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The River ChurchSermons

Gary Wright · 7 Jun 2026

Gary Wright · Sunday, 7 June 2026 · 37:43 · 4,908 words

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Psalm 62 is examined, showing how David repeatedly emphasizes that God alone is our rock, salvation, fortress and hope. The sermon contrasts trusting the Lord with relying on ourselves, wealth, pride or others, warning that anything placed before God is temporary and undependable. Believers are encouraged to remind themselves of who God is through scripture and prayer, especially during hardships, and to keep both feet on the rock. It concludes by pointing to the gospel, reminding that salvation comes through Jesus Christ alone.

What this sermon is about

Ranked by keyness against every other sermon in the corpus. Each one is a word this sermon actually said — nothing here was written by a model.

rock 28 confidence 22 trust 33 alone 26 enemy 23 david 29 wealth 13 fortress 12 put 35 honestly 11 position 10 hardship 9

Topics

Salvation 6 Hope 3 Faith 3 Grace 1 Sin 1 Prayer 1

Scripture referenced 18

Verified against the transcript. A reference the recording does not support is never listed here.

Psalms 62 0:04 Psalms 73 0:13 Psalms 62 1:03 Psalms 62 6:19 Psalms 62:3-4 6:40 Psalms 3 6:50 Psalms 46 18:12 Psalms 119:114 18:21 Psalms 56 18:33 Psalms 62 19:05 Psalms 62:8 19:05 Psalms 62:8 19:05 Psalms 62 22:36 Psalms 62:10 28:07 John 14:6 35:28 Acts 4:12 36:07 Matthew 16:18 36:34 Galatians 2:20 37:10

Transcript

Every word, as spoken, with the second it was said. Each word links to its own entry in the index.

Today we're going to be continuing our study through the psalm.

We'll be in Psalm 62 today, so if you have your Bibles, I encourage you to turn there.

The scripture will be on the screen as well.

Next week we will be on Psalm 73.

I encourage you to read ahead next week, study it yourself, and then come back and see if

I'm telling you the truth or not, okay?

All right.

So let me pray and we'll jump into this.

Father, thank you for today.

Thank you for loving us.

Thank you for your son, Jesus, who sacrificed or took our place on the cross, Lord, and

paid the price for our sin.

Lord, we praise you for that.

We praise you for your love for us, Lord, and we praise you for your word this morning

and the truthfulness of that.

And I just ask that you use your word to penetrate our hearts this morning, meet us where we

are, and show us the next step we need to take in following you, whatever that may be.

We love you.

In Jesus' name.

So this morning I want to start off reading the first nine verses of Psalm 62.

So if you want to follow along, that would be awesome.

But David is the writer of the psalm.

He says,

For God alone my soul waits in silence.

From him comes my salvation.

He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress.

I shall not be greatly shaken.

How long?

Will all of you attack a man to batter him, like a leaning wall or a tottering fence?

They only plan to thrust him down from his high position.

They take pleasure in falsehood.

They bless with their mouths, but inwardly they curse.

For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence.

For my hope is from him.

He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress.

I shall not be greatly shaken.

I shall not be shaken.

On God rests my salvation and my glory.

My mighty rock, my refuge, is God.

Trust in him at all times, O people.

Pour out your heart before him.

God is a refuge for us.

Those of low estate are but a breath.

Those of high estate are a delusion.

In the balance they go up, and they all together lighter than a breath.

Okay?

So the first nine verses of this passage, David uses the same Hebrew word.

It's translated different ways into the English language,

but it's translated in the English language as the word alone, only, or but in this passage.

Okay?

Why is this important?

This really is the theme of this passage,

but it's important that David use,

he used it five times, he's using it five times to show us that it's God alone who are these things for us, okay?

Look, we as believers, we have to trust Jesus to come to salvation, right?

And it's him alone who provides that salvation.

But sometimes once we're saved, when things come our way,

hardships, enemies, and different things,

we tend to not only be standing on God alone,

but we want to put our other foot on salvation.

We want to try to do things ourself, and we take God out of the mix somewhat.

But David's pointing out something very important,

that it's God alone that we can put our confidence in.

He says, God alone is our salvation.

God alone is our rock.

God alone is our fortress.

He is our hope.

And this hope is not saying, man, I hope this happens.

This hope is a confidence that God is who he says he is,

and he will do what he promises to do.

And it is him alone who we can fully trust and not be shaken

when hardships and things come our way.

We cannot add anything to God alone,

because anything else is undependable.

It truly is.

And it's clear that David is going through some kind of hardship in this passage.

I mean, he talks about his enemies.

He talks about people being two-faced, talking behind his back.

