Psalm 55: My Heart Is in Anguish

[00:00:00] For the choir director on stringed instruments A maskal of David. [00:00:07] Give ear to my prayer, O God, and do not hide yourself from my supplication. Give heed to me and answer me. I am restless in my complaint and am surely distracted because of the voice of the enemy, because of the pressure of the wicked. [00:00:28] For they bring down trouble upon me, and in anger they bear a grudge against me. [00:00:35] My heart is in anguish within me, and the terrors of death have fallen upon me. [00:00:42] Fear and trembling come upon me, and horror has overwhelmed me. [00:00:48] I said, oh, that I had wings like a dove. I would fly away and be at rest. [00:00:55] Behold, I would wander far away. I would lodge in the wilderness. [00:01:01] I would hasten to my place of refuge from the stormy wind and tempest. [00:01:09] Confuse, O Lord, divide their tongues. For I have seen violence and strife in the city. [00:01:16] Day and night they go around her upon her walls, and iniquity and mischief are in her midst, and destruction is in her midst. Oppression and deceit. Do not depart from her streets. [00:01:30] For it is not an enemy who reproaches me, then I could bear it. [00:01:36] Nor is it one who hates me, who has exalted himself against me. Then I could hide myself from him. But it is you, a man, my equal, my companion and my familiar friend. [00:01:48] We who had sweet fellowship together walked in the house of God in the throng. [00:01:55] Let death come deceitfully upon them. Let them go down alive to Sheol, for evil is in their dwelling in their midst. [00:02:06] As for me, I shall call upon God, and the Lord will save me evening and morning, and at noon I will complain and murmur, and he will hear my voice, and he will redeem my soul in peace from the battle which is against me. [00:02:25] For they are many who strive with me. [00:02:29] God will hear and answer them. Even the one who sits enthroned from of old Selah, with whom there is no change, and who do not fear God. He has put forth his hands against those who are at peace with him. He has violated his covenant. His speech was smoother than butter, but his heart was war. His words were softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords. [00:02:54] Cast your burden upon the Lord, and he will sustain you. [00:02:59] He will never allow the righteous to be shaken. [00:03:03] But you, O God, will bring them down to the pit of destruction. Men of bloodshed and deceit will not live out half their days. [00:03:13] But I will trust in you. [00:03:16] This is the word of the Lord. [00:03:19] Please be seated. [00:03:27] This psalm is long enough that it can take a bit to keep it all in mind. So I Want to talk about the structure of this psalm? [00:03:39] It will help us as we walk through it to see how it's laid out. [00:03:47] Because there's two sort of three basic sections to this psalm. And there's a big change about halfway through, a lot of overlap between them. But the beginning verses 1 and 2 are simply David saying that he is praying and asking God to listen. [00:04:17] Then in verses 3 through 15, we get his complaint description of how bad things are, that there's no escape, that it's his close friend and his prayer for vindication. [00:04:36] In verse 16, he returns to prayer. And so it's starting over in some sense, he says, instead of give ear to my prayer, he says, I shall call upon God. And instead of saying, do not hide yourself, as he does in verse one, he says, and the Lord will save me. [00:05:01] So there's this transition that happens right in verse 16. And the transition is God's sure response. [00:05:12] We know we've still got the enemies in the second part of this. [00:05:21] In the second half of this Psalm, in verses 16 through 23, we've still got David praying. [00:05:29] We've still got the trials and the tribulations. We've still got the request for vindication. But there's a big shift that has taken place. [00:05:39] Because the second part is all about the surety of God hearing, the surety of God answering. [00:05:50] And so in that, we have the continuation of the prayer, the assurance that God will hear and save, and the assurance that God will punish the wicked. [00:06:00] So this is essentially how we see the psalm laid out for us. [00:06:08] Both parts are the whole prayer, right? It's one whole psalm. It's David the whole time. [00:06:18] But there's a shift that takes place. [00:06:22] And that shift really informs how we ought to understand this psalm. [00:06:28] It's not simply a psalm of despair. [00:06:33] There is much that is difficult in this psalm. There's much that's difficult that David is facing. In fact, I titled my sermon, My Heart is in Anguish. [00:06:48] My heart is in anguish. And we see that throughout the whole psalm. [00:06:55] But when you make it to verse 16 and we get that declaration, and the Lord will save me, everything changes at that point. [00:07:08] Everything changes for us when we go simply from crying out, simply from praying, simply from being in anguish, to coming to a recognition, an understanding, a remembrance of the fact that God always hears, that we don't simply need to ask him