Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Psalm 17, emphasizing David's earnest prayer for God's protection and guidance while he is pursued by Saul. He highlights David's requests to see, search, show, shield, save, and satisfy him, illustrating the importance of fervent prayer and reliance on God in times of distress. The sermon encourages believers to seek God's righteousness and presence, reminding them that true satisfaction comes from a relationship with Him rather than the fleeting pleasures of the world.
Welcome and Housekeeping
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Amen. Thank you, choir. If you have a child that wants to be dismissed to Children's Church, that is available for them now. You can turn in your Bibles to Psalms chapter 17. We're going to start a series through the summer of a disconjointed summer series.
We're calling it Summer in the Psalms. And so we're going to look at nine, maybe ten different psalms and look through these different passages to help us gain greater understanding of what the psalmist was saying in these different ones.
And I'm going to be preaching nine of them. I think Stephen's going to preach one of them. And so we are looking through this, looking really excited about it. The psalms are written with different dynamics, different praises.
Some are for a praise of prayer. Some are a praise of lament.
Some are just a praise of adoration. And so we're going to look through these over the next couple of weeks and really over the next summer and begin to look through this. And so before we read the intro to this psalm is David is being chased by Saul.
So he's in fear of his life and he is having a specific structure to the order that he is praying for the Lord's help.
And so we're going to take this psalm and see what David is saying and how he comes about and how he is looking at the Lord helping him. And so if you found your place, Psalm 17,
the words will be on the screen as well. Let's stand out of honor of God's reading. We don't do that often, but we try to.
And so let's read here out of the CSB this morning. The Bible says, My steps are on your paths. My feet have not slipped. I called on you, God, because you answered me. Listen closely to me. Hear what I say.
Display the wonders of your faithful love. Savior of all who seek refuge from those who rebel against your right hand. Protect me as the pupil of your eye. Hide me in the shadow of your wing from the wicked who treat me violently. My deadly enemies who surround me. They are uncaring.
My mouth speak arrogantly. They advance against me and they surround me. They are determined to throw me to the ground. They are like a lion eager to tear, like a young lion lurking to ambush. Rise up, Lord. Confront him.
Bring him down. With your sword, save me from the wicked. With your hand, Lord, save me from the men.
From the men whose worlds of portion is their life, who fill their bellies with what they have in store. Their sons are satisfied and they leave their surplus to their children. But I will seek your face in righteousness.
And when I awake, I will be satisfied with your presence. Lord, we love you. We thank you again for what you've done for us. Help us this morning as we study this word, that you would ultimately be lifted high. We love you. In your name we pray. Amen. Amen.
Thank you. You can be seated. As I was looking through this prayer and prayers of many other saints of days gone by, I like to examine the prayers of different reformers and different forefathers of our faith.
And some of those prayers are really, really beneficial for us. A lot of those prayers were recorded and written down.
Story of Faith and Prayer
And so it's good to go back and read them. But I came across a story of a young girl years ago who was diagnosed with sickness and was not expected to ever recover. And because of her love for Jesus,
she was troubled that she had not been able to do more for him in her short life.
As her pastor came in and began to talk with her, her pastor suggested that she make a list of people in her small town who needed to hear Jesus and needed to know Christ and pray that they might put their faith in him.
You see, she couldn't go out. She couldn't talk to anyone because of her sickness. She just could not get any other disease.
And so she took his advice and made a list and began to pray often for each person. Sometime later, God began to stir revival in that small village.
The girl began to hear of people who were coming to know Christ and she began to pray even more.
And as she heard reports, she checked off the names of those who had been led to the Lord that she had been praying for. And after the girl died, a prayer list with those 56 names was found underneath her pillow. And all 56 had put their faith in Christ.
And the very last one was the very night before she passed away. I said all that because I believe in the power of prayer.
