Skip to content

The River ChurchSermons

Psalm 142 - A Psalm of David

Steve Shadley · Sunday, 2 August 2026 · 42:54 · 4,928 words

Listen to this message

Psalm 142 is examined in a message that traces David’s desperate cry from a cave while being hunted by Saul and the Philistines. The speaker explains three reasons for calling out to God: He knows our way, He is our refuge, and He is worthy of praise. The sermon urges listeners to bring their own struggles to God, shifting focus from self‑circumstances to the all‑knowing, protective God who offers comfort. It calls for honest, gut‑wrenching prayer and trust that God will deliver.

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 56 cry 37 saul 24 philistines 12 cave 13 samuel 10 king 16 jesse 5 psalm 23 refuge 11 gath 4 kill 11

Topics

Prayer 2 Grace 1 Faith 1

Scripture referenced 27

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

Psalms 142 1:19 Psalms 142 1:26 1 Samuel 6 5:00 1 Samuel 6:1 5:03 1 Samuel 17 6:19 1 Samuel 18 6:28 1 Samuel 18 6:33 1 Samuel 18 6:51 1 Samuel 18:5 6:51 1 Samuel 18:6 7:20 Psalms 142 14:47 Psalms 142 15:38 Psalms 142:1-2 15:38 Psalms 139 18:26 Psalms 139 18:33 Hebrews 4 21:52 Hebrews 4:12 22:02 Hebrews 5 23:30 Hebrews 5:7 23:30 Psalms 142 24:55 Psalms 142 25:05 Psalms 142:4-5 25:05 Psalms 142:4 25:23 Psalms 136 32:29 Psalms 136 32:33 Psalms 142 33:00 Matthew 11 40:35

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, 0:33. Excluded from every count and search on this site, kept here so nothing is hidden.

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

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

And the easiest way to do that is to text RIVERCHURCH to 97000.

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

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

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

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

Morning! You guys are awake this morning.

You know, last week, when Caleb was up here and he was talking about being up at camp and speaking,

and he was standing before all the senior high kids, and he looked out and he says,

Man, I'm the oldest guy here.

And I was one of those sitting back in the seats saying, Yeah, just wait, Caleb, just wait.

And now I look out there and I see I am the oldest guy here.

I'm the old guy this morning.

Well, this morning we're going to continue in our...

In our series on the Psalms.

If you have your Bibles, turn with me to Psalm 142.

Psalm 142.

I'll get situated up here.

Just read through the Psalm this morning.

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 and I tell Him my trouble.

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

In the path where I walk, they have hidden traps for me.

Look to the right.

Look to the right and see, and there is no one who takes notice of me.

No refuge remains to me, and no one cares for my soul.

I cry to you, O Lord, and 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.

For the righteous will surround me, for you will deal bountifully with me.

You know, when Caleb, Caleb asked me to speak on this probably, oh, I don't know, maybe three months ago or so.

And as I was reading through it over and over and over again, one of the things I like to do is to outline the passage.

And so I went through a bunch of different outlines in my head, and I, you know, I was trying to come up with something really clever.

You know, so you guys would look at me and say, well, that guy, he may be old, but he's pretty clever.

You know, he's wise.

Well, you know, I couldn't come up with that.

So bottom line is like.

I came up with something that's pretty simple.

As we look through this psalm, I think what we're going to see, hopefully, is three different things.

First of all, we're going to see where was David when he wrote the psalm?

What was he doing and why was he doing it?

So let's start out with where was David when he wrote this psalm?

And this psalm is very interesting because it is one in which has a title with it.

A lot of the psalms do not have a title, but this one has a title and it was penned by the author.

And it's actually part of the.

And if you look in and probably in your Bible, you'll see the title.

It says a mask of David when he was in the cave, a prayer.

So when we look at the title, we actually see a little bit of the context of where David was, what was going on with David when he wrote this song.

But we don't get a lot of context here.

We know he's in a cave.

But what does that even mean?

If you look through David's life, there was a number of times where he went into a cave.

I.

I think most scholars believe and I think that we can pinpoint the cave that he was in.

At least I believe I know which cave he was in.

But in order to do that, we have to turn back to first Samuel.

I just want to do a quick recap of where where David was at this point in his life, because David has gone through a lot of ups and downs in his in his life.

And as he's in this cave, he's obviously at a down point.

