Psalm 31

To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.

1 In you, O LORD, do I take refuge; let me never be put to shame; in your righteousness deliver me!

This won’t be the first time David says this, but be clear that he takes refuge in God himself. How do you take refuge in a person? The metaphor of refuge makes sense when you are sheltering in a cave from a storm, or hiding behind a rock when an enemy is hunting you. It makes sense for financial advisors to shelter assets in tax-free accounts or in precious metals. It makes sense to put your car in the garage before a hail storm. During a pandemic, we all shelter in place. These are all physical shelters that we use to prevent harm from happening to us or something we own. But David shelters in a person. God himself is the one who protects him (though not every time). God himself is the one who whispers promises that sustain him and give him hope. God himself is the one in whom he will shelter even when his physical body ceases to function. This is the same way that David began Psalm 16 (Save me O God, for in you I take refuge). In that psalm his conclusion is that God is his greatest good and that even in death he will not be separated from Him. His prayer here suggests that he is under attack by men who seek to bring him down. He prays that he would never be put to shame and that God would deliver him in his righteousness. One suspects that David has been falsely charged or prosecuted for something for which he is innocent and he wishes that God would vindicate him. This is in part a prayer for justice to be done in a way that would bring honor to the just God. Hence he prays that God would deliver him in his justice (righteousness). We take refuge in God when we place our trust in his promises. We shelter in Him when we set aside worry and anxiety over any situation and rest in his protection and providence. We take cover in God when the incoming arrows from the enemy are threatening to wound and kill, praying “deliver us from the Evil One.” We take refuge in God when we cling to the truth of who He is, what He has done, and what He has said to us. His name is a strong tower into which we run, and we are saved. 

2 Incline your ear to me; rescue me speedily! Be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me!

3 For you are my rock and my fortress; and for your name's sake you lead me and guide me;

4 you take me out of the net they have hidden for me, for you are my refuge.

David’s prayer continues with urgency as he prays, “rescue me speedily!” Clearly he is in a crisis situation and his patience is running out as he asks God to move in closer and listen favorably to his prayer. He appeals to God to be a rock of refuge and a strong fortress for him. These are frequent metaphors in the psalms and they come out of David’s military experience. The Israelites never had a massive standing army, heavy ballistic weapons or cavalry. They were guerilla fighters, hiding among the rocks firing rocks and arrows and then retreating to a defensible location. David sees his troubles in that context and so it’s nature that David would look for that high rock, that secure place in a cliff, or a manmade defensive structure to be safe. David continues with the military metaphor of a leader where God is his commander in battle, directing and guiding him through the minefield. This is similar language to the 23rd Psalm where the LORD is David’s shepherd, leading and guiding for his namesake. David prays for God’s leadership in this moment so that ultimately God would be honored, that his reputation would benefit. The next metaphor is that of a net, a device that was commonly used to hunt birds. A net could be hidden and then quickly engaged when prey walked into it. Once in the net, there was nothing the bird could do. It was lunch. David suggests that he has already been caught in the net that has been set for him. He is being hunted and in fact, he has been caught. However, before the hunter can retrieve their prey from the net, the LORD himself removes David from the trap, becoming his refuge. Each day has its own attacks and traps. The New Testament describes our enemy as a roaring lion, a hunter seeking to kill and devour us. You can read about his techniques in C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters. Just because most people don’t believe (or live as if they don’t believe) in the devil, doesn’t make him any less real. Jesus did battle with him in the wilderness for 40 days, but that wasn’t the beginning or the end of it. In your battles with temptation, seek help from the LORD who is your refuge, your fortress, your rescuer from the hidden traps set for you. 

5 Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O LORD, faithful God.

