Turning Point

Guest (Male): If you've sunk to your lowest and tried to hide from your troubles, you can identify with David. Today on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah visits this Old Testament figure as he literally hides out in a cave and reveals how David was able to turn his problems into praise as he continues the series, Making Sense of It All. Here is David to introduce his important message, "A Prayer from a Cave."

Dr. David Jeremiah: Psalm 142 has over the years become one of my favorite psalms. It illustrates how David so honestly described his life. Someone said that David's psalms begin with a sigh and they end with a song. In other words, he's not afraid to tell us what's going on in his life and the depths of his despair. That certainly was the reason why he headed to a cave in order to get some solace.

All of a sudden, he gets there and finds out that quite a company has awaited him. In the midst of all of that, God does a mighty thing in David's life. He takes him from the lowest point to the highest point. We're going to see how that happened, and we can apply this truth to our own hearts as well. So, get your Bible and be ready to follow along as we talk about Psalm 142.

In this month, we are making available a very wonderful book that will add value to your life and encourage you in your walk with the Lord and in your patriotism and your love for this nation. This book is called *100 Bible Verses that Made America* and its defining moments that shaped our enduring foundation of faith. It's by Robert Morgan, one of my favorite writers.

It is just wonderful because each chapter is easy to read and captures a moment in history that you may not know about that will encourage you as you think about where we are as a nation celebrating this major anniversary this year. Get your copy when you send a gift to Turning Point and simply ask for it. Your gift of any size will trigger us to send you this book if you ask for it. So, whatever your gift, just simply say, "Send me the book on the verses of America," and we'll get it to you right away. Here is part one of "A Prayer from a Cave."

The life of David is a great encouragement to all of us because he mirrors to a great extent many of the expressions and feelings of our own hearts. As you know, David is a man of great faith and a man of great vision. But he's also a man who struggles on occasion with the gap between his belief and his behavior. Psalm 142 is one of three psalms that David probably wrote from the cave experience: Psalm 142, Psalm 57, and perhaps even Psalm 34.

We have called these psalms Michtam or Maskil psalms. The word is the word that you will find in the superscript over the psalm, and it means a teaching psalm. Psalm 142 is the last of the teaching psalms. There are 14 of them all together. In fact, David wrote eight psalms while he was on the run. These three that we're going to look briefly at today were written by David while he was running from Saul and hiding out in a cave.

Now, in 1 Samuel 22:1, we are told that David is in the cave of Adullam. The Bible says in 1 Samuel 22 that David departed and escaped to the cave of Adullam. When his brethren and all his father's house heard it, they went down there to him. Everyone who was in distress, everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was discontented gathered themselves unto him, and he became captain over them. There were with him about 400 men.

Most scholars believe that Saul had levied a heavy tax upon the inhabitants of Israel. Many of these people who were in debt, discontented, and distressed were victims of the high taxation and were struggling for their very existence. They were friends of David from the past, and when they heard David was in exile hiding out in the cave, they decided to go join him.

It should be evident to all of us at once that this was not your one-man cave. The cave of Adullam is still in existence today. If you were to go and visit it, you would discover that the mouth of the cave is some 20 feet wide and the height of the cave is some 40 feet—a place quite large enough for 400 people to gather.

It is also interesting to discover that when the word got out of these 400 men who had gathered to David in the cave of Adullam, they began to grow in number. When you come to the 23rd chapter of 1 Samuel, verse 13, you will learn that this number has now grown to 600 men. No doubt, all of them are still described by these words: distressed, debtors, discontent. What a group! What a wonderful bunch of people to have come and minister to you when you're down. What a group of renegades and rebels. They have all come there because David is there. Now David has become their leader.

So, if you have your Bibles open to the Psalms and Psalm 142, we need to look at what's going on in the mind of David as he experiences this cave experience. Some of you may say to me, "Pastor, what do I care about what goes on in a man's heart when he's in a cave?" Perhaps you have forgotten that all of us have our caves, every one of us. For some of us, it is the cave of physical distress and infirmity. For others, it's the cave of financial reverse and discouragement. For still others, it's the cave of family distress, upheaval, and rebellion.

I don't know what the cave is for you, but everyone has them. Everyone moves in the direction of the cave on occasion. We cannot escape them. There are moments when we are down under all of the pressures of life and we seek for refuge. I cannot help but believe that David went to that cave to be alone. He wanted to get away from everybody, and the next thing he knows, he's surrounded by all of these wonderful counselors that have come to be a part of his life.

