Skip to content

The River ChurchSermons

Where Do You Run?

Jules Schieferstein · Sunday, 2 August 2026 · 43:09 · 7,312 words

Listen to this message

This sermon examines Psalm 142, a lament where David fled to God while hiding in a cave from those pursuing him. It shows David's first response to trouble was active, intentional prayer—bringing formal complaints before the Lord rather than merely venting. The message asks: where do you turn when suffering? Do you run to God in faith, or to distractions that ultimately fall short? It emphasizes that genuine prayer admits we have reached the end of ourselves and need God's deliverance.

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.

david's 30 david 50 refuge 28 prayer 35 psalm 45 cave 18 discipline 17 complaint 12 perspective 16 situation 18 casey 6 active 11

Topics

Prayer 13 Suffering 1 Election & Predestination 1 Faith 1

Scripture referenced 10

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

Psalms 51 3:23 Psalms 142 3:23 1 Samuel 22 5:46 Psalms 142 20:25 Psalms 139 20:28 Psalms 119:67 34:49 Job 5:17 34:58 Hebrews 12 35:06 Psalms 1 40:02 Psalms 136 40:03

Transcript

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

Pre-service announcement — 7 lines, 0:35. Excluded from every count and search on this site, kept here so nothing is hidden.

Hey, everyone. My name is Zach, and thanks for checking out one of our sermons today.

We are so glad that you're here, and we want to connect with you and your family.

Easiest way to do that is to text RIVERCHURCH to 97000.

There you can ask questions, submit prayer requests, and even support the River Church financially.

At the end of the day, we just want to connect with you and be a blessing any way that we can.

You can also visit our website at theriverchurch.cc to learn more about us and what we have going on as a church.

Thanks again for joining us, and we hope you are blessed by today's message.

Let's go ahead and open our Bibles to that psalm.

As we've kind of gone through the series, as we've repeatedly done, let's start by reading that entire psalm together.

So, a mascal of David when he was in the cave. A prayer.

With my voice, I cry out to the Lord.

With my voice, I plead for mercy to the Lord.

I pour out my complaint before Him.

I tell my trouble before Him.

When my spirit faints within me, you know my way.

The path where I walk, they have hidden a trap for me.

Look to the right and see.

There is none who takes notice of me.

No refuge remains to me.

No one cares for my soul.

I cry to you, O Lord.

I say, you are my refuge.

My portion in the land of the living.

Attend to my cry, for I am brought very low.

Deliver me from my persecutors, for they are too strong for me.

Bring me out of prison, that I may give thanks to your name.

The righteous will surround me, for you will deal bountifully with me.

Let's pray before we dive into God's Word this morning.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the gift that is your Word

and the gift that is the book of Psalms.

Lord, as we rapidly come to the conclusion of this series,

we thank you for the reminder that this book has been of your closeness,

of your nearness, of your goodness, of your steadfast love,

of your omniscience, your omnipotence, and all of it,

and how much that you care about our lives despite your greatness.

And that is why we are able to call you good this morning.

Open this Word to us.

Open our hearts and our minds to be receptive to it.

Help us to not walk out of this room unaffected and unchanged by what your Word does

because we know that it is a double-edged sword that pierces us, but it also comforts us.

Lord, I pray that those that need to be pierced this morning are pierced,

and those that need to be comforted this morning are comforted,

maybe even both at the same time.

Lord, we thank you so much for the gift that is your Word,

and pray you change us with it this morning.

In your Son's name I pray. Amen.

All right, so this is—they keep giving me the bummer psalms.

Last time I was up here, I preached on Psalm 51, and this is Psalm 142, as we just read,

and it is a genre of psalm that Pastor Josh has mentioned a few times now called lament.

It is a—as the verses state, it is a place where the psalmist, in this case David,

can lay out what they call their complaint before the Lord, bring his sorrows, his distresses.

And this one in particular, I think, challenges us to ask—

and I want you to keep this question in your mind as we go through the psalm this morning—

to ask, where is it that you run in times of trouble?

I think we can all agree that the universal human experience,

from varying degrees, is a lot of times suffering, right?

We have all been, as the psalm says, like sometimes in a cave.