to hear, but we need to remember that he does hear, he does answer. [00:07:41] So let's go back to the beginning, where the anguish especially is laid out for us. To see, yes, David starts out in prayer, and there is no escaping the centrality of prayer in the life of the believer. [00:08:05] When you look at the Psalms as a whole, what you see is that when blessings are poured out, the psalmists pray and praise God. When destruction and calamity come, the psalmists pray and cry out to God. [00:08:24] There is nothing in this life where prayer is not an appropriate response. [00:08:32] You can respond with prayer no matter what is going on in your life. And often I think that we are hesitant to pray because there's not enough extremity in our lives. [00:08:48] We're not in the foxhole. And so we hesitate to think of prayer or to think that it's a big enough deal to be worth praying about, or there's not enough recognition of the constant continuous blessings that are being poured out on us. [00:09:07] And so we don't think to praise. We don't think to pray. The Psalms are constantly laying prayer before us as the appropriate response. [00:09:18] And in this particular psalm, we have extremity, extremity of need, extremity of feelings, anguish, anguish. [00:09:34] The psalmist's heart. [00:09:39] If we can cry out to God at a time like this, why can we not cry out to God in prayer when we're wishing that the line would go faster at the bmv? [00:09:55] I mean, you might think that that's reversed because after all, you know, God. [00:10:03] God cares about us, but he cares, like, when we're really facing, like he's, you know, actual problems. That's what God cares about. [00:10:13] But actually, God cares about you. [00:10:19] And so you might think that such a prayer is silly. [00:10:26] But what could be the fruit praying? [00:10:30] What could be the benefit of praying in that moment? Well, the line might go faster. [00:10:36] And you know what? [00:10:39] You could give honor and glory and thanks to God for that, for hearing your prayer and answering. [00:10:46] Or the line might not go faster. [00:10:52] And you know, by praying, you will be tuning your heart to respond appropriately to the things that happen to you in life. So you will. You will be focused on what an appropriate response is, which is maybe learning patience, not becoming irritable when things don't go your way. [00:11:13] Prayer actually helps us in all of these things. And so you, even as you're praying, you will recognize what's going on in your. In your mind. You'll be like, God, would you please help this line to go faster? I'm going. And then you'll think, huh, isn't that revealing about me? [00:11:33] And isn't God so patient with me? [00:11:42] And that will change your life. [00:11:48] Your life can be changed by praying at the BMV when you're facing something as so small that you wouldn't even mention it to your friend. [00:12:00] Because prayer is powerful. [00:12:06] God works when we cry out to him. [00:12:12] And of course, I'm focusing on the troubles because part of the reason that I was struggling to think about preaching this psalm is because I feel like it's often hard for us to relate to the psalmists when they are in such extremities, whether it's the extremity of glorious blessings and thanksgivings, because it's like, well, we're just living a kind of regular, normal life right now, right? Or whether it's the extremity and the depths of the suffering that they're going through, which is what this psalm has. [00:12:50] Very few of us at any given time are in this kind of anguish. [00:12:57] But you know what? We all are. [00:12:59] We are all in need of turning to God in prayer. As the psalmist starts, as David starts, he turns to the Lord in his time of need. [00:13:11] Do you even recognize your needs? [00:13:18] Turn to the Lord in prayer. [00:13:22] This is the first thing that we learn. [00:13:25] David goes to God immediately. [00:13:31] Now, what does David pray? [00:13:33] This might be scandalous, but he complains, right? [00:13:38] Well, yes, yes and no, right? [00:13:43] It says complaint in verse two. And then when it returns to prayer again, because remember this, there's. There's essentially a double arc in this where it starts over at prayer again in verse 16, when he returns to prayer, verse 17, again, I will complain and murmur. [00:14:04] Now, the reason that's kind of scandalous is because the Israelites are condemned for their murmuring in the wilderness. [00:14:13] And of course, nobody thinks that we should be complainers, whether to one another or to God. In fact, I would say that one of the things that is scandalous about us often as Christians is that we complain to one another a lot. [00:14:34] We complain and complain and complain. We complain about the weather. We complain about. Think about the Israelites, right? The Israelites traveling through the wilderness. And what is it that traveling through the wilderness for 40 years because they refused to go in in obedience to God, right? They live through just a lifetime of regular problems that you face in the wilderness. [00:15:03] Now, there are times in our life where we're going through the