Latest / Reformed Thinking / Taking Refuge in God Until the Storm Passes (Psalm 57) | Charles Spurgeon

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Taking Refuge in God Until the Storm Passes (Psalm 57) | Charles Spurgeon · Reformed Thinking

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  Hello and welcome to Reformed Thinking.
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  We're really glad you're with us today.
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  We are, and if you're familiar with what we do here, you know
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  we don't just skim the surface. No, we, yeah, we like to take
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  the archives of church history, you know, the dusty books, the
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  forgotten commentaries, the heavy theology, and really pull
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  them apart to see how they work. And maybe more to the point, how
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  they apply to you. We're two Protestant Christians
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  and we come at the world through the lens of the Westminster
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  Confession of Faith. Which is really just our way of
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  saying we take the sovereignty of God and the authority of
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  Scripture very, very seriously. Seriously.
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  But we hope not joylessly. Exactly.
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  So today we are opening up a massive resource.
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  It's Charles Spurgeon's The Treasury of David.
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  And if you've never encountered this work, it's it's not just a
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  commentary. It's more like a collection, a
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  curated anthology of the best thoughts on the Psalms from
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  centuries of Christian thinkers. And we're going to zoom in
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  specifically on Psalm 57. A Psalm Spurgeon just clearly
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  loved. He called it a treasure trove.
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  But to really get it, you have to understand the the geography
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  of it, right? This is not a song composed in a
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  music room or on some palace balcony.
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  Yeah. Let's set that scene, because
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  the context here changes everything.
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  I mean, if I sing God is my refuge while I'm sitting here in
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  a comfortable chair, that's one thing.
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  It's nice. It's nice.
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  But David is singing this from inside a cave.
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  And not just any cave. The superscription, that little
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  bit of text at the top of the Psalm that, let's be honest, we
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  often just skip right over, tells us this is when he fled
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  from Saul in The Cave. So scholars have an idea of
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  where this was. They do most like Fell Luck and
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  Kiddo who Spurgeon quotes. They identify this as either The
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  Cave of a Dulum or in Jetty. And based on the sources you and
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  I were looking at, this is not just some small hole in the
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  wall. Oh, not at all.
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  It's closer to a labyrinth. Travelers who've described these
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  caves in Palestine say they're massive.
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  Massive how? Capable of holding thousands of
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  men, they have natural arches, huge winding passages, deep dark
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  recesses. It's confusing.
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  It's damp, cold, it's cold. Spurgeon has this great line
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  where he says the Psalm has a taste of the place.
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  And you really can. You can almost feel the chill of
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  the limestone coming off the page.
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  So our mission for this deep dive, then, is to trace the
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  trajectory of this fugitive. We want to figure out how a man
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  starts in the bowels of the earth, as Bergin puts it,
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  terrified for his life, and by the end of this song, he's
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  standing at the mouth of The Cave, basically shouting at the
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  sunrise. It's a path from the pit to the
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  peak, and it all starts with a very strange Hebrew word in the
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  title, Alta shift. Alta Shift.
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  It sounds a bit like a sneeze, but it's actually it's a
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  command, isn't it? It is.
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  It translates to destroy, not destroy.
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  Not now. That seems like a strange title
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  for a song. Is he talking to God or is he
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  talking to someone? Else, and that is the
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  fascinating tension right there, it operates on at least 2
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  levels. OK, so historically, if this is
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  The Cave incident from First Samuel, David actually had King
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  Saul at his mercy. Right.
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  Saul wanders into The Cave. To relieve himself completely
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  unaware that David and his armed men are hiding back in the
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  shadows and David's men are whispering, You know this is it.
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  God has delivered him into your hand.
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  Kill him. But David stops.
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  Them he does, he effectively, says Altasheth, destroy him.
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  Not so. On one hand, it's a statement of
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  David's own restraint. He refused to kill the Lord's
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  anointed even when he had the perfect chance.
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  But on the other hand, this is a prayer.
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  He's got to be talking to God. That's the second level, he's
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  pleading. Lord, I have not destroyed my
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  enemy. Please do not let my enemy
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  destroy me. It creates this powerful the
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  symmetry. David is asking for the very
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  same mercy he just extended to Saul.
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  And I noticed in our prep for this, this isn't a one off
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  title. It's not unique to Psalm 57.
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  No, it's part of a cluster. Psalms 575859 and 75 all have
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  this title, Altisheth. They're often called the
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  Destroy, not Psalms, and they all kind of dealt with this
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  precarious balance between the destruction of the wicked and
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  the preservation of the righteous.