One of the things that as we were talking with the search committee and as we were beginning to figure out where the Lord was leading, one of the things that I am most passionate about is fervent prayer and
the church being able to pray in a manner that is able to shake the throne room of heaven.
And I believe if we are not a church of prayer,
then we will not be able to do anything for the glory of God. One of my most amazing experiences of my entire life was when we went on a mission trip to New York and we went to the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, the location where Jim Cimbala is at.
And being able to sit in an auditorium of 4,000 or 5,000 people praying in different languages,
praying over specific things was in a moment of time where I realized I did not know how to pray the right way.
And God really began to deal with me even in 2019 of this matter and I began to read about prayer and I began to read about the power that prayer has and how we can pray specifically and definite four prayers for God to answer.
And so today as we look through this psalm, as we look through really six different things that the psalmist David prays, again, he is in distress, he is in hurt, he is in turmoil, he doesn't know what's going
to happen in this moment, and yet he is praying for God to do something miraculous in his life. The first two verses as we look here, we see the very first thing that David says, see me.
Look at it, he says David begins to pray and he says, Lord, hear a just cause, pay attention to my cry, listen to my prayer. David, in his praying, was pouring out his soul. He's saying, hear me God, see me God.
I began to really think through this and understand what he was saying here and my mind went to one of my children as they begin to go through life, as they begin to go through things. As parents, we get distracted.
Have you ever had a distracted parent in here before? Right, okay, we get distracted and all of a sudden they'll come to me and Jade will go, hey dad, dad, I'm right here.
Will you watch me do this? Yeah, yeah, I'll watch you do this. This happens, they're not here, Natalie and Kim are not here this morning.
They may be watching, but I get to pick on people often. And so we were at the pool this past Sunday at the Prevettes house. We thanked them for allowing us to come over and Natalie was going to do something and she said, hey mom, did you see what I did?
And Kim was talking to us, she said, yeah, yeah, I saw what you did. She said, no you didn't, you're lying. I didn't do anything.
She was like, well, okay, well, what are you going to do? All of a sudden, as parents, we can get caught up in things and we can get caught up in life and things that are going on and the kid sort of comes up to you and says, hey, watch
me, watch me do this. I learned this new trick, I want to show it to you. And this is what God is doing, David is doing for God. He's saying, plead,
God, I need you to hear me. I need you to give me a fair trial. I need you to be a lawyer to a judge. I need you to examine my deeds. Look at what he says in verse two. Your ruling, your evidence, your vindication is from you.
You will see what is right. He's saying here, judge me according to what I have done.
See me, look at what I've done. Look at how I've honored you. And David is starting out his prayer by simply going to God and saying, God, I need you to honestly look at me. And evaluate me. Tell me what I'm doing wrong. Tell me what I need to work on.
Tell me what I need to do to be better. You are my lawyer. You are my, you're going to my judge for me. And I need you to help me today. How often is it that we're going to God like this and we're saying, God, look at me. Examine me.
Are we willing to be vulnerable? Are we willing to say, God, I need you to look at me. I need you to pay attention to me. Or are we saying, God, don't pay attention to me.
God, don't look at what I'm doing because it's not right. God, don't look at what I'm, the actions that I'm doing because they're not good actions. So he starts out by saying, God, look at me. See me.
The second thing he does is he says, search me, God. Verses three through five. He begins to say, test my heart.
Examine me at night. Begin to examine the things of my life. This is the terminology he's using here is the detective, right? A detective comes in. Me and my wife, we like watching crime show detectives, CSI,
some of those SVU moments where they go in and they begin to examine the evidences before them. And if you're like me, we begin to say, okay, who did it? Who was the person that committed this crime? Who was the one that's guilty for this?
And you begin to examine the information and I'll look at Allie and I'll say, I think it's this person. And she'll go, no, no, no, you're wrong. It's this person.
And we'll go through and we'll begin to go through as a good detective would do and see the case that's laid before them. David is saying here, God, I want you to be the detective.
