Psalm 55: Cast Your Anxieties
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Good morning. My name is Spencer. I am one of the pastors here. So before we get into the text for today in Psalm 55, which is on page 272, if you want to go ahead and flip there, just have a church family quick announcement to address really the elephant in the room. So Friday was a big emotional day in our country with the fall of Roe v.
Wade. If you've not been around our church the last few years, we are not a political church in the slightest. We do approach things biblically as they arise in the scriptures. When it talks about life in the womb, when it talks about justice, we will address the issue. We do believe as a church that life begins at conception. We believe that God is knitting and forming a child in the womb.
And where biblical ethics overlap with political things, we will actually address that from the scriptures. Now, I'm not going to get into all of that today. What I will say is if you have not been here long enough, and that was a lot to hear, I would invite you, please have a conversation with me or one of the pastors. We would love to have that conversation with you. I understand it is a very, very hot button issue right now, and there are a ton of emotions that are stirring in the midst of all of that. But the reason I say that is because that ruling will directly affect this state.
And there will be an opportunity for Christians to do what we are called to do in the coming years in this state. There will be unplanned pregnancies that happen in this state. And we as Christians are called to care for orphans. That's biblically, James 1, 27, the pure undefiled religion before the father is this, to visit the orphans and the widows. That is historically, the church has stood up for orphans all the way back to the first, second, and third century when children who had birth defects were being abandoned by Roman families and Christians were swooping in and adopting children. We get the opportunity to live out our faith and the calling of Christians when it comes to orphan care.
That we'll have an opportunity to step into that through the foster system, which some of you should be praying about. Domestic adoption. We have families that do domestic and international adoption in our church. I say all that to say that we have a benevolence fund in our church. It's $15,000 this year. That benevolence fund is for a lot of different things, from paying for families in our church that are behind on payments, to supplementing counseling costs, to engaging community needs that we do from time to time.
We have $15,000 that we set aside in our budget for that. We will be, in the future, giving adoption grants out of that because we want to incentivize and come alongside some of the financial costs of adoption because we deeply care about orphans. And my hope, my prayer is in the response to all of this, that we would first walk in wisdom, be salt and light, but that we would get behind the biblical ethic of orphan care and actually step into a need that is going to happen. So I want to start this conversation. If you have questions about any of that, please don't leave today frustrated or angry.
Please come and talk and we can start a conversation. But we are going to be moving this direction with orphan care and we want to encourage this as a church family. So we're going to be in Psalm 55 today, which is on page 272 in your blue Bibles. You can turn there and follow along. The text will be on the screen. These first three Psalms and this summer in the Psalms that we have deal with.
Last week, Chad introduced the idea in Psalm 37, a fret not. Be still before the Lord. Don't worry. This week, we get to walk into that a little more from Psalm 55. The next week is a Psalm of lament. It's kind of all three go together on this broader subject matter of what do you do in the midst of suffering.
So we're in Psalm 55. We'll follow along with that in a moment. About a month ago, if you know me, I love music. I listen to lots of different types of music, different genres of music, different time periods of music. And I have Spotify, different playlists and shuffles that happen. And I had a shuffle.
I was in a late 90s, early 2000s music, alternative music kind of mood. So I was letting the Spotify shuffle. And that's, you know, that was my childhood, late 90s, early 2000s. So these are songs that I grew up listening to. And then all of a sudden, one came on and it hit differently because when you're listening to a song, when you are a kid, it doesn't hit the same when you're in your 30s. So it was a song called Breathe by Anna Nolik.
That, you know, 2 a.m. and she calls me because I'm still awake. All right. So that song. Listening to it, I'm like, oh man, I remember this. And then all of a sudden, the chorus hit. And I went, oh man.
The chorus says this, because you can't jump the track. We're like cars on a cable. And life's like an hourglass glued to the table. No one can find the rewind button now. So cradle your head and your hands and breathe.
Just breathe. And I heard that and I went, oh man, I did not know songs from Grey's Anatomy could do that to me. Like I just, I was like, man, she has a point. Life is like an hourglass glued to the table. Like there is no rewind button. She's talking about all like difficult situations and life is hard and suffering happens.
And her advice is cradle your head and your hands and breathe. Just breathe. And I was like, yes, man, that is so good. It's so close. Like you almost got it. You got part of the picture.
The gospel gives us a more complete picture. And this Psalm 55 today helps paint that in more completely. It helps give us a picture of what to do in the midst of suffering when life hits us in the face and how we are called to respond. We're going to look at this, the Psalmist David, in the midst of deep trials and suffering. And we're going to see his response and how that is key for us and important for us in understanding how we are to respond in the moments of trial. So if you feel overwhelmed right now, if you feel ridden with worry or anxiety, if you feel like you are struggling, this Psalm is for you.
