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March, 2022 (Vol.56-No.3) |
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Preached by Dr. Gene Scott on January 24, 1988 Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me: for my soul trusteth in thee: yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast.. Psalm 57:1 WE READ IN 1ST SAMUEL 21, “Then came David to Nob to Ahimelech the priest.” Let’s look at the background to this low point in David’s life. David was fleeing from King Saul. Saul’s son Jonathan had the natural right of succession to the kingship, but he abdicated his right because he accepted God’s will that David would be the next king. So Saul relentlessly pursued David and sought to kill him. Jonathan had recognized that David was God’s anointed, and he yielded to David in a pledge of loyalty and friendship. That was a great victory for David; but from that victory, David bottomed out in one fell swoop. This is why David’s life captures our attention through the ages. I cannot relate to people who are always perfect. Now, I am not speaking of God’s perfection, because that would be something to get excited about. I am speaking of the kind of perfection that is peddled by traditional Christianity, which is nothing more than conformity to a bunch of rules. All my life, I have heard the perfectionists preach, “Don’t do this!” and “Don’t do that!” They have reduced Christianity down to doing nothing. If you try to keep all of their rules, you will eventually go into a spiritual coma: you will think you have “arrived” and can do no wrong. David could never claim such perfection. His life was a series of ups and downs, victories and failures. He was anointed to be king, which immediately made him the target for the wrath of Saul. David fled to Nob and came to Ahimelech the priest. David asked the priest for some bread because he and the young men who were with him were famished. The only bread that the priest had was the “showbread,” which was hallowed bread. Ahimelech told David that he and his men could have this bread only if they had not been with a woman for so many days. David assured the priest that neither he nor his men had been with a woman, so they were given the hallowed bread. David was fleeing for his life and didn’t even have a sword. So he asked the priest, “Do you have a sword here?” And the priest answered, “The only sword we have here is the one you took from Goliath, which was hung in the sanctuary.” In a previous message, I spoke of the pain that accompanies the remembrance of past spiritual victories. Put flesh and blood on this episode and put yourself in David’s place. He had to beg for the hallowed bread from the sanctuary, and when he asked for a weapon, he was given the sword of Goliath. If I had been David, I would have wanted to kill myself with that sword. It must have brought back all the memories of that day when David came on the scene while everyone else in God’s community was cowering in fear of Goliath. David declared, “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine?” and went out to fight this giant with a sling and some stones. David killed Goliath and then cut off his head using Goliath’s own sword! Based on Goliath’s size, it must have taken a pretty hefty grip for David to have picked up that sword. No one ever backed David up, not when he fought a lion, a bear, or a giant. There had to be some pain in the memory triggered by handling that sword. David must have thought, “How did I get from there to here?” He had done nothing to deserve the state he was in. Now, I might think that I have accomplished a few things for God in my lifetime, but I have never done anything that matches what David did when he killed Goliath. Nor have I ever had things turn sour on me to the degree that they did for David. Oh, sometimes it feels that way. That is like a man with a broken foot complaining as he hobbles down the road, until he meets a man who is missing a foot. I am focusing on our attitude before I go much further. I want you to wrap your mind around David’s circumstances to understand the state this man was in. He had not asked to be anointed in the first place. He obviously had not been politicking for the job, because no one in his household even thought that he should be considered. He didn’t come to Saul’s camp intending to fight Goliath; he came to bring some food to his brethren. When he got there, the circumstances grabbed him. He thought, “Why should this Philistine humiliate and demean God’s people?” The circumstances revealed David’s frame of mind: he could not tolerate God’s honor being demeaned. David would rather be dead than allow that to happen. After cutting off Goliath’s head with Goliath’s own sword, someone hung that sword in the sanctuary as a testimonial to that victory. Now David is in failure. We would think that when he was handed Goliath’s sword, he would have been reminded that “My God can do anything!” We would think that he would have stopped dead in his tracks, found his courage, and returned to do battle with Saul. But instead, we read in 1st Samuel 21:10, “And David arose, and fled that day for fear of Saul, and went to Achish the king of Gath.” Isn’t that the most ridiculous thing you have ever heard? Goliath was from Gath! When you get out of step with God, black turns white, and white turns black. After years of ministry, I still get amazed at what some people do when they backslide. I am using an old-fashioned word, but the traditional use of the word “backslide” does not really fit our context. Most churches define backsliding as getting caught doing something that you have been denying that you do. At this church, I would define backsliding as taking your hand