And think of how daunting that would be in our life. God, I want you to be my detective. And he sort of lays out a couple of things he wants God to look at. He says, the first one here, look at my heart. He says, test my heart.
See if there's any evil in my heart. See if there's any wicked way in my heart. Examine me.
This morning our Sunday school lesson was on our mind and how our mind affects our actions and ultimately how our heart affects everything that we do. And this is the thought of what David is saying. Look at my heart.
Test my heart. But not only should he look at our heart. He says here in verse 3, look at my response. You have tried me and you found no evil. And I have determined that my mouth will not sin.
He said, I'm avoiding these things. Look at how I'm responding.
Look at what's happening in my life. I'm running for my life. I'm doing what you called me to do. You told me I was going to be the next king. You told me I was going to be the next leader of Israel. And Saul's coming after me.
God, why would you put me through this? Look at how I'm responding. Look at how I'm going through this. I've avoided violence.
I've had multiple occasions where I could walk in and I could kill Saul. But I didn't.
He's saying, God, I need you in my life. But if I'm going to need you, I want you to look at me and know that I am going to be devoted to you. I've avoided these things. And then he says, look at my words. My mouth will not sin.
Oftentimes we can sin with our mouth. We can sin with the words that come out of our mouth. And he's saying here, I am avoiding these things. I'm avoiding the ways of violence.
And when we go through trials and tribulations, we can look at the response of these people, of David, of Job, of Joseph.
And we can appeal to God honestly. And we can say, God, you're a loving God. You're a just God. And I need you to help me in this moment. I need you to search me. Imagine a child coming up to you.
Punishment is needing to happen. Maybe it's a disciplinary spanking or a, I don't know if you guys do that. We do that in our family. But maybe it's a grounding or whatever it may be. And they deserve it. They know that they've done wrong. We as a parent,
oftentimes because of the love of a child, we'll give more grace than probably what we should. They may have deserved 10 spankings. We only gave them five. Okay. We gave grace. We gave mercy.
And God is saying here in the same way, just as we love our children, just as we love the ones that we have, our offsprings, we, he loves us as well.
And David is saying here, I love in verse five, my steps are on your path. God, I'm doing what you want me to do. I need you now to come and do what you have called me to do. And so we start out by saying, examine me, search me, but now show me.
Show me verses six and seven. Display the wonders. William Carey, a great missionary for God, made this statement. He said this, expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.
You see, when's the last time we prayed truly expecting God to answer that prayer?
God, I need you to help me today. And we go off and we never think about it again. God, I need you to, to work in this situation. But we walk away, not even, even expecting God to move and work in that situation.
Oftentimes it's this, we pray without ever expecting God to do anything.
But David, David, on the other hand, look at what he did. He said, he said in verse six, I call on you, God, because you will answer me. Man, that's bold. Look closely to me. Hear what I say.
This is what, this is almost demanding. Display the wonders of your faithful love. Savior, you're the one who, who seeks refuge from those who rebel against me at your right hand. You're going to display these things.
When's the last time we prayed in that kind of boldness? When's the last time we said, God, I need you to do this and I'm not going to stop praying until you do this. This is the fervency that God's looking for. He said, I'm calling upon you and I'm expecting a response.
Incline your ear, hear my speech. This is us asking for God to show his love in our life. But oftentimes we begin to have this superficial prayer where we'll pray for all the missionaries of the world.
And we don't begin to pray specifically and say, God, I got this missionary family in Haiti and they've just experienced hardship. And I need you to work in that family's life. And this is what God's wanting for us. He's wanting us to be specific.
He's wanting us to ask him and expect a response from him.
I mean, imagine a kid coming up to you again. I'm using this kid parent illustration because this is the illustration that God's using for us. He's saying that you're the child and I'm the parent. And you're coming to me and you're asking me for these things.
