The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): Be strong and take heart all you who hope in the Lord. Today on the Bible Study Hour with Dr. James Boice, we'll continue our study of the Psalms as we hear David move from a desperate cry for deliverance and rescue from his enemies to an unshakable confidence in God and a remembrance of God's continued faithfulness.

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. In today's message, David starts out with a familiar cry for help to God, but he doesn't stay there. Instead, David remembers God's provision throughout his life and he confidently trusts God to remain his rock and fortress through difficult times. If you have your Bible, turn to Psalm 31.

Dr. James Boice: We're studying Psalm 31, so again I invite you to turn to that in your Bibles as we study to see what God has to say to us from the words of this psalm. One striking thing about this psalm is that it has apparently appealed to other biblical writers. Let me explain what I mean. There's a phrase in it that appealed to Jeremiah. It's the phrase "terror on every side."

You find it in verse 13. Jeremiah seems to have picked this up from the psalm and used it no less than six times in his prophecy. You find it in the 6th chapter, the 20th, twice in that chapter, the 46th chapter, the 49th, and then also in Lamentations, which Jeremiah wrote, in the second chapter.

Now we know that he borrowed it from Psalm 31 because in some of those places he reflects some of the other language of the psalm. So he's obviously thinking about that psalm and meditating on it. David said he was surrounded by terror on every side, and Jeremiah found himself to be likewise surrounded. That's interesting.

The minor prophet Jonah also seems to have borrowed from it because if you look at verse 6, "I hate those who cling to worthless idols," and then study the second chapter of Jonah, you'll find that that is there almost intact in the second chapter in Jonah's great prayer from inside the fish. You find it in verse 8. It's just before his great testimony that God had delivered him while he was still in the fish. So Jonah seems to have borrowed it.

The author of Psalm 71 very clearly borrowed this psalm. The author of 71 might even be David, although we don't know that for sure, but in the opening verses of Psalm 71, you have a reflection of the opening verses of Psalm 31. Three or four verses are repeated in the latter psalm. And most striking of all, the Lord Jesus Christ borrowed from it.

When he was on the cross and was about to die, he said, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." Well, that's what we find in verse 5 of this psalm. It's commended itself to those writers, and then also to a long line of Christians who have likewise been blessed as they've studied it.

In spite of the popularity of this psalm, it's a bit hard to outline. I look through I suppose 20 or 30 commentators every week to see how they handle these various psalms, and I discover on this one a remarkable lack of agreement on an outline. Some see it as falling into three parts, some into two parts, but even those who see it falling into two parts or three parts can't agree on the subdivisions within the parts. And so there are almost as many outlines of this psalm as there are commentators.

I've found an easy way to deal with that. I'm going to outline it on the basis of the New International Version paragraphs or stanzas. That's not entirely arbitrary, of course, because the translators obviously reflected on the movement of thought in the psalm and what goes together, and I find that each one of these stanzas that are indicated by a line that is skipped, I find in those an outline which is very, very helpful.

First of all, I do find this psalm falling into two parts, and I think that's not difficult to substantiate. The break comes toward the end after verse 20 and before verse 21. The first 20 verses are the body of the psalm. David's addressing himself to God, and the bulk of what he has to say are in those 20 verses.

Having said that, he turns to other people and he applies it, telling them what they should do on the basis of what he has just said and done. So you have a long body of the psalm, 20 verses, followed by verses 21 through 24 in which he makes an application. So that's the first main division.

When we look at the first part, there are five sections to that, and I see it flowing along this way. The first five verses are a prayer to God for help in trouble. Following that, verse 6 and going through verse 8, you have an expression of trust in God. He prays for help and then he says he trusts that God is going to give him help. And then you have the emotional heart of the psalm, verses 9 through 13, which are properly described as a lament. Here David describes what's wrong, why he's praying for help, why he's turning to God and trusting Him.

In verses 14 through 18, you have an expression of trust again, and finally in verses 19 through 20, you have another prayer, this one rising to the height of praise. If you want to graph it, it's a little bit like a wave going from a crest of a wave down into the trough and back up to the crest again.

