All right, good morning. Be turning to, let's turn the box on. All right. You got me up there, Brother Bruce? Yeah, it's on. Very good. Okay. And still they're coming. Amen. All right. Psalm 56 today. Psalm 56. And it's good to be back, able to, teach. I'm not at full strength, of course, but I'm used to being up there instead of down here. But I hope you'll put up with that. And we just thankful for this opportunity. Um, Anything else I'm supposed to say? I'm trying to remember. I've about forgotten how to do this. But I did want to share a story. The other night, somebody broke in my house and was looking for money. I got up and helped him look. That didn't happen. I made that up. All right. Psalm 56, and today's lesson is Faith in the Midst of Fear. So let's take time just to read the entire psalm, and then we'll go back and make our comments. I wanna include the introduction. It says, to the chief musician upon Jonathan Elam Rekhokim, Mictam of David, when the Philistines took him in Gath. Be merciful unto me, O God, for man would swallow me up, he fighting daily oppresseth me. Mine enemies would daily swallow me up, for they be many that fight against me, O thou most high. What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee. In God I will praise his word. In God I have put my trust. I will not fear what flesh can do unto me. Every day they rest my words. All their thoughts are against me for evil. They gather themselves together. They hide themselves. They mark my steps when they wait for my soul. Shall they escape by iniquity? In thine anger cast down the people, O God. Thou tellest my wanderings, put thou my tears into thy bottle. Are they not in thy book? When I cry unto thee, then shall mine enemies turn back. This I know, for God is for me. In God will I praise his word. In the Lord will I praise his word. In God have I put my trust. I will not be afraid what man can do unto me. Thy vows are upon me, O God. I will render praises unto thee. For thou hast delivered my soul from death. Wilt thou not deliver my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living? Let's pray. pray that you would add your blessing to the reading of your word and now may we gain some insight and some encouragement from these words of David as we study them today and we pray it in Jesus name amen. In the preface to the psalm We're told basically three things. Number one, it says that the psalm is to be played upon Jonathan Elam Rekhokim. Now, it seems to me, and different people have different ideas because we really don't know for sure, it seems to me that when it says upon this, that it means a particular musical instrument. And they couldn't just say guitar or harp, they had to say Jonathelum Requichem. So I don't know exactly, we really don't know, have any idea of what it might have been. And then secondly, it says Mictam of David. This may have been the musical style in which it was meant to be played and sung. When you look at a piece of choral arrangement music, for example, you that are in the choir, there's various things on there that tell you how the song is supposed to be played and what the general performance, the general attitude of the song is supposed to be and there's words like adagio and andante and all those I guess those are Italian words but there's a lot of things that tell how the song is to be presented and You know, there's different ways that songs are presented. Some are happy songs. Some are like a march tune, like a John Philip Sousa composition. Or it might be a funeral dirge. You've heard of those. So there's different ways that songs could be presented. uh the um we really don't know the background of this direction but if you notice psalm 57 also says mctan of david so these psalms where david is is uh in danger, fleeing from enemies. It seems like he had a particular type of presentation that he designated these songs to be done in a certain style. for what that's worth we don't we don't really know i could be totally off base on that and uh... that's one of the things i want to ask david when we get to heaven is that what was all that stuff and uh... hopefully you know hopefully you'll remember uh... what he meant when he wrote those things but then third uh... this preface tells us a little more uh... applicable tells us the historical setting of the writing and it says that uh... that this is when the Philistines took him in Gath. David, in that particular time of his life, seemed like he was always on the run. He was always fleeing from enemies. I mean, Saul was dead set on catching him and killing him. And there were many others as well that were seeking David's life. And so in this particular instance, David went to Gath. Now, if you know anything about Gath, Gath was the home of of what's his name Goliath now you know David and Goliath David had killed Goliath earlier on and but I guess David thought that might have died down or whatever and so he fled to Gath looking for protection or asylum, perhaps we would put it. And the folks there at Gath did not treat him very well. In fact, they arrested him, put him in jail. And so what David did was to feign or fake insanity. For some of us, that's not real hard, is it? Somebody told me once, said, play dumb. I said, well, how will people know the difference? But anyway, he faked mental illness. And the Bible says that he drooled down his beard. And I don't know what all that he might have done. But in those days, it was considered bad form, I guess we could put it. to execute, I mean they were planning to kill him, but it was considered wrong to execute someone who was insane. And so somehow, I don't know if they turned him loose or if he escaped, but he's back on the run. But that's the setting. of this particular psalm. It's interesting that David was faking insanity and writing psalms at