dismiss anybody I'll stay here all right Psalm chapter 33 I think this morning Psalm 31 there Well, when I wrote this message, I didn't realize that my wife was gonna fall off a ladder. And so it starts with, have you got any trouble this morning in your life? Any trials, anything consuming your thoughts? Obviously, life's like that, isn't it? We don't know what a day's gonna bring forth. And by the way, I wanna say thank you, thank you to the Lord that he kept my wife safe, that she had that little tumble. And I know she's got an injury, but it could have been much worse, and so we do praise God for that. But the older I get, it does seem that life is full of troubles. And not to discourage anybody that's young, but it's just a fact that there is a lot of things in life that are just frankly difficult things to go through. Job chapter 5 verse 7 says, that said that, and in many ways, he and his friends were wrong in the things that they said to Joe as they went there to comfort him. You don't know the story about Joe. Joe lost his livestock. He was a wealthy man. He lost his livestock. He lost his children. They were killed, and it all happened in one day, and then he got horrible boils all over his body, and his friends came to mourn with him or to try to comfort him, but they were very poor comforters You just kind of picture him sitting around that campfire and the sparks are going upwards, and he says, man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. And I think, you know, I think it's true. Whether or not he was right in a lot of the things that he said or they were right, you know, sparks go up and it ensures that we're going to face a lot of trouble trouble in health, it could be finances, it could be emotional, mental, relational, so many ways that there's just things that come into our life that could be tough and difficult things and so we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, we don't know what's going to happen the next day. The one thing is certain in life they say and that is that life is uncertain right and we just don't know and it's not to be morbid this morning or to be really negative like oh you know if you're something terrible is going to happen but it's just a reality that you know what there could be things that we're facing very quickly or things that are unexpected. So our text is born in Psalm 31. David was in a dark time in life he's And if you look at verse nine, he says that. He says, have mercy upon me, O Lord, in these words, for I am in trouble. Mine eye is consumed with grief, yea, my soul and my belly, for my life is spent with grief and my years with sighing. My strength faileth because of my iniquity and my bones are consumed. I was a reproach among all my enemies, but especially among my neighbors, and a fear to mine acquaintance. They that did see me without fled from me, I'm forgotten as a dead man out of mind, of like a broken vessel, for I've heard the slander of many. Fear was on every side, while they took counsel together against me, they devised to take away God, and he's going to cry out to God in faith. You can see that in verse 22. It says, For I said in my haste, I'm cut off from before thine eyes. Nevertheless, thou heardest the voice of my supplications when I cried that I just feel like I am isolated from God, God's forgotten about me, and I'm set aside here, and God doesn't care about what I'm going through. Nevertheless, thou heardest the voice of my supplications when I cried unto thee. Those that are unfamiliar with the life of David, a study that we've been doing here at church, and are unfamiliar with the story there in your own Bible, David was doing what's right, he loved God, And he loved God's people, and he was just being a servant. He was a faithful young man to his father. He was a faithful servant to King Saul. He became the king's son-in-law. But Saul, in jealousy against David, begins to hate him and tries to kill him, and he's pursued into the wilderness. He has to leave his wife, and eventually Saul gives his wife to another man, and incredible trials that David is facing in the wilderness. things are going to go and yet knowing God's plan for his life as the next anointed king of Israel because God had rejected King Saul. In that time of trouble, David had a simple plan and his plan was, I put my trust in the Lord. I'm going to trust in God. So, we see that in verse 1. It says, Let me never be ashamed. Deliver me in thy righteousness. And so my title this morning is that statement of David. I am in trouble. And our consideration this morning, you must put your trust in the Lord when you're in trouble. When the difficult times come or the unexpected, we're going through life and say, God, why is it like this? I'm trying to honor you, trying to please you, and just life has suddenly gotten very, very difficult. What am I gonna do? You must put your trust in the Lord when you're in trouble. Are you letting your trouble take your eyes off the Lord? Is it making you doubt his care, making you wonder if he is aware of what you're going through and going to help you as you believe he should? Or are you letting your trouble push you to greater dependence upon God and saying, consider this one. Let's pray to ask God to help us as we go to the word of God. Father we thank you for the Bible and Father our prayer this morning is that you'd unpack this scripture to our hearts and minds and Father