Not People, Power or Prosperity
"Truly my soul finds rest in God;
my salvation comes from him.
Truly he is my rock and my salvation;
he is my fortress, I will never be shaken." Psalm 62:1-2
Main Readings: Psalm 62 & 2 Chronicles 25
Supporting Readings: Acts 14:22 & 2 Corinthians 4:8-9
It’s a rare gift to be asked, by a member of the church, to speak on their favourite text. But that is my privilege this morning.
Mark has asked me to preach Psalm 62, which was the text he had at his baptism.
And since we too have baptisms looming, and since we’ve just finished a series in the Psalms, this seems a good moment to fulfil Mark’s request.
And I do so gladly. Thank you, Mark.
When I told a pastor friend why I was preaching Psalm 62 this morning, they said they would consider that a privilege on par with being asked to preach at someone’s wedding.
And so, I pray I don’t disappoint, Mark.
May this be good for all our souls this morning.
Underpinning this Psalm is a question really. The question is: what will you do when the pressure is on?
It’s not a complicated question; just, a can-opener of a question. The kind that gets under our skin and exposes our hearts a little.
For sure, there are all kinds of pressures in life. And there are all kinds of responses.
But since we’re in God’s Word, the question is uniquely Christian.
And so, we can ask it more precisely like this: what will the Christiando when the pressure’s on?
King David, who authored this Psalm, was a man acquainted with pressure. And we can hear the echo of that pressure in verse 3 and verse 4. ‘How long will you assault me?’ and, ‘Surely they intend to topple me’ are the utterances of a man under pressure.
It’s a flavour of what David endured in his life.
I mean, have you ever thought how beset David’s life was with conflict and opposition?
Just think of his conflict with Goliath even as a young man. And thenpursued by the jealousy of King Saul for what, seven, eight, maybe even ten years.
Then foreign enemies after he became king. Rebellions from his own people. Political alliances against him.
And eventually even his own Sons conspired to overthrow him.
The picture you get is of a man hounded throughout his life.
And of course, David being a type of Jesus, his experience certainly maps onto Christ’s own life on earth.
We can’t be sure which episode David has in mind as he writes this Psalm; we can know, though, that it’s a Psalm that rises up out of the crucible of opposition.
And so, we can expect that the question ‘what will the Christian do when the pressure’s on?’ be answered here in this Psalm.
And since we are Christians, that’s a question for us. And it’s a usefulone because, we all know the pressure-cooker experience of Christian discipleship.
For example: How should we respond when the opportunity arises to confess faith in Jesus but the social stigma of that, sears into the very depths of our hearts?
What should our reaction be shaped by when the thrill of a competing interest wrestles for our chief affection?
What word from our souls should we strive for, when the cost of a kingdom-demand is felt in the very hour we would most want to spend indulging ourselves?
How can we be shaped in a response that glorifies the God of our salvation, when we feel the irresistible temptation to serve the deepest sinful desires of our hearts – even though they will severe the sweetness of fellowship we enjoyed with Jesus, just ten minutes ago?
Pressures abound in this Christian life.
And, though David, was pursued by ruthless, blood-thirsty men – with fast chariots, and long spears and sharp swords, yet the opposition against our souls is not one whit less significant than all that he encountered!
For his pursuit, and ours, are the same pursuit. The pursuit is God himself! And all his manifold goodness.
So, let’s see what David discovers in his pursuit of an answer to this question: what will the Christian do when the pressure’s on?
To begin with, let’s see in verses 1 & 2 the position David understands himself to be in. And the one we understand ourselves to be in.
We could summarise it by calling it: the position of a child within the family of God.
David’s soul is one that is restful – we see that in the first sentence.
Why is it restful?
Well, surely, it’s because of God, right?
There is something about God that is so good, and so loving, and so powerful, and so precious that belonging to him results in rest. ‘Truly’, he says, ‘my soul finds rest in God’.
And just so you know, I’m getting these qualities of power and lovefrom near the end of the Psalm in verses 11 and 12.
