We turn now in Scripture to Psalm 55. Psalm 55. Hear the word of God. Give ear to my prayer, O God, and hide not yourself from my plea for mercy. Attend to me and answer me. I am restless in my complaint, and I moan because of the noise of the enemy, because of the oppression of the wicked. For they drop trouble upon me. and in anger they bear a grudge against me. My heart is in anguish within me. The terrors of death have fallen upon me. Fear and trembling come upon me, and horror overwhelms me. And I say, oh, that I had wings like a dove. I would fly away and be at rest. Yes, I would wander far away. I would lodge in the wilderness. I would hurry to find a shelter from the raging wind and tempest. Destroy, O Lord, divide their tongues, for I see violence and strife in the city. Day and night they go around it on its walls, and iniquity and trouble are within it. Ruin is in its midst. Oppression and fraud do not depart from its marketplace. For it is not an enemy who taunts me, then I could bear it. It is not an adversary who deals insolently with me, then I could hide from him. But it is you, a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend. We used to take sweet counsel together. Within God's house, we walked in the throng. Let death steal over them. Let them go down to Sheol alive. For evil is in their dwelling place and in their heart. But I call to God, and the Lord will save me. Evening and morning and at noon, I utter my complaint and moan, and he hears my voice. He redeems my soul in safety from the battle that I wage, for many are arrayed against me. God will give ear and humble them, he who is enthroned from of old, because they do not change and do not fear God. My companion stretches out his hand against his friends. He violated his covenant. His speech was smooth as butter. Yet war was in his heart. His words were softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords. Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you. He will never permit the righteous to be moved. But you, O God, will cast them down into the pit of destruction. Men of blood and treachery shall not live out half their days. But I will trust in you. This ends our reading of God's Word. Let us pray and ask His blessing upon the reading and preaching of His Word. O Lord, our Heavenly Father, again we thank You for the privilege it is to have Your Word delivered to us. We confess, O Lord, that on our own we are an ignorant people who live in darkness. But how we thank You that You have revealed Yourself to us through your prophets of old and through Christ your Son and your apostles in these latter days. And we pray, O Father, that you would bless this word which has been read and the word which will be preached. We pray, O Lord, that you would be honored and glorified among us. And we ask that we, your people, might receive your word with faith and repentance. And may it be for our edification and our growth in every grace that is in Jesus Christ. And we pray this in his name. Amen. Have you ever felt discouraged and tempted to give up? And when I ask that, I'm not really asking whether you've had a really hard math assignment at school that you wanted to quit, or that you wanted to give up the piano lessons that your parents made you take, I wanted to quit the lousy summer job. But what I'm getting at is asking whether you've ever felt distressed about the power of the wicked. That you've looked around in this world and you have felt how strong the powers of evil are. And in comparison, how weak and how vulnerable the church of Jesus Christ is. And how weak his saints are in comparison to their opponents. And if you've ever felt so distressed, have you ever just had the sense that you wanted to get away? to get away from the trials of this world, to go somewhere far away where you can be at peace, you can be at rest, where you don't have those temptations and the oppression of the wicked. You don't have to listen to their blasphemies against the church of Jesus Christ. If you've ever had that sense, if you've ever had that feeling, maybe it's encouraging to you this evening to consider that long ago, King David had exactly that feeling and that experience. And not only that, but King David's greater son, our Lord Jesus Christ, also knew exactly that distress and exactly that desire to flee away. Psalm 55, before us this evening, takes us into the heart and the mind of King Jesus, of King David, as he is facing a distress, oppression that must have been as great as he ever faced in his life. And yet this psalm also comforts us. It comforts us with the victory that God gave to his king long ago. And it also points to that greater victory that God gave to His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, over the strongest forces and the strongest enemy that could possibly have been arrayed against Him or His people. And this psalm reminds us that because God has given victory to His King, that there is also victory for us, His people, who trust in Him. There is no foe that is stronger than our victorious Lord Jesus Christ. Let's look first at verses 1 