I praise you that you're able to speak anybody, no matter what academic abilities that we may or may not have or our understanding and things like that, that you are able to encourage us this morning through the Word of God and strengthen us through your truth. And I pray that the Word of God would be crystal clear. Father, it's been a joy this week to have known some experiences with you. and to get to see your hand. And I pray for the transparency that you are light and there's no darkness at all. And our prayer would be that we can walk in the light as we come to the Word of God, that there would be a clarity that the Word of God is a free course, that Satan could not hinder in any way what you desire to do in the heart of any person. And Father, I pray that the Spirit of God would open our ears to hear, and that you'd open my tongue to speak, that I could plainly declare the truth of your word in a way that is enabled of you to be a blessing to the hearts of the hearers. It's in Christ, in you pray, amen. Okay, and so, you must put your trust in the Lord when you are in trouble. And so, put your trust in the Lord, first of all, because he is your rock and your fortress, okay? He is your rock. In time of trouble we can feel vulnerable. Like, we're open to, I mean, just danger, right? And that we could be easily attacked. David felt that way. Later in David's life, he's gonna have the things that he prayed about, but he's gonna have them physically. He's gonna have a strategic position as a castle Like our Scottish castles do, as you go down into Edinburgh, you know, you see that the law that's there and you can see some of it when you tour the castle, you can actually see the rocky outcropping coming into the, you know, the war memorial that's up there and other places up there in front of the oldest chapel there. walls. A lot of times the castles in Scotland, as you tour them, would have outer battlements or areas like that. If you go to Tantallon there by North Berwick, you can see where they had the trenches that were out in front of the castle, and they had other security measures that they took. There was a lot of safety in that. If somebody's inside that castle, they feel very secure. They feel very safe. that castle against Cromwell, and it took several days of siege before he could battle his way in there against a handful, really, of soldiers that were holding that place because they had a strategic position and they had all those battles. David's out in the wilderness. He doesn't have the physical protection that he needs. He doesn't have the fortress. He doesn't have the outer battlements or things like that, so he didn't have that physically, but he had that spiritually. and he had the same protection on a physical level through the spiritual protection that God was giving to him. If that makes sense to you, I am speaking very much about the protection of David as if he's in a castle, as if he's in a fortress, but he's not because he's got God there protecting him. get to David. David didn't have the security of those physical walls, but there was one thing King Saul had to go through to get to David, and that was the fortress of God. That God was around David. That God was protecting David. That God was a wall to him. That David was in that keep, that place of security. And so, it might be this morning, something that's happened in your life and you there's this feeling of vulnerability but you think if I just had that place of security that I you know I got these walls about me whether it's financial walls health walls you know whatever it is that we think of that if I had that that would make me feel safer let's remember this morning that God is all of that and more to us as believers he is our wall I remember at Bible College, I went my freshman year, and as we got there, we'd go into the FMA, or they actually wrote a Hebrew, I think, auditorium there at Bob Jones University, and as you come in, you've got the different letters for your names, your surnames, and there were several thousand students at that time, and so you get in the queue, and you go up, and you find out where your dorm is, and then you go to your dorm, and you find your room. find out you know who your roommates are and then you get your class schedule and your class schedule is intense and you got to get to all your new classes you know what there's one week where that's what you do that Wednesday through Friday whatever it is you get to every single class and you know everything that you got to do that for that semester it can be kind of overwhelming I remember as a freshman laying in my bed and You know, I'm just completely overwhelmed back then you didn't have mobiles. You didn't have the Communications that we have nowadays with parents and things like that. We had a phone that was attached to the wall You know in our room and thankfully we didn't have just one phone down the hall or something like that We we did have that but I mean I couldn't talk to mom and dad like you could have far away from home couple 1,600 miles from home for me You know, and just feeling completely overwhelmed. I remember laying there on my bed and just crying out to God, and probably, I'm pretty sure, tears coming down my cheeks, you know. I'm just, man, I'm floored, I'm so overwhelmed. But there was a sense that God gave me, and it's got a very clear memory for this reason. It was like God put his arms around