Pastor Tim continues our three-week live streaming series, Steadfast, with Psalm 57:4-6. How do we look up to God to escape the “lions of life”? The Psalmist points us to God’s victory for help.
Please join us live next week on Monday at 7 pm. You can find out how here.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
David praises God in verse 5 (“Be exalted, O God, above the heavens”) even while facing real danger in verses 4 and 6. How is this different from “faking it till you make it” or simply “naming it and claiming it”? What does it look like in your own life to praise God while still honestly acknowledging genuine hardship?
The sermon describes praise as “a weapon in itself against evil.” How does lifting your eyes to God—rather than fixating on your circumstances—practically change the way you face fear and uncertainty? Where might you need to practice that this week?
In verse 6, David says his enemies “dug a pit in my way, but they have fallen into it themselves.” What does this teach us about the nature of evil and its ultimate self-defeating character, and how should that truth shape the way we respond to those who oppose or harm us?
The sermon mentions that over 35,000 people came to faith through online church during the crisis. In what ways have you already seen God bring unexpected good—acts of kindness, new faith, deeper dependence on him—out of a difficult season? How do those “glimmers” strengthen your confidence that God’s victory is already won?
Where in your life right now do you most feel “in the midst of lions,” and what would it mean for you personally to trust that your victory is already secured in Christ—whether the threat is related to health, finances, relationships, or something else entirely?
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
I’m so glad to have you here now for our second live stream here at Little Hills Church. It’s great to have you here and I’m so glad to get to share in God’s Word with you tonight. Last week we began our series Steadfast by exploring the very beginning of Psalm 57, and we’re going to pick up right where we left off. We’re going to start at verse 4 tonight. We really are glad to have you, and let’s go ahead and open with a word of prayer as we begin.
Father, thank you for your gracious love for us. Thank you for all the ways that you watch over us. Lord, we pray that you would be with us this day as we dig into your Word. Would you help us to see the things that you want us to see in it and would you encourage us through it? We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
Well, as I said, we looked last week at the very beginning of Psalm 57. It’s written by David, King David, as he’s taking shelter in a cave from King Saul. And it’s a perfect passage for us to be looking at, I believe, right now because I think all of us have some fear. All of us are a little scared at what’s going on. Maybe you’re afraid about the virus that we’re facing. Maybe you are scared of what’s going to happen afterwards. But whatever fears you have, we’re reminded, and that’s why our series is called Steadfast, that our God is steadfast. And that’s so important for us to remember right now.
Let’s go ahead and look at verses four through six, and if you have a Bible or Bible app, you’re welcome to go ahead and follow along. If you’re using live.littlehills.church, you can actually click the little Bible tab even and follow along in your web browser with the video right next to it. And so we turn to verse four where we find these words: “My soul is in the midst of the lions. I lie down amid fiery beasts. The children of man, whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongues are sharp swords. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens. Let your glory be over all the earth. They set a net for my steps. My soul was bowed down. They dug a pit in my way, but they have fallen into it themselves.”
These verses are verses written of a man who is in the middle of distress, maybe like you feel right now, who is facing an uncontrollable enemy. And it sort of feels like we’re facing an uncontrollable enemy. If we weren’t, we would still be meeting in church buildings and doing our normal lives rather than all the social distancing, all the constant reports of new cases of coronavirus and unfortunately deaths related to it. But we face this uncontrollable enemy. It feels like we’re losing. It feels like we’re losing to the virus as we see cases increase. The magnitude of the increase, if you look at the charts, is terrifying.
And then we start to think about what happens after. People were talking a lot today, different leaders, about what happens to our economy, what happens to jobs. How do people pay the bills? Lots of things that feel so uncontrollable. We may not be talking about actual people out to kill us, but we have all the same, it seems like, things and circumstances that feel like they could. So we turn to this passage. We find a psalmist, David, who could relate.
Last week we thought about the overall problem that David was facing and the storms of life that he was facing and how he could trust God to be steadfast in the midst of those. We find that continues to be true tonight. Opposition tries to turn our focus downward. We see that in verse 4. I’m going to go ahead and pull that up for us on screen so we can look at it.
What do we find in verse 4? We find that the psalmist finds himself feeling like he’s in the midst of those that want to devour him. Lions are fiery beasts, as the ESV translates the second line. Finds himself lying down amongst them and the children of man whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongues are sharp swords, feels on the verge of being devoured. And whether it’s the things I’ve already mentioned or some other circumstance in life, maybe you feel like you’re about to be devoured tonight too. Maybe it’s people. Maybe you feel like people want to devour you. Whatever it might be, the truth that we’re finding here is still just as true.
We can be utterly surrounded. Maybe it’s that job that you were feeling like you were just barely hanging on to and now with this you feel like it’s inevitable you’re going to lose it. Maybe it’s the retirement that you thought you had perfectly planned and now you’re watching go down and down and wondering what you should do. It could be existing problems that suddenly feel paused and yet it feels like some kind of horrible cartoon where some enemy is paused for a moment but you see it getting ready to come down and devour you and attack you. Whatever your lions are that you’re facing, what we do know is that universally as human beings we face those lions. It feels like things are ready to eat us alive. And David knew this experience. It’s nothing new to us.