But if you go back to first Samuel, chapter six.

You'll see that when he was just a boy, it says the Lord in verse one, the Lord said to Samuel, how long will you grieve over Saul since I have rejected him from being king over Israel?

Fill your horn with oil and go and I will send you to Jesse, the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.

And so here we see that Samuel goes to Jesse and he's going to pick the next.

King for Israel.

And we know the story where where Samuel calls Jesse and Jesse brings by his sons.

He has seven sons that he that he that he brings in one at a time before Samuel and each son comes and Samuel says, that's not the guy.

The next one comes in.

That's not the guy that gets all seven sons.

And it's like, is that it?

Is that it?

And Jesse says, well, I do have one more son, but he's he's out with the sheep.

And Samuel says, well, go get him.

He was just a boy.

And so he brings him in and it was David.

And Samuel says, this is the man.

And so he anoints him as king.

And this is the beginning of the rise of David.

And if you go through and then you get to chapter 17 of 1 Samuel, you'll see the story of David and Goliath, where he actually kills the giant.

And then in chapter 18, he is still on the upward rise.

And so in chapter 18, we see that that Saul looked at David.

And Saul that his, that the spirit of the Lord was upon him.

And so he, he says, I want David to be a part of my household.

And so he brings him into his household and it says in verse five of chapter 18, and David went out and was successful wherever Saul sent him.

So Saul set him over the men of war, and this was good in the sight of the people and in the sight of Saul's servants.

So now David becomes, becomes a man of war.

And so they're at war.

And so they're at war with the Philistines.

And so they go out and they have battle after battle after battle.

And one of the battles, they come back and it says in verse six, they were coming home and David returned from striking down the Philistines.

And the women came out from all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing to meet King Saul with tambourines and songs and joy and musical instruments.

And the women sang one to another and they celebrated.

And this is what they sang.

Saul has struck down.

His thousands, but David, his tens of thousands.

Well, that didn't sit very well with Saul.

It says that he became very angry and he became very jealous of David.

And this was kind of now David is getting to the peak of his popularity with the people.

But Saul is beginning to hate him.

And so Saul, it says the next day, verse 10, that a harmful spirit from the Lord rushed upon Saul.

And he raved around his house.

And David was in playing the liar day by day as he has done.

And Saul picked up a spear and he hurled the spear for he thought, I will pin David to the wall.

So now we have David who's popular with the people, but not with Saul.

We have Saul angry and jealous of David and he tries to kill him and he wasn't successful.

And that really made him mad.

But then he began to think, he says, you know,

I shouldn't lift my hand against him.

I know what I'll do.

I will make him commander of a thousand men and I'll send them out to the Philistines.

I'll send them out in battle and I'll allow the Philistines to kill him.

And so he does that.

And what happens?

God gives him victory after victory after victory.

And so now Saul is really angry at him.

And so then he says, well, I'll come up with a different plan.

I'll marry him off to my daughter.

And, and, and that'll mess him up.

And then I'll send them out to fight the Philistines.

And surely they will kill him at that point.

In fact, this is what I'll tell David.

He says, I will tell David that he doesn't need to provide any diary for, for marrying my daughter.

The only thing I ask, and this is, this is kind of bizarre.

He says, the only thing I ask is that he goes and kills a hundred Philistines.

And brings back their foreskin.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, that's the kind of guy Saul was.

All right.

Now for you fathers out there that have daughters that you don't like the guy that she's hanging around with.

I wouldn't suggest doing this.

Okay.

Um, but Saul thought it was a great idea.

And you know what is bizarre about this story?

Thought it was a pretty good idea.

I mean, it was, it's so bizarre here.

Not what a couple of days before Saul was trying to kill him with a spear.

And now he's saying, I want you to be my son-in-law.

And David says, great.

I want you to go kill a hundred Philistines.

And David says, great.

And so what does he do?

He goes out with his men and he kills 200 Philistines.

And he brings back their foreskin.

That is gross.

But it's in the Bible.

Okay.

So it's okay.

But then Saul gets so angry that he says, forget this.

I can't rely on the Philistines to kill him.

I'm going after him.

And so he orders his army to go after David.

And if we come to, if we go, if we look at chapters 19, 20, and 21, we see that, that,

that Saul is chasing David all over Israel to try to kill him.

And so David then decides, I got to get away from this guy.