me. It was like, peace, and I was able to go to sleep, and I was able to rest. David knew what that was like. David knew that wilderness experience, though, he didn't have those walls that God was there, God was physically around him, so that he could say, in Psalm 4, verse 8, I will both lay me down in peace and sleep, for thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety. See, that's all David needed. David, in his trouble, he felt like, he could've felt like, if I had this, then I'd be okay. If I had this security, but David found his security in God. And so remember in your time of trouble, put your trust in the Lord. He is your rock and He is your fortress. And then put your trust in the Lord. He is your strength. He's your strength. Verse four. It says, pull me out of the net that they have laid privily for me. For thou art my strength. So they are trying to entrap me. If I've fallen into that, it's getting tighter and tighter. God, you're my strength. Pull me out of that. I think of David as a fit man. You know, I was thinking about being ruddy. You know, he wasn't a big guy, but I think he was a pretty fit guy. I think he had an active lifestyle. But in time of trouble, he felt his weakness. He felt his own strength as not being sufficient, maybe for what he needed to do. You know, how do you feel when you find out about a health problem? When you find out, you know, they go to the doctor and the doctor has some news and it's not maybe what you expected and he says something, you know, how do you feel when you get an unexpected bill? It's way more than you expected. And you're going, why? You know, I had no idea that this was coming. How do you feel when a relationship that you thought was strong is suddenly vulnerable? How does that make you feel? I think a lot of us can say, you know, it makes me feel weak. It makes me feel like I don't have strength. It makes me feel like everything has been shaken. Your trouble will make us feel our frailty and our weakness. When 9-11 happened, Katie and I were in our first ministry in New York City. We were back in the city, we were in Queens, and of course the towers were in Manhattan, so we were about 10 miles away as the crow flies, and from where we were you could just see the smoke and nothing else. You couldn't actually see the towers or something like that. But we were at a Christian school, and I happened to be there that day. I should have been away at a pastor's fellowship, but my wife, I think, had a dentist's appointment, that day. And the way we found out about it, there were some guys that were there working at the church. They weren't safe guys. They were builders, you know, pretty tough guys. But one thing I remember is that as we found out about it, one of those tough guys had tears going down his face because he thought that his cousin was in the building because that's where his cousin worked. And so, I mean, this is a pretty tough, tough guy. But, you know, sometimes, again, a trial or trouble that is in our life can just make us, again, feel our weakness, make us feel our own inability. So you may be a strong person, but trouble takes this human strength out of us. My grandma sure, my dad grew up on a dairy farm in Colorado. And my grandpa later worked for the county and he drove a truck and you know, gravel trucks and things like that for the county. And when my dad had his car accident, dad at 26 had a severe car accident. His family was killed and dad's back was broken. It's a neat testimony of God's grace and God's goodness. But on the day that that took place, my grandma received a phone call and the lady said, is there anybody there with you? And grandma said no, but she lived on the farm and the properties were quite a ways apart and there was nobody that was even nearby to come and be with grandma. And you know, the lady might have said something like, you need to sit down, I've got some news and you need to sit down. Why do we say that to somebody? news that we have to share with them. Why do we say you need to sit down? Because if somebody doesn't sit down, the news may may floor them, right? They may pass out or something like that, because it could be so draining of the strength that is in them. You know, we can't look to our own strength, can we, when trouble comes? We can't look to ourselves and think, well, you know, I've got this. There's going to be a sense that, you know, I don't have this. And this is bigger than me. And I, I feel very weak and I feel very vulnerable in this. And yet our strength, like David, could be from somebody outside of us. And that is God. Ephesians 6, verse 10. Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, in the powerless mind. You might feel like, today I can't do it, I can't, that is too tough for me, but be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Psalm 62, verse 11, God hath spoken once, twice have I heard this, that power belongeth unto God. Zechariah 4, 6, then he answered and spake unto me, saying, this is the word of the Lord, of which is irrevocable, saying, not by might or by power, but by my spirit, sayeth the Lord of hosts. Again, you might be looking at it, but we can remember this morning, wait, we've got a strength that an unbeliever doesn't have. Again, a lot of times I look at unbelievers, I think, I have no idea how you can even begin to go through life without God. How can you go through life without somebody that you can go to and say, God, I need help. I need your strength. Do you feel weak because of trouble this morning? Can you say with David, pull me up without my strength. And as a position of faith, I don't think David felt strong, I think he felt very weak, but it was a position of faith, God, you've gotta be my strength. And so put your trust in the Lord, he is your rock and he is your fortress and he is your strength. And then put your trust in the Lord, he is your savior, he is your savior. Into thy hand I commit my spirit, verse five, thou hast redeemed me. me, O Lord God of truth." Many of the Psalms are messianic, meaning that they're prophecies, wonderful prophecies, like Psalm 22, they pierced his hands and his was crucified, but he was speaking about the Messiah and what the Messiah would do when he would come. So it's a messianic song. And so this seems messianic. As into thy hands I commit my spirit, thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth. Jesus could die in faith and rise again in faith because he had complete faith in God's truth. It was a step of faith for the Lord Jesus Christ to obey the Father and to go to the cross, believing that He would rise again. It was based on what the Father had said, John 10, verse 17 and 18. Therefore doth my Father love me because I lay down my life that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down in myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father. And so I have the opportunity to lay down my life behind the cross, and I have the opportunity to take my life again. Why? Because my God said so, and he believed in the truth of what God the Father had said. David said, thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth. David knew the God of truth and he committed his spirit, his physical life to God because thou hast redeemed me. You're my redeemer. I've trusted you spiritually. I can trust you physically. You know, this morning, are you redeemed? Are you part of those that are brought back through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ? Have you been born again? Is that your testimony? That you can say, you know what? I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if I died, I'd go to heaven. It's not because I'm a good person. It's not because of anything that I've done, but that there was a point in time in my life where I humbled my heart and in faith, I prayed to God and I asked God to save me from my sin and give me his somebody is bought back by God through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. James Gray spoke about it this way. He said, nor silver nor gold hath obtained my redemption, nor riches of earth could have saved my poor soul. The blood of the cross is my only foundation. The death of my Savior now maketh me whole. I'm redeemed, but not with silver. And so when you got saved, you said to God, God, I'm going to take my soul and I'm going to entrust it to you for all eternity. You're a God that cannot lie. And you said, it was a ritual call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. I trust you. And I take that gift of everlasting life. Okay. If we could trust God with our eternity. we can trust God with our temporality, right? If we trust God with something so great, we can trust Him with something lesser. Okay, so can you then trust God with your children? If your children are the source of your trouble, maybe there's things that you're concerned about, worried about, hurting about, can you trust God with your children? Can you trust God with your finances? If I, again, we trust God with our soul, can we trust God with that which is financial and the things that we're praying about and thinking about? What about relationships? You see, I mean, the God that is worthy of our trust for something so great as our soul for all eternity is certainly worthy of us turning to him and saying, you know what, into thy hands I commend my spirit, thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, God of truth, and so I trust you. And so if your trouble isn't greater than the damnation God saved you from, you can be assured that the God who redeemed you can take care of it. I mean, the God that took care of your eternal destiny is a God certainly that you could go to and say, uh on a much bigger scale. So, into thy hand, I commit my spirit and so you put your trust in the lord. He is your rock. He's your fortress. He's your strength. He's your savior and then put your trust in the lord. He's your guardian. He's your guardian. Verse six. It says, I've hated them that regard lying vanities but I trust in the lord. I will be glad and rejoice in thy mercy for thou has of the enemy, thou hast set my feet in a large room." Okay, David here begins to speak of the providential care of God, that God was watching over him. He knew that God was thinking about his trouble. And so verse 7, he said, I will be glad and rejoice in thy mercy, for thou hast considered my trouble. my soul in adversities. You know, sometimes again, we might feel like, God, don't you know what's happening? It's going on here. You know, the disciples rolling away in the storm, trying to get across, you know, like, here's thou not that we perish. Don't you understand? You know, what's going on in my life? And there could be a sense of that. But David said, no, I know that God, you're thinking about this. I know you're aware that I'm out here in the wilderness. I'm the next