What else did he know and what should we know as well? We know it won’t last because our victory is above the fray of uncertainty. Our victory is in God. That’s what we find in verse 5 and 6. Let’s go ahead and turn there.
What does the psalmist say in verse 5? “Be exalted, O God, above the heavens. Let your glory be over all the earth. They set a net for my steps. My soul was bowed down. They dug a pit in my way, but they have fallen in it themselves.”
It feels like we have some contrasting pictures there so let’s dig into this just a bit. I think we need to start with verse 5 and see that the praise happening there isn’t because everything’s solved already. We saw that in verse 4 and we see that again in verse 6. There’s bad stuff going on. David feels the brunt of Saul’s anger, his desire to kill him. He feels it very clearly and yet he pauses in verse 5 and says, Be exalted, O God, above the heavens. Why does he do that? Because he knows the evil will trap itself. That’s what he says in verse 6.
He says, They dug a pit in my way, but they have fallen into it themselves. Quite a picture if you think about it. Someone digging a pit and then presumably covering up, hoping to trap someone and yet as they were doing it, they fell into it themselves. And what we’re told here and what scripture tells us in general, that’s true of every enemy of God. Those who do evil will find their evil traps themselves.
And the psalmist can state that this is going to happen in verse 6 as if it were already done because he has so much confidence in the victory that he has in God. He’s looking upward towards God, not downward as his opponents are trying to drag him. He’s looking to God who is in control.
Now I want to take a moment here because this can be misinterpreted. We might, we hear oftentimes people talking about faking it until we make it or something like that. That’s not what the psalmist is talking about here. It’s not about pretending something that’s untrue, nor is it naming it and claiming it as others will say, where we just say whatever we want and it’s going to happen. That’s not it either.
We need to evaluate ourselves and make sure that our hearts are pure, that we’re actually going in the right direction because if not, maybe the opposition we’re facing is God trying to redirect us. But if as we turn to God’s word, we find that the direction we’re headed in life is one that God has called us to, we face this opposition, we can join David and say, the victory is already won for that.
And as we trust in Jesus, even when we’re wrong, even when we’re going in the wrong direction and God’s using the circumstances to redirect us, we can still say the victory is ours in Christ because the true victory has already been won for us.
I love this quote about this passage. One commentator said, “With the recollection of God comes the assurance that evil will be its own downfall.” Now of course there’s evil in us. All of us are fallen and sinful and yet as God’s working in us, he has already claimed us. He’s already called us his own and called us his children for every person that trusts in him.
And so while we may have our stumbles and our pitfalls and certainly our uncertain times, even as we’re doing what God has called us to do, what we know is that that victory has already been won. And that’s why David can praise God.
Another commentator said that praise of God is a weapon in itself against evil. We shout praises to our God. We know God will use us. We can see that in our current circumstances. People do wonderful acts of kindness, even just funny things to make us laugh. I think many of us have probably spent a lot of time just looking for the lighter side of our situation online and seeing funny videos and memes and things like that. And in this, as we help each other, both in really practical ways and just help to lighten the mood, what do we see? We see some of how God is using us to help each other. We see through that a glimmer of the victory that God promises to us.
I heard the song “Raise a Hallelujah” the other day again, and you’re probably familiar with it. It’s been very popular in recent times. And if you really think about the words of that song, it’s speaking to exactly what we’re facing here. I wanted to just read a few of them to you.
Part of it says, “I’m going to sing in the middle of the storm, louder and louder. You’re going to hear my praises roar. Up from the ashes, hope will arise. Death is defeated. The king is alive.” It’s not saying that there aren’t ashes to rise up from. It’s picking up on what we find in the Psalms. Yes, there are times that we feel like we’re in the pit, and yet, our king has already defeated death. Our king is alive. That’s what David knows here. That’s why he can praise the mighty God of heaven. He can praise him even when it looks like things are bad. Even when people that were, if they were taking bets on who was going to be king in the Las Vegas of Israel at the time, and David’s odds may not have been very good. The one thing they weren’t factoring in is that God is in control. Odds were actually very good. They were perfect. God’s plan was going to be seen out, even in circumstances that would appear less than ideal.
And so that moves us towards recognizing the victory that is in Christ in a time like this. A victory that we see as we focus on God and not on the circumstances. When we’re busy thinking about how we’re defeated, and we’re thinking about how we can do things in our own ingenuity, and yes, we should be using that because that’s a gift from God, but when we’re dependent upon ourselves, what we find, we look at the hopelessness, we look at the staggering numbers, and we feel like nothing can be done.
But what do we do when we turn to Christ? See a king who is already triumphant in heaven. A king whose story that he’s written for us has already been written down, and whose victory is already sure. We see glimmers of that in the situation I mentioned those kind acts earlier. Here’s another one. This is just such a wonderful story.
