In You Do I Take Refuge (Psalm 7)

Announcements

This Sunday, November 7th, we have several events going on that I want to be sure that you’re aware of:

Of course, we have our normal worship service on Sunday morning at 10:30am, here in the auditorium.

We do have a quarterly and annual business meeting right after the service on Sunday morning. This meeting has a few items that require voting, so if you’re a member, please plan to be there this Sunday in order to vote. I’m hoping that this meeting will last no longer than 25-30 minutes. If you aren’t a member, please feel free to stick around during that meeting, all of our business meetings are open to the public, so if you have any interest in the church’s comings and goings, please feel free to stick around.

After the meeting, we’ll have a meal in the Activity Room. This meal is to celebrate our one-year anniversary as a church. There is a sign-up sheet available at the entrance for those of you that would still like to sign up to bring food, but even if you aren’t able to sign up tonight, but still want to bring food, please feel free to do so.

As always, let me remind you to continue worshiping the LORD through your giving. To help you give, we have three ways for you to do so: (1) in-person giving can be done at the offering box in the front of the room. If you give a check, please write it to Grace and Peace and if you give cash and would like a receipt, please stick it in an envelope with your name written on it; debit, credit, and ACH transfers can be done either by (2) texting 84321 with your $[amount] and following the text prompts or (3) by visiting us online at graceandpeacepa.com and selecting giving in the menu bar. Everything that you give goes to the building up of our local church and the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Prayer of Repentance and Adoration

Sermon

Introduction

Our passage for this evening’s message is Psalm 7, which is a Psalm of David. As you turn there, I’m going to give you just a little bit of background information concerning this psalm based on the superscription of the text. Psalm 7 tells us this in the superscription, “A shiggaion of David, which he sang to the LORD concerning the words of Cush, a Benjaminite,” which despite how much detail is in that sentence, we know very little of what the details mean. Let me explain:

The Bible says that this is a Shiggaion, but much like the words sheminith from Psalm 6, and Selah, which is spread throughout the book of psalms, we actually have no idea what a Shiggaion is. The most common suggestion is that it, like sheminith is some sort of musical term that was utilized during the years of Ezra who remember, compiled the book of Psalms. The other suggestion, from Allen Ross is that it “may mean a poem written with intense feeling,” but I’m more inclined to believe that shiggaion is a musical term because most of the psalms were written with intense feelings.

We’re told that this is a psalm of David, “which he sang to the LORD concerning the words of Cush, a Benjaminite.” And you’d think that with the name of the person that this psalm concerns, that we would be able to dig up some additional details, but beyond knowing that this person’s name was Cush and that he was of the tribe of Benjamin, we have no clue who he is and we have no clue what exactly the events surrounding Psalm 7 are because this is very literally, the only time that Cush the Benjaminite is mentioned in the Bible.

Reading the psalm critically with some discernment we can deduce that Cush had made some accusations against David that were completely false, but caused people to want to pursue him and tear him apart. Essentially, we can determine that someone was gossiping or bearing false witness against David, which resulted in other people reacting negatively toward David; and in the midst of these false accusations David cries out to the LORD. Read with me Psalm 7 and I’ll explain how we’ll break down the passage:

Psalm 7 ESV

A Shiggaion of David, which he sang to the Lord concerning the words of Cush, a Benjaminite. 1 O Lord my God, in you do I take refuge; save me from all my pursuers and deliver me, 2 lest like a lion they tear my soul apart, rending it in pieces, with none to deliver. 3 O Lord my God, if I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands, 4 if I have repaid my friend with evil or plundered my enemy without cause, 5 let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it, and let him trample my life to the ground and lay my glory in the dust. Selah 6 Arise, O Lord, in your anger; lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies; awake for me; you have appointed a judgment. 7 Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you; over it return on high. 8 The Lord judges the peoples; judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me. 9 Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end, and may you establish the righteous— you who test the minds and hearts, O righteous God! 10 My shield is with God, who saves the upright in heart. 11 God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day. 12 If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword; he has bent and readied his bow; 13 he has prepared for him his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery shafts. 14 Behold, the wicked man conceives evil and is pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies. 15 He makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made. 16 His mischief returns upon his own head, and on his own skull his violence descends. 17 I will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High.