You might not be in a cave this morning, or maybe you are in a cave this morning.

This psalm will equip us to see how we respond to those situations,

and where we go for refuge, and how we gain refuge.

So ask yourself, where do you run?

Where do you turn when times are hard?

Where do you find refuge, which is a shelter, or a safe place, or a defense?

That's what David was trying to do when he wrote this psalm.

So if you look at the little superscription at the top,

there's that little text before the first verse.

Super long word for a very simple concept.

But it says that this is a mascal of David when he was in the cave, a prayer.

So what's a mascal?

Great question.

We don't actually know.

That's why it's called a mascal, because it's just a word we've transliterated,

and we're like, I don't know what that means.

It means, in some sense, it is a type of psalm.

We don't really know what that meant.

It was a setting.

But the important part I want to look at is when he was in the cave.

If you know anything about the life of King David,

you'll know that he was anointed king by Samuel while Saul was still king.

And then David grew very, very popular, and Saul didn't like this,

because Saul already knew that God was going to take his throne from him.

And at the end of the book of 1 Samuel, in chapters 22 and 24,

we have two examples.

We have two instances where David is hiding in a cave

while he's being pursued by Saul.

Which of those cave events is this in reference to?

Also a great question.

I looked at lots of different commentaries,

and I'd say like 60% of them said it was from 1 Samuel 22.

The other 40% said 24.

We don't really know, but I think just knowing that it is in that period of David's life

gives us enough context to understand where it is that David is coming from.

Because it's really the same situation, just different caves.

So that's where this psalm is written.

David has been promised a throne.

David has been serving the Lord faithfully.

He's called a man after God's own heart.

He's been serving Saul faithfully, and all of a sudden he is on the run.

He's had to leave his entire family behind.

He's married, I think, probably has kids at this point.

He's been serving Saul faithfully for years.

This is, I think, at least a good decade after the whole thing with Goliath.

So David has been a good servant to Saul and to the Lord,

and his reward for that is to wind up in this cave.

So I want to start real simply by just looking at the first two verses.

See how David begins responding to this horrible situation he's in.

I want us to notice the first thing.

This is going to be a mind-blowing observation.

The first thing that David does before he even begins recounting his trouble

and his emotional state is he brings his complaint before God.

His first response to the situation is to pray.

I know, it's like, whoa, he prayed.

But I don't know.

I don't want us to gloss over, like, how monumental that is.

That was his first response.

He's actively turning to God for a solution for his problem.

And David, while he's describing his trouble, he states, like,

with my voice implies an active and a willful response.

His emotions, I think his emotions and affections have not quite caught up

with what he knows he should be doing in this moment.

But he's not just passively allowing those events to unfold around him.

No, he's making an active step.

That's what he's doing.

The act of praying is an active step to address his problem.

And he's throwing himself into this.

I mean, just look at the language that he uses to describe it.

He says, I cry out, I plead.

I think there could be temptation to see prayer kind of like, you know,

like, you know, talking to someone, like, out in the foyer or lobby.

I guess that's the word we use.

I don't know.

But out in the lobby and just be like, oh, I'll pray for you.

Like, you know, see, it is like a very passive kind of thing.

Like, I'm going to shoot that prayer up and it's going to get lost in God's inbox somewhere.

But it's the way we should be praying

and the way that David is modeling prayer for us in this psalm, much more active.

It's much more full-bodied.

He used, I guess, like a coffee term.

But David's not just like casually talking to David about his trouble.

He's emphatically approaching the throne of the most high God

and boldly expecting a response or for God to do something about it.

And treating prayer actively here as the psalm does often may mean doing it before we feel like it.

I want us to, like, there's a very small detail in this psalm

that I think is absolutely huge for entering David's kind of emotional state.

Like, David is in the midst of some serious spiritual and emotional turmoil.

Like, we have to realize the gravity of what has been taken from him.

He's on the run in his own homeland for doing nothing, nothing wrong.

In fact, actually being the most upright person around.

So he seems to almost, I think he's almost like dragging his affections

and his emotions before the Lord in this prayer.

Don't miss how he's referring to God in the first two verses.

Like, he uses third person pronouns.

Like, God is somewhere far off.

