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You guys did a great job. Appreciate that last song. We sang that this morning out at Cottonwood, and Janelle was giving me a hard time after the service saying, You need to sing more upbeat songs. And I said, Well, that one was upbeat. And she said, No, that wasn't.

But it's exactly the song that I wanted for this message. We're going to be in Psalm 142, so if you would go ahead and open up, is T here? T's not here. See, when you see T. Getterman, you tell him I had a real Bible. I had it here.

Oh, I tore a page out. That's a problem. Tear pages out. All right. That's because he normally has a phone. Yeah, you know, he told me, he said, you know, I know you've got all your stuff on that gizmo, but he said, I'm kind of old-fashioned. I like to see the book.

And so I brought it just for tea. I'm going to hang it over. Just tell him you saw it, and it was here. I'm actually going to read it. I'm going to read from it here in a minute, trust me. So let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank you again for the time that we have together tonight, for the fellowship that we have here, for the music, being able to work.

You together in song. And I ask that as we look into your word, that you would speak into our hearts and lives and give us something not only for ourselves, but give us something that we can feed others with. We pray it in Christ's name. Amen. All right, Psalm 142.

It says there, but right before the actual psalm, it says it's a mascal of David when he was in the cave. It's a prayer, it says. Now, a mascal, there are 13 different psalms that are labeled as mascals. And about the only other place you see this word in the scripture is in Amos chapter 5.

And I won't make you turn there because it's, you know, unless you're a sword-drill geek, you're not going to be able to find it very quickly. But Amos 5:13 is talking about when we're in evil times, when the nation is run by evil men and evil is at large.

It says, at such a time, the prudent person keeps silent, for it is an evil time. And that word there for the prudent person, that's the same word that is for a masculine. So what this means is if this psalm is a mascal, that means that a prudent person would meditate on this psalm to gain insight into something.

It's something that's worth thinking about. And not that any scripture isn't worth thinking about, but this psalm is worthy of some deep meditation. So I want us to consider it. I want to talk. About the context of the Psalm so that as we read through this prayer that David prayed, we can sympathize with him, or better yet, we can empathize with him.

I would say that most of us can probably empathize. And as we do so, I want us to consider three things, three P's. It's easy. I want us to consider the problem, the promise, and the purpose of David's prayer. Okay, so in a general sense, let's look at his problem.

How did he end up here when he's in this cave? What cave is he in? How did he end up there? Has anybody ever been in a cave? An actual cave? With like a tour guy that took you down in the depths of the cave? What's one thing they always do on a cave tour?

Turn off the lights. And it is, I mean, nothing, nothing. Your eyes don't work. You might as well not have them anymore, right? You have to hear and kind of feel your way. So that's kind of what we're doing with David here. We're going to hear what he said, and then I want us to try to kind of feel what he was going through.

So let's just, you know, kind of like being in the middle of a cave. There are two cave visits that are recorded in Scripture. One of them in 1 Samuel 22, and the other is in 1 Samuel 24. This one, I think, is the one in 1 Samuel 22.

Most people assume that this is the cave of Adulum, is what it is labeled there. It could have been another cave, but in this psalm, he is clearly by himself. He's alone. And this was really, the cave of Adolum was really the only time when he was fleeing from Saul that he was alone.

So that's when I think it happened: 1 Samuel 22. So David is in the narrative there. David had left Jonathan. Jonathan had kind of done the fleece test with his father Saul to see if he was really out to kill David. And sure enough, he was. So Jonathan came, told David, you need to get out of town or you're going to get killed.

So David took off with nothing but the clothes on his back. He showed up and saw Ahimelech, the priest. And Ahimelech said, Why are you here by yourself? Why don't you have anything? You have no weapons. You have no food. What are you doing? And David said, well, I'm on a secret mission.

And Ahimelech said, well, you need some supplies. And so he gave him some bread and he gave him a sword. Whose sword was it? Anybody know offhand? Goliath's sword. And then David went to Ahish, who was the king of Gath. And whose hometown was Gath? Goliath's. So you can sort of read between the lines here.

David is a tactical military thinker. Now, if you're the guy who killed the hometown boy and you're carrying the hometown boy's sword, are you going to go to the hometown and say, hey, can I crash on your couch? Heavens no. So, you can sort of infer from that that David was desperate.

He was in a desperate situation. He wasn't even thinking straight. And he realized his mistake very quickly, and he played crazy. He pretended to be crazy. He foamed at the mouth and was drooling and just blabbering. And Achish says, I got enough crazy people around here. Get this guy out of here.

So they throw him out. And David is so relieved that they threw him out that he writes Psalm 34, which I'm not going to read it now, but Psalm 34 is this exultant celebration of God's deliverance. And so he's just thrilled to death that God has saved him from that blunder that David made, that tactical blunder.

But then a very short time later, he's alone in this cave. It says he fled from Achish, and he went into the wilderness to this cave of Adulum. And then I think the reality of his situation really came down on top of him. And he realized, you know, he got to thinking about where he was.

And then he writes this psalm. So let's read this together. Psalm 142. I've got to read it from this. Tell T. I cry aloud with my voice to the Lord. I make supplication with my voice to the Lord. I pour out my complaint before him. I declare my trouble.