through 15 of Psalm 55. Now, verses 1 through 15 are about two-thirds of this psalm, but we'll consider here these initial words of David as he contemplates the situation he's in and the desires that arise in his heart as he faces the foe. In the opening verse of this psalm, we find David crying out to God. He says, give ear to my prayer, O God, and hide not yourself from my plea for mercy. David approaches God at the opening of this psalm, and he asks for God's mercy because he knows that he is in trouble, and he needs help from the hand of his God. As we look at the verses which follow, David uses a variety of terms to describe the situation that he finds himself in. You'll notice that he says that he is restless. He moans. His heart is in anguish. Terrors of death fall upon him. Fear and trembling come upon him. Horror overwhelms him. Now, it's worth thinking about this. Who is it who's writing this? Oh, David? Who is David? When David was a boy, tending his father's sheep, he fought off the lion and the bear. When David was still a young man, he alone of the armies of Israel stood up and faced the giant Goliath with only a sling and a few rocks. In other words, David was one of the most courageous men that we meet in the Bible. He was no coward. He was no sissy. And yet we find David here in absolute distress because he knows that he is facing the oppression of a strong, strong enemy. And as David finds himself in these circumstances, he issues a cry out to God, a wish, A kind of a desperate plea before his God. Let me read for you again what he says in verses 6 through 8. He says, Oh, that I had wings like a dove. I would fly away and be at rest. Yes, I would wander far away. I would lodge in the wilderness. I would hurry to find a shelter from the raging wind and tempest. Faced with this enemy, David wants to fly away. As today, he knows that the quickest form of transportation is by air. And since Southwest Airlines is not available, he asks for wings, wings to fly away. It's interesting he doesn't ask for the wings of an eagle. We might think that that might be a quicker mode of transportation. Perhaps he describes himself as a dove because he doesn't feel very strong. He feels weak and helpless. Perhaps he feels innocent in comparison with his enemies. But he compares himself to it. He asked for the wings of a dove that he might get away quickly. But he's not just asking to get away quickly. He's asking to get far away. He wants a place in the desert, he says. Let me go and find a lodging in the wilderness. Now it's interesting to think about this request that David makes. He wants to get away from it all. into the desert, perhaps we Americans have a little different view of the desert from what David would have had. Maybe we think of the Midwesterner who likes the thought of going to Phoenix for the winter. We think of the person who wants to have a good time and schedules a weekend in Vegas. Well, it's amazing with a little bit of irrigation, a little air conditioning. We can make the desert a rather pleasant place to go. But we shouldn't think about that in that way as we consider David and this wish to fly away into the desert. You don't think about Phoenix or Las Vegas or Palm Springs. Maybe some of you have made a drive out into deserts that aren't far from here. Maybe you've gone out 78, gone past Ramona and past Julian, and you've dropped down into the desert. And all of a sudden you've been struck by just how lonely and barren it is. How hot and how dry and how deserted it is. And how there's nothing growing there except a few things that you know you don't want to touch. David is asking to get away from it all. And he's asking to get away from it in a place where there are no restaurants, no five-star resorts with swimming pools and golf courses. He's asking to go to a place that is inhospitable and abandoned and barren. And we understand as we think about this just how desperate David's plea is. David speaks here about finding a shelter from the raging wind and the tempest. When you think about this, is the desert really the place you'd want to go to find escape from the raging wind? We in Southern California know something about hot east winds that the biblical authors also knew about. Where do those hot east winds come from? They come from the desert. We know that the deserts can have terrible rainstorms in the winters. It wouldn't seem that the desert is the place to go to escape the raging wind and the tempest. But the desert for David is more than just an abandoned place, a barren place that looks attractive in comparison with how bad things are as he faces the enemy. It's important to remember that in the Old Testament, the desert was a place of trial and temptation. The Israelites had to wander for 40 years in the desert because of their sin, away from the promised land. David, at one point in his life, had to flee away from Saul into the desert. And there in 1 Samuel 26, he cursed those who made him wander in the desert because he said they were tempting him to worship other gods. You see, to be in the desert meant to be away from one's