6 I hate [or You hate] those who pay regard to worthless idols, but I trust in the Lord.

David has already declared God to be his rock, his refuge, and his strong fortress, so the statement “Into your hand I commit my spirit” is only logical. This is a statement of absolute trust and dependence. David is presumably still in the midst of a crisis when he says this, “You have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.” The redemption hasn’t actually occured yet, but in David’s mind it is already actualized by faith. What does David mean by “spirit”? Like Greek, the Hebrew word for “spirit” is the same as “wind” or “breath”, so David has committed his very breath, his very life to the LORD. This phrase takes on even greater significance in the New Testament where Jesus prays this from the cross, perhaps with the entire psalm in mind. Stephen uses the same phrase in the moment of his martyrdom as I assume Christian martyrs have through the centuries. So committing one’s spirit to God cannot mean that God will make you invincible. It simply means that you are trusting God to receive you at the moment of your death. I hope that on my deathbed I can pray these words with the same confidence as the saints before me. God is a redeemer -- one who purchases us out of slavery, out of debt, and makes us his own. He is a faithful God, or more literally, the God of truth. God is real and his words are trustworthy. Speaking of worthy, the gods of this world are not. They are not worthy of our trust and we should not commit our life to them. They will not be there at our deathbed. They will not provide ultimate satisfaction. David “hates” those who worship idols in the sense that he wants no part of that. He pledges single-minded devotion to the one true God. Examine the altars in your life. Are you worshiping things that are not worthy of your worship -- things that will not be there comforting you on your deathbed? To whom or what have you committed your very life? The breath in your lungs is a gift. How are you sharing that life with others? 

7 I will rejoice and be glad in your steadfast love, because you have seen my affliction; you have known the distress of my soul,

8 and you have not delivered me into the hand of the enemy; you have set my feet in a broad place.

It’s not clear that David has received a positive answer to his prayer, but he speaks as though he has. Is he simply seeing this through the eyes of faith? Is he visualizing the outcome before it has happened? That seems to be the case and if so, it is a lesson in faith and confidence. If you entrust your spirit to God, you can have confidence that He is with you through anything. So David chooses to rejoice in the LORD’s steadfast love, confident that God has seen his affliction. The LORD knows the distress of his soul, and based on the statements of Psalm 139, He doesn’t just know about them, he knows them intimately and actively. The LORD has not delivered him into the hands of his enemy, but he has set his feet in a broad place. Earlier David affirmed that the LORD had removed his feet from a net spread for him. Now he is in safety and freedom in a broad place, no traps or corners in which to be caught. No longer entangled in the cords of anxiety and fear, David is free to move about. Faith is incredibly freeing. Once you’ve entrusted your spirit to God, you have given him control of your life and the circumstances around it. It is an odd paradox that to achieve freedom you must surrender control. In Psalm 119 the psalmist states that he walks about in freedom because he obeys the LORD’s precepts. So freedom can’t mean, “do whatever you want.” While David is now in a spacious place, it is not borderless. It is still bounded by God’s good law. While he experiences a level of freedom, it is not freedom from God and his laws, but freedom because of them. Our enemy is sin and death and the one who pushes us toward both of them -- the devil. God hasn’t delivered us to that enemy and he has allowed us to walk about in the freedom that comes from obeying his laws and aligning our lives with his way. 

9 Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye is wasted from grief; my soul and my body also.

10 For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my iniquity, and my bones waste away.

David shifts back to sharing feelings of distress in these verses, even though he has just become convinced that God had already set him free. This wavering back and forth does not suggest a lack of faith but rather the normal thing that happens when we grieve. We can move from complete confidence to anger, fear, anxiety, denial and just plain sadness in a moment. For those that have lost someone close to them, this may endure for a lifetime. In fact, David is describing a lifetime of suffering here. Of course there is poetic license here, but in this moment he feels like he has always felt this way, distressed, grieving, sorrowful. In verse 10 he links his sorrow to his iniquity. Aha, he bears some responsibility in his own suffering. How often this is true -- guilt. Sometimes there is false guilt -- “I should have done something, I could have prevented this tragedy, I wasn’t a good parent/child”, etc. David may be expressing this, but more likely this has something to do with something wrong that he has done. We know that David blew up his family by having an affair with a married woman, murdering her husband, and then marrying her and then favoring the children he had with her. I don’t know what kind of grief David received from his other wives and his children, but it must have been excruciating. And on top of that, to know that it was all his fault, one choice in a moment of weakness that cascaded into more bad choices and wreckage. This is the road that sin takes you on -- sorrow, sighing (regret), a sapping of your strength, and a wasting away of your inner being. Don’t let the enemy tell you that “sinners have much more fun” (Billy Joel). There is a high price to pay for momentary lapses in judgment. This is how sin and judgment work. It’s not that God was just waiting to smite David with grief for no reason here; David brought this on himself when he chose his pleasure over the pain it would cause to others. This is the prayer of man with deep regrets. Overall it is a prayer of trust, but only after great personal failure. 