Okay? Let me pray for us and then we will get going. Father, I pray that you would help us be present this morning. You help us hear the words of the Psalm, the wisdom that is bound up in it, that it would be balm for the soul. That it would help us see how we would respond in the midst of trials and suffering. And that you would help us walk this out in faith, in repentance, in glorious worship.
We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. Verse 1. He says, Give ear to my prayer, O God, and hide not yourself from my plea for mercy. Attend to me and answer me.
I am restless in my complaint and I moan. There are four urgent pleas right out the gate. He says, Give ear. Don't hide yourself from me, O God. Pay attention. Answer me.
This is a desperate, needy posture. Lord, listen to me. Give ear to my prayer. And then he says, I am restless in my complaint and I moan. You ever heard someone moan before? And by someone, I mean not a child.
In our household, we have, in the summertime, we have ice cream. Because we're a fun family. And I'm a cool dad. And we have, my wife bought the variety pack of, box of drumsticks. Which back in the day, they just had like the vanilla centered ones. Not anymore, you guys.
They have ones that are filled with chocolate in the inside. And caramel in the inside. And about every day, our kids are like, Can we have ice cream? And most days, we're like, Yes. Now, they love the ones that have the chocolate and the caramel in the center. Right?
Because that's awesome. And, you know, they get the chocolate ones. I may or may not clear out the caramel ones. But by the end of the week, or however long we have them, what's left is just the original ones, the OG drumstick. And there is weeping and lamenting in our house sometimes. But there's moaning and deep complaint.
And it's like, Oh man, y'all have not experienced suffering yet. If this is the type of lamenting that happens. Like, it's not a child. But if you ever heard, you ever heard an adult moan? And deep pain. It hurts the soul.
It is heavy. It is a deep hurt. Deep complaint. That's what's happening here. And then in verse 3, he says, Because of the noise of the enemy, because of the oppression of the wicked, for they drop trouble upon me, and in anger they bear a grudge against me. So, context.
David is the Lord's anointed. He is a man after God's own heart. God fiercely loves David. David fiercely loves David. And yet, he ordains that David suffers. In fact, when you follow his life in 1 and 2 Samuel, you see he suffers over and over again.
He has enemies that seek to destroy him, to kill him. Some of these Psalms are written in the midst of those times. And that's what's happening here. So, God loves his people deeply. That does not mean he will spare us from suffering in the slightest. Verse 4, it says, My heart is in anguish within me.
The terrors of death have fallen upon me. Fear and trembling come upon me. And horror overwhelms me. David is in emotional and physical torment. He's restless. He cannot sleep.
Moaning. It says, His heart is in anguish. Fear of death. Fear and trembling are upon him. Horror overwhelms him. And some of you have felt that.
You felt that with the death of a loved one. You felt that with abandonment that has happened in your life. That type of deep anguish of the heart. You felt that with rejection that happens in a way that makes you question reality itself and what's happening in your life. We feel this. And at some point, if you have not felt this, you will feel this.
Suffering is guaranteed this side of the fall. You will feel this type of pain, the kind of pain deep in your soul when you have no more tears to cry. And when this happens, you may feel tempted to run. And that's what David feels here in verse 6. And I say, Oh, that I had wings like a dove. I would fly away and be at rest.
Yes, I would wander far away. I would lodge in the wilderness. Selah. Which, by the way, we don't know what Selah means. Okay? In the Hebrew, we just don't know.
It could be a pause. It could be a musical note. Not even Kanye knows what Selah means. We don't know what that means. But before that, he's like, if I had wings, if I could just spread and get away, if I could fly away, if I could wander and get in the wilderness.
Who hasn't wanted that to run from your problems? Who hasn't wanted to flee and get away from it all? Maybe you're someone in a marriage that is filled with suffering and you want out. Maybe you're a teenager that's in a home that you maybe feel misunderstood. Or maybe it just feels toxic. Or maybe you're the parent of a teenager where you feel misunderstood and things are tumultuous and you just want to get away.
Listen, most of us, we're not going to physically escape. It's not going to happen. But we will do it mentally. Right? That's our go-to. We'll mentally escape.
We'll go to Netflix. We'll go to social media. We'll go to pornography. Because that's easy and controllable. To get away from it. Fly away to it.
What feels like a safer place but ultimately isn't safe for the soul. David feels that. He wants to get away from it all. He's acknowledging that before the Lord. I want to get away. Verse 8, I would hurry, verse 8, to find a shelter from the raging wind and tempest.
A tempest is a storm. I could just find shelter in the midst of all of this from this storm. From this raging storm of suffering that he's enduring. Maybe you've wanted that. Maybe you've wanted that. You've been in a group and a community group that feels like there's a lot of suffering, a lot of trials, a lot of people that are hurting.
