Psalm 70 - An Urgent Plea

INTRODUCTION:

Interest:

Kids are great at producing urgent pleas. They can make it sound like the whole world is going to stop spinning in a moment if their need is not met immediately. Of course, sometimes their “need” is not much of a need, “Dad, I need a new video game.” “How many games do you have already that you haven’t finished playing?” “Ummm, but I need this one, it just came out.” “Well, that means it will be discounted in about 3 months.” “But Dad! I need, need, need, need it right now because all the kids at school have it!” “I see…”

Of course, there are times when their pleas are actually related to urgent needs. “Dad, I need to go to the bathroom.” “Ok, in a few minutes.” “Dad, I nnneeeeeddddd to go to the bathroom! Right now!”

Involvement:

As we all know, urgent needs to not end with childhood, though, do they? Urgent needs can come into our lives at any time, can’t they? This is something that we know and it is something that our psalmist this morning realizes as well.

Context:

Our psalm this morning is a bit unusual in that it is virtually identical to the prayer included in Psalm 40 as verses 13–17. Psalm 40 is a psalm of David’s and thus, so is our psalm this morning, Psalm 70. It is impossible to say how these five verses became an independent psalm during Israel’s history, but God clearly has preserved them this way as we have this psalm before us morning.

This psalm is a plea for deliverance, an urgent plea, as I titled our sermon. It is possible that at some point during a time of great distress in Israel’s history that these verses were taken over from Psalm 40 and turned into an independent psalm to give voice to the urgent needs of the moment.

Preview:

Whatever the case, we now have these wonderful verses before us as an independent psalm. Five verses formulating an urgent plea. The need is great. The time is desperate. The writer needs to get God’s attention.

As always, though, with Scripture, there is more here than just a record of a plea; there is also a lesson here. The lesson is that God places urgent needs into our lives to accomplish His purposes.

God places urgent needs into our lives to accomplish His purposes. This is so important for us to realize. The urgent needs we face are not accidents. Our desperate times do not just happen to come about. They are in our lives by God’s design. As we look at our psalm this morning, we will see four things generated by the urgent needs that God places into our lives.

Transition from introduction to body:

Let’s begin by reading our short psalm together…<read Ps 70:1–5>.

God places urgent needs into our lives to accomplish His purposes. From the first verse we learn that…

BODY:

I. Urgent needs generate urgent pleas

“O God.” “O Lord.” These are desperate cries, urgent cries to God. The initial phrase in made even more urgent by the lack of a verb in the original language…the first “hasten” has been added by our translators to smooth out the flow. Without it, though, we get a sense for the breathless urgency with which David is coming to God, “O God, to deliver me.”

When things are desperate, careful grammar frequently falls by the wayside. We stutter and spurt short phrases trying to get our point across quickly. That is what David is doing here. This prayer is still an expression of God’s ability to protect and deliver him. David knows that God is able to do that because God has done so in the past. His prayer now expresses his longing that it might be the Lord’s will to do so again.

Application

Folks, it is one thing to talk about God’s ability to deliver us when we are sitting in Sunday School. We can talk about His lovingkindness, His compassion, His truth, His strength, His care in a nice warm room. There we have our Bibles open. We have coffee in front of us. It is comfortable. It is abstract. In that environment we can easily close with a prayer thanking God for His ability to care for us and guide us in the coming week.

It is altogether different to approach God in prayer when life is crashing around us. When we are sitting next to the emergency room bed of a spouse who was in a serious car accident or when we just lost our job because of corporate downsizing. During times of real suffering such as these, prayers are no longer abstract…they are frantic appeals to God to come to our aid.

We are aware that God instructs us in Heb 4:16 that we are to “draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” We can quote that verse. We affirm that it is true. But only urgent needs can cause us to appreciate its relevance in our lives. Then we grasp the opportunity to come into God’s presence with our urgent requests like a drowning man grabs the life preserver that is tossed into the water. There is a raw urgency to our prayers. We are bold in our desperation. We are even quick to turn to God.

Think about this past week. How much time did you spend urgently begging God to come to your aid? I would anticipate that there is a correlation between how much time you spent in prayer and how smooth your week went. If your week was a smooth one, one in which you did not really encounter any unique challenges or urgent needs, I can predict that you likely spent limited time in prayer. You may have set times of prayer each day that you faithfully held, but you probably didn’t find yourself going to God additionally. By contrast, if a family member tested positive for COVID this week or if you faced some other urgent need, I predict that you spent significantly more time in prayer. I also predict that the tone of your prayer was more urgent, more of the “Oh God, hasten to deliver me; O Lord, hasten to my help!” variety.

Transition:

God places urgent needs into our lives to accomplish His purposes. Urgent needs generate urgent pleas. Urgent pleas are the first thing generated by the urgent needs that God places into our lives.

Secondly,…

II. Urgent needs generate dependent petitions

Urgent pleas in and of themselves are not really God’s ultimate goal for us when He places urgent needs into our lives. God is not looking for us to simply line up and smother Him with our urgent cries. Rather, God is working to teach us to depend on Him by learning to ask Him for relief from every situation that He allows into our lives.