And in chapter 21, verse 10, it says, and David rose and he fled that day from Saul

to Achish, the king of Gath.

Now, Achish, the king of Gath, Achish is the king of the Philistines.

Okay.

He's the king of the guys that he just killed a bunch of, but he thinks I got to get away

from Saul.

I'll go there.

And the city of Gath is where Goliath was from.

This does not seem like a very good plan.

Okay.

That's just my opinion, but you know, David thought it was pretty good.

So he says the servants, when he got there, the servants of Achish said to him, is this

not David, the king of the land?

Did they not sing to one another about him and dance saying, Saul struck down his thousands

and David is 10,000.

And David, I love these words.

This is great.

David took these words to heart and was much afraid of Achish, the king of Gath.

So in other words, he's saying, I think this was a mistake.

So notice what he does to get out of this one.

You know, we read these stories about these men in the Bible and we think, man, they are

just, they are amazing people.

You know, we think of David, a man after God's own heart.

He is just an amazing guy.

Look at the plan he comes with.

To get out of this mess that he got himself in.

It says, so he changed his behavior before them and he pretended to be insane in their

hands and he made marks on the doors of the gates and spittle ran down his beard.

Now being an old guy, that's pretty normal for me, but, but, but he's, you know, he's

doing that.

So he looks insane.

That says, and Achish said to his servants, behold, this man is a mad.

Why have you brought him to me?

Do I?

Do I lack mad men in my kingdom?

Get him out of here.

And so it says, David departed from there and he escaped to the cave at a Doolam.

And that's where we find David.

I believe when we get back to Psalm 142, David at one point had reached the height of popularity

And now he's running from Saul.

He's running from Saul's army.

He's running from the king of the Philistines.

He finds himself deep in this cave all alone, nowhere to go.

And he cries out to God.

This is what he does.

And I love this.

If we look at verses one and two of Psalm 142, it says, with my voice, I cry out to the

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

I pour out my complaint before him.

I tell my trouble before him.

Words I cry out with a loud voice.

This is not your, now I lay me down to sleep type of prayer.

This is a gut-wrenching, desperate crying out to God.

Why?

Why is, why cry out to God?

You know, some would think you just need to come to church.

You know, you need to get around believers.

You need to get around people.

You need to get around people that will support you.

You need to get a t-shirt that says, join the team.

You know, they come, but not now.

When you find yourself in a cave, desperate, no place to go, feeling alone, you cry out

to God.

And that is what he did.

But why?

Why cry out to God?

I think he gives us three reasons.

And we'll go through those three reasons quickly.

First reason that we see that he's crying out to God is found in verse three.

It says, my spirit faints within me, but you know my way.

In the path where I walk.

They have hidden traps for me.

When my spirit within me fails, you, God, knows my way.

The Lord and the Lord alone knows our way.

You know, I loved last week's message in Psalm 139.

Just turn back to Psalm 139.

This is, this is just so good.

It says, oh Lord, I, you have searched me and known me.

You know, when I sit down and you know, when I rise up, he knows what we do.

You discern my thoughts.

From afar, he knows what we are thinking.

You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all of my ways.

You know where I go.

And even before a word is on my tongue, behold, oh Lord, you know it all together.

He knows what we say.

That is our God knows us.

And so David in this desperate time in his life cries out to God because God is God.

And he knows that he knows.

Came across a quote from Spurgeon.

I love this quote.

It says, note that we do not show our troubles before the Lord that he may see it, but that we

may see him.

It is for our relief and not for his information that we make plain statements concerning our

David was a hero, yet his spirit sank.

He could smite a giant down, but yet he could not keep himself up.

He did not know his own path, nor feel able to bear his.

own burden, but observe his comfort.

He looked away from his own condition to the ever observant, all knowing God and solaced

himself with the fact that all was known to his heavenly friend.

Truly, it is well for us to know that God knows what we don't know.

David cries out to God because God knows all.

It's not like we're informing God of anything.

That's not the point.

The purpose of prayer is to let God know what's going on in your life.

The purpose of prayer is to change our focus and to put it on God.

And David here is saying, I cry out to you because you already know where I'm at.

You know what's going on in my life.

And so I cry to you.

But you know, even though David didn't know this part, I think that's just part of it.

For us, it goes beyond that.

Turn to Hebrews, one of my favorite passages.

All of scripture.

Hebrews chapter four.

I love this passage.

