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My sermon text this evening, we’re going to focus on a psalm this evening, that is Psalm 71.
And you’ll find that beginning on page 572 in your Pew Bibles. Psalm 71.
People of God, this is the word of God. Hear it with reverence and awe.
In you, O Lord, do I take refuge. Let me never be put to shame. In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me.
Incline your ear to me and save me. Be to me a rock of refuge to which I may continually come.
You have given the command to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress. Rescue me, O my God,
from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and cruel man. For you, O Lord,
are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth. Upon you I have leaned from before my birth.
You are he who took me from my mother’s womb. My praise is continually of you. I have been as
important to many, but you are my strong refuge. My mouth is filled with your praise and with your
glory all the day. Do not cast me off in the time of old age. Forsake me not when my strength is
spent. For my enemies speak concerning me. Those who watch for my life consult together and say,
God has forsaken him. Pursue and seize him, for there is none to deliver him. O God, be not far
from me. O my God, make haste to help me. May my accusers be put to shame and consumed with scorn
and disgrace. May they be covered who seek my hurt. But I will hope continually and will praise
you yet more and more. My mouth will tell of your righteous acts, of your deeds of salvation all the
day, for their number is past my knowledge. With the mighty deeds of the Lord God, I will come.
I will remind them of your righteousness, yours alone. O God, from my youth you have taught me
and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds. So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake
me until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come.
Your righteousness, O God, reaches the high heavens. You who have done great things, O God,
who is like you? You who have made me see many troubles and calamities will revive me again.
From the depths of the earth you will bring me up again. You will increase my greatness and comfort
me again. I will also praise you with the harp for your faithfulness, O my God. I will sing praises
to you with the lyre, O Holy One of Israel. My lips will shout for joy when I sing praises to you,
my soul also, which you have redeemed. And my tongue will talk of your righteous help all the day
long, for they have been put to shame and disappointed who sought to do me hurt. The grass
withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for the Lord to
bless the preaching of his word. O Heavenly Father, once again we come before your word.
Lord, you communicate yourself to us through your God-breathed, inerrant, infallible,
authoritative word. We would pray, O Lord, that by your spirit you would once again open our minds
and our hearts to behold wondrous things from your word as we consider this psalm this evening.
And we would ask that this would be to our edification and strengthening in grace and
faith. We pray that we would be challenged, encouraged, blessed, and corrected as necessary
through what we consider this evening. And we ask, Lord, that you would enable me to declare your
word with clarity and power and faithfulness. May Jesus our Lord be present in the preaching
of your word this evening. In his name we pray, and all of God’s people said, Amen. You may be seated.
This evening, the title of my message is An Old Man’s Prayer. And the key words to be listening
for in my sermon this evening, they’re printed out in your sermon outline. But there are five
key words, the words prayer, faith, grace, praise, and mature. Well, my dear brothers and sisters
in Christ, our perspective on time changes over time, doesn’t it? If you’ve been around for a
while and you have attained to your adult years, you know this to be the case. For most of us,
the journey of life changes us over time. It changes us either for good or for ill,
depending on various factors and circumstances. And so, for example, as a general rule,
the life stages of childhood and youth are often characterized by a certain amount of turbulence
and drama and instability due to immaturity and limited life experience on the part of young
people. But as we grow older, and hopefully as we grow more mature in our perspective,
we tend to settle down and to mellow out over time. Now, of course, this is not always the
case. There are plenty of young people who are wise beyond their years, just as there are plenty
of old fools, plenty of immature and foolish adults. But ideally speaking, and as a general rule,
the tendency of stable, normal growth in the natural realm, the tendency of stable,
normal growth and development is to grow in practical wisdom and to grow in practical
maturity over time as we gain life experience. And what is true in the natural realm of common
grace and common providence is also true in the spiritual realm of saving grace. When we consider
our relationship with Jesus Christ and our growth in him and our walk with him, as we walk with
Christ over time, by the grace of God, we gradually mature. We grow up into Jesus over time. And at
least that’s a healthy spiritual development. Think about believers who are new converts and
who are young in their faith. It’s wonderful to be around new believers, isn’t it? It can be so
refreshing. For those of us who have been in the Lord for a while, isn’t it encouraging and refreshing
to see the enthusiasm and the excitement of new believers as they talk about their faith in Jesus
and as they joyfully feast upon the milk of God’s word. It’s a faith, the faith of young believers
can be a contagious faith. And we who are older believers, we appreciate that. We need that
enthusiasm to remind us of just how wonderful the gospel is. But at the same time, new converts
and young believers can often be unstable in their faith with a tendency to be tossed to and fro by
every changing wind of doctrine simply because they are not yet well grounded in the word. And so
we would do well to help guard and shepherd and care for new believers with special care.
