A Mighty Fortress

Sermon Transcript

I’m only 38 years old, which I think still makes me a young pastor, but I started when I was 28, at which time I was definitely a young pastor. At that time I would have told you that suffering was a normal part of the Christian life because I knew it was the theologically correct answer, and it is. But 10 years later, I’m starting to say it more because I’ve seen it in the lives of the people I’ve had the privilege of shepherding. Globally and historically, suffering is the norm in a fallen world, not the exception. Rapid advances in technology over the past century or so have enabled us to mitigate it, no doubt—and in that we find a significant reason to give thanks to God. But at the same time some forms of suffering have intensified—think of rising rates of depression, anxiety, suicide, and loneliness. The wise approach to life in such a world, then, can’t just be to engineer your life in such a way as to minimize or avoid all suffering. The wise approach is to consider how you will deal with it, not if, but when, it finds you. And in my 10 years as a pastor, I can tell you there are two basic ways you can deal with it: You can draw nearer to the Lord through it, or you can drift from him in it. In this Psalm, David lets us in on his experience as one who drew nearer to the Lord through it, and his conclusion from it is that that is the wiser approach. No matter how bad your situation gets, keep running to the Lord, and in this Psalm he gives us four reasons to do so: Because he is your rock and fortress, he can handle whatever you’re going through, he hears your prayers, and he has enough goodness for you. Therefore, we should press on running to him.

 

Because he is your rock and fortress

 

Our psalm today begins with the words, “In you, O LORD, do I take refuge,” and though the word Lord is capitalized in your Bibles because that’s how the ESV lets you know that the Hebrew word Yahweh, the distinctive name of the God of Israel, is being translated, the word that you can imagine being underlined, bolded, or italicized is “you.” In you, O LORD, do I take refuge. David is writing this Psalm during a very difficult time in his life. In this psalm he says he is in distress, his eye is wasted from grief, his soul and his body also, his life is spent with sorrow, his years with sighing, his strength fails, his bones waste away, he’s a reproach even to his neighbors, he’s forgotten by others, and still others scheme together against him, plotting to take his life.

 

When you’re in a situation like that, you never turn nowhere. You never remain static in it. For what do you look? You look for refuge, somewhere to run, somewhere to be safe from it all, and so where does David run? He runs to the Lord. In you, O LORD, do I take refuge. Other options abound, though. Sin offers its own refuge. Is another person the occasion for your hardship? Sin invites you to live in a fantasy world in which you get your vengeance on them, and tempts you to start taking action in that direction. Is your spouse the occasion for your hardship? Sin presents all kinds of forbidden men and women to you, whether in person or through a screen, as a warm blanket to shelter you. Are finances the source of your hardship? Sin shows you all kinds of ways with some little white lies you could accumulate more money for yourself.

 

But Satan’s devices can also be more subtle, as when he doesn’t present sin itself as a refuge to you, but rather presents things God made as a refuge, instead of God himself. In our time, a video game, a television show, or an app may be enjoyed as a good gift from God, but how often do we turn to them as a refuge from our hardships? If you find yourself binging them or preferring them to prayer, you might suspect that they have become a refuge for you. Food is a good gift from God, but it too can be used as a refuge, with similarly detrimental consequences. Alcohol and sex even are good gifts from God, but terrible as a refuge. Modern medicine is an incredible gift of God’s grace, but if you find yourself able to do hours of research on what is wrong with you, seek out multiple specialists, and drown your money into such an endeavor, while you find it comparatively difficult to give money to your local church or pray, you might suspect that it has become a refuge for you. Even a therapist can be a good gift from the Lord, but makes for an awful replacement for the Lord.

 

Alternatives abound, but David says in verse 1: In you, O LORD, do I take refuge. And so what does he do? He prays in his time of distress. He calls out: Let me never be put to shame; in your righteousness deliver me! Incline your ear to me; rescue me speedily! Be a rock of refuge to me, a strong fortress to save me. And why run to this God in times of distress, rather than all the alternatives? Because, verse 3: You are my rock and my fortress. Why ask this God to be to you a rock of refuge, and a strong fortress to save you? Because that’s the kind of God he is. The rock and the fortress are both images of protection. If you lived in the wilderness in the ancient world and an intense storm was coming on, your best bet was to find a large rock, and hide yourself behind it. If your enemies were attacking you, as we see was happening to David in this Psalm, and you knew they were too powerful for you, where’d you want to go? To the fortress, the castle, the solid, strong tower, in which you would be safe.