We see David demonstrating dependent faith in verses 2 and 3. David is under attack from unnamed enemies. They have made his situation desperate. So, he lodges three petitions before God to bring these enemies and their threats against him to an end. He asks God to cause their efforts to backfire. If you look carefully at the petitions, in every case David includes a description of the enemies with his request. They are those “who seek [his] life,” “who delight in [his] hurt,” “who say, ‘Aha, aha!’” That last expression is one of derision, mocking David for his hardships. As David turns to God, he asks God to bring the efforts of these enemies to nothing. Through his requests he expresses that his only hope for the resolution of this situation is God; he depends on God. David is facing shame, confusion, and disgrace from his enemies. Only God can turn the situation around. He turns to God for help.

Now, we don’t know when this psalm was written in David’s life, but from the many psalms that we have looked at from David we know that one lesson that he learned well was to depend on God in times of trial. He faced numerous enemies. He faced countless defeats and difficulties. Time and time again, David was boxed into the metaphorical corner by his trials so that the only option left to him was to cry out to God for help. That means, that it is possible that David is not learning a new lesson at this point, but rather practicing a well-established policy in his life to petition God in times of urgent needs. Still, every time that he turned to God, David’s dependence upon God was reinforced; his confidence and trust in God was strengthened; he learned more fully what it looks like to depend upon God for deliverance.

Application

The same is true for us. God may need to bring urgent needs into our lives to finally bow our stiff back of independent pride and force us to learn for the first time to depend on Him. Or God may bring urgent needs into our lives to reinforce this lesson that we already know—that we need God to deliver us from every trial. We may be quite familiar with depending on God or we may be just discovering that God is there when we need Him. In either case, urgent needs are designed to cause us to petition God, expressing our dependence on Him.

Let me ask you? Do you find yourself naturally turning to God when urgent needs come into your life? If you can answer “yes” to that question, it will be because you have experience already with turning to God when urgent needs hit you.

Illustration

I know that I have mentioned it before, but I still remember clearly one night when God really taught me this lesson, about 27 years ago now. I had taken a job here and left Grace and Katie, who was a baby at that time, in WI waiting for our house to sell. Through a series of circumstances, the rapid house sell that we expected in WI had fallen through and I had been separated from my family for several months. I had had a phone call that night in which Grace had relayed through tears her frustration of trying to shovel a large amount of snow from the driveway while having our baby out there in the cold in the stroller while she was doing it. On top of all of that, the job here had turned into an extreme disappointment for me and it felt like one of the leaders here was out to get me. There was no one that I could talk to about the situation. I was completely at the end of myself; the only One I could turn to for help was God. That night, in my desperation I spent time begging God to deliver me.

That was the most severe need that I had ever taken to God to that point in my life. But through that experience, I learned about taking my petitions for deliverance to Him when He allowed urgent needs into my life.

I would expect that many of you can relate.

Transition:

God places urgent needs into our lives to accomplish His purposes. Urgent needs generate dependent petitions. We see that reflected in verses 2 and 3 of David’s prayer.

From verse 4, we can add a third thing to the list of things generated by urgent needs;…

III. Urgent needs generate anticipated praise

David prays that things will backfire on those who are rejoicing in his misery in verses 2 and 3. At the same time, though, he also prays that God will work so that all the people who love God the way that David loves God might be given a new reason to rejoice. He knows that there are other people in Israel who love God as he loves God, who seek after God like he does. Because he knows that there are other people who hope in God’s salvation just as he does, David has an ongoing concern that the cry, “Let God be magnified!” be continually shouted throughout the land. Such praise draws attention to God’s greatness. It reflects the glory of His goodness. David’s concern is that all who love God and have experienced His salvation would continually express such joy.

Of course, we can anticipate that David is leading in this effort, even as he is suffering. There is no hint of complaint, even in his petitions. He never states that he is underserving of the difficulties that he is facing. And now there is no whiff of anything other than joy in any of David’s words. After all, He cannot call on others to do that which is his not doing himself.

Application

One of the most difficult times to express joy in God is when tears are running down our cheeks because of the suffering that we are going through…yet there is no time that is a more powerful display of joy in God than at such a time as that. When all around us is misery, to express joy in God and to call on others to do the same is an extremely powerful testimony of the salvation that we have experienced in Him.

Illustration

Think of the many times you have seen such praise given at the funeral for a godly saint. Believing family members are grieving the loss of their loved one. At the same time, they are rejoicing that God has taken their loved one home. They are rejoicing that they will see their loved one again. They are grateful for the many ways that God used their loved one to reflect glory to Himself throughout their life. So, amid all the tears that grief brings, there are words of praise given to God for His goodness and faithfulness.

The same behavior should come from us when we face urgent needs of any kinds. The moment we finish asking God to deliver us, we should be bouncing over to words of praise. After all, we have just entered the throne room of our holy Creator with our petitions. We have all the promises of this book in our grasp. We have assurance that our salvation is secure because our God has secured it through the sacrifice of His own Son. We have countless reasons to give praise.

Yet the praise generated by our urgent needs is never meant be limited to words that we personally express to God. Rather, we should anticipate words of praise to God coming from many believers, others who seek God in their lives and who share in His salvation. That is what we see David anticipating here in verse 4.

