Psalm 61 - Crying For Safety To Your Father

Well, welcome back today to Tabernacle Talk. We are in Psalm 61 today.

And this is actually a song, a psalm that I heard a song of several years ago now. And I could not find on YouTube a link to the particular group that I had heard doing it, which is a beautiful group, the Steve Pettit Evangelistic Team.

And they had done a particular rendition of this psalm. And they're kind of a more like bluegrass Irish type band. And I grew up listening to them, really enjoyed their music.

And they had just a gorgeous rendition of this. What I have put in the show notes, though, is just a local church choir that ended up doing the song as well. And so I've linked that in the show notes.

If you want to maybe hear a version of this, frankly, whenever I've heard this particular tune to this song, to me, it seems like something like David would have written. It's just kind of a simple, flowing melody and it's really pretty.

So I would encourage you if you get a chance to listen to it. The inscription for Psalm 61 says this, for the choir director on Stringed Instruments, a song of David. It says, God, hear my cry.

Pay attention to my prayer. I call to you from the ends of the earth when my heart is without strength. Lead me to a rock that is high above me.

For you have been a refuge for me, a strong tower in the face of the enemy. I will live in your tent forever and take refuge under the shelter of your wings. Salah.

God, you have heard my vows. You have given a heritage to those who fear your name. Add days to the king's life.

May his years span many generations. May he sit enthroned before God forever. Appoint faithful love and truth to guard him.

Then I will continually sing of your name, fulfilling my vows day by day. What a great little song. And we're going to go through and just look at a few things of how David is asking for God to work.

What we can take from it. What we can ask from God. And hopefully it will be a time of great encouragement for our own hearts.

If I'm a little briefer today, that will be quite all right. I managed to accidentally leave my laptop charging cord at home. So I'm on a little bit of a time crunch for a couple of things today.

But we'll try and take all of the time that we need in God's Word this morning. First, God, hear my cry, pay attention to my prayer.

One of the things that maybe if you're a parent or if you've got a nephew, if you've worked, nephew or niece, if you've worked in nursery, whatever that you have seen before as a little kid, you know, they're trying to get your attention.

And then maybe as kind of like last resort, they grab on to your face and they make you look at them. And I can see David doing this to the Lord like, God, I need you to hear me.

I need you to pay attention to me because I am really feeling this right now. What he says in verse two, I call to you from the ends of the earth when my heart is without strength.

Now, when we think of the ends of the earth, we're thinking like, you know, far away in the Amazon. You know, if you're in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, that's the ends of the earth.

But here what David is saying is how I am feeling in relation to other people as I feel in relation to, you know, my family or to my country of Israel is that I'm estranged. And it feels like I'm the furthest away from them.

Sure, geographically, I might be close, but that's not the reality that I'm living in. I'm not getting to enjoy what it's like to be with and near your people or the ones that you have given to me, God.

So he says, I'm calling to you from the ends of the earth. He says, when my heart is without strength. And obviously here he's not talking about his physical heart.

He's saying, God, my innermost being has no strength. Like I'm not really feeling the carrying on right now, God. And so I am in desperate need of your help.

And here's what he prays to God. He says, lead me to a rock that is high above me.

I've talked often before about David as he's journeying through the wilderness of Judea and some other areas with his band of merry men that he is taking refuge in different caves and things along cliffs. That as he's in those areas, he is sheltered.

He is sheltered. He is hidden from both, you know, elements and weather and wild animals. He's also sheltered first and foremost from from Saul or from any of the various, you know, tribes or peoples that might want to harm David.

And so he says, God, lead me to a rock that is high above me. The higher it is, the harder it is to get there, the more safe and secure you are. So he says, God, will you provide me security in my life?

And frankly, this is something that we can ask the Lord. We can say, God, right now, like I'm in desperate financial straits and financial need, and I need you to help me out, Lord.

God, right now, in my relationships, it feels like everything is just getting jumbled and crazy. And God, I need you to work in my marriage. God, I need you to work in the lives of my kids.

God, I need you to help me out as I'm interacting with a sibling or with a parent. And there is absolute uncertainty and fear in all of this. And so, God, will you provide safety?

