Psalm 11

What do you do with fear or doubt when it comes your way?

Flee? Freeze? Fight? 

Finding genuine courage and security in those times can be a game-changer but where do you look for that?  While we can look inside ourselves for a little "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" courage, Psalm 11 gives us another model to respond.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:22

What do you do with fear when it comes your way? Flee? Freeze? Fight? Finding genuine courage and security in moments like those can be a complete game changer. But where do you find that? We're gonna look in Psalm 11 today and see how one person responded to fear that was probably pretty dramatic in his life. While you're turning to Psalm 11, I'll just go ahead and remind you that subscribing or following is the easiest way to stay connected to our weekly rhythm. And that weekly rhythm really is designed to help us get that breadth of scripture every single week. This isn't a race, right? We're just looking to uh enjoy and appreciate each day, having that time in the Word with the Lord and meeting with Jesus. So open up to Psalm eleven. I'm gonna pray, and then we'll get right into it. Jesus, thank you for today. God thank you for all that you are. Thank you that we can bring every single situation in our lives to you, that we don't have to be afraid. God, would you be with us now? Amen. All right, here we begin at verse one. In the Lord I take refuge. How then can you say to me, Flee like a bird to your mountain? For look, the wicked bend their bows, they set their arrows against the strings to shoot from the shadows at the upright in heart. When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do? The Lord is in his holy temple, the Lord is on his heavenly throne, he observes everyone on earth, his eyes examine them. The Lord examines the righteous, but the wicked, those who love violence, he hates with a passion. On the wicked he will rain fiery coals and burning sulfur, a scorching wind will be their lot. For the Lord is righteous, he loves justice, the upright will see his face. I know that was kind of a short one, but go ahead and take a moment to pause and take in what God has for you. In fact, if you'd like to, this is a great chance to pause this and read it back to yourself and listen to the Lord again. Okay, let's uh make some observations together and soak this one up. There are a few things even in these short seven verses that that David composed that I think are really encouraging. They were encouraging to me, and I hope that they are to you as well. The first one is really kind of short. David knows where he finds that security. He's convinced that when he goes to the Lord, when he rests in the Lord, there is refuge there. And that's just that little phrase there at the beginning, in the Lord I take refuge. David's not taking refuge in his own strength or in schemes or anything else. He's just coming back to the Lord and saying, This is where I find my security. And then we move into verses one through three, kind of the second part of verse one, and he begins to challenge the rhetoric of fear. And I don't know if you picked it up as we were going through it, but those verses there kind of when after he says, In the Lord I take refuge, and then he moves on, it seems like he's giving voice to to something else. Perhaps it's an actual person who's been speaking this way, or just the general rhetoric of those who would say, You should be fleeing right now. Why are you staying where you are? And uh up until the end of verse three, that really is what's uh what's being talked about there. So he he acknowledges that and he challenges that rhetoric. And and the tone here really it could be like a friend giving advice and showing concern. Like you can read those verses that way. Or it can also be that um kind of condescending tone, the thing that people do when they don't actually believe in somebody. When they look at them and they they kind of are thinking, Well, I see what you're doing, but I don't actually think that you're big enough, strong enough, whatever enough to handle this. And so they give that kind of advice that maybe is almost like a faux concern. It's not real, but they step into that. So David acknowledges that. And then the response is kind of giving the reasons why he is confident in taking refuge in the Lord and not fleeing. He really worships God here and he does that in a declarative way. All of these different reasons why he's finding his security and his strength in the Lord. Let's take a look at a few of those. The first one is the Lord is enthroned. It's an acknowledgement that God really is sovereign and he is there, he is in authority, he understands all of what's taking place, everything that we observe around us, everything that we experience is under the authority or the government or the governing of the Lord. So the Lord is the one who is enthroned, not his enemies, not even his advisors, not even himself. It's the Lord, and he is the one who is rightfully acknowledged in that place. And then he goes into what God is doing. He says, The Lord observes. And I looked at this uh a a little bit here, and and in the NASB, it actually uses a different word, behold, and both one, both words I think work there, but the original word has this idea carried with it. It