11 Because of all my adversaries I have become a reproach, especially to my neighbors, and an object of dread to my acquaintances; those who see me in the street flee from me.

12 I have been forgotten like one who is dead; I have become like a broken vessel.

David describes the pain of social isolation. Everyone seems to be avoiding him, especially his neighbors, those who are closest to him. When someone sees him, their first reaction is to look away, avoid eye contact and walk on the other side of the street. Let’s put this in modern terms. Everyone has unfriended and unfollowed David. Others have ghosted him. He starts a conversation, but they do not reply. He feels utterly alone. In these days of a global pandemic, I don’t doubt that there are people that feel this way as well, completely cut off from meaningful human contact, everyone wearing masks so smiles can’t be seen, going out of their way to avoid being within six feet of one another. Countless people (like David) feel that they have been forgotten, like one who is dead. Like a broken vessel they have been cast aside to bake in the sun while no one pays attention to them anymore. Unlike modern social distancing due to a pandemic, David is responsible for his suffering, although his neighbors are playing a role as well. Earlier references in this psalm to David’s past iniquity suggest that he is experiencing social distancing because of the shame he has brought on himself and his family. This is a powerful reminder that sin has consequences whether we acknowledge it or not. It isolates, separates, and leads to self-condemnation. Consider this before pursuing the illusive path of freedom that sin offers. At the same time, the community should come around those who have bought the world’s lies and show them a better way. Bruce Marshall said, “the young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God.” Our sex-saturated world is evidence that people are longing for human connection and sex is seen as the ultimate connection. However, divorced from love and self-sacrificial commitment, it leaves one vulnerable, used, and eventually discarded. There are broken isolated people everywhere who need someone to treat them as Jesus did the leper, the tax collector, and the prostitute. This section of the psalm is the sinner's prayer. It is where he finds himself at the feeding trough eating garbage while his rightful place is at his father’s table, waiting for someone to tell him that it’s not too late to come home. 

13 For I hear the whispering of many— terror on every side!—

as they scheme together against me, as they plot to take my life.

14 But I trust in you, O LORD; I say, “You are my God.”

David finds himself in a culture of fear. There are voices telling him that there is terror on every side. People are out to get him. Don’t leave the house. Someone will stab you. There’s a lion in the street! (Proverbs 22:13). And indeed there are people that are literally trying to kill him. Not just one person, but groups of people that are actively plotting a coup. But David says, “I trust in you, O LORD; You are my God.” We are living in a time of unprecedented fear as the world is gripped by the covid-19 panic. Even after the mandatory restrictions are relaxed, there will be plenty of people who will not leave their homes or ever return to “normal” activities. Their lives will forever be ruled by fear. There are many things that can kill us, and we should certainly be prudent to guard the life that God has given us. But this cannot keep us from living life without crippling fear. Assassination is always a real threat to a public figure, and it’s something that has to be accepted as an occupational hazard. The odds of a leader being assassinated are probably pretty slim, probably about the same as a young healthy person dying from covid-19. David steps out of his home every day and acknowledges what we all should. God is in control. Our lives are in his hands. “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” (Psalm 139:16) If this verse tells us anything it is that we must live by faith and refuse to be enslaved by fear. Even death is not the worst thing that can happen to us. No, the worst thing that could happen to us is to die without knowing and trusting in God.