We’re going there, but for now it’s enough for you to know that I’m not importing those ideas about God – they really are here.
What is it, then, about God’s power, and his love that gives rise to this sense of rest? And the answer comes in the second half of verse 1: it’s ‘salvation’.
We don’t know what David is referring to specifically, but David’s experience is that God has delivered him.
‘Delivered’ is another word for ‘salvation’.
Delivered him from some massive threat such that he can say ‘my salvation comes from God’.
And, if God has rescued him, and delivered him, and saved him from that threat it implies two things.
One – he was powerful to save. More powerful than the threat was powerful – or else he wouldn’t have been saved.
And two – God must have loved him. It’s all very well having the power to save, but if you don’t have love, you don’t have the impulseto exercise that power on behalf of the person in trouble.
Do you see that? God must have loved David and his love for David must have moved him to exercise his power against the threat on David’s life, and so save him.
Therefore, he was saved. And therefore, he has rest. Rest in God.
Because his salvation is in God.
David wants to make his meaning even more abundantly clear and so he goes on in verse 2.
The word we have here translated ‘rock’ has two meanings in Hebrew.
When we read ‘rock’ here, we probably think a solid outcrop to standon. A rock that is immovable.
Mark and I recently walked in the Peaks and there were rocks just like this – totally massive and immovable.
You can stand on them with all your weight and depend on them completely – they will not move.
Even though, some of them are wedged between each other and below them is literally thin air. Yet they are totally dependable.
Well, there is one Hebrew word for that kind of rock. And there is another Hebrew word for the kind of rock you can hide in – one that acts like a cave.
And it’s this second one that is probably the primary idea David has in mind.
Although a cave that simply crumbles around you – or worse, on top of you – wouldn’t be the kind of thing David is thinking of at all.
So, it probably has both meanings. It’s a rock that is strong and securebut, crucially, one that envelopes you. One that you can hide in, or shelter in. One that protects you.
It’s a rock that, like he says, simultaneously acts like a fortress andone which cannot be shaken to pieces, leaving you exposed.
And he’s saying, ‘God is that to me’. ‘After saving me by setting his love on me and then exercising his power for me – then he hides me in himself so that no one can get to me! And my God will never be shaken apart so that I’m left exposed. Never!’
So that’s the position David finds himself in.
And most certainly, it’s by God’s grace that he finds himself there.
It’s the position we find ourselves in too.
Ours is a position of restful repose also. And our rest is a soul-rest that is located in God as well.
Our salvation has come from him.
Think about it: in his great love he has sent Jesus into the world to rescue us from the oppression of our sins – which hung over us.
Sin is a mighty mortal enemy. One that kindles God’s wrath againstus.
But Jesus loved us, and that love moved in him like a mighty impulse, to lay down his life for us and rescue us from the eternal consequences of our sins.
It was his power that accomplished the act. Death couldn’t hold him in that grave. But by the divine power at work in him, he overcame death and conquered it once and for all, rescuing me – even me, from it!
He is, therefore, our rock shelter – he is secure, dependable, immovable. He is our fortress, we will never be shaken.
That’s our position in Jesus!
We belong to God in this way, and therefore our souls are at rest.
What a position we have inherited!
And we did not deserve it either! God did it of his own accord. And in this way, we cannot boast that we rescued ourselves.
Like David, we have to use phrases repeatedly that tell the truth. Phrases like ‘in God’, and ‘from him’, and ‘he is’. Because they show who did it, and they show where we are positioned now!
Well, that’s supremely good news, but what about our experience – our experience in this life?
David acknowledges that it’s often especially trying.
Verses 3 & 4 take us there.
His question at the beginning of verse 3 is an indicator that the trials of his life are prolonged.
The question: ‘how long will you assault me?’ is a question that tells a story.
It’s saying: ‘even after all this time of oppression, will you still go on oppressing?’
And of course, we know that his expectation is that they will.