says to gaze at mentally, to perceive, to contemplate, and then it says with pleasure. And so this idea that the Lord is looking at his creation, that he's observing us, that he's observing even those who are righteous, it's not this idea that the Lord is, you know, kind of looking for ways to shoot us down in in that kind of a way. It's this affectionate gaze. It's like, hey, I I love you, I care about you, I'm delighting in you. There's a there's pleasure in just seeing what it is that you're doing. You're my creation, and and I'm taking joy in in beholding you in that sense, which I think is a really beautiful description there. And then there's another word that comes in where it reads as examines, and that does have that idea of of being tested or proved, and and yet it's not, again, designed to make us fall. It's this idea that as the Lord uh walks us through life, we do face hard things. David was facing adversity, he had faced or he did face adversity throughout his life, and I think most of us can relate to that. I don't know if there's necessarily a a long season of life where you're just like, man, that was super easy, no problems at all. It's pretty normal for us to have some uh aspect of challenge and difficulty in life, and that is some of the ways that God uh refines us and builds us and continues to raise us up uh in him. So all of that is there. His gaze is on the righteous and then implied, this isn't said, his gaze is not on the wicked, that there's this rejection, that his eyes aren't uh on those who who defy him, um, not that God doesn't notice, but there's not that affectionate gaze at beholding that he has for those who who seek him out. And it's really pretty pointed stuff here. God has no tolerance for the wicked, and it describes those who are wicked, those who love violence. Is that the total definition of wickedness? Uh probably not, but it's what's on David's mind, and loving violence, desiring that is not in line with what God has for us. In fact, it says He hates them. That's really strong, isn't it? Pouring out all kinds of burning judgment on them. Again, we see that kind of rolling out there in verses five and six. Ultimately, though, we get to verse seven, and we see that God is just and that he is righteous. Those who seek the same things, justice and righteousness, it says they will see his face. They will be able to remain in his presence without fear, remaining in that place of being safe, secure, trusting that God really does have their best interests in heart, and uh and we can we can really live well in that place regardless of the difficult things we might be facing. Let's take some of this and do our best to receive it and apply it to our own lives. Hopefully we've already been doing that a little bit, but I wanted to ask you really just two questions. The first one is how does this psalm shape your view of God? And we actually do see kind of two components here. The first one, his response to those who are righteous, those who desire to be righteous and to love God. There's this very loving, very protecting picture. Again, that whole idea of being beheld by God, that he's affectionate towards us, that he's looking out for us. There's that. But then there's also the flip side of that, his response to wickedness and specifically to those who are wicked to those people. And you know, we see in scripture that all of humanity is made in the image of God. That's true. And we see that God is love. That theme is undeniable in Scripture. And so I think that we can still rest in that, and yet we must also recognize and wrestle with the reality that God, the same merciful, grace-filled, loving, kind God, passionately opposes wickedness. And in this psalm, the word hate is the right word. He hates wickedness. So how do we wrestle through that? How do we understand who God is and how is it shaping us? I don't want to answer that too much because that's part of the joy of you doing your own good spiritual growth work. The second question is what have been the voices of fear in your life? Or maybe doubt, fear and or doubt, those kind of hold hands a lot of times, but what have those voices been and then how have you responded? Maybe you're facing something of that nature right now, where people in your life, or maybe your own thoughts, are doubting you, kind of planting that seed that you aren't strong enough, smart enough, right, clever enough, good looking enough, whatever it might be, uh, to do the thing that you want to do. How are we going to respond to that? My encouragement to you and to myself is that we do take our cue from David in this case, and we respond with the sense of like, no, hang on. This will be okay. Not in a foolhardy way, not in a blind faith kind of way, but just a recognition that God is good and he is strong enough. We can bring all of our cares, all of our anxiety and excuse me, anxious thoughts. There we go. And we can bring those to him, and he really will take care of us. Be encouraged today. Jesus is risen, and we have hope. Let's pray. God, thank you. Thank you for being with us. Thank you that we can turn to you when life gets super challenging. Thank you that we can bring all of these doubts and fears that we experience, and and uh just understand that you will carry us through them. We want to do the next faithful thing. Would you lead us on? Amen.