As we study this psalm, we’re going to split it into two primary sections: (1) Vs. 1-7 is David’s Prayer for Deliverance, and in his prayer, he cries out to the LORD as his refuge and he does something bold in the fact that he tells God that if he is guilty of sin to “let the enemy pursue my soul and take it,” which is definitely a protestation of his innocence. He asks the LORD to vindicate him. In (2) Vs. 10-17 is David’s Description of God’s Justice, David essentially gives reasons as to why he thinks God should vindicate him or deliver him and it’s all based on God’s justness or God’s justice. Or in other words, because God is just, David has prayed for God to vindicate him and because God is just, David will thank him and praise him. This sermon will teach us how to pray when we feel wrongly or falsely accused of sin and it’ll teach us of God’s just character.

Prayer for Illumination

David’s Prayer for Deliverance (1-7)

This psalm of David starts very simply with a prayer for God’s intervention. Vs. 1-2 is David very simply asking God to step in and help him, “O LORD my God, in you do I take refuge; save me from all my pursuers and deliver me, lest like a lion they tear my soul apart, rending it in pieces, with none to deliver.”

Much like other psalms, I do want to point out David’s understand of who God is and who he is in God. The phrase, “O LORD my God” in Hebrew is literally Yahweh ʾǎnî elohim.

Or put differently, David starts by giving the personal name of God—Yahweh, which shows a personal relationship with the one he speaks of; and then he says ʾǎnî elohim or “my God,” which relates how he views Yahweh in that relationship.

Yahweh speaks of a personal relationship, but ʾǎnî elohim speaks of submission. In some ways, you could say, “Yahweh, you are my God,” which David does make that explicit statement in Psalm 63, “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you.”

In Psalm 7:1 and Vs. 3, David utilizes this phrase “O LORD my God,” to express his relationship with the LORD and his submission to the LORD.

David says, “in you do I take refuge; save me from all my pursuers and deliver me.”

He’s speaking, of course, of God and he states that he takes refuge in him. To take refuge in something means to utilize something for shelter (e.g., you can take refuge in a building during a storm), but to take refuge in someone is a little more figurative. You’re typically not going to ask someone to stand over you so that you can hide underneath them for shelter.

But you might ask someone to protect you in other ways. Andrew Smith, “One can take refuge in mighty nations or in foreign gods; the righteous, however, take refuge in Yahweh.”

David goes to the LORD for protection and he prays for the LORD to “save [him] from all [his] pursuers and deliver [him].”

David utilizes vivid imagery to describe how this attack is happening. He calls those that are against him as pursuers, which involves an intentionality, they are intentionally chasing him; and his prayer for God to save him and deliver him implies that David cannot get away from them on his own.

In fact, David describes this attack in a devastating way, “Save me” and “deliver me” “lest like a lion they tear my soul apart, rending it in pieces, with none to deliver.”

Remember, this is poetry and in poetry it is common to utilize figurative, colorful imagery to paint a picture.

And in this case, David’s picture of what they’re doing to him isn’t pretty—an animal being torn to pieces by a lion is something that you typically don’t want to see, and in fact, anytime you see a video of a safari and someone captures a lion going after an animal, it’s typically to hear a groan or two from the group of people watching as that lion devours the animal.

This is how David is describing himself as he’s being attacked by these people—if God doesn’t save him and if God doesn’t deliver him, his soul would be torn apart, so much so, that there won’t be anything left.

I do want to clarify, that in this context, when David says his soul will be torn apart, he isn’t utilizing the term soul in the same manner that we do today.

When we talk about a person’s soul today, we’re speaking of the immaterial part of a person, which is what eventually leaves this earth and goes to be in God’s presence in heaven, but often, when the term soul is utilized in the Old Testament, it’s the word nephesh, which isn’t necessarily talking about a person’s immaterial being.

Rather, it’s talking about a person’s whole being—body, soul, spirit, and mind. With this in mind, David is wrestling with the idea that if God doesn’t rescue him, his whole being will be torn apart; there will be nothing of him left.

We can actually relate to this, because we’ve all faced times in our lives in which people have brought forth accusations against us and attacked us for whatever their reasons are. And many of us can relate to the feeling of our whole being pulled apart by the emotions that these attacks bring about. Many times, when there are attacks like this, there is a bit of blame on both sides of the fence, they’re definitely attacking you, but you’ve done something deserving of that attack. Occasionally, you’ll be attacked by someone for no fault of your own and this is what’s occuring to David and we can see this as he continues his prayer, because he makes a tremendously bold statement.