And it did go on!
Even when David was too old to keep himself warm at night, his son, Adonijah, plotted to undermine his kingship and jump onto the throne, whilst David was still alive, and Solomon hadn’t yet ascended to king.
So, right to the end, David was assaulted. He would have described himself as a ‘tottering fence’ when that happened – like he does at the end of verse 3.
Like a ‘leaning wall about to topple over’.
So many enemies that wanted to ‘throw him down’ - who wanted to ‘bring him down from his lofty place’, he says in verse 4.
And he notes that their main weapon is deceit.
It does not matter whether it’s bare faced lies or cleaver talk; blessing from the mouth, but murder in the heart. Both are designed to bring him down.
It’s a relentless, formidable enemy that keeps coming against him. Different guises all the time – but the same aim: destroy David. And David sounds weary now.
Switching gears for a minute: Who could deny that Jesus was pursued like this his whole life too?
Who could deny it in the edict of king Herod.
Or in the Satanic pursuit in the desert. Or in the hounding of the pharisees. Or in the crushing weight of the ordeal facing him in the garden. Or in the deceit of the witnesses at his trial.
Or in the heckles of the crowd: ‘crucify him’, or the agony of the nails, hanging on the cross? Who could deny it?
In Jesus’ prayer to his Father in the garden: ‘Father, let this cup pass from me, yet not what I will but what you will’ we hear the pressurebearing down on him, don’t we?
And also in David’s words, ‘How long will you assault me?’, we can hear the pressure bearing down on him too.
As people who have been united to Jesus by the salvation of verse 1, we too share in the pressures that are part and parcel of discipleship. Jesus said, ‘anybody who would follow me, will have to deny themselves and take up their cross’ didn’t he?
Pressures from expectation. Pressures from conformity. Pressures from temptation. Pressures from suffering. Pressures from commitment. Pressures from competing loves. And ten thousand other pressures too.
That’s a significant characteristic of the Christian experience this side of heaven.
To give you confidence that the Christian life is really attended with pressures, listen to what the scriptures say.
Acts 14:22 – ‘We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God’.
2 Corinthains 4:8 – ‘We are hard pressed on every side’.
1 Peter 2:11 ‘sinful desires wage war against your soul’.
Hardships; war; being hard pressed on every side. This is what we are led to expect the Christian life to feel like, often – by Jesus and by his apostles.
There are two very real responses to these Christian pressures that weface. David knew it and he expressed them here. And that is for our benefit.
So, let’s see what they are.
First the response we absolutely must not pursue, and, that is so real. And which, therefore, poses an ever-present danger to our lives.
The pressures create the temptation in us to find other refuges than the one David told us is our true rest in verses 1 to 2 – namely God himself.
It comes in three forms as David expresses it here. And it is THE comfortable and THE easy way to respond.
Which is why it’s so appealing. And, therefore, so dangerous.
The three forms are People, Power and Prosperity.
People promise acceptance. Power promises control. And prosperitypromises satisfaction.
These are competing refuges for the weary Christian soul.
They are all innocuous; even unconscious, choices we make to ease our experience.
They all involve placing our trust somewhere other than in God.
And in each case, David shows us the futility of proceeding in this way.
So, verse 9, then, gives us the People.
We could trust in the approval of people, and thereby, ease the pressure.
The thought is something like this: everyone loves the approval of those who we admire – David calls them ‘highborn’.
We think: ‘If I walk in step with them, that will be better than this constant pressure that’s associated with belonging to God.
It’s the social sidestep.
Get liked by the right people and the pressure of being reviled for Christ will evaporate quickly.
David’s response to that is: it’s madness!
He says, ‘consider the eternal perspective not the temporary one!’
‘Look at the lowborn and look at the highborn. You think so highly of the highborn, but their prospects are no better than the lowborn.
‘The lowborn are but a breath’. They are born, and no sooner are they born, than they die.
And ‘the highborn - they are a lie’.