the same time. David was a complex and intriguing character. And like many other of his psalms, Psalm 56 combines David's foes, his fears, and his faith. And we'll see all three of those represented here in this psalm. So now as we go on to, that was the context, searching the text, the first thing we see in the first section, verses one through four, is David's trust, his trust. And it starts out talking about his foes in verses one through four. 1 and 2. In verse 1, he says, Be merciful unto me, O God, for man would swallow me up. He fighting daily oppresseth me. So we see that his enemy is man. Satan stirs up unregenerate human beings to oppose god and uh... his people he has uh... the devil has uh... considerable influence in the world especially among the lost and uh... and so he he gets people to oppose christianity they uh... they oppose it they fear it uh... i mean we see that vividly today i mean everything is tolerant tolerated We're told we need to be tolerant. We need to accept all different forms of same-sex marriage and transgender identification and all that. We need to accept all that. The only thing that isn't tolerated is Christianity. And that's, we shouldn't be surprised. The Bible tells us that that is what we can expect, and more so, it says, as you see the day of Christ approaching. So his enemy is man, but not only that, his enemies are many. In verse two, it says, mine enemies would daily swallow me up. For they be many that fight against me, O thou most high. I don't know how many people we might count as enemies. in our lives. David, though, I mean, it seems like the more high profile that you are, then the more attention you attract and the more enemies that you might have. At one time, King Saul had 3,000 soldiers dedicated to chasing David down to kill him. So there were many. And he says, they want to swallow me up. They want to just really to get rid of his existence. And what I see in that is people do not want the influence of righteousness in their lives. Romans 1 says they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. They want to think about God. Why? Because the idea of God, the idea of a Creator God, brings about the idea of accountability to that God. If God created us, then does He not have the right to Dictate to us how we ought to live our lives. And of course he does now It's not like that. We elected God to be God and said now now we're going to have a you know a representative Republic that's that's not the way it works and That's our government. But when it comes to God, God is sovereign. God is the creator. And so we are accountable to him. And people don't like the idea of being accountable for their actions. And so that's why they want to repress. They want to put away all Christian influences. In Psalm 2, It says that the kings of the earth and the rulers set themselves and they took counsel together saying, let us break their bands asunder. What's he talking about? I really believe he's talking about Christian influence. We want to get rid of that. We don't want anybody suggesting that what we are doing is somehow wrong, that there is somehow an ultimate standard by which that we need to be living. People today want to create their own righteousness. They want to determine their own standards and say, This is what I think is right, so therefore it must be right. And of course, we know that there is absolute truth. And it's found, of course, in God's Word. Anything that God has revealed to us is an absolute standard. And people hate that. Lost people hate the idea that there is some kind of a God that has the right to tell us what we ought to do and what we ought not to do. And so they want to swallow up those that, they want to do away with uh... christian influence and that's what david is saying here they were swallowing up he was very high profile of course and uh... he had killed goliath and and uh... he had uh... as the the uh... the little diddy with that uh... the women saying saul has slain his thousands and david his tens of thousands and that's what of course one of the things that uh... made saul angry in the first place but uh... so uh... david was a man of renown And through no fault of his own, he found himself with all of these enemies. And as I said, the more known you are, the more enemies that you're going to have. So his enemy is man, and his enemies are many. Now we move on to verses three and four, but we wanna talk about his faith. In verse three, we see faith during time of fear. Verse three says, what time I am afraid, I will trust in thee. Now, I don't believe that David is saying, well, whenever I'm afraid, then that's when I'll trust in God, just in the times when I'm afraid. We should always, trust in God in all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths we always need the Lord we need him when we're fearful and we need him when we're confident as well and sometimes our confidence is more like arrogance Well, Lord, if I need you, I'll call you, but I can take care of this myself. Well, in John 15, five, Jesus said, without me, you can do nothing. And what does that nothing mean? Well, I think it means nothing. I mean, anything worthwhile, anything we want to accomplish in life, we need the Lord's help in accomplishing that. And then in Romans 14, 23, he that doubted is damned if he eats. And that's talking about eating meats offered unto idols, in this case, because he eateth not of faith. Whatsoever is not of faith is sin. When we think that we are accomplishing something and we're not acknowledging the role of Christ in our lives, enabling us to do that, well, whatever is not a faith is sin. So when we get so arrogant and confident and say, well, you know, I'm taking care of this and I'm doing well and I'm just sailing along here, we don't acknowledge You know God's role in that the