So, let’s think about what is required for this anticipation to become a reality, for many to say continually, “Let God be magnified.” Of course, God will have to deliver us from our urgent need in some fashion…let’s not forget that God ways are not our ways so often the way in which God delivers us from our needs is something that we could have never anticipated. Still, there must be some manner of deliverance from our needs. But there must also be an awareness of our urgent needs in others; people must know what we are going through so that they can know when God has delivered us.

Several of us…and I say “us” because I am very much in this group…several of us like to keep our personal issues private. We don’t like to show our weaknesses and vulnerabilities to others. We don’t like to have attention on ourselves, especially when urgent needs have caused us to feel out of control. So, we don’t share our challenges and needs with others. But if we keep things quiet, then who will join us in praise to God when He delivers us from our urgent need?

Remember, I said that God’s ways are certainly not our ways. Maybe God’s way of delivering us will be to deliver us from this life and bringing us home to glory. If that happens, who will know that God has sustained our faith through the hardship? We will no longer be here; who will continually say, “Let God be magnified?”

We need to share our urgent needs with others because we anticipate that our needs will generate praise. I rejoice when I see our church family share burdens in our Faithlife group or in our Facebook group because I know that sharing these urgent needs will draw others in to pray for the needs. I also rejoice because I know that now the entire church will join in praise to God as He works out His perfect plan in the situation, regardless of how His plan unfolds.

Transition:

God places urgent needs into our lives to accomplish His purposes. Urgent needs generate anticipated praise. That is item number three generated by urgent needs.

Fourthly, the final verse teaches us that…

IV. Urgent needs generate strengthened faith

In verse 4, David has anticipated praise that will be given in the future; in verse 5, though, he shifts back to the current dilemma with “but I am afflicted and needy.” While he can anticipate the future, the current situation is real; he needs God’s help now! David closes out this psalm…and his prayer…with a cry for God to “not delay.” He needs God to respond quickly.

Notice with me that David’s final cry is preceded by a statement of faith. He says “You (addressing God directly) are my help and my deliverer.” Those words indicate that David knows that he is not a passing thought to God. God has made plans for him and God is carefully orchestrating the situations in his life to accomplish those plans. And because God is totally aware of David’s plight, David can humbly cast himself before the Lord. Even in the midst of his time of suffering God remains his “help.” God remains his “deliverer.” David’s hope remains in God alone. He ends with an acknowledgement of his neediness before the Lord, but his neediness is balanced by this statement of confidence. The crisis is real. There is no time for delay if God is going to come to his aid in time. But there is also nothing about the crisis that is shaking David’s faith in God. The urgent need has served rather to affirm and strengthen his faith. David trusts in God.

Application

Folks, we need times of urgent needs in our lives to strengthen our faith. We need times of urgent needs to give us opportunities to display this type of hope in God. Urgency has a way of focusing our attention, captivating our thoughts. We come to realize that many things are distractions in our lives, What really matters is the things that will allow us to go on, the things that we ask God for in our time of need. This focusing of our thoughts and directing them to God will strengthen our faith.

A danger that we need to recognize is that our natural instinct is to do whatever we can to get out of a hard situation as quickly as we can. We want to get out from under the pressure that urgent needs create as fast as possible. In order to do that, all too often we can make really bad long-term choices because we are trying to alleviate a time of present suffering.

Illustration

For example, Things are hard at work, so people quit their job. Our child throws an embarrassing tantrum, so we buy the toy that they want. People mock us for our faith, so we cease talking about our Savior. A COVID pandemic hits, so we shut ourselves off from people who need us to encourage them in Christ or point them to Christ.

We tend to do whatever we can to relieve the pressures that urgent needs create in our lives. But as believers in God, our suffering provides us an opportunity to do something much greater than simply work our way out from under it. We can display hope in God when we suffer. We can allow our needs to build our faith as we respond with confidence that God is our help and our deliverer. We can cast ourselves humbly and completely upon Him. We can call on Him in our desperation while we affirm that He is our God, that He has planned each breath of our lives, and that He is at all times—the good times and the bad times—our help and our deliverer. Through times of urgent needs our faith should be strengthened.

Transition from body to conclusion:

God places urgent needs into our lives to accomplish His purposes

CONCLUSION

As I said at the beginning, kids have a way of expressing their urgent needs, don’t they? They can make it sound like the world will stop if their need is not met in the next 2.5 seconds.

Based on what we have seen in our psalm this morning, there are times when we should resemble kids a bit in dealing with urgent needs. God places urgent needs into our lives to accomplish His purposes.

We have seen four things from Psalm 70 that are generated by urgent needs. First urgent needs generate urgent pleas. We turn to God when He brings urgent needs into our lives. Second, urgent needs generate dependent petitions. We learn to ask God for deliverance when our needs are urgent. Third, urgent needs generate anticipated praise. We anticipate that we and other believers will praise God when our need is resolved by Him. Fourth, urgent needs generate strengthened faith. God uses our needs to teach us and reinforce our trust in Him as our God.

God places urgent needs into our lives to accomplish His purposes