Placing Your Life in the Hand of God
For the next few weeks, we’re going to do a series called End of Summer Songs. All of us have songs we like that we associate with summer. In the Bible, the book of Psalms contains the songs and prayers of Israel, 150 of them gathered in a collection that includes joyful songs of praise and thanksgiving as well as sad songs of lamentation and distress.
The songs and prayers are addressed to God, usually either pleading for help or bearing witness to God’s gracious acts on behalf of God’s people.
Jesus died with psalms on his lips, quoting from or referring directly to three of them, including Psalm 31, our focus for this Sunday.
While we won’t be reading the entire Psalm in worship, I encourage you to do so. Psalm 31 is an intensely personal prayer for deliverance. The title of the Psalm says that this is a Psalm of David. David turned to the Lord in times of distress and so can we, and in Psalm 31 he pours out his lament to the Lord and expresses his trust in our faithful God in whom we all can find refuge. If we wanted to give this Psalm a title, “Taking refuge in the Lord,” would be appropriate.
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Placing Your Life in the Hand of God
Today we begin a series called End of Summer Songs. Many of us have songs we like that we associate with summer. The songs vary depending on our age. You might think of a song by Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, the Beach Boys, Bananarama, or Taylor Swift. Some of you recently saw Beautiful, The Carol King Musical at the Cape Playhouse, and in it you heard one such song, It Might as Well Rain Until September.
In the Bible, the book of Psalms contains the songs, hymns, and prayers, of Israel, 150 of them gathered in a collection that includes joyful songs of praise and thanksgiving as well as sad songs of lamentation and distress.
The songs and prayers are addressed to God, usually either pleading for help or bearing witness to God’s gracious acts on behalf of God’s people.
Because of the range of human emotion and God’s activity in the psalms, believers in every generation have found them applicable to their own lives and worship.
Christians came to revere the Psalms as well, in part because Jesus died with psalms on his lips, quoting from or referring directly to Psalm 22 (Mark 15:34), Psalm 69 (John 19:28), and today’s scripture, Psalm 31 (Luke 23:46), so Israel’s laments were drawn into the story of Jesus’ passion. In Acts 7:59, an early church leader named Stephen as he was dying as a martyr also seems to reference this psalm with his final words, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”
The psalms have served believers in every generation as a biblical source of prayer and praise and as models for our own response to God. The people of God have also heard God addressing them in the psalms, as the prayers and hymns bear witness to the nature and work of God.
The Psalms are unique, bringing together human word and the word of God in an inseparable unity. One spiritual discipline you can do is to read through the Book of Psalms in a month by reading five psalms a day which will enrich your faith and your prayer life.
We’re going to look at four Psalms in order in the coming weeks beginning with Psalm 31. While we’re not reading the entire Psalm in worship, I encourage you to do so later.
Psalm 31 is a lament and it’s an intensely personal prayer for deliverance. Listen for how many times you hear the words, “I, me, and my” in just the first five verses and for all the Psalmist is asking God to do. Psalm 31 also reflects the parallelism that’s characteristic of so much Hebrew poetry and the psalms. The title of the Psalm says that this is a Psalm of David. David turned to the Lord in times of distress and so can we, and in Psalm 31 he pours out his lament to the Lord and expresses his trust in our faithful God.
Psalm 31:1-5,
“In you, O LORD, I seek refuge; do not let me ever be put to shame; in your righteousness deliver me. Incline your ear to me; rescue me speedily.
Be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me.
You are indeed my rock and my fortress; for your name’s sake lead me and guide me, take me out of the net that is hidden for me, for you are my refuge.
Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O LORD, faithful God.”
Today there are a few key words I encourage you to remember and the first is Ask.
If you’ve ever wondered if it’s okay to pray and ask God to do something for you, Psalm 31 makes is clear, it’s okay to ask. Just in the first five verses, how many requests do you hear?
Don’t let me be put to shame. Deliver me, incline your ear to me, which is a way of saying hear me, rescue me speedily, be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me, lead me, guide me, take me out of the net, that is hidden for me which implies someone trying to capture him. Finally in gratitude, you have redeemed me. David is asking God to do a lot, isn’t he?
