Psalm 86
Download MP3This morning, we will be continuing our summer sermon series through the book of Psalm the multiple of the books in Psalms. Let's try that again. Through multiple chapters in the book of Psalms. And today, we'll be looking at Psalm 86. Now, this psalm might not be quite as familiar to many of you as some of the other psalms that we have looked at and will look at, but it has become a personal favorite of mine over the past couple of years.
Dwight Castle:Psalm 86 is a psalm of David. It's the only psalm of David in book 3 of the Psalms, and it is a lament or a supplication to the Lord. And that is because David is crying out to God from a great place of need. Specifically, he is once again surrounded by enemies who want to take his life. And so David cries out from a place of desperation for God to save him.
Dwight Castle:However, today, I want us to view this psalm from a a different perspective, to zoom out. Yes. David is calling out to God for help in this particular situation, but I think that this psalm serves as a microcosm of life for us. I think that we all can relate to this in a way of calling out to God to help us to know how to walk with him in the daily rhythms of life. This psalm teaches us how to abide with the Lord with all of our heart.
Dwight Castle:So let's look at it together now with me. Psalm 86. Incline your ear, oh, Lord, and answer me. For I am poor and needy. Preserve my life for I am godly.
Dwight Castle:Save your servant who trusts in you. You are my God. Be gracious to me, oh Lord, for to you do I cry all the day. Gladden the soul of your servant. For to you do I lift up my soul.
Dwight Castle:For you, oh, Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding, and steadfast love to all who call upon you. Give ear, o lord, to my prayer. Listen to my plea for grace. In the day of my trouble, I call upon you, for you answer me. There is none like you among the gods, o lord, nor are there any works like yours.
Dwight Castle:All the nations that you have made shall come and worship before you, oh, lord, and shall glorify your name, for you are great and do wondrous things. You alone are God. Teach me your way, oh, Lord, that I may walk in your truth. Unite my heart to fear your name. I give thanks to you, oh, Lord, my God, with my whole heart.
Dwight Castle:And I will glorify your name forever. For great is your steadfast love toward me. You have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol. Oh, God. Insolent men have risen up against me.
Dwight Castle:A band of ruthless men seeks my life, and they do not set you before them. But you, oh Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Turn to me and be gracious to me. Give your strength to your servant and save the son of your maidservant. Show me a sign of your favor that those who hate me may see and be put to shame because you, Lord, have helped me and comforted me.
Dwight Castle:This is the word of the Lord. Pray with me. Lord, our our cry to you today is simple. Lord, we need you. We need you in more ways than we even know.
Dwight Castle:Lord, we need you right now in this moment to speak to all of us. We ask that you'll open up our hearts and our minds and our ears. Soften us to hear from your word. We ask, as David says here, that you will teach us your way, oh, lord. And I ask that the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart will be pleasing and acceptable in your sight, oh Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
Dwight Castle:Amen. Now, as I mentioned, I have studied this chapter for a while, so much so that I've actually read it almost every day for the past 2 years. I chose to memorize a few of the verses in it, specifically verses 11 and 12. It's because these particular verses are so relatable to me, and they're relatable to me because I think that they accurately describe the condition of my own soul. Namely, that I have a divided heart.
Dwight Castle:This is the lens that we are gonna look at this Psalm through today. Through these two verses because I think they help us understand what is one of the biggest core problems for all fallen human beings, that we suffer from divided hearts. So look again with me, if you will, at verses 11 and 12. It says, teach me your way, oh, Lord, that I may walk in your truth. Unite my heart to fear your name.
Dwight Castle:I give thanks to you, oh, Lord, my God, with my whole heart, and I will glorify your name forever. So in my home lately, we have been watching a lot of Star Wars, and I know that excites you, Caleb. I knew I'd get something right there. This means we have a lot of light saber battles in our house that turn into real battles, that turn into real injuries, so it's, tons of fun. And we recently watched, one of the movies, and I'm gonna go ahead and warn you, there's gonna be some big spoiler alerts here, but if you have not seen Star Wars up to this point, that's on your head.