As we grow spiritually over time, our faith stabilizes, it matures, and it even mellows,
not in the sense of becoming complacent, but in the good sense of that term. Well, dear ones,
our passage for this Lord’s Day evening is the prayer of an old man. It’s a prayer which gives
us a picture of what a mature, well-seasoned, stable, well-settled and mellowed faith and piety
look like. And so as we turn our attention to our psalm for this evening, let us keep our attention
open, our eyes open for what we learn here about this man with a mature faith. And of course,
the Spirit has inspired him to pen this wonderful poem, this wonderful psalm wherein he under the
Spirit’s inspiration expresses this mature faith. Now this psalm is classified by scholars as an
individual lament. It is one of the few psalms in this particular section of the Psalter which lacks
a superscription. And as I’ll mention in a moment, there may be a good reason for that.
This psalm is utterly permeated with a spirit of deep adoration and praise to God. Did you catch
that as I read through this psalm? Just how the psalmist overflows with praise and trust and
confident trust in the Lord and adoration for the Lord. It is a psalm that pulsates with an
attitude of confident trust in Yahweh and in His righteousness and faithfulness in keeping His
covenant promises. In this psalm, the unnamed author expresses his deep, long-time persevering
trust in Yahweh, his gracious Redeemer God, to deliver him out of the hand of wicked, cruel enemies
who seek to shame and destroy him. One commentator introduces this psalm by describing
the psalm as follows. It is a prayer for God’s help in old age when enemies threaten
because they see that the king’s strength is waning. Now the psalm bears no superscription,
but it may well be that psalm 70 was viewed by the editors of the Psalms as the introduction
to psalm 71, in which case the psalm is ascribed to David in his old age. And that would certainly
make sense that this psalm may well have been penned by David towards the end of his life as
he looks back on his turbulent life and how the Lord has been with him through many trials,
many dangerous toils and snares. And this commentator goes on to say that this suggestion of
David being the author of this psalm gains support from the fact that psalm 72 is identified as a
prayer by and or for King Solomon. So we see that flow here from psalm 70 through psalm 72.
Whatever the case may be, whether this psalm was actually penned by King David later in his life
or by some other anonymous psalmist, we have in this psalm a prayer expressing mature faith in
Yahweh, our faithful God. And this is the first point in your sermon outline. We find here in this
psalm a prayer expressing mature faith in Yahweh, our faithful God. This psalm is interestingly
bookended by the theme of shame. In verse one, what does the psalmist open up his psalm by praying?
In verse one, the psalmist prays that Yahweh, in whom he had taken refuge, would never let him be
put to shame. It says in verse one, in you, O Yahweh, the Lord, Lord, that’s in all capital letters,
as you folks know, that’s an indication by the English translators that they are translating
the Hebrew name for God, Yahweh, which is the name for God that speaks of God as the faithful
covenant-making redeemer God, the God of Israel, the God of his people. And the psalmist has taken
refuge in Yahweh as his redeemer God. And he prays to the Lord, in you, O Lord, do I take refuge?