Before him. When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, you knew my path. In the way where I walk, they have hidden a trap for me. Look to the right and see, for there is no one who regards me. There is no escape from me. No one cares for my soul.

I cried out to you, O Lord. I said, You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living. Give heed to my cry, for I am brought very low. Deliver me from my persecutors, for they are too strong for me. Bring my soul out of prison so that I may give thanks to your name.

The righteous will surround me, for you will deal bountifully with me. Now, I could sum up that psalm in a tweet: Life is hard, but God is good. Right? You could just tweet that. But when someone is in this kind of despair, as David was, a sound bite isn't going to do them any good.

Earlier this year, Cigna, a big health insurance company, interviewed 20,000 people in America, and they found that over half the country feels alone, especially people under the age of 25. So we have all. Of this social media, we are more connected with more people than anyone else in the history of the world, and yet everybody feels lonely.

Half the country is, metaphorically speaking, in the cave. And that's before you add in all of the other problems that are in this fallen world to affect us. So, when it comes to addressing the kind of gut-wrenching despair that David is feeling here, Instagram is inadequate, Facebook is futile, Pinterest is pointless, and Twitter is terrible.

I wanted us to study this psalm together because I want each of us to be worth something in the cave. I want us to have something to bring to the cave. And whether that's you in the cave, or whether you're there struggling with what David struggled with, or whether God has put you in a position to minister to someone who is struggling, I want you to be worth something there.

And we know Jesus is the answer. We always say Jesus, that's the textbook, Sunday school answer. Jesus is the answer. But practically speaking, how? How is Jesus the answer? How does Jesus answer this problem specifically? This is a great time to think about this because the holidays. A lot of people struggle with the holidays for a lot of different reasons.

I guarantee you, somebody you know struggles with the holidays. Probably many people. So let's look at what David did in the physical cave so that we can be worth something in the metaphorical cave. Look at the promise, the problem, the promise, and the purpose of his prayer. Let's look in the text.

He lays out his problem. Verse 3: He says, In the way where I walk, they have hidden a trap for me. Now, they are obviously his enemies, the people who want to kill him. It's Saul and Saul's people, it's Ahish, it's everybody who's chasing him. Verse 4, he says, Look to the right and see, for there is no one who regards me.

Now, if we're doing a wedding and I'm the preacher, and then you've got a bride over here, and then you've got a groom over here. Who stands right here? The best man, the groom's right-hand man, as it were. Your right-hand man is the one who watches out for you, he's the one who has your back.

And what David is saying here is: look to the right. I got nobody, I have no right-hand man. There's nobody looking out for me, there's nobody who has my back. No one cares for my soul. Then in verse 6, he says, he is brought low, very low. My persecutors are too strong for me.

So he sees no way out. He's at a dead end. He has no hope. He's alone. So David clearly recognized his need. He's defined his problem. But I want you to notice as he prayed out this problem, he was also praying God's promises. He just wove them into this prayer.

In fact, I want us to look at three specific promises that he wove into this prayer. Going back to verse 3, he says, When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, you knew my path. If you remember, several weeks ago when I preached in Joshua 2, we talked about the word knew or know.

The Hebrew there is yada, which is the meaning of that is not just that, well, God knew where he was. God knew the fact about where he was. This is an intimate knowing. It is an intimate familiarity. It's like in Psalm 139, which says, O Lord, you have searched me and known me.

You know when I sit down. When I rise up, you understand my thoughts from afar, you scrutinize my path and my lying down, you are intimately acquainted with all my ways. That's the connotation of this word, you knew my path. So, what David is saying, the practical reality of that is: is David really alone in the cave?

No. No, he knows that God is with him. God was with him just as certainly as God was with him when he was in the fields guarding the sheep, just as God was with him when he fought Goliath, just as God was with him at all times. David understood that.

Today is the liturgically speaking, today is the first Sunday of Advent, which, do I have any Latin geeks out there? It comes from the Latin Adventus, which means coming. We celebrate the name of this place. Emmanuel. Let's talk about that a little bit. Now, the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows.

When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man, not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly. But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.

She will bear a son. You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. Now, listen, all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us.

I want you to listen to what Jesus had to say about God being with us. This is in John 16:32. He says, Behold, an hour is coming and has already come for you to be scattered, each to his own home, and to leave me alone. And yet, I am not alone, because the Father is with me.

These things I've spoken to you, so that in me you may have peace. And then in John 14, if you look back, John 14, 16 through 18, he says, I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper, that he may be with you forever. That is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it does not see him or know him.

But you know him, because he abides with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans. Poetic language. What does it mean? Let me talk. Talking in earthly physical terms. Your portion on earth is all your stuff and all of the people who are important to you.

Right? And your refuge is where you put all those things. Right? Okay, that's your portion and your refuge. So, what do we call that place? Our home. Your home. That's what David is saying. He's saying, God, you are my home. God is our home. You wonder why Paul was able to say, for me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

Because he understood that God is his home. He understood what David said in this prayer. And the last promise that I want us to look at that David sings about here is in verse 7. It's at the very end of the Psalm. He says, The righteous will surround me, for you will deal bountifully with me.