Maybe there's some relational drama that's happening. You just want to get away from it all. Maybe you're a group leader and you feel that as a group leader. I just want to stop leading this group. Maybe you feel this as it pertains to the whole church family. It's like, I just want to leave this church.
I want to find somewhere else. I want to find shelter from what I'm facing. Listen, you have felt this or you will feel this. This side of the fall in a world that's filled with suffering. David feels this. He feels this and he continues in verse 9 to describe what he's facing.
Destroy, verse 9, O Lord, divide their tongues for I see violence and strife in the city. Day and night they go around it on its walls and iniquity and trouble are within it. Ruin is in its midst. Oppression and fraud do not depart from its marketplace. So he has enemies that seek to destroy him but he's also in a city that's filled with oppression and fraud and violence and sin.
He wants to get away from it all to the wilderness. He wants to leave it all behind. That's a familiar feeling for our country. And that was 2020. Cities falling apart. People trying to leave and get away from all of it.
My sister recently moved to Bozeman, Montana with her husband. And when they moved out there and they were, before they moved out there they were on a job interview out there and the Uber driver that was driving around said, hey, where are you from? They said, we're from South Carolina. He said, oh good. He said, as long as you're not from California. Because Montana and some of the states have been overwhelmed.
People trying to get away from the cities, get away from the violence, get away from everything that's happening. The reality is it's not just the cities that have sin all over it. It's the suburbs. It's your phone. It's the internet. It's all around us.
David feels this. Iniquity, sin is all around him but the situation is much worse. In verse 12 it says, for it is not an enemy who taunts me, then I could bear it. It is not an adversary who deals insolently with me, then I could hide from it. The enemies are not the worst part of what I'm facing here. Verse 13, but it is you, a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend.
We used to take sweet counsel together. Within God's house we walked in the throng. David has been stabbed in the back and betrayed by a close friend. By a familiar friend. That's an intimate, close friend. A friend he used to go to advice for.
The end of throng is worship. So he used to worship together with him in the house of the Lord. This friend has betrayed him and it is crushing. If you've ever been betrayed, it hurts. My first big dose of that was when I was 17 and naive, 17, dating a girl, thinking, things are, things are great. All of a sudden, boom, find out she's cheating on me with not one, not two, but most likely three.
Couldn't confirm the third one, but I'm almost positive. Third. Three of my friends and football teammates crushed me. I was like so naive. Like how could this happen? You were my friends.
You were my girlfriend. What in the world? And it taught me one valuable lesson. You really cannot trust anyone fully in this life like you can, God. No one is 100% dependable like the Lord. But what came out of that is a lot of cynicism and a lot of deep anger.
I worked through it, you guys. It took some years to be able to get in to trust some people. But if you felt that kind of betrayal, it hurts if you've been betrayed by a family member or a friend or a church family member, a mentor or a child or a parent or a significant other. It hurts. When you've had your trust violated seemingly beyond repair, it hurts. One of the most famous lines in all of Western literature is from Julius Caesar, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.
And Caesar, in the midst of the conspirators, in the midst of the senators who are killing him or stabbing him is fearless. He's fearless. But the moment he sees Brutus, his friend, he's no longer fearless. One of those famous lines, et tu, Brute. And you, Brutus. And this is a picture of, oh, man, you would betray me as well.
A dear, close friend. That's what David feels. A king betrayed by a close friend. And when that happens for us, you will, there's a part of you that longs for retribution. Longs for, maybe it's not retribution, but it's justice. But you feel that in you.
That's what David feels in verse 15. He says, let death steal over them. Which is a poetic way of saying, let death come upon them by surprise. Let them go down to Sheol alive. Sheol's the place of death. The best I can tell what he's saying there is let them be buried alive.
For evil is in their dwelling place and in their heart. David has put his enemies, the evil in the city, his close friend, all in the same category as he's lamenting before the Lord all of this. this shows the real thoughts and sorrow that David feels. Many of us have felt that. Maybe a co-worker that has hurt you. Maybe a family member that has hurt you. We can't relate to what David is saying here.
And then a shift happens in verse 16. After 15 verses of David before the Lord lamenting all the pain and suffering that he has endured and is facing, he shifts to the one whom he's crying out to in verse 16 and says this, but I call to God and the Lord will save me. He cries out to God because God is his help. Throughout the Psalms you see this one of the ones that David writes and throughout the Psalms the Lord is our help. The Lord is our salvation. This cry here in this Psalm is personally humbling for me to read this, to see this on display because what happens for me and I'm probably not alone is that when I face problems right, every now and then it's like clockwork in our family.
Every three years we're due for like a major medical bill that just comes out of nowhere and when it comes like we're feeling with right now it's like alright I'm going to hustle who I got to call alright, insurance company, doctors, how are we going to negotiate this? I get into I'm going to fix this.