off the plow and losing faith. You backslide when you quit pressing on. That is closer to what David did. But when people backslide, they inevitably flee to the very things they formerly hated. You will find them sitting on the front row of a fundamentalist church, singing, “I shall not be moved.” David fled to Achish. It was bad enough for him to flee, but why flee to a Philistine king? “And the servants of Achish said unto him, Is not this David the king of the land?” Did they not sing one to another of him in dances, saying, Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands? And David laid up these words in his heart, and was sore afraid of Achish the king of Gath.” David, carrying the very sword of Goliath, heard the Philistines sing of his past victories as a warrior in faith, but it didn’t do a thing for him. He just “laid up these words in is heart, and was sore afraid of Achish the king of Gath. And he changed his behavior before them, and feigned himself mad in their hands, and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down upon his beard.” I am reminded of the New Testament parable of the prodigal son. The Bible says that when the prodigal son came to his senses, he remembered that the servants in his father’s house had bread enough to spare. You could translate it “when he became sane again,” for it describes a transition from insanity to sanity. When viewed from the realm of faith, David was close to insanity when he played the madman before the Philistine King. “Then said Achish unto his servants, Lo, ye see the man is mad: wherefore then have ye brought him to me? Have I need of mad men, that ye have brought this fellow to play the mad man in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house: David therefore departed thence, and escaped to the cave Adullam: and when his brethren and all his father’s house heard it, they went down thither to him. And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them: and there were with him about four hundred men.” Wherever you are in your journey of faith, I want you to compare your state with David’s state. I doubt that anyone has enjoyed as many victories, and I doubt that anyone has sunk as low. There are some people whose bland Christian life could be plotted by drawing a horizontal line, as I described in the previous message. There are others who would make you think that Christianity is an ever-upward path of success followed by more success. But I find only one pattern in the Bible for the Christian life: the life of faith is a roller coaster of ups and downs. So cheer up! If this describes you, you are like a true saint! There is no victory quite as high as David’s victories, and there is no low place quite as low as David’s lows. Therefore, if a man who could fall from such a height to such a depth can get out of his valley and end up with the epitaph “He was a man after God’s own heart,” that means we can make it too. This is a lesson in practical Christianity. How did David make his way back? He wrote a least three of the most amazing psalms at this time, including Psalm 34, Psalm 56, and Psalm 57. What a time to be writing psalms, sitting in a cave and looking at that band of discontented, distressed, and indebted men, plus a few relatives. For some people, that would be about as close to hell as one can get! He had fallen from the pinnacle of success to this cave. If you would compare your circumstances with David’s, you would realize that you are relatively well-off. Have you been living in a cave all week? Are you surrounded by the distressed, discontented, and debtors, plus some relatives? There is nowhere to go in a cave. It is not like a tunnel with a way out; you are surrounded by miserable people crying, “Woe is me!” In a previous message, I preached from Psalm 34, “The angel of the LORD encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them.” The heading of that psalm says, “A Psalm of David, when he changed his behavior before Abimelech; who drove him away, and he departed.” Some Bible commentators say that “Abimelech” may have been the royal title for Achish. Psalm 56’s heading says it is a “Michtam of David, when the Philistines took him in Gath.” My Bible has a cross-reference next to the heading to direct the reader to 1st Samuel 21. The heading of Psalm 57 says, “Michtam of David, when he fled from Saul in the cave.” The Bible is not arranged in an order that makes it easy to understand. I wish that 1st Samuel 21-22 had a footnote that said, “But, in spite of all these events, when David was in the cave with the snaggletooths and the relatives, he took a grip on himself and wrote three psalms that have blessed God’s people down through the years.” There are some amazing statements in these psalms. Psalm 34:20 says, “He keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken.” This is one of the Messianic Psalms that were fulfilled in Christ. God let David be identified with what His Son would do at Calvary when He was crucified for the sins of the world. Not one of His bones would be broken, which allows us to identify Christ in prophecy and distinguish Him from other people in history who have been crucified. This is one of the many Old Testament prophecies pointing to Christ. Not one of His bones would be broken, even though it was routine to break the legs of the crucified to demonstrate that they were dead before they were taken down from the cross. God gave David a high honor by allowing his circumstances to bring forth a burst of revelation that identified him with Christ’s redeeming work for all mankind. Things are not always as we see them. God’s ways are not our ways; we want sunshine all the time. No one knows which of these three psalms