Will you lead me to this secure place? And he's asking this in verse three. He says, because you have been a refuge for me, a strong tower in the face of the enemy.

What a wonderful truth that God is our refuge and our strength and ever-present help in time of trouble.

And this is true in our day-to-day life, that God is the refuge that we can turn to, that we can ask him for provision, we can ask him for healing and relationships, we can ask him for physical healing.

But first and foremost, God is our spiritual refuge. He is the one that we turn to, that we find salvation in, that we can know, hey, I'm growing in my sanctification day by day. I know that God is still with me.

And so God, I want to take refuge in you.

I want to, when Satan tells me, like, you are too terrible, you are not able to be a child of God, you shouldn't share Jesus with anyone else, because you're not good enough, you're not keeping enough of the rules that I go to God as my refuge.

And I say, Lord, there is no goodness in me, there's no righteousness in me.

And so I throw myself entirely on you to say, if anything good is going to come out of my life, if I'm going to make it to heaven, if I'm going to have a relationship here and now with God, it's got to come through Jesus and what Jesus has done for

me. He is my refuge.

He is that strong tower in the face of the enemy, that one lonely foot soldier is not going to be able to tear down a tower and David here says that God is a strong tower in the face of our enemy and certainly here David's thinking of actual physical

enemies that want to kill him and I'm certain that many of us in the same circumstance where people were literally looking to kill us, we would describe God as a strong tower in the face of our enemy, but he is a strong tower in the face of Satan and

not only is he our tower, our refuge, our fortress, he is also the one that as we are moving forward in the kingdom of God, he is not just our defense, but he is the one that helps us to move forward, that he gives us all of the armor and the shield

and the sword to be able to fight spiritual warfare, that we see people saved and baptized and discipled and added to the church and the church grown and multiplied out to various places all across the world. Like that's our goal, that's our mission

that we're on. And as Jesus told the disciples, the gates of hell will not be able to prevail against the church. So God is not just our like defensive position, he is our progressing, our offensive position as well. Verse number four, David says, I

will live in your tent forever and take refuge under the shelter of your wings. David says, where am I going to live? I'm going to live with you. Think of the end of Psalm 23.

Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

That our eternal destiny is to be with God, the one that we were made to walk with and to journey with and to be with, the one that died for us, the one that rose for us, the one that calls us his bride, the one that is coming again for us, the one

that went to prepare a place in his father's house for us. That's the God that we are going to live with forever and ever. And there it says, and take refuge under the shelter of your wings. I've talked about this before.

When scripture talks about God and his hands, his arm, his eyes, those are anthropomorphisms that God doesn't got the father and got the spirit. They don't have physical flesh and bone. He doesn't have a physical arm or something.

Obviously, Christ does, but he only took that nature on when he came to earth. There's certainly some of the Christophanies in the Old Testament.

God wrestling with Jacob, God interacting with Samson's parents, the fourth man in the fire with the children of Israel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.

Some other things like that, that angel of Yahweh that's talked about, would cause us to ask some questions, certainly.

But the point is that those are anthropomorphisms, that God is a spirit and as such, he doesn't have physical body parts like we do. But it's a way of talking about God's work or his safety or his protection. Same kind of thing.

But in the animal world is what's being talked about here, that God doesn't literally have wings, that this is just a way to talk about it.

It's Jesus when he's talking about Jerusalem and he says, how often I wanted to like protect you and love you and bring you under my wings like a mother hen. He says, but you would have none of it.

And so here this is what is being said, that we can take refuge under the shelter of God's wings. That for a mother hen, when she puts her chicks underneath her wings, no one can see them, no one's going to go after them.

And here this is what David is saying, I want to take refuge under the shelter of your wings, God. I want to be completely hidden away and protected by you. Verse number five, he says, God, you have heard my vows.

You have given a heritage to those who fear your name. Here David says, God, I made you promises of what I was going to do, and you heard them. And so because you have heard them, you are helping me.

And certainly, we can think truly no vows that we make can genuinely make God do something he wasn't going to do otherwise, but he is after our hearts. He does want us to commit to him.

And certainly, when we think of vows, we can think of what Jesus said on the cross, a vow. It is finished, to telestai, that the work is complete. It has all been paid for.

