The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): We often refer to a strong person as a rock, someone who is unshaken by trouble and strong in the face of adversity. David was a rock to the people of Israel, but the real rock is God, and David was very aware of the need for a Savior's protection. Keep listening to hear about this unique relationship between the King of Israel and the God in whom he trusted.

Guest (Male): Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. As David reflects on the strength of his God, a God that can be turned to in times of trouble, he finds reason to praise. Turn with us to Psalm 61 as Dr. Boice shows us that we too should cry out to the rock and offer praise as David did when God answers our call.

Dr. James Boice: I'm sure you've noticed over the years that in our hymn book, the Trinity Hymnal, the hymns are linked to verses from the Bible. The verses occur at the top, and usually they have within them a theme, a phrase, or a statement that is reflected in the hymn. Quite often, the hymn is built directly upon the verse or upon a passage from which the verse comes.

If you look in our hymnal at William Cushing's hymn, "O Safe to the Rock That is Higher Than I," you'll find that it's tied to Psalm 64. That's probably because of a verse in that Psalm that speaks about God being a refuge to his people. And yet when I think about that Psalm, it seems hard for me to imagine that Cushing wrote it without thinking about the Psalm to which we come now, Psalm 61.

Psalm 61 says, "Lead me to the rock that is higher than I." And this hymn says virtually that: "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. Thou blest rock of ages, I'm hiding in thee. Hiding in thee, hiding in thee, thou blest rock of ages, I'm hiding in thee."

People who have lived with the Lord for any length of time know the force of that hymn and the power of the image that it contains. That's because life is often disappointing. We often go through very lonely times, and it's frequently the case that in our sorrow, disappointment, or loneliness, there's literally no one to whom we can turn. There is nobody to whom we can turn for comfort or for sorrow.

I can think of all sorts of situations like that. Sometimes people simply live alone. People who were overrun with families or, if I may suggest, overrun with children wish they had a little bit more of that experience. But when you have it and you're living all alone and there's nobody there, it can really be a very discouraging time.

Sometimes people don't live alone, but they live with someone who doesn't understand them at all, perhaps with parents who are not Christians and even ridicule the faith of the one who has been brought to faith in Christ. Or perhaps an unbelieving husband or an unbelieving wife. Sometimes people have just grown old, and in their old age, the people that had been close to them in the past, perhaps a spouse, family, friends, co-workers, whatever it may be, people with whom they shared wonderful times in past days, those people have simply died, and now they're all alone.

It's good to be studying this Psalm at Christmas time because I think at the holidays, this is generally intensified for people for whom this is a problem. The holidays intensify everything. If you're harassed, you're even more harassed at Christmas. And if you're lonely, you're even lonelier at Christmas. Everybody else seems to be having a wonderful time. Families collect, all of the presents are bought, and yet people who are alone are really lonely.

Now, the Psalm speaks to that. Christians who have lived with God any length of time, as I say, know that in times like that, God is a rock to whom they can turn. Someone who is greater, higher, stronger, wiser, and more comforting than they can possibly be themselves. That's what this Psalm is about.

It's identified as a Psalm of David. Nothing in the title tells us what period of his life it comes from, but it could have come from any period of his life, couldn't it? You think of him hiding in the wilderness before he became king. Certainly, there were times that he must have felt very lonely there as well as in danger.

There were other times later when he was fleeing from his own son, Absalom. He must have felt in danger and lonely then. But even when he was in Jerusalem, even when he was sitting upon the throne, there's a certain loneliness that goes with high places. People at the very top of the pyramid are often the loneliest of all. Everybody's out to get them, it seems, and often that's the case. So we don't know exactly when in David's life this might have come from, but we can understand it as fitting almost any time at all.

What about an outline? Well, there are various ways of outlining it. Some divide it into two parts, and you'll see how that's easy to do. It's got eight verses, and there's a selah pause after verse four. So the most obvious way to do it is divide it into two: verses one through four and verses five through eight. A lot of commentators do that.

Some divide it into three different stanzas, each of which make a request, and the first two of which are followed by a reason for the request, why God should answer it, and then the last one with a vow. It would be verses one to three, then four and five, and finally six through eight. Other commentators suggest that you have an initial verse, then you have three sets of pairs, and then finally you have a single verse at the end that corresponds to the single verse at the beginning.

I don't take these outlines seriously because I think they often help us to understand the Psalm, but in this case, I don't think they really do. As I study those various ways of outlining it, it seems to me that anyone is equally good and none is particularly helpful. Therefore, the best way of looking at it is simply to go through the Psalms for the various things that it teaches, the various points that are made. I want to suggest there are five points here. Maybe you find more than that, but there are five that I see and I want you to think through each of them.