David starts out on the crest in his prayer for help in trouble, expressing great trust in God. He expresses trust in the second stanza. At the bottom, he's giving his lament. He moves back up to trust again, and in the end, he's doing the same thing he was doing at the beginning, but with a slight addition that we'll come to.

The first five verses are a prayer for help in trouble, and as I say, this is not the kind of prayer you utter in despair. You see, if that were the case, I'd say that belongs down in the trough as well. It doesn't, it's on the crest because even though David is praying for help in trouble, he's praying with a remarkable degree of trust. One commentator calls this entire psalm a magnificent psalm of confidence, and that's true. It's the way it begins, and it's also the way it ends.

It has a theme, this first stanza, and the theme is the one I've taken for the title, "Rock of Refuge." There are two nouns in that phrase, Rock of Refuge, and each of them is repeated elsewhere in the stanza. The word rock is not only there in verse 2, where the phrase "Rock of Refuge" occurs, but also in verse 3, "Since you are my rock and my fortress."

The word refuge occurs three times. You find it in verse 1, "In you, O Lord, I have taken refuge." You find it in verse 2, "Be my rock of refuge." And then in verse 4, "You are my refuge." And if that weren't enough, you also have the word fortress. The word fortress is almost a synonym for Rock of Refuge, and that word occurs twice. So by the mere repetition of those terms, you get what David is saying. He's declaring that God is his refuge, and he's rejoicing in that.

There's an interesting combination of phrases in which he does that, which are in verses 2 and 3. In verse 3, he says, "You are my rock and my fortress." And in verse 2, he says, "Be my rock of refuge and a strong fortress." There are people who have looked at that and said, "Well, that is logically inconsistent. Here's David saying, 'You are my rock,' and he's praying, 'Be my rock.'"

Well, that's only logically inconsistent to those who know very little about the life of faith. And if you reflect yourself on what it means to grow in grace, you know that that is a very apt description of the way we move through the Christian life.

We read in the word what God is, and as His Holy Spirit bears witness in our heart, we say we believe it. But then that doesn't mean that we've actually lived it out. And when we get into the difficulty, we say in prayer to God, "Now be what I know you to be. That is, be it in my experience. I want to know it myself."

There are times in your life when you were weak. Well, you know that God is strong. You've known that for a long time. Not only is He strong, He's omnipotent, He's all strong, all powerful. You believe that. It's not right to say, "Well, I really don't believe that." You do. But what you want to say when you go through times of weakness is this, "Now God, be my strength in the time of weakness. In other words, demonstrate your omnipotence to me."

Same way, we go through times in our lives when we feel very, very foolish. The situation we face is overwhelming. We don't know what to do. Now, we know that God is all-wise. He's omniscient, knows all things, filled with wisdom. We don't doubt that, but when we pray in a situation like that, we say, "God, be wise to me. Show me your wisdom. Demonstrate your omniscience in my situation." We want to live it out. One of the great joys of the Christian life is being able to do that.

Especially do we want to live it out in death. That phrase from verse 5, "Into your hands I commit my spirit," is one that Christian people have turned to again and again. You see, when David wrote that into the psalm, he was thinking of being delivered from death, undoubtedly. Later on in the psalm, we find what's bothering him.

His enemies have surrounded him, and they're plotting to take his life. So when he says, "Into your hands I commit my spirit," he means I'm committing my spirit into your hands to deliver me. But we remember that the Lord Jesus Christ took those words upon his lips when he was hanging on the cross, and that's what he uttered as he died. He said to his father, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." And Christians down through the centuries have remembered what Jesus Christ did and have died with those words on their lips.

Some of them are quite striking. Saint Bernard died with those words on his lips. John Huss, Jerome of Prague, Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, and many, many others. Luther said, as he was reflecting on this, "Blessed are they who die not only for the Lord as martyrs, not only in the Lord as all believers do, but likewise with the Lord as breathing forth their lives in these words: 'Into thy hands I commend my spirit.'"

The story of John Huss is particularly interesting. He was perhaps the first martyr of the Reformation period, you know, a precursor of the Reformation. He had discovered the same doctrines that Luther discovered, and he was preaching them, and they arrested him and tried him on heresy, convicted him, and burnt him at the stake.