The interesting thing about this passage is,

David never asked God for anything.

He doesn't.

What he's doing here is praising God and trusting him

and realizing that he, you're just saying,

I confidently trust you, God.

I trust you, and I believe in you.

He's full of faith.

He's full of trust.

And there is no fear.

And I think it's just an awesome example

how we should be in trusting our Lord.

Is it easy?

It's not.

But we're going to go through this

and talk about a few things that we struggle with

putting our confidence in, even as believers,

other than the Lord.

Throughout Psalm 62, David contrasts between

trusting the Lord,

or putting our confidence in the Lord alone,

or putting our confidence in something other than God.

He goes back and forth throughout this passage.

And in verses 3 and 4, David speaks of his enemies.

He starts off praising God,

but then he goes to speaking of his enemies.

Let's take a look at Psalm 3 and 4 again.

How long will all of you attack a man and batter him,

like a leaning wall or a tottering fence?

They only plan to thrust him down from his high position.

They take pleasure in falsehood.

They bless with their mouths, but inwardly they curse.

The first person, so when we think of enemies in our Christian walk,

the first person, the first enemy that should come to our mind is who?

Ourself, right?

We're our worst, or we can be our own worst enemy.

Look, as a pastor, I could easily,

say this, I've finally made it.

I can have confidence in myself, right?

And I can become prideful.

And let me tell you, one of the main reasons that a pastor falls is pride.

Can be confident in what God's called me to do.

Look, God's called you to do something as well.

And you can be confident in that.

But when we take the position that we earned this,

and that it's all about us,

it turns to pride and fall is coming.

Right?

The scripture says pride comes before the fall.

But David's a man.

He has the same issue.

He's the king of Israel.

God called him to this position.

And he probably felt, man, I've made it.

I can make people do whatever I want.

And honestly, sometimes David did some terrible things, right?

We talked about one of them last week.

But for the most part, God, David followed the Lord.

Look, we, the minute we start to take credit for the things

that we have in this life, the positions we have,

how smart we are, that we're smarter than somebody else,

or we begin putting something, trusting ourselves other than God,

we have become prideful and we need to see that and repent.

And honestly, Christians, we need to hold each other accountable in this

because sometimes we can become prideful and not even realize it.

Okay?

But David also speaks of,

he speaks of another enemy.

He speaks of an enemy outside.

He says they were attacking him, looking for weakness.

He says, there's some different thoughts on whether this passage is talking about David

when it says leaning wall or tottering fence, or talking about the enemy.

I believe it's talking about David.

I believe his enemies were attacking him, trying to find the weakness

because they wanted to take his throne, right?

And they were looking for a weakness.

Like a tottering fence or a leaning wall where they could push him out, right?

Because the very next verse says,

they only plan to thrust him down from his high position.

And honestly, a lot of commentators believe this passage is written

when Absalom, David's own son, was trying to take the throne away from David.

Okay?

And Absalom had all these things,

all these things going on.

He was prideful.

He got people to follow him in the kingdom.

He wasn't called by God to be the king, but he was going to take it.

David had to flee.

But David had confidence the whole time that this,

that God was going to come through, and God did.

But we can easily, David can be, you know, people in high positions can be prideful,

but our enemies can also become something that we focus on instead of God.

Let me tell you, I used to work,

when I worked at the county, there was a guy that worked there,

I'm not even going to say his name, but he drove me crazy, right?

He did.

He was always negative and tearing people down,

and I mean, he was just hard to work with.

Listen, I liked the guy, but he was so negative that it drove me crazy.

And honestly, it became a focal point in my life.

I focused on, like, I started, I got so upset about it,

I focused on that.

Instead of trusting God, when I realized that, this is what I did,

I began to pray for this guy.

And I began to pray that God would give me the opportunity to share the gospel.

And listen, if you pray that way, you better be ready,

because God is going to give you the opportunity.

He did, right?

I come to find out this guy grew up in church.

Him and his wife, they met in a youth group.

I'm like, who knew?

Because there's no evidence of that now.

But I had the opportunity, instead of focusing on that,

I pointed him back to Christ, right?

And that's where we have to be.

We have to focus on the Lord instead of focusing on this hardship

or this enemy in our life.

Otherwise, it becomes the main focus instead of God.

And when we trust our enemies,

when we put our trust in the enemies,

we have to remember, when we let them become the focus point,

that thing is only temporary.

Our God is our fortress, and he's unmovable,

and he's permanently there.

We need to focus on the permanent.

David speaks of these people, his enemies,

blessing them with their mouth, and then in their hearts,

they want nothing more than to tear him down from the throne.

You have people like that in your life?