was written first. Today, I want us to focus on Psalm 57. This message is for those who are down at the bottom. It is also for those who are up on top, because they are going to fall down to the bottom very shortly. Therefore, this message is for everyone. I have learned the hard way that I would much rather be on the bottom getting ready to climb back up than be on a pinnacle of success getting ready to fall all the way down. “Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me.” You are in a terrible state if you don’t think you need to pray for mercy, but you must be on the bottom to cry that prayer from your heart. “Be merciful unto me, O God,” but not necessarily because your condition demands mercy. This is the most important point regarding how David made his way back. We are prone to focus on our condition, so we pray, “God, look at me and have mercy on me. You’ve never seen a suffering soul like me!” A famous evangelist once published a book featuring successful Christians in their various fields of business. He was trying to prove that God wants everyone to be prosperous. I never saw a sequel to that book, because some of those people he featured eventually went bankrupt. One of the men highlighted in that book later personally told me the story of his financial failure. He had taken a verse of Scripture out of context, specifically 2nd Corinthians 16:9, which says, “For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong. . .” He reasoned that God was looking for ways to show off His strength by finding people in a hole He could lift them out of, so he concluded that the way to get a victory is to dig the deepest hole you could possibly dig for yourself in order to get God’s attention. He thought, “If you want help from God, then go make a mess of things!” But that is not what the Bible teaches. This man confessed to me that he had learned the hard way that God wasn’t so hard up that He had to rely upon our ability to create a mess. The criterion for receiving mercy is not how deep a hole I have dug or how big a mess I have gotten myself into. The criterion for receiving mercy is something other than those things. “Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me.” Why should God be merciful unto me? Obviously, David was in a worse mess than I have ever been in. I would guess that in my congregation there are people who are in a worse mess than I am in. Why did David need mercy? I imagine him looking around at those distressed and discontented men in the cave and thinking, “These men are hard to put up with. I used to have all the charming ladies of Israel sing my praises and throw flowers in my path. But these guys haven’t taken a bath since they got here; and what’s worse, I have to live with some of my relatives!” Remember, David had some special relatives. When he was going to kill Goliath, David’s brethren told him quite plainly that he was an upstart and was only there to cause trouble. When the prophet came to anoint the new king, his whole family knew it could be anyone but David. He didn’t have the kindest relatives. They were not always encouraging him and lifting him up in times of spiritual accomplishment. He had plenty of reasons for God to have mercy on him, but those were not the reasons. What was the reason? “Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me: for my soul trusteth in thee: yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamites be overpast. Do you want one word for David’s declaration? Faith! “In the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamites be overpast.” Notice that David didn’t say, “Get rid of these calamites, Lord, and then I will serve You forever!” He didn’t say, “You got me into this mess, You must get me out!” David didn’t give any reason other than “for my soul trusteth in thee.” There are two Hebrew words in the Old Testament that are most often translated “trust.” The one used in this verse means “to flee to the shelter of a rock” or “to flee to the shadow of a mother bird’s wings.” The other word was used to describe the act of leaning on a staff. It means “trust,” “to have confidence in,” and “to be secure.” David was the first man in the Bible to use this word in relationship to God. Both of these words for “trust” involve an action; you cannot just think about it. The New Testament word for “faith” is pistis. It describes an action, based upon belief, and sustained by confidence. You don’t have biblical faith until you are acting. Faith involves the will, it involves the mind, and it involves the emotions. You must use your will to grab hold of yourself and hang your body on your belief in God’s promises. Sit in that cave with David. Nothing in his circumstances had changed, but David wasn’t complaining, “God why did You choose me? Look what I did for You: Can’t You see this sword? I’m the one who took it from Goliath! I’m not even sure You were there that day. Let’s face it; maybe You were there or maybe You weren’t. You could have knocked Goliath down with a lightning bolt if You had wanted to, but I’m the one who killed him.” Forgive me for being ludicrous, but this is one of the things I don’t like about God. He could be a little more obvious in the way He does things. He has delivered me so many times with a mixture of His action and my action that when I get cynical, it is hard to figure out whether He did it or I did it. I remember the first time I was standing before an unruly mob in Sibalom, in the central Philippines. I was on a teaching mission and had been invited to preach; but after arriving, I learned that my appearance had been advertised as an “anti-communist rally, to be led by Gene Scott from Stanford.” A huge crowd had gathered! Security officers