We're going to start back in verse 12.

It says,

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing

division of soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions

of our heart.

No creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him

to whom we must give an account.

Since then, we have such a high, a great high priest who passed through the heavens, Jesus,

the son of God.

Let us hold fast to our confession, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to

sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are

yet without sin.

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive a mercy

and find grace to help in time of need.

You know, David didn't have that information, but we do.

This is our savior.

Who not only knows us because he is God, he knows us by experience of what it is like

to be man, what it is like to put on flesh, what it is like to be in a cave with nowhere

to go.

In fact, if you look at chapter 5 of Hebrews, verse 7, it says,

In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered a prayer and supplication with loud cries.

And tears to him who is able to save him from death.

People, no matter what it is that you are going through in life, you can run to him

knowing that he knows you, knowing that he knows everything about you, knowing that he

has personally experienced pain and suffering and despair.

The gospels tell us that Jesus in the garden.

The garden of Gethsemane got on his knees and prayed to the Lord and it was so intense

that he sweat drops of blood.

He suffered far greater than we will ever suffer in this life.

He knows us.

He has experienced that.

And so we can go to him.

So David, back to Psalm 142, says he cries out to the Lord because he knows his ways.

Secondly, verses 4 and 5 of Psalm 142.

He says, I cry to the Lord and I say, you are my refuge, my portion in the land.

Actually, let's go back to verse 4.

It says, look to the right and see there is no one who takes notice of me.

No refuge remains to me.

No one cares for my soul.

I cry out to you, Lord.

And I say, you are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living.

He's all alone.

He's desperate.

He's suffering.

And he cries out to God.

And he says, you are my refuge.

You are my shield.

You are my protection.

Again, last week's message, 139 verse 5.

You hem me in behind and before and you lay your hand upon me.

Some people look at that and they say, well, God is putting a restriction on me.

No, God is putting protection on you.

That's all about protection.

Jesus, right before he was betrayed and taken and arrested and beaten and,

and ultimately crucified, is praying for his disciples.

And he prays, he says, he's praying out to God.

He's crying out to the father and he's saying, keep them.

While I was here on earth with them, I kept them.

I kept them safe, he says.

But now I'm coming back to you.

So you keep them, protect them from the evil one.

And that is what David is saying.

I cry out to you because I know that you are my,

you are my protection.

You are my shield.

You alone are my refuge and my portion.

And I love the way this reads in verse five.

Notice what it says.

I cry out to you, oh Lord.

And then he says, I say, you are my refuge,

my portion in the land of the living.

It's, it's almost like he's preaching to himself here.

I cry out to God, but man, I am preaching to myself

because this despair, this, this suffering that I feel is real.

I know you are real.

He has to remind him himself of that.

And, and, and people, we need to remind ourselves of that.

When we're in the middle of the cave and no one is around

and no one cares for us, we need to remind ourselves,

God is our protection.

God is our refuge.

We need to preach it to ourselves.

Because it's so easy in those times to look at self,

look at situations, get our eyes off him.

And so we need to preach to ourself.

It is God and God alone who is our protection,

regardless of what we're going through.

Third and finally, he cries out to the Lord

because the Lord alone is worthy of our praise.

Look at verse six.

I love the end of this, this song.

It says,

I love that because so often in my prayers,

and I don't know, maybe in yours as well,

when we, when we're feeling like we're in a cave,

so often we, we cry out to the Lord,

save me, get me out of this mess

because I want to be comfortable again.

I, I, I love comfort.

I mean, I don't know about you guys,

but I, I love to be comfortable.

I love to sit at home on my couch

and just kick back, not have any worries.

I love being out on my tractor.

I love being on my lawnmower.

I, I just love being by myself actually.

Um, because I'm comfortable there.

But you throw me in a big room with people I don't know.

And man, that comfort just goes out the window.

Unlike my wife, my wife,

you throw her in a room with a bunch of people she doesn't know.

And she is excited, man.

There's people I get to know.

I mean, that's the difference.

I, I, I think God gave her to me

just to get me out of my comfort zone at times

because she drags me along to all these things, you know?

That's why we're always the last ones out of church too.

By the way, it's not me.

It's her, okay?

She's got to talk to everybody she does know

and then find the people she doesn't know.

I find a corner so I can just kind of sit back

and just look at you guys, okay?

But I don't want to talk to you, all right?