15 My times are in your hand; rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors!

16 Make your face shine on your servant; save me in your steadfast love!

David follows up from his previous statement, “I trust in you, O LORD. You are my God”, with the logical consequence of that faith. “My times are in your hand.” This trust that David’s days are numbered and known by God doesn’t lead him to be reckless. He still prays that he would be rescued from his enemies. He doesn’t have a death wish and he doesn’t behave stupidly. He wants to live long, otherwise there’s no point in desiring rescue. “In shallah” as they say in Islam. You will die when Allah wants you to die. There is nothing you can do about it. Muslims are right to a point, but this attitude can lead to a fatalism that throws caution and common sense to the wind. No, David prays for God’s favor in this moment of fear. With enemies actively plotting his assassination he prays for safety while still acknowleding the sovereignty of God. It’s easy to say, “my times are in your hand” when all is well. When you are dying of cancer, or heading into battle, or these days, into a hospital with covid-19, it may not be so easy. Pray for healing, pray for life, but like the three in the fire, “But even if the LORD does not rescue us, we will not worship your idol (we will not value that which is ultimately worthless.”)  “My times are in your hand” does not mean to live as if you don’t value the gift of life, but it does mean that you hold your life loosely. If there truly is a God that you say you believe in, you can trust him even in death. David prays that God’s face would shine on him. The best way I know to picture that is of God smiling on him. This is how I show that I am pleased with someone, that I desire their good, that I love them -- it is with a smile. Someone once defined mercy as “God smiling on you.” LORD, smile on me today. My times are in your hand. 

17 O Lord, let me not be put to shame, for I call upon you; let the wicked be put to shame; let them go silently to Sheol.

18 Let the lying lips be mute, which speak insolently against the righteous in pride and contempt.

David’s next prayer is that his honor might be sustained through this crisis. In contrast, he prays that the wicked would be put to shame. These are his enemies who are unjustly coming after him with outright lies. There’s nothing more frustrating than when someone tells lies about you. If the lies are told in secret and spread as gossip there is not much you can do about it. People will believe about you what they want to believe. David prays that they would be silenced and their lies with them, that they would go silently, mute to the grave. I don’t have enemies like this that are speaking against me. If I were in politics, I’m sure I would. But we do have lying voices in our culture that attempt to shame believers. Turn on the TV for a few minutes and you will see lies in abundance and we tolerate them in the name of entertainment. Read or listen to the news and you will get opposite knee-jerk opinions on everything. It is a constant state of verbal warfare as each side tries to shape the narrative in a way that makes them look better. Perhaps David’s prayer for today would be, “may truth win.”  If there is a battle for truth in the culture, and lies have terrible consequences, then perhaps I need to be engaged in that battle in an attempt to silence the lies. Some lies are just so terrible they need to be dead and buried. The lie that abortion is a woman’s right, the lie that pornography has no victims, the lie that sexual autonomy is the greatest good, the lie that the right people in leadership can bring about a utopia, and the lie that this world is all that there is. I could go on, but there are huge and terrible lies that have horrific consequences at the grassroots level. Today I pray that these lying lips would be mute, and that those who speak those lies would be humbled and corrected. And yes, I’m willing to do my part in speaking the truth publicly. 

19 Oh, how abundant is your goodness, which you have stored up for those who fear you and worked for those who take refuge in you, in the sight of the children of mankind!

20 In the cover of your presence you hide them from the plots of men; you store them in your shelter from the strife of tongues.