anointed king of Israel, but you know exactly what I'm going through. And I understand thou hast considered my trouble. But then he knew that God was not allowing him to be overcome by his trouble. Verse eight, he said, it has not shut me up into the hand of the enemy that has set my feet in a large room. All right, God, you're aware, okay? And yeah, it's been tough, but you haven't shut me up. I've never been isolated to the point where there was no way of escape from King Saul. In our study of David's life, we see him at times as he's being pursued in the wilderness, and King Saul and his soldiers are coming out. You know, at different times, Saul with different bands of soldiers, one time 3,000 chosen men, they were gonna come out, they're pursuing after David. Informants would report on his position. But then we see also as we're studying the scripture at the last minute, the Philistines would attack and Saul gets called away because the Philistines are attacking. Or God put, in another case, the army into a deep sleep and David's able to go into the army and take Saul's spirit and his bolster and then stand and confront Saul from across the valley about Saul's disobedience. And so there's these times where providence got involved. It wasn't just natural that, you read the story and it's amazing, David was a great, you know, playing hide-and-go-seek or something like that. He was able to somehow stay just a step ahead of the enemy. It's that God providentially was orchestrating things so that David, even though David felt like, oh man, this is really tough, yet behind it all was the hand of God working things out so that David was never put in a place where David could not do what God intended David to do. You know, when God called us to come to Scotland, and we had a nice house that we had in Michigan, a five-bedroom, two-bath house on a small pond, and beautiful woods around us. I mean, it's a gorgeous place that got to get into us, but we sold that on. We got a travel trailer, a mobile caravan. that we pulled, and that was our house for the next four years that we traveled raising support to come here to Scala, but we needed to go south for meetings because it was kind of wintertime there as we started out, I think in January, and so we got down there in Alabama in the United States. We had our first meeting at Green Pond Baptist Church in Alabama. It's a great wheat church, and we got there and had a meeting with Pastor Carl Hall, and he's still the pastor that's there, and And Pastor Hall said, when's your next meeting? And I said, well, like six weeks. I was working on my schedule, trying to get it, you know, and it just wasn't happening. I didn't have meetings. And he said, hey, you know what, just stay hooked up right here. He was such a blessing. And I remember calling my dad from the car park and probably crying again. Yeah, man, I don't know what I'm doing. You know, I'm pretty young. I guess not that young, probably about 30 years of age, but we got a young family. three kids, three, two, and one, and I've got my family there, and it's like, dead end, you know, almost. But, you know, God would begin to fill in our schedule a little bit. I think we got some meetings right in that area. Our first, of our first 10 meetings, eventually, six or seven of those churches took us on for support. That is a high ratio of support from God. you know, a small, a relatively small number of churches, but it was over time that they would take us on. If you look back at that, God didn't allow us to get isolated. God didn't allow us to get in a place where we couldn't move forward. We might have felt that way. We might have felt like, you know, we just can't get through this, but providentially behind it all, God was working things out. You know, you might feel today that you don't have a way forward. What do I do? Well, just encourage yourself in the Lord like David did and say, but God, you're watching over me. You know exactly what's going on, and God, you're gonna work this out for your glory. So remember who your God is. So put your trust in your Lord. He is your rock, he's your fortress, he's your strength, he's your savior. And then put your trust in the Lord, he is your God, he is your God. It says in verse 14, but I trusted in thee, O Lord, I said, thou art My God. David didn't worship an idol. David didn't worship and bow down to something. By the way, if you don't know, an idol is just wood, stone, or metal. It is nothing. It is nothing. It is empty. It can't hear, think, or feel. There's people that they bow down and they worship that, but they made it with their own hands and they crafted it with their own hands. And that idol is unfeeling and it's as inanimate as that chair. It has no ability to minister to them or meet their needs, but that's not who David was praying to. David wasn't praying to an idol that didn't care. David was praying to God. A God that is very aware, a God that we spoke about this morning, His compassion. I mentioned this morning that a scripture that stood out to me this week is Jesus said, He loved them that were in the world, His children. He loved them unto the end. What can separate us from the love of God, right? He cares about us. Casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you. So he's personal, but he's also almighty God. And so David is praying, he's crying out to a God that can do anything and a God that can do everything with