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  OK, there's another term right next to it.
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  Mictum. It's like I see that word a lot
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  in the Psalms and just kind of my eyes glaze over it.
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  What does it actually imply? Well, Nick Tom is usually
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  defined as a golden Psalm or sometimes a secret.
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  A golden Psalm. Yeah, and Spurgeon uses a
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  metaphor here that I think is just brilliant.
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  He imagines the Psalm as a golden casket or maybe jewelry
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  box. Like a lock box for something
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  precious. That's it exactly.
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  The idea is that David has a secret joy, a precious jewel of
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  comfort that's locked up inside this terrible situation.
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  To an outside observer, David is just a fugitive in a dirty cave.
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  But inside, spiritually, he holds this victim, this golden
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  secret of faith. So our job is to try and pry the
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  lid open. That is the goal.
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  All right, let's look at the first verse.
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  Though David doesn't ease into it, he just bursts out Be
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  merciful unto me, oh God, be merciful unto me the.
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  Repetition is the first clue to his state of mind.
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  He says it twice and you have to ask why.
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  Because the danger is right there.
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  It's immediate. It's immediate.
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  There's an old Latin proverb that Spurgeon quotes here.
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  He gives twice. Who gives quickly?
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  Meaning if you need help right now, you ask with double the
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  intensity. Precisely.
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  David isn't writing a theological treatise here on the
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  nature of mercy. He is knocking on heaven's door
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  with both fists. He can probably hear the
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  footsteps of Saul's soldiers outside The Cave.
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  He needs God to show up now. And then he gives us this image
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  that has become one of the most famous metaphors in all the
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  scripture. He says, For my soul trusteth in
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  thee. Yeah, in the shadow of thy wings
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  will I make my refuge. The shadow of thy wings.
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  It's an incredibly tender image, especially coming from a
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  hardened warrior like David. It really is, but I want to push
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  on this image a bit. I mean, usually when we hear
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  wings, our minds go straight to birds.
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  And that's the natural interpretation.
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  The mother hen and her chicks. It's a picture of total
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  dependence, right? When a hawk, which would
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  represent the enemy Saul, is circling overhead, the little
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  chicks don't try to fight back. They don't have talons or beaks
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  to defend themselves. They just run for cover.
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  They run to the Mother. They hide in the warmth, in the
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  darkness under her wings. You know it's a safe place, but
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  it's also a blind place. The chick can't see what's
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  happening outside anymore. That is such a great point, and
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  faith often involves that kind of that blindness.
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  You're covered, which means you can no longer see the danger,
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  but it also means you can't see the solution.
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  You just have to trust the warmth and the presence of the
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  protector. But as reformed believers, we
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  can't help but see the temple imagery here too can.
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  We have to The shadow of wings isn't just a barnyard metaphor.
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  It would have immediately evoked the Holy of Holies.
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  The Ark of the Covenant was covered by the outstretched
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  wings of the Cherubim. So David is picturing himself
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  hiding beneath the mercy seat. Yes, he's seeking refuge in the
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  covenant presence of God itself. He's hiding right there beneath
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  the very throne of grace. So whether you see it as a
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  mother hen or the mighty cherubim, the result is the
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  same. Divine protection is standing
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  between the victim and the threat.
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  And he puts a time limit on it. He says he'll stay there until
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  these calamities be overpassed. And that little word until does
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  so much heavy lifting. In that phrase, it suggests that
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  the calamities are transient. They are on the move.
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  They're like a storm cloud passing over.
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  But the refuge, the wings that remains.
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  Correct. The reform view of suffering
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  always pivots on this distinction between the temporal
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  and the eternal. Our troubles are matters of
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  time. Our safety is a matter of
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  eternity. The storm passes, but the rock,
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  or in this case the wings, remains.
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  That brings us to verse 2, which contains what might be the most
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  Reformed insight in this whole text.
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  I will cry unto God most High, unto God that performeth all
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  things for me. This verse is a gold mine,
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  Spurgeon points out a linguistic quirk in the Hebrew here that,
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  well, it completely changes how you read the verse.
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  It's about a missing word, isn't it?
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  Yes, in the original Hebrew, the verb performeth is what we call
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  a transitive verb. It expects an object, something
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  that it's acting on, but there's no object written in the text.
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  It literally reads unto God that performeth for me.
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  So the all things that we see in our English Bibles, like the
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  King James that's been inserted by the translators to make the
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  sentence grammatically complete in English.
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  You're right, and Spurgeon absolutely loves this.
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  He calls that little gap a carte blanche, a blank check.
