As we continue our way through the Psalms we once again see the connection between the praises offered to God and what God has done for his people.

‌We see this right away in verse one when the Psalmist says that he will recount all of the LORD’s wonderful deeds. As we continue through this Psalm we see a list of things that God has done for David and it is an impressive list. You can easily understand why David has sat down to write this song. As I said, the stuff that David mentions that God has done for him is pretty impressive and it is all stuff that is related to David as king. This list of the deeds of God here isn’t that something small has happened and David is happy. He didn’t pray for a new bike for his birthday and he got one. It is also important that we understand that this faithfulness to David is also a faithfulness to the people of God. David is more than just an ordinary earthly power. He is the anointed of God and that anointing is not just that he has the authority as a king over a particular plot of land in the middle east. The faithfulness of God to David points to the faithfulness of God that will come in the one who will one day descend from David. When we talk about God being faithful it encompasses all these things and that is important as we consider how the Psalm applies to us, but we will get to that a little later. Let’s consider this list of things that David is recounting.

Of the psalms we have looked at so far it is likely that Psalm 8 is the one that we are most familiar with. It is one of the psalms that you come to and you read through it and discover that several phrases that are used in prayers and songs come from this Psalm. And of course we do, this is a psalm of praise with majestic language not only about the glory of God but it also sets out how amazing it is that the maker of heaven and earth cares for us.

‌Right away with the first verse we see a statement that we say in praise along with the Psalmist: O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. As we read this you may have notice that in the original language this isn’t repetitive like it is in the English. As you’ve heard me mention before in our English bibles we get an indication of when the proper name of God is being used in the Old Testament. When we see all caps used for the word Lord it means that in the Hebrew it is the proper name of God, Yahweh, being used. You may have also noticed that the second time the word lord is used in English it isn’t in all caps. There in the original language it is not the proper name of God but the Hebrew word for lord, which is adonai.

Here in the seventh Psalm we find David proclaiming that he takes refuge in the LORD. We have seen so far that David’s life is anything but ordinary. As the anointed one of God he is pursued by those who would do him harm in order to take his position of authority. As we think about these circumstances that the King of Israel might get himself in it would be easy to find the solution in building up earthly armies and resting on the military strength and strategy that you can come up with. Despite our natural human tendency to find our strength within ourselves we find that David finds his refuge in God. Yahweh is the one who will save him from these assorted difficulties that he encounters. We see this trust that David has in the LORD in verse one when he says O Lord, my God, in you do I take my refuge. His refuge isn’t in bows or swords. His trust is in God. The LORD is the fortress that he will use to remain safe and as it continues we get the idea of how serious the situation is for David. If God does not shelter him from this storm he is experiencing he believes they may tear apart his soul like a lion and he will be torn to pieces.

We see once again that the Psalmist is in a very desperate state of affairs. We see, as verse 1 comes about, that he is begging God, Rebuke me not in your anger nor discipline me in your wrath. He is asking for mercy. In fact, in verse 2, we see that he's asked God to be gracious to him because he is languishing. He's in a desperate state of affairs to the point that his bones are troubled. In fact, verse three, My soul is greatly troubled, but you, O Lord, how long... In other words, he is wondering how long is God going to allow this to happen? How long is this state of affairs going to be the way that His life is because this is getting deep down into Him? Notice, My bones are troubled. Now, I don't know if you've ever had something go wrong where you were grieving or you felt it down within your bones physically, but we know what this phrase means, and there are ways in which we grieve and things that we feel that affect parts of us that have nothing to do with what we've experienced, right? We can feel it deep down in our bones.

When we think of the Psalms, what do we normally think of? We think of Psalms of praise, right? The idea of praising God because this is a Book of Praise. It's a Book of prayers. That's what we expect. But we really haven't seen much of that yet, have we? Sure, there is ascribing of glory and honor to God, but we have seen a lot of crying out to God, haven't we? We see that here in this Psalm as well. The Psalmist asks for God to hear and consider his groaning, to give attention to the sound of his cry. The Psalmist, and we see here that it is David, he is experiencing very negative things, and he is going to God each day, calling out to him and asking for help.

Landing in the fourth chapter of the psalter, we once again see the psalmist calling out for help. He expects God to come and to rescue him. We see this right away in verse 1, Answer me when I call, O God, of my righteousness. He understands who God is. He calls out to him, understanding that this God is the God of his righteousness. He doesn't have this on his own. He needs God. And he also acknowledges what has happened in the past. You have given me relief. When I was in distress, you have answered me before, so I am trusting you to answer me again. And there is this cry here, Be gracious to me and hear my prayer. In other words, the Psalmist knows that it is a gracious act of God that he hears the prayers of his people. We don't deserve an Almighty, righteous God to hear us, but creatures of the dirt who were in rebellion against him, but we know that he is gracious and he will listen because he has listened in the past. And we see also in verse 3 that we can know that God has a particular people that he cares for, that he looks after, that he does something special with.