God, all things are possible. But it's not just crying out to an almighty God, but David is crying out to his almighty God. I mentioned this morning that we're gonna be able to see that idea in the scripture here this morning. Remember Jesus on the cross, he cried out, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? When he was God forsaken, as he died on the cross for a sin, just like somebody that's in hell, separated from God for all eternity, but it was personal, my God. And so David said, you know what, you are my God. David didn't have a big army at this point. Most of the time in the wilderness here, he had around 600 men that were his men. David knew what it was like to be the underdog. He went out against Goliath as a shepherd boy with a sling and a stone. And I mean, the odds, if you were to take odds in that, nobody would have put any odds whatsoever on David. There was no chance in the world that he could win that battle against that giant Goliath. But David came out undefeated, and David always came out undefeated, because David walked with God. 1 Samuel 17 45 Then said David to the Philistine, Goliath, Thou comest to me with a sword, with a spear, with a shield, but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied. The early church began with 120 people in an upper room. Jesus told him, wait, I tear you in the city of Jerusalem until you be endued with power from on high. And right before he said that, he said, behold, I send the promise of my father upon you. I send this promise, but wait there in that place until the promise comes and then go out and do the gospel and all those things I've been teaching you about and take care of the gospel to the world and baptize in my name as the converts that is saved. And I want you to do that, but first wait, because I've got something to send you. we said as a person, the endowment with power that would come would be that fact that the Holy Spirit was there and God was with them, and so they had a power. You know, you and I can take a lot of confidence from those who are with us. I'll tell you, there's places in Edinburgh I wouldn't go at certain times of the night. You wouldn't either. You know, you walk down that place and maybe a back alley somewhere, and dark time and certain things, activities that are taking place there, you just wouldn't be caught there. I would almost say you wouldn't be caught dead there, but you might be caught dead there if you went there at the wrong time of day, right? But if you had the police with you, you're gonna walk into that place and you're gonna have perfect confidence no matter what time it is, no matter who's there, because you've got somebody that's with you that's an authority that has power to protect you even in that place. You know our trouble begins to fade when we know that God is present. It doesn't matter, maybe, that we've got health issues, or relational issues, or financial issues, if there's a real sense in our heart that God is present. Hebrews 13, five says, for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. Romans 8, 31 says, what shall we then say to these things, if God be for us, who can be against us? Again, you can be looking at something in your life, saying, man, that's just over my head, I'm overwhelmed by that, but God isn't. I flew in a plane this week, on Tuesdays, I flew to Ireland, I looked down at everything, you know, and we're just these little people down in these little places, in these little cars and things like that. We're so small, but God is so great, he's so far above us. Our problems are nothing to God. And so put your trust in the Lord, he's your rock, he's your fortress, he's your strength, he's your savior, he's your God. And then put your trust in the Lord, he is your sustainer, your sustainer. Notice what it says in verse 15, It says, My times are in thy hand. Deliver me from the hand of mine enemy, from them that persecute me. Make thy face to shine upon thy servant. Save me for thy mercy's sake. Let the wicked be ashamed and let them be silent in the grave. Let the lying lips be put to silence, which speak grievous things proudly and contemptuously against the righteous. Oh, how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee, which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee before the sons of men. Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the pride of men. Thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues. Blessed be the Lord, for he hath showed me his marvelous kindness in a strong where David says, I'm in trouble, and then he begins to list it out, and if you read it again, it's like, oh man, it's bad, it's bad, it's bad, and that was his I'm in trouble stanza. This stanza is I am in God's hands. I am in God's hands. My times are in thy hands. God was sustaining David. You know, there were times where David could have taken things into his own hands. Again, as we read the story, I think that's what stands out to me more than anything about the life of David, is that David, at times, he could have killed King Saul as King Saul chased him into the wilderness, could have killed him in the cave, he could have killed him that night, I already mentioned, where he snakes into the camp, but rather than taking things into his own hands, David just steps back and says, no, God's got this. He's my sustainer. He's the one that's watching over me. He's the one that's protecting me. He said