First of all, the setting is what the very first phrase of verse two is about. The setting usually provides the background and gives us a way of interpreting or getting into the Psalm. In this case, the setting is this feeling that the Psalmist has that he's very far from God. The phrase he uses is, "From the ends of the earth, I call to you."

Now, for any Jew, the very center of the earth was Jerusalem, and particularly the temple area and the Ark of the Covenant where God was understood symbolically to dwell. So if a Jew would say, "Well, I feel that I'm at the ends of the earth, I'm far from you," what he really means is I'm far from Jerusalem. Now, if you think about that in terms of David's life, that could apply to any of the settings I gave earlier. When he was fleeing from Absalom, when he was fleeing from Saul, or perhaps even when he was just away on a military campaign.

Well, you look at the Psalm a little more closely and you find that verses six and seven indicate that the king is actually ruling in Jerusalem. If David is talking about himself, as I believe he is, that means he's king, so that eliminates the possibility of him fleeing during the days of Saul. So maybe this is Absalom, it could be. As you look at this and remember that Psalm 61 follows immediately after Psalm 60, and the setting for Psalm 60 was when David was far away from Jerusalem fighting on the banks of the Euphrates, it would make great sense that this Psalm is written about a time like that. Far, far from Jerusalem, fighting on the banks of the Euphrates River would literally seem to David like the very ends of the earth. And maybe that's what he's talking about, I really don't know.

There's another way of looking at it, however, and that's to take the phrase metaphorically. Marvin Tate, one of the good commentators, does this. He says that the real value of the Psalm is in its very strong images, its metaphorical richness. And he says the most significant image of all is this image of being very far from God.

Now, I don't know how we should take it, whether that means that David, the author, is literally away from Jerusalem. He certainly was at times and that could be. Or whether it's to be understood metaphorically, but I do know that it's in the metaphorical sense that it applies to us. You see, for us, Jerusalem is not the center of the earth, and even Philadelphia doesn't exactly qualify for that. It's hard to think of anything that really is the center if you're thinking geographically.

But if you're thinking metaphorically, you and I go through times all the time when we do feel far from God. We go through those end-of-the-earth experiences. We find ourselves crying out to God in times just like that. "I call out," we say, "even as my heart grows faint." So that's the setting.

Second point I want you to see is that what David does is turn to the rock, the rock that's higher than he is. Now, that image of God being a rock is very common in the Psalms. We've already seen it a number of times. As a matter of fact, in the very next Psalm, Psalm 62, it occurs three times. You find it in verse two: "He alone is my rock and my salvation." That's repeated in verse six, and then verse seven uses the image as well. We studied it at some length when we were studying Psalm 18. It's used four times in that Psalm in an interesting progression.

In Psalm 18, you get these phrases: "The Lord is my rock," "My God is my rock," "Who is the rock except our God?" and then the very last idea, "Praise be to my rock." You see, that was a wonderful sequence. Now, that's the image that David is using here. You understand why that meant so much to him because he was so often running away from someone. When he did, he fled into the Judean wilderness. That's what he understood so well. He'd been there many years when he was young as a shepherd with the sheep. And I suppose it's true that he literally knew virtually every cranny, nook, rock, cave, and hiding place of that vast wilderness. So when he thought of the rock, he thought immediately of a place where he could run to and be safe.

Now, he's thinking of God that way. God is the one to whom he can turn in all these troubles. Every time we come across this image of the rock in the Psalms, we find it treated in a slightly different way, however. You see, it's not the case that David simply uses the image like a little package he's devised and then whenever he has a need for it in the Psalm, he just plugs it in. He treats it differently every time.

And when we look at it here in this Psalm, we see that there are two special ideas. First of all, he talks about the rock being higher than he is. That's very important, isn't it? When you and I are down, we think naturally that way. We think, well, what we need is somebody who's greater than we are, stronger than we are, more helpful than we are. And sometimes we turn to people that way, but if we're Christians, we naturally turn to God.

That happens easily when we're down, but when we're at the top, we don't usually think that way when we're feeling good. After all, David apparently in this Psalm is the king. You'd think of him at the top, being at the top. And sometimes when we think we're better than we are, we think, well, we're sufficient in ourselves. We're doing all right. We don't think of a rock that's higher than we are. But David never made that mistake, you see. Always realized, always knew, always had it in his mind that he served a God who was greater than he is and he knew in the depths of his heart that he always, always, always needed that God. You see, the people who looked up to the king might have thought of David as their rock, but David knew that he needed a rock himself, a rock that was higher than he is.

