Authentic Hope

Transcript

Welcome to this week’s sermon from Trinity Church in Portland, Oregon. Following the scripture reading by Pastor Ryan Lister, Pastor Devin Berry will deliver the message entitled Authentic Hope. The message is based on Psalm 62. Thanks for joining us. Here’s Ryan. Good morning, Trinity Church. I wanted to say that this morning’s sermon is going to be a bit of a bridge sermon. First we’re going to be hitting the pause button for a little bit on the Gospel of Mark. This morning we’ll be hearing from our friend and pastor, Devin Berry, on Psalm 62 so that we can learn from what God has been teaching him through his word and specifically through his own circumstances.

Psalm 62, a Psalm of David. For God alone my soul waits in silence. From him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress. I shall not be greatly shaken.

— Psalm 62

(ESV)

How long will all of you attack a man to batter him like a leaning wall, a tottering fence? They only plan to thrust him down from his high position. They take pleasure in falsehood. They bless with their mouths, but inwardly they curse. For God alone, oh my soul, wait in silence. For my hope is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress. I shall not be shaken. On God rests my salvation and my glory. My mighty rock, my refuge is God. Trust in him at all times, oh people. Pour out your heart before him. God is a refuge for us. Those of lowest state are but a breath. Those of highest state are a delusion. In the balance they go up, they are together lighter than a breath. Set no trust in extortion. Set no vain hopes on robbery. If riches increase, set not your heart on them.

The Preacher’s Preparation

Once God has spoken, twice have I heard this, that power belongs to God. And that to you, oh Lord, belongs steadfast love. For you will render to a man according to his work. This Trinity Church is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. I want to begin this morning by sharing with you a quote from Greg Taylor’s favorite preacher, Charles Spurgeon. He says this, a man ought to always be good company for himself. And he ought also to be able to catechize himself. He who is not fit to be his own schoolmaster is not fit to be schoolmaster to other people. If you cannot catechize your own heart and drill a truth into your own soul, you do not know how to teach other people. I believe, says Charles Spurgeon, the best preaching in the world is that which is done at home.

When a sorrowing spirit shall have comforted itself, it will have learned the art of consoling other people. I would say, and many have said before me, that a preacher does his best work when in the study, that is the place of preparation, and in the closet, that is the place of prayer, he is corrected, consoled, compelled, convicted, and conformed by his own preaching first. If he has not experienced the transforming power of the word he preaches first, however will he be able with authenticity to communicate that to his people? As the old adage goes, you can’t give away what you don’t have. When pastors fail to be moved by their own experience of the word, when they prepare to preach, I suppose it is how we come to find talking heads versus talking hearts in the pulpit. Men who may soar with oratory as high as clouds, but as with those same clouds have

no power to move their hearers. When preaching the Psalms especially perhaps, this risk can be very real. The Psalms by their very nature are so personal, they’re so intimate, they’re so tied to the Psalmist’s lived experience, that it can be particularly easy to feel unattached to the text because you have not shared that season of life with the Psalmist. Part of the preacher’s work then is to attach first himself and then his hearers to not only the structure and the content and the flow and the patterns, et cetera, of the Psalm, but to the substance itself. At times, the Lord chooses to do this in powerful ways, to take his sons and daughters on a real life journey that gains them an intimate understanding of the Psalmist’s circumstance. Some of you will realize by now where I am headed. My family is currently experiencing the hardship of walking in the footsteps that David left

in Psalm 62. Paul tells us that all scripture is breathed out by God himself and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. Psalm 62 is currently teaching, reproving, correcting, and training my household. With this in mind, I want to acknowledge a balance that every preacher must aspire to keep. Much of what I have to share today is personal in that I am being touched and tutored by Psalm 62 on a day-by-day basis. That is not bad at all. It does much to ensure that I will not be a talking head speaking eloquently of things with which I have little intimacy. At the same time, I must ensure that the preaching is never about me or about my life, but always about God and his Son, Jesus Christ.