inheritance in the promised land. It meant to be away from the tabernacle or the temple, away from the priests, away from their ministry, away from the worship of God and the fellowship of his people. To be out in the desert was like being exiled from the presence of the living God. David's situation is so desperate that he says, oh, that I wish I could get into the desert to get away from the strong foe. Well, as we turn and look at the following verses, verses 9 through 11, we get a sense of why David is so desperate. You see, David says in verse 9 that he sees violence and strife in the city. You see, David wants to get into the desert because of how bad things are in the city, in civilization. He describes this in verses 10 and 11. He says, day and night they go around it on its walls. In other words, the evil people are on the outskirts of the city all the time, 24 hours a day. And then he says, iniquity and trouble are within it. Ruin is in its midst. You see, David is communicating the fact that this wickedness is everywhere in the city. Whether you go to the outskirts on the walls or whether you go to the inside, the evildoers are everywhere. He closes verse 11 by saying, oppression and fraud do not depart from its marketplace. The place of commerce, the place where you could get justice in the courts. Even they have been corrupted. Even there it's only oppression and fraud that he finds. We can understand why David wants to get out to the desert when we see what things are like in the city. But you see, even that's not the worst of it. In verses 12 and 14, David says, It's not even just an enemy, a known enemy, that's giving me trouble. It's my brother. It's my comrade. It's my friend. David has been betrayed. Someone who was his companion with whom he used to worship God together, a spiritual ally, has turned his back on David, has stabbed him in the back. No one wants to have enemies, but at least if you know who the enemy is, you can be on your guard, you can go into hiding, but when your friends become your enemies, you don't know where to turn. David is truly in a desperate situation. But what do we make of David's plea? How do we evaluate David's cry, his desire to flee away into the wilderness? Is this a righteous desire or a temptation that David ought to be resisting? Well, as we think about our lives in this world, we recognize, don't we, that there are times when it is appropriate for the godly to flee. We hear even in our own day, in recent days, about Christians in the Middle East who have had to flee as refugees away from brutal people who will do unspeakable things to them if they find them. We don't blame them for running away, for fleeing for their lives and for their children's lives. And yet at other times, to flee, to flee one's responsibilities, one's vocations in the face of oppression is cowardly and disobedient to the Lord. I suggest that it's this latter that is the case for David here in Psalm 55. I want you to consider with me a couple similar pleas or cries that we find in the Old Testament that are similar to this. It's interesting, the prophet Jeremiah, now if you know anything about the life of Jeremiah, if you've read his prophecy, you know that Jeremiah did not have the best life. He prophesied for decades and decades and no one listened to him. They threw him down wells and they locked him up all night. Jeremiah did not have an easy life. And so we can understand what he says in Jeremiah chapter 9. He says, Oh, that I had in the desert a traveler's lodging place, that I might leave my people and go away from them, for they are all adulterers. Sounds a lot like what David says in Psalm 55. And yet Jeremiah did not flee. Jeremiah had a calling from the Lord. He was called to be a prophet to the nations. And though he was opposed, though he was ignored, though he was ridiculed, though he was oppressed, he had to fulfill the calling that God had given to him to speak the truth in the midst of an adulterous generation. Now you might also consider something that David said earlier in the Psalms, Psalm 11. It's interesting, you can notice here again how similar this is. Psalm 11, verse 1, David says, In the Lord I take refuge. How can you say to my soul, flee like a bird to your mountain? Now this is a little different, David, that we find here. He begins with this expression of confidence. The Lord is my refuge. And there were apparently people who were coming to him. He must have been under oppression, he must have been suffering. people were saying to him, David, flee like a bird to the mountain. Go away, get away from things. And it made David angry. He says, how can you say this to me? The Lord is my refuge. Why do I need to flee if the Lord is on my side? And we get the sense as we read Psalm 55 that David cannot simply flee. Like Jeremiah, he has been appointed by God. He has been anointed by God to be king of the people. It is his job to fight for his people, to protect them from evildoers, not to flee before the face of the enemy. And as David also has said in Psalm 11, the Lord has promised that he would be his