Radical Faith

Welcome back to the Book of Psalms!

If you’re a guest with us this morning, since this past January every Sunday the pastors have been preaching through the Book of Hebrews (which I have loved), but over the summer we’re going to hit “pause” on Hebrews and for our fifth summer in a row, we are back in the Psalms — and we’re just picking up where we left off last year, which means today we are in Psalm 62.

And as a way to help re-acclimate us to the Book of Psalms I wrote up a little thing for you that we sent out on Friday, and we’ve made it available for you this morning — check that out when you get a chance — but in short, the main thing we should keep in mind about the Psalms is that as helpful and as practical as the Psalms are to our lives and our faith, the Psalms are not about us — their first purpose is not to make us feel better. 

The first purpose of the Psalms is to show us that real faith in God is actually a focused hope on the Messiah. The Book of Psalms wants to make clear that God will fulfill the promise he made to David to send a Son of David, the Messiah, who will reign as king forever. 

That is the main message of the Book of Psalms overall — and Psalm 62 does not disappoint. Psalm 62, which was written by David, is meant to show what it looks like to have radical faith in God.

And when I say “radical” I don’t mean unreasonable or illogical. I mean radical as in robust and comprehensive. Radical faith is the full-throated, consistent faith that we’re all called to, and it’s faith that only makes sense because of who God is. 

Remember that faith is always a response to what God has revealed about himself. Faith must always have an object, and God and his truth is that object. So anytime we see faith that gets our attention, we shouldn’t get stuck on the faith itself, but we should track the faith back to what it says about God. The faith here in Psalm 62 looks radical because the truth of God is extraordinary! And this morning I want to show you three facts about radical faith we find here. And I’m gonna go ahead and tell you what they are:

1. Radical faith resigns the effort to control.

2. Radical faith rightly assesses reality.

3. Radical faith relies on the Promised Messiah.

We’re gonna look closer at each of these, but first let’s pray:

Father in heaven, thank you for this moment where we open your word together. Together now we ask that, by your Holy Spirit, accomplish your will and magnify your glory, in Jesus’s name, amen. 

Three facts about radical faith. Here’s the first:

1) Radical faith resigns the effort to control. 

Look at verses 1-2

“For God alone my soul waits in silence;
from him comes my salvation.
2 He alone is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken.”

And then these words are repeated in verses 5–6, with just a few tweaks and the main one is that in verses 5–6 David is speaking to his soul. He says, verses 5-6

“For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence,
for my hope is from him.
6 He only is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress; I shall not be shaken.”

These verses — 1 & 2, and 5 & 6 — this is the heart of the psalm. This is the radical faith, and in each of these verses — in 1, 2, 5, and 6 — there is one important word repeated four times. It’s that word “alone” or “only.” Look at these verses with me for a minute, because I want you to see this:

Verse 1: For God alone

Verse 2: He alone

Verse 5: For God alone

Verse 6: He only

In the original Hebrew that’s the exact same word and in the order that’s the very first word of each verse. It’s meant for emphasis. You could translate it to say only or truly.

Truly for God my soul waits in silence!

Truly he is my rock and my salvation!

We should hear these statements as earnest declarations. The point here is to get us amped up. David is taking the volume and he’s cranking it. There’s an urgency here. And so we’d imagine that David must once again find himself in a difficult situation. We see that in verses 3 and 4: 

David’s enemies are relentlessly attacking him. It’s constant battery, repeated blows, especially when he’s most vulnerable. If he’s leaning or tottering at all, here they come. They’re watching for that.

Verse 4: Truly they plan to bring him down! — at all costs: they’re gonna lie; they’re gonna appear to be one way but really be another —they’re not playing by any kind of rules! David’s enemies are gonna do whatever it takes to topple him!

And in that kind of a situation, under that kind of pressure, hear again what David says in verse 1:

“For God alone [Truly for God] my soul waits in silence.”

This is radical faith that right away we know is uncommon. 

This is not how most people would respond, and we know this because David does two things that our world can barely fathom: he waits, and he waits in silence.

Waiting and Silence

Waiting and silence — are there any two things more difficult for us? Think about this. We hate waiting. Admit it. 

I’ll admit it. I just planted some new grass seed in my front yard. And some of y’all know, I have a thing with grass. My backyard is perfect. My front-yard needs a lot of work, and I can never get it right. But this year, I’m gonna do it. It’s a different kind of seed. I have some special ingredients. I’m gonna water it everyday. And I seeded the whole yard with excitement, and then I checked the details on when I could expect the grass to look like grass. 12 days. And when I read that I audibly groaned. 

Y’all have done the same thing about something. We don’t like waiting. 

And we also don’t like being silent. 

Maybe you’ve heard this before, but it was Blaise Pascal, in the 1600s, who said that humanity’s biggest problem stems from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room for an hour. I read that from Pascal and think: we can’t even be off our phone for an hour — and that’s just in normal life.

In a difficult situation like David’s, everything in us would want to act. To be moving. To stay busy. We’d want to take matters into our own hands, and yet the radical faith we see here tells us: “Don’t just do something, stand there.” 