David is asking the Lord to do a lot for him, what does David pledge to do? To place his spirit in God’s hand. He commits to trusting his life, his present, his future, his hopes, in the hand of God. In doing so, he encourages us to do the same.
In your life, it’s okay to ask God to do for you that David asks the Lord to do for him.
None of us wants to be put to shame, we don’t want to do or say anything that would bring shame upon ourselves, our family, or our God.
We may need the Lord’s help at times to keep us in the center of God’s will.
You may need deliverance from a behavior that has doggedly pursued you, hampered or hurt you, or from a circumstance or even a person.
We all want to feel that when we cry out to God, that the Lord will hear us in our moment of need.
Rescue. Refuge. A Fortress, preventing our being captured or trapped by an enemy that may be outside or within us.
When we feel under attack or assault, we all long for these things as David did.
When you face a choice or decision about the next step to take, praying for the Lord to lead and guide you is wise and appropriate.
Expressing gratitude to God for redeeming and saving us is always fitting.
Just as a loving parent would never discourage a child asking for love, guidance, or protection, God welcomes our asking as well (James 4:2-3). Don’t be afraid to ask
A second word to remember from Psalm 31 is Refuge.
When you’re reading the Bible on your own, you want to look for repeated words and phrases and a key, repeated word in these verses is Refuge.
Refuge – is a condition of being safe or sheltered from pursuit, danger, or trouble.
If we wanted to give this Psalm a title, “Taking refuge in the Lord,” would be appropriate.
Refuge is an important concept in the Bible. For example, within the Hebrew Bible there’s a provision for six cities of refuge, where someone who has unintentionally committed murder can go and not be subject to blood revenge (see Numbers 35:11-15).
If you look through the life of David as we have it in the scriptures, sometimes we can envision a time in his life that connects with a psalm that’s attributed to him. While we can’t know for sure, if you read 1 Samuel 23 and the account of David and his men delivering the people of a place called Keilah from the Philistines and then having to again flee from King Saul who was seeking to kill him, you can see why David’s experiences at that time might occasion a prayer like Psalm 31.
At that point in his life, David and the men who are loyal to him, are living life on the run from King Saul, an unstable, paranoid leader willing to use violence to remain in power. Saul feels threatened by David, so he wants to kill him, even though David had served King Saul both in battle and with his music and David is his son Jonathan’s best friend.
David’s prayer for refuge, rescue, and for God to be fortress is a plea for God to keep him safe from Saul’s pursuit and the danger and trouble that came with it.
While you may not have a powerful enemy openly pursuing you and seeking to take your life, I think most of us long for a place of refuge. As an old hymn says, “There is a place of quiet rest, near to the heart of God.”
Whatever you may be afraid of, whatever trouble you’re facing, whatever enemy you’re fleeing from or seeking to escape, you can find refuge in God.
Have you ever visited, walked, or hiked in a wildlife refuge? What’s that experience like? If you could interview the creatures living there, what do you think they’d say? “This is the best! We feel so safe here.” In the same way, just as David prayed, you can pray that God will be a refuge for you in your times of need, to shelter you from trouble.
A third word to remember from Psalm 31 is Hand.
One of the points of connection between 1 Samuel 23 and Psalm 31 is the use of the word and concept “hand.”
In 1 Samuel 23:4, the Lord says to David, “Yes, go down to Keilah; for I will give the Philistines into your hand.”
After rescuing the inhabitants of the city, David hears that Saul knows where he is, so he asks the Lord, “Will the men of Keilah surrender me and my men into the hand of Saul?” When the Lord says they will, David and his 600 men set out from Keilah to live and hide in the wilderness.
1 Samuel 23:14 says, “Saul sought him every day, but the Lord did not give him into his hand.”
There’s a reference to David’s friend, Jonathan, the son of Saul, visiting David and (1 Samuel 23:16) “strengthening his hand in the Lord.” The Ziphites tell Saul where David was located and promise to surrender him (1 Samuel 23:20) into “the king’s hand.”
With that background, if you look at Psalm 31 you see David placing his life in the hand of God and thanking the Lord for not delivering him (Psalm 31:8, 15) “into the hand of the enemy.”
