The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): Have you ever hiked inside a deep dark cave? Today on the Bible Study Hour with Dr. James Boice, we'll study Psalm 57 where David is on the run, experiencing dark days inside a cave, hiding from his enemies. Do you think David's confidence is in the shelter of the cave or in the Almighty God who will deliver him?

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet project with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. Our circumstances are frequently like David's. We find ourselves cut off and sometimes in hiding, and certainly disappointed in life again and again. But like David, we can trust that the manifold wisdom of God will be displayed in suffering. If your Bible is close by, turn now to Psalm 57.

Dr. James Boice: Several weeks ago we began to study a section of the Psalms that contain the Psalms of David. And not only that, historical Psalms from the life of David, that is pertaining to a particular period in his life. And the period in his life these Psalms pertain to is that early desperate stage when he was fleeing from the king, King Saul who wanted to kill him.

Many of the Psalms, most of them in these first two books of the psalter are by David or are identified as being his Psalms, but this is a particular group of them. They began with Psalm 52, and if you can remember back to that Psalm, that's the Psalm that tells how this enemy, this foreigner, Doeg the Edomite, saw David when he was in Nob when he first ran away from Jerusalem to escape Saul. He was all alone, and the priest of Nob, Ahimelech, gave him bread to eat and Goliath's sword that he had in keeping there.

And we know from the story that Doeg went back to Saul and some time later, when it served his own advantage, reported on that. And of course, Doeg appeared as a great friend of the king. No doubt he was promoted, but as a result of it, Ahimelech and a large number of the priests and the families of the priests in Nob were killed. So, Psalm 52 is a reflection of that. That was probably the lowest period in David's life.

And then, skipping a Psalm, you come to Psalm 54, and that tells about David's betrayal by the Ziphites. Now, that's a little bit later. He had gone to Gath, and then he had escaped from Gath and he'd gone into a wilderness area very much to the south where these people, the Ziphites lived. And he was from that area of the country. He should have been protected by them because of general loyalty, tribal loyalty, and things like that, but they didn't. They reported the thing to Saul too. So, here was Doeg the Edomite who reported on him, and now his own kinsmen down there, and of course he had to leave the area and hide somewhere else. So, that's Psalm 54.

And then in Psalm 56, the last one we were studying, we saw that that concerns the period between Nob and his hiding in the wilderness of Ziph when he went to Gath. Now, Gath was one of the chief cities of the Philistines. It's where Goliath had come from. And I pointed out, although I'd never seen this in any of the commentaries—I'm surprised no one has mentioned it—that there he is, going into Gath, the hometown of Goliath whom he had killed, Goliath the great champion of the Philistines, carrying Goliath's sword. Sort of a foolhardy thing to do, and I pointed out he must have been absolutely desperate to do a thing like that. He must have felt he had absolutely nowhere else to turn, the fact that he would go to an enemy nation to begin with and then to Gath, the city of this great hero that he had killed. It must have been a very bad time.

Now, Psalm 57, that we come to now, is another Psalm in this series. Here we're told David is in the cave at Adullam. That's where he finally ended up. You see, he left Jerusalem, he went to Nob, he retreated to Gath, he went into the wilderness of Ziph. Finally, he got into this area, same part of the country but a much wilder wilderness area in which there was this cave. Maybe during his years as a shepherd boy wandering out taking care of the sheep in the wilderness, he'd come across it. He knew where it was. We don't know that, but that's quite likely. At any rate, that's where he ends up. And according to the title of this Psalm, that's where this was written, when he had fled from Saul into the cave.

There's a possibility that it could be another cave. There was a cave called En Gedi that he also hid in, but I think not. I think that comes later. So, here he is at Adullam. Now, all these Psalms come from the same period. But what I want you to see is that there's a change in the tone when we come to Psalm 57. Here David is hiding, apparently he's still alone. While he was in this cave, these disenfranchised people who were abused and people who were his friends and his relatives who were also in danger because he was in danger, they began to collect when they heard that David was in the cave of Adullam.