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  A blank check. The fact that the object is
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  missing means that you, the believer, can fill it in with
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  whatever your current necessity demands.
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  That is a very powerful concept. So if I need salvation, I can
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  just write salvation into that blank space.
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  God that performance salvation for me.
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  If you need your daily bread, God that performeth provision
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  for me. If you feel like your reputation
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  has been destroyed, God, that performeth vindication for me.
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  It turns the verse into a universal promise that adapts to
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  any situation. It does, and structurally it
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  places the burden of action entirely on God's shoulders.
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  Notice David doesn't say I will perform, he says I will cry and
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  God performeth. This is the very essence of
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  Providence. We are the supplicants.
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  God is the actor. He's not just a passive observer
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  in that cave. He is the performing God.
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  And verse 3 seems to double down on that act of nature.
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  He shall send from heaven and save me.
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  Yeah, think about David's resources at that moment.
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  What does he have? A few hundred men who are
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  distressed, in debt, discontented.
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  He has no army, no political leverage, no palace.
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  He is completely cut off from earthly help.
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  So when the earth is cut. Off Heaven opens up.
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  Spurgeon notes that if there are no instruments on earth to help
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  David, God will just mobilize heaven.
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  And the text personifies God's attributes here.
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  It says God shall send forth his mercy and his truth.
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  It's like there's special agents being dispatched.
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  Just so, mercy and truth are depicted as God's ministers sent
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  from the throne room to perform the saving work.
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  Mercy comes to cover the sin and the misery.
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  Truth comes to fulfill the promise in the covenant.
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  They are the tactical team sent to extract David from that cave.
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  Extract him from what though? I mean, we've talked about The
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  Cave itself, but verse 4 introduces the living threats.
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  My soul is among lions. The imagery shifts here from the
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  landscape to the inhabitants. David feels like a Daniel before
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  Daniel's time. He's trapped.
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  And the sources we looked at suggest the Hebrew word might
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  not just be lions, but specifically lionesses.
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  Which just amps up the terror, doesn't it?
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  Lionesses are the primary hunters.
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  They're fiercer. They're more aggressive,
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  especially when they're protecting their territory or
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  they're young. It implies that Saul and his men
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  aren't just annoyed with David, they're hunting with a primal,
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  aggressive ferocity. But then the metaphor morphs
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  into something that's, well, it's even more disturbing.
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  We get this image of cannibalism.
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  From the reproach of him that would swallow me up.
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  And Henry Ward Beecher has a commentary on this that is just,
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  it's visceral. He talks about moral
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  cannibalism. Beecher has such a sharp way
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  with words. He's not talking about literally
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  eating flesh. He's talking about eating a
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  man's reputation. To swallow a person is to
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  consume their standing, their honor, their very name in the
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  community. He has this line about them
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  broiling a man's honor over the coals of indignation.
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  And then inviting the neighbors to the feast.
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  It's a perfect, horrifying description of slander.
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  When you destroy someone's reputation, you're consuming
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  them. And Beecher points out that
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  these moral cannibals actually enjoy it.
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  They savor the destruction of another person.
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  You know, that hits close to home.
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  You might not be facing physical lines today, but I think a lot
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  of our listeners know what it's like to be in a workplace or
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  even a family dynamic where people are trying to swallow you
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  up. Absolutely.
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  And look at the weapons they use.
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  It's right there in verse 4, whose teeth are Spears and
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  arrows and their tongue a sharp sword.
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  It's. The weaponization of the mouth.
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  We teach kids that old rhyme. You know, sticks and stones may
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  break my bones, but David here seems to think that words are
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  actually the sharper weapons. He absolutely does.
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  The imagery is so precise. Teeth are like Spears, they
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  puncture. But the tongue?
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  The tongue is a sword. It slashes.
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  It severs relationships. It cuts right through a person's
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  dignity. As one of the commentators
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  Spurgeon sites says, no weapon is so terrible as a tongue
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  sharpened on the Devil's grindstone.
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  And Saul had spent years doing this to David, painting him as a
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  traitor, poisoning the minds of Israel against him.
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  That was the sword. But then, then we see this
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  amazing reversal in verse 6. They have prepared a net for my
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  steps. They have digged a pit before me
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  into the midst whereof they are fallen themselves.
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  This is the beautiful irony of Providence.
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  We often call it the lex talionis, the law of
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  retaliation. The boomerang effect, right?
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  The enemy digs a pit right in the victim's ordinary path.
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  This is deliberate, calculated hunting.
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  But the theological lesson here is that evil is a stream that
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  inevitably flows back to its source.