David continues in vs. 3-5 with this, “O LORD my God, if I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands, if I have repaid my friend with evil or plundered my enemy without cause, let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it, and let him trample my life to the ground and lay my glory in the dust. Selah.”

What David says here, is only wise to say if you know for sure that you did absolutely nothing wrong. Because his argument in Vs. 3-5 is that if he did something wrong, then God should let his enemies overtake him and trample him.

David is sure that he hasn’t done anything worthy of what’s happening to him, so he asks God to judge him. “If I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands, if I have repaid my friend with evil or plundered my enemy without cause.”

David is sincere and he’s sure that he hasn’t done anything worthy of judgment—in fact, I would argue, that if he wasn’t sure, he would be a fool to say what he’s saying in these verses because invoking God’s judgment on yourself is utter foolishness if you’ve been in unrepentant sin (which by the way, is precisely what you do when you take communion in an unworthy manner).

Again, if you wasn’t sure that he had done something worthy of judgment, he would be foolish to call God’s judgment upon himself, but as Matthew Henry says, “When a man has made peace with God about all his sins, upon the terms of grace and mercy, through the sacrifice of the Mediator, he may, in comparison with his enemies, appeal to God’s justice to decide,”

Which is precisely what David does as he continues in Vs. 6-9 "Arise O LORD, in your anger; lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies; awake for me; you have appointed a judgment Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you; over it return on high. The LORD judges the peoples; judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me. Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end, and may you establish the righteous—you who test the minds and hearts, O righteous God!”

Because David knows that he did nothing wrong, and because he realizes that his enemies are accusing him false, he calls on the LORD to make the judgment.

You might question why this seems as if he’s asking God to judge and punish his enemies, which I’ll explain just simply. It’s because by falsely accusing him of whatever they’ve accused him of and by attacking him in the way that he did, they’re actually sinning.

They’re sinning against David, but not only are they sinning against David, all sin is an affront against a holy God; thus, they’re sinning against God as well.

David can rightly call on the LORD to have fury against his enemies and to in anger judge them because their sin separates them from the LORD.

As David says, “The LORD judges the peoples; judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me.”

I do want to pause here just momentarily, because I want to talk about the idea of God judging people. In our modern world, it’s common to hear people make the argument that only God can judge them

Psalm 7 makes it clear that that is a true statement because it is the LORD who judges the people, but I do want to make it clear that the way that people utilize that phrase today negates the fact that God’s judgment ought to bring forth fear and repentance.

Often, when people make the statement that only God can judge them it’s because they recognize that they’re doing something sinful and you’ve just called them out for their sin. They’re making the statement to stop you from telling them that they’re wrong.

Quite frankly, the fact that God is their judge ought to cause fear and trembling because God does not hold the guilty sinless.

“The LORD judges the people” and that means all people. For those that are in unrepentant sin that are acting in wickedness, that should cause fear; but for those that are righteous, that should cause praise.

Now the question that you might have is, “How can I be righteous?” Righteousness is closely tied to the idea of justification by faith alone.

Galatians 2:16 teaches us that a person is justified through faith in Jesus Christ. As someone who is justified, Proverbs 15:9 teaches us to continue pursuing righteousness in our lives

And I think the best way to figure this out is by recognizing that you cannot please God when you’re in sin and allowing that recognition to cause you to repent and turn to God. How do we pursue righteousness? By desiring for God to transform our minds and conform us into the image of Christ. It is genuine faith and pursuit of Jesus that makes you righteous

David was righteous and he knew he was righteous based on his genuine faith and belief in God.

David knew that he wasn’t acting in sin and that he was righteous, so he can ask God to come and judge him and judge the others because he knew that he was in the right.

He is righteous because of his genuine faith in the LORD.

And he knows that his enemies are unrighteous because of their lack of genuine belief that has resulted in them acting wickedly against him.

Because they are wicked, he prays “Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end, and may you establish the righteous—you who test the minds and hearts, O righteous God.”

He prays for their wickedness to come to an end and for those who are righteous to be established

And he makes this prayer off of God’s character, “you who test the minds and hearts, O righteous God.”