In the process of the trial, an ecclesiastical trial, there came the moment when the judgment was pronounced, and the judgment was excommunication, on the basis of which the civil authorities were authorized to take his life. And excommunication means to be delivered into the hands of the devil. And those very solemn words were pronounced by the presiding bishop.

Here's what he said: "Now we commit thy soul to the devil." To which John Huss very calmly replied, "I commit my spirit into your hands, Lord Jesus Christ. Unto thee I commend my spirit, which thou hast redeemed." How many Christians have died with those words on their lips, and it's an appropriate expression of this psalm because the psalm as a whole is a psalm of confident trust in God, and these first verses obviously do it in a great measure.

In the second section, we come to what I've called an expression of trust. We've already had that in the first stanza, but here David does it explicitly because he says in the first verse, "I trust in the Lord." Why does he trust in the Lord? Well, he explains it in this stanza.

This is not something that's just off the wall, as we might say, as if he were saying, "Got to trust in somebody, I think I'll trust in the Lord." Not that at all. What he says in these verses is that he has experienced the Lord's deliverance in the past, and because he's experienced the Lord's deliverance in the past, he's going to trust Him in the present. He's not simply making a random, meaningless choice. He's making a rational choice. He says God has demonstrated Himself to be faithful, nobody else has, and so I'm going to trust God.

Notice what he says about Him. There are four things in verses 7 and 8. I take them slightly out of order. The last phrase of verse 7: "You knew the anguish of my soul." God knew what was going on. Verse 7: "You saw my affliction." I think that means you saw with a desire to help me and a willingness to help.

Verse 8, the negative side of it: because you knew my anguish and saw my affliction, "You have not handed me over to my enemy." Negative, what you have not done, but rather, positively, "You have set my feet in a spacious place." In other words, David in the past had been delivered by God. God was faithful to deliver him, and therefore in the present, he was going to trust Him as well. The memory of past deliverances should for each of us bear fruit in present confidence.

And yet it often doesn't. Why is that? God has delivered us in the past. He's certainly delivered us at the cross of Christ from the penalty of our sins. We know that if we're Christians, and it would be a strange Christian who's not experienced other deliverances of one sort or another in the course of a life.

Why is it that we forget that so easily? I suppose it's simply because we don't have the mental discipline to remember the things and to bring them to our consciousness when the times of difficulty come. David remembered, and we should learn to remember too.

In verses 9 through 13, we have, as I said a moment ago, the emotional heart of the psalm because here he's describing the danger he's really in. Some of the psalms you see begin with this sort of thing. David is so overwhelmed he begins in the trough.

But not this psalm. He begins on the crest with confidence, but he has to express why it is that he is praying as he is, and so at this point in the psalm, he begins to describe it. Now the opening verses contain a lot of references to bodily afflictions or weaknesses. His eyes grow weak, his body is overcome with grief, his life is consumed, his strength fails, and his bones grow weak.

Sometimes when we find phrases like that in the psalms, we have to ask whether he's really talking about a physical affliction or whether this is metaphorical language. Earlier, in some of the psalms, I've tried to argue that it is literal sickness that he's describing. I think that's true in the preceding psalm. I don't think that's true in this one. And the reason for that is what he goes on to say. He's explaining as this stanza unfolds why it is that he feels as weak and afflicted as he does.

What he describes here is not physical sickness, but rather the fact that he's surrounded by his enemies. I think you have to take what he says here in inverse order because he's working away from how he feels to the cause, and for us to understand it, we have to start with the cause and work back to how he feels.

Start at the end. He says he's surrounded by enemies and they're conspiring to take his life. I think that's literally true. David was surrounded by enemies virtually during his entire reign over Israel during 40 years, and he was even surrounded by enemies in his court at some times. That broke out against him in ways he knew perfectly well what the dangers were. So all of that is true.

Apparently, these enemies were so strong and the period he's describing was one of such apparent weakness on his part that the second thing happened. Notice verse 11: "Because of all my enemies, I am the utter contempt of my neighbors and I'm a dread to my friends." See, he seemed to be in such danger from his enemies that even his friends were turning against him and his neighbors were despising him.