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  The very trap that Saul laid for David became the trap for Saul.
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  And it's so literal in this story.
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  Saul went into that cave thinking it was a secure place
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  to rest. He walked right into the pit
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  where David and his men were hiding.
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  And David was standing there with a sword.
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  He could have ended the entire conflict right there.
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  The hunter became the haunted. It just shows us that God so
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  often allows the wicked to construct the very apparatus of
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  their own defeat. Now, before we get to the
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  second-half of the Psalm, the praise half, we really need to
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  pause, because if we just read this as a page from David's
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  diary, we miss the much deeper layer.
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  The Christological layer. Exactly how do we justify
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  reading Jesus into a Psalm about David hiding in a cave?
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  Well. Christ is the great son of
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  David, and in Reformed theology we see David as a type, a kind
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  of foreshadowing of the Messiah. John Boyes, an old English
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  divine whom Spurgeon quotes, maps this out beautifully.
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  So if David is a type of Christ. Then The Cave of a dull
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  prefigures the grave Joseph of Arimatheist tomb.
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  Christ, too, descended into the bowels of the earth.
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  And the Lions, Who are the Lions?
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  The lions represent the chief priests and the rulers who were,
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  you know, roaring for his blood before Pilate.
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  What about the net they prepared?
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  The net represents the trap questions of the Pharisees.
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  Remember how they were always trying to catch him in his
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  words? Is it lawful to pay taxes to
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  Caesar? They were digging a pit to
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  entrap. Him and the Sharp.
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  That's the crowd. The crowd crying, Crucify him,
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  crucify him. It fits perfectly.
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  So when we read Psalm 57, we're not just reading a historical
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  anecdote. We are seeing a mirror of the
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  Gospel story. Christ went into the heart of
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  the darkness, surrounded by the bulls of Bashan, and he emerged
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  victorious. That gives so much more weight
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  to the transition we're about to see.
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  Because if this is the pattern of Christ, it's also the pattern
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  for the Christian. We move from the pit to the
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  praise. And that pivot, that turning
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  point happens in verse 7. My heart is fixed.
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  Oh God, my heart is fixed. I will sing and give praise.
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  This is the hinge on which the entire Psalm swings, so.
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  What does he mean by fixed? Is he just being stubborn here?
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  Like my mind is made-up. The Hebrew word nisham.
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  It gives us a much richer nuance than that.
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  It can mean fitted, prepared or established.
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  Prepared. Think of a musical instrument.
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  If you have a guitar that's been sitting in a damp, cold cave,
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  the strings are going to go slack.
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  It'll be out of tune. You can't play a melody on it to
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  sticks the heart in the sense is to tune the strings.
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  Oh, I love that. So David is saying I have tuned
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  the instrument of my soul. Precisely, he's saying, Lord,
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  despite the dampness, despite the fear, I have cranked the
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  tuning pegs. I have brought my will into
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  alignment with your will. I am ready to play.
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  And you can feel the determination in his voice.
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  I will sing not I might sing or I feel like singing.
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  It's an act of the will. He is commanding his emotions.
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  He's not waiting for the feeling of joy arrive, He is deciding to
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  sing and letting the feeling follow.
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  And then he starts talking to himself in verse 8.
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  It's almost like a pep talk. I wake up my glory awake, sultry
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  and harp. I wake up my glory.
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  What a fascinating phrase. Most commentators, and Spurgeon
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  agrees, think that glory here refers to the soul, or more
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  specifically, the tongue, as the instrument of the souls praise.
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  But why call the tongue glory? That seems unusual.
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  Because the ability to praise God with coherent, intelligent
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  words is what distinguish which is humanity from the beasts.
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  The lions in The Cave have strength, they have teeth, but
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  they don't have this glory. They can roar, but they Can't
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  Sing psalms. David is calling his highest
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  faculties to attention. He's telling his soul, wake up.
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  We have work to do that the Lions cannot do.
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  And then we get this incredibly bold, poetic line.
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  I myself will awake early. And the translation there, it's
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  actually a bit tame. The literal Hebrew is even more
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  striking. What is it?
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  I will awake the dawn. I will awake the dawn.
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  That sounds completely backwards.
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  The sun wakes us up, not the other way around.
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  Exactly. Usually the dawn breaks, the
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  light hits our eyes when we begin to stir.
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  David is saying his praise is so eager, so pent up from the night
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  of fear, that he is going to wake up the sun.
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  He's going to sing the sun into the sky.
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  That's a beautiful reversal of how we normally think about it.
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  He's not waiting for the light to bring him joy.