Many churches, including Little Hills, were streaming through the church online platform. If you’re on live.littlehills.church to watch this, you’re actually using that software, and they’ve been sending out a weekly update to the churches that use it about how it’s being used in this crisis. And over the last two weeks, by those who have responded to say they’re trusting in Jesus after tuning into church online, perhaps for the first time, over 35,000 people have said they now believe in Jesus, who didn’t before. Think about that for a moment.
God is using this horrible crisis to call people to himself, that even as the kingdom of this world feels like it’s in ruin, and we don’t know how to pull it back together, and we don’t know even once the virus is taken care of, at whatever point it is, what will be left, the kingdom of heaven is expanding. The king is triumphant. As we trust in him, and if you haven’t already, as you trust in him, and I pray that you would even this night, as we trust in our king, his victory is already won, and he shares it with us. That’s the firm foundation we have for this crisis. He’s the one that’s in control.
That’s why even in our darkest hour, we should praise the victorious king of heaven, because his victory is won and shared with us. So our darkest hour is nothing like the darkest hour he faced for us when Jesus took our sins to the cross. He’s seen the absolute darkest hour for us. So in our darkest hour, we can turn to him, we can see his promises, we can see what he has done for us, and in that, we know we have hope. He’s the one who sustains us even in this time.
If you turn to Acts chapter 17, what do we find there? This wonderful quote that Paul shares to the Greek philosophers. He says, “In him we live and move and have our being. As even some of your own poets have said, for we indeed are his offspring.” You see, even at a time like this where we feel very helpless, where we wonder where is God, what scripture reminds us is our very breath, the very breath that we have that we can utter the question, where is God in this, is given by God. The very ingenuity that the doctors and scientists and those with technology to deploy the science, all those people, the very abilities they have are given by God.
Where is God in this? He’s right in the middle of everything that is triumphing over evil, including this evil virus. What a wonderful thing that is. Every protection, every provision that we have is from God. And as we stop and reflect, as we use these next weeks as a time to maybe slow down a little and to reflect on what God is doing, may we see that all the more, that as we see the little steps of progress, and hopefully some big ones, all those are made possible by the one in whom we live and move and have our being.
Our victory is above the fray. All this uncertainty, it’s all here, this fray that we’re caused to look downcast upon. What do we know? Our victory is above the fray of this uncertainty. It’s our God who is victorious, and our victory is in Him. That’s our hope this week, every week. Sometimes in a crisis we can recognize our weakness and our need for that all the more, which is why we should pray now, even for our own hearts, that we would recognize it just as much, if not more, when things hopefully return to normal soon.
And again, if you haven’t yet recognized Jesus as your King, I pray that you take a moment tonight, confess your sins, and confess Him as your Lord and Savior. If you have, and you’re just feeling uncertain, just recommit, just take a moment to recognize who the true King is. If you already know that, and yet all this fear is causing you to look downcast, and all of us are going to be struggling with this, just come back, just like the psalmist.
What do we say? Just like in verse 5, once again, “Be exalted, O God, above the heavens. Let your glory be over all the earth.” Our victory is above the fray of uncertainty. It is in our God that we are victorious. That’s our promise tonight.
Would you pray with me, please? Lord, we thank you for your goodness and your mercy. We thank you for your love. Lord, as we feel uncertain, as we wonder what’s next in life, Lord, we pray for your patient kindness to us all the more. Lord, you remind us of the victory we have in you, and we pray for each person that we know and love, particularly if anyone is already infected, for quick healing, for safety. We pray that you would minimize the loss of life.
We pray that you’d give our nation’s leaders wisdom as they seek to deal with it, that you’d protect the doctors and nurses and emergency workers, that you’d protect the grocery store workers keeping us fed. But everyone that is responding in some way, would you protect them? Would you help all of us to show your love to each other and to praise you, even when it feels like someone or something has laid a pit out for us? We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
As we close tonight, I want to remind you we’ll be back here again next week. We’re going to continue. We’re going to wrap up Psalm 57 next week in this series, Steadfast, and I hope you’ll join me again at 7 p.m. next Monday night.
I also want to say at Little Hills, we’re continuing to explore different opportunities to use online technology during this time. This week we’re going to start our first ever men’s Bible study online on Thursday at 7. There’s an event link on our Facebook page for more information on that, or on our website, littlehills.church. So please stay on our Facebook page, our Twitter page, our Instagram. If you haven’t already followed us or liked us on those, please do. Please go to our website and follow the opportunities there as well.
We’re going to try to do as much as possible to minister through technology during this time. Sometimes it feels a little distant, so if you’re needing a personal contact, if you need prayer, feel free to reach out to me by private message or in the comments. You can email me at tim@littlehillschurch.org. That’s tim@littlehillschurch.org. Any of those options, whatever works best for you, I’d be happy to pray for you, talk over questions of faith, simply to try to encourage you in God’s Word. I’d love to hear from you.
Thanks again for tuning in tonight, and we will look forward to seeing you again next week, Monday at 7 p.m., if not before. Have a blessed week.