The second interesting thing about this is that he asks to be led to the rock. That's a prayer, you see. "Lead me to the rock that is higher than I." Now, I don't know exactly what he was thinking about when he said that, but Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher, makes a very good point of this and he translates it naturally into Christian terminology.

He says you and I need a rock and our rock is Jesus Christ, our salvation. We need the rock and we have the rock in him, but as he points out, we also need to be led to him. In other words, we not only need the salvation that God has provided in Jesus Christ, we need the Holy Spirit to lead us to the rock because left to ourselves, we're never going to find it. We're never going to have the strength to stand upon it. God literally has to lift us up and put us upon the rock and establish our goings, which is the way David writes in other places.

Spurgeon has an interesting illustration of that in this section of the commentary, "The Treasury of David," that I'm thinking of. He points out that in his day, a great deal of shipping in precarious ships took place around the English coast. Because the coast is rocky, it was often the case that ships would be wrecked on the rocks that mark the coast of England. Sometimes the mariners would be thrown into the sea, they'd be struggling, they could make it to the shore, and there would be this enormous cliff that would rise up in front of them. If they could only get up on top of the rock, they'd be all right, but they couldn't do it. Here they were, being battered by the waves at the bottom.

Now, Spurgeon says that there was one place where there were a number of rocks and a man who lived on the top of that particular cliff went to the trouble of carving steps into the face of the rock so that mariners who were wrecked could actually make their way up the precarious and nearly impassable surface to the top. In time, the rocks got worn and it was hard to get up there, especially if they were wet in a storm or something like that. So somebody in a later age drove stanchions into the rock and put a chain there so anybody who could grab the chain could make it to the top.

Now, Spurgeon says, you see, that's what God does for us. When we are saved and we think of our salvation, when we're standing on the rock, we think of it as a wonderfully solid rock and indeed it is. But before we come to Jesus Christ, that is almost an imposing thing. It's hard for us to get there. I've talked to many people who aren't yet Christians and they say to themselves, well, I believe it's a wonderful gospel, but I just can't quite get there. I just can't quite believe it. I can't quite come.

Well, you see, here's David saying, "Lead me to the rock," and Spurgeon makes the point that it's always right to pray to God to lead us to himself. Nothing unworthy about that, you see. I ask the question: is God your rock? Have you been led to him? If you say no, God is not yet my rock and I have not been led to him, well, then ask him to do it. You can ask God to do anything and certainly a prayer like that, "Lead me to the rock that is higher than I, lead me to Jesus Christ, give me the grace to believe on him and to plant my feet upon him," that's the kind of prayer that God loves to hear and answer.

You know, in the days of Jesus Christ, there was a man who wanted to believe on him but was having a hard time doing it and he said to Jesus, "I believe, but Lord, help my unbelief." See, nothing wrong with that. If that's your problem, that's what you should say and God will certainly do it.

Now, the third thing I'd like you to see is that that image of the rock is not the only one that David uses. Verses three and four bring in four additional images. Any number of images might be listed; there are four of them here. God is so infinite and great you could never exhaust it.

But these four are important, and if you look at them carefully, you'll see that they're arranged so that they become increasingly warm and intimate as the Psalm goes on. It's a very short Psalm, but there's movement within it and we see the movement in these images. Look at them: refuge, tower, tent, and the shelter of your wings. How about the refuge? Well, that's an idea that's frequently linked to the rock. So it's natural that David would say that in verse three. I think, for example, of Psalm 18:2, "My rock in whom I take refuge," or Psalm 31, "My rock of refuge," or Psalm 62, "My mighty rock, my refuge," or Psalm 94, "The rock in whom I take refuge." You see, that calls to mind the kind of retreat that David had when he fled into the wilderness. He found God to be his rock.

Now, the second image is that of a tower. Now, things have changed a little bit here. You see, a tower is not in the wilderness. A tower is part of the walls that surround a city. And so when you come to this image, you're thinking of a city and the kind of retreat you have here is quite different. You see, the one who has fled to the rock in the wilderness is running away; he's a fugitive. The one who goes into the tower is a citizen of the city and the tower is built there for his defense and presumably he's not alone when he goes into the tower. There are other people there who live in the city who are there to help him and work with him as they defend the city.