It's hard.

And they cursed him inwardly, it says.

But our enemies in life, or the hardships in life,

and I'm talking to believers here,

can sometimes be, seem, not be,

they can sometimes seem to be undefeatable.

They can become such a stronghold or like a rock in our life

that we think that there's no way

that God's going to be able to get us through that.

But when we do that,

we're lying to ourselves, because guess what?

We serve a God who can defeat our enemies,

just like he did with Absalom.

Absalom actually was running, he had long hair,

and his hair got tangled up in a tree,

and he was hanging there by his hair,

and they caught him, and they actually killed him.

But God intervened, David trusted, and God came through.

Look, when there's hardships in your life,

when there's enemies in your life,

those things are only temporary.

And I want to encourage you to stay focused

on what is permanent, the rock, the true rock,

God, our fortress.

That's who we need to put our confidence in,

in these hardships.

But David, he talks about how awesome God is

in the first couple of verses.

He talks about his enemies, and then he goes back again

to talking, praising God.

In verses five through seven, he says,

not alone, oh my soul, wait in silence,

for my hope is from him.

He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress.

I shall not be shaken.

On God rests my salvation and my glory.

My mighty rock, my refuge is God.

And I love this part, because David at the beginning,

he's talking to God when he says this exact thing,

almost word for word.

But here, he's talking,

he's talking to his own soul.

He's reminding himself of who God is.

Look, he uses the word, he says, for God alone,

oh my soul, wait in silence.

He's speaking the truth to himself.

He's reassuring himself that God is who he says he is.

And I love that.

And sometimes I think we need to do that.

But David's reassuring himself that God's his rock,

his salvation, his fortress.

And he uses personal pronouns for himself.

My, I, right?

He's not saying God is our fortress.

He's saying he is my fortress.

He is my rock.

And look, when we're going through hard times,

he is, if we're believers, he is our rock.

He is our fortress.

He is someone we can trust.

He's somebody we can put confidence in.

He will come through.

And that's what David's saying here.

He's reminding himself of that.

And I love at the beginning, he says,

he says, I will not greatly be shaken.

He says, I won't move too far.

But here when he's reminding himself of who's God is,

he says this, I won't be shaken.

I'm going to be unmovable because God is my rock.

I can trust him and I can stand firm on him.

I can put both feet on the rock and stand firm.

I can put both feet on the rock and stand firm.

I can put both feet on the rock and stand firm.

And when we feel attacked, what do we do?

We do the same thing.

Remind ourself who God is.

And honestly, the best way to do that is scripture.

And I wrote down a few scriptures here.

And honestly, this is what Jesus did

when he was tempted in the wilderness.

How did he respond to Satan?

Look, memorize some scripture for when you're struggling.

Psalm 46, one says, God is our refuge and strength.

A very precious scripture.

Present help in trouble.

I used all Psalm verses here.

Psalm 119, 114 says, you are my hiding place, my shield.

I hope in your word.

Psalm 56, three, when I am afraid, I put my trust in you.

And David, what he did here is he's reminding himself

of who Jesus is or who the Lord is.

And that's what we need to do.

And the best way to do that is to pray.

And the best way to do that is to memorize some scripture.

David goes from encouraging his own soul

to encouraging us or others.

Verse eight, Psalm 62, verse eight, he says,

David goes, says, trust in him at all times, O people.

Pour out your heart before him.

God is our refuge.

God is a refuge for us.

David's saying, look, pour out your heart.

Tell God what's going on in your life.

And trust.

Trust him.

He is the refuge.

He is the city we can run to when we're going through struggles,

when we're going through hard times,

when we're dealing with something.

He's our refuge.

One pastor says this.

I read this this week and I thought it was pretty, pretty cool.

He says, they trust not at all who trust in him, him not alone.

Let me read that again because I kind of messed it up.

They trust not.

God at all who trust not him alone.

He that stands with a foot on a rock and the other on quicksand will sink and perish as

certainly as he that stands with both feet upon the quicksand.

Look, David knew this and he therefore called earnestly upon his soul to trust only on God.

Look, we can't stand if we're lukewarm, if we're standing on the rock and we're

standing on the quicksand, what's going to happen?

Eventually, we're going to tip over, right?

We're going to sink anyways.

We have to have both feet on God alone.

We don't run around and try to take care of things ourself, right?

We love to do that, don't we?

Or we love to jump ahead of God.

Well, God's going to want me to be here.

So I'm just going to jump up here in front of him.

When we do that, we're jumping straight into the quicksand.

And look, when we're going through hardship,

and we're dealing with an enemy, and we're standing firmly on the rock,

and we are experiencing joy anyways, what are we to other people?