And finally, he had 400 men with him and he began to train them. It became the core of his army. But there's nothing in the Psalm that indicates that had happened yet. He's just alone here in the cave. He's hiding, and yet as we read this Psalm, we begin to detect a quite different tone. The other Psalms, as we saw, were uncertain, fearful, at times David even seems to be desperate in the kind of things he says, but not Psalm 57. Here we find a new note of confidence, and the prevailing tone is one of praise. He's praising God.

So, I ask the question right at the beginning, what is it that makes the difference? Well, the earlier Psalms, we find him hiding from Saul, hiding from his enemies. He's running away. In this Psalm, by contrast, what we find him doing is hiding in God. And that makes all the difference. That's the tone of the Psalm. That's the way he's speaking. I say sometimes when I think of these ancient characters, I don't know what kind of songs they sang in those days. I know they had their own and David, of course, is writing the Psalms. I guess that's what he sang.

But if he had our song, Hiding in Thee, he probably could have sung that at this particular stage in his life. You know how it goes? O safe to the Rock that is higher than I, my soul in its conflicts and sorrows would fly. So sinful, so weary, Thine, Thine would I be; O blessed Rock of Ages, I'm hiding in Thee. That's what David could have sung there and probably in his own words did sing in this cave at Adullam.

Now, let me take a moment to talk about the outline. The outline's important. I'm not going to show why. I'm going to come back to that later and show why then, but let me just discuss the outline. It can be divided into three parts, and some of the commentators have done this. They point out that verses one to three make a unit, that would be David's call to God for mercy. And then verses four to six would be a description of the problem that caused David to ask for mercy. It has to do with his enemies. And then finally, seven to 11, the last half of this Psalm, you have a concluding hymn of praise to God.

Now, that's one way to do it. That's not entirely bad. On the other hand, if you follow the clue, which I think is very significant, that you have a chorus here repeated twice, once in verse five and a second time in verse 11, then you should probably divide the Psalm into two parts, each part ending with the chorus. Now, you find that in this particular section of the Psalm, which is one reason for thinking that these Psalms were written by David following more or less the same format at more or less the same period of his life.

I pointed out that the earlier Psalm, Psalm 57 is like that, there's a chorus repeated twice. Psalm 59 is like that, there's a chorus repeated twice. And Psalm 59 is very much like Psalm 57. Now, if we are to follow that as a clue, then we have two parts, and in each of those parts we have three stanzas and each stanza's followed by the chorus. Now, I want to come back to that and show why it's important.

Let me just point out for your interest that verses seven through 11 of this Psalm are also repeated in Psalm 108. They begin Psalm 108, and then the second half of Psalm 108 is borrowed from another Psalm, from Psalm 60. So, when we get to Psalm 108, we're going to get two parts of these earlier Psalms put together. And so you get a repetition. We've already seen a bit of that between 14 and 53. That's a very direct repetition. There are also phrases from this Psalm that are borrowed and used in other places. It makes one think that this Psalm was very popular if it's copied later on.

And probably because it came from this early period in David's life. I would imagine there in the cave that the army as it began to develop sang these hymns that David was writing. That was their worship and so it got into their minds and their hearts and then it begins to show up in other Psalms. I think probably that's the mechanism of the repetition. But at any rate, that's what we have.

Now, let's just look first of all through this first part and see what it's saying. And then when we do that, I want to look at the second part and see how it reflects the first part and also how it differs and then finally, I want to look at the chorus. So, that's the way we're going to do it. Now, let's look at the first part. David begins by saying that he's taking refuge in God, verse one: For in You my soul takes refuge. Now, since he's hiding in the cave, it's very natural to think that it was the fact of the cave that suggested the word to David. A cave was his refuge. Refuge is where you go to hide.

And so he had run away and finally at last, he had found refuge in the cave. The interesting thing however, and you have to look at this carefully, is that David does not call the cave his refuge. You see, we would understand how he would use the word in that setting, but he doesn't say, thank You God for bringing me to this wonderful refuge. What does he do? He calls God his refuge. If you want to use the image of the second half of that verse, I will take refuge in the shadow of Your wings, you imagine something like this.