refuge and strength, that he does not need to fear those who line up against him, mighty as they seem for a time. And this interpretation is confirmed when we consider that King David, perhaps more than any other figure in the Old Testament, was appointed by God to show us the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. David was appointed by God as a king after God's own heart to show them the kind of Messiah that they were to look for and expect and long and pray for. Think about our Lord Jesus Christ. He came as our great king, but not to rule in a palace, but to suffer for our sake. And God called our Lord Jesus Christ to go to Jerusalem, to go where he knew that he would suffer. There were many people who told Jesus not to go. His own disciples said, Jesus, don't go to Jerusalem. They're going to kill you there. Jesus, along the way, was opposed by the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the religious leaders of his day. He had made enemies of the Roman leaders. Yet we find in Luke chapter 9 that Jesus sets his face to Jerusalem. He will not be deterred. And he entered Jerusalem on a donkey. We call it the triumphal entry, but it really wasn't very triumphal. Because he went there to face the sort of thing that David reflects on in Psalm 55. When he entered that city, he found nothing but trouble within. Opposed by the leaders, political and religious. Abandoned by all of his disciples when he was arrested. And like David here, betrayed by one of his friends, by one of his companions with whom he had enjoyed sweet counsel in the past. Do we think that was easy for the Lord Jesus Christ? Do we say to ourselves, well, he was the God-man. Of course, he didn't really feel that much oppression when he went through all that. Well, we go then to the Garden of Gethsemane and we find Jesus going away from his disciples and he prays to his Father, Father, if it is possible, take this cup from me. Jesus felt distress and anguish that none of us here have ever experienced. When he prayed for that cup to be taken away, it is as if he is saying, Heavenly Father, oh, that I had the wings of the dove, that I might fly away and be at rest. Our Lord Jesus knew what awaited him, and he knew the attraction of fleeing his post. And yet he remained faithful to the calling that God had given to him as the king of his people, as the one who could not flee, but needed to fight for them and win the victory. He fulfilled the course that God had given to him. And as we come to the latter sections of this psalm, verses 16 through 23, we find David, as it were, coming to the other side. He has expressed this desperate wish. He has described the oppression of the wicked and the evil of those who oppose him. And yet we find here David, the man of faith, the man who will persevere with the help of God and win the victory. We see in verses 16 and 17 that David presents himself as a man of prayer. In the face of this overwhelming opposition, David does not flee, but he prays. He says, I call to God, and the Lord will save me. Evening and morning and at noon, I utter my complaint and moan, and he hears my voice. He prays, and the Lord answers. David knows that he cannot rely on his own strength, his own wisdom, his own resources, but he prays to God, and God gives him the victory. David goes on and says, He redeems my soul in safety from the battle that I wage. For many are arrayed against me. God will give ear and humble them. He who is enthroned from of old. You see where David points. God is enthroned from of old. At times when the wicked raise their head. At times when evildoers seem so strong and so numerous, it may be tempting to think they're the ones who are in control. They're the ones who are calling the shots. But David turns to his God in prayer because he knows that God is the one who is enthroned on high. He is sovereign. And because he is sovereign, he will give his king the victory. And David, against earthly odds... He prevails with the help of his Lord. So also, our Lord Jesus Christ. Truly against all earthly odds. Not only did our Lord Jesus Christ have no army with him, he did not have even a single friend. When he was brought before the courts of the Jews, the courts of the Romans, when he was condemned and beaten and mocked, when he was led to the cross and crucified and died. But it was through the way of the cross that God would bring salvation for his people. And the New Testament tells us that through his death and his subsequent resurrection, that the Lord Jesus Christ not only took away the guilt of our sin, but he took on the evil powers of this world, Not only evil human beings, but even the angelic powers, the demonic powers that stood against him. And he conquered them by his cross. Our Lord Jesus Christ has faced the enemy with faithfulness and perseverance. And he has overcome. He has conquered on behalf of his people. In these final verses, verses 20 through 23, David in many ways recaps the psalm, describing for us again the trials that he faces and the victory that God gives. But I call your attention especially to verse 22. Here in