 

That’s who God is for his people, David says in verse 3, and then he says for his name’s sake he leads and guides us. If you are a Christian, in your baptism you were named with the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. So now for his name’s sake, he is not going to let you go. He won’t keep you from all hardship; this Psalm and the whole Bible makes that clear. But he will lead you and guide you through it, and if you run to him in it, you will find him to be your rock and your fortress. So what do you say to such a God if you are running to him as your rock and your fortress, your refuge? It sounds like what the Psalmist says in verse 5: “Into your hand I commit my spirit.”

 

This is a prayer Jesus himself prayed in his dying hour, it is a prayer many believers have prayed as they saw their death approaching, but it is also a prayer we can pray daily: Into your hand I commit my spirit. As someone in a storm may commit their spirit to a rock they’d hide behind, or as someone in battle may commit their spirit to a fortress they’d run to, so we can say to the Lord: “Into your hand I commit my spirit.” We don’t know most of the details to what our future holds. We make plans only to find that they are often foiled, and many of us are very good at projecting worst-case scenario futures for ourselves that never end up happening. One thing we can know about our future is that we are very bad at predicting it, but another thing we can know about it is that the God who is our rock and our fortress will continue to be so. And so we can say with confidence, “Into your hand I commit my spirit.”

 

He’s been faithful in the past. Verse 5 continues: “You have redeemed me, O LORD, faithful God.” In verses 7-8 David recounts how God has seen his affliction, known his distress, and set his feet in a broad place in the past. If you are here today praising the Lord, believing in Jesus, still saying to God, “you are my rock and my fortress,” it can only be because he has already led you and guided you through so much for his name’s sake. Just thinking of people I’ve know in this church over the years, God has led you through abusive upbringings, parental divorce, your own divorce, violence, poverty, drug addiction, mental health struggles, incarceration, homelessness, estrangement from family, broken engagements, infertility, miscarriages, stillbirths, sexual assault, death of loved ones, and much more. And that brings us to our next reason to run to the Lord no matter how bad your situation gets: He can handle whatever you’re going through.

 

Because he can handle whatever you’re going through

 

In verse 9 David begins to break down just how dire his situation is. Remember that this is a record of David’s prayer, he wrote it down and addressed it to the choirmaster, who would then lead God’s people in singing it together. Why did he want all of us to know what he puts in verses 9-13? So that we’d know that no matter how bad our situation gets, the Lord can handle it. Look at how desperate David’s situation was. First he says in verse 9 that he was in distress, then he says his eye is wasted from grief, probably an allusion to crying. He wept so much that his eyes were physically affected by it. Then he adds on: My soul and my body also—also what? Also wasted from grief. By his soul here he’s probably thinking of something like a persistent depression that just weighs him down inside. And we now have further medical evidence of the link between stress and bodily ailments like high blood pressure, sleep issues, appetite issues, inflammation, and more. One brother told me of a time recently when he was in such distress that he lost over twenty pounds in the span of a few months from vomiting regularly and having trouble eating. That’s the kind of thing David is describing here.

 

He goes on in verse 10 to say that his life is spent with sorrow, and his years with sighing. So this was not just a bad day or background noise in his life. His life is consumed by this sorrow, and it’s been going on for years. As he evaluates it, he says as the verse continues that his strength fails because of his iniquity, and his bones waste away. How’s this for an added distress? He realized that at least part of the reason for his distress was his own iniquity, his own sin! Might you consider that, whatever your distress is? Many today have an appropriate concern that people not blame themselves for the sins of others. It’s false and harmful for children who were abused to think the abuse of their parents was somehow their fault as children, for example. But our present distress always comes to us as sinful people, and so typically our sin also makes its contribution to our distress. As counselor and author Paul Tripp has said, “We trouble our trouble.” Others of you have no trouble seeing your sin in your distress—it’s clear as day that your suffering is a consequence of your sin, and so the awareness of it adds to the distress.