wilderness, and there are a lot of hard things. [00:15:14] Generally, though, it's not like, I'm afraid I'm going to die of starvation or I'm going to die of dehydration. [00:15:22] These are the kinds of things that the Israelites were murmuring about. [00:15:29] We complain and murmur to One another because it's raining again. [00:15:37] And I was hoping to go play golf today, or it's not raining today. And I was wanting the yard to get water today. Now I'm going to have to go. Have to go set up the hose and sprinkler. [00:15:52] It's like the kinds of things that we complain about are very small, right? [00:16:01] Well, if you would take your complaints to the Lord, this is, you know, I say they're very small, and I say, now take them to the Lord and you will realize something about yourself. Again, you take them to the Lord in prayer and he will hear you. [00:16:31] Now, how can we distinguish between a complaint that's appropriate, like the psalmist has here, and murmur that's appropriate, right? [00:16:46] Versus the problem that the Israelites had? And the consequences for them were often dramatic. [00:16:54] They're murmuring and complaining they were punished. [00:16:58] Well, this complaint is in some ways more like a lawsuit is a complaint, right? [00:17:07] You're bringing a case. [00:17:11] You're bringing a case against your enemies in this psalm, right? Something unjust has been done. This is. [00:17:22] This is my argument. [00:17:26] The argument that I should be vindicated, that they should be punished, right? It's bringing it before the Lord for adjudication. [00:17:36] But that's not the only thing. There's also this murmuring. [00:17:39] There is a sense of constancy in bringing this to the Lord, this supplication, this day by day. And then, in fact, as we see in verse 17, evening, morning and noon, this repetition, just constantly bringing it to the Lord. [00:17:59] But this is not whining. And I think you can see it in this psalm. [00:18:06] It's a complaint. [00:18:08] It is murmuring, but it is not just whining. [00:18:15] It is actually asking the Lord to act. [00:18:19] And I think that is the key difference between the Israelites. Faithless complaining, faithless murmuring. They would not humble themselves to ask the Lord for water. They would not trust him to provide food and go to him in prayer for those things. Instead, they would just whine about their circumstances, complain, but not take their desires, their needs, their hopes to the Lord. [00:18:54] And so that is the key difference. We're returning to the main point that I gave first, which is pray. [00:19:01] The difference between whining to one another and taking your complaints to the Lord is night and day. [00:19:12] The Israelites complained to one another, murmured against God, instead of taking their complaint to the Lord. [00:19:24] There is a real injustice that has been done to David, and as we will see, he is suffering greatly. [00:19:35] And he knows that if God refuses to hear him, it is hopeless. [00:19:41] And so he cries out, asking God to hear him. [00:19:46] That's his first prayer, right? Remember, we've got prayer at the start of each ark, but at the first one, it's asking God, give heed to me. Answer me. [00:20:00] Do not hide yourself from my supplication. [00:20:03] It's this hope that God will actually hear. [00:20:09] It's calling out to God, reminding him, you need to hear, I need you. If you don't hear, it's hopeless for me. [00:20:22] Now here, I want to pause for a second and just side note, okay, Whether in life or in prayer, I've just gotten done saying, don't just complain to one another so much. Don't whine, right? But I also want to say there is no holiness in pretending that you are not suffering. [00:20:50] Does that make sense? [00:20:53] Can I say both of those things and have them still not be completely at odds with one another? [00:21:00] Part of our whining, when we're just whining is so silly because of how we are not actually suffering, how blessed we truly are. We whine to one another about such minor things and forget the many blessings that God has poured out on us. [00:21:19] He has provided for all of our needs. He's given us shelter and food and clothing and all that we need in life for holiness, which is so much greater than our physical needs. Our spiritual needs are desperate because we are hopeless without Him. [00:21:47] And yet we don't like our shoes or I didn't get very much sleep last night. You know, life's hard. [00:22:02] Hey, going without sleep is hard. [00:22:08] But do you remember what God has given to you? [00:22:14] So part of not whining is remembering the blessings that God has poured out on you, right? [00:22:22] But on the flip side, this pretending that we aren't suffering when we are facing trials, tribulations. [00:22:36] And those trials and tribulations can take many forms, not just the extremities that the psalmists David is in, right? [00:22:45] It can be a real trial to be without sleep. [00:22:51] Okay? [00:22:54] To pretend like you are not suffering is actually pride. [00:23:02] To refuse to take something to the Lord. [00:23:08] What other reason besides pride do we pretend like, oh, I have