So while I’m sure it will be easy to detect echoes of my family’s personal journey in what is shared today, please know that my plain intent is to preach Christ crucified. And if we stick to the text, that should not at all be difficult. So let’s pray and get started. We have a fantastic song before us this morning. Father, as we come to hear your Word, as we come to sit before you to listen to quiet our own minds, I ask that you would do by your Holy Spirit what we cannot do for ourselves. Please transform us, Father. Change us evermore into the image of your Son through the preaching and the proclamation of your Word. We pray these things in Christ’s name, amen. Sometimes in life, we have complicated stories to tell. And experience has taught us that the listener is likely to latch onto the wrong thing if

Listening for the Right Thing

we don’t preemptively guide them to notice the right things. So many of you have probably had that call to your mom as, Mom, hey, I just had a fender bender. I wanted to let you know. What? You had a fender bender? Is the car okay? Is the car okay? Did the insurance come? Did the police come? Wait, wait, wait, Mom. What I’m trying to tell you is I met this wonderful girl in the accident. But wait, are you okay? Is the car okay? Did the police come? But Mom, Mom, I met this wonderful girl. We’ve had those experiences where we have to take the listener and say, now listen, I want you to really latch in and dial into what I’m about to say. I have to give you some context, but I want you to hear this especially. And David starts this psalm this way.

He wants us to know right up front what to listen for as this song is sung or as this story is told. So what is David wanting us to see right at the outset? In verses one and two, which are repeated almost verbatim again in verses five and six, David is actively willfully placing his hope in God alone. And we’re going to come back and deal with this at length as it is the primary message of this psalm. But before we do that, let’s get the bad news out of the way and understand more about the context of this psalm from verses three and four. David says this, how long will all of you attack a man to batter him? Like a leaning wall, a tottering fence. They only plan to thrust him down from his high position. They take pleasure in falsehood. They bless with their mouths, but inwardly they curse.

The stability of David’s position and possibly his life is being severely threatened by those who are seeking to intentionally undo him. David has bona fide enemies and they are beating him down. Not with physical weapons in this psalm, but with words, lies, slander, and gossip, disparaging and damaging language. We covered it several times. If you recall this summer in our proverb series and the scriptures regularly demonstrated from Genesis one on, words are powerful. And when they are wielded to do harm, they are a weapon like no other. Recall how James puts it, but a tiny spark can set a great forest on fire. And among all the parts of the body, the tongue is a flame of fire. It is a whole world of wickedness, corrupting your entire body. It can set your whole life on fire for it is set on fire by hell itself.

David’s life has been set on fire by the words of others. Unlike a sword or a spear or a club, which only damage that which they strike, fire grows and spreads uncontrollably, suffocating or destroying everything in its path. Words like fire are among the most deadly of weapons. And even though James was writing long before the age of digital communication, the internet and social media, he very accurately describes the power of words both then and especially now as the speed and ubiquity of communication has placed us all into a tinderbox. But unlike California these days, little sparks ravaging tens of thousands of acres. With that said, it may be true for you as it was for me when I was younger, I could never relate to all these Psalms talking about enemies. In part, it was the innocence and inexperience of youth. In part, it was my less mature walk with the Lord that intentionally downplayed the

importance of living in a way that distinguished me from the world. But take it to heart, beloved, for the true believer, life will not be free of trouble. David in Psalm 34 reminds us, many are the afflictions of the righteous. Jesus in John 15 says, a servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. And Paul in 1 Timothy 3 says, indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. If this Psalm does not resonate with you now and you are a believer, just give it time. It will. And all the better if you can take in its lessons before those days come. Given the civilized and digitized society we live in today, much of that trouble is going to come through words. Maybe those words will carry forward falsehoods, thinly disguised by the smiling faces of those

who are known to us, just as it did for David in this Psalm. Note the vivid and violent imagery associated with the verbal assault that is taking place. David uses words like attack, batter, thrust him down. And the goal, reputation assassination, dethroning, devastation by a thousand verbal blows. Each one successively bringing the teetering wall one degree closer to total collapse. And as we see here, and we’ll see later in the Psalm, David is in a situation where there are no immediate godly options available for resolving his troubles. Again, if you find this hard to relate to and need an easy visual, just look at American politics today. This very kind of thing happens on what seems like a weekly basis. Similar to David’s situation in this Psalm, it is not truth that matters, but rather the effectiveness of your messaging strategy. David is being beaten in the arena of words.

