to you. Wisdom, righteousness. The Scripture says He is made unto us. He is these things to us. Wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. He's my defense. He's my high tower. He's my high place. He's my resting place. And then he says here in verse 10 and 16, he is the God of my mercy. And I think he's looking back here and he's taking a survey of his life. And he's taking a survey of all the mercy of God to him all these years. And he said, he's the God of my mercy. And I tell you this, as God is, so will he be. Is He the God of my mercy? He will always be the God of my mercy. Does He love me? He will always love me. God never changes. That is so comforting. As He is, He will be. If He loves me, He loves me with an everlasting life. He always loved me. Mercy is of God. Saving, sovereign mercy is of God. And He's the God of my mercy. He has saved me by His grace, by His mercy. He has saved me. And He's the God of my mercy. And His mercy, as David said in Psalm 23, His mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. I started to work on an article today for the Bulletin, and I sketched out a little bit of it here before coming down, but I thought, I can outlive my education. I can outlive my health. I can outlive my mind. but I cannot outlive the love and mercy and grace of God given to me in Christ before the foundation of the world. I cannot outlive that. I can outlive all the rest of this, my health, my mind, all of it, but not His love and grace. It's forever and ever and ever. Now, in verse 16, because of all that God is to us in Christ, David says, we wait for Him with singing. David says, I will, but I've said we, because we are included in this, if we are His. We wait. It's not hard to wait on someone who's faithful. Not hard to wait on someone who loves you and you love them. We wait with patience, and your patience possesses your souls. We wait for Him, listen, and we wait with singing. You know, usually when you're waiting on somebody, what are you doing most of the time? You're complaining. You're looking at your watch. I thought you were going to be here 10 minutes ago. David said, I wait. I wait for Him with singing. rejoicing in this. He's coming. He's coming. We're singing of His coming. And we encourage ourselves when we sing of Him, as we wait for Him. Saul's men waited around the house. David waited on God. Big difference. Big difference. And then singing shows happiness. Singing has a calming influence. It does. It has a calming influence. And God's children can sing even when they're pressed down in sorrow. They have something to sing about. What do we have to sing about? Well, it says also in verse 16 here, I will sing of thy power. Saul, they had him surrounded. It's like, all right, we got you now. You're in, you're under my power. No, you're not. Pilate said that. Don't you know, I have the power to release you and the power to let you go in the Lord. The only time he spoke up, You know, until then he answered him not a word. But when Pilate took the power that belonged to God, when he took that to himself, the Lord spoke up, hold on now. You know, there's a time to be quiet. There's a time to speak up. And our Lord is like, hold on now. You have no power at all against me except to be given you from above. And we have that, we can say that same thing. We sing of His power, the power of God. The Scripture says over, look over in Psalm 62, just a page over, in 62.11, God has spoken once, twice have I heard this, that power belongeth unto God. You know there are no powers that be except the ones that God has given power to. Seriously, I mean from Satan, all the demons, all men, all people who are in positions of power, have no power except to be given to them from God. They have no power. The power to even take your next breath is of God. You know why people die? Sin. We know that. It's not because the heart stops. You say, well, his heart stopped, now he's dead. No, God took life away and his heart stopped. It is life that keeps the heart going. It's not the heart that keeps life going. The life that God gives, when we come into this world, keeps everything in our body working. And when God takes that life away, the body stops. The organs stop. My heart does not keep me alive. It's the life God's given me that keeps the heart working. Power. That's power. Stephen Sharnock said this, "...the power of God is His ability to bring to pass all that He has decreed. Who can say unto Him, What doest thou? Who can put God in check? No one. Every time our Lord told a demon, commanded a demon to come out, every time, they came out with a word, just by word. It's hocus pocus, just these words come out of him. And he came out. And this power is possessed by the Lord Jesus Christ. He said, All power over all flesh is given to me, that I may give eternal life to as many as thou hast given me. And in another place he said, All power is given to me in heaven and earth. Now you go preach the gospel. You go preach the gospel. Because all power is given to me in heaven and earth. I'm standing here preaching the gospel, but the power to save, the power to break the heart, the power to convict of sin is of God. It's in the hands of Jesus Christ. And by His Spirit, He convicts and convinces of sin and He gives life from the dead. Life from the dead. When you see a sinner saved, you know, if you walked out here at the cemetery and someone came out of that grave, someone came out of that grave, it would freak you out, I know it would, if someone came out of that grave. When you see God save a sinner, you've literally seen a resurrection. You've seen spiritual life. You've seen someone raised from spiritual death to spiritual life. You've seen it. Our Lord has power to save, power to heal, power to subdue, power to kill, and power to make alive. He has all power. And then I'm going to close. In verse 17, "'Unto thee,' he says, "'O my strength will I sing.'" We sing unto a real person. We sing two songs. Did we sing it as unto the Lord or did we just sing two songs? Because that's part of the ritual of the service. I hope and pray we sing to the Lord. We sing to a real person. One who has saved us, one who defends us, one who sustains us, one who guides us, one who encourages us, all the way home. We sing to Him. We sing to Him. You know, after our Lord and His disciples took the Passover and He's getting ready to go to the cross, what did they do right after they did that? They sang a song. They sang a song. And while David's house is surrounded, what's he doing? He's singing. He sings a song. I will sing, I will sing unto thee, O my strength. David had his enemies. Christ had and has his enemies. We have the same enemies. But we will wait on the Lord and sing while we wait on His mercy, power, and strength. God. God is our strength and our refuge at all times.