David transitions from a prayer for deliverance to a declaration of trust. First, the LORD’s abundant goodness is stored up for those who fear him. Storing things up for the future is generally a good thing. Joseph did this in Egypt and saved the nations. What God has stored up for those who fear him is a huge cache of goodness. To fear the LORD is to honor and respect him in a way that leads to obedience and worship. Trust is implied in this, but David didn’t say “trust”, he said “fear”. In times of crisis we are tempted to fear men, to fear bad outcomes, to fear the things that are beyond our control. Instead we are to fear the LORD. Jesus said as much when he told us not to be afraid of those that can kill the body and do nothing more. Rather, be afraid of the one who has the power to cast you both body and soul into hell. Fear Him! Whatever you are afraid of today, be more afraid of God. Respect Him and his words to you, and you will experience a heaping pile of goodness. Not only that but the LORD has worked for those who take refuge in him. This seems to be a look back at how God has worked in the past in the sight of the children of mankind. In other words, everyone has seen this! He has not forgotten you, but is actively engaged in working on your behalf, assuming that you are sheltering in Him. The LORD covers you with his presence to hide you from the plots of men and stores you in his shelter from the strife of tongues. It’s as if God has some kind of cloaking device. His very presence is a shelter from the plots of men. There are those who are actively trying to destroy faith in God and replace it with faith in science, faith in government, or faith in yourself. Experience God’s presence and you will not desire lesser things. 

21 Blessed be the Lord, for he has wondrously shown his steadfast love to me when I was in a besieged city.

22 I had said in my alarm, [in my haste] “I am cut off from your sight.”

But you heard the voice of my pleas for mercy when I cried to you for help.

David likens his situation to being in a besieged city. He cannot leave, resources are scarce, and no one knows how long it will last, but there is a sense of hopelessness and impending doom as he looks out from the wall onto the army around the city. Trapped! Yet, the LORD heard David’s prayers and showed him his steadfast love. The trap that David was in had to do with his enemies who wanted to topple him. While most of us don’t have enemies like that, we do have an enemy who wants to topple us, who besieges us and creates in us a feeling of inevitability -- I will fall. This is the lie that sin can foist upon us: you are too weak, you can’t resist, your walls will fall before the onslaught of this temptation, you are alone, it’s every person for themselves, resist and die or surrender and live. These are all lies that we’ve wrestled with when temptation takes its place around our city. The solution is clear, cry to God for help. Just ask. Just shift your focus from the army that surrounds you to the commander of the angel armies that surrounds them. The spiritual battle we are waging is more significant than the physical one that David is referring to (his tottering kingdom). This is for eternity. LORD today, give me strength to resist every temptation that besieges this city.

23 Love the LORD, all you his saints! The LORD preserves the faithful but abundantly repays the one who acts in pride.

24 Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the LORD!

There are few places where love for the LORD is declared (Psalms 18:1 and 116:1 come to mind), but here the psalmist commands the saints to love the LORD. To love the LORD is to keep his commandments. It is to live within the boundaries of a covenant, just as loving a spouse is meant to be done in the boundaries of the marriage covenant. Then there is also the passionate love -- the love that is exhibited but not identified as love throughout the Psalms in the commands to sing for joy and shout aloud. That seems to be the type of love David is suggesting here -- joy that the LORD preserves the faithful and repays the proud, joy in the justice of God. The admonition in verse 24 is similar to that of Psalm 27:14, echoing the words of Moses to Joshua (Joshua 1), be strong and courageous all you who wait for the LORD. In short, be confident of God’s goodness and his justice while you wait to see both of them play out in your life. Restraining your anger and frustration are aspects of what it means to be a mature adult and a mature Christian for that matter. Our fast-paced culture has conditioned us for impatience. We expect everything to happen immediately, so waiting is a difficult place to be. We don’t like to wait more than 2 days for something to be shipped to us. We don’t like to wait in line for anything, and we can even pick up food without stopping and getting out of our cars. This is true of bigger issues as well. We can’t wait to save money to purchase what we want and need, so we buy it on credit instantly. We expect to have the wealth that our parents have while we are still in our 20s even though it took them 30 years to accumulate it. And perhaps most destructive of all, we can’t wait to have sex until we are married. As a result, there is sexual brokenness and children are born into the world without a whole family. No we’re not good at waiting. Yet, this is what we must do. What are you waiting for? What are your fears and frustrations that you demand immediate escape from? You may have to live with them for a while knowing that God is good and God is just. Be strengthened and wait for the LORD.