God Is My Savior, Not Me

Truly for God I’m going to wait. And I’m going to not talk — I’m going to stop not just the words that come out of my mouth but also the words that race through my head. I’m not going to do anything or say anything because I don’t have to. Why?

Because my salvation comes from God, not me. I am not my own savior — God is my Savior.

Now this doesn’t mean that God’s action is always apart from ours. Oftentimes God will work through us. This doesn’t mean that we’re inactive, but it does mean that at the heart-level we resign the effort to control. We stop trying to “play God.” That resignation is the heart-posture of radical faith, and Jesus shows us in how he teaches us to pray. He tells us to pray: 

“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.”

That is surrendering control. Because if it’s God’s kingdom, that’s not my kingdom. We’re saying that we don’t want our will, we want God’s will. We actually want to align our will to be like God’s will. Do what seems good to you! That’s what I want. That is radical faith. And we see it here in the waiting and the silence. Radical faith resigns the effort to control.

2) Radical faith rightly assesses reality.

We see this in verse 8. There’s a change that happens here. In verses 1–7 David has made a declaration of faith and he’s addressed his own soul, but now in verse 8 it’s like he looks out and addresses others. It’s almost like his radical faith in God, because of who God is — his salvation, his glory, his mighty rock, his refuge — it’s like that reality wells up in David and overflows in exhortation. He looks out and says, verse 8:

“Trust in him at all times, O people;
pour out your heart before him;
God is a refuge for us.”

And in this light, in verse 9, David states facts. He says: 

“Those of low estate are but a breath;
those of high estate are a delusion;”

And the idea in saying “low estate” and “high estate” is to say all humans. “Humans and mankind.” And he says they’re all only a breath. They’re a delusion. And that sets up the image in the second half of verse 9: 

“In the balances they [mankind] go up;
They are together lighter than a breath.”

When he says “in the balances” he’s talking about a balance scale, and I think you can picture what that is. It’s what Lady Justice is holding. It’s like a “T” and it has the two plates side by side, and you put stuff on them, and the heavier thing drops down, the lighter thing goes up.

And David is saying when you put man on that scale it goes up. Mankind is actually lighter than a breath. Another way to translate that sentence is to say mankind is a “puff of wind.”

That’s an amazing image, right?

But here’s the thing: my guess is that for most of us, if we walked around with a balance scale for how we see the world, if we had man (or think: the approval of man) — on this side of the scale, my guess is that it doesn’t go up, but it’s actually weighs it down. I think man is heavy for us.

Overcoming the Fear of Man

Think about the balance scale you carry in your life. Pretend that you carry one everywhere you go. Is man and the desire for the approval of man, and fear of man lighter than a breath to you, or does it have the most weight?

And you might think, “Well, compared to what?” What’s on the other side of the balance scale? 

And that’s a good question. What do you think is on the other side? What could go on this side of the scale that weighs more to you than the fear of man?

Ed Welch is a counselor who has written a book titled When People Are Big and God Is Small, and the title itself pretty much sums up our problem. 

Ed says that the fear of man is the root-cause for so many of our issues, from peer-pressure and people-pleasing to shame and pride. And the truth is that all of us, too many times, care way too much about what other people think. We are afraid of man because we’ve made man — the opinion of man and the threat of man — we’ve made man bigger and more real to us than God. We’ve made man big and God small. Our balance scale has man carrying all the weight over here. But radical faith says No. 

Radical faith rightly assesses reality. Radical faith sees things clearly, and knows that God is not small. God is more real than everything. He’s bigger than anything. 

God, the good Creator of all things, in His infinite power and wisdom, he upholds, directs, disposes, and governs all creatures and things from the greatest even to the least, by His most wise and holy providence, to the end for the which they were created, according to His infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of His own will; to the praise of the glory of His wisdom and power and justice and infinite goodness and mercy.

And when we see that — when we assess reality rightly — what is man?

We don’t fear him. And when we don’t fear man, we also don’t put our faith in man or man-made devices.

Forsaking Faith in Man

Verse 10 continues to warn us. Now the topic isn’t the fear of man, it’s faith in man. 

Look at three words here in verse 10 all getting at the same idea: extortion, robbery, and riches. Do y’all see those words in verse 10? Riches is the umbrella category for them. Extortion and robbery are man-made, criminal ways to make riches increase. And David tell us three times:

“put no trust in them”

“set no vain hopes on them”

“set not your heart on them”

This is important. David is not talking about greed here; he’s going deeper. He’s aiming at the heart and this is what he’s saying. He’s saying: Stop thinking that having more money is going to solve your problems. 

And if we’re honest with ourselves for a minute, sometimes we can think that. It’s easy for us to survey our lives, see the parts that are the toughest, and think: this would all be easier if my bank account was bigger. That is trusting in riches. It’s faith in man.

And look, I don’t want to ignore financial anxiety and stress. That’s a real thing. I get that. I’m in and out of that stress every year with my kids’ tuition.