There is nothing more to be done. And because God has heard the vow of Jesus, that it is finished and it is done, we do not fear any condemnation anymore, and we are his forever. There, that last part of verse 5.

You have given a heritage to those who fear your name. That God has given us a rich history that we can look back on to be able to say, God, you worked for Noah. You worked for Abraham.

You worked for Jacob. You worked for David. You worked for Moses.

You worked for the disciples. And so, God, I know that you will work for me, that we have that heritage, and we have a heritage going forward, that we can say, like, God, will you work in the lives of my children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren?

God, will you help those that I am discipling and involving in my spiritual life, that I am telling about Christ? Will you help all of this to go forward generation after generation?

A heritage before and a heritage behind is what is the unique blessing of those that fear God's name, that we have a reverential awe for him, that we say, he is incredible. He is so far above us. He is holy and so he must punish sin.

So I don't want to sin because I don't want the punishment of God. I want to enjoy his favor and his love and his forgiveness that he gives to those that follow after him. Verse number 6.

David says, add days to the king's life. May his years span many generations. May he sit enthroned before God forever, appoint faithful love and truth to guard him.

Then I will continually sing of your name, fulfilling my vows day by day. Certainly here there's an element in which David was the king, and so he's asking, like, God, extend my life. May I be before you forever.

May you have your steadfast covenant, faithful love, your chassid, and your truth. Have those guard me so that I don't do anything that would not be marked by the love of God. And I wouldn't do anything that wouldn't be marked by the truth of God.

May these both be a part of my life. And may I live a long life. And he says, then I will continually sing of your name, fulfilling my vows day by day.

I mention it often. We ought to sing to Jesus. We ought to sing about the Lord.

It ought to be something we sing about in our homes. It ought to be something we sing about with our families.

One of my favorite things that we've picked up over the last about two years or so has been every night before we go to bed, we sing a kind of like hymn or song of the month with B and with Evelyn.

And they've, you know, by this point, they've learned probably 24 different songs, just that we have sung every single month since B was about two and a half. And it was like right after Evelyn was born.

And so they've learned great songs like Holy, Holy, Holy. They've learned Jesus Loves Me, Jesus Loves Even Me. They've learned some new hymns like Rejoice or Christ our Hope in Life and Death.

They've learned songs like Gratitude or Jesus Only Jesus or Christ Be Magnified. Or the hymn slash song that we're singing this month is Abide. You're the way, the truth and the life.

You're the well that never runs dry. You're the brand. I'm the branch and you are the vine.

Draw me close and teach me to abide. Be my strength, my song in the night. Be my all, my treasure, my prize.

I am yours forever, you're mine. Draw me close and teach me to abide. If David says, I'm going to continually sing about your name as you keep me alive day by day, let's do it.

Let's sing with our family. Let's sing in our homes. Let's sing in our cars.

Let's sing in, certainly in church. Let's sing in our small groups. Wherever we are, let us sing out about the Lord because he has been good to us.

I also want to mention just one other thing as well. Here, though David is asking for these things for his own life, certainly these things are true about Jesus. That Jesus is the one whose years span many, in fact, all generations.

Jesus is this king who will sit enthroned before God forever. Jesus is the one who faithful love and truth, or as the New Testament writers would put it, grace and truth, that exemplifies who Jesus is.

He is full of grace and truth, and those things are part of who he is. It's around him. It's in how he interacts with others.

And if Jesus is this wonderful king, let's obey him. Let's follow him. Let's call out to him.

Let's ask for him to be our security and our refuge and our strength. Let's ask him our requests. Let's realize that he bought our salvation.

He declared it is finished and those vows cannot be undone. So, let's sing to him. Let's obey him and let's tell others about him.

Thanks for tuning in today. Hope that Psalm 61 would be an encouragement for you. Psalm 62, I know there's a great song from Psalm 62.

And so, I'm going to be linking a thing tomorrow with that song. I can't remember which song it is though. So, you guys are in for a treat.

Oh, I know what it is, actually. It's from Sovereign Grace Music. They did a Psalms album this past year.

And they did one from this Psalm that is one of my favorites that I have heard in the past couple of years. So, looking forward to that and see you next episode.