He's here in the cave, the great big cave with its roof is spread out over him like a shadow, blocking him in from the sun where he's safe, where he's out of view, and he says what I'm really hiding in here is not the cave and the shadow of the rock. I'm really hiding in the shadow of the wings of Almighty God. I suppose this is the point at which it's worth saying that the Psalm has a great many references to God. You look through the Psalm, not all of them do, but if you look through the Psalm and you count up all the references to God, either by name or a pronoun referring to God, and if your count is like my count, you come up with 21 different references to God.

And then there are other words that refer to Him as well that I didn't even count, words like refuge and the shadow of Your wings and so on. So, throughout this Psalm, you have more references to God than you do verses. You have at least an average of two references to God by verse. That all is part of the same picture. David is not hiding from his enemies now. He's hiding in God. And because he's hiding in God and he's thinking of God, everything is transformed. And that's why I say this was the turning point at this particular period of David's life.

Now, let's look at some of the things that he refers to. How about this phrase, the shadow of Your wings? What does that refer to? That's a very beautiful phrase. And the commentators have quite naturally thought about that, written about it. Some of them suggest that what David has in mind here are the wings of the cherubim because they're referred to so often in the Old Testament. You would need to know to understand that, that early in Exodus, there's the description of these two golden cherubim that were to be constructed on the ends of the mercy seat that was the lid of the ark of the covenant within the most holy place of the tabernacle.

Now, I've talked about that from time to time because that was meant to portray what propitiation is all about, the blood which propitiates the wrath of God. And I talk about it in those terms, but it also as an object of art and the description is laid out quite a few times in the Old Testament. The fullest description and the earliest is in Exodus 25, verses 17 through 20. But the same description is repeated again in chapter 37, verse nine at a shorter form. And then also in 1 Kings, the sixth chapter, verse 27. And there are lots of additional references to the cherubim's wings.

1 Kings 8:6 and 7, 1 Chronicles 28:18, 2 Chronicles 3:13, 2 Chronicles 5:7 and 8 and so on. In Ezekiel, that book in which the prophet has great visions of heaven, there are more than 20 references to the wings of the heavenly beings, the cherubim, which apparently were represented in gold on the ark. So, the instructions that you have there in the book of Exodus for building the ark with a cherubim on each side with their wings stretching out and almost touching over the center of the ark where God is supposed to dwell symbolically, apparently are only a pictorial representation on earth of what Ezekiel actually saw in heaven.

And you go to the book of Revelation and you find much the same sort of thing there in chapter four. Now, it's easy to understand because the tabernacle and its furniture were so much a part of the religious life of the Jewish people that one, when he said wings, would quite naturally think of that. And so the commentator suggests, well, this is what David has in mind, especially since God is associated with the wings of the cherubim. He was supposed to dwell symbolically there between the cherubim's wings. But there's a problem with that interpretation, isn't there?

That's the obvious interpretation. What David says here in verse one is I will take refuge in the shadow of Your wings, and that means the wings of God, not the wings of the cherubim. And if you're to take that seriously, then it would seem that we would be more along the right course of interpretation if we think in terms of what Jesus said in Matthew. He was talking about Jerusalem, he was bemoaning the fact that the people of Jerusalem had rejected the prophets, and he said how often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Probably the reference is along those lines.

Now, when we shift away from thinking of the wings of the cherubim and we begin to think actually of the wings of God, the first obvious objection is that God doesn't have wings. Someone will say, well, that is even inappropriate of God, it's sort of demeaning of God to speak in those terms. Well, Jesus used the phrase himself, but when you begin to think along those lines and you look through the Old Testament, you find that God himself speaks of himself in those terms, not as frequently as you find references to the wings of the cherubim, but frequently enough.