Dwight Castle:You've had a long time. So we've been watching the episode where young Anakin Skywalker transforms into Darth Vader. There it is. Now this is a quite heavy movie, to be honest. It might be a little bit intense for my kids.
Dwight Castle:It's it was kind of, sobering to watch what happened. It was it's interesting because you see this young Anakin Skywalker as he grows up. He's raised by the Jedis. He's taught all about the good side of the force, how to care for other people, how to use it selflessly to serve and to protect, but then he comes under the kind of clandestine tutelage of the the secret emperor who begins to expose Anakin to the dark side of the force. And so Anakin begins to struggle back and forth as he grows between what he was taught and raised in, what he knew to be true and good, and then what he's hearing from the emperor, things that the dark side of the force can do for him that the good side can't, ways that he can serve himself and those around him instead of serving others, and you begin to see this internal turmoil take over his life.
Dwight Castle:It consumes him. He begins to make decisions he never would have made in greater and greater degrees until, by the end of the movie, he is a person he never would have imagined he would be. He's Darth Vader. I think David can relate to this. This seems to be something that David is struggling with himself.
Dwight Castle:He knows his own propensity to sin, but he also has a genuine desire for the Lord. So he feels torn. And in this Psalm, he asks the Lord to unite that divided heart, to walk only in God's way. Now I can relate to this, and it seems that the apostle Paul could as well, because in Romans 7, this is exactly what Paul confesses when he says, the very thing I don't want to do, I find myself doing. And the thing I do want to do, I don't do.
Dwight Castle:So I feel these same warring desires within me as well. I want to obey the Lord, but I really want my own way also. I want to serve and love and sacrifice for my wife and be gentle and patient with my children, but I'm really impatient, and I wanna be in control, and I want things my way. I want to spend time with the Lord, but I end up wasting my time on so many other things of no significance. This battle between my flesh and God's spirit is constant.
Dwight Castle:And on top of this, not only is my heart divided in its affections, there's this constant battle between sin and holiness, but my heart is also distracted in its attention. And this further divides me. So even when I do the right things, when I sit down for time with the Lord in the word and in prayer, I'm so distractible. Even when I'm not pursuing sinful things, I might reach the end of a day and realize that I haven't even thought about the Lord all day. I've just been doing my own thing.
Dwight Castle:Can you relate to this? I want to ask you this morning, what are the ways that you suffer from a divided heart? I want you to stop and think on that for a minute. Ponder that. How do you suffer from a divided heart?
Dwight Castle:One way to tell is to do a love audit. What is it that you love? So think about the things that you spend your time and your attention on. For example, if you spend most of your day thinking about money, how to get more of it, how you don't have enough of it, how your wealth and your possessions stack up against others, maybe money has an unhealthy affection in your heart, or could be your reputation or your body image or you fill in the blank. What is it for you?
Dwight Castle:Even good things can become idols when we give them an unhealthy place in our heart. Things like spouses and children and the desire for spouses and children. Things like comfort and safety. There's no end to the ways that our heart is divided. And this is why scripture is full of prayers of God's people begging God to give them a united or a whole heart.
Dwight Castle:One of the most famous is Deuteronomy 6, the Shema. What all Israelites would say every day. Hear, oh, Israel. The Lord our God. The Lord is one.
Dwight Castle:You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your might. On this Psalm, David recognizes this broken condition, and so he asks the Lord to direct and unite his heart towards the Lord. Specifically, he asks God to establish his steps into God's way. Look at verse 11. He says, teach me your way, oh, Lord, that I may walk in your truth.
Dwight Castle:So this is the key of the psalm. Our heart's desire becomes unified towards the Lord when we walk in his way. It's how we walk with the Lord, and this is what the psalm is gonna talk to us about today. Now there are many ways in life, many paths. Our culture says that all of these ways basically end up at the same point because the purpose of it is self discovery.
Dwight Castle:So you find your truth, your path. It doesn't matter about anyone else's. Don't judge them. The point is to be true to yourself. However, scripture is clear that there's really only one way that leads to life.
Dwight Castle:Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Did you know that the early Christians in the New Testament were actually called, for a time, the way, because they so closely followed the way of Jesus. Throughout scripture, when God tells his people to stay in the way, this is not a generic term. It's speaking about something very specific. The way that God has established for his people.