role of the Spirit in leading our lives Well, that's it's sin when we don't when we don't practice these things in faith So if we have faith during time of fear, but then in verse 4 we have faith overcoming flesh verse 4 in God I will praise his word. In God I have put my trust. I will not fear what flesh can do unto me. so uh... twice in this song first of all he says in god i will praise his word he's gonna have more to say about that in a moment twice he addresses that subject and then he goes on to say uh... in god i have put my trust i will not fear what flesh can do unto me and he'll repeat that this uh... thought again as well We should not fear even the worst of what our enemies can do to us. I mean, what can our enemies do? They can kill us. All that does is just send us on to heaven. I heard a story about John R. Rice at one time was, I guess, in a public restroom, and a fellow came in, pulled out a gun, and stuck it in his belly. And if you know who John, maybe or maybe not know who John R. Rice was, a well-known evangelist, editor of Sword of the Lord paper. But anyway, this guy stuck his gun in John R. Rice's belly. And you would have to understand Rice to know this. They sort of said he looked down at the gun and looked up to the guy and says, you can't scare me with heaven. See, he realized that that's the worst that flesh could do unto him. We'll get to more of that as well, but we see faith overcoming flesh. Now in the second installment of the psalm, we notice David's troubles in verses five through nine. In verses five and six, we see there is a deadly intent Verse 5, we see them twisting his words. Verse 5, every day they rest. That word rest means they twist, they turn, they try to make something that it's not. They rest my words. All their thoughts are against me for evil. twisting his words. Hey, have you seen anything like that going on during this election season? Yes, all you have to do is turn the television on or look at your Yahoo feed on on your cell phone. And you see that people take grab onto a phrase, take it out of context. And the the, by the way, the the Conservatives do it as well as the liberals, so nobody's immune from this. Now, this should be a warning to us to be careful what we say, because people are going to twist our words. And we need to be careful of what we say. We need to be especially careful what we post on Facebook. And I have learned one thing about Facebook, that the best thing I can do most of the time is just keep my mouth shut. And just resist the urge to dash off a message. Once you say it it's out there There's no taking it back if it's on the internet. It's forever somebody said and so we see that our words are going to be twisted and I our pastor as he preaches and and people you know listen to that they can go to sermon audio and and in fact people can watch what I'm saying right now so I got to be careful but uh... they'll they'll twist it they'll they'll turn it around they'll say see this is what this this fellow uh... teaches this is what that church believes and so uh... we can't avoid it all together we need to be careful what we say but understand that people are going to rest or twist our words but not only were they twisting his words but they were tracking his way look at verse six they gathered themselves together They hide themselves, they mark my steps when they wait for my soul. This is not just a spiritual thing with David, this was literal. They were tracking him, they were hunting him down like an animal. I mean it was just a, he never knew when he was gonna come up with someone that was seeking to kill him. Now I'll tell you what, I don't, I don't walk around, of course I'm not walking around at all right now, but I don't move around in fear looking over my shoulder because I fear that somebody is tracking me down, trying to kill me. But then again, I'm not very high profile. David had the notoriety. David was a known man. There was a price on David's head. And not only did they twist his words, But they were tracking his way, his steps. They were hunting him down, just like you would an animal. So there was a deadly intent going on here. But we also see, verses 7 through 9, that there was a divine intervention. First of all, God cast down our enemies. Look at verse 7. Shall they escape? by iniquity, in thine anger cast down the people, O God." Now, the first part of that verse is sort of a rhetorical question. Now, you all know what a rhetorical question is, I hope. It's a question that doesn't require an answer. If you ask a rhetorical question and somebody answers you, then something got lost in the translation somewhere. He's saying, shall they escape by iniquity? In other words, will they get away with what they're trying to do? Will their iniquity be so crafty, so cunning, that they're going to just get away with their evil? And I think, of course, the answer to that, he is implying, the answer is no. Because, in thine anger, he says, cast down the people, O God. That's what we call an imprecation. uh... there are imprecatory songs are songs with that are almost totally dedicated to uh... calling god's vengeance is wrapped his chastisement upon uh... evil doers those are sometimes hard to understand and uh... we have to understand too and i'll get into more of this in just a second but uh... in the new testament god requires more of us He requires more exacting behavior of us than he did in the Old Testament. We have advantages that the Old Testament saints did not have. And I'll save that for the next verses. Then in verse 8, we see that God cares about our trials. And this verse really jumped out at me. I really love this verse. He says, thou, who's he talking to? God, thou tellest my wanderings, put thou my tears into thy bottle, are they not in thy book? Three things we see here concerning