And I love how Jesus says, would not a loving parent, when a child comes to him and says, I'm hungry, dad. I need something to eat. Do you have any bread? Say, yeah, here's a snake. Hope it helps you.
He said no loving parent would do that. No loving parent would give a child a snake if they're hungry for bread. Just as if a kid came to you and said, I'm thirsty, dad. I need some drink. You're not going to say, well, here's some poison. Here you go.
No loving father would do that. And he's saying in the same way when we pray, ask specifically for your father, which is in heaven, who loves you just as much, if not more, and so much more than your family does and your parents do.
Seeking God's Protection
And expect them to show, God to show a response in a way. So he says, see me, God. Search me. Show me. But then he says, shield me in verses 8 through 12. He's saying here, Saul's coming after me. And I'm going from cave to cave. Imagine darkness.
There's no cell phones. There's no social media. There's no type of rest.
There's no type of bedding there. It's not like you're going to the Holiday Inn and you're going to wake up and there's going to be a fresh breakfast waiting for you. There's no clean sheets waiting on you. There's not a shower that's been sanitized. No, he's going from dirty cave to dirty cave.
And he says, God, I need you to shield me. Not in the palace. You told me I was going to be a king. You told me I was going to be ruler.
But why is it that I'm going from cave to cave? And I love even in this response, he says this in verse 8. Protect me as your prized or pupil of your eye. Your most prized possession.
The most valuable thing you own. God, I need you to protect me like that. Protect me from the enemies. And then he uses this beautiful word analogy. He says this. Hide me in the shadow of your wings. Man, he's saying protect me and hide me. A couple years ago,
a couple years ago, I mean it could have been eight months ago. As a youth pastor, I played dodgeball a lot with kids. Any adults in here like to play dodgeball? Okay, and we'd have teenagers lined up.
And sometimes we'd play different styles of dodgeball. But there was one time where Jade was out there playing. And I had one teenager who, he's not really a teenager, he's a college student now.
But you've seen these kids who can't be just on level one, right? They've got to be level 100 all the time. They're jacked up on energy. They're jacked up on everything. It's like a kid that's jacked up on Mountain Dew. They're just hyper. They're excited.
They're going to go over everything. And so we're playing dodgeball. And he sweats through everything. And I love the kid to death. And so we're playing dodgeball. And he's on one side. And he's by himself. And we're over there. And it's me. And it's Jade.
We're going against him. And he's got the ball. And he's ready to throw. And he goes to throw it at Jade. And what does Jade do? She's standing here. She goes, whoop. I'm going to stand behind Dad. Dad.
Dad's going to be my protector. And so I'm standing there. I'm the target now. And he's going after her.
But I'm the one that she's standing behind. And this is what David is saying as he's going through his life. God, I've got an enemy coming after me. They're on cloud. I mean, they're coming at me. With everything they've got, I'm just going to stand behind God. Whoop.
Shield me, God. Hide me in your wings. Hide me behind your protective wings.
And this is as a kid who's saying, God, Dad, I need you to come. I need me to stand behind you. This is what he is saying here. I'm going to stand behind God. Because what is your enemies? They're cunning. They surround me. They're like someone who is going to destroy me.
They're around me. I was watching an interview a couple years back of a 60-year-old man in ministry. I'm sorry. He was 80 years old. He had been in ministry for 60 years.
The interview, it was on Focus on the Family. You can look it up. But the interviewer began to ask this pastor. He said, sir, if the devil could do one thing, what would he do to destroy your ministry?
My ears began to perk up. I'm like, okay, this is a guy who's been in ministry for 60 years. He's got a pretty spotless record.
And this is his response. He said, I've never been asked the question quite like that.
He said, if I were to respond to you, I guess I would respond like this. There's one thing the devil would not ever try to do. And that would be to tempt me with a woman. I love my wife too much to ever do that thing.
A couple years later, that man who was in his 80s had a one-night stand with a woman. Because the devil is smart and cunning.