Because David is a poetic fellow, he tells us what he feels. I have a poet in my family. When she writes me letters, they are so rich with color and beauty. I know everything that's going on in her heart. She's the most descriptive of all the Jeremiahs. I don't have to doubt about what she feels because she puts it down in writing and she does it beautifully. That's the poetic genius of David.

If it had been me, I would have just said in a little subscript, "Life in the cave is the pits," and let it go at that. David put down in writing everything he felt, what he was going through, what it was like, what his emotions were. I'm glad he did because it helps me comprehend what was going through his heart at the time. It also helps me to see how he dealt with it.

In the 142nd Psalm, David talks about the condition of his soul during this period of time. He was, first of all, disoriented. Notice what it says in verse 3: "When my spirit was overwhelmed within me." Do you know what that means? The Hebrew of that particular phrase literally says, "In the muffling of my spirit upon me."

David felt like some fierce flood had rushed down upon him. He can barely stand up against the might of it. He's overwhelmed. He's disoriented. When my way and my spirit are so wrapped in trouble and gloom, so muffled with woe, my powers of judgment are baffled. Literally, that's what it means. He's disoriented. Have you ever gone through disorientation?

I don't know exactly what it's like at its total depth, but it's something like coming home from a trip and seeing your desk piled high with papers, walking in, sitting down, looking at them all, and feeling like there's too much. There's no way. I know I should start this, but I don't know where to start, so I don't think I will. So you just sit there and look at them.

David's disorientation is at a much deeper level. He's so cumbered with problems and difficulties. He's being chased by the king of Israel with the army of Israel. Now he's got all these sorry people around him that he doesn't really want but that have come down to be a part of him, and he ends up being their leader. He's got all these personal problems, probably overrun with guilt because of the death of Ahimelech's family. He says, "I'm just disoriented."

Have you ever been there? Have you ever gone through that part of the cave? David said when he continued to think about his situation, he went through a period of total desertion, feeling as if he was all alone. This is probably the saddest verse in the Psalms. Look at the fourth verse. He said, "I looked on my right hand, and behold, there was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul."

Wait a minute, David. There are 400 people and more coming every day. What do you mean nobody's around? How can you be surrounded by people and be alone? I'll never forget a trip my wife and I took one time years past to London. We went to Piccadilly Square right in the rush hour when all the work got out and everybody was running for the train. We were standing right in the middle of a million people, they said, and we didn't know a soul.

I got in the train and Donna kind of got caught in the crowd. I had a hold of her hand, but I couldn't see her. I wasn't going to let go of her hand because I thought I might never see her again. I finally held on to her and pulled her body in, and we got in the train. We were smushed in with all those people, and I felt very, very alone—surrounded by more people than I'd been in the presence of in all my life, and yet very much alone.

Sometimes our problems can do that to us, can't they? David said, "I looked on my right hand. Who am I going to talk to? I looked on my left hand, and they don't understand." You know what he said? "There's not one person in this whole group that cares for my soul."

I don't know what there is about a problem, but problems have a tendency to isolate us from others. We build a shell around ourselves and sometimes to our own undoing. We believe that we are unique in that situation. So who can we tell and who will understand? The more we think on it, the more certain we are that there's not a person in the world who would ever totally understand what we're going through. So although we're surrounded by people, we feel very much alone.

I can think back on some problems that I've experienced as a father and as a pastor when I would deeply desire to have talked to somebody but just didn't know how to go about it, wondering if anybody would really understand. He's totally abandoned, he's hunted by Saul, and he feels alone. Because of all of this, David gets depressed.

The sixth verse is the best description for depression I have ever found in the Bible. It's exactly what the word means. He said, "I am brought very low." What is depression? If you make a depression in something, you press in on it and you leave an indentation. When the soul is depressed, when your spirit is depressed, when you are emotionally depressed, it is a low point in your emotional cycle and you get very low. David said he had gone through depression.

I don't know if I've ever been depressed. I'm not easily depressed, not really easily discouraged. But I've probably been close enough to it to know that I don't want to be. I've counseled with people who have suffered with chronic depression, and I know that it is a very, very heavy burden to bear. It is what is causing hundreds and thousands of high school young people, teenagers, to end their lives because they see no hope or any reason to go on.

They see family problems or total despair over the future of their own lives because of a lack of purpose and concern for spiritual truth. They look around at a world and to them, it's not worth fighting. They get so depressed that finally they despair of their own lives and they're killing themselves by the dozens. David was depressed. All of his hope and all of his joy is gone.