And he's not really present yet.

He doesn't say to you, but he says to him.

And you'll see later in the psalm, there is a turn eventually.

So if you look at other lament psalms, they will often address God directly.

They will say to you, Lord.

But David's not doing that in this lament psalm.

He's saying to him.

There's a distance there on David's part between himself and God.

And David's not treating God as a genius.

He's treating God as a living and active person from whom he can go to to help.

But there's that little window of separation.

But David is still forcing himself to take part in that action

that he knows is going to actually result in him finding refuge.

One commentary I read summed up the entire psalm this way,

which is, what will David do to stay alive?

Pray to overcome Saul.

Pray to voice the injustice of his situation.

Pray to deal with the distress he feels.

David's first instinct, despite his emotional distance from the Lord here,

is still to go to the Lord in prayer.

I don't want to miss what a big example that is for us.

And what a solid example that is for us.

And what we're supposed to do when we're in circumstances

where we don't understand why God's doing what he's doing.

And we feel distant from the Lord.

It's still to run towards him.

And then we also read that David is placing a complaint.

I really got hung up on that word as I was studying this.

Its basic meaning in the Hebrew is,

kind of like, to rehearse or to meditate on something.

But I was getting the sense as I was reading through this,

I don't think it means just, like, complain, right?

Because, like, you know, we all, like, vent from time to time.

You know, we just, like, need to get something off our chest.

That's actually really bad for you.

I was looking that up, and apparently, like,

it can actually make you feel more stressed

if you're complaining all the time.

But that's not what David's doing.

I think the word complaint in English

is actually a really, really fitting way to render this word.

Because it has a bit more of a formal,

a more formal sense than complaining.

It's kind of verbalizing our trouble

and rehearsing or expressing our grief

or dissatisfaction about something.

You know, like, if you have a customer service problem,

you lodge what? A complaint.

If you're going to sue someone,

good or bad reasons, I don't know.

We live in a very litigious society.

But if you're going to sue someone,

like, the first step in a lawsuit is to file a complaint,

which is a list of, like, grievances

against the person you're suing.

So there's really kind of, like, a very formal,

connotation to the word complaint here.

So this prayer, as David brings his problems before the Lord,

is not him engaging in, like, an empty venting, all right?

But he's lodging a, like, kind of formal complaint

with the highest and most righteous judge

that he can possibly lodge a complaint with.

He's not turning around to, like, one of his men

that are traveling with him and be like,

doesn't this suck?

No, he's turning instead to God.

He's finding his refuge through going through prayer

and being active about it and being willful about it.

So he's turning to the proper authority

to handle the problem.

So his prayer is an act that is turning over his grief

and his sorrow to the hands of the Lord.

And it's an act of humility and reliance on God

in a situation where he is totally outside of his control.

And I think most of the time when we are going through

events where we're suffering, that's how things feel.

You're like, things are totally out of our control.

And so we find refuge through prayer

because that is us, in at least one sense,

giving up control of the situation, too.

God, this should challenge us of this being

David's opening response in this psalm.

And remember that this is a psalm, all right?

That means it was in the Israelites' hymnal.

You know, like, we've got a list of songs

that we kind of cycle through over here.

Like, this would have been in their list of songs.

So it's inviting us to enter into this experience

and to enter into this response.

It's inviting us to enter in and to pray honestly.

Because David's, David, again, there's that distance

between himself and God.

But he's still going to God, and he's being,

honest about how he's feeling.

And he's pouring out his complaint,

which invokes the imagery of spilling something

until it's completely drained.

David's going to pour out all of this.

And again, that's not in a way that's empty venting,

but it is like, I'm giving the Lord everything

by pouring out my complaint.

That's what prayer is.

Like, it's not just, it's not just sitting

and having a casual conversation.

It is a real active, it is a real active action

that we can partake in when we go to the Lord in prayer.

Approach him honestly with all the feelings,

all the hurt, all the anger, the sadness, the joy,

happiness, or bitterness that that might entail

before going to the Lord.

It's not mere venting, but bringing it before God

in acknowledgement of his power to transform

both us and our situation.

So prayer humbles us and turns us to God.

