As we begin our Summer in the Psalms series, studying Psalms 71 – 80, we get to begin with a beautiful Psalm that is meant to guide us in our relationship with the Lord when we are feeling weak, alone, and helpless.

Many commentators agree that David wrote this Psalm at a later stage in his life even though there is no mention of him in the title of this Psalm.2 It seems like this Psalm is meant to be read in conjunction with Psalm 72 which does mention David as its author, and in this Psalm the language is clearly Davidic, although much more mature than his earlier Psalms.3

We know enough about David’s life to know that he endured some excruciating seasons of difficulty and suffering. I am reminded of David’s suffering when one of his sons raped his own sister, which then lead to another son killing his rapist of a brother and then turning in anger against David for his failure to address the rapist son appropriately (2 Sam. 13 – 18).

We could also look to the incident of “a worthless man, whose name was Sheba” who attempted to turn Israel against David in his elderly years (2 Sam. 20).  We could also look to David’s song of praise to the Lord for the many times he delivered David from harm in his elderly years (2 Sam. 22). Or finally, we could look at when David was on his death bed, with his strength failing, and another one of his sons, Adonijah, attempted to take the throne from him by coercion and manipulation (1 Kings 1).

The bottom line is this, even if David is not the author of this Psalm, we have in David, an example of a person’s life that was filled with seasons of weakness, and lonelinee, and helplessness; times when David would cry out, “forsake me not when my strength is spent”as he does in verse 9 of our passage today.

This cry, to not be left alone in our helplessness, should remind us of Jesus as he hung on that cross crying for our Heavenly Father to not forsake him in his final moments of suffering.4 You see, in David, and in all of his writings, we have the example of a sinful human being that, in his suffering, points us to the suffering of a sinless Savior, in Christ Jesus, who empathizes and remains with us amidst our suffering.

Who has not faced intense seasons of suffering, and loneliness, and difficulty?  Who has not felt utterly weak, without any shred of strength to continue forward, totally helpless to endure the painful circumstances that have consumed their life?

I imagine that all of us have experienced seasons like these, where we feel like our strength is spent; times where a health crisis, or a financial crisis, or a relational crisis has left us feeling alone, and weak, and helpless. This is where our Psalmist is at today in our passage. In our Psalmist we see what we can do when our strength is spent, when we are feeling helpless and alone.

1In you, O Lord, do I take refuge; let me never be put to shame! 2In your righteousness, deliver me and rescue me: incline your ear to me, and save me! 3Be 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.

4Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and cruel man. 5For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth. 6Upon you have I leaned from before my birth; you are he who took me from my mother’s womb. My praise is continually of you.

7I have been as a portent to many, but you are my strong refuge. 8My mouth is filled with your praise, and with your glory all the day. 9Do not cast me off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength is spent. 10For my enemies speak concerning me; those who watch for my life consult together 11and say, “God has forsaken him; pursue and seize him, for there is none to deliver him.”

12O God, be not far from me; O my God, make haste to help me! 13May my accusers be put to shame and consumed; with scorn and disgrace may they be covered who seek my hurt. 14But I will hope continually and will praise you yet more and more. 15My mouth will tell of your righteous acts, of your deeds of salvation all the day, for their number is past my knowledge. 16With the mighty deeds of the Lord God I will come; I will remind them of your righteousness, yours alone.

17O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds. 18So 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 who come. 19Your righteousness, O God, reaches the high heavens. You who have done great things, O God, who is like you? 20You 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. 21You will increase my greatness and comfort me again.

22I 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. 23My lips will shout for joy, when I sing praises to you; my soul also, which you have redeemed. 24And 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.

#1: A DESPERATE PRAYER (VV. 1 – 13)

The first thing our Psalmist does, is to utter a desperate prayer to the Lord for help in verses 1 – 13. I was greatly helped by one commentator, Christopher Ash, in his commentary entitled “The Psalms: A Christ-Centered Commentary” in which he seeks to see Jesus in every word of this Psalm, as he outlined our passage into two sections with the first thirteen verses being a desperate prayer for deliverance from the his difficult circumstances.5

In this desperate prayer, our Psalmist begins in verse 1, not with his problems, but with his absolute trust in the Lord, who is his “refuge” and who will never let him “be put to shame”. How glorious it would be if we could all learn this lesson of uttering our trust in the Lord when calamity hits before our complaint or a description of that calamity comes out of our mouths!

The question is, what kind of refuge does our Psalmist find in Lord? In verse 2, we see that the refuge, or the shelter that our Psalmist finds is none other than the righteousness and salvation of our God. It is the Lord’s righteousness – his perfection in Christ Jesus – that “delivers” us and “rescues” us and saves us from our greatest calamities that come to us through the effects of Satan, Sin, and Death.

It is the perfection of Christ Jesus in verse 3 that becomes our “rock of refuge” and the place that we “may continually come” to or abide in or dwell in as we trust that the Lord has commanded our salvation and that nothing can overturn that command. Is there any better place to rest our weary souls other than the promise of God’s assurance in his salvation over us?

It is with this assurance, this hope-filled trust of God’s certain salvation over him, that the Psalmist in verse 4 makes his dire situation known to the Lord when he begs God to “rescue” him “from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and cruel man”who is persecuting him.

But notice that his complaint and his description of this wicked man is short lived as he comes straight back in verses 5 – 6 to his hope and trust in the Lord, who has been his crutch – the one he has leaned upon in seasons of great suffering – since before his birth; he has leaned upon the Lord for so long now that he can actually say “my praise is continually of you” at the end of verse 6.