For example, again in Exodus, Exodus 19:4, God said, speaking to the people, you yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, how I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now, that's the wings of eagles. God is describing himself as an eagle who takes care of his young. That image appears several other places in variations. For example, in the Song of Moses, God is compared to, I quote, an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them on its pinions. How about the phrase shadow of your wings?

Well, that occurs not only in Psalm 57:1 but also in Psalm 17:8, 36:7, 61:4, 63:7. So, it's a very common phrase. And when you come to Psalm 91, verse one, and we have that great hymn we sang that contains that reference, there the shadow of your wings actually becomes the shadow of the Almighty. So, you can understand how all these terms work together. Well, that's what David is talking about here. He's saying I'm really protected by God who is hovering over me like a mother bird that's protecting the little chicks.

Let's look at another term in the second verse. David refers to God as God Most High. Now, that's one of the great names for God that occurs first in the book of Genesis and the story of Abraham meeting up with Melchizedek where Abraham presents offerings to this otherwise unknown king of Salem. Melchizedek appears out of nowhere. And the author of Hebrews refers to that, uses it symbolically in reference to Christ. But here's this man, this king Melchizedek who appears and Abraham honors him, we're told, and then Melchizedek blesses him, we're told, in the name of the Most High God, the creator of heaven earth, who delivered your enemies into your hand.

Now, that's Genesis 14. One of the commentators on this, Derek Kidner, thinks that the reason David in this Psalm refers to God as God Most High with a clear reference to the story of Abraham is that Abraham was also a homeless man, a wanderer, you see, without support. And David is like that. I think in view of what it actually says in Genesis 14 that the reason he's doing it is because there God is described as the one who delivers one's enemies into our hands. And of course, that's what David needed. He needed a God who was going to do that and not only did he need a God who was going to do that, God did do that.

And he did it many times. If you go back to 1 Samuel and study his story, you'll find there are several occasions there where God actually delivered Saul into the hands of David where he could have killed him if he had wanted to. And he didn't do it, he respected him because he was the Lord's anointed, he left it in God's hands, but you see this is exactly what's involved in the term. Well, let's look at one more idea before we move on to stanza two. Just briefly, verse four, another idea: I am in the midst of lions.

Now, he may have literally been in the midst of lions. We know that in the wilderness in those days there were lions. The reason we know that is that David killed one on one occasion when he was protecting the sheep. So, there were these wild animals out there and here he's in the wilderness, and literally was surrounded by wild animals, by lions and beasts, that's what he says, but you see those are only symbolic of his human enemies. A wild animal may be dangerous, but a wild animal is not vicious the way human beings are.

And when David speaks of them, he speaks of them as ravenous beasts whose teeth are spears and arrows whose tongues are sharp swords. That was literally what David was facing. Now, when you think of David in the midst of the lions, you can't help but think of Daniel in the lions' den. Daniel, you know, surrounded by the lions, and yet God protected him. He closed the lions' mouth, is the way Daniel put it. You know what Daniel said? It's very interesting. You could almost take these words and put them in David's mouth and see him speaking them to Saul because David said to the king, Belshazzar: My God sent His angel and He shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me because I was found innocent in His sight, nor have I done any wrong before you, O King.

So, here in the life of David, you have almost an exact picture of what was going to happen later in the case of Daniel. So, that's the first part. Now, let's look at part two. Sometimes when I study these Psalms, when I begin to study them, I say now I just don't know how to handle these things. And it seems to me it's repeating one phrase after the other, there's no particular organization to it. I do discover as I work with them that there's far more organization to these Psalms than you imagine. They're not just a lot of ideas thrown together, beautiful as that may be.

But there's actually a careful outline. I want you to see this outline. First thing I want you to see, I want you to look at the general subject matter, and I want you to see that the subject matter in part two is a repetition of the subject matter you have in the first section. First section there is talking about the mercy of God. And then David begins to talk about himself, verses two and three. And then finally, he's talking about his enemies in verse four, writing about those who are like lions and surround him. At that point, he breaks off and you have the chorus.