Active prayer admits that we have reached

the end of ourselves and need the Lord

according to his goodness and his mercy

to deliver us from our circumstance.

We find refuge, first and foremost,

by going to the Lord in prayer.

But as we move forward through the psalm,

we also begin to see, begin to see, like,

the rubber really hit the road with David

in verses three and four.

I just want to read those again.

My spirit faints within me.

You know my way.

In the path where I walk, they've hidden a trap for me.

Look to the right and see.

There's none who takes notice of me.

No refuge remains to me.

No one cares for my soul.

You know, as I was studying this

and reading those two verses side by side,

I was like, this is really confusing.

I think it's expressing David's confusion.

In the same breath, almost, he says,

Lord, you know my path.

You know my steps.

Also, no one cares for me.

I have no refuge.

And when he says no one, he's talking to the Lord.

I think he's including the Lord in that conversation.

He's like, I don't feel like you care for me.

So David's acknowledging that God knows his path

when his spirit faints.

But at the same time, he confesses

that he is seemingly and entirely alone,

that he has no refuge.

There's no one who cares for him.

What is happening here?

What is David trying to tell us?

Why did the Lord include those two?

Those two verses in the Bible for our good?

Should we rely on God as refuge or not?

Because let's just really put ourselves

in David's shoes for a moment.

I want to just really settle in

with the situation that he's in.

You've been anointed king nearly 20 years ago now.

You killed Goliath.

You have been in the king's court.

You're hailed as a hero by the people of Israel.

God has made promises to you to make you king one day.

And instead of seeing any of those promises fulfilled yet,

again, after probably two decades at this point,

you're now being hunted

by the person that's sitting on the throne

that was promised to you.

You're in a dirty, dry cave

in the middle of the wilderness.

You're sweaty.

You're tired.

Your muscles are aching from traveling across

probably really harsh terrain.

And you're a wanted man in your own land

for the mere crime of being a steadfast servant

of the Lord and of his king.

I would be confused.

Like the Lord seems to be positioning David

with his growing popularity to become king

and win the hearts of the people.

And then all of a sudden,

all of that is just snatched away from him in an instant.

David's probably like wrestling with like,

what has he believed with what he's believed

and previously seemed to be true about God.

Because remember, this is the same guy

that went up and fought Goliath as like a young man.

And now he's got the reality of a circumstance

staring him down.

And so what I think we see in verse three

is a man who's desperately trying to remind himself

that God is still sovereign and faithful,

even when his situation kind of screams the opposite.

I think, you know,

I think raw, honest moments like that in the Psalms

are God's gift to us with the Psalms.

Like the Psalms are in here like for our good.

They're not always about us,

but they are here for us.

They're the place where what we know about God,

you know, like about his goodness

and his mercy and his grace

kind of comes into like messy conflict

with what we often seem to experience,

which is a lot of suffering.

It's the space within God's word

where those hard questions

about life are asked and dealt with.

And they're not always answered.

See, David was a man after God's own heart,

but at this point in his life,

it doesn't seem to have gotten him anywhere.

We can read this,

like we read this with the benefit of hindsight.

Like we know David's going to be okay.

We know that he's going to become king.

And we know that eventually,

like through the line of David,

Jesus Christ comes and is born on the earth.

Like we read all that

and we have like a broader perspective.

And I think David's acknowledging the reality of that

when he says, you know my path.

Because when we read all that,

we often encounter times of trouble or distress.

Like it's not the perspective

that we're looking at it, right?

But I think that we can find refuge in the Lord

by remembering what his perspective

on what we're suffering through is.

David's reminding us and himself

that God knows his path

and he knows ours too.

Pastor Josh spoke last week a lot about,

you know, the concept of God's omniscience,

which is, you know, he's all knowing

and God's omnipotence,

which he's all powerful.

And I was sitting there as he was saying that,

I was like, oh, please don't steal my point.

Um, but he didn't.

He actually teed it up really well

because I don't think it's by accident

that Psalm 142 is just three chapters

after Psalm 139.

There's that reminder before we get to this Psalm

because again, we're seeing what we know about God,

what we've been reminded about God

is coming into conflict

with what we often experience.

