Psalm 28 - Deaf Rocks

Podcast Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

Hello, and welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. Today we are in Psalm 28, and this is another Psalm of David, and we're going to dive right into it this morning, or whenever you listen to this.

He says this, Yahweh, I call to you, my rock, do not be deaf to me. If you remain silent to me, I will be like those going down to the pit.

Listen to the sound of my pleading, when I cry to you for help, when I lift up my hands toward your holy sanctuary.

Do not drag me away with the wicked, with the evildoers who speak in friendly ways with their neighbors while malice is in their hearts. Repay them according to what they have done, according to the evil of their deeds.

Repay them according to the work of their hands. Give them back what they deserve, because they do not consider what Yahweh has done or the work of His hands. He will tear them down and not rebuild them.

Blessed be Yahweh, for He has heard the sound of my pleading. Yahweh is my strength and my shield. My heart trusts in Him, and I am helped.

Therefore, my heart celebrates, and I give thanks to Him with my song. Yahweh is the strength of His people. He is a stronghold of salvation for His anointed.

Save your people, bless your possession, shepherd them, and carry them forever. What a great song, and this again is many of the themes that we have been rehearsing and diving at various points into over the past several weeks now.

But I want to take a look at even some things that are kind of unique to this Psalm that David writes and some of the things that he says here that he doesn't say in the exact same way in some of the other Psalms that we've been in.

So he says, Lord, I call to you my rock. Do not be deaf to me. Even as I read that, it makes me think because for most rocks, most rocks are deaf to me.

I can say things to in my hometown. There was a lot of foothills and some really cool geography.

And there was this one rock that was on top of this hill was a huge rock that you could climb up and you could stand on top of it and you could see for miles around. And it was called Castle Rock.

And I could talk to Castle Rock all day and it would never answer me. It would always be deaf to me.

I've been at Moab National Park, something in Moab, Utah, and have seen the really, really iconic arch that's there and I could talk to that rock all day and it would never answer me.

I could even go to Mount Rushmore to these beautiful rock outcroppings where the faces of incredibly powerful men from ancient history, where they were, and yet none of them would talk back to me, no matter how much I talk to them.

But God is different. He's a rock. Here he is a fortress.

He is, I think I mentioned yesterday or two days ago, he's that outcropping in the Judean wilderness where David could go to hide from the storm, where he could go to hide from animals, that he could hide from perhaps Saul pursuing him and trying to

hunt him down. That he could go and the Lord here is described as a rock. He's a place of safety, but he's not just an inanimate place of safety. He's one that hears and responds to our prayers and our requests.

What a cool thought there. He says, if you remain silent to me, I will be like those going down to the pit. They are obviously that is the grave and oftentimes when the pit is mentioned in scripture, there's the specific thought.

It's the place of the dead where the damned go.

At various points throughout scripture, you can read about either Sheol, hell, Gehenna are some different words that are used to describe the final resting place of those that have lived their lives in opposition to God that have rejected him.

That have not obeyed his voice and in calling them to reconcile with himself and so David says, God, God, if I die, then I'm not going to be able to praise you. So God, keep me alive so that I can keep declaring who you are.

Verse number two, listen to the sound of my pleading when I cry to you for help. Then he says, when I lift up my hands toward your holy sanctuary.

Lifting up of hands is something many people do in a time of worship, whether Christian worship or even if you look at maybe a Taylor Swift concert, or if you look at any number of concerts around the world, that would happen in which maybe singing

is taking place, especially. I don't know that it happens much in the classical world, but it's this thing of, wow, this person, this action is so incredible. I can't help but raise my hands in adoration.

This type of action is talked about in one particular book called Holy Roar that's written by, I can't remember the pastor's name, but it's Chris Tomlin, and then Darren Whitehead is his pastor.

And they created an excellent book on the expressions of worship that are found in the Hebrew Testaments, specifically in the Book of Psalms. But this word, I believe, lift up my hands would be the word yadda. It's to throw up your hands.

It would be there's a similar action that's like when you're throwing a stone, like it's a shooting out of the hands. And it's something that you don't necessarily have to like teach people. It's more instinctual.

So if a touchdown is scored or someone hits a home run, there's that final run that's batted in the last second penalty shot. It goes in and there's an automatic expression of, yes, I'm shooting up my hands. It's wonderful.

It's victory. It deserves more than just maybe sound from my mouth. It also involves the rest of my body getting involved.

And here this is what David says. He says, when I think about God, I'm shooting out my hands toward your holy sanctuary. I realize that you are set apart.

That's the word holy. It's not just that he is perfect, though he is. His holiness is that he is apart.

He's different. He is separate from us in ways that are good and great. That he's not petty like we are.

He's not impatient like we are. He doesn't cheat us like we cheat one another. He doesn't fail to love us like we fail to love others.

And so David recognizes God for who you are, for your sanctuary, for the place where you live, for the incredible works that you do from your place of authority. God, you deserve actions of praise from me.

And I think sometimes in an attempt to not seem fanatical, we have limited our reactions to God.

But from scripture, there's about six or seven different words that David uses in the Psalms that he goes, if God is worthy and he is, then it should involve every part of me. Like it's not just a nice singing voice. It's not just reading some words.

It might be, you know, David exemplified dancing before the Lord. It's just delighted movement, not for the sake of movement itself, but out of rejoicing in the Lord. He says, I can't help it.

Like it's got to come out of me in some way. If I'm throwing up my hands, if I'm clapping, one of the songs I learned as a kid, clap your hands, all you people, shout unto God with the voice of triumph, taken from one of the Psalms.