He knows our weaknesses better than we know our own weaknesses. And he is coming after us, as the Bible says, to destroy us or to kill us. They are determined to throw us to the ground in verse 11. Okay? In verse 12, he says that they're hiding. They're smart.
They're like a lion who is waiting for their prey to come so they can jump out and get them. Imagine with me here for a moment. How many of you have ever seen The Lion King? A couple of you. Have you ever been to a zoo before? Okay?
You've seen The Lion before maybe on TV. He's trying to wake you up a little bit. Okay?
And all of a sudden, the opening scene of The Lion King where the dad, I'm not going to know their names because I can't think of them off the top of my head.
But the two lions there and the dad's there and the son's there and the son's trying to jump on the parrot. You know what I'm talking about? The son's just trying and every time he jumps, the parrot flies away. And the dad says, hey son, let me show you how to do this.
And all of a sudden, he tells the bird to turn around. And he's like, oh no,
don't let me do this. And he turns and the moment he turns around, it's quiet.
The lions are beginning to make their prowl and he's showing the son how we can be stealth-like. And then out of nowhere, what happens? They jump and he captures that bird.
This is the picture that he's saying here. He's saying the lion is like a hungry, eager to tear you apart, young lion lurking in the ambushes. And this is Satan in our life.
Call for Divine Intervention
The devils in our life that are around us. And he's saying, shield me from these things. Not only does he say shield me, but he says, save me. Verse 13 and 14. Rise up, Lord. Confront him.
Bring him down with your sword. Save me from the wicked. With your hand, Lord, save me from these men.
You see, there's a couple of things he says here. The first is this. There's a call to action. He says, rise up, Lord.
Again, the boldness of David to be able to say, God, I need you to rise up. It's almost like a command where David's saying, God, I can't do this on my own. I can't do this without you. I need you to rise up. I need you to come before me.
He then goes on to say, not only is there a call to action, but there's a call of surprise.
It says, disappoint him. Cast him down. Man, there's like this lion, this seeking to take over us. And he's saying, avenge your saint.
There is a call of surprise that only God can do. He's saying, I can't do this myself, but only you can do this, God. And then ultimately, there's a call of deliverance where it says, deliver from the wicked and the world that we're entangled in. You see, we're in this world,
like it or not. We're in the world of the sin, of the suffering,
of all the things in this world. And he's saying here, God, I need you to save me and deliver me from these things. Because only God can do that for us. And the last thing in verses 14 and 15, it says here, satisfy me.
You see, after we begin to go walk through this prayer of God seeing us and God shielding us and God showing us and God saving us, now he's saying, God, I need you to satisfy me.
In the verse 14, it says that you feel that their bellies are full with what they have in store. The world satisfies with the fat of the land, but it's never filling.
I was talking to our youth this morning as I was teaching, and I was talking about how we're going to make decisions in our life. And the easier the decision at the beginning, the harder the decision is typically at the end.
But if you make the hard choices first, then it begins to get easier as we begin to get closer to Christ.
And oftentimes in our life, we are wanting to get satisfied quickly and easily because we're a give it to me now society.
We're a, I want to put something in the microwave, and three minutes later, I've got a full made meal. Where sometimes that meal needs to have time taken, love taken to be nurtured the right way.
The Bible says in verse 14, this type of satisfaction will always leave you wanting more. But there's a satisfaction that the Lord can bring.
If you look back at verse 10, it says, we seek the ratification of the world, and when we do that, we are wanting more. The pride of life, the lust of the eyes, as Jesus says, the lust of the flesh, this is the world trying to satisfy us.
One person said it like this, sin will always take you further than you want to go.
Keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay.
We have to ask ourselves, am I willing to be satisfied by the world, or am I willing to be filled with what the Lord wants me to be filled with? Which are the three things at the very end of this.
He says this in verse 15, I will seek your face in righteousness. He says, God, I want you to fill me with righteousness.