We can say all we want that God is omniscient,

God is omnipotent, God is loving,

God is kind, God is gracious, God is just.

We can even sing those things.

As we sung this morning,

we sang a song called The Joy.

And I think that's a great song.

I picked that song on purpose

because we don't always feel like singing The Joy.

Oftentimes, we probably don't feel like singing The Joy.

But the way we respond to situations

like David in the cave

can reveal how much we actually believe

what we say is true about God.

We have to ask ourselves,

what is our perspective on our suffering?

Are we trapped by the perspective of our troubles?

Or are we clinging to what we know about God

and his plans?

Because perspective matters a whole lot.

Some of you have heard the story about my wife.

And I already.

But like three years ago,

we bought our first house down in Ohio.

And it was a nice little starter home.

It was a flip.

There were a few problems from that,

but like nothing,

nothing that you couldn't really handle, right?

And outside of this house is a hundred-year-old oak tree.

And it's on a little patch of grass

between the street and like the sidewalk.

And a month after we moved into this house,

there's some thunderstorms coming through that weekend.

And I remember distinctly,

Casey and I having a conversation about this.

He's like,

do you think that oak tree is going to fall over?

I'm like, Casey,

that oak tree has been there for a hundred years.

It's not going anywhere.

So two years later,

or two days later,

it went somewhere.

I was in our bedroom doing laundry,

All of a sudden,

I hear this big old crash

and there's dust in the air.

I'm like,

that's probably not good.

And I turn around and sure enough,

there is a branch sticking through the wall

and into our attic

because that hundred-year-old oak tree

fell right on top of our house.

Casey yells up the stairs,

I think the tree fell over.

I'm like,

yeah,

I'm pretty sure it did.

So,

and like,

again,

we'd lived in that house for one month.

We'd been there for four weeks

and I'd actually been away for a week

for a summer camp

in those four weeks.

I had only been there for three weeks

and a whole giant tree

and it displaced Casey from her office

because that was right below our bedroom.

We didn't get sleep in our own bedroom

in our own home for a year and a half.

Like we were totally displaced

from like half of that house

for a year and a half.

We had to deal with insurance adjusters,

which might be worse

than David being pursued by King.

But you know,

like in the middle of all that,

we're kind of like,

we were here for a month.

We just bought this house

and now we can't live in it.

Like we can't,

like we want to have kids,

but now we don't have space

because we're sleeping

in what was going to be the kid's room.

And you know,

like I'm sure there's all sorts of situations

that you can probably think of

that are exactly like this.

Like, well,

maybe not exactly like this,

but you know,

like where you're in the middle of a situation

where you're undergoing real suffering

and you're just like,

I have no idea

what I'm going to do.

What possible good

could come from this?

How are you being glorified

from a tree falling on top of my new house?

But there is the kind of a happy ending

to this story,

which is the month

that we finished kind of like construction

and reconstruction on our house

is the same month

I started talking to the river.

And the fact that that tree

fell on top of our house,

it puts so much equity into the home.

It's what made it financially viable

for us to move up here in the first place.

That's God's perspective.

And think about that.

Let's zoom out even further.

Someone planted that tree a hundred years ago.

And God knew when he was going to knock it over.

Like we kind of laugh at that.

But like there's,

that's God's perspective

on the events in our lives.

And I'm not saying,

I want to say this

because that can sound like really cold comfort

if you're in the middle of something right now.

I'm not saying every situation

that you've ever been through

is going to end with like a happy bow at the end.

You're going to be like,

oh, that's why God did that.

I was diagnosed with type one diabetes,

which is like a chronic illness

when I was nine years old.

And I'm still not totally sure

what good has come of that.

And I've lived with that

for nearly 25 years now.

But that is God's perspective

on the events in our lives

and on the suffering in our lives.

God is doing good through that.

I say all of that to emphasize the fact

that perspective matters.

We view our circumstances,

David is viewing his circumstances

in the middle of the psalm

like from like a very limited human perspective.

But God is a master storyteller.

The Lord even refers to us,

the word Jesus refers to us

in the New Testament

as this word poiema,

which means masterpiece.

So we,

we can trust

that he is establishing the events in our lives

to accomplish his purposes.

