Krista Hamrick’s beautiful artwork inspired
me during this time in which we are living, which is being called “unprecedented”
in our lifetimes. The eyes of the connected world have simultaneously widened
on a common enemy called COVID-19. What do we do when we feel threatened? When
our normalcy is upended? Krista’s artwork reminded me of an old hymn I sang as
a child, based on Psalm 62, and helps us look to God’s Word to shed light in
these uncertain times.
As a little girl growing up in church, I can vividly remember holding the church
hymnal with my parents, and singing, “On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand.” The
lyrics which Krista illustrates so beautifully in her artwork, speak directly
to our hearts in this unsettling time: “My hope is built on nothing less, than
Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly
lean on Jesus' Name. When darkness seems to hide His face, I rest on His
unchanging grace. In every high and stormy gale, my anchor holds within the
veil. His oath, His covenant, His blood, support me in the whelming flood. When
all around my soul gives way, He then is all my Hope and Stay. When He shall
come with trumpet sound, oh may I then in Him be found. Dressed in His
righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne. On Christ the solid
Rock I stand, All other ground is sinking sand, All other ground is sinking
sand.”
ESV: He only is my rock and
my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken.
AMP: He only is my rock and my salvation; My fortress and my defense, I
will not be shaken or discouraged.
CEB: Only God is my rock
and my salvation— my stronghold!—I will not be shaken.
KJV: He only is my rock and my salvation: he is my defense; I shall not
be moved.
TPT: For he alone is my safe place. His wrap-around presence always
protects me as my champion defender. There’s no risk of failure with God! So why
would I let worry paralyze me, even when troubles multiply around me?
The Message: God, the one and only—I’ll wait as long as he says.
Everything I hope for comes from him, so why not? He’s solid rock under my
feet, breathing room for my soul, An impregnable castle: I’m set for life.
Pastor Steven J. Cole writes: "The
difficulty with applying Psalm 62 is that very few of us have ever been in the
desperate straits that David was in and so we cannot truly relate to what he
says here. Evil men were threatening David’s life and scheming how, not only to
topple him as king, but also how to kill him. They were trying to murder David.
They were saying, “He’s like a leaning wall or tottering fence. Just push and
he’ll go down!” Under that real threat of death, David’s mind was wonderfully
concentrated to write this psalm. The message is:
In
life’s most threatening times, you will be at peace if God alone is your
salvation and refuge.
The main
theme of the psalm is the right and wrong objects of faith. If we trust in God,
we’re secure. If we trust in men or in things, we’re depending on that which is
lighter than breath (62:9). Interestingly, even though David was in a
life-threatening situation, the psalm contains no prayer.
Pastor H. C. Leupold writes, “There is scarcely another psalm that
reveals such an absolute and undisturbed peace, in which confidence in God is
so completely unshaken, and in which assurance is so strong that not even one
single petition is voiced throughout the psalm.” Of course, David experienced
this peace through prayer, and he exhorts God’s people to pour out their hearts
before Him (62:8). All of us want to have this same peace that David had in
this crisis. At the heart of his peace is his confident trust in God alone.
The
word “only,”
which translates a little Hebrew particle, is also a recurring theme in this
psalm. It occurs six times, four in reference to God. Each time it begins the
sentence for emphasis. The word itself conveys emphasis and may be translated
in different ways, depending on the context. Sometimes it is translated “but, it
sometimes means “surely” or “certainly.” The most authoritative Hebrew lexicon
and most modern translations translate it in Psalm 62 as “only” or “alone.” By
repetition, David hammers home the concept that we will enjoy God’s peace in
the midst of life’s most threatening moments when God only—God alone—is our
salvation and refuge. Since we all struggle to get to that place—and as we’ll
see in the psalm, David himself struggled to remain there—let’s focus on how to
come to that place of complete trust in God.
While
David begins with his calm waiting on God (62:1-2), it’s helpful to work
our way back by looking first at the fierce enemies that were threatening him: Some
think that David wrote this psalm in the context of Absalom’s rebellion, but we
can’t know for sure. The attacks seem to have been prolonged, as seen by
David’s cry, “How long?” The New King James Version translates verse 3b, “You
shall be slain, all of you, like a leaning wall and a tottering fence,” making
it David’s words against his enemies. But the ancient versions and most modern
versions take it as David’s enemies’ words against him. They were counseling
together how to thrust him down from his role as king by assassinating him.
They were spreading falsehoods and using flattery, telling him that he was a
great king, while inwardly cursing him. The Bible never promises exemption from
such attacks. Rather, it shows us what to do when you’re under attack. David
begins (61:1a), “My soul waits in silence for God only.” Commentaries helpfully
explain what David means by “silence.” “The silence intended is, in short, that
composed submission of the believer, in the exercise of which he acquiesces in
the promises of God, gives place to his word, bows to his sovereignty, and
suppresses every inward murmur of dissatisfaction.”