verse 22, there comes an exhortation to us. David says, cast your burden on the Lord, and He will sustain you. He will never permit the righteous to be moved. And surely those are important words for us to ponder again this evening. Surely in our own day, it seems that believers in the Lord Jesus Christ feel the oppression of evil in ways that we may not have felt it before. And Christians are tempted to become discouraged in ways that perhaps they did not before. Often we see evildoers around us and we are struck by how they seem to hold the levers of power and influence. We look at our own churches. We look in the mirror and we see ourselves. And we recognize our weakness, our frailty, and our smallness. And we may literally be tempted to say, Oh, that I had the wings of the dove, that I could just get away, that we could just get away. Maybe there's somewhere we could find quiet and rest. Somewhere we could find relief from the evil of this world. Or maybe more realistically, we are tempted in the face of evil to find ways that we could make ourselves less obvious, make our faith less apparent to the world, find ways to get along in which maybe there's a little less trouble. People of God, brothers and sisters. There's one exhortation that this psalm gives us. And it is not to flee. It is not to find our own resources to try to get away from evil doers. The one thing that we are exhorted to do in this psalm is to cast our burdens upon the Lord. The courageous Christian does not flee, but prays. And the psalmist says, if you cast your burden on the Lord, He will sustain you. Maybe some of you, as you heard this verse, verse 22, thought, would think of the words that Peter speaks to us in 1 Peter 5. He tells us, cast all your anxieties on Him. that is, upon God, because he cares for you. Be sober-minded, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. Cast your burdens on the Lord, Peter repeats the words of the psalm, because he cares for you. Remember as you go before the Lord that you have a compassionate and a merciful high priest at the right hand of the Father. Remember our Lord Jesus Christ. If you think that you face opposition, if you think the evildoers surrounding you seem strong and intimidating, remember our Lord Jesus Christ. Remember that he faced not only the wrath of man, but the wrath of Satan and all of his host. He knows what it is to be tempted. He knows what it is to want to flee away. Cast your burdens on him because he cares for you. He will sustain you. But it's not only that. As you go before the Lord and cast your burdens on him, be assured that the victory has already been won. Jesus Christ has already prevailed against the evil powers of this world. Look at the evildoers of this present age. Look at those who ridicule the church. Look at those who mock your faith. There is not a single one of them that has not already been defeated by the Lord Jesus Christ. there is not a single one who will not have to answer to him on the last day. No matter how strong they may look for a moment, there is not a single one who can lift a finger before our great King, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, people of God, in the face of opposition, In the face of trial and temptation, cast your burden on the Lord. Remain steadfast in the vocations that God has placed before you. Remain faithful in your good profession. Pray for the conversion of the enemies. And pray for the return of our Lord. When he will on that last day put every enemy under his feet and no one will ever again lift their hand against our God. Let us pray. Our Heavenly Father, we come before you as a blessed people. We thank you, O Lord, that we have the liberty, the wealth, the opportunity to meet together this evening in a comfortable place and to call upon your name without fear of being arrested or killed. We know that many of our brothers and sisters around the world do not have the same privilege. But we also know, O Lord, that even in our own day and in our own time and place, that there are many who hate you, who hate your Son, who hate your Word, who hate your church. And, O Lord, there are times when we feel so discouraged and distressed and overwhelmed. O Lord, we pray that we would not, that we would not be in despair. That we would not be given over to fear. That we would not be cowardly. That we would not take up the temptation to flee. So that we can find rest and peace here and now. O Lord, we pray that you would remind us again this evening that we have a great high priest at your right hand who knows every temptation that we feel who is willing and able and ready to help us in our time of need. Remind us again, O Lord, that we have a king who has already conquered his enemies and that there is no one in this world that can lay a finger upon us apart from the will of our Sovereign Lord. So, Lord, we pray that you would please buoy our courage, strengthen our faith, augment our hope, and may we be faithful as those who pray, always casting our burdens upon you, our gracious Lord. We pray this in the name of Jesus, our Savior. Amen. Thank you.