Maybe it's clapping, maybe it's shouting for joy to the Lord. I think Psalm 66 or 64, somewhere in there, has that particular command. Shout out for joy, all ye lands, all ye ends of the earth.

There's just so many ways in which praise for God can come out. It's kind of the heart behind why we would believe that we need to be singing new songs of praise, because God is consistently working.

And so no one has ever praised God yet for the things that he is doing right now. I can think back to portions of my life where God was working, God spoke to my heart, and no one had ever praised God for working in my heart.

Like no one had ever written a song about that. And so I know for my life there was Psalm 31. There was a song, You Are My Rock and My Fortress.

That because God was working in me that he had given me time and ability to learn some instruments and to begin trying to work on writing some songs that I wanted to praise him. And so I created a song to praise God for what he had done in me.

And no one else can praise God for what he's done for me. So it inspires me. What am I going to do?

Am I going to tell others about it? Am I going to sing about it? Am I going to pray to him about it?

Am I going to testify? Like there are so many amazing ways in which God personally works for us that then we are called to share that with others, to give a testimony that God is consistently working.

So are we consistently praising and testifying to the work of the Lord?

Then verses 3 through 5, some of the things that we've seen already in Book 1 of Psalms, we're saying God, these evil people, they flatter others, they say nice things to their face, and then they're trashing them behind their back.

And he says, God, I want you to turn back on to them what they're trying to put on others.

So in different times throughout the Psalms, may the one that is laid like a bird trap for someone that they would get snagged up in it, he says, may they accidentally step into it, if you will.

I think of Wiley Coyote, I think I might have mentioned this several weeks ago now, but it's kind of the Wiley Coyote. He sits up a trap for Roadrunner, and then he ends up being the one that gets attacked by it.

That's kind of the prayer of David here, which I find a very humorous thought. And it's just something cool. In verse number five, why?

Why would David pray for someone's intended calamity to come back on them? Just because they don't consider what the Lord has done or the work of his hands. What a thought.

We need to consider God, what he has done and the work of his hands. The work of his hands primarily is people. God's greatest handiwork is not the Grand Canyon or the sun, moon and stars or plant life.

God's chief work is people. Do you appreciate people? Do you consider the fact that when you interact with people, that God like personally created them?

That's one of the things that Christians would believe even from Psalm 139, that God's the one that puts us together in the way in which we are.

That's, if you will, the DNA process, the little minute decisions that make us who we are were orchestrated by God.

That you are not an accident and that because of that, you have intrinsic worth and value to God that can't be taken away by any person. You are not worthless. You are valued by God himself.

And so anyone that anyone that loves God, anyone that seen life from the biblical perspective is going to value you as an image bearer of God. So you have worth and you have purpose. And so do other people.

Do you consider that when you interact with others? Are you like that person's a waste of time, waste of space? Or do you realize, no, like this is one of God's expressions of divine creativity.

And sure, all of us are marred by sin. All of us have things that because of the fall, we're not perfect. Our personalities, our health, our bodies, none of it's perfect.

But it is created in the image of God. Do you value other people? Do you consider them in what you think, what you say, and what you do?

Verses six and seven. Blessed be the Lord, for he has heard the sound of my pleading. What a wonder it is that God hears our prayers.

Verse number seven. The Lord is my strength and my shield. My heart trusts in him and I am helped.

Therefore, my heart celebrates and I give thanks to him with my song. Do you thank God for what he does? Did you thank him that you woke up today?

Did you thank him for maybe the roof over your head or the bed that you have, maybe family that you have? Have you thanked God for what he's given you? Then verses eight and nine.

The Lord is the strength of his people. He is a stronghold of salvation for his anointed.

There again, Mashiach, both referencing the king in David, as well as anytime we can see that in scripture, we can think back to Christ, that he is the one that raised Jesus from the dead.

First Peter one three would talk about that, that the God and Father are Lord Jesus Christ. He raised from the dead into a living hope, and he raises us as well. Verse nine, I really love, save your people, bless your possession.

You are God's. You are not your own. It's not directly tied with Psalm 28, but I'm going to link to this amazing song written by Skye Peterson.

And the song is called I am not my own. And it was just a really, really big encouragement to me when I heard it last year. You belong to God.

So what you do has to be run through God and what his direction is for your life. It says, save your people, bless your possession. It says shepherd them.

And as a pastor, the word pastor is shepherd. If you were to translate the word, well, actually, you could just take the word pastor into Spanish, and it would mean shepherd.

The word in Greek is poymen, which is shepherd most every time in Scripture.

I think there's 16 times the Greek word shows up, and depending on the translation you have, some of them have all 16 times it's translated as shepherd, some of them like once or twice it's translated as pastor.

So as a shepherd, I have to look at how God treats people and how God guides people, how God deals with sin, what God says, and I'm trying to follow God to go, okay, God, I know how you deal with me, how you love me, how you forgive me, how you show

me the way. Now, I'm called to do that for others as well. But God shepherds you, He guides you, He cares for you, He is walking with you. A shepherd's not a good shepherd if he's not around the sheep, and God is with you, He is present with you.

Are you listening to His voice? And then the last part of verse 9, Save your people, bless your possessions, shepherd them, and carry them forever.

One of the things I love most in the world is when I carry my son or my daughter, and they know that they're safe. I'm not dropping them.

And if that's true for me, it is so much more true for the God of Gods, that He will carry us, He will never drop us, He will never abandon us. We are safe in Him. I hope that would be an encouragement to you today.

Again, I'll link that song, I Am Not My Own. Thanks for tuning in. Tomorrow is Psalm 29, and I'm going to do just the smallest peek in the world to see.

Oh, yeah, tomorrow is going to be great. Tune in for Psalm 29 tomorrow.