Now, in the second half, you have all of these themes also, but here's the interesting thing, you have them in reverse order. That's the first thing. And then secondly, you find them heightened, that is, taken up a notch or two. Already a very optimistic Psalm, we've seen that because he's hiding in God, that doesn't have the despair of some of the earlier ones, but it becomes even more exalted, more optimistic as it goes on. Let me explain exactly what I mean here. The order, if I could put it like this, is A-B-C. That's what you've got in the first part. He's talking about God, then himself, then his enemies, A-B-C.

Then you get to the second half and you have it like this, you have C-B-A. So, he's got God, himself, his enemies, chorus, then he has his enemies, himself, and God. Isn't that a wonderful structure? You see, he starts with God because he's praising God, he begins to think about himself and the situation he's in, which is why he's praising God, then he begins to think of his enemies that are out there that are causing the problem, then he reflects again on the enemies, then he moves back to himself and finally he ends the Psalm by praising God.

But now each time he does that in the second half he heightens a little bit. And let me explain how that is. First of all, the stanzas that I have identified as C here, that is verse four in the first half and verse six in the second half deal with his enemies. But notice, in the first half of this, he's talking about them simply as ravenous beasts who are threatening him. It doesn't say anything more than that. I'm in the midst of lions, I lie among ravenous beasts. But you see he's hiding in God. And so when he gets to verse six, he realizes that although the danger is out there is quite real, they spread a net for my feet, it's caused me to be bowed down in distress, they've dug a pit in my path, but notice: they have fallen into it themselves.

You see, that's quite different than what he was saying in part one. Here he's acknowledging that God is already acting to deliver him. Then look at the section I have identified as stanza B. It's verses two and three in that first part. Here he's talking about himself, especially in his relationship to God. He's very confident in that. He's praying to God who fulfills His purpose for me, He sends from heaven and saves me. It's the way God acts with me. He's done it in the past, He's doing it today. But notice when he gets to the second half of this, verses seven and eight, he actually bursts out in singing, he's so confident in God.

Same theme you see, but he raises it a notch. He says my heart is steadfast, I will sing and make music, I will awaken the dawn. And finally, you come to the section that I identify as stanza A. These are the direct address to God. Notice at the beginning, he is calling out to God for mercy, he's saying he's going to take refuge in God until the danger is past. But by the time you get to the end, all he's doing is praising God. He's singing praises to Him, he's praising Him among the nations. And the reason he's doing that is God's love is great and His faithfulness reaches to the skies.

See what I mean about the movement of the Psalm? Notice something else. He mentions the love and faithfulness of God at the beginning. You have it in verse three. You find the faithfulness and love of God mentioned again at the end in verse 10. And between, in verse seven, and because of that David says: My heart is steadfast. I would say that's probably the emotional center of the poem. It's because of who God is and because he's hiding in God that he is steadfast.

If you're trying to hide in anything else, well, you're not going to be steadfast because anything else in which you can hide is going to pass away. Heaven and earth will pass away is what Jesus said. But God is not going to pass away. God is the eternal one. So, if you're hidden in Him, if you're protected under the shadow of His wings, then you are as secure as God, and you can say my heart is steadfast because I'm steadfast in Him.

We don't have a whole lot of that today, steadfast Christianity. And probably we haven't had it for a long, long time. I have sometimes mentioned Alexander MacLaren. He was one of the great Bible expositors of 50 years ago. He has a sermon on this text, My heart is fixed, he calls it The Fixed Heart. I want to read you just a paragraph or two of what MacLaren wrote. In order to have a fixed heart, he said, I must have a fixed determination and not a mere fluctuating and broken intention.

I must have a steadfast affection and not merely a fluttering love that like a butterfly lights now on this, now on that flower. I need to be straight as a carrier pigeon that is going home. And I must have a continuous realization of my dependence upon God and of God's sweet sufficiency going with me all through the dusty day. And then he gets personal. Ah, brethren, he says, how unlike the broken, interrupted, divergent lines that we draw.