in the cave, he said, 1 Samuel 24, verse six, The Lord forbid that I should do this thing unto my master, the Lord's anointed, to stretch forth mine hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the Lord. In the story of Saul sleeping, Abishai's with him as they go into the camp, and Abishai says, I'll smite him to the ground, I'll only smite him one time, that'll be it, that'll be him done. And David says, destroy him not, for who can stretch forth his hand against the Lord's anointed and be guiltless? And then verse 11, the Lord forbid that I should stretch forth take care of Saul in his timing and God is going to preserve me because God has anointed me to be the next king of Israel. Again it stands out that David was trusting in God to sustain him. You know when I learned to swim I remember my mom being there with me and she was my sustainer. I started to go under the water and she bring me back up, you know And I had to have confidence in mom that if I go under she's gonna grab me She's gonna pick me up and I could have taken things into my own hands I could have I could have been there by the side of the pool for the rest of my life, you know And I would have never learned to swim, right? But I had to trust my sustainer that she's gonna pick me up, you know And if I start to drown now, I can swim on my own. Hey gods are a sustainer. I Are you today clinging to the side thing? Well, I'm not gonna trust God with that finance. I'm not gonna trust God with that relationship. I'm not gonna trust God with that health need. I'm gonna cling to what I can grab ahold of myself. You know, we need to step back from that and say, you know, I'm gonna trust God. Just like David, David goes, my times are in thy hands. God, you've got this. I don't have to be focused on this all the time. I can elect God. Take care of it. Do you believe God's going to sustain you in time of trouble? And so put your trust in the Lord. He is your rock. He's your fortress. He's your strength. He's your savior. He's your God. He's your sustainer. And we end with this morning. He is your hope. He's your hope. Verse 23. It says, Oh, love the Lord, all ye his saints. For the Lord preserved the faithful and plentifully rewarded the proud doer. Be of good courage and he shall strengthen you. I hope so. Like you might think, I hope I get to go to Disney World someday or something like that, but you have no, there's no reality that that might take place. Hope in the Bible is I know so. It's confident expectation. It's that this is true. This will happen because I am hoping in God. It's confidence in God. David said, my confident expectation is God's got this, and I encourage you, he's saying to us, we have the courage, he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord. You know, we can think of King David, again, as a man who never lacked courage. He fought the light, went out against that giant, but David knew his weakness. Psalm 103, verse 14, he wrote, for he knoweth our frame, he remembereth that we are dust. David, at times, even when he's running from King Saul, he got weak and he felt like, I'm not gonna make it, okay. He said, 1 Samuel 27 verse 1, David said in his heart, I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul. And so, I mean, reading the story, we studied this, it's like, God's got it, God's got it, but he got to that moment, it's like, he just felt defeated. He lacked courage. And once again, in chapter 30, verse six, after the city of Ziklag was destroyed by the Amalekites, and that was his home village, his wife and possessions were taken, same with the rest of the men of the city, David was greatly distressed, for the people spake of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters, but David encouraged himself in the Lord his God. David hoped in God and he was of good courage himself and he took strength in who his God was and he trusted God and God brought him through. It's a great story of God's deliverance as everything was recovered from that city. All lives and goods were brought back. And so David spake with experience when he said, be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all you that hope in the Lord. And so he's telling us from his own experience what is absolutely true. You know, the songwriter Robert Harkness wrote a chorus, and it's called Are We Downhearted? It says, are we downhearted? No, no, no. Are we downhearted? No, no, no. Troubles may come and troubles may go. We trust in Jesus. Come, we'll, or woe. Are we downhearted? No, no, no. You're already downhearted this morning. You're already looking at who God is. And David would just say, be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord. God has got this, because he's God. He is our hope. And so as we conclude this morning, troubles are a part of life. We can't hide it from somebody, you know, even somebody newly saved that, you know, a believer's life is not that, you know, never gonna have trouble or anything like that. I'll tell you it's a blessed life because we're walking with everything that we just talked about, about who God is. But there are gonna be trials certainly in life. My mom has faced a trial recently, and actually for the last several years, and my dad, and it's Alzheimer's. I think I told you the story that my dad called me over when I was there in November. He said, has mom told you that I've got memory issues? Okay. And I'm like, you know, I'm