Ever experience anything like that? I'm sure you have. As long as we're riding on the crest of popularity and we're succeeding in our work and we're wealthy or well-to-do and everything goes fine, well, we're surrounded by friends. People come in, they like people that are succeeding. They ride on your coattails. They're glad to have a good time as long as you're doing well.

But if things turn against you as they do even as Christians and you have hard times and the money isn't there or you lose your job, isn't it the case that your neighbors, instead of expressing concern and compassion, say, "Well, I wonder what he did to get into a situation like that. There must be something he did wrong, or she did wrong." And so they begin to look down on you. They scorn you for the failure.

Might be a failure that's come as the result of a righteous stance. You can stand for something right at work and be fired for it, but your friends won't say, "How courageous he was to do that, to stand against that unrighteousness." They'll say, "Well, there's probably more to it than that. He probably wasn't handling the work very well. They wouldn't fire him for nothing."

Wasn't nothing, of course, but nevertheless that's the way it's looked at, and friends unfortunately often abandon us in such times. The third thing David says, as we read backwards, is that affected him. You think of this great King David, this man after God's own heart, obviously a pillar of strength, you say, "Well, what did he care what his neighbors thought? Or what did he care about his friends forsaking him?"

He cared a lot, just the way you and I care a lot. It's foolish to pretend that it doesn't bother us when we're slandered or people speak against us unjustly. David says that affected me to such an extent that I am in great distress. My eyes grow weak with sorrow. You see, not losing his eyesight, it's sorrow he's talking about.

My soul and my body with grief, my life by anguish, my years by groaning, my strength fails because of affliction, and even my bones grow weak. You see, that's his lament. And so we read that and we say, "Well, if David felt that way, might be alright for us to feel that way too."

It's alright to feel that way, it's natural. But you see what David does not do and which we sometimes do, is wallow in the trough. We get down there in the bottom and we don't want to get out of the trough because, well, we like feeling sorry for ourselves.

Although David's perfectly honest in expressing what's bothering him, he doesn't stay down there. He says, "That's what's bothering me. I want you to know the trouble. But I trust in God." And so what we find in the very next stanza is that word explicitly: "But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, 'You are my God. My times are in your hands.'"

He's beginning to come back up again. Verses 6 through 8 were an expression of trust, "I trust in the Lord." Now in verses 14 through 18, we have the same thing: "I trust in you, O Lord." A lot of Christians like verse 15 and refer to it, and rightly so: "My times are in your hands." Isn't that a wonderful expression of what it is to be a Christian, to have our times in the hands of God?

What times is that? Well, all our times, of course. The times of our youth are in God's hands. In the days of our youth, we're yet foolish, we don't know much the way in which we should go. Isn't it wonderful that the times of our youth are in God's hands as He guides us through all the folly of youth and keeps us from the worst of our sins and mistakes and directs us in His path, sometimes when we don't even know what that path is and aren't seeking it?

God is faithful in our youth. He's faithful in middle age, the years of our productivity. Sometimes we're successful during those years and lots of good things happen. Sometimes we're not. We experience lots of failures. But God is with us in those times as well. Our times, our times of middle age, are in His hands.

Also our old age is in His hands. Those days when powers fail and we begin to say, "Is there anything I can really do for the Lord anymore?" Yes, there is. As long as we are here, He has work for us to do and He is faithful to us.

In one of our hymns, we sing about old age beautifully and it goes like this: "Even down to old age all thy people shall prove my sovereign, eternal, unchangeable love; and when hoary hairs shall their temples adorn, like lambs they shall still in thy bosom be borne."

Our times, whether the times of youth or middle age or old age or whatever it may be, are in the hands of God, and we can praise and thank Him for it. One thing this means, of course, is that our circumstances are in His hands. Nothing comes into our lives that isn't guided by God, and therefore we can say, "In all things I'll praise Him."

We can say as Paul did, "I have learned in whatever state I am, therewith to be content." So if we're deprived, we can thank God. And if we are blessed, we can thank God. And in the abundance or in the deprivation, we can have our eyes on God. It makes all the difference in the world. You see, that's what trusting God really is, which is why verse 15 follows verse 14.