What’s his petition? Let me never be put to shame. It’s interesting that eternal judgment, that hell
is sometimes described in the scriptures as a place of everlasting shame. Our sin deserves shame.
Our sin earns us shame, but praise God, Jesus Christ took that shame upon himself. Jesus Christ
underwent that shame that we might be forgiven so that we might not suffer shame. But in any case,
the psalmist cries out to the Lord, let me never be put to shame. But in verse 24, as the psalmist
wraps up his psalm, he praises God for putting to shame those who had sought his hurt. And so if
you compare verse one with the very last verse, what does it say in verse 24? He says, and my tongue
will talk of your righteous help all the day long. Why? For they have been put to shame and
disappointed, who sought to do me hurt. There were enemies who sought to shame and destroy
the psalmist. And the psalmist cries out to the Lord for deliverance from shame and the Lord
answers him and instead puts to shame those who sought to shame him. The fact that this psalm was
penned by an older saint of mature years is made clear in various places within the context of
this psalm. You may have picked up on that as I read through it. For example, let’s go back and
look at verses five and six. It says in these verses, for you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust,
O Lord, from my youth, which implies that he’s no longer a youth. He is trusted in the Lord from
his youth. Verse six, upon you I have leaned from before my birth. This is a covenant child, if you
will, someone who was raised in the faith and has known the Lord and followed the Lord and trusted
the Lord even from his youngest years. He says, upon you I have leaned from my birth. Notice the
personal trust, the leaning on the Lord that is emphasized here. You are he who took me from my
mother’s womb. My praise is continually of you. And then skip down to verse nine, which again gives
us a hint of the stage in life that this psalmist is at when he pens this. He says, do not cast me
off in the time of old age. He’s concerned about his old age. Do not cast me off in the time of
old age. Forsake me not when my strength is spent. And then skip down again to verses 17 and 18. It
says, O God, from my youth you have taught me and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds. So even to
old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me until I proclaim your might to another generations.
Lord, keep me around enough that I can proclaim, long enough that I can proclaim your praises to
the next generation. He’s concerned that the faith be passed on to future generations.
Even to old age and gray hairs, do not forsake me until I proclaim your might to another generation,
your power to those, to all those yet to come. From the way the psalmist expresses himself
throughout this psalm, as he does so under the Spirit’s inspiration, he shows that he has long
experience walking by faith with his God. And he has experienced Yahweh’s faithfulness and deliverance
many times in his past. In the words of Dr. Willem van Gammeren,
the psalmist commits himself to God’s care. He has enjoyed a life of faith commitment
and through the experiences of communion with the Lord, he has learned that Yahweh is faithful.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, as we grow in our faith and as we grow in our years, we can look back
over our lives and we can see time and time and time again, the Lord has been faithful.
Can you not say that, brothers and sisters in Christ, especially you who are seasoned saints?
Can you not look back and see the Lord’s faithful hand guiding you throughout your years? And so,
when you are tempted in the present to despair or to think the Lord has abandoned me,
just remind yourself of all the faithfulness that he has shown to you in your past.
And so again, we see the psalmist crying out to God for rescue, but clearly trusting in the Lord
throughout. Oh beloved, by way of application, let us pray that God in his grace would so sanctify
and mature us in our faith that we may one day possess the kind of stable, settled, well-seasoned,
mature faith that the psalmist here exhibits throughout his psalm. And toward that end,
by God’s grace, let us make it our intention to go on to maturity, whatever stage of life we may
happen to be in. May we make it our goal to grow in the knowledge and love of our Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ, to go on to maturity as the scriptures command us to. And so, just a couple
passages from the New Testament where believers are urged to do this, consider Hebrews 6, 1 to 3.