God is telling a story

through you and through his church.

And again,

we're not always going to see

what good is coming out of that.

There might be seeds

that you plant in your life

through the suffering that you go through

that you may never see watered or grown

or see the fruit of.

Because remember,

someone planted that tree 100 years ago.

No idea that it was going to fall over on that house

and then lead to Casey and I moving up to Michigan

where I have this ministry position.

That is,

that is God orchestrating all things together

for our good.

And so to introduce like another big theological word

for a week,

second week in a row,

that what I'm describing here

is what we call God's providence,

which is like,

which is God's activity throughout human history

and providing for the needs of human beings,

especially those who follow him in faith.

And so the problem that David is,

David is wrestling with

is that providence,

it doesn't always feel like providence, right?

It doesn't always feel like it's for our good

because we often don't know what God's plans for us are.

And so what's the solution for us

when we don't know what God's plans for us are?

When we don't feel God's goodness,

when it doesn't look like his providence

is going to result in our good,

when we're surrounded by hopelessness,

when you don't know when that next paycheck

is going to come from

or you receive that medical news you've been dreading

or a relationship falls apart

or when you're trapped in that cave

with nowhere else to run.

I think what the psalm points us to

and to repeat what I said earlier,

it's very, very simple,

simple to say but harder to live out

is that God asks us to be humble and open with him,

to state our case before him

and that's what David is doing in here.

He's humbly and openly stating his case before the Lord

even though his feelings have not caught up

with what he knows is true about God and his providence

because God's not scared to hear of our emotions.

God is not scared to hear about the good or the bad

and if the psalms,

this entire series that we've been in,

I feel like it can teach us anything

is that God wants to hear from you.

He wants to hear our sorrows.

He wants to hear our pain.

He wants to hear our joys.

He wants to hear our hopes, our dreams, all of it.

And bringing those things to him in prayer

is an act of faith and obedience to him.

It allows us to submit all of those things

to him and to his will

because sometimes the things that we dream for

are not appropriate

and God needs to take those things away from us

or sometimes we are just suffering

and we're like, Lord, I just need to sit with you

and I need you to hear what is happening.

It reminds us as we go through this prayer

and as I think David is beginning to be reminded,

it reminds us of God's perspective on our suffering

that we find refuge through prayer

and we find it through remembering God's perspective.

And let's move on to these final three verses.

And we see how I think David's prayer

has begun to bring kind of like his head

and his heart more into alignment now.

Despite how he's feeling,

despite the darkness of the situation,

he kind of, I feel like he kind of stops the psalm

and he just kind of is like, okay, let me try this again.

Because the thing he says in verse five,

I cry to you, O Lord.

I say, you are my refuge,

my portion in the land of the living.

Attend to my cry for I am brought

very low.

Deliver me from my persecutors,

for they are too strong for me.

Bring me out of prison,

that I may give thanks to your name.

The righteous will surround me,

for you will deal bountifully with me.

David calling God his refuge here

is this almost instantaneous turn

from the verse that precedes it.

Just a verse ago, David said he had no refuge.

And he's talking to God when he said that.

But then he kind of stops and it's like,

no, Lord, you are my refuge.

And I don't want us to gloss over

that tiny little thing.

It's a tiny detail, but see the change

in the person of the pronouns.

He's no longer referring to God as him.

He's referring to him as you.

He's moved from third to first person,

or second person of the verse five.

No longer is David referring to God as someone

as far off, but he's speaking to him now

even more personally than when he started this prayer.

As David's kind of like laid bare,

like the reality of his situation,

he's been driven even closer to God.

He's looked around and like found no other refuge,

no other hope in any other.

Person or thing in his life,

he's kind of come to the realization

that he's like, I need God even more

than when I started this prayer.

The only place he can find any semblance of safety

is God himself.

Even in this dark cave that David finds himself in,

like a literal dark cave,

he's coming to the Lord humbly in prayer

and he's turned this kind of place of danger

into a place of refuge

because the Lord is there with him.

So as we move through verses five to seven,

I want us to like see that we see David's like

hope for deliverance, it begins to grow.

Like his faith and his trust in the Lord has changed

than when he first started this prayer.