And the promise there is that God will bless his children. God will deal bountifully with his children. David understands that. David understood the covenant that God had made with Abram back in Genesis 12. 12. And if you haven't memorized this passage, you should, because we will always come back to this.

The Lord said to Abram, Go forth from your country, and from your relatives, and from your father's house, to the land which I will show you, and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great. And so you shall be a blessing.

And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you, I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. There is the gospel right there in Genesis 12. And David knew that. David knew the song of Moses. It's in Exodus 15.

I'm just going to read. I'm going to skip through a couple of verses of the song of Moses there in Exodus 15. The Lord is my strength and song, and he has become my salvation. This is my God, and I will praise him, my father's God, and I will extol him.

And in verse 11, who is like you among the gods, O Lord? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in praises, working wonders? Then verse 13, In your loving kindness, you have led the people whom you have redeemed. In your strength, you have guided them to your holy habitation.

So David closes his prayer, this psalm, singing about the loving kindness, the covenant faithfulness of God. Because that is the foundational promise that shown lives. Into his darkness that gave him that hope that he could walk out of that cave with. And in fact, at the end of all of this time of trial, after all of the mess with Saul, when David was finally delivered, he wrote Psalm 18, which is another good one to read.

And I want you to listen to how he closed Psalm 18. It's verse 50, I believe. He gives great deliverance to his king and shows loving kindness to his anointed, to David and his descendants forever. And you'll recognize this from Matthew chapter 7. Jesus said, Ask, and it will be given to you.

Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives. He who seeks finds, and to him who knocks, it will be opened. What man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone?

Or if he asks for a fish, he won't give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask him? Our God blesses us.

So David here has prayed out his problem. He's prayed God's promises. And then he makes a very simple Simple supplication. The only thing that he really asks here is in verses 6 and 7. He says, Give heed to my cry, deliver me from my persecutors, bring my soul out of prison.

Hear me and save me. And then, I love that he tells us the purpose of his prayer. Lays out his problems, praise God for God's promises, and then David tells us the purpose of his prayer in verse 7: so that I may give thanks to your name. The ultimate purpose of David's prayer is to proclaim his gratitude to God publicly.

It's to thank God for handling his problem, to thank God for his promises, his covenant faithfulness. David's greatest desire, not only here in this psalm, but throughout, you see this throughout his life, his greatest desire is to publicly glorify God's name. 1 Peter chapter 4. Whoever speaks is to do so as one who is speaking the utterances of God.

Whoever serves is to do so as one who is serving by the strength which God supplies, so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. And in Ephesians 3, verse 20, now, to him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever.

Amen. That is our purpose. So, when you find yourself or when you find a friend who is in the cave, as it were, learn from David here. Listen to the problem. Hear. Hear the problem so that you can voice that to God. And as you do that, as you empathize and sympathize and voice that problem to the Lord, remember and remind yourselves of his promises.

And remember that the ultimate purpose is to give glory to God for the way that he is going to answer the prayer, for the way that he has answered prayers in the past, for who he is. So, how did David's cave experience turn out? Look at 1 Samuel chapter 22.

I'll give you a moment to flip there. I've been going fast. Sorry, I've been waiting. If you want to know what verses I hit, just shoot me an email and I'll give you a list. 1 Samuel 22, and this is right after David has been kicked out of Gath, says, So David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adulum, semicolon.

Anyone got anything but a semicolon right there? That's where we are. That little semicolon, that's where this psalm happened. It's right there in the semicolon. And then look at the rest of the sentence. And when his brothers and all his father's household heard of it, they went down there to him.

Everyone who was in distress, everyone who was in debt, everyone who was discontented gathered to him, and he became captain over them. Now there were about 400 men with him, which meant there were more people than that because there were probably others there too. Women and children, who knows?

He had a big group. So did God answer David's prayer? He's not alone anymore. You or someone close to you is going to have a cave experience. And I've had a brother and an uncle who went into the cave and never came out. So when you encounter that, whether it's in your own life or someone close to you, you may walk into that cave and experience hopelessness.

You may experience despair, but if you will go in there with the truths of this psalm, understanding what David did about God's promise and about your purpose, you will find fresh hope and you will come out of that cave giving glory to God. And that is why this psalm is a masculine worthy of meditation.

Let's pray, Lord God. I thank you again for your word and for the richness in its pages. And, Father, as we take in those truths and seek to give them feet, seek to live out your precepts and your truths in our own lives, we come up against some really, really tough things, Lord.

And so I ask for each one of us that you would give us not just wisdom, not just understanding, but that you would give us the ability to walk in the power of your Spirit to bring your love and your kingdom to bear in the lives of those we encounter.

Lord, especially at this time of year. When it can be so difficult, Lord, would you make us agents of healing in our families and in our community, just in the circle of our friends and acquaintances? Lord, help us to speak your truth in a way that is winsome and will, again, bring healing and will draw people who need you to you in a powerful way.

We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. That's it. Any announcements? All right, you're dismissed. Merry Christmas. Good job, John.