We are an example of who Jesus is and that we can trust him.

People are like, how can you be joyful?

And how can you have peace in these difficult times?

And it's only because we can put,

our faith and our trust in God alone.

So David's contrasted.

He talks about how great God is.

He talks about his enemies.

He talks to his soul and reminds himself.

He talks to us about how great God is.

And now he goes back and contrasts the other ways.

In verse nine, he says,

we can't put confidence in people at all, okay?

So we can't put our confidence in our enemies.

We can't put our confidence in ourself.

We can't, and now he's gonna tell us,

we can't put confidence in people at all.

Psalm 62, nine says,

those of low esteem are but a breath.

Those of high, I'm sorry,

those of low estate are but a breath.

Those of high estate are a delusion.

In the balance, they go up,

they are all together lighter than a breath.

Look, what is he saying here?

He's saying, common people, normal, down to earth,

regular people that don't have a high position

are like a puff of wind.

And he says, powerful people are liars.

And so really, he's including all people in this.

And he says, lighter than a puff of air.

Look, he's saying, we can't rely,

we can't put our confidence in people

because they're like smoke that blows away.

They're like air.

They weigh nothing.

There's no substance there.

And this may seem to,

when I read this, I'm like,

it seems to contradict what it says

about believers building each other up.

You know, we need each other.

We need the Lord, but we need each other too.

And this seems to contradict that.

But this is what I want to encourage you with here.

When we are encouraging other,

one believer to another,

what are we doing?

Are we pointing people to us

or are we pointing people to Christ?

If we're pointing people to us,

we're pointing them in the wrong direction.

We are a puff of air.

When we encourage people,

we pray for them.

We point them to Jesus.

We point them to the truth of his word.

That's how we build each other up.

This is not a contradiction.

We can't trust people.

We can trust our God.

Some of us, we, all of us can do this.

We can put our hope or our confidence in people, right?

Sometimes I've seen people put confidence in their pastor.

Not that they don't,

I'm not saying that to not trust your pastor,

that he's going to point you in the right direction.

That's what I'm supposed to do.

But when people sometimes will almost make a pastor

like a God to them, right?

So somebody in this high position,

what happens when that person falls

or if that person falls from grace?

You're going to be lost.

We can't put our confidence in our pastor, right?

God's called me here to point you to him,

not to point you to,

to me, right?

And I could, it goes back to the pride thing.

Look, another thing we can easily do,

another person of position

that we can easily put our hope in

or our confidence in is a politician.

Come on, right?

We do that.

Like this person's going to change the world.

This person's going to do that.

But what happens when they get in office?

None of them do what they say they're going to do, right?

And it really goes back to powerful people are liars.

They never do exactly what they say.

Honestly, I think when they get in there,

they realize how messed up it is

and that they alone can't change it.

And honestly, who can?

Our God.

And honestly, another thing we do

is we put confidence in our friends.

We can become people pleasers.

Have you ever been a people pleaser?

I have.

I can say that honestly.

But like one pastor says this,

when we put our stock,

in human friendship,

then that friend disappoints us.

What happens to our world?

It collapses, right?

We put our hope in this friend.

That friend lets us down.

We're lost.

Now what?

When we pursue human approval, he says,

and then we discover that the person

we're trying to seek approval from

doesn't even like us,

we're going to come crashing down.

You ever done that?

Living in the light of friends,

approval means trying to be something,

to stay in.

That's not who our God is.

When we trust our God, we're in.

We can stand on him firmly.

He's unmovable.

This last one is going to be a little more

close to home, I think, for some of us.

David says that we can't put our confidence

in our wealth, our possessions, our money.

And I think this is something

we all struggle with in some way.

Psalm 62.10 says,

put no trust or exhortation,

set no vain hope,

If riches increase,

set not your heart on them.

Like we want to put confidence

in the things we have in life.

We want to put our hope

on the money we have in the bank.

And when we're speaking of wealth,

David talks about robbing first, right?

And when I think of that,

obviously, if we're stealing from people,

we're not following the Lord.

But what I think about more there

that applies to us more

is sometimes when we're

and we don't have wealth,

we pursue that

and it becomes our God.

We pursue money

and we pursue the things in life

to the point where that's our focus.

We go from being standing on the rock

to focusing on that.

Look, I've been there.

When I was growing up,

when I was younger,

and I really wasn't walking

with the Lord at this time,

I pursued wealth.

I pursued the things in life.

And I worked all the overtime I could get

because I wanted these things.

And you want to know something?

They never happened.

They never did.

I mean, a few things,

but I never had what I was pursuing.

And what did it cost me?