Dwight Castle:Proverbs 16 warns against doing the opposite of this. It says, there is a way that seems right to man, but in the end it leads to death. Picture with me a walking trail. Right? You're hiking, you're walking in the woods.
Dwight Castle:If you've ever done this, you know how important it is to stay on the path. It can be hard at times. The path can be obscured. There can even be splits in the path, but if you lose the way, you're going to end up somewhere where you didn't intend or desire to be. Jeremiah 6 16 says, thus says the Lord, stand by the roads and look and ask for the ancient paths where the good way is, and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.
Dwight Castle:Isaiah 3021 describes how God guides his people in his way by his spirit. He says, and your ears shall hear a word behind you saying, this is the way. Walk in it.' Have you ever considered that you might feel so anxious in your life because you are trying to walk in your own way and it just simply isn't working? Or maybe you feel directionless and purposeless in life, and it's because you're on the wrong path, one that dead ends in self discovery and self gratification. Or maybe you are feeling divided because you actually have one foot in one path and one foot in another.
Dwight Castle:You're straddling the fence and you feel torn. Your heart is divided. There are many ways in life, but only one that leads to true joy. In 16/78, John Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim's Progress. I commend this book to you.
Dwight Castle:In addition to Star Wars, it is something we are doing in our house as well. We gotta have a little bit of both there. Right? Now, in this beautiful allegory of the Christian life, we meet this character, young Christian. He leaves the city of destruction, and he goes on a journey to the celestial city where he will live forever with his good king.
Dwight Castle:On his long and difficult journey, he's constantly faced with challenges that tempt him to leave the way of the king, but he finds that every time he does, it just brings more pain and sorrow. Now, along the way of the king, he's led into deep friendships. He receives help in his time of need. He comes to places like the Palace Beautiful and the Delectable Mountains. But the way of the king is also fraught with danger.
Dwight Castle:He has to face enemies like self and the giant despair. He has to climb the hill of difficulty and go through the valley of the shadow of death. There are many appealing distractions and temptations off of the path for a young Christian, but he finds that the only way to true life and happiness is on the way of the king. Now this is what David is asking the Lord to guide him into, and I think it is the deepest desire of our hearts as well. So, okay.
Dwight Castle:That sounds good. How? What does this practically look like for us to walk in God's way with a united heart? I think Psalm 86 gives us a very clear picture. Look at verse 1 with me because this is the key to walking with the Lord.
Dwight Castle:Verse 1 says, incline your ear, oh Lord, and answer me for I am poor and needy. There it is. The key to walking in the way of the Lord is to grasp your need for him. David begins this prayer by just clearing the air right away, and he's like, let's make no pretenses. I am poor and needy.
Dwight Castle:God, I come to you as the one in need of help. You are the one who can help me. He is acknowledging in humility his total dependence on God. He's saying, I am completely incapable of doing any good on my own, and he is trusting God to move towards him and rescue him. Now that might seem obvious to you, but don't miss it.
Dwight Castle:I think that the reason for our divided hearts is often because we fail to recognize how poor and needy we are. This is what Jesus is talking about when he preaches the famous Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5, Jesus begins by saying, hey. The people who are gonna be blessed are the poor in spirit. They are the ones who are going to hear everything else that he has to say after this.
Dwight Castle:They are the ones who are not going to try to defend themselves, justify themselves. They are the ones who say, no. I come to you because I am in need. Now, we Christians, we're funny about this. Right?
Dwight Castle:We say this truth with our mouth, but we don't always live this out in actual life. We say we need the Lord, but we really want to be in control of our own lives. We'll give the Lord a nod of the head on Sundays. We'll pray a few prayers throughout the week. We even believe a lot of these things, but, functionally, we want to be Lord of our lives.
Dwight Castle:We want to control everything. We keep up a facade for ourselves and for everyone else. We do everything within our power to try to stay in control. Think about it. The moments that you hate are the ones where you don't feel like you're in control.