Because I like to be comfortable.

And, and, and oftentimes I find myself praying,

get me out of this mess

because I don't want to be in the mess.

I want to be comfortable.

And David is saying, that's not why I'm praying.

Praying, look at what he says.

Bring me out of the prison

that I may give thanks to your name.

I love that.

A couple of weeks ago, Pastor Noble spoke on Psalm 136.

I love Psalm 136.

It begins, give thanks to the Lord for he is good.

His steadfast love endures forever.

And then he lists all kinds of different things

that God has done, starting with creation.

And then all of the blessings

that he's poured out on the nation of Israel.

And then he ends, give thanks to the God of heaven

for his steadfast love endures forever.

It's almost as though David here in Psalm 142

is saying, God, get me out of this mess

so I can add another thing to the list.

I can, I can, I can say, wow, what a great God

because he did this for me.

You see, at this point in the Psalm,

it is not about David.

David, it's about God.

And that is how it should be.

Because I tell you, this life is not about us.

It's about him.

It's about him.

And so David cries out to the Lord.

Hear my cry, deliver me, get me out of this prison

so I can praise you.

And he's not playing, let's make a deal with God.

You know, cause I do that every once in a while as well.

I don't know if you've ever done that.

You know, get me out of the mess I've gotten me in.

I'll never do it again, Lord.

You know, until the next time.

That's not what David is doing.

He's saying, truly, give me another opportunity

to praise you, the Lord, because he knows us,

because he is our refuge, because he is worthy of our praise.

But then he ends this Psalm in a, I mean, it's amazing.

The progression in this Psalm is so good.

He starts out crying to God,

this gut-wrenching cry to God.

And he ends with praise.

He ends with faith in God.

Look at the last two lines of this in verse 7, 142.

It says,

Now, the word surround there in the noun,

or the noun in Hebrew is the same word that we get crown.

And many scholars think that what David is saying here is,

the righteous will come and crown me as their king,

because, Lord, you deal bountifully with me.

See, David, as we saw, was already anointed king.

So that was God's promise to him.

David knew it was going to happen.

And so the Psalm is really a Psalm of faith,

even though it starts out in desperation,

knowing that God will deliver him.

And yet he doesn't say,

well, God, I know things are going to go well,

so I don't have to worry about how I'm feeling right now.

He's honest with God.

He's in a cave.

He's being chased by the king of the Philistines.

He's being chased by the king of Israel.

He's got nobody around him at that point.

He's desperate.

And so he cries out, God, I'm desperate,

even though he knows that God will deliver him.

And if you know Jesus Christ as your personal savior,

you know that he's going to deliver you.

You know that God will deliver you,

regardless of what goes on in this world,

regardless of if he delivers you from something that we see as terrifying.

I mean, what's the worst thing that could happen?

We die and we get to go to heaven.

I mean, I don't know about you,

but I think that's a pretty cool thing.

Dill wants us to cry out to him when we are feeling despair,

but he doesn't want the feelings to overwhelm.

What he wants is for us to get our eyes off of ourselves,

to get our eyes off of our surroundings,

whether good or bad.

Sometimes the good things mess us up more than the bad.

And he wants us to cry out to him because he knows us.

He knows what we're going through.

Cry out to him because he is our refuge.

He is our protection.

Cry out to him because he is worthy of our praise.

He alone is worthy.

You know, as we close, I do know a few of you out there,

and I do know some of the stuff that you've been going through.

I mean, it's not easy stuff.

I mean, I can't even imagine some of the tragedies that's going on in your life,

but I know one who does know those things.

He is our savior.

He has experienced pain beyond what we'll ever experience, loves us.

And he wants us to cry out to him.

He said in Matthew chapter 11,

Come unto me, you who are weary and burdened.

I will give you rest.

What an amazing God.

People, we need to preach that to ourselves.

We need to preach to ourselves that we serve an amazing.

Father, we humbly come to you.

Lord, we bow before you.

We echo the words of the angels who cry out,

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.

Your greatness cannot be fathomed.

Your grace and mercy and love cannot fully be understood by us.

But Father, we praise you for that.

Father, we love you.

I pray, Lord, that in the good times and in the bad times,

that you would help us to get our eyes off of ourself,

off of our circumstances, and firmly fixed on you.

For we pray this for Savior's name, a name above every name, Jesus.

and for His glory.

Listen to this message