That sentence acts as a transition for David, because he goes from praying for deliverance from his wicked enemies to speaking of God’s righteousness and God’s justice. The last eight verses of Psalm 7 closes David’s prayer with praise for the LORD based on God’s character, which is something for us to learn from as we study through these last eight verses. Read with me Psalm 7:10-17:

David’s Description of God’s Justice (10-17)

Psalm 7:10–17 ESV

10 My shield is with God, who saves the upright in heart. 11 God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day. 12 If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword; he has bent and readied his bow; 13 he has prepared for him his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery shafts. 14 Behold, the wicked man conceives evil and is pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies. 15 He makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made. 16 His mischief returns upon his own head, and on his own skull his violence descends. 17 I will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High.

In the last few verses of Psalm 7, David shifts his focus onto the character of God, which he describes with the imagery of battle and war. Or in other words, David utilizes illustrations from battle to describe God’s character:

Starting with Vs. 10-11, “My shield is with God, who saves the upright in heart. God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day.”

The first bit of battle or war imagery is that of God being David’s shield.

With the exception of modern-time warfare in which our soldiers have battle armor and protective gear, protection from swords, arrows, and various other weaponry during David’s life would have been in the form of a shield as well as armor.

Obviously, it would be better for the soldier if the weaponry never made it to his body whatsoever, so shields were utilized for protection.

This isn’t the only time David calls God his shield, in fact the Psalms are littered with verse after verse in which the psalmist calls God a shield:

Psalm 3:3, “But you, O LORD, are a shield about me.”

Psalm 28:7, “The LORD is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts.”

There are roughly 20 times in the book of Psalms in which the psalmist calls God his shield or speaks of God shielding him.

David’s use of this illustration has a simple meaning, “God is his protection.”

That idea extends as David continues in the passage, “My shield is with God, who saves the upright in heart.”

The upright in heart calls back to the idea mentioned earlier in Vs. 8, that David is a righteous person. The upright in heart and righteousness goes hand-in-hand. You cannot be upright in heart unless you are righteous.

Or conversely God doesn’t protect the unrighteous, he only protect those who are righteous.

We can say it like this, God protects his own because only his own are considered righteous in his sight because of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ.

No, for those who aren’t his, who aren’t upright in heart, who aren’t considered righteous due to Jesus’ sacrificial atonement on the cross, there is but judgment.

How do we know? Because Vs. 10, says God saves the upright in heart. and Vs. 11 continues and says, “God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day.”

Or put differently, we know that God is the judge and that God makes all the right judgments and it is he who tests the minds and hearts.

The very fact that David describes God as righteous shows us that his judgments are just.

God saves the upright, he protects his own people; but those who are not his, who are not upright in heart, but are evil and wicked, God feels indignation towards them every day.

In fact, God feels such indignation towards those who are wicked, that David spends Vs. 12-16 describing how God will trap and punish the wicked.

The Bible speaks of God whetting his sword, bending his bow, preparing his weapons and causing the wicked to fall into their own trap.

Vs. 12, “If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword; he has bent and readied his bow; he has prepared for him his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery shafts.”

Like a warrior prepared his weapons for battle, so shall God prepare his weapons for the wicked. Swords, bows, and arrows all provide the imagery for God’s decree of judgment that will destroy the wicked.

Notice the first phrase of Vs. 12, “If a man does not repent.” It’s important to note that this level of destruction is reserved for those who refuse to repent—those who refuse to turn away from their wickedness and their evil. Those who refuse to cry out to the LORD for mercy will face God’s righteous judgment.

And I’m emphasizing the term righteous because he is right in judging those who are wicked.

Occasionally, the accusation is thrown against God that a good God wouldn’t judge people nor would he send people to face punishment for their sins, but we have to remember, that God isn’t just good—God is also righteous, and he is just, but what these people who throw that accusation out against God neglect to realize is that God is also holy.

And in his holiness, he cannot be in the presence of sin, and in his righteousness and in his justness, he cannot let sin remain unpunished.

God is absolutely right in his punishment of sin, which is described in terms of war and battle in Psalm 7. God militantly opposes sin and those who live in unrepentant sin; those who live in the ways of evil.

But again, look at that first phrase, “If a man does not repent.” The word if clues us in to the fact that there is a very real possibility that those who are wicked and evil can repent if they so choose.

What that means is that those who are wicked and evil can become righteous in the sign of God

Those that are wicked and evil who perform evil deeds can be upright in heart, they can be God’s people

If they repent from their wickedness and their evil deeds. However, if he refuses to repent, the LORD judges and God is prepared to punish sinful people for their sins to the extent that he’ll utilize the wicked’s own plans for their punishment.