Dwight Castle:Why is this so hard for us to admit that we are poor and needy? It feels so vulnerable for us. It feels like a failure. Despite what we read in scripture, it seems like there's condemnation. Like, there's loss to admit that.
Dwight Castle:But this is actually the opposite of the truth. In his book, Gentle and Lowly, Dane Ortland speaks to this issue. He says, The minimum bar to be enfolded into the embrace of Jesus is simply this, open yourself up to him. It's all he needs. Indeed, it is the only thing that he works with.
Dwight Castle:With Christ, our sins and weaknesses are the very resume items that qualify us to approach him. Nothing but coming to him is necessary. Ortland is honing in here on the fact that we have to come to Jesus with no pretense, no pride, no self sufficiency, and when we do, it is good news. We find him ready to meet us in our need. That's what the psalm is about.
Dwight Castle:We see that David comes to God in his need. He says I'm poor and needy, and God meets him in every range of his human experience. Let's start with verse 14. This is the most obvious one. It's why David has come to the Lord.
Dwight Castle:Oh, God. Insolent men have risen up against me. A band of ruthless men seeks my life. Okay. So David is in a tight spot, to say the least here.
Dwight Castle:Right? The odds are stacked up against him. This is the most common time where we come to the Lord, when it's really hit the fan. Right? Maybe it's a diagnosis.
Dwight Castle:Maybe it's a death. Maybe it's an unimaginable loss or suffering in your life or the life of someone near you. You're in confusion. It's easier to come to God in these times because it's so obvious in front of our face. We cannot handle this on our own, and so we rightly should come to the Lord.
Dwight Castle:David does. We should come to God when you're overwhelmed. You should come to God when no one else can fix that situation. Come utterly dependent, poor and needy to him, and ask him for help. But the Psalm also teaches us how David comes to the Lord for many other things too.
Dwight Castle:It's actually surprising when you read it how many different things David asks of God in the Psalm. I'm gonna I'm just gonna bullet point him. Follow along with me. Look here in these verses. Look at verse 2.
Dwight Castle:David says, preserve my life, oh God. Verse 3, be gracious to me, oh, Lord. He asks for daily grace for that moment. Be gracious to me, Lord. Verse 4, gladden the soul of your servant.
Dwight Castle:David says, God, I'm depressed. Help me. Give me joy. Gladden my soul. Verse 6, David begs for God to hear his cry, to just listen to him.
Dwight Castle:In verse 11, David says, God, teach me your way. In verse 16, David asks for strength. Give strength to your servant. In verse 17, he asks for a sign of God's favor. He asks for help.
Dwight Castle:He asks for comfort. Verse 3 is the perfect summary of this. Verse 3 says, be gracious to me, oh Lord, for to you do I cry all the day. This is a constant posture before the Lord. Friend, there is nothing that you should not come to the Lord with.
Dwight Castle:When we come to him poor and needy, we find him to meet us in this place of desperation. So, yes, you can come to him with your addiction, with your own sin that has piled up on your head. You can come to him when others sin against you, when those external forces of life, the unasked for things, crush you. Come to God. You can come to him with your longing, and with your loneliness, your anxiety, your fear, your depression, your doubts, your pain.
Dwight Castle:Come to him with all of it. Every single thought and emotion that you have. There is nothing that is too hard for God. Nothing too big, too small, too extra for God. And, here's the good news.
Dwight Castle:When you come to him in this way, not only does he meet you in your time of need, but he trains your heart to do it more and more and more. He unites your heart to walk in his way. Now, there are some of you, when you hear this, you're like, yeah. That sounds good, but I don't know. How can I know that God is actually gonna do this?
Dwight Castle:I'm not sure that God is really even listening to me. How do I know that he cares, that he will answer? I think that Psalm 86 gives us three reasons that we can trust God to respond in this way when we call to him. First, we can trust God to respond like this because of our covenant relationship with him. For those of us who call God savior, he's also our father.
Dwight Castle:Now, this Psalm is chocked full of familial language. It's rich. It's implicit and explicit. Why does God answer us when we come to him poor and needy? Well, look at verse 2.
Dwight Castle:Verse 2 says, preserve my life for I am godly. Save your servant who trusts in you. You are my God. Now I am godly kind of makes it sound like David's like, hey, God. You kinda owe me.