Are we asking that this morning? Are we saying, God, I can't do this on my own, and my own righteousness is as filthy rags? Or are we saying,
well, my own righteousness is good. I'm a pretty good guy. I don't break all the Ten Commandments, but I break a couple of them. But I mean, overall, I'm pretty good. No, David's saying, my righteousness is useless. I need your righteousness, God, this morning. And then he says, when I awake.
This is the awareness of God. This is waking up. And he's saying, make me to be aware of what's going on around me. Don't let me sit idle of not knowing what's around me, but wake me up. Let me see the things that are around me.
Let me see the things that are going to disrupt my own thoughts. I like how Terry said this morning, he said, don't let me be so heavenly minded that I'm no earthly good. Because we can be like that sometimes. We can get so focused on Scripture,
and I'm saying Scripture is great, but we can be so focused on our own sanctification that we begin to not worry about the people that are around us.
But the command of Jesus is to still go into all the world and preach and teach the gospel so that they can see forgiveness of their sins.
Ask God to give me awareness and wake me up for what I need to do. And then he continues on by saying, I will be satisfied with your presence.
Another way to put this would be your holiness. Make me holy like you are holy, God.
Because your holiness is the only thing I need. Your holiness is the only thing that is going to give me strength in the days when I need your help. And really the question is, are these the three things that we're searching for? For God's righteousness, God's awareness, God's holiness in our life.
As Terry comes and plays as we continue or conclude our message, I want to ask you this morning.
Let this morning, as we go into the summer, as school is ending in just a couple of days for our students and staff will be getting to be out and students are gone and it's a wonderful time. But let this summer be a summer of reevaluation,
a summer of reexamining your life and saying, God, am I doing these things in my life? Am I searching after you? Are you shielding me in my everyday life?
Are you satisfying me or am I going after the things of the world to be satisfied? You see, because remember, David was in a cold cave,
a damp cave, a cave where he was all alone, he fell all alone and he said, God, I need you. God, I need you in my life this morning. The world was against him.
His own family was against him. Everyone around him was against him other than his 300 men that he had around him.
You can imagine after that wonderful victory of killing David and David killing Goliath and him hearing those people praise his name and say that Saul's killed his thousand, but you've killed your 10,000 and holy, holy is David,
how he would have been on this high. And now he's saying, God, I don't care about any of that. That doesn't satisfy me. Only your righteousness is what I want.
Prayer of Distress
You see, this was a prayer of distress. This was a prayer of him calling out to God, saying, God, I need you in my life to work mightily in my life today. The longer I study this prayer, and there's about five other specific prayers of David throughout Scripture, Psalms 51, Psalms 23, where David specifically begins to pray.
The more I read of David's prayers, the more boldness, the more specificity that David prays, and the more courage that David prays in his prayers. And it challenges me this morning, church, to say, am I that bold? Am I that specific?
Am I praying that specific for my family the way David would have prayed for his family, the way David prayed for himself? Am I praying with courage that, God, you're going to deliver these things? God, you're going to surprise my enemies.
You're going to call me to action to rise up and be bold.
Lord, is that the way we are praying in our life?
Or are we just sort of floating and expecting God to do things without us ever to intervene through prayer? God is calling us to pray. God is calling us to seek his face. And the question is this morning, are we doing that?
Lord, we love you. We thank you for what you've done. God, you are holy and you are great.
I thank you for your blessings and your challenge in my life as I've studied through this this week. And Lord, as you've unveiled some things in my life that I need to have a call to action to.
Lord, help us as a church to grow closer to you. Maybe there's one here this morning that says, I've never even had that prayer of knowing Jesus as my Savior. I'm being filled with the world.
I'm not being filled with God. Lord, help us today to come to know you. Help them today to come to know that you are the all-forgiving God. Lord, help us to search you in every day of our life. We love you. In your name we pray. Amen.
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