And remember, by the time he's at the end of this prayer,

like nothing about his circumstance has changed.

He's still in the cave, he's still probably tired,

he's still probably hungry.

Saul is definitely still after him

and David still does not know

how God is going to fulfill his promises.

But this trial he is going through

has driven him to prayer

and it has driven him to reflect upon who God is

and dwelling upon and praying to God

about his sovereignty has transformed David's perspective

and it's drawn him closer to the Lord.

David's acknowledgement in the earlier verse

that the Lord knows his steps

is also him acknowledging that what is happening to him

is part of God's plan for him

and that somehow he's going to use it for his good.

Every step of the way in this psalm,

David has chosen,

I think this proves why David is called a man

if your God's on heart.

He has chosen time and time again to turn to God

instead of giving into the despair he's feeling.

It doesn't mean he's not being honest,

he's honest about the despair he's feeling

and it doesn't mean he's not feeling those things

but he's responding to them appropriately.

He's running to the Lord in the midst of his trouble

even before his emotions and his situation

have caught up with what he knows to be true.

And by the time we arrive at these last three verses,

David is at his most, I think, emotionally vulnerable here

and the reason he's called, again,

a man after God's own heart

is because of the attitude that is revealed here in this psalm

that in spite of his circumstances,

it results in greater trust and greater faith,

not running the other direction

because we find refuge through discipline.

Like, what do I mean by that?

Well, I mean that by like two senses of the word.

The hard times and suffering,

and this is a hard thing to hear,

the hard times and suffering are often for our good.

It's like a loving father disciplining us

so that we may grow to be healthy and mature adults,

spiritually speaking.

The suffering actually, I mean,

think about the times that you've grown the most

in your relationship with the Lord.

It's probably not,

it's not been when things are going really well, right?

It's probably when you have to rely on him more.

So suffering actively molds us to God's will

and enhances our faith and trust in him.

And that's what's happening with David in this psalm

in these last three verses.

It's why you see him get closer to the Lord

as we move through this psalm.

So is our response when we're in circumstances that are hard,

is it to blame God

or is it to grow in our trust in him?

Because God often uses the hardest situations in our lives

to shape us.

To be more like his son.

And we find refuge through the Lord's discipline.

This is repeated all throughout scripture.

Psalm 119, 67.

Before I was afflicted, I went astray,

but now I keep your word.

Job 5, 17.

Behold, blessed is the one who God reproves.

Therefore, despise not the discipline of the Almighty.

Hebrews 12, five through seven,

which is paraphrasing those two verses,

says my son, do not regard lightly

the discipline of the Lord,

nor beware of the Lord.

Be weary when reproved by him.

For the Lord disciplines the one he loves

and chastises every son whom he receives.

It is for discipline that you have to endure.

God is treating you as sons.

For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?

And this discipline from the Lord,

for responding to it correctly,

should produce discipline in us.

Because we need to be practicing reliance on the Lord,

not just when things are hard.

Because there's often a temptation

to only really go to the Lord when things are hard.

When we need something, right?

But we need to be practicing closeness to God

before those hard times comes.

Because that is a discipline.

We need to be exercising it at all times

that it becomes our natural reflex,

like it is for David here in the cave.

That's why he's able to come before the Lord in prayer

before his emotions had caught up

to where he feels like he really likes

being around the Lord right now.

In one of the most edifying books I've ever read,

it's called Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life.

If you want to know more about it,

you can come ask me about it afterwards.

But the author describes prayer like,

or aspects of prayer beautifully like this.

He says,

a lack of sensing the nearness of God

may also discourage prayer.

There are those wonderful moments

when the Lord seems so near

that we almost expect to hear an audible voice.

No one needs to be prodded to pray

in such time of precious intimacy with God.

Usually though, we don't feel like that.

In fact, sometimes we can't sense

the presence of God at all.

While it's true that our praying,

as well as all aspects of our Christian living,

should be governed by the truth of scripture

rather than our faith,

nevertheless, the frailty of our emotions

frequently erodes our desire to pray.

When the desire to pray is weakened,

we can find many other things to do besides pray.

When there is little awareness of real need,

there is little real prayer.