The thoughts of his problems have turned inward and now they're no longer out here; now they're in here. It's no longer Saul is chasing me. It's no longer the 400 men are surrounding me. All of that has somehow come into his spirit and it resides within his own emotions. He may not even be aware that anybody else is around. He is so down and depressed and discouraged.

Sometimes we think depression is sin, and there are occasions perhaps when it is. But as I've read the history of the great preachers, I've been overwhelmed to discover how many of them had great, great difficulty with depression. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the great English preacher, would oftentimes get so depressed that he would have to take two to three months off from his ministry and go to the French Riviera just to be by himself and not even think about anybody or talk about anybody until he finally came out of it. Elijah was depressed, remember, after his great mountaintop experience. Jonah was depressed after he was confronted by God in his disbelief of God's will. I could name others in the Bible. Moses was depressed. Many of God's people have been depressed. David's depressed.

Because of that, he has given up. He's in the midst of this situation and he doesn't see any way out. He doesn't see any hope. So in verse 6, he just kind of looks at the problem and he says, "My persecutors are stronger than I am."

Listen carefully to what David has done now. He's added up the score. He's put everything down over on this side of the ledger. He's looked at all of his problems. You can just see him mentally listing them. He's got all these people, and he's got Saul, and he's got this problem, and he's got his guilt over what's happened, and he's the king elect but it isn't going to happen that way. He lists all these things down and he looks at them. He said, "Listen, there's no hope. When I look at everything that's wrong in my life, every problem I have, I've totaled it up and I'm telling you, I'm going to lose."

So he describes his experience in the last verse as being in prison. Wait a minute, David. You're not in prison. You're in a cave. "Yes, I know, but sometimes your caves become your prisons, don't they?" Sometimes the problems you go through literally incarcerate you in the midst of them. You can't get out and there's no way to look and you don't know what to do.

David is right there in his life. This is his low point and he's telling us what it's like. He's telling us honestly what he feels, and we can identify with it because we've walked with him through all these experiences. David is a man after God's own heart. So when he thinks about Ahimelech the priest and that whole family being annihilated because of his rebellion, David is just overwhelmed with it all. If we read the psalm, we sure identify, don't we? Some of you here today have been right where David was, and some of you are there right now. You may think I've been reading your mail. You may think I've been listening to your conversations because I've just described what's happening with you.

Folks, I don't want to leave you there. The thing that's so great about this psalm is David kind of works his way through. I want to just show you the beginning and the end of the psalm, and then I want to take you through the steps in between. Verse 1: "I cried unto the Lord." Verse 7: "Thou shalt deal bountifully with me."

How did David get from the depths of depression to the confidence that he shows in the last verse? At the risk of being very simplistic, let's just watch carefully the steps he walks through. These are steps which we too can experience. First of all, he verbalized what was going on in his life. I have come to this psalm often and read it often because it reminds me of all the things I don't like to do when I have problems.

I'm reminded that David was a man of God who followed these principles in his own life and shows us the way that we should go when we have difficulty. If you will look through the psalm, you will notice it over and over again. Verse 1: "I cried unto the Lord." Verse 2: "I poured out my complaint before him." Verse 5: "I cried unto thee." Verse 6: "Attend unto my cry." What is David doing? He's telling God what's going on. You say, "Doesn't God know?" Oh yes, He knows.

Why is it so hard for us to do that? Why do we struggle? Some of you have a problem that's overwhelming to you. It's bigger than you can bear, but you cannot bring yourself to tell anybody what's happening. You haven't even told God. Before God, we speak our minds fully and name the problems and the people that plague us. Why do we do that?

First of all, I do it because the best friend I have in the universe is the God of heaven. He knows, and I can say to Him anything that's in my heart. Isn't that what a true friend is? A true friend is somebody to whom you can go, pour out your heart, and say everything that you want to say. As one writer has said, they will keep the wheat and blow the chaff away.

Do you have anybody that you can get in the car with, lock the door, roll up the windows, and drive off? When you get to one of those overlooks, you pull the car off, turn, and vent? And you say, "I'm going to tell you what is going on in my life. Here's what I feel." You can scream if you want to, and holler, and cry. That's what God is for us. You say, "Pastor, that doesn't sound very spiritual."