Dwight Castle:Right? Like, I'm pretty good. You you owe me to, be rescued here. That's not what's going on. It's not the best translation.
Dwight Castle:A better translation of that is, I'm loyal. I'm faithful. I'm yours. David is saying that he has a relationship with God here. Picture someone throwing in their lot and saying, God, I'm on your team.
Dwight Castle:Come hell or high water, no matter what. And then he's calling on God and saying, I'm with you. No one else. There's a relational honesty here that I really appreciate. This is common in the common in the Psalms.
Dwight Castle:It's it's all throughout this Psalm. And this gives me courage to talk to God when I'm in difficult times in life. Now, we have a tendency when we read passages like this to kinda sanitize it a bit. Right? We hear phrases like incline your ear to me.
Dwight Castle:Here's what I want you to hear when you when you read that. God, listen to me. When you hear preserve my life, save your servant, I want you to hear, God, help me. God, save me, please. You know what this sounds like to me?
Dwight Castle:It sounds like my scared, exasperated children calling out for their father. Now maybe me, as a finite father who's tired and busy, maybe I'm not able to give my kids all that they think they need all the time. Right? And I do have 5 kids after all, so that's basically all the time I'm failing someone's expectations, but that doesn't stop my kids. What do they do?
Dwight Castle:Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad.
Dwight Castle:They get in the face right like, Dad. Dad. Do you hear me? Dad, look at this. Listen.
Dwight Castle:Can you come help me? Dad. Do this. Do you wanna jump on the trailer? My shoe is untied.
Dwight Castle:Dad. Right? It doesn't stop them. And what do I do? I listen.
Dwight Castle:I help them Even if it's almost always an overreaction, even if the thing they're worried about isn't quite as big as they think it is. And then certainly when it is, when they're running out in the middle of the road or they're stuck on that trampoline upside down, I'm running over there. Right? We are God's children. He is our father.
Dwight Castle:He will always answer his people because we are in covenant relationship with him. There's a second reason that we can trust God to respond, and it's because of his character. Now, there's a phrase that's repeated 3 times in the Psalm that might stand out as familiar to you. Look with me, if you will, at verse 5. For you, oh, Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you.
Dwight Castle:Look at verse 13. For great is your steadfast love toward me. Verse 15. But you, oh Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. The reason this might seem familiar to you is because it comes from a very important passage of scripture in Exodus 34 when Moses meets with God on Mount Sinai.
Dwight Castle:God gives his people his law, and he reveals himself to them. He descends in a cloud in this iconic moment. He passes before Moses. He proclaims his name, and he says this. He says, the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
Dwight Castle:Now, this is one of the most important passages in all of scripture. It's where God reveals his true identity to his people, telling them about the nature of his character. This statement is repeated more than any other in all the old testament, and it's at the core of understanding who God is. And, this is the phrase that David comes back to 3 times in his time of need. This is where he hangs his hope.
Dwight Castle:How do I know that God will answer me when I call? Because it's who he is. He's merciful. He's gracious. He's slow to anger with me.
Dwight Castle:He's abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Now that last phrase, it comes from the Hebrew word hesed, and I know that everyone woke up today wanting to learn Hebrew. If you learn one Hebrew word, it's this. Hesed. It is used over 250 times in the old testament.
Dwight Castle:It is core at understanding who God is, and it's impossible to really translate it into English well because it's so rich and full of meaning. This is why Sally Lloyd Jones and her book, The Jesus Storybook Bible, says this about that word. It's God's never stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever love. That is God's character. It's who he is.
Dwight Castle:We can absolutely bank on it because he's the same yesterday, today, and forever. Now, the final reason that we can trust God to respond is because of his track record. Look at how David reminds himself of God's past faithfulness. In verse 7, he remembers that God always answers when he calls. In verses 8 and 9, he recalls God's power over all of creation.
Dwight Castle:All people will bow down before him. In verse 10, he remembers that God is great. He's done wondrous things. And in verse 13, David remembers that God has delivered him many times even from the depths of Sheol. That is translated, Hellish situation.