Three Marks of Biblical Hope

So what is a believer’s response in this kind of severe trouble? David began his answer to that question in verses one and two. In short, it is to hope in God alone. You might say, ‘You can hope in God, but in the end, what are you going to do?’ And therein lies a false dichotomy, a tension that we’ve introduced by reducing the biblical idea of hope to something that is passive and uncertain, and at best, and utterly useless at worst. This is not David’s brand of hope, nor is it the scriptures. As we are going to see in the rest of this Psalm, hope is an active state of mind. It’s an active state of heart that we must willfully pursue in an informed way. And this morning, we’re going to break it down into three observations about authentic or biblical hope. First, biblical hope is grounded by actively believing what is true.

Second, biblical hope is expressed by intentionally waiting in silence. And third, biblical hope is secured by aggressively resisting false hopes. We’ll follow those three observations by asking some questions about practical application. So first, hope is grounded in believing what is true. As we noted earlier, verses one and two and five and six are almost identical. Though David is in a very vulnerable situation that he obviously does not have the resources to deal with, this song is not written to highlight the trouble, but to highlight the hope that David has in difficulty. Yes, he is being sorely beaten by his enemies. And as you may remember, David’s life story was anything but a string of rainbows and unicorns. But David asserts that he will act in a manner that reveals his belief in what he knows to be true. He will wait in silence because he believes God.

In verses one and two and five and six, God is his rock, his salvation, his hope, his fortress. Beloved, we cannot miss this most fundamental of connections throughout the whole of the Bible. What we believe shapes how we think, how we feel, how we act, how we behave, and how we live. You generally see three kinds of people in the Portland rain, runners, soakers, and shelterers. Runners believe in their power to control their destiny. The faster they move, they reason, the fewer drops that will hit them. Soakers operate under no such delusion. They believe that being soaked to the bone is simply the state of man, and they must accept it. Shelterers know they cannot outrun the rain, but they also know that there is an alternative to soaking. They get undercover and waited out. David is clear.

He cannot outrun his enemies. David is also clear that he is not helpless in the downpour. So what does David do? He acts on the knowledge of what he knows to be true about God, his fortress, and his refuge. He shelters in the almighty creator, God of the universe, who will not fumble the hope placed in him. So a quick question to help you evaluate your functional beliefs, those beliefs that are really shaping the way that you live. Take a moment and recall, what was the last personal crisis that you went through? What did your actions during that crisis indicate you believe? Were you sullen and despairing, perhaps believing that God is not loving? Were you frantic and overreactive, perhaps believing God is not powerful and somebody’s got to get the job done? If biblical hope is not evidenced in either of those extremes, what does it look like?

And that brings us to our second observation. Hope is expressed by intentionally waiting in silence. In verses one and five, you see slightly different constructions of that waiting in silence idea. In verse one, David is declaring his status. He says, for God alone, my soul waits in silence. In verse five, slightly different. He is declaring his intent. He is counseling himself. He is counseling his soul. He says, for God alone, oh, my soul wait in silence. Does this not reflect the reality of the internal struggle that takes place when we are in the midst of trouble? Our souls constantly waver and we must again and again speak to them. We must counsel them, advise them. In this case, David is persuading himself to wait in silence. But wait in silence, that’s somewhat enigmatic, is it not? What does that mean? Particularly for someone like David who’s about to see it all come tumbling down, what

does he mean wait in silence? I’ve wrestled with this personally. Is it passivism? Is it resignation? Is it fatalism? Is it muteness? What is it? It is certainly not my natural instinct in the midst of a severe trial. What I experience is predominantly two driving and disparate impulses described by the psychologist very well. Vengeance or escape, fight or flight, retribution or retreat. But in this psalm, does not seem to be operating at either of those extremes. There’s a commentator by the name of Gerald Wilson, thank you, Jan, wherever you are, my provider of multitudes of commentaries on Old Testament texts, who provides some excellent insights on this idea of waiting in silence. Let me try to briefly summarize the biblical observations that he provides. In surveying the whole of the Old Testament, we see this idea of waiting in silence portrayed in primarily two different ways.