Is our average Christianity fairly represented by such words as these? Do they not rather make us burn with shame when we think that a man who lived in the twilight of God's revelation—he means at the very beginning where he didn't have all the full teaching that we have, he didn't have the whole of the Old Testament or the New Testament—a man who lived in the twilight of God's revelation and was weighed upon by distresses such as wrung this Psalm out of him, that he should have poured out this resolve while we who live in the sunlight and are flooded with blessings find it hard to echo this with sincerity and truth. Fixed hearts, he says, are rare among the Christians of this day.

Well, MacLaren died more than 50 years ago. I don't know when he wrote the sermon. So, it must have been more than that. Have things improved in the last half a century? We'd be very foolish to think so. We have less steadfastness today perhaps than ever. And certainly less than we had then.

Well, after we've seen what David is saying here, we're not surprised when we come to verse five and verse 11, the refrain or the chorus to find him praising God: Be exalted, O God, above the heavens, let Your glory fill the earth. Now, God is exalted above the heavens and His glory does fill the earth. Other Psalms tell us that. The heavens reveal the glory of God, the firmament showeth forth His handiwork. That's what the Psalm says. So, David is not praying that that might happen in that kind of abstract way by the revelation of God in nature.

What is he saying here? He's not saying God has been exalted or is exalted. He's asking for God to be exalted, and when you ask that question you say, well, how is God exalted? The answer obviously is in him. That's what he means. You see, you say by whom, in what manner, how so should God be exalted? And the answer is by how I conduct myself here in the cave of Adullam.

Now, this was not a great period in his life, humanly speaking. He's going to become king eventually, but he's not a long way from it. Even when he's made king in Hebron some years later, still only in Hebron, it's seven more years before he becomes the king over the united country. You know, these were what we would call humanly speaking dark days in the cave. And yet you see what he's praying here is that God will be exalted in his life by the way he conducts himself while he's in the cave.

I suggest that's what we are called to do. We think the way for God to be exalted in our life is for us to be exalted. You know, if we get a great important position and we're Christians, we'll say, well, God gave me this great important position and so we're exalting God. But you know, that isn't the way it's done. Where did the Lord Jesus Christ display most of the glory of God? It was on the cross.

That's where we learn about the love and the grace and the mercy and the wisdom and the compassion of God Almighty. And you see where we are able most to glorify God is not when we are sitting on the throne but when we are hiding in the cave because it's in that kind of a situation that we're able to say as David does: I am hiding in Thee.

Makes me think of Ephesians. You know, in Ephesians where Paul in the third chapter is writing about the purpose of God in history, he gets on to talk about the angels and he says, you know, the angels are looking on to see what we do. And the reason they're looking on is to see the manifold wisdom of God made known in the church. And then he says: So therefore, don't be discouraged because of my sufferings for you.

You see, because it's in his sufferings that the manifold wisdom of God is displayed. And it's in the cave that the glory of God is revealed. And it's in your suffering, your disappointments, your hardships, your aches and pains, whatever they may be. If you receive those as from God and take them to God and hide in God and glorify God, that God is really seen. Why, even the world can be happy when everything goes well. But where a Christian hides in God, that is something that even the angels look on and marvel at.

And they say: Isn't it simply wonderful what God is able to do in those sinful people? Isn't it wonderful how they will glorify Him? Our Father, we thank You for this Psalm. We thank You for its teaching. We thank You for the circumstances out of which it came because our circumstances are frequently like David's. We find ourselves cut off and sometimes even in hiding and certainly disappointed in life again and again.

But you see, here's a man who knew what it was to belong to You and trust You, and we're encouraged by that. And we ask You to take that and apply it to us in such practical ways that we will be able all our lives to look at this Psalm and say: Well, I learned something from that as we were studying at that night, and it really does change the way I look at things, and because of that I really want to live for Jesus Christ and glorify God in whatever circumstance of life He leads me to. And so praise Him, and praise the Lord Jesus Christ our savior. Amen.

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