 

On top of what David was going through personally, he had real adversaries who were out to get him, and they even included his neighbors and acquaintances! One of the most psychologically difficult things to go through is the hostility of someone else, that sense that someone really, really does not like you. That’s hard no matter who it is, but maybe you’d console yourself with the knowledge that at least the people closest to you love you; at least you have your tribe. But here David says even they are against him! Imagine walking home and when your neighbors see you, they look at you with disdain, and hide from you. Or imagine the people closest to you just forget all about you. That’s what he describes in verse 12: “I have been forgotten like one who is dead; I have become like a broken vessel,” and what do people do with broken vessels? They throw them away. When you go through hardship, you know what can make it even harder in addition to your own sin? That sense that no one else cares. And then on top of that, the one thing David does hear from others is a plot to take his life.

 

So whatever you’re going through, no matter how bad it gets, what I want you to see here is that you are not alone. David enjoys one of the deepest friendships with God that we have recorded for us in all the Bible, and look at what he still went through. As the Christian author C.S. Lewis put it when asked about life in the world of the atomic bomb, we must begin by not exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Whatever you’re going through, you can be sure that God has led his people through it before, and he can lead you through it too. He can handle it.

 

Just as we always look somewhere for refuge in distress, we always do something with God in distress: Either we get closer to him, or we distance ourselves from him, and there could be many reasons we distance ourselves from him, but one is if we start thinking he can’t handle what we’re going through, or perhaps that he doesn’t care to. But look again: This Psalm and many like it stand as a definitive argument against that. God can handle it, and God does care, and that’s why David even bothers taking the time to explain what he is feeling to God and to write it down for our instruction: He wants us to know that too.

 

So what’s it look like to run to the Lord, no matter how bad your situation gets? Instead of just grumbling about your situation in your heart, or venting it to others, take it to the Lord and talk to him about it. Sometimes when you do that, the Lord uses is to show you just how ridiculous you’re actually being. My family went to the beach recently, and the weather was bad, so of course me being the godly man that I am, I start grumbling in my heart about it: “Man, why’s it the one week we’re at the beach that it’s 60 and rainy?” Now imagine me pouring that out before the LORD like this: “Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am in distress; my eye is wasted away from grief, my soul and my body also. After all, I’m at the beach, but it’s 60 and rainy.” That would show that I don’t need deliverance; I need forgiveness for my vacation idolatry.

 

That’s one way a Psalm like this can get twisted in our cultural moment. It’s culturally taboo now to invalidate anyone’s feelings, so anytime someone is in distress, we’re losing the ability to stop and ask, “Does this situation actually warrant the level of distress you’re giving it, or might there be some iniquity in you, like David confesses in this psalm, or like my sense of entitlement to not only a beach vacation, but perfect weather at it, that is exacerbating your distress?” There have been some voices even in the non-Christian world in recent years pointing out the dangers of over validating peoples’ feelings. In the 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind, the authors say that the idea that you can always trust your feelings is one of the three great “untruths” that are causing psychological damage to people today. The more recent 2024 release Bad Therapy suggests that an overemphasis on “how you’re feeling” and encouraging especially kids to express distressing feelings is causing more harm than good to their psyche.

 

No doubt these books offer some valid critiques. It would not have been most helpful to me if someone had encouraged me to identify my disappointment with the weather at the beach with David’s distress in this Psalm. Not every hard thing in your life is trauma, not every sin against you is abuse, and not every discomfort in your life is a mental illness. But what about those who have been genuinely abused, as some of you in this room I know have been? What about those who have lost a loved one unexpectedly? What about those whose minds really do seem to be malfunctioning in a debilitating way? We live in a world with no shortage of significant suffering like that described here, and is there a real God who cares, a real God who can handle it? Yes, there is. So no matter how bad your situation gets, keep running to him, talk to him about it, write or type out to him what you’re going through like David did here, and then ask him to act, because he hears you.

 

Because he hears your prayers

 

Verse 14 introduces a new section in which the focus is on what David is requesting of God, and it is an important link between the sections. Despite all that David is going through, what keeps him talking to God? “But I trust in you, O LORD; I say, ‘you are my God,’ my times are in your hand.” That’s the big question for you when you go through hardship: Will you trust the Lord? Will you run to him, or run from him? If you run to him, run to him with your requests.