First, to wait in silence is to be still. In Exodus 14, as the Israelites are fleeing Egypt with Pharaoh’s army hot on their trail, God instructs Israel through Moses in a very strange way. He says, the Lord will fight for you. You need only to be still. And the NLT, it says, just stay calm. In Psalm 4610, this idea of stillness is even more forceful. The author says, be still, or in another translation, cease striving and know that I am God. The point, says Wilson, is not to get caught up in frantic activity that relies on human strength. Second, to wait in silence is to be silent. Nehemiah and Zechariah both admonish the Israelites to hush and be quiet before the Lord’s presence and before his word. Have you ever noticed that you cannot effectively process what someone else is saying while you are talking?

Maybe for the first second, maybe two, but if you keep talking, eventually you have no idea what the other person is saying. My kids can attest to this. When I speak over them, I pretty soon have no idea what they were talking about. It’s all about what I’m saying. That’s true for all of us. To hear God, we must be quiet before him and his word. Wilson says, quiet repose in the face of attack is the ultimate evidence of trust in God and reliance on his strength. So is waiting in silence then a call to warm up the lazy boy? To go flaccid? To let go and let God? That’s hardly what Israel did when Pharaoh was in pursuit. They were clear on what was God’s work and what was their work, and we’re going to come to that in just a few moments. For now, know that a frantic flurry of actions designed to get control of all aspects of

a situation at any cost, which is my tendency, or a hysteria that leads to an incessant monologue, either out loud or in one’s mind, is not waiting in silence. God’s people believing and trusting that God alone is their rescue will be characterized by a disposition of stillness and quietness. And this brings us to our third observation. Hope is protected by aggressively resisting false hope. What does that mean? Well, the scriptures never failed to confront us with radically counter-cultural and counter-intuitive thinking. Embedded in those around us and in ourselves is a deeply habituated tendency to place our hope in earthly solutions. It often sounds like this, can’t you just sue the guy? That is a quintessential American response. We hate to think that we could be in a situation where the assertion of our own rugged individualism cannot solve the problem by calling in a few favors, paying a little money, fighting

fire with fire, or in the end, suing the guy. David’s hope, in contrast, looks to God alone for salvation. To place trust somewhere else would suggest that God is not enough. David is so convinced of the primacy of God’s help that he not only says it in the positive, put your hope in God alone. He says it in the negative, anticipating the natural human temptation. Do not put your hope in others, in your own schemes, or in money. And if you think about it, that’s a pretty good list of where we often turn to, at least in our hearts, if not our actions. Verse nine reads this way, those of lowest state are but a breath. Those of highest state are a delusion. In the balances, they go up, together, lighter than a breath. What is David saying here? Simply this, the people you know, regardless of their station in life, will not be able

to save you. This is a sobering reality once you come to realize it. And for some of us, that takes quite some time. One of those key transitions from childhood to adulthood, moving out of your parents’ home, moving away from the safety and security and the support of mom and dad, in many cases, not all, is you realize this, no one is coming to save you. No one is going to appear on a white horse and make it all better. No one can practically reach in and somehow solve your most troubling problems. This is why on many occasions when people ask us how can they help, the only answer we can really give is pray, right? It’s too complex. You can’t fix what’s going on here. No one can fix what’s going on here. So please pray because I am soberly beginning to realize that no one’s coming from an earthly

perspective to unscramble this egg. Verse 10 reads, put no trust in extortion. Set no vain hopes on robbery. If riches increase, set not your heart on them. Under great duress, the temptation will arise to engage in sinful means, to manipulate, to extort, and even to steal, to take that which is not yours. Have you been here? Perhaps the reactive part of you says, if they’re going to play that way, then one good turn deserves another. I’m going to overcome evil with evil. They stole my reputation, and now I’ll do whatever it takes to steal theirs. According to Bruce Willis, Liam Neeson, Uma Thurman, Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood, and Denzel Washington, and almost every other movie star in an action movie, that is the American or at least the noble thing to do. However, it is not the Christian thing to do. And then there is the ever-present temptation to place our hope in money.

If I was just independently wealthy, I could solve or escape this suffering. Have you thought that? I’m pretty sure you have at least once. Beloved, take a long look around. Are the wealthy really insulated from trouble? The tale we tell ourselves just does not hold up under scrutiny. David, who possessed the wealth of a king, warns against setting our hearts on riches. They are no better than extortion or robbery in saving us from the attacks of others. By identifying and warning us against these false hopes, David pushes us further toward what is the main thrust of this entire psalm. Verse 7, the center of the psalm, captures the essence well. David says, On God rests my salvation and my glory. My mighty rock, my refuge, is God. Biblical hope is anchored in God alone. This is hard to miss in this psalm. David emphasizes it no less than five times directly, and then even more than that indirectly.