So I think what the psalm challenges us this morning

is to ask ourselves,

remember that question I asked you at the beginning,

where do you run when you're in the cape?

Where do you run when you're not?

What does our response to the hard times in life

reveal about what we really believe?

Do you run to the Lord in faith and in trust

and in greater faith and trust

as you go through that hard circumstance?

Or do you run towards distraction,

entertainment, food, friends, relationships,

fill in the blank?

Again, those things aren't bad,

but when they become what we seek refuge in,

they're going to come up short

because they can't compare to the safety and the joy

that we find in trusting and clinging to God.

I'm not saying that when bad stuff happens

that we just need to let go and let God.

That's a hobby.

Lobby, lobby, slogan.

But when bad things happen,

we need to make a conscious and active effort

to seek him out, to seek him as our refuge.

That's what David does in this psalm.

That's what real, genuine prayer is.

We find refuge through being disciplined by the Lord

and then being disciplined to ourselves

and our relationship with him.

David turned to the Lord when he was in this cave

because he was already a man after God's own heart.

He'd already worked on that relationship.

Turning to God in times of trouble,

whether that was regarding, like,

his sheep from a lion or facing down Goliath,

was already David's normal discipline.

And the harder David's life got,

the more he was taught and disciplined by the Lord

and convinced of his increasing need for God.

Like, the further up and further in you go

with your relationship with Jesus

should not result in us having to put less effort, but more.

The longer I've been married to my wife, Casey,

the more I want to move further up and further in

with our relationship.

The closer that intimacy should become

instead of drifting apart.

Like, we don't put less effort in now.

We have to put in more than when it started.

And so that's why David is able to expect

that he'll be surrounded by the righteous again.

That's why he's confident that the Lord

is going to deal bountifully with him.

He spent so much time on his relationship with the Lord

that even when the circumstance in front of him

is making him feel alone or anxious

and feel fearful for his very life,

he knows that God will prove to be faithful again

in the future.

If you flip back just a few more chapters in the Psalms,

you'll see Psalm 1.

Psalm 136.

The steadfast love of the Lord endures forever.

So as we conclude today,

I just want you to ask yourself,

where are we putting our trust?

Where do you run?

Are you running to the God who knows your steps

or are you looking at your circumstances in despair

and seeking refuge in anything but?

Because we know, again, David's life will turn around

and that God had real plans for David's life.

He becomes king and he sits on a throne.

David ends up sitting on a throne

that God promises him.

He promises it will be established forever

through Jesus Christ.

Part of God knowing the plan for David's life

is knowing that you would sit here today.

You were part of David's steps in that sense

because it was through David's line and lineage

that Jesus Christ came into the world,

lived a sinless life,

died on a cross for the punishment

that we so richly deserved for our sin,

and then rose again three days later

to mediate our sins before the Father

if we confess that he is Lord

and believe that God raised him from the dead.

That's a verse that we quote often here,

but it's because it is the heart of the gospel.

So I'm going to invite the band to come back up

and we're going to sing one more song.

It's not going to be as smooth a transition

because I have to get over the keyboard,

but I just want to consider, again,

where do you run?

And do you run to the Lord?

Have you been running from him?

Maybe you haven't ran to him at all before.

You can confess that today.

You can find salvation through Christ Jesus

because that is ultimately the steps

that the Lord saw before David.

So let's pray and we're going to sing a song

where we can just confess that together.

Dear Heavenly Father,

I just thank you so much for the Psalms

and I thank you for this reminder from King David

about your goodness, about your faithfulness,

about your steadfastness to us,

and about your perspective on the sufferings

and the hardships that we have to go through in our lives.

Lord, I pray that as the Psalms remind us

that we receive those things for our good,

that we turn to you as the only source of good in our lives

and the only refuge that we can go to,

that we come to you in prayer, active,

expected prayer,

to be reminded of what your perspective on our lives is

and to accept your discipline joyfully.

Lord, I pray that we've been challenged by this,

challenged by the way in which we respond to suffering

and I pray that you continue to use those things in our lives

to shape us to be more like your son, Jesus.

Help us now as we worship you for this one last song

and declare of who you are and of your goodness.

In your son's name I pray.

Listen to this message