Vs. 14, “Behold, the wicked man conceives evil and is pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies. He makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made. His mischief returns upon his own head, and on his own skull his violence descends.”

David states in Vs. 14-16 the manner of God’s judgment against the wicked and in this instance, the judgment doesn’t wait until the next life, it occurs immediately.

God will trap these people in their own wicked plans—They conceive evil and they are pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies. They make a pit, they dig it out. And after they take the time to dig out this pit, they fall into it themselves.

This picture of how sin takes root (how it is conceived, grown, birthed) and builds up is actually utilized by James in James 1:13-15 “Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.”

The Bible says that for the one who refuses to repent, “His mischief returns upon his own head, and on his own skull his violence descends.”

Now, I do want to talk about something that you might be thinking about as we work through this passage, and it’s simple, you might be thinking, “why does it seem like whatever this punishment for sin is, is going to occur almost immediately and why doesn’t this happen today?”

Or put differently, why does it seem as if the wicked always prosper today? If God is just and righteous, why doesn’t he punish sin in the same way that he did for David’s enemies?

The only answer that I have to that question is found in 2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”

Why doesn’t God punish sin immediately or quickly after the fact? Because God is patient, not wishing that they should perish, but that they should reach repentance.

Why doesn’t God immediately judge people and why do wicked people seem to prosper for so long? It’s because God wants them to repent and he is being patient with them.

But the truth is, eventually because of God’s holiness, he will have to judge the sins of those who refuse to repent.

And he is perfectly right and just for his judgments

He is perfectly just for judging sins; and all his judgments are correct.

And just like David, we can praise him because of his righteousness. God deserves praise for his righteousness; Vs. 17, “I will give to the LORD the thanks due to his righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the LORD, the most high.”

David concludes this psalm in which he cries out for justice as a man hunted by those who are seeking to do evil towards him with praise.

As we’ve worked through this passage, we’ve seen how David goes from crying out against the injustice that he’s facing from his enemies to him reflecting on the character of God, particularly God’s justice in contrast to their injustice.

And in the very last verse, David makes this final declaration of praise, “I will give to the LORD the thanks due to his righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the LORD, the Most High.”

Despite the great injustice that David is facing from his enemies, he knows that God is righteous and thus, he can give thanks and praise the LORD.

Which is something that we need to learn from as well—we live in a world in which it seems that the good suffer and the evil always prosper, but the reality is this:

That God is righteous and we can be thankful that we serve a God who is just.

In the remaining few minutes, I want to give some specific application that we can all apply to our lives today from this passage, but like last week, I think the best way for us to gain the full understanding of the text that we need to apply this passage, we should look at the psalm all at once rather than breaking it up in two:

Application

Psalm 7 is a psalm of David in which he cries out against the injustice that he faces from those that he call his pursuers who want to tear him apart—he doesn’t exactly give us the details of this beyond just describing his pursuing as lions who want to destroy him and his need of the LORD to save him or deliver him. David expresses innocence throughout the ordeal that he has described to the extent that he’s willing to call on the LORD to judge him if he has done evil, if he has done wrong. He calls on God to judge his enemies and then he shifts focus from Vs. 10-17, in which he reflects on God’s justice and righteousness. Despite the injustice that he’s facing, he knows that God is righteous and just and that God is his shield who saves those who are righteous. And because God is just, he gives thanks and sings praise.

So let’s start with David’s prayer for deliverance in Vs. 1-7, in this section, David speaks of how the LORD is whom he takes refuge from his pursuers. That despite these great injustices that he faces, the LORD will protect him. There’s two application points that I want to draw out from these verses:

First off, there will always be people who will pursue you in order to destroy you. Jesus himself says that the world will hate you because the world hated him.

As Christians today, we have to anticipate people being against us in various ways and on occasion, those same people might be against you due to no fault of your own. Just like David here, you could be completely blameless concerning the incident, but people will still want to destroy.

But just like David, your response should be the same. When people attack you whether verbally or physically, our first response is typically to attack back. If someone says something malicious about you, you say something malicious back, if someone gossips behind your back, you gossip behind their back.

Let me suggest that when people are attacking you, the proper response isn’t to attack back—by all means defend yourself if possible, but start by taking refuge in the LORD.