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  His joy is going to summon the light.
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  It's a profound lesson on worship, isn't it?
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  We so often say, I'll praise God when I see the sunrise.
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  You know I'll praise him when the situation gets better.
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  David says no, I'm going to start the music in the dark, and
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  the dawn will just have to catch up with me.
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  Spurgeon calls it a powerful rejection of sleepy verses and
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  drowsy worship. And this praise isn't just for
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  him and his men hiding in The Cave.
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  Look at verse 9. I will praise the O Lord among
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  the people. I will sing into the among the
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  nations. And here we see the missionary
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  spirit of the Old Testament burning so brightly.
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  It's amazing when you stop and think about where he is.
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  He's a Jewish fugitive hiding in a hole in the ground in the
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  middle of Judea, and he's talking about the nations, the
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  gentiles, hearing his song. It just breaks the boundaries of
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  bigotry and nationalism. Standard nationalist view at the
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  time might have been God destroy the nations and save Israel.
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  David's prayer is I want the nations to hear this song of
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  praise. He is envisioning a global
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  audience for the grace of Jehovah.
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  Even at his absolute lowest moment.
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  His vision is worldwide. And then we reach the grand
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  finale, the chorus. It appears in verse 5 and it
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  comes back in verses 10 and 11. Be thou exalted, O God, above
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  the heavens. This is all about the scope of
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  God's mercy and truth. Verse 10 says, For thy mercy is
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  great unto the heavens, and thy truth unto the clouds.
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  Spurgeon paints this visual here that I just can't get out of my
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  head. He imagines David finally
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  stepping out of the dark cave. Yes, the night of terror is
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  over. He has, in his own words,
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  awakened the dawn. He walks out to the mouth of the
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  cavern. He looks up at the vast blue
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  sky. He sees the clouds floating by.
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  And in that moment, he sees the mercy of God as this massive
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  ocean filling the entire space between earth and sky.
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  It's just everywhere. It fills everything.
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  But then in verse 11, he goes even higher.
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  Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens.
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  So God's glory isn't even contained by the sky.
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  No creation is vast and glorious, but the Creator is
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  greater still. The mercy reaches to the clouds,
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  but the glory of God must go above the heavens.
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  The ultimate goal of all history, of all our personal
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  suffering, and of all our deliverance, is the sunrise of
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  divine glory over both heaven and earth.
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  Let thy glory be above all the earth.
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  That is the ultimate Reformed purpose solely.
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  Dale, Gloria, glory to God alone.
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  Whether we find ourselves in The Cave or in the palace, the end
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  goal is always the exaltation of God.
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  So let's just recap this movement because it's incredible
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  when you trace it. We started with that desperate
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  cry. Destroy.
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  Not from the bowels of the Earth.
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  We saw the fear of being swallowed up, consumed by lions
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  and moral cannibals. We saw the desperate plea for
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  the shadow of wings, that beautiful mix of the mother hens
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  comfort and the Holy of Holies power.
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  Then we saw the heart getting fixed, tuned up like a harp,
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  right there in the darkness of The Cave.
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  Finally standing at the cave's mouth, waking the dawn and
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  filling the entire universe with praise.
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  It's a complete track from terror to triumph, and it all
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  rests on that one pillar we discussed from verse 2.
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  God that performeth all things for me.
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  That blank check of Providence is valid even when you're in the
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  lion's den. It really is.
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  You know, as we're closing out here, there's one thing that
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  struck me that wasn't explicitly in the text, but the silence on
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  this point speaks volumes. And what's that?
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  The Psalm talks all about lions. It talks about their teeth being
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  Spears and their tongues being swords, but nowhere in the Psalm
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  does David mention fighting the lions.
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  That is a striking observation. He doesn't say I sharpen my
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  sword. He doesn't say I set traps for
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  the lions. He says I tuned my heart.
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  He tunes his harp, he sings to God, and he lets God handle the
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  lions. That seems to be the essence of
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  faith right there. The battle belongs to the Lord,
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  The song belongs to us. That's beautifully put.
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  So here's a final question for you listening right now.
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  If your heart were fixed, if it were tuned up like an instrument
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  right the second, what song would it play?
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  You might be in a cave of your own, the lions might be roaring,
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  but if you tuned your heart to the sovereignty of the God who
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  performs all things, what would that melody be?
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  A question well worth meditating on this week.
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  Thank you so much for joining us for this deep dive into Psalm
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  57. We hope it's encouraged you to
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  trust the God who performs all things for you.
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  Until next time. This has been reformed thinking
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  goodbye.