Faith & Fear
Sermon Notes
When we think of David, our first thought is his victory over Goliath. Other incidents would be his sin against and with Bathsheba, his anointing and call as a young man, his problems with Saul and Absalom and his friendship with Jonathan. We usually remember the spectacular, the traumatic and the glorious. However, when God remembers David, He remembers something quite different about him. Some 1,000 years after his death, Paul speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, reveals what God remembers about David in Acts. 13:22, “I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do”. Is this not something that we would want to be said about us? It’s here that it would make sense for us to then say “great, well tell me what I need to do what David did so that I have what was said about him to be said about me.”
Eugene Peterson reminds us in his book about the story of David that David's life doesn't necessarily present us with a polished ideal to which we should aspire to, but with the rough edged actuality in which we see humanity being formed and the presence of God in our human conditions. I love that, because when you actually take the time to look at the life of David, you see this entire range of humanness and existence and life that happens and in every crack and crevice of that existence you see a man who is becoming more and more aware of God and His response to God.
Eugene Peterson goes on to say that “we are never more alive than when we are dealing with God”. David deals with God in the middle of his humanness and existence. David was an unfortunate parent and an unfaithful husband. He used his hands to kill mighty animals and used those same hands to craft poetry and songs that are still referenced today. Those things, though important, according to scripture, don’t categorize him, but His experience with God in those things, according to Acts 13:22, did.
Psalm 56 (HCSB) — For the choir director: according to “A Silent Dove Far Away.” A Davidic Miktam. When the Philistines seized him in Gath. 1 Be gracious to me, God, for man tramples me; he fights and oppresses me all day long. 2 My adversaries trample me all day, for many arrogantly fight against me. 3 When I am afraid, I will trust in You. 4 In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I will not fear. What can man do to me? 5 They twist my words all day long; all their thoughts against me are evil. 6 They stir up strife, they lurk; they watch my steps while they wait to take my life. 7 Will they escape in spite of such sin? God, bring down the nations in wrath. 8 You Yourself have recorded my wanderings. Put my tears in Your bottle. Are they not in Your records? 9 Then my enemies will retreat on the day when I call. This I know: God is for me. 10 In God, whose word I praise, in the Lord, whose word I praise, 11 in God I trust; I will not fear. What can man do to me? 12 I am obligated by vows to You, God; I will make my thank offerings to You. 13 For You delivered me from death, even my feet from stumbling, to walk before God in the light of life.
Here’s the backstory: David is a young man who God has anointed to become the next king of Israel (1 Samuel 16:1, 12 13); the current king, Saul, is obviously not in favor of this, so Saul turns against David (1 Samuel 18:10…) and sets out to kill him (1 Samuel 19:1).
Like any sane person who doesn’t want to get killed, David runs for his life and unfortunately ends up in the hands of his greatest enemy, the Philistines. To add insult to injury, David also has in his possession the sword of Goliath, who was the Philistines greatest champion and hero (1 Samuel 21:9–10).
This is clearly not a good situation for David. The people of Gath immediately recognize David and to avoid being captured, David acts like he's crazy to escape the deadly situation (vv. 12–15).
He escapes and finds himself in a cave and David writes Psalm 56 in the midst of this terrifying situation. In it, David admits that he’s afraid for his life multiple times, but even in his fear, he shows this amazing faith that, I would say, only comes from when you have experienced God. David, in his fear, asserts that steadfast trust in the Lord is the only solution to a troubling scenario like this. Easy to say, but what does that kind of trust actually look like?
The first thing I want us to see this morning is this…
It’s possible for fear and faith to occupy the space of our minds at the same time…
Guess what…according to this Psalm…that's ok. How can I say that? Because David opens up the psalm expressing his fear boldly. He isn’t trying to hide it, he's not ashamed of it, he’s vocal about it.
Lord, I need your grace! I need your mercy! Why? Because of what's taking place in my life here at this moment! Do you hear the tone in the psalm?
David is overwhelmed. If you look closely at verse 1,2 and 5, David describes how men are trampling on him, oppressing him, and injuring him, and he says this happens “all day long”. It’s as if he’s saying, “Bruh!!! I can’t take a breath. First it’s Saul; now it’s the Philistines. It’s one thing after another.”
I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve been there before. You ever heard that saying I can’t win for losing. There's always something coming up and the consistency of it is just overwhelming.