The
key word there is “submission.” When difficult things happen to us, we can
either angrily complain to God, “I don’t deserve such treatment!” Or, we can
submit to Him, agreeing with His promises, giving supremacy to His Word, bowing
before His sovereignty, and suppressing our tendency to grumble. There is no
more remarkable demonstration of this than that of Job. When God inexplicably
took his possessions, his ten children, and his health, Job humbly proclaimed
(Job 1:21b), “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of
the Lord.” While the rest of the book of Job shows how he wrestled through his
pain and his complaints against God, by the end of the book we find Job again
in a posture of worship, bowing before God’s sovereign hand (Job 40:4-5;
42:1-6). So, humbling yourself “under the mighty hand of God” (1 Pet. 5:6) is a
key element in experiencing God’s peace when you’re under attack.
David
adds (62:1b-2), “from Him is my salvation. He only is my rock and my salvation,
my stronghold; I shall not be greatly shaken.” In this context,
salvation refers to God’s deliverance from David’s enemies. And yet we’re not
amiss if, with Pastor Charles H. Spurgeon, we apply this to God being the only
source of our salvation from sin and judgment. He preached two sermons on this
psalm. In one (“God Alone the Salvation of His People,” Metropolitan Tabernacle
Pulpit he writes, “If anyone should ask us what we would choose for our motto,
as preachers of the gospel, we think we should reply, ‘God only is our
salvation.’” Then he adds, “I cannot find in Scripture any other doctrine than
this. It is the essence of the Bible. . .Tell me anything that departs from
this and it will be a heresy; tell me a heresy, and I shall find its essence
here, that it has departed from this great, this fundamental, this rocky truth,
“God is my rock and my salvation.”
If God
alone is your salvation from eternal death, if He raised you from death to life and
gave you the faith to believe in Jesus Christ, then you also can take refuge in
Him from less threatening trials. As Paul puts it in Romans 8:31-32, “What then
shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did
not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also
with Him freely give us all things?” So if you know God as your only source of
salvation from sin, then when problems hit, submit yourself to His sovereign
hand and trust God alone as your salvation and refuge from the problems.
In
verses 5-7, David repeats what he already said in verses 1-2, with a few
variations.
Why does he do this? In verses 3 & 4, he has been thinking about his
enemies and the extreme threat that they represented. So, he may have been a
little bit shaken (not, greatly shaken, v. 2). “Here it is to be remembered,
that our minds can never be expected to reach such perfect composure as shall
preclude every inward feeling of disquietude, but are, at the best, as the sea
before a light breeze, fluctuating sensibly, though not swollen into billows.”
In other words, we never reach a place of perfect composure, where severe
trials don’t affect us. And so we have to fight to regain our peace in God. But
how?
First,
David talks to himself (“My soul”). They say that talking to yourself is a sign of
senility, but the Bible often tells us to do this very thing. In Psalms 42
& 43, the psalmist repeats (42:5, 11; 43:5) the refrain (43:5), “Why are
you in despair, O my soul? And why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God,
for I shall again praise Him, the help of my countenance and my God.” The
opening chapter of Pastor Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ wonderful book, Spiritual Depression:
Its Causes and Cure, is on Psalm 42. He asks, “Have you realized that most
of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to
yourself instead of talking to yourself?” He goes on to explain that rather
than just going along with the thoughts that come to you in the morning, which
bring back all of the problems of yesterday, you’ve got to take yourself in
hand, preach to yourself, and question yourself. You ask yourself, “Why are you
cast down?” Then you exhort yourself to hope in God. Lloyd-Jones continues, “You
must go on to remind yourself of God, Who God is, and what God is and what God
has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do. Then having done that, end on
this great note: defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and
the whole world, and say with this man: “I shall yet praise Him for the help of
His countenance, who is also the health of my countenance and my God.”
That’s
exactly what David does in Psalm 62. He piles up description after description of
who God is. After telling himself to wait in silence for God only (62:5), he
adds (62:5b-6), “for my hope is from Him. He only is my rock and my salvation,
my stronghold; I shall not be moved.” This time he does not say, “I shall not
be greatly shaken” (62:2), but he advances to, “I shall not be moved” at all!
Then he goes over it again (62:7), “On God my salvation and my glory rest; the
rock of my strength, my refuge is in God.”
Don’t
miss the pronoun, “my” (9 times in vv. 5-7). Also, God is either
directly named or referred to with the pronouns Him or He five times in these
verses. David knew God personally as his hope, his rock, his salvation, his
stronghold, his strength, and his refuge. If we want His peace in severe
trials, we must know God personally and experientially as our God and remind
ourselves of who He is. David is fighting here, while under these
life-threatening attacks, to put these comforting truths front and center in
his mind. We say we’re trusting in God alone, but then we quickly scheme how to
deliver ourselves, rather than waiting on Him! It’s not that it’s wrong to
think about how to get out of a difficult trial, or to use methods to do so. In
fact, more often than not we should use plans and methods in dependence on Him.