In verse 19, we come to the crest again. I pointed out that we have this wonderful sequence here, and it's intentional. The theme of stanza 1 is repeated when we get to stanza 5. The theme of stanza 2 is repeated in stanza 4, and so on. But when we get to stanza 5, we have this additional thing.

You recall what I said about the first stanza? I said that it's a prayer for help in time of trouble. When you get to the fifth stanza, it's a prayer, yes, but it goes beyond that because now it's praise to God for His deliverance. In other words, it's a slight variation of the pattern.

We would expect if the pattern holds true that we'd have a simple prayer for help and deliverance once again. But actually, by the time David gets to this point, he's praising God for the deliverance he has and for His goodness.

Haven't you found that to be true when you've prayed? You start off presenting a problem to God, and if you pray wisely, and as we should, you reflect on His attributes which are certainly able to help you in the circumstance and to His faithfulness and love which means that He will.

With the confidence that God hears and understands, you pour out your heart before Him all the things that are distressing you. But as you do that, you're led back to an expression of trust in Him. And when you get to the end, you find yourself praising Him and not merely repeating the earlier petition.

That's a good form of prayer. If you haven't experienced that, I hope you will. God delights to hear, but as you pray and as you reflect on who He is, well, you'll find yourself lifted up to praise Him as David does.

What's he praise Him for? Well, he praises God for His goodness. It's interesting how he talks about this. A number of preachers throughout the history of the church have turned to these verses because of the contrast it makes between the goodness of God which is "stored up" for those who fear Him, that is, goodness which is not yet seen, and the goodness which He bestows in the sight of men.

Notice how that works. "How great is your goodness, which"—there's the first subordinate clause—"you have stored up for those who fear you, which"—you bestow in the sight of men—"that's the second subordinate clause." So it's saying two things about the goodness of God. There's the goodness of God to us which people see, and then there's the goodness of God stored up which they don't see.

That really calls for some reflection, and I would say it goes like this. There's a contrast between the goodness of God to us that other people see now and the goodness of God to us now which they cannot see. You see, if we're blessed by God, as we are in many important ways, the world will see that.

I have said on occasion, based on the Gallup poll that I like to refer to, that there are noticeable, measurable differences in the lives of people whose hearts are given to God. They are noticeably happier and declare themselves to be so, according to George Gallup. Statistically demonstrated, they are less prejudiced, they are engaged in social work regularly, and they have more stable families. All of those are outward blessings, and they're things the world can see. George Gallup could see them by the Gallup poll. And those are evidences of the glory of God and His goodness which He has bestowed in the sight of men.

Any Christian who reflects on those visible things would say, "Oh yes, but they're nothing compared to the blessings that God has given me that other people cannot see. I think of the times of quiet prayer when God makes Himself especially real to me, and I say, 'Well, there's no comparison between the outward things that people look at and those moments of quiet spiritual blessing.'"

Every Christian has a large number of things like that and can testify to it. So you've got that kind of a contrast. There's a second kind of contrast, and that is between the goodness of God that other people see because it's already been given and the goodness of God which they don't see because it hasn't yet been given but it will be given later.

It's a way of saying that in the Christian life, we go on from blessing to blessing. God is gracious in what He gives to us, and the end of the life of the righteous man or the righteous woman is greater than the beginning. You start good, but you end good, you end even better.

There's that kind of a contrast. Stored up, stored up for us in this life. We're going to see it, we're going to experience it, and others are going to experience it too. And then there's a third contrast, and it's this: the goodness which is experienced and at least partially seen in this life and the superlative goodness which is yet to be experienced in heaven.

You see, there's a lot of good that we enjoy now and we testify to it, and other people can see it. But we say, "What is that to be compared with the glory of the saints in heaven when they taste the goodness of our God in full measure and indeed go on tasting that goodness forever and ever?"

You know the 23rd Psalm, how it goes? It's a testimony to this very thing, although as far as I know, David didn't explicitly make the association. He's talking about present goodness, now seen. He goes on to talk about goodness still to be seen on earth, and then he looks forward to the goodness in heaven.