Our intern Isaiah has been taking us through the epistle to the Hebrews, and I know he’s already
preached on this, but let me remind us of this important passage, Hebrews 6, 1 through 3,
where the author of Hebrews exhorts his readers to leave the elementary doctrine to go on to
maturity, not to leave the doctrine in the sense of abandoning it, but to press on to maturity,
verse 1 to 3. Therefore, let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to
maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God
and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead,
and eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits. In other words, let’s go on to maturity
and to a mature understanding of the faith. But not only that, as Peter exhorts his readers in
2 Peter 3, 18, let us grow in the knowledge and in the love of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
And as we do so, our faith and our piety will more and more exhibit the kind of spirit
that is manifested in this psalm, this spirit of a mature, well-seasoned faith. But what is this
mature faith grounded in? What is it that motivates the psalmist to have such a faith and to express
such a faith? Well, we have next a clue to that in this psalm in verses 17 through 21,
as I want us to consider in these verses a testimony to Yahweh’s preserving grace.
We persevere in faith because our sovereign God preserves us in his sovereign omnipotent
grace. Look at verse 17. It says this,
O God, from my youth you have taught me. The Lord has taught him from his youth. The Lord’s been
with him throughout his youth, this implies. And I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.
So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me. He’s again petitioning God not to
forsake him until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come.
And then he says this, verse 19, your righteousness, O God, reaches the high heavens.
You who have done great things, O God, who is like you? His God is a God like no other,
the true and living God. He is all-powerful. He is like no other. He is a God of righteousness,
and thus he is faithful to his covenant promises. And he’s reliable. You can rest in him. You can
rely upon him. You have made me see many troubles and calamities. Oh, he’s a realist. He recognizes
that his life has been filled with troubles and calamities. And certainly if this has been penned
by King David in his later years, you read the biblical history about David’s ascent to the
throne and David’s life. David’s life was a hard life. He was the king, yes, but he had people out
for his blood. Saul the king was after his life, trying to kill him. There were many dangers,
toils, and snares that David experienced. And yet, what is the Psalmist, if he be David,
what does he say? You’ve made me see many troubles and calamities, but you will revive me again.
In other words, just as you’ve revived me in the past, God has been preserving him
all these years, through all these troubles, all these calamities. From the depths of the earth,
you will bring me up again. This reference to the depths of the earth, that’s a reference to death.
David, or the Psalmist, whoever the Psalmist may be, had faced death many times, and the Lord had
brought him out from the verge of death, delivering him. You will increase my greatness and comfort
me again. Notice his confidence. You will. You will comfort me again. As we reflect upon verses
17 and 18, where he says, from my youth you’ve taught me, and so forth. Sometimes when we’re
tempted to doubt that God really cares about us, it can help to reflect upon the ways that God has
shown himself to be faithful to us in the past, as I’ve already mentioned. And that’s essentially
what our Psalmist does here. He reflects on God’s faithfulness to him in the past,
which gives him boldness in the present to cry out to God for deliverance and rescue,
and gives him confident hope in God’s future deliverance. You see the connection? God has
been faithful in the past, and so we can be confident in the present and hopeful as we look
to the future. For the Psalmist, God indeed is our help in ages past, our hope for years to come.
And with respect to that term righteousness in verse 19, your righteousness, O God, reaches to
the high heavens. Certainly in terms of ethical purity and excellence, God is righteous in that
sense. But it would seem that in this particular passage, the term righteous here seems to mean
God’s faithfulness, his righteousness in the sense that he faithfully keeps his covenant
promises. And it is on those covenant promises that the Psalmist rests his eternal hope.