 

In the verses that follow David prays for rescue, for God to let his face shine upon him, for God to not let him be put to shame, and for God to judge his enemies. A few things to notice here: First, David does pray for a favorable outcome in his circumstance: Rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from persecutors! He prays for safety, in other words. When your loved one is sick, what do you pray for? Naturally you pray for healing, and that is appropriate. When Jesus taught us to pray, one of the things for which he taught us to pray was our daily bread—material provision. But then he also prays specifically for his relationship with God: Make your face shine on your servant. “God, enable us to get pregnant, and would you also show us more of yourself through the trial of infertility?” “God, give me a job, and would you also teach me to rely on you as my provider while I remain in this season of joblessness?”

 

Notice finally the context in which he sets his prayers. Verse 17: “O Lord, let me not be put to shame, for I call upon you.” Why would it be a big deal for David to be put to shame? Because he calls upon the Lord, and if after calling upon the Lord he was then put to shame, what would that suggest about the Lord? That he wasn’t faithful to his promises, that he didn’t care, or that he wasn’t powerful enough to answer David’s prayer. Just as God leads and guides us for his name’s sake, so he hears our prayers for his name’s sake, and we should appeal to that when praying. And similar to how crying out to God with our distress also places a test on our distress, crying out to God and asking him to act for his name’s sake also puts a check on our prayers: if God answered this prayer, would it really bring him more glory?

 

You see, David wasn’t just praying as a private person with his own dreams for his life and then asking God to bless them. He was praying as the king of God’s people, which also explains why he can pray against his enemies the way he does in verses 17-18: Because they are God’s enemies, and in judging them, God would be passing a just sentence on their deception, pride, and contempt. You see how that’s different from launching a business, praying for God to prosper it, and praying for him to shut down the competition? So again when Jesus taught us to pray, he taught us to begin with, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come, thy will be done,” not “hallowed be my name, my kingdom come, my will be done.”

 

But as you seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, you will suffer, both the sufferings common to all humanity, and the sufferings that uniquely come to you from a world that hates the true God. And when it does, the godly response is not simply to bear it and stuff it. The godly response is to bear it in communion with God, pouring it out before him, and asking him to act on your behalf so you can keep seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. God save my mother’s life so she can continue singing your praises and telling the next generation about what you’ve done. God give me a wife so I can show the love of Christ to her and to the world, so we can have children and bring them up in the discipline and instruction of Christ. God give me a job so I can give more money to missions and so I can show more people in my workplace what your loving authority looks like. Our God is a God who hears the prayers of his people. No matter how bad your situation gets, keep running to him, and the next reason we’ll look at is because he has enough goodness for you.

 

Because he has enough goodness for you

 

After presenting his prayer, David expresses confidence in God’s answer when he says in verse 19, “Oh how abundant is your goodness, which you have stored up for those who fear you and worked for those who take refuge in you, in the sight of the children of mankind!” Why does David keep running to the Lord even in this incredible distress? Why does he keep praying and asking God to act, when mind you, God has still for the time being left David in distress? Why should you keep running to the Lord in your distress? Because his goodness is abundant, and he still has more of it stored up for you.

 

I know an older couple who likes to keep things. They love their kids especially, so they tend to keep things from their kids’ childhood. But you know what happens when you do that, right? You run out of room in the basement. So what did this couple do next? They paid for a storage unit. Then when that got full, what did they do next? They paid for another storage unit. Well the God who exists has an infinite supply of goodness, only he hasn’t stored it in basements or storage units. He’s stored it in a person: Jesus Christ, in whom all his fullness was pleased to dwell. The true God is a God who in his very essence is good, an infinite fountain of goodness. He is an infinite, eternal act of love, a Father who loves his Son in the unity of his Spirit. And so when he made all things, what did he repeatedly see? He saw that it was good. God is good, God’s creation is good, and yet we humans have turned from him. Even David, the friend of God, amid all his distress, knew that he was not a mere victim of his distress. He knew that his strength failed because of his iniquity, and so does ours.