I just want to challenge you that whatever it is in your life, wherever things feel difficult for you, if we dared to look closer, do we have faith in man?

It’s easy for us, in the sublet of ways, to set our hearts on man and on man-made devices and means (like money), but radical faith says No. 

Radical faith knows that God is big. He is real. And so we don’t fear man. We don’t put our faith in man. We understand that our most fundamental need, in every situation, cannot be met by anything of man. Radical faith rightly assesses reality. 

3) Radical faith relies on the promised Messiah.

When we started I said that the main point of radical faith is not the faith itself, but it’s God as the object of faith. What I mean is: David’s faith says more about God than it does himself. That’s the point. That doesn’t mean that David is irrelevant. We don’t ignore him. But it just means that we follow his experience through to the objective reality of who God is. 

For example, when we read verse 1, when David says “from him [God] comes my salvation” we understand this to mean that salvation comes from God. We’re not just reading about David’s personal religious experience. We’re reading truth about God that David knew first-hand — and that means we can too. 

That’s the beauty of the Book of Psalms overall. Psalm 62 is loaded with truth about God, and one way to state the truth could be in simple subject-predicate form: “God is a rock. God is salvation. God is a fortress. …” All that is true and it could be stated that way. But it’s not. Instead, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, in David’s real-life experience —  which was a real life just like all of us have — David puts it like this:

From God comes my salvation

He’s my rock

My salvation

My fortress

My hope is from him

My rock, salvation, fortress

My glory

My mighty rock

My refuge is God

God is a refuge for us

Can You Say This?

We’re supposed to read Psalm 62 and realize that the radical faith of David is not a statement of his greatness but of God’s greatness, and if David can know the greatness of God this way and embrace it, so can we. 

We’re supposed to think: All the “my’s” here could be “my’s” for me. David wants us to think that, which is why in verse 8 he goes from saying “my” to saying “us.” God is a refuge for us. 

Can you say that? Think about this. Can you say of God what David says of God here in a real, practical, everyday-life kind of way? If you can’t, why not? Why would you not make God your “rock”? (verse 2)

That word rock is just an image to say that God is reliable. God can be relied upon. God is the surest fact about reality that David always comes back to. What about for you?

When things get crazy or slippery or overwhelming, what’s your rock? Where do you go to “feel the ground” as it were? Everybody’s got some kind of rock. Make God your rock.

For all of us, we want to go from reading what David says to actually saying ourselves what David says.

That’s where the Psalm ends. 

Power and Steadfast Love

Remember that beginning in verse 8 it’s like David is looking out, speaking to others, and in verse 11, he commends to others this truth about God. 

Verse 11: “Once God has spoken; twice have I heard this …” — that phrase is a poetic way to say that what David is about to say is absolutely certain. This is revealed and confirmed truth. Here it is:

“That power belongs to God,
and that to you, O Lord, belongs steadfast love.”

Power and steadfast love. God’s might and God’s mercy. His greatness and his goodness. This truth about God is where David lands. And practically, in this situation, this is how David knows he will experience rescue. 

He says this is that last sentence: “For you will render to man according to his work” — that rendering here is the execution of God’s power and steadfast love that David needs in his current situation.

David is not saying that God only gives people what they deserve; this doesn’t mean that God rewards man based upon his merit. David isn’t talking here about final reckoning, but about present justice for himself.

Remember he’s got these enemies looking for every chance they can get to destroy him. But David can wait and be silent because his salvation comes from God. David knows that God, in his steadfast love — in his grace to David — will render to David’s enemies what they deserve. God says that power and steadfast love belong to him. 

The Forever King

And David’s hope in this revelation of God is actually hope in the Promised Messiah. The power and mercy of God together means that God will overcome every obstacle that gets in the way of him fulfilling his promise.

Now the promise of the Messiah King is not mentioned explicitly in Psalm 62, but the promise is alluded to in the psalms before and after it, in Psalm 61 and 63. The end of Psalm 61 says, verse 6:

“Prolong the life of the king;
may his years endure to all generations!
7 May he be enthroned forever before God;
appoint steadfast love and faithfulness to watch over him!”

And if we’re remembering God’s promise to David about the Messiah King, we know what this is about.

I asked the kids last night at dinner: Who is the king who is enthroned forever before God? Easy. They said Jesus. That’s right. 

That’s who David is thinking about in Psalm 61. It’s where he returns the focus at the end of Psalm 63. And it’s in that same stream that Psalm 62 recalls God’s power and steadfast love.

Radical faith in God is not in generic attributes, but it’s in what God has revealed about himself — what he revealed about himself in the old covenant through words and signs, but now in the new covenant through Jesus Christ. In these last days, God has spoken to us by his Son. Radical faith in God relies upon the Promised Messiah, and that’s what we remember at this table.

The Table

Jesus is the true and final focus of God’s revelation and redemption. Jesus has come to show us God, and to bring us back to God through his death and resurrection. The bread and the cup symbolize that, and when we eat and drink we are saying that the Messiah, Jesus, is our hope.

If he is your hope, if you are united to Jesus by faith, eat and drink with us this morning.