But it’s wrong to give God a token nod of trust and then set Him aside while really,
we trust in our schemes and methods. Rather, with David we must fight to make
God our only source of deliverance: “He only is my rock and my salvation, my
stronghold.” Then, “I shall not be shaken” (62:6). If we trust in plans and
methods we’ll fail. But if God only is our rock, we will stand firm.
David
can’t contain the joy of knowing God as his salvation, so he writes (62:8),
“Trust in Him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before Him; God is a
refuge for us.” What a wonderful verse! David isn’t giving out pat, useless
advice! He’s telling us how he endured this terrible attack on his life by
these fierce, cunning enemies. He trusted in God; he poured out his heart to
God; he took refuge in God. He’s telling us to do the same. What God was to
David in his extreme trial, He can be to you in your crisis.
How
does pouring out your heart to God (62:8) fit with waiting silently for Him
(62:1, 5)? Obviously,
they’re not contradictory. Waiting silently for God only, as we’ve seen, is to
put our hearts in submission to His sovereign love in the face of trials that
seem to contradict either His sovereignty or His love. It’s an attitude of
trustful submission. Pouring out our hearts is to unburden ourselves in prayer,
where we empty all of our anxieties and confusion and pain onto the Lord, while
still remaining in submission to His sovereign love. As 1 Peter 5:7 puts it,
“casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.”
How
prone we all are to keep our troubles pent up in our hearts until we’re driven
to despair.
We show much anxiety and ingenuity in seeking to escape our troubles without
God. But in so doing, he says, we only get ourselves into “a labyrinth of
difficulties.” The answer is to pour out our hearts before Him, taking refuge
in Him, because He cares for us. David has shown us that we can be composed or
at peace if God alone is our salvation and refuge. He has reaffirmed it,
showing that it is usually a battle to get to this place and remain there in
the face of difficult trials. He concludes with a contrast, showing us what not
to trust and repeating again who to trust."
The
main reason that we should “fight” for God’s peace in threatening times
is not so that we will be at peace, but so that God will be glorified and
others will be drawn to Him through us. God’s peace comes to us in life’s
threatening times when He alone is our salvation and refuge.
In this psalm David pours out his heart to God, describing his
difficulties, the enemies that are trying to kill him, and the lies and curses
others have spoken against him. But on the battlefield of life, in the midst of
every trouble, David has a Godward focus. He is honest about his complaints and
problems, but he has purposed to direct his gaze to the God of all
faithfulness, putting his trust in the One who alone is his rock, salvation,
fortress, and refuge. He then can wait quietly before God because he has put
his hope, and his very life, in the Lord’s hands. He doesn’t trust in human
nature because it is no more secure than a breath. He doesn’t put his hope in
riches because he knows that wealth will not save him. His hope, confidence,
and trust are in the Lord Almighty. If, like David, we are waiting for God to
act when we are in the midst of trouble, we can wait frantically or
impatiently. But to wait quietly in hope takes a deep confidence in knowing the
One we are waiting for. He will never disappoint us. This psalm is an open
invitation to be honest and deeply real with the Lord. It calls us to take our
masks off and pour out our true thoughts and feelings to God, to be there
before Him telling it like it is, not how we think things should be. How
freeing it is to realize that we can be totally honest with God and express our
sadness or joy, our fears, our faults and weaknesses, our pain, desires and
dreams, and to know that the contents of our hearts are really safe with God,
our refuge. This psalm also reminds us that although the specific patterns or
formats for prayer are excellent principles for individual or corporate prayer
times, we don’t have to follow them in order for God to hear us, nor do we have
to hide our negative emotions and attitudes just so we’ll look good. God
already knows all that we are feeling and struggling with, so we can come to
him just as we are and pour out our hearts “at all times.” He invites us in the
midst of conflicts, stresses, responsibilities, and frustration to seek him as
our closest confidante, our intimate friend.
Heavenly
Father, I lift my eyes up to you, my rock, my salvation, my fortress, and my
refuge. Quiet my heart to wait on you, for my hope is in You. Help me to wait
for You in this unprecedented time, in the storms, in the light, and in the
darkness. Let my confidence not be shaken by what my heart may feel,
circumstances may say, or my mind may think. I thank you that my confidence
rests on the One who is my rock and that you will never be shaken. How thankful
I am for the confidence and security that You long to hear from me and to
comfort me. You know and understand all the thoughts of my heart better than I
do myself, and you invite me to pour out my heart to you even now in this unprecedented
time. I trust You with my eternity—I will trust You today with my next breath,
my next heartbeat. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
Look Up—meditate on Psalm 62:6 … pray to see what it reveals about the character of God.
Look In—as you meditate on Psalm 62:6 … pray to see how you might apply it to your life. Be propelled
to ask galvanizing questions about your discoveries: "Because God
is_________, I will_____________."
Look Out—as you meditate on Psalm 62:6 …pray to see how you might apply it to your relationships with
others. Let the nature of God impact on every relationship, for your good, and
for His glory.