They present themselves as if they will not die. But they will die. They are made of the same stuff as the lowborn.
End of verse 9: if the highborn are weighed in the balance of life, guess what? They are nothing, also.
‘Together, the lowborn and highborn and nothing more than a breath’.
The highborn can no more help you than the lowborn.
Trusting in People then, is futile!
Together, with them, your temporary ease of acceptance, or favour, of being counted with the ‘in-crowd’ is gone forever.
The Apostle Paul makes this astonishing claim, ‘Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings or of God. If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ!’
What about Power? You could use power to ease the pressure.
In David’s day, as king, the power to force people to do what he wanted could bring him the kind of control that felt better. That’s what he means by ‘extortion’ – forcing people.
Or he could even steel in order to ease the pressure of doing the Godly thing.
These were readily available options to David.
In fact, we know David fell foul of both these when he took Uriah’s wife Bathsheba. In effect, he stole her from him and then he wound up having Uriah killed to cover things up.
How deceitful and wicked the human heart is!
It is a hundred times more difficult to explain the human heart than it is for the heart to figure out THE most effective way of easing pressure in a millisecond – no matter how corrupt that solution might be.
Power provides access to a kind of self-sufficiency. It allows a person to say: ‘I will secure the outcome for myself’. ‘I’ll steel the control from God for my life. I’ll force my way forward without his help’.
It’s when the heart learns to depend on self and not on him anymore.
And as we become more capable in life, the temptation deepens to do things in our own strength and no longer depend on him. Becausedepending on him - that requires faith, and prayer, and confession, and hewing out the promises and planting them deep down in our hearts.
It all feels much harder work than simply relying on ourselves.
All the time using human power, to secure what alone should be secured in dependence on God.
The Apostle James gets forthright about it: ‘Now listen you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry business or make money”. Why you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that”. As it is you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil!’
Self-reliance is evil. David says, ‘do not trust in it!’
And then Prosperity. Yes, often, in life, riches increase. That could be a blessing – it could be a curse too. It depends.
Money tends to make things go easier. Because it buys all kinds of passing pleasures.
And passing pleasures promise to satisfy our souls. But it’s a lie. They, in fact, make our hearts drunk.
Passing pleasures deaden the senses and cause the soul to forget that Jesus is the treasure the man in the field went and sold everything to buy!
David has so much wealth at his disposal - how tempting to forget God. How easy to rest in that, instead of resting in him.
How easy to make an idol out of silver in David’s day.
Can you feel the impulse constantly saying, ‘if I have enough, I’ll be satisfied’.
The way David says it is: ‘do not set your heart on them’.
It’s in the realm of the heart, you see, that this is going on – because that’s where the ache for satisfaction resides.
Paul says to Timothy: ‘Command [that’s a strong word]. Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant [the expectation is that riches are prone to take you there – to arrogance]nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share’.
It's not like we’re saying to ourselves, ‘I’ll renounce Jesus for money’. It’s much more subtle than that.
You just construct a life that is so comfortable; so stimulating; so pleasurable in material things that you barely notice how littlesatisfaction you’re actually finding in Jesus. Maybe it’s hardly any!
And that’s why it’s so dangerous to your faith. Which is why David warns like this.
So, People, Power and Prosperity. None of them are the right response to the pressures of the Christian life.
David says, People are breath. David says, Power is self-reliance. David says, Prosperity can’t satisfy our heart’s longings.
People say: Conform and we’ll accept you.
Power says: Take control, and you won’t have to depend anymore.
Prosperity says: Have enough and you’ll be satisfied.
But, our question needs to be: what does faith say?
If those are the wrong responses - soothing our hearts with social acceptance, or evil power-plays, or even the riches that God supplies – what is the right response?
All this pressure of the Christian life is constantly encouraging us to find our satisfaction here – in this world.
That’s what People, Power and Prosperity amount to – temporary fixes that satisfy temporarily in the here and now.
The answer – the right response - to the pressure that tempts us to drift into sinful patterns, is found in verses 5 to 7.