It cost me time with my family.

It cost me relationships, right?

I was willing to give that up

for what I wanted

when the truth is what I needed

was the Lord.

Sometimes, like early in my, you know,

when I was a young man,

I had kids and friends,

some of you are going to be able to relate.

I had nothing, right?

Everything I had seemed like

it went to the kids

or to fix the car, right?

And you can understand.

But as I've gotten older,

my kids are grown.

I really, I don't really want

for anything anymore.

And I have a little bit of money

in the bank, right?

Sometimes wealth will increase in life.

Is David knocking that?

He's not.

He says when,

if riches increase,

not your heart on them.

When wealth increases

and we have something in the bank,

we can easily put our hope there.

We can say, man,

I got this little nest egg.

I'm set for life, right?

I worked at the county 25 years.

Why?

So I can have this pension

that I have now.

And it's great.

Don't get me wrong.

I praise God that I have it.

But that thing could go away tomorrow.

But if I had,

if that was my hope in life,

I would be crushed if I lost it.

The money we have in the bank

can be gone tomorrow.

A hardship can come

and we have nothing.

But when we put our hope in the Lord,

it is not going away.

He is our firm foundation.

The rock on which I stand,

right?

The song says.

A lot of us,

we acquire wealth

at some point in our life.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

But the problem is,

what do we want to do with it?

We want to hold it.

We want to keep it to ourselves.

We want to be selfish.

This is mine.

I earned this.

And this is where I'm going to put my confidence.

But the Lord said,

David's saying something else.

He's saying when you have wealth,

don't make it part of your heart.

He's saying,

open your hand.

Remember who the wealth came from.

The wealth didn't come from us.

God gave us everything.

It belongs to him.

And he wants us to use the wealth

that he's give us to help others,

to support the church,

That don't mean we give everything away,

but that means we are generous

and we help people when we can.

That is the purpose of wealth.

It's God's anyways.

Let's use it.

Listen, when we die,

it's going to stay here.

We're not taking it with us.

It is not where we can put our hope.

Wealth should be used as believers

for God's kingdom.

David, he goes back at the end of the day,

end of the passage here,

the last two verses,

verses 11 and 12.

It says,

once God has spoken,

twice have I heard this,

that power belongs to God

and that you, O Lord,

belong steadfast love,

for you will render to a man

according to his work.

David says,

I've heard this,

and it says,

and I've heard it twice.

What are you saying?

I've heard this repeatedly,

that God is powerful,

and that he is loving.

when this passage was written

before Jesus came and died on the cross,

but really when we look at this passage,

we see our Savior.

He is our rock.

He is our fortress.

He is who we can stand on.

It's him who we can trust.

Look, God loved us so much.

It says in Romans,

it says God shows his love for us

that while we were still sinners,

Christ died for us.

He was all powerful

and he loved us so much

that he sent Jesus to die for our sin.

The scripture says

that we all have sinned

and fall short of God's glory.

And we need Jesus to come

and we need to put our faith in Jesus

in order to make him the rock of our life.

Look, the scripture says,

our sin,

separates us from God.

He says the wages of sin is death,

but the free gift,

right, he says it twice,

is Jesus Christ our Lord.

He give us a gift.

It's salvation.

Jesus is our salvation.

He is our refuge.

In John 14, 6,

Jesus says this about himself.

I am the way,

the truth,

and the life,

and no one,

no one comes to the Father

except through me.

here's our word,

he alone is the one,

the path to salvation,

the path to heaven.

We all, when we die,

we always say,

man, he was a good person

or she was a good person.

They're gonna go to heaven,

but that's not true.

It's only through faith in Jesus Christ

that's going to get us there.

It is only him.

Acts 4, 12 says this,

and there,

there's salvation

in no one else.

Speaking of Jesus.

For there is no other name

under heaven given among men

by which we must be saved.

It is Jesus alone.

Christ alone is our salvation.

And he's our rock.

In Matthew 16, 18,

Jesus says this.

He's talking to Peter,

and he says,

I tell you,

and I tell you,

you are Peter.

And people get this,

they think he's calling Peter the rock,

but Jesus is saying,

on this rock,

talking about himself,

on this rock,

I will build my church.

And on the gates,

in the gates of hell

shall not prevail against it.

Jesus is our salvation.

He's our rock.

And he's our fortress.

Galatians 2, 20.

I have been crucified with Christ.

It is no longer I who live,

but it is Christ who lives

in me.

In the life I now live in the flesh,

I live by faith in the Son of God

who loved me

and gave himself for me.

He is our foundation.

He is our refuge.

He is who we can run to.

Jesus is the only way.

He alone is our salvation.