I want to tell you something. You can't get to verse 7 if you don't walk through that step until you get to the place where you can tell God what you feel, as honestly as you know how to say it. I'm not talking about chronic complaining or negative begging of God. I'm simply saying oftentimes we don't come to God with our problem. We don't cry out to God from the cave.

One of my favorite people has always been Joseph Bayly. Joe Bayly for years wrote a column for *Eternity* magazine. He's written many books, some of them on the family. Joe Bayly suffered a great deal in his life. He lost three of his children through terrible, tragic accidents. He wrote a book called *A View from the Hearse*, describing what he went through in his pain.

But he was such a great writer because he just put down on paper the way it was. He's got a book called *The Psalms of My Life*, things that he wrote while he was walking through life. One particular psalm he wrote while he was traveling across the country on a speaking and writing tour. He was all by himself, and these are his words: "I'm alone, Lord, all alone. A thousand miles from home. There's no one here who knows my name except the clerk, and he spelled it wrong. No one to eat dinner with, no one to laugh at my jokes, listen to my gripes, be happy with me about what happened today and say, 'That's great.' No one cares. There's just this lousy bed and slush in the street outside and between the buildings. I feel sorry for myself and I've plenty of reason to. Maybe I ought to say I'm on top of it. Praise the Lord. Things are great."

"But they're not. Tonight, it's all gray slush." Not much of a psalm, but surely a good way to express what the man felt. He verbalized what was happening in his heart. Do you do that? Have you listened to your prayers lately? Some of you are hurting so desperately today. I know some of your hurts. When was the last time you closed the door, locked it, got on your knees, and just told God what you were feeling?

Some of you feel abandoned by Him. Some of you think God has forgotten about you. You've gone through so many difficult things that you wonder if God really cares. Have you told Him? That's where it starts. That's how it begins. I want you to notice the second thing that he does is he visualizes this whole thing before God. Verse 2: he says, "I poured out my complaint before him; I showed before him my trouble." That's a very important verse.

Here's his trouble in this little book, and David says he goes before God and he just turns the book around and he says, "Here, God. Here it is. This is what's wrong. Look at it. Will you look at it?" But the key to the verse is that he did it before God. In the picture, if you can see it, are David's troubles laid out, and in the picture is God.

One of the dangers we have in our praying is that we rush quickly into our supplication and intercession before we go to praise. I've warned you about that and how carefully God has protected in the pattern of praying that worship comes first. That's not just because it's an arbitrary thing of God. Listen to me now. If we do not praise God, if we do not worship God, if we do not adore God in the beginning of our praying, we will not be showing our problems before Him.

The purpose of praise is not only because God alone is worthy of it, but praise has a tendency to make God big in our hearts and in our minds and in our spiritual being. So when we finally pass through the gates of praise and thanksgiving and we enter into the disclosure of our problems, we are pouring out our problems before a great and mighty God. If I visualize my problems without God in the picture, I'm depressed. Truly much praying can be depressing because we give God the grocery list of all of our problems and we've forgotten the greatness of the One to whom we pray. David said, "I showed my problems before Him. I poured them out before God."

Dr. David Jeremiah: What a wonderful principle that is, and we'll have more tomorrow as we bring the discussion of Psalm 142 to a conclusion. David gives us some great lessons on how to pray when we're having a cave experience.

Friends, we're having a wonderful summer and hope you are too. We've had some great events here in San Diego, and we're looking forward to the fall and the renewed church year. At the end of this calendar year, as many of you know, we take a conference cruise to the Caribbean. We pull all of you people who are cold out of the cold and take you to the warm weather. We'd like to invite you to come with us.

The dates for this event are December 26th through January the 2nd. Get over Christmas, get on a plane, get to Florida, and go with us as we travel the blue waters of the Caribbean, see some wonderful ports of call, and have a great time together with God's people. Information about this is available at davidjeremiah.org. Go there today and find out all you need to register and be with us.

Guest (Male): For more information on Dr. Jeremiah’s series, Making Sense of It All, please visit our website, where we also offer two free ways to help you stay connected: our monthly magazine, *Turning Point*, and our daily email devotional. Sign up today at davidjeremiah.org/radio. That’s davidjeremiah.org/radio. Or call us at 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of Robert J. Morgan’s inspiring book, *100 Bible Verses That Made America*. It’s yours for a gift of any amount.

You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study Bible in the English Standard, New International, and New King James versions, available in your choice of handsome and durable cover options. Get all the details when you visit our website, davidjeremiah.org/radio. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue the series, Making Sense of It All, on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.