were strutting around with guns and machetes on their sides. Teenagers were playing a gambling game on the city plaza. Murderous fanatics were eyeing me like I was a candidate to earn them a guaranteed ride to heaven. I was speaking outdoors, and not in the local cathedral, and I knew that my life was in jeopardy. Now I think that God gave me the courage. And I think that God gave me the message and helped me find favor with that mob until they quieted down; and by the time we moved on, we had established a church in that town. But I will never be sure. Maybe it was because I thought that God was with me that I had the courage, and He got all the credit! I am reminded of a story about a little boy who came home from Sunday school and his father asked him, “What did you learn in Sunday school today?” “Well,” he replied, “the teacher told us about this fellow Moses who got into a war with Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. Moses won a round or two, and then he and his army took the Egyptians’ gold and silver and headed off across the desert. Pharaoh chased after him with all his tanks and artillery, and they hemmed in Moses and his army by the Red Sea. So Moses radioed his engineers and asked them, ‘How are we going to get across the sea?’ So they rallied and built some pontoon bridges in a hurry. Then Moses got all his tanks, his guns, and his people onto those pontoons; and they raced across to the other side of the sea. He’d instructed his men to put dynamite in those pontoons and to blow them up as soon as they were safely across. Now Pharaoh and his army came charging after them with his tanks, jeeps, and heavy equipment. Moses and his whole army got safely to the other side, but by that time Pharaoh and his army were halfway across the sea. So Moses radioed his engineer and shouted, ‘Blow the bridges!’ So the engineer punched the plunger and kablowie! Kaboom! Those pontoons exploded and Pharaoh and his army were swallowed up in the sea along with all his tanks, his guns, and everything!” The little boy’s father just looked as his son and said, “Now, son, did your Sunday school teacher really tell you that story?” And the little boy replied, “Well, not exactly. But you’d never believe it the way she told it!” My problem is that everything God has ever done for me is believable. I would like for God to do something unbelievable for me one day. Of course, He knows that if I saw something unbelievable, I might not accept it. David could have said, “Be merciful unto me, O Lord, because I have helped You thus far, and it’s about time for You to do something for me! I killed Goliah for You. Now, You can solve my problems.” The point is that none of David’s past actions qualified him for mercy. God has the ability to dispense mercy, but there was only one thing that qualified David to receive mercy. Here is a man living centuries before Paul who understood the gospel message at its core. God is looking for faithers. Someone in my congregation might say, “I’m tired of faithing.” So am I! Join the team. But I don’t like caves either. Our mindset should be, “Have mercy on me, O Lord: for my soul trusts in You- whether this cave changes or not, whether I like my circumstances or not, and regardless of what I may have done to cause the situation I am in!” I have preached many times from Psalm 84. The message is that blessed men go through valleys of weeping. Valleys of weeping are part of the Christian journey. It does not matter whether you are to blame or whether you are innocent; God’s promise remains the same. David could say, “I may have been on top, and I sure know that I’m now on the bottom. But have mercy on me, God, for my soul resteth in You, leans on You for strength, flees to You for refuge. My soul trusteth in You. I am going to act on Your word.” David acted in faith right there in that cave when he penned these psalms. That was the starting point of his action. You can make these promises yours and start acting on them today: “My soul trusteth in thee: yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast.” So we make our commitment to God and then we start looking at the clock, saying, “Well, where is He? I said the right words. I even paid a tithe for one whole week: I put it under a rock here in this cave, waiting until I could get to the sanctuary to deliver it.” There are many people who have heard the truth of God and have said, “I have nothing to lose. I am on the bottom, so I might as well try what the preacher told me to. ‘My soul trusteth in thee!’ Now, where is He? Nothing has changed!” Nothing had changed after David made his statement of faith. Get it clear in your mind: there is no mercy offered to non-faithers. Do you want to know which came first, the chicken or the egg? The egg is mercy, and the chicken is faith. The age-old mystery is now solved: the chicken came first. Nowhere in the Bible does it say, “God created eggs,” but He did create the fowls. Faith before mercy! We think, “But I deserve mercy and it’s hard to have faith!” Faith before mercy! So we think, “Okay, I tried faith for at least an hour, and I still don’t see any mercy!” The promise is to those who continuously act in faith. Verse 7 says, “My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed.” The idea of the word “heart” is not limited to emotions such as love and hate. My Bible says that God discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart, which involves mind, will, and purpose. The heart is used as a figure of speech for the inner man who determines what the outward man does. “Have mercy on me, God: because I will flee to the shadow of Your wings, until this calamity is over. I can lean on You, the unseen Strength, while the seen world