no needs, oh no, I'm great all the time. [00:23:21] I'm fine, always. [00:23:26] Well, there may be a few, but generally the main one is we're too proud even to let God know about our needs. [00:23:40] Too proud even to let God hear our suffering, let alone our brothers and sisters. [00:23:50] I will say that trying to walk the line between whining to your brothers and sisters and letting them know what your needs are and how you're suffering so that they can pray for you can be a fine line, right? But I think that often if you pay attention, you'll be able to tell the difference right away when you switch from one to the other. [00:24:15] It's in your heart, it's in the conversation, it's in the heart of the person you're talking to. And just like gossip, you can be having a conversation and then suddenly you're in something different, right? [00:24:31] Start out sharing your needs and now you're whining, oh, let's just stop. [00:24:38] Start out explaining what's going on, suddenly you're gossiping, oh, okay. Where was the line? I don't know, but we crossed it. [00:24:50] So don't whine, but don't pretend. [00:24:55] The psalmist pours out his heart not just to the Lord, but look for the whole world to see his anguish, his sorrow, his suffering. [00:25:07] Why does the psalmist bare his heart to us? [00:25:17] It's so that we can see God's reaction. [00:25:23] It's so that we can see that God acts. This is why God inspired this psalm. [00:25:29] It's not just David deciding, oh, yeah, this is. [00:25:34] I'm going to write a good one, you know. [00:25:37] No, God gave us this psalm so that we could see. Yes, God is there in our extremity, in our greatest needs. [00:25:53] So what does David face? [00:25:55] What is his complaint? It's bad. [00:25:59] Life is bad for David right now. And I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this because it's so clear in what we read, right? [00:26:09] Not just his enemies having control over the city, his close friend, his brother, the one who walked in the house of God that had sweet fellowship together with this is the one who has betrayed him. [00:26:35] David would happily just fly away and leave. [00:26:39] Now, remember, David spent a long time of his life in the wilderness, hiding. [00:26:45] Right now he's in the city and wishing he could just leave and be in the wilderness. [00:26:52] It's not like running away to the wilderness when your king is like a great win. [00:27:04] You know what I'm saying? [00:27:08] If I could just hide in the rocks like I used to, I'd be happy. [00:27:15] But I can't even do that now. This psalm, we don't know precisely when it was written there a couple of times in David's life that we know of that it might make sense for him to write this. One of them is Absalom's rebellion. [00:27:40] I hesitate to say it's likely that that's what was going on at this time, because we're not given the particular time but we do have David's closest trusted advisor, Ahithophel, betraying him, David's son betraying him. [00:28:09] And there doesn't appear to be anything that he can do at that time except cry out to God. [00:28:19] Jesus also faced betrayal by his close friend and anguish and terrors of death, as the psalm says. I mean, the picture here, if you read it with your eyes open, it's a horrifying picture. [00:28:43] The stormy wind and tempest is how his life is described. His heart being in anguish, people having a grudge within him, terrors of death having fallen upon him, His own city against him. [00:29:09] The reason I bring up Jesus is because this is an example of foreshadowing. [00:29:18] In the psalm, we have the life of Jesus foreshadowed, right? [00:29:24] Prophetically, God showing us what will happen to his obedient son, his servant, the King, Our king suffers in this way when he's on earth. [00:29:41] And so how is that beneficial to us? Well, first of all, it just strengthens our faith to see the fulfillment of this prophecy in the life of Jesus, but also both with David and with Jesus, to see them at the extremity of their need and seeing how God was faithful to them strengthens us. [00:30:03] So we have very little to be afraid of, though we have much to suffer through. [00:30:14] Jesus suffered much. [00:30:22] Now, if I stopped here and skipped to the end, it would be a glorious sermon and there would be nothing wrong with it. Except that I ignored the thing that's hardest in the psalm, and that is that you have these prayers and promises, the imprecations. Now, I think I used imprecations the last time I preached. I talked about imprecatory psalms. And afterwards I was told, you might want to explain what that means. [00:30:53] And I thought, yes. [00:30:55] So what is an imprecation? [00:31:01] It is a calling down of God's judgment onto others. [00:31:10] It is calling for God's judgment, calling for God's calamity to be poured out. It's calling curses on his enemies through prayer. Because this is a prayer, right? [00:31:28] So imprecations. [00:31:31] In the Scriptures, there are examples of some imprecations that are not godly. In fact, one of the things that happens when David does end up fleeing his city during Absalom's rebellion is that I think it's