Hope in God Alone

Take a look at your text as I read with this in mind. Psalm 62, verse 1. For God alone my soul waits in silence. From him comes my salvation. Verse 2, he alone is my rock and my salvation. My fortress, I shall not be greatly shaken. Verse 5, for God alone, oh my soul, wait in silence. For my hope is from him. Verse 6, he only is my rock and my salvation. My fortress, I shall not be shaken. Verse 7, on God rests my salvation and my glory. My mighty rock, my refuge is God. And then verse 8, trust in him at all times, oh people, pour out your heart before him. God is a refuge for us. What is David saying? If not, God alone is where we must place our hope. Authentic biblical hope is exclusive. What we see here in David is a diligent mindset that continually reminds himself of where

real help will be found and where it will not be found. It is not that God won’t use people and even riches to care for us, but we cannot place our confidence in those things. Those of you that know me know that I’m a planner. And during this season of unemployment for me, if you were to come over to look at my calendar, Monday through Friday, I have every single business hour blocked. But nevertheless, I have this just natural tendency to want to plan everything out. And over the past weeks, I have found myself at so many turns putting my hope in this scheme or that plan. If we can just get this, I tell myself, or pull off that, I say to myself, largely those

things have not come to pass. But what I often fail to realize is that God is a planner too, and his plans are perfect. They never fail. God does not have a plan B. God does not have a contingency. He knows exactly what he is doing, and it always works. By his power and because of his love, he has wisely cared for us every step of the way. As we mentioned earlier, it is counterintuitive and countercultural to hope in God alone. To do so takes a lot of reminding my soul what is true. But as we’ll discuss in a moment, he will not, God will not, disappoint us. So as we move to wrap up, you may have noticed that we left a few loose ends. And when I say wrap up, I don’t actually really mean that. I see that in my manuscript here, I’m like, we’re only about two-thirds of the way through,

Practical Questions About Hope

so don’t close anything yet. I wanted to save a few of these pieces and parts of verses that we skipped over to address some very practical questions that might arise about biblical hope. First, what does biblical hope guarantee? Second, how do I actually live out hope in difficult times? What does that look like? And third, if I place my hope in God, how can I be certain that he is trustworthy? So first, what does biblical hope guarantee? If biblical hope is something different than worldly hope in that it is imbued with certainty, what can we be certain of? Verses two and six point us in the right direction. David states at the end of each verse, I will not be greatly shaken. What is David saying here? That nothing will go wrong? There is certainly no biblical evidence for that. And as we noted earlier, in God’s providence, believers will have hard times.

So that’s not the correct interpretation. To put it in new covenant language, biblical hope guarantees that we will not be shaken from God’s hand. Recall Jesus’s words, I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. What can believers be certain of? That no matter what assails them, whether in life or in death, your Savior will not abandon you. All will come to pass just as he promised. And no matter what, he will bring you home unshaken from his hand. For some of you, that may not feel like enough. If you go back to John 10 where Jesus shares this, it definitely was not enough for the Pharisees. But brothers and sisters, let me press you, press you as Greg, I think mentioned earlier, to let your emotions and your affections be shaped by the word.

This ought to be enough. And as you mature in the Lord, it will become enough to know this one thing, that he will bring you home unshaken. While our fortunes may wax and wane in the temporal, there is no such risk with eternity. Remember this when the here and now begins to inflict upon you a kind of tunnel vision, which difficulty inevitably does for most of us. This present life is but a fleeting moment in the context of forever. This is all Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 4. So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now. Rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone. But the things we cannot see will last forever. Second question. If biblical hope is not passive and fatalistic, and it is not frantic attempts to play God