In his righteousness and covenant faithfulness, God has indeed done great things, things that
set God apart from all other beings. And so again, as we read in verses 20 and 21,
the Lord has not spared the Psalmist from experiencing many troubles and calamities in
his life, but in the Psalmist’s long experience of walking with the Lord, he has always experienced
God’s reviving mercies. And thus he is confident that the Lord will revive him yet again. And just
as the Lord has revived him and delivered him from the depths of the earth, in other words,
from the threat of death. But I would remind us, brothers and sisters, as we read Psalms like this
from a new covenant perspective, consider that the ultimate way that God delivers us from the
depths of the earth, in other words, from the threat of death, is through the promise of the
resurrection at the end of this age. The general resurrection of the body, which was only made
possible by our Lord Jesus Christ’s physical bodily resurrection from the dead. That was
a truth that was not known to the Psalmist at this particular stage in redemptive history,
the stage in which he was situated in God’s providence. But nevertheless, this reminds us
and points us forward to the resurrection of Christ and to our ultimate resurrection from the
dead at the end of this age, where God will indeed, he will deliver us from the depths of the earth.
Oh beloved, this section of Psalm 71 reminds me of one of that stanza from the well-known
hymn, Amazing Grace, the stanza that says, through many dangers, toils, and snares,
I have already come. Tis grace has brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.
Even within his old covenant framework and context, the words of the author of this Psalm
resonate with that sentiment. Can you, dear listener, say the same about your own experience
of walking with the Lord? He is faithful. He brings us through many dangers, toils, and snares,
because he has loved us from before the foundation of the world. In Christ he has saved us,
and by the Spirit he has sealed us, and he keeps us until the end. And so what is the conclusion to
this beautiful Psalm? We find that conclusion in verses 22 through 24, where the psalmist
expresses confidence culminating in overflowing praise. That’s the final point on your sermon
outline. Confidence culminating in overflowing praise. The psalmist says, I will also praise you
with the harp for your faithfulness, oh my God. I will sing praises to you with the lyre. Oh,
holy one of Israel. Notice he calls upon God. He addresses God as the holy one of Israel.
He is the holy one. My lips will shout for joy when I sing praises to you. My soul also,
which you have redeemed. The Lord is his redeemer, his deliverer. And my tongue will
talk of your righteous help all the day long, for they have been put to shame and disappointed
who sought to do me hurt. Here again we have the climax and culmination of this beautiful
Psalm as the psalmist closes off his poem of confident trust with a promise of praise
and testimony of the holy one of Israel, the one who had been so faithful to him since his youth.
As he looks back on his long life and considers the faithfulness and redeeming mercy of Yahweh,
his covenant Lord, his heart is once again filled with deep gratitude and adoration for
the gracious God who has redeemed his soul. My dear friends in Christ, as we look back and consider
afresh the redeeming love and mercy of our incarnate Lord Jesus, who stretched out his arms upon the
hard wood of the cross to die for our sins. And as we reflect upon how he manifested his preserving
grace throughout the years of our lives, may our hearts and our lips likewise overflow with
gratitude and praise for our faithful, holy, righteous and gracious Lord. And as we anticipate
the eschatological future that our Lord has planned for us in eternity, may we remember the words
of that final stanza of amazing grace. You know the words, when we’ve been there 10,000 years,
bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we’d first begun.
Hallelujah to God be the glory and all of God’s people said amen. Let’s pray.
Our Lord and Father in heaven, you are the one who has granted us the gift of life.
You are the one who in Christ and by your spirit has given us new life, resurrected life.
You are the one who provides us and brings us through every stage of life and development.
And wherever we find ourselves Lord along life’s journey, we know that you prove yourself to be
faithful to those who trust in you. By your grace Lord, may we look to you as a God who cares for us
who will never leave us nor forsake us, who will not ultimately give us over to the hands of our
enemies what but will preserve us even unto life eternal. And Lord as we contemplate these truths
we’ve considered tonight, we also pray that as we come to the Lord’s table you would seal the
promises of the gospel to our souls once again. That you would once again reassure us that we are
loved, that Christ died for us, that he preserves us and keeps us and that he will carry us through
and pull us through into eternity. So Lord, we give you thanks and praise for who you are,
for all you’ve done for us, especially for Jesus our wonderful Lord and Savior.
For it is in his name that we pray these things and all of God’s people said, Amen.