Dwight Castle:What is David doing here? He's remembering. He's reminding himself of God's faithfulness. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever seen God rescue you from the depths of Sheol?
Dwight Castle:I have. Such overwhelming circumstances that you see no way out? There's nothing but fear and anxiety and death all around you? That feeling is still palpable for me often. And I know it's something that is palpable for some of you sitting in this room right now.
Dwight Castle:I know that because I know your stories. I've been talking with you and I've been praying with you. Maybe a crushing diagnosis, maybe a struggling marriage, Maybe broken hearts. Loss. When you're in that place, it can close in on you so that you can't even remember God's truth.
Dwight Castle:It can be difficult to see out of that place. Despite these truths, you can feel like God has abandoned you. Total silence. And so you might hear me today from that place saying, God is with you, and he responds, and you're like, yeah. I don't think so.
Dwight Castle:Not in my experience right now. And I've been there. When we had our conjoined twins, my wife and I, I told some of my close friends that I felt like I was in a deep deep pit, thousands of feet down. There was no one who could do anything for me. There was no way out.
Dwight Castle:Even the best things that people did, unbelievable, lavish things, was like someone taking a really nice steak and dropping it down into that pit. Thanks. I guess. I'd rather be out of this pit. And so, what do we do in these circumstances when you stay in that pit for a very long time?
Dwight Castle:Some of you in deeper pits than I've ever been in. What do we do? Where is God? That is when I started reading this Psalm, in that moment in my life. That's when I screamed, sometimes literally, God, where are you?
Dwight Castle:Do you hear me? Answer me. Incline your ear to me. This Psalm gave me words in those moments. Now it didn't immediately fix things.
Dwight Castle:I didn't get out of that pit right away, but it helped me to keep coming to God in the midst of my pain. And sometimes, not every time, it reminded me just enough of God's covenant faithfulness that I could remember that he was with me, and that was my true hope in those times. God is with me in this pit. Staying in his words, staying in the Psalms, staying in this Psalm gave me just enough firm footing in that miry bog. And even though life is still hard for me, some days now it feels like I'm back in that pit.
Dwight Castle:I can look back and I can say, God has brought me out of the depths of Sheol. I have more perspective to understand on the days where it feels like I'm back in it that he's gonna save me again. And I can praise him, as David says, with a whole heart. I give him thanks. If you've ever experienced that internally in your own soul or externally in your circumstances, you don't forget that deliverance quickly.
Dwight Castle:It changes us. And here is the best news for every person in this room. We, today, have something even greater than David did to look back on God's track record. This gives us hope in our darkest moments. We know that Jesus actually delivered our souls from the depths of Sheol, from hell.
Dwight Castle:Unlike David, who couldn't look on what Jesus had already done, we can look back and see an example of God's steadfast, hesed love right in front of us. We see that Jesus is so reliable that he went to the uttermost for his covenant family. He called out to God, and he wasn't answered. So that every time we call out to him, we will be answered. We see in verse 17, David asks God for a sign of God's favor.
Dwight Castle:Friends, we have that sign. It is Jesus on the cross. David asks for comfort. He asked for help. God has given us comfort and help, and that extends into every circumstance of your life right now.
Dwight Castle:When we see that we've been rescued from the depths of Sheol, it should change the way that we walk with God. Now, we come to him. Yes. Broken, poor, and needy. But we come and see that he meets us in our time of need, and this unites our heart to fear his name.
Dwight Castle:This helps us to walk in the way of the Lord. And this is my prayer for us today that God would do that in each of us. Pray with me. Lord Jesus, we are poor and needy. We come to you poor and needy, and we acknowledge how desperate we are for you to intervene.
Dwight Castle:And thank you that you have with the blood of Jesus. And for those who are walking through difficult times right now, who are here, who question even what that means for them, Lord, I pray that you will surround them with your love, your steadfast hesed love, a love that never fails. Lord, even in the midst of the valley of the shadow of death, you are with us. I pray that your steadfast love and mercy will follow us all the days of our life. Remind us of these truths.
Dwight Castle:Keep us in your way, we pray. In your name, amen.