Shimei who is cursing him. [00:31:59] And as he's leaving the city, Shimei is walking along, imprecations being poured out of his mouth on David. [00:32:10] Well, they're not godly. [00:32:12] It's not a holy biblical prayer. In Shimei's Mouth, because it's unjust. [00:32:24] But these prayers, these imprecations, the curses that David is calling down are just because he has been righteous and they have returned evil for good. [00:32:37] They have betrayed innocent blood. [00:32:49] I looked at a few sermon outlines for this psalm. [00:32:54] They ignored this. [00:32:57] What a shame. [00:33:00] What a shame to ignore the thing that jumps out at you and you can't escape it when you're reading the psalm. [00:33:09] I suppose if I just read a few verses from it, right? [00:33:13] We could have the first. But here we are, we've got this psalm and what do we have? We've got these, confuse them. [00:33:22] Now, this again applies perfectly, I think, to Absalom's rebellion. Because Ahithophel is the consummate, the perfect, wise counselor. [00:33:33] His counsel was always perfect. [00:33:37] If you ever did what Ahithophel said, then you were going to get the goods, it was going to work out. [00:33:50] For confusion to come is perfect for such a circumstance. [00:34:02] But not just confuse, O Lord, divide their tongues, but also let death swallow them alive into the pit of destruction, not live out half their days. Again, we see this in both the first ark and in the second ark. [00:34:27] Don't be embarrassed about this, the Psalms. [00:34:33] It's not all over the place in the Psalms, but it's not uncommon that you run into this, these kinds of prayers, and you got to decide, is it just an example of sin in the Bible, or is this part of the inspired prayers that we are to imitate? [00:34:54] I want to make the case that these are good prayers and that we don't need to be embarrassed about this in the psalm. And the reason is because Jesus is the prince, the king, and he is unapologetic in looking forward to every enemy being crushed by his rod of iron. [00:35:15] If we have Jesus Christ as our Lord, we are looking forward to this very thing happening. And so we pray for it. [00:35:25] In fact, I prayed this morning for it. [00:35:28] When I asked that Jesus Christ would return. I asked that the day of judgment would come. And on that day of judgment, his people will be saved and his enemies will be destroyed. [00:35:44] I prayed this psalm, imprecations, judgments, calling for God's wrath to be poured out on sin. [00:35:59] David is a man after God's own heart. He is also faithful, though, to leave vengeance to the Lord. [00:36:08] And so as he cries out to the Lord for vindication, he's also crying out that God's will would accomplish this, that God's hand would accomplish this vindication. And I want you to picture that, because David regularly refuses, regularly refuses to take vengeance on his own to kill or even punish his enemies. Saul trying to kill him. [00:36:38] David refuses to kill Saul. [00:36:40] Absalom, David says, don't kill him. [00:36:45] Shimei, one of his men with him says, shall I go and relieve him of his head? [00:36:51] David says, no. [00:36:55] Ish, bosheth, Abner. [00:36:58] And all through scripture we've got examples of this. [00:37:01] The faithful people of God refusing to take vengeance into their own hands, but crying out to God that God would exercise his divine power on our behalf, saving us from our enemies and pouring out judgment on their sins and on them. [00:37:26] David trusted God to give his enemies what they deserved. And this is a sure thing. [00:37:33] And that's the second arc, that it is a sure thing. God's salvation and his judgment on the wicked is a sure thing. That's the whole second arc of the psalm. [00:37:44] So the prayers start up again. And what do you see? [00:37:48] I will complain and he will hear my voice. [00:37:54] Not make sure you hear me, God, but he will hear me. [00:38:00] And then you have these declarations. He will redeem my soul in peace. Can you imagine peace being declared in the context of this mayhem, this heart of anguish, the storm, the tempest, the battle against him? [00:38:23] God will hear and answer them. Who? The wicked. And you got the description of what the wicked are doing again. [00:38:32] But what is sure is God's redemption and salvation for his people and God's wrath being poured out on our enemies. [00:38:42] And so we can trust him. [00:38:45] And this is how the psalm ends. [00:38:47] David returns to saying that he will pray and God will answer. [00:38:52] When our closest friends and brothers betray us, when they violate their covenants and pretend to be our friends while stabbing us in the back. No matter what the extremity of your need is, no matter the power that your enemies have, no matter how close you were to them when they stabbed you in the back. [00:39:19] If we cast our burdens on the Lord, he will surely not allow us to be shaken. [00:39:32] Shaken is precisely how David feels right on the verge of falling over. [00:39:46] God will not allow us to be shaken. [00:39:52] Men of bloodshed and deceit will not live out half their days. But I will trust in you.