He’s oppressed. He shares how his enemies are opposing him and fighting against him as well as twisting his words. Taking his words out of context if you will. Have you ever been slandered? This is a difficult form of opposition, particularly when you’ve done nothing wrong. David had done nothing wrong, yet Saul and others opposed him in 1 Samuel. Have you ever been opposed for doing something right? Have you ever been unjustly attacked by others? Has someone ever plotted strife against you?
Add to all of that, David just feels afraid and isolated. My man is in a cave by himself. Not to find peace and quiet, but to escape for his life and he’s afraid. Three times in this Psalm he says I’m afraid.
Family, we may not have people after our lives like David did but every single one of us has come face to face with things that are fear inducing.
We’re all familiar with fear. To the little kid who has to have a night light on because of what the think lives in the closet or under the bed to the adult who just got the diagnoses at the hospital.
It’s frightening to think about what people can do to you. They can slander you, ruin your reputation, or fire you from your job. Your spouse could abandon you. People you love can abuse you, harm you, and hurt you. And it’s not only people who make us afraid but also circumstances. The threat of a tornado, terrorism, or cancer can leave us paralyzed with fear.
Like David we fear the unknown. Even with little things we can become so worried and anxious. Fear is very real, but family, so is our faith.
Do you see how David responds to all of this? He asks a really interesting rhetorical question, twice in this Psalm: What can man do to me?
I mean, “nothing” seems to be the implied answer to his question. BUT…Idk David… It seems like man can do a lot to you, my guy.
These men can attack, oppose, injure, threaten, and even kill you. David understands this and he expresses his fear of these dangers with honesty, which is why this Psalm is important for every single one of us!
This is not some superficial religiosity that ignores life’s realities. David is running for his life. Enemies pursue him on one side and surround him on the other, and he is afraid.
But like I shared earlier, fear and faith can occupy the same space. You see, even though David is very afraid, he lets us know that he won’t remain there. Why? Because of his faith in God.
Being afraid is ok, but eventually, our faith has to win out. It may take time and our situation may take forever to improve or may not improve at all, but I have to trust that God is for me, even in the middle of my fear. How can I say that?
Tim Keller on speaking about this Psalm says that “Faith is not a vague sense that ‘God will work it out.’ It comes from prayerful immersion in the Scripture, the word of God.”
David tells us three times in vv. 4 and 10 that he puts his trust in God, “whose word I praise.” To trust in God is to trust the value of His word.
David trusted God by believing that God would actually do what He had promised to do. And what was that promise? 1 Samuel 16, God told David he was going to be given a kingdom and make him the head of a royal dynasty.
David was like, yo…God said this and I’m not a king yet and I don’t have a kingdom. That means that this isn’t my burial ground. This isn’t where it ends!
If we’re honest, at this point in the story—hiding out from the murderous Saul in desert caves, acting insane to escape the Philistines—this promise seems laughable. Despite present appearances, however, David still believes God’s word, so much so that it causes him to praise God (vv. 4 and 10) even while he is still neck-deep in his circumstances.
David takes God at His word and acts upon it, even when the circumstances don’t seem to match. For David, this means stepping out of the cave while the odds still seem stacked against him. He continued the fight that eventually culminated in his ascension to the throne of Israel (2 Samuel 5:1-3). That is trust in God even in the face of fear.
But what about us? How do we experience God when we are fearful? For starters, I think we need to remind ourselves that…
God is aware of your fears
Look at verse 8. 8 You Yourself have recorded my wanderings. Put my tears in Your bottle. Are they not in Your records?
Because they lived in arid climates, ancient Israelites would preserve precious liquids such as water or wine or milk in special containers. David was asking God to store his tears like that. He knew his tears were precious to God, every single one of them, and that they were in God’s “book”
David at this moment is saying, I’m going through it! But I know that you still care for me. You know when I’m lost. You have bottled up my tears. Even in my hardest moments, I’m still under your care. Family, listen to me, God is not cold towards our present sufferings. How could he be?
In fact, in Matthew 10 Jesus says this to His disciples: Matthew 10:28–31 (HCSB) — 28 Don’t fear those who kill the body but are not able to kill the soul; rather, fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. 29 Aren’t two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s consent. 30 But even the hairs of your head have all been counted. 31 So don’t be afraid therefore; you are worth more than many sparrows.
From the very beginning God promised us that He would send us a rescuer and we know this rescuer to be Jesus who told us, to take heart or to not fear because He has overcome the world. Listen family, Jesus has come to give us hope, give us peace, and to bring us salvation. These things aren't exclusive from one another, they are a package deal.