David turns the steady-state rest of verse 1 into the pursuit of that rest in verse 5.
He says, ‘yes my soul find rest in God; my hope comes from him’. The impulse, under the pressure of Chistian discipleship, is to forget his rest.
The temptation is to find rest just about anywhere else.
But David exhorts his own soul: ‘find the rest God gave you’.
‘Hope in God alone and in nothing else – not People, not Power, not Prosperity’.
And what’s his strategy?
It is to preach to himself isn’t it? He speaks to his own soul: ‘Soul, find rest in God!’ He does it to remind himself, continually who is his salvation; who is his fortress.
It’s God.
With God’s love and God’s power he will not be shaken – not even by these external pressures.
He'll preach it to himself, and he’ll preach it to me and you – verse 8: ‘Trust in him at all times’.
Not sometimes. Not just when we feel like it. Trust in him, and him alone, all the time.
In fact, he says, ‘pour out your hearts’ – by which he means pray. In the midst of the pressure, you find yourself under - pray.
Why? Because he is our refuge! We’ll find our rest in him.
In other words, God is the rock in whom you can hide yourself completely.
Because he is the rock that alone can stand firm – like a fortress – when the full weight of pressure is bearing on him.
And you say, ‘hang on! It’s bearing on me, it’s not bearing on him’.
Nope!
When you trust in God, like David is exhorting, the pressure lifts from you and it lands on him.
The act of faith transfers the pressure from you to him.
His work of salvation is a work that bears the weight on your behalf. In other words, the sure-fire way to buckle under the pressure is to rely on anything except to rely on God as your refuge.
Because if you make them your refuge, God himself is not your refuge. And then he is your enemy. And there is no greater rock that can fall on a person in judgment than God.
You do not want to exchange the God who is your refuge, for counterfeit refuges that promise nothing but temporary benefits and ultimately deliver, nothing but, everlasting curses.
That’s what the end of verse 12 is driving at: ‘you [O God] reward everyone according to what they have done.
To the one who trusts in other things and capitulates to the pressure of Christian cross-carrying, there is an accounting to give to God.
And to the one who has trusted in God as their refuge in the pressure-cooker of Christian living, there will be this word from Jesus: ‘well done good and faithful servant’.
God is simply not a take-it-or-leave-it kind of option. He is the onlyoption.
Let this word be the word that encourages us to repeatedly, unendingly, rely on God as our refuge and nothing else – not People, not Power or not Prosperity – ‘One thing God has spoken’. In fact, ‘two things I’ve heard him say’ – this is certain, so take note: ‘Power’ belongs to who? ‘To you, God’. ‘And with you Lord is unfailing love’.
It is the worst and most dangerous kind of folly to trust in the powerof anything, when the power of God is right here for us in Jesus Christ.
It is the worst and most dangerous kind of folly to trust in the love of anything when the love of God is extended to us in Jesus Christ.
The power of those other things will be shown to be pathetic – not even enough to extend beyond death!
The love of those other things will be shown to be empty, leaving usempty, and cold and destitute.
Only God’s love can satisfy forever. Only his power can save to the uttermost.
So, the message is: let him be your refuge all this life long – no matter how the pressure mounts.
He alone can bear the weight, and shelter you so that you will neverbe shaken.
All the pressure from enemies will meet with his final justice.
Do you believe that?
You should!
He will bring them all to account. You will sit back and watch as every single power that came to bear against you, receives it’s just punishment on the day of God’s reckoning.
Verse 12 promises that too.
Pressure creates the question in us, ‘what will hold me?’ Or to say it the way we have in the sermon: ‘What, Christian, will you do when the pressure is on?’
People say, ‘we will hold you’.
Power says, ‘you can hold yourself’.
Prosperity says, ‘trust in what you can get – it will hold you’.
But only faith says, ‘trust in God alone – he has you held’. And he has. He is your rock and your salvation.
Let nothing else convince you otherwise.