 

How then could David, not only as a sufferer, but as a sinner, keep running to the Lord? How can we? We can because the infinitely good God has become a human in Jesus Christ, and as a human he went through the distress that our sins deserved. Jesus is the one who could ultimately say, “My life is spent with sorrow and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of their iniquities,” for all the iniquities of God’s people were placed on him. He’s the one who became a reproach, even to his own neighbors and acquaintances, who came to his own, and his own did not receive him. One of his own disciples joined in the plot to kill him, and yet on the cross, he still ran to the Lord, and said, “Into your hands I commit my spirit.” While David says here that he was forgotten like one who was dead, Jesus truly died, and for a couple days, he was forgotten. But now he can say the end of verse 22: You heard the voice of my pleas for mercy when I cried to you for help, because on the third day God raised him from the dead, and now in him all the fullness of God’s goodness is stored up for those who turn from their sins and believe in him, and God is determined to pour it all out on us from now unto the age to come.

 

Brothers and sisters, today that store of goodness has not run out. He still has more goodness to give you if you will run to Christ and ask him for it. His plans for your future are for your good, even though they include times of distress. Is this what shapes your perception of your future? We can’t help but think about our future–what do you expect when you look ahead? What about when you even just wake up in the morning and think about the day ahead? Or when you think about the future of our church? Do you see a God of abundant goodness who has more stored up for you, and more stored up for our church? Whatever your distress today, if you fear the Lord, that’s what he does have in store for your future. If you are here today and you are not a Christian, don’t run to the power of positive thinking. What reason do you really have to think your future will be good? It’s only in a savior who has overcome death, who is alive and interceding for your now, and who promises to come again that you can have a secure hope of future goodness. He’s got it stored up for all who believe in him, and therefore, to those of you who do: press on.

 

Therefore, press on

 

Through the end of verse 22, David has been talking to God, and just writing down for us that conversation with God. In verse 23, though, he turns to address us. What’s he want us to learn from his experience with God? What’s he wants us to do with it? Love the LORD, all you his saints. Jesus has gone through this Psalm, and now risen from the dead; what does he want from us who believe in him? Love the LORD, all you his saints. We love because he first loved us. Don’t let the darkness of your distress overwhelm the basic response of love to God. You may not be able to fix or understand your suffering, but you can love the LORD in the midst of it. Just look at how he’s loved you! Whatever you’re going through pales in comparison to the torment of hell, and God has so loved us that not only has he not given us the hell we deserve; he’s poured out his goodness on us and stored up even more of it in Christ Jesus! God’s not calling you to make your life work. He’s calling you to love him.

 

And in our final verse, he’s calling you to press on with strength and courage as you wait for the LORD. We’ve already seen how weak David is: His eye, soul, and body are wasting away because of his grief. And when you have adversaries scheming together against you, plotting to take your life, what do you need? Courage. Brothers and sisters, you and I are far too weak to persevere in faith through the trials we will face in this life. We have an enemy, the devil, who prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. We have the sin that remains in us, that looks like such an attractive refuge from those trials. We have unbelief at work in us, causing us to doubt that God really does care, that he really does have goodness stored up for us. And we live in a world that opposes Christ, and will oppose us the more closely we follow and identify with him.

 

But we also have a savior, who committed his spirit into God’s hands, and who is risen now to reign, who is interceding for us, and who promises to come again, to put the wicked to shame, to mute the lying lips, and to show the immeasurable riches of God’s grace in kindness toward us for the age to come. You can do all things through him who strengthens you. No matter how bad your situation gets, run to him. Don’t turn to the false refuge of sin or even of the good gifts that God provides. Don’t distance yourself from him, and don’t turn down your obedience to him or proclamation of his word in the face of the world’s opposition. Pour out your heart before the Lord, let your requests be made known to him, love him, be strong and courageous, and wait for the Lord to pour out more of the goodness he has stored up for you. A sincere love for God and courage in the face of cultural pressure may be the biggest needs of Jesus’ church in a place like Philadelphia today. A people who love their God, a people looking forward to the future with joyful expectation of God’s goodness, and a people who can therefore courageously and cheerfully live for Christ and proclaim his word even in the midst of real distress—may the Lord increasingly make us just such a people.