When we are in the throes of suffering and we are fearful of the outcome, we need to remember that we do not suffer alone, God sent Jesus to us. And in His sending Jesus, Jesus doesn't just offer us words in our suffering; he offers us his nail-scarred hands. He doesn't say, "Your suffering is small, but your sin is great." No, he says, "Your suffering is real, and I will take it on myself. You sin is real, and I will take it on myself as well. Whatever plagues you, whatever ails you, whatever breaks you down, I take that as my own ... and I give you my life in return.
If you are suffering, in pain, or hurting today then take hope: God is giving you an opportunity for you to experience His mercy and love towards you even in that.
You may not want to hear that because you want rescue from your issues but listen, our hope is not in our healing but the healer. Christ has the power and authority to do all, including save us from our current issues, but he has the right to say “yes” or “no” but since we know he has all power, we do not have the right to not believe he can. He can move right now. Which means…
God can be trusted even in the hardest of circumstances
David knew that his enemies were real and his circumstances were difficult, but He knew that God could be trusted.
Oftentimes we allow our circumstances to overpower the promises of God. This is what I mean by that:
Your doubts are high because of something that took place in the past. You’ve suffered abuse from a parent when you were a child. Or a dad or mom may have walked out on your family or your parents may have gone through a divorce.
You have sin in your life that you want gone and you have 2-3 weeks of solid progress but then you slip up and you are back to space number 1.
You aren't sure if you can trust God because you’re just waiting for God to let you down like your dad did or your mom did or your friend did.
You have a hard time trusting Him and taking Him at His word because you compare His relationship with those who have hurt you. It has created a barrier between you and God.
When doubts creep into our emotions they can create barriers between us and God whether we’re aware of them or not but I need you to see something nestled in this text that could be easy to miss.
10 In God, whose word I praise, in the Lord, whose word I praise,
We can have faith in His Word
Listen: Our faith is as strong as the object of our faith. Who and what you believe in will determine the strength of your faith. If I’m spending time depending and putting my faith in myself, or my family, or my friends, or my possessions I’m going to get let down.
This psalm does not end in verse 13, because it points to something greater. More specifically, along with all of Scripture, it points to someone greater.
Jesus is at the center of the Bible, and he is at the center of this Psalms. if thats true, the ultimate exhortation in Psalm 56, when seen in light of the entirety of Scripture, is this: when you are overwhelmed or opposed, alone or afraid, place your hope in the Son of God. Why? Because…
Jesus, is the fullness of God’s character. All of the attributes of God that David lists out in Psalm 56—his omnipotence and mercy, his justice and kindness—are revealed in the person of Christ. And so the call to put your trust in the character of God is a call to put your trust in Christ.
He is the one who delivers us from darkness and death, he has taken the judgment due our sin. Jesus has died on a cross in our place, and he has risen from the grave in victory over death so that you and I might walk with God in the light of life.
Just as David said in Psalm 56:9, “This I know: God is for me,” Paul will go on to say of those who are in Christ: “If God is for us, who is against us?” (Rom 8:31). To have this type of faith
means we must be grounded in the work of Christ for us.
If God, through Christ, has saved you from sin, death, hell, and the devil, then in what circumstance in this world can you not trust him? What can man do to you? You can trust God amid overwhelming opposition, loneliness, and fear. He has taken on sin and death on your behalf, so you now have nothing to fear.
Going back to verse 10, David praises God’s word because it brings light to his life. Do you remember what Jesus says about himself? “I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows me will never walk in the darkness but will have the light of life. . . A thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance.” (John 8:12; 10:10)
As followers of Jesus, we delight in God’s word but also in Christ, the Word of God made flesh, is the light of life. Fix your gaze on the face of Christ, and you will find yourself moving from fear to faith. Like David you will find yourself saying, “In God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can mere humans do to me?” (Ps 56:11).
We trust in God by believing in what He has said and, no less importantly, by believing that He actually intends to fulfill His word. Hebrews 10:23 tells us that our hope is well-founded because “He who promised is faithful.” Just like David, our hope is based on God’s faithfulness, not our present circumstances. So let’s step out in faith like David, praising God for who He is and living lives that show we believe He will accomplish all his good purposes, just as He said He would.
Leap Over a Wall
Ibid, pg 5
David Platt, Matt Mason, and Jim Shaddix, Exalting Jesus in Psalms 51-100 (Nashville, TN: Holman Reference, 2020).
David Platt, Matt Mason, and Jim Shaddix, Exalting Jesus in Psalms 51-100 (Nashville, TN: Holman Reference, 2020).
The Songs of Jesus, Tim Keller