thinking, Dad, you've had memory issues for seven years. since November. Many times what he says doesn't make sense at all. He's lost a good amount of weight. He's put into a care home. Praise God. Tremendous answer to prayer that God opened the door for him to go into that care home. He went in there on Thursday. But mom shared a quote. It was from Jim Elliott's widow, and she was widowed when her husband Jim was martyred in Ecuador taking the gospel to the Hawkeye Indians. But she said this, Elizabeth Elliott said, waiting on God requires the willingness to bear uncertainty, to carry within oneself the unanswered question, lifting the heart to God about it whenever it intrudes upon one's thoughts. What's she saying? She's saying what we just studied. She's saying, you know, there might be times in life where you got trouble, it's uncertainty, I don't really know what's going on, unanswered questions. But as often as it comes up, I just take it to God, and I just take it to God again, whenever it intrudes upon one's thoughts. So what's she saying? She's saying exactly what we talked about. In times of trouble, what do you do? Trust God. Lift it up to God continually. So what's your first response to your trouble? Do you let it turn you away from God and believe, oh, God's not good, God's forgotten about me, and turn to sin or something like that, and bitterness against God, and anger against God, Or is it the kind of thing that you go, Noah, when trouble comes into my life, it's gonna push me to God, like David. And I'm gonna trust God. Why? Because God is my rock and my fortress. I don't need that health security. I don't need that financial security. I don't need that relational security. I can do without that, because I've got God. He is my strength. You might feel kind of weak. You might feel like, I can't do this. Well, remember, God is your strength. He's your savior, and we ought to be able to say to God, into thy hands of commitments, my spirit, thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth, and be able to say, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is my God because I've personally gotten saved. I received Jesus as my savior. And if you've trusted him with your soul, you can trust him with anything lesser. He's your guardian. He's the one that's there watching over you. You know, we don't have to watch over ourselves. We've got God watching over us. your God so that you can cry out my God he is personal he is aware he is everything that we need to help us he is your Savior and he is your hope your hope and so verse 24 was in with that this morning be of good courage and he shall strengthen your heart Father, I pray just now, as we bow our heads, that the Spirit of God would speak to hearts. It might be that somebody right now would have to admit, you know, Pastor, there is trouble in my life, and I really haven't been trusting God with it. I've been burdened about it. I've been worried about it. My response has not been to run to God like it should be, and God's convicted me about it, and I realize I need to take that to God. But Father, I pray for that person right now that might be in a position like that. I pray they get victory. And Father, Satan would love it if we're in unbelief or disobedience to God because we're angry at you or have turned our back on you because of the trial that we're facing. But Father, it's a wonderful thing to set that burden again at the feet of the Lord and say, but God's got this, God's aware, God wants to meet my needs. You just keep your heads bowed, your eyes closed. I just want to say this, if God's pulling your heart about something in your heart, you just feel like you need to commit something to God today, whatever that is, you want to acknowledge that just publicly and I'm not gonna call on you or anything like that but I do I do think it's important that we give invitations at our church I think it's important when the Spirit of God speaking to our hearts that we take time to say you know what when I come to church I want God to speak to me and if God speaks to me I want to make a decision about that and it might be again it could be anything that I preach this your heart in about a decision you can make this morning committing a trial or trouble to him or something like that would you please just indicate that by a praised hand this morning anybody like that this morning something specific gospel in your heart about and praise God anybody else like that today amen praise God that's good anybody else amen that's great So I want to give you the opportunity to acknowledge before God, God spoke in your heart about something today and you need to make a decision about it. You want to do that, daughter of God? All right, let's go over to prayer. Fighting for these three that specifically indicated something in their heart that they need to commit to you or a decision they need to make. We pray, God, give them grace. to do that make a definite there might be i'm sure this morning you spoke of my own heart uh through this text and and father maybe each one just take on board the truth here but father especially if somebody needs to get saved we pray they make that decision today but lord beyond that as your children how we need to trust you more fully and so thank you for speaking to hearts today and uh and thank you for your love as in christ we pray amen Let's all stand and we'll sing him an invitation this morning.