God is your protector and if you are truly innocent, then there is nothing better for you than to simply run to Jesus for protection.

As a Christian, there will always be people against you because there will always be people against the LORD; so, turn to Jesus and run to him.

Second, when faced with attacks from those around you, let me encourage you to utilize it as an opportunity to reflect on your own spiritual condition.

David does this in Vs. 3-5, “O LORD my God, if I have done this, let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it.”

He has already taken time to reflect and make sure that his heart is right before praying for God to judge him.

And I assure you, David has already asked himself whether these attacks were due to anything that he did prior to praying for God’s deliverance.

If you’re facing an attack, and really, if you’re facing any sort of hardship in life, do you know what your first response to those hardships ought to be? To reflect on your heart and your spiritual condition.

Be sure that these hardships aren’t just repercussions for your sinful behavior and if they are repercussions for your sinful behavior, repent from your sin, seek reconciliation, and return to Jesus.

If these hardships aren’t repercussions for your own sinful behavior, then do what David did and cry out to the LORD for protection. God protects his people.

If you’re facing an attack or hardship: (1) check your heart first and repent if necessary, and then (2) turn and run to Jesus for protection.

As David continues his psalm and really his prayer to the LORD, he spends a large part of the psalm reflecting on who God is, which is something that we need to learn from concerning our own prayers:

Often when we pray today, we focus on what’s typically referred to as prayer of petition, which simply means that as we pray, we’re praying for God to answer our prayers:

These are usually prayers for health, for help making decisions, for those that we love to come to know Jesus

And there’s nothing wrong with these types of prayers, in fact, the Bible tells us to make petition to the LORD. John Newton once wrote, “Thou art coming to a king, large petitions with thee bring, for his grace and power are such, none can ever ask too much.”

However, have you noticed a pattern in many of the prayers in the Psalms? That even though part of the psalm is typically reserved for petitions, the vast majority of them are just reflections on God and who God is?

Vs. 10-16 of Psalm 7 is a reflection on God’s character, particularly concerning his justice. Now, of course this is a psalm, which means that it was written to be sung, but I would argue that David, as he wrote this psalm, he prayed through this psalm.

That as he was reflecting on those who were seeking to do evil and wicked things to him, he paused and considered how despite their wickedness, God is still good

Despite how the wicked and evil ones were acting unjustly to him, he reflects on how God is still just and righteous.

Now consider your own prayers. Do you spend ample time reflecting on God and his character when you pray? Or is your prayer simply a list of requests for him?

Consider your own prayers, have you taken the effort to worship the LORD through your prayer by reflecting on who he is? His goodness, his glory, his mercy, his strength, the fact that he gives you your very breath?

Or are you too busy asking him to do things for you?

When you face great hardship in life, Psalm 7 teaches us to (1) check your heart first and repent if necessary, (2) to run to Jesus for protection, and (3) to remind ourselves of who God is and what his character is like.

You’ll find that as your do this and you reflect on who God is, you won’t be able to help but to worship him and praise him (just like David does in Vs. 17).

Put Simply: as you face great difficulty in life, (1) use every difficulty to reflect on your spiritual condition and repent if necessary, (2) use every difficulty to cause you to run to Jesus for protection, and (3) use each difficulty to compel you to reflect on Jesus, his character, and what he has done. Doing so, will cause you to “give to the LORD the thanks due to his righteousness, and [you] will sing praise to the name of the LORD, the Most High.”

Prayer Requests

Caleb Miller - Medical Issues

Alan Wisor - Medical Issues

The Dunlop Family - Our missionary friends sent out a quick update for September 2021 (you can read it hear: https://www.thedunlopfamily.org/post/quick-update-september-2021)—they’re asking specifically for prayer in the following areas: safety while on deputation, continued direction for planning, addition financial partners, and grace as Michael continues his education.

Pray for the remaining renovation work

We’re currently $5,000 short of completing all of the projects. Continue to pray for the Lord’s provision of these funds.What we’ve already paid for and what we have supplies for will hopefully be done with in the next week or two.

The rest will be done as more funding comes in.

Praise the LORD for the good turnout this past week at the PRC Halloween Parade and Vender Event, we were able to have great conversations with people in the community; pray for seeds to have been planted.

And continue praying for our mission and vision for Philipsburg and the surrounding areas, that we continue to make mature believers of Jesus Christ.