God's care about our trials. Thou tellest my wanderings. In other words, God knows about what's going on. If we are, if we're being, shunted into an undesirable path in life, and we have to go through some unpleasant times and some unsavory things. God knows about that. God tells, and I don't think that means he's just expressing them. He is intimately acquainted with our wanderings. Notice what he says next. Put thou my tears into thy bottle. do you ever think about that? Gee, I mean here's God with his bottle collecting our tears putting them into that bottle. Why? Because he cares about us. There was a song written years ago and I still like to hear it sung. Tears are a language God understands. And how true that is that when we get to the point of weeping when our soul is anguished that God knows about that and he's saving up our tears he puts them into his bottle that he might be reminded Does God need to be reminded? No, of course not. We understand that. But that's an anthropomorphism that we put on God where we ascribe human characteristics to God to help us understand God. And this is almost like a memorial that God looks at that bottle of tears from his people and is reminded, hey, they're going through some negative things here. They're going through some rotten stuff and God does not leave us or forget us or just count it as a light thing. God cares about our trials. And then in verse nine, we see that God champions our cause. Let me finish up verse 8. Are they not in thy book? These are the undesirable things, the trials of life, they're in God's book. He's keeping track of that. God is not unrighteous to forget your labor of love. God knows what we're going through. And then God champions our cause in verse 9. When I cry unto thee, then shall mine enemies turn back. This I know, for God is for me. Of course, you know the verse in Romans 8.31. If God be for us, who can be against us? Now, that doesn't mean the people aren't against us, but who can prevail against us? See, no one can win an ultimate victory against the child of God. We know that the victory is has already been won and As I've already said, the worst that the world can do is kill this old body. And yet, if God is for us, we know that when we cease to live on this earth, absent from the body, present with the Lord. If God be for us, who can be? against us. So there's a deadly intent that David experienced but also a divine intervention. Now we go on to the third section and that is David's triumph. Look at verse 10 and we see in here a reverence for God's revelation. In verse 10, he says, in God, will I praise his word in the Lord? Will I praise his word? God there, the word God is the word Elohim, and then the word Lord is Jehovah, and that's two different names for God. And he said, in God, in the Lord, I will praise his word. If we think of word there, it simply means revealed truth. Now we have And I told you I was gonna get to this. We have a great advantage that Old Testament saints did not have, and that is the completed Word of God. 1 Corinthians 13 says, when that which is perfect or that which is complete is come, then that which is in part shall be done away with. That's why we don't, we believe that the era of speaking in tongues not the gibberish you hear from charismatics today. I'm talking about genuinely being able to supernaturally speak another language that someone else can understand. The tongues have ceased. Prophecies, we don't need to prophesy anymore because we have the fullness of prophecy. Everything God wants us to know about the future, about life, he's put it in his word. And if you hear somebody saying, well, God told me this, if it's not out of the word of God, no, God didn't tell you that. I think God leads us and impresses us, but everything that God impresses upon us is through and in his written word. And that's the bottom line. And we have that advantage over the Old Testament saints. People often ask, why did God allow some of the things that he did in Old Testament times? Well, now it says red. Okay, it's green again. All right, where were we? Have I been off all that time? I hope you could hear me. Oh, well. I like to be heard. Not that I have anything to say, but I like to be heard. But anyway, I started saying, why did God allow some of the things that, one example is polygamy. And you hear that a lot. Well, you know, so-and-so had two wives and Solomon had 700 wives and 300 cucumber vines. That's a joke, okay. But why did God allow some of those things in the Old Testament? The New Testament tells us in Acts 17, 30, and the times of this ignorance, God winked at. They were ignorant because they did not have the completed revelation of God in the completed Bible. So it says the times of this ignorance God winked at In other words, he just chose to sort of set that aside for the time, but now commanded all men everywhere to repent. And so we have a responsibility that when we sin, we need to repent of that sin, not try to justify our sinful actions by what somebody did in the Old Testament. And then in Luke 12, 48, unto whomsoever, I'll get it out there in a minute, unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required, and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more. Here's a principle, a New Testament principle, and Jesus taught this throughout the entirety of the Sermon on the Mount, and that is that when we have more, we have more advantages, more is going to be expected of us. Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required. So, you know, Jesus, and I wanna just go back for just a second, in the Sermon on the Mount, over and over, Jesus said, you have heard that it was said, this and this and the other. And that was from the Old Testament. He said, but I say unto you. He said, I'm tightening the restrictions now. And he said, you've heard don't uh... don't do this and don't do that don't uh... you should shout not kill he said i'm telling you don't even hate your brother without a cause so uh... there's there's more requirements for those of us who have more advantages so uh... david had a reverence for god's revelation then we see in verse eleven faith overcoming In God have I put my trust, I will not be afraid what man can do unto me. And I've already covered that. The worst that the world can do, the worst our enemies can do is to kill this flesh. And that just sends us on to our heavenly home. And you say, well, and I've heard people say, why am I still here? I've heard good people, people that I admire greatly say, why am I still here? Why can't I just die and go on to heaven? God has a purpose for you as long as you are still here. So we have faith overcoming fear. In Matthew 10, 28, fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul, but rather fear him Him, that's God, fear Him which is able to destroy both body and soul in hell. So faith overcomes fear knowing what this flesh is worth. We know this flesh is going to cease to function at some point in time. Now I hope I'm 130 years old eating chocolate ice cream. When it happens, I don't know. But it's gonna come to an end at some point. That's the worst that the man can do to us. And then as we go on to verse 12, we see the pressure of David's promises. Thy vows. And the commentators generally agree that this is talking about the vows that David had made unto God. Thy vows are upon me. They press upon me the promises that I have made. I will render praises unto thee. In the Old Testament, we read a lot about people making vows to the Lord. The New Testament in the New Testament the dynamic has sort of changed Jesus said this in Matthew 5 verses 34 and 37, but I say unto you Now he this is again in the Sermon on the Mount. He said he said I You've heard said that thou shalt not forswear thyself, but thou shalt swear by this or that or the other. But I say unto you, here's my command, swear not at all, but let your communication be yea, yea, nay, nay. For whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. So he's saying you don't need to swear. When people use swear words, and it's not always, but a lot of times, they're trying to reinforce what they're saying. And they'll say, well, blankety blank, I'll do it. Is that really necessary? See, they're trying to make their words sound even more authoritative or more definite. And Jesus said, don't be doing that. He says, let your communication be yay and nay. In other words, whether it's a vow, and I really don't think that God's people need to be making vows today. We just need to say yes and no and keep our word. Whatever you say, do your dead level best to keep your word. And I know that circumstances sometimes come up and we have to apologize and say, I know I promised you I would do that. And And I had this come up, and I just couldn't do it. And Jesus said, too, about that. He said, we ought to say, if the Lord wills, then I'll do this or that or the other. But whether it's a vow or a promise, keep your word, not only to others, but especially to the Lord. And then there's a desire for deliverance in verse 13. He said, for thou hast delivered my soul from death, wilt not thou deliver my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living? He says, first of all, thou hast delivered my soul from death. David was a saved man. David, through the testimony of the sacrifices of the Old Testament times, David had his faith in a coming Messiah. People in the Old Testament were saved the same way that people in the New Testament are saved. Do not ever let anybody tell you, well, there was a different way that they were saved by doing the sacrifices and keeping the commandments and all that. No, all that was a picture of Christ who was to come. Their faith was in Christ. Abraham believed God. And it was counted unto him for righteousness. Didn't say Abraham offered sheep. Didn't say that Abraham kept the commandments. It said Abraham believed God. It was his faith. And so people in the Old Testament, saved by faith. People in the New Testament, saved by faith. Thou hast delivered my soul from death. And David had already acknowledged in verse 11 and also in verse 4 that in the end, it didn't matter if his enemies were successful in killing him. They could not kill his eternal soul. All right, so he says, you delivered my soul from death. But now he says this, will thou not deliver my feet from falling? David is expressing a desire to go on living in this life, so that he might serve God. He says, will thou not deliver my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living. He says, I wanna go on. I believe you've got me here for a purpose. I believe I can serve you. And I wanna go on living. And you know, Jesus, said, Lord, if it be possible, God, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done. And I think that was David's attitude here. I want to go on living. I enjoy life. In spite of all the issues and all that we go through, I want to live. And very few people get to the point where they want to die we want to live and and that was David's prayer here Lord if you be your will let me go on living that I can serve you and and live for you as we set the application there's always going to be foes in life and there's always we're always going to experience fear at times Those are opportunities for us to exercise that great gift of God, which is faith. And may we try to do that. And trust this has been a blessing to you. Father, bless your word and the hearing of it. And I pray, Lord, that as we go through life, that we'll trust you, realizing that the victory ultimately has already been won. Let's now in the furtherance, of the services today, in Jesus' name, amen.