tumbles!” What if the seen world does not “un-tumble?” It does not matter because my heart is fixed! What have I been teaching you for twelve years about faith? You must be willing to die in the effort! If you want to argue with God about it, wait until you wake up on the other side. I have tried to argue with God for many of my fifty-eight years, and I have never received a direct answer. I wonder what I would do if I had the opportunity to question God about the times when I thought He was in the wrong. I suppose I would probably get squashed after I did it, but there is something about being able to tell God about where He let me down. Try tithing until you starve to death, and you will have that opportunity. I am being ludicrous to make the point: faith demands that you orient the self until you can say, “I will hang my body on God’s promises even if I die in the effort!” There is no way that I can soften that lifestyle for you. As we go into the coming year, may God give us a band of people who will hang their lives on His word! And may God give you a pastor who will hang his body on God’s word no matter what! “My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise.” For what? Because my heart is fixed on God and is word! Now let’s go to Psalm 56. “Be merciful unto me, O God: for man would swallow me up; he fighting daily oppresseth me. Mine enemies would daily swallow me up: for they be many that fight against me, O thou most High.” Then in verse 3, David grabs hold of himself and declares, “What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.” There is a reason for fear; fear means that the circumstances are very bad and we have bottomed out again. Fear will come, but what time I am afraid, I will trust in the Lord. What am I to do about all these things that give me a reason to cry? Verse 8 says, “Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?” In the King James Version, the words “are they” are in italics, which means they were added by the translators. I am not so sure that my tears are in God’s book. The New Testament says that my name is in the Lamb’s book of life! I know there have been many wonderful songs about God putting our tears into a bottle. How wonderful that is. I should just cry for my entire life; at least I would have something to look forward to in eternity: God kept my tears in a bottle. But bottles are fragile, temporary things. We can omit the words “are they,” because they are not in the original text. Now read the verse,” God, put my tears into Your bottle, not in Your book.” There are plenty of reasons for crying, but nowhere in the Bible does it say you will make it into heaven only if your tears are in a bottle. Again, you make it into heaven if your name is written in the Lamb’s book of life. And it gets there by faith, not by crying. “Put my tears into a bottle, not in Your book.” What time I am afraid, I will trust in the Lord. Now go to Psalm 34:22. “The LORD redeemeth the soul of his servants: and none of them that trust in him shall be desolate.” Again, David uses the word for “trust” that means “to flee to for refuge,” but the word “desolate” is the one I want us to focus on. It is used in verses 21 and 22. Some Bibles have a marginal note that says this word also means “guilty.” A more complete definition includes “to incur guilt,” “to feel guilt,” “to be condemned,” and “to be punished.” This is a declaration of total exoneration in God’s book. God is saying, “None of those who have bottomed out and have cried, ‘Give me mercy because I put my trust in You,’ none of those who have declared, ‘What time I am afraid, I will trust in the Lord,’ will ever incur guilt, can ever be made to feel guilty, can ever be ultimately condemned at the bar of God, or will ever be punished.” That is even better than the promise of Psalm 84, “Blessed men go through valleys.” It does not matter what caused the valley. More than that, the faith life is a guilt-free life before the bar of God! I would never trade places with those beaten-down people who gather in most fundamentalist churches every Sunday to get spray-painted with guilt. If you have bottomed out today, or if you have not yet bottomed out but certainly will, this is God’s formula for dealing with it: “I will run to the shadow of thy wings, until these calamities be overpast.” “What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.” And they that trust in the Lord will not be guilty, feel guilty, be condemned, deserve condemnation, or ever be punished by the hand of God. And since God is the one we are dealing with, no one else counts. Hallelujah! Reprinted with permission from Pastor Melissa Scott | December, 2022 Wingspread | November, 2022 Wingspread November, 2022 Wingsprea | October, 2022 Wingspread | September, 2022 Wingspread | August, 2022 Wingspread | July, 2022 Wingspread | June, 2022 Wingspread | May, 2022 Wingspead | April, 2022 Wingspread | March, 2022 Wingspread | February, 2022 Wingspread | January, 2022 Wingspread | | Year 2019 Wingspreads | August, 2016 Wingspread | 2016 Wingspreads | 2014 Wingspreads | 2013 Wingspreads | 2012 Wingspreads | 2011 Wingspreads | 2010 Wingspreads | 2009 Wingspreads | 2008 Wingspreads | 2007 Wingspreads | 2006 Wingspreads | 2005 Wingspreads | 2004 Wingspreads | 2003 Wingspreads | 2002 Wingspreads | 2001 Wingspreads | August, 2001 Wingspread | November, 2001 Wingspread | December, 2001 Wingspread | 2000 Wingspreads | 1999 Wingspreads | 2015 Wingspreads | Year 2017 Wingspreads | 2018 Wingspreads | Year 2020 Wingspreads | Year 2021 Wingspreads | Year 2022 Wingspreads | Year 2023 Wingspreads | | Return Home | Current Wingspread | Wingspread Archives | Contact Us | |
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