in difficult situations, how do I actually live out hope in difficult times? How do I know what I should be doing? So let’s review what we’ve said already. David’s head game and his heart game, if you will, is very active. It’s willful. He is intentionally working to believe what is true. Namely, God will be his salvation, his refuge, his fortress, and his rock. Beloved, do not make that harder or more complex than what it sounds like. That may simply mean walking around all day muttering to yourself, God is my rock. God is my salvation. God is my fortress, is my refuge. I will trust in him alone. Don’t discount the effectiveness of repeating truth to yourself. In addition, during difficulty, gather those around you who will mutter with you those same things, who will remind you of those things, who will challenge you when you are

not saying those things to yourself. Don’t run headlong into the folks who will not point you to Christ. Run headlong into those who will lovingly grab you by the ears, look you in the eyes, cup your face in their hands, and say, listen, sister, listen, brother, God is going to take care of you. It’s not a lie. He is your rock. He is your refuge. You can trust him. Next, take a look at verse 8. It’s another loose end that we passed over. David makes it clear to the people of God that waiting in silence is not some kind of monastic vow to silence. No, not at all. David says, trust in him at all times, O people. And what does that look like? What does it sound like? Pour out your hearts before him. Why? Because God is a refuge for us. So often, beloved, we will pour out our hearts to our therapists, to our friends, to our

family, to our hairdresser, and here in Portland, probably to our dogs. But we do not pour out our hearts to God, the one person who has the power and the love to help. And again, don’t overcomplicate it. What does it mean to pour out your heart to God? It simply means to say to him all that is inside, to say to him all that you’re thinking and feeling, to tell him with your words. That may require closing your door, getting on your knees, and hiding for a while. But pour out your heart to God. It may require doing it out loud so that you’re not distracted by the billions of things your mind wants to bring up. But pour out your heart to God. He is the one person who has the power and the love to help. So brothers and sisters, when in trouble, pray and pray more.

The hymnist said it well, oh, what peace we often forfeit, oh, what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer. Close friends, spouses, relations otherwise, provoke each other, encourage each other to do this. Do it together. Go to God and pour out your hearts. Next, in answering this question about what is waiting in silence look like, consider the testimony of David’s life. Waiting in silence is to have a disposition characterized by stillness and quietness. But if we interpret that as a hopeless helplessness and engage a let go and let God mentality, we’re no longer in concert with a holistic picture of how David waited in silence. In the most difficult seasons of his life, he was doing his best to take wise steps to deal with his situation. What did it look like? If you read over the course of his life, fleeing, fighting, hiding, scheming, partnering, leading,

repenting, seeking, negotiating, and the list could go on. Yet in the midst of all of this, there is Psalm 62. This Psalm and David’s life are obviously not at odds. This Psalm is written by David about his life. So how do we practically reconcile that? What Psalm 62 tells us is that David did all that he did in an active dependence upon God, recognizing that while action was called for, he could not place his ultimate hope in others. He cannot place his ultimate hope in riches. He cannot place his ultimate hope in his own devices, and he certainly could not place his hope in sin. But rather, he must place his hope in God. So this presents us with a challenge. As we work to deal with difficulty, how can we know when we are beginning to trust in things or people other than God?

Do you recall the simple test that I’ve given to you in the past for detecting idols in your life? And by idols, I mean things that we put on the throne of our hearts that displace Jesus. That test is this. If you’ll sin to get something, or sin if you don’t get something, you should suspect that something is an idol ruling your heart. If you’ll sin to get something, or sin if you do not get that something, you should suspect that something is an idol on your heart. Something that you are placing your hope and trust in other than God. So how does that apply practically here? Let’s say that in the midst of my hardship, I engage a lawyer to help sort things out. This may be a very wise step to take. The lawyer says, hey, you’ve really been harmed here.

We need to go after restitution. The lawyer is basically saying, I’m owed some money, and perhaps I am. But what if the lawyer is not successful, and I don’t get the money? Will I become angry, sullen, and despairing, believing somehow that God is not loving? This would be sinning when I didn’t get what I wanted. What if to get the money, I need to exaggerate a few things, to tell a few fibs, to be sure that my situation appears to be much worse than it really is? This would be sinning to get what I wanted. Anything wrong with engaging the lawyer? No. However, I must be careful that money does not become an idol, and that I do not place my hope in a lawyer, or as David put it, a person of high estate. Authentic biblical hope never leads to sin. Authentic biblical hope never leads to sin.