Look at the third image, the image of a tent. Now, that suggests a number of things. You see, you have here a fairly nomadic people. Some were dwelling in cities, but many were Bedouin and some still are in the Holy Land. It suggests a domestic scene in which a host might welcome strangers. When you were welcomed into somebody's tent, he had a responsibility towards you; he had to be hospitable; he had to defend you by all the power that he had. All of that is conjured up by the scene.

But there may be something even more in the word. That word "tent" is sometimes translated "tabernacle," and it's the very word that's used of the wilderness tabernacle, which was the place where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. When David moved the ark up into Jerusalem, they didn't have the temple yet, that didn't get built till the time of Solomon, but they did have the tabernacle. So when David is saying, "I long to dwell in your tent forever," what he's really thinking about is dwelling in the very presence of God in the tabernacle, you see, where the ark is kept or very near to it.

Now, I suggest that's really what he has in mind because that's an idea he expresses in other language in other places. Psalm 27, for example: "One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple." Now, you see what's happening here? These images are drawing us closer and closer to God. He starts off in the wilderness on the rock and now he's in Jerusalem in the temple, close to God, and all of that prepares us for the final image: the shelter of your wings.

Now, we saw that already, didn't we, in Psalm 57. Many of the commentators take that as a reference to the wings of the Cherubim, which were over the ark, and that would certainly fit the flow of the images, wouldn't it? But what I suggested when we were studying that earlier is that it doesn't say the wings of the Cherubim. Although it might well have said that, it says the wings of God. And my argument would be that David intends that literally. It's an image, of course; God doesn't actually have wings. But it does suggest this image of a mother hen or a mother bird sheltering the chicks, and it's very warm, you see, and very intimate.

I think that's the way the message flows and the movement flows in these verses. David starts off feeling far from God, but as he draws close to God, he finds that God is drawing closer and closer to David. God is his refuge and his tower and his tent and he's able to take refuge in the shelter of his wings. This leads him to think of the Messiah, God's great promise of the Savior who's going to come and whose kingdom is going to last forever. That's something to praise God for.

And that, of course, is exactly what he does. That's the way the Psalm ends, verse eight: "Then will I ever sing praise to your name and fulfill my vows day after day." Now, shouldn't that be true of us as well? You may be feeling particularly lonely just now, alone. But if you draw close to God, you'll find that he'll draw close to you and you'll end up praising him because that is the way it should be for Christian people.

How do we praise him? Well, we praise him above all in Jesus Christ. David knew him; we know him even better than David did because we know more about him. We know what he's done for us in Jesus Christ. We know the salvation that has come to us through the Messiah. And if you think back over the Psalm of all those images, you'll find that that's exactly what Jesus Christ has become to us.

David speaks of God as his refuge. Isn't Jesus Christ our refuge? Isn't he the rock that is higher than we are? He is very God of very God, as the creed says. He's the rock of ages, he's the one upon whom our feet have been fixed. He is the rock of our salvation. We sing, "Rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee." Jesus is that to us.

You talk about God as a tower. Jesus Christ has become our tower. He's the one into whom we can run and be safe. The image of the tent or tabernacle, that's the very word the Apostle John used in the first chapter in the prologue of his Gospel, where we read, "The word became flesh and lived for a while among us." In the Greek language, "lived for a while among us" is actually the word "tabernacled" or "tented among us." So it refers, you see, to the incarnation, Jesus Christ primarily, uniquely the incarnate one.

And then you think of that phrase, "sheltered under your wings," and you remember Jesus saying about the city of Jerusalem, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered you under my wings like a hen gathers the chicks and you would not." And yet that's the way he's gathered us in the fellowship of the church, under the protecting, comforting, wonderful shadow of his wings.

May I end this way? Sometimes you have to feel at the end of the earth before you really come to experience how wonderful Jesus Christ is. I think that's what St. Augustine was thinking about when he wrote on one occasion these words, listen: "They that are godly are oppressed and vexed in the church or congregation for this purpose: that when they are pressed, they should cry, and when they cry, they should be heard, and when they are heard, that they should praise God." Augustine always has a wonderful way of putting it, and he sums it up brilliantly in those words. Any Christian who has experienced that is a happy person indeed.

Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you for your wonderful provision for our needs. You provide for all our needs. You provide times of joy and happiness and fellowship, and you also provide for us when we're lonely, when we feel far from other people and worst of all when we feel at the ends of the earth in our separation from you. Work in the lives and the hearts of people who feel that way now. Grant that instead of despairing in their loneliness, they might be given grace to turn to you. That as they cry to you, they might have the consciousness that they've been heard, and that having been heard, they might end by praising you, the great God whom we have come to know through Christ our Savior. Amen.

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