Many of the psalms of lament move from their cry of distress or plea for help to an expression of trust in God and Psalm 31:14-15a is an example of that. “But I trust in you, O LORD; I say, “You are my God.” My times are in your hand.” And verse 20 affirms that those who take refuge in God, will be held safe.
Sadly, we know this is not always the case in a physical sense. We know that innocent, good, righteous, loving, devout, holy people do not always have this prayer answered.
Throughout history and every day tragically, the innocent suffer and even die. We don’t have a good answer as to why this is the case beyond the reality of sin and evil in a broken world.
Yet even in the face of evil, placing your life in the hand of God is the best place to be.
We see this in the life and death of Jesus. Luke 23:46 has Jesus on the cross, quoting Psalm 31:5 as his final words before he died so Psalm 31 contains one of the “seven last words from the cross.” It’s possible that Jesus recited the entire psalm or at least longer parts of it, with Luke reporting only this verse which is enough to remind us of the whole Psalm. As I said when I began, Psalm 31 is associated with the death of Jesus and of Stephen. Because of these associations, the psalm has long been used at the time of death by faithful people.
Psalm 31, however, also has something important to say about the life of the believer.
This psalm is about trusting in the Lord, no matter what.
On day 3 of VBS, Fischer the Seal taught us that in the good and bad times of life, “God is a friend we can trust.” We’re far more likely to trust God at the time of our death if we’ve trusted God in our life.
In praying, “Into your hand I commit my spirit” (verse 5), David and Jesus invite us to say the same prayer and make the same commitment.
“Into your hand I commit my spirit” is an affirmation of trust.
After putting himself in the Lord’s hands, David recalls that the Lord delivered him from the hand of the enemy (verse 8) and “set my feet in a broad place.” A “broad place” means a place of safety and security. David, Jesus, and Stephen all put their lives in the hand of God who proved to be a rock, a fortress, and a trusted guide. God is faithful in life and even at the time of death, even a violent death of martyrdom.
From our post-Easter perspective, we might sum up Psalm 31 by saying, “Even in the face of enemies, adversity, the distress of physical pain (verse 10) and the failure of some of those around me (verses 11-13), I’m not giving up on you Lord. You’re still my God and my refuge. Through your son Jesus Christ, you have redeemed me. I trust you, I place my life, all my times, in your hand (verse 15). And I’m going on with my life, loving you, caring for my neighbors, and living each day with strength and with courage (verses 23-24).”
There is so much we can learn from this Psalm about how a person of faith responds during a trial.
In it, we see David’s dependence, trust, submission, humility, perseverance, gratitude, and encouragement of others. Psalm 31 is a model of prayer that’s confident of being heard. That confidence is not because of the virtue of the one praying, which is good for all of us, but because of the character of the God to whom we pray. Ask and trust and God will be a refuge for you. Place your life and your spirit in the hand of God. There’s no better place to be.
Blessing: We close with the final words of Psalm 31 with which we began our service: “Love the LORD, all you his saints. The LORD preserves the faithful, but abundantly repays the one who acts haughtily. Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the LORD.”
Questions for Discussion or Reflection
- Discuss or reflect on the idea of God as a refuge as mentioned in Psalm 31:1-4. How has this concept played out in your own life experiences?
- Review Psalm 31, which is a lament, and note all the things that are causing David stress, for example, grief, sorrow, failing strength, enemies, etc. How do you reconcile David’s afflictions with his unwavering faith and trust in God throughout Psalm 31?
- How does David’s portrayal of his affliction make you reflect on your own moments of distress? Can you recall a time when you felt like a ‘broken vessel’ (verse 12)? How did you seek God’s intervention during this period?
- What does it mean to commit your spirit into God’s hands as David does in Psalm 31:5? How can David’s words in Psalm 31 inspire you to hold onto faith in times of trouble?
- Psalm 31:5 has a special place in Christian devotion because it is the final prayer of Jesus’ life (Luke 23:46). What difference does placing our spirit into the hand of God make in life and even at the time of our death?
- In verse 24, David encourages believers to be strong and courageous. How does this inspire you in your personal walk with God? How can we use David’s prayer in Psalm 31 to strengthen our relationship with God?