Continually testing my heart for idols, will I sin to get it? Will I sin if I don’t get it? Is a helpful way to detect if my hope is no longer in God alone. And one last question to answer this morning. If I place my hope in God, how can I be certain that he is trustworthy? This question brings us to the conclusion that David provides in verses 11 and 12. Once God has spoken, twice I have heard this, that power belongs to God. And that to you, O Lord, belongs steadfast love. For you will render to a man according to his work. If David has heard it once, he has heard it 100 times. God is powerful, and God is loving. As believers, we need to know both of these things if we are to place our hope, our trust, in God. A God who is only powerful cannot be trusted to be kind, and a God who is only loving cannot

be trusted to be effective. What about this last sentence? For you will render to a man according to his work. Be kind of easy expositionally just to skip over that and wrap the sermon up. But we’d be missing some important things if we did that. For the new covenant believer, this can be read as both a warning and as an encouragement. It warns the unbeliever who would seek to bring down God’s people because it reaffirms what Paul tells us in Romans 12, that vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. All of our enemies who do not find themselves in Christ at the end of days will receive their due. However, there is another way to read this that provides much needed encouragement to believers, especially when they are being beaten down. Which one of us has lived in a way that merits the benefits of God’s love and power?

Not one of us. Not a single one of us. If God rendered to us on the basis of our work, we’d be in a world of hurt. But someone has worked on our behalf. By virtue of the gospel, the exchange that took place at the cross, Christ taking on the curse for our sin and us taking on the blessing for his righteousness, we are counted worthy of God’s favor. According to Christ’s work, God renders to us the benefits of his power and his love. Our hope in God is sure, not because of our performance, but because of Christ’s performance. God will not turn away from us when we fail. What’s more, the author of Hebrew tells us, for we do not have a high priest who was unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Not only is Christ our guarantee that God will be our reliable hope, our salvation, Christ is our example in the midst of the trial. Walk with me through Christ’s example as seen through the lens of Psalm 62. Consider that Jesus was falsely accused throughout the entirety of his ministry by the words of religious leaders and then ultimately by an entire Jewish mob that successfully pressured Pilate with their shouts to crucify him. David says in verses three and four, like a leaning wall, a tottering fence, they only plan to thrust him down from his high position. Consider that Jesus prayed with great intensity in the garden of Gethsemane, pouring out what was in his heart of hearts while at the same time committing himself to the father’s will. David said in verse eight, trust in him at all times, pour out your heart before him. Consider that Jesus did not place his hope in the help of men.

Pilate says to Jesus, do you not know that I have authority to release and authority to crucify you? For Jesus to accept Pilate’s offer of salvation would have been to disobey his father and to turn to another for salvation. David said in verse nine, those of high estate are a delusion and the balances, they go up. Consider that Jesus, Isaiah tells us, was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth like a lamb that is led to the slaughter and like a sheep that before it shears is silent. So he opened not his mouth. David said in verse five, for God alone, oh my soul, wait in silence for my hope is in him. Consider that Jesus was anything but passive or fatalistic. There was no act in all of the universe that required greater effort than for Jesus to trust that God, his father would be his salvation and to walk obediently through the trial of

Christ Our Example

the cross. And David said in verses 11 and 12, that power belongs to God and that to you, oh Lord, belongs steadfast love for you will render to a man according to his work. Brothers and sisters, take heart. Jesus knows what it is to suffer greatly from the attacks of men. Jesus knows what it is to place his hope in God alone. He did not fail and he knows how to keep you from failing and he will. You can hope in God alone. May God give us all the confidence of David that when hard times come, we would say with him for God alone, my soul waits in silence for from him comes my salvation. Let’s pray. Father, I praise you for your word. I praise you for the clarity of the Psalms. I praise you for the intimacy with which they speak to us in the midst of our trouble.

Father, thank you for the rescue of Jesus, that we stand in favor with you. You will rescue us. You will be our God, our fortress, our refuge, our salvation. We praise you for that. And thank you for the example of Jesus. He has been there. He has walked through. And I know, Father, that he will help us. We praise you for your goodness and your greatness, in Jesus’ name, amen. Thanks for joining us for this week’s sermon from Trinity Church in Portland, Oregon. If you’d like to learn more about us, you can visit our website at www.trinityportland.com.