Here's the way it goes: "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows." Everybody could see that he's eating from the banquet of the Lord.

Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life. What I'm experiencing now I'm going to go on experiencing and in fuller measure. And then the very last phrase of that well-known psalm says, "And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

There's a sense in which I'm in God's house now, but it's not to be compared with the glory and the goodness we'll enjoy hereafter. I like to give you quotations from the classics from time to time. Alexander Maclaren's a great preacher on the psalms. He has a whole book of psalms, and here's what he says about this. It's really very well put.

"Here," he's talking about here and now, "we see sometimes the messengers coming with the one cluster of grapes on the pole; there, we shall live in the vineyard. Don't you wish you could write like that? Naturally express yourself in images.

Here, we are in the vestibule of the King's house; there, we shall be in the throne room, and each chamber as we pass through it will be richer and fairer than the one preceding. When God begins to compare His adjectives, He does not stop until He gets to the superlative degree. Good begets better, and the better of earth ensures the best of heaven.

So out of our poor little experience here, we may gather grounds of confidence that will carry our thoughts peacefully even into the great darkness, the darkness of death. And we may say, 'What thou didst work is much, but what thou hast laid up is more.' And the contrast will continue forever and ever, for all through eternity that which is wrought will be less than that which is laid up. And we shall never get to the end of God nor to the end of His goodness."

What a wonderful thought. Have you ever thought of the inexhaustible goodness of God in those terms? We are never going to get to the end of His goodness. And those who know this, I am sure, say Amen.

In verse 21, we come to the application. I've been making applications all through this, but when we get to the end, we have David's own application. And it's in three phrases. First of all, praise to the Lord. In the earlier psalm, that is Psalm 30, before this, he called upon the saints to praise God, verse 4, and his reasoning was like this: God had delivered David, and he called upon them to praise God because it was God's nature to be good, and therefore they would experience it as well. They had and they would. So praise God because it's like Him to do that.

Remember the words: His anger lasts only a moment, but His favor lasts a lifetime. We don't have exactly that here. Here they're to praise the Lord, I think, because of the very thing David himself experienced. He's not extracting it to a principle, but he's saying, "I've been delivered and you've been delivered too."

In other words, what I think he's speaking of here when he says he was in a besieged city is a literal deliverance from a city. Now it's not always that way. Sometimes he'll use that terminology figuratively, but I don't think he's doing that here. I think he was literally besieged and he's saying God delivered me, and if God delivered him from the besieged city, he delivered those who were with him as well.

So he's saying, "I'm praising God for the deliverance. I want you to praise God too." See, probably that's what he's talking about in the section on the lament when there is terror on every side, they're conspiring against him to take away his life. That's probably the same thing, and he's saying God delivered me and he wants them to praise God for the deliverance.

Then the second application is in verse 23. He says, "Love the Lord, all his saints." It's one thing to praise Him; it's another thing to love Him. And the psalm rightly ends by commending us to love God who is so good to us. You see, love and trust go together.

David has been saying all along, "I trust the Lord," but the reason he trusts Him is that he knows that He's a good and faithful God. And to know a good and faithful God is to love Him. He wants us to love Him as well.

"Love the Lord, all his saints, because the Lord preserves the faithful, but the proud he pays back in full." And then verse 24, the last of his three points of application: "Be strong and take heart." It's a way of saying keep on trusting.

The point is we will do this as long as we keep close to God, as David is keeping close to God in the psalm, and as long as we love Him. One commentator, H.C. Leupold, puts it like this: "The practical application amounts to this: don't ever lose faith in Him." And he says faith will never be lost if love keeps burning.

You can never love God too much. You can never trust God too much. And you will do both. You will both love and trust Him when you reflect on the degree to which He has loved and delivered you.

Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you for this psalm, a great psalm. We ask you to bless it to our hearts. Here David out of his heart expresses his experience of living with you, an experience which takes him from the expression of his own agony and distress to great and superlative confidence in you because you are the faithful and loving God.

And that's what we need too. Make us conscious of who you are and teach us to trust you more and more and to love you and to keep on trusting you because you're a God who is above all worthy to be both loved and trusted. For Jesus' sake, Amen.

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