How wonderful it would be to proclaim that no matter what has happened in my life, that I have continued to praise him through thick and through thin. That is the testimony of our Psalmist though. He says in verse 7, that even though he has “been as a portent” or in other words “a sign that causes wonder and amazement” – even though people have wondered in amazement at the suffering he keeps enduring – the Lord has remained as his “strong refuge”.

Nothing has caused our Psalmist to seek shelter outside of the presence of God, and that has amazed many people around him. Notice too, that we can see in these verses how the Psalmist’s heart is now being moved through prayer to praise – though he is not fully in praise mode until verse 14, his heart is moving in that direction because prayer that is full of the theology of the saving grace of our sovereign God will inevitably move our hearts to full blown praise.

But here in verse 8, we catch an inkling of the Psalmist’s heart as he begins to be moved to praising the God who has and will continue to rescue him, to save him, to shelter him, and to preserve his life for all of eternity when he says “my mouth is filled with your praise, and with your glory all the day”.

His mouth could have been filled with complaints and worry and doubt, but it was not filled with those things, because his mind and his heart and therefore his mouth was filled with doctrinal and theological truths that sustained him amidst his failed strength.

You see, if you and I want to be sustained amidst our own seasons of weakness, and helplessness, and loneliness, we need to look no further than the deep doctrinal, and theological truths of God’s mighty power to save, and to preserve those who have thrown themselves on the altar of God’s faithfulness in Christ crucified, risen, and returning. It is the gospel that is our rock of refuge in Christ Jesus!

From that solid rock of refuge – the Rock of Ages whom the winds and the waves of suffering dash the believer against – from that place, our Psalmist is able to beg God in verse 9, not to “cast” him off in his “old age” and not to “forsake” him when his “strength is spent”. His enemies can talk about him all day long in verse 10, they can watch him and wonder if “God has forsaken him” and if they should “pursue and seize him” because maybe “there is none to deliver him”.

But the reality is that the Psalmist’s enemies do not know the God he knows – the one he calls “my God” over and over again in this prayer as though they are intimate friends – they do not know this God at all. But the Psalmist knows his God. Therefore, he can pray confidently in verses 12 – 13 for his God to not be “far from” him and to come to his aid quickly so that his “accusers” (literally “the satans of his soul”)6 may “be put to shame and consumed” and “covered… with scorn and disgrace” for seeking the Psalmist’s “hurt”. The Psalmist’s enemies will literally be left in a puddle of their own shame and disgrace because they dared to move against a child of God.

This first portion of our Psalm, describing the desperate prayer of our Psalmist as he surveys his own weakness, and helplessness, and loneliness in light of the sovereign power of his God to save him and sustain him, it is as though he has been moved through any presence of fear or doubt into the life-giving and refreshing place of hope-filled praise of the only One who is mighty to save.

#2: HOPE-FILLED PRAISE (VV. 14 – 24)

Once again, when your prayers are rooted in the glorious doctrines and theological truths of God’s power and faithfulness in salvation and preservation of his saints, in the face of your own weakness, and loneliness, and helplessness, your heart will inevitably be moved into hope-filled praise, just as our Psalmist is moved to in verses 14 – 24.

So much of the music that passes for praise and worship today is nothing more than sentimental, fluffy, music that is centered on self-experience and emotions rather than timeless theological and doctrinal, biblical truths. Much of what we are force-fed in modern day Christianity, under the banner of praise and worship music, is void of any mention or even notion of sin, repentance, the cross, the blood, the broken body, or even the promised return of Jesus.

Instead, we often have, what I call Christless music that exalts feelings and emotions and experiences over the gospel; as though our feelings, emotions, and experiences were meant to be our god. But as we have seen in the opening prayer of our Psalm, the author’s mind and heart and lips have been filled with the timeless doctrinal truths of God’s righteous salvation and preservation of his saints.

It should not surprise us then that our Psalmist’s praise is filled with the same timeless, and doctrinal theology as well. This is why, as he begins to praise God in verses 14 – 16, he cannot help himself but praise God “more and more” as he places his “hope continually”in the God who saves as he proclaims his “righteous acts” and the “deeds of salvation”that outnumber his memories.

As he praises God for his “mighty deeds” of salvation, he recognizes that in his praises he “will remind” everyone around him of God’s righteousness, alone. His praises have ignited a deep desire to proclaim the goodness and faithfulness of our Saving God!

Our Psalmist is so moved by God’s ability to save by his own righteousness, that he cannot even think to speak of his own good deeds because his own good deeds pale in comparison to the work of God in saving sinners by his grace through his own righteous work of salvation at the bloody cross and the empty tomb of Christ. This is true praise my friends – the kind of true praise that speaks of nothing other than the God who is mighty to save!

This is the kind of mature praise that has taken years to develop in the heart of our Psalmist as he acknowledges in verses 17 – 21 that it is God who has taught him from childhood and that he is now, in his old age, trusting God never forsake him until he can “proclaim” the power of God to the next generation of young believers. Once again, this is hope-filled praise igniting the desire to proclaim the excellencies of the God who Saves!

Our Psalmist knows that there is no one like our God, whose “righteousness… reaches the heavens” and surpasses our greatest expectations, because, according to verses 19 – 20, there is no one like God, who makes us to “see many troubles and calamities” and will “revive” us again, in the resurrection as he brings us up from the depths of the earth – he will literally resurrect us from the dead so that our greatness and our comfort will be increased as we take part in the resurrecting power of our risen Savior (vv. 20 – 21).

Can you see the depths of the doctrinal and theological truths seeping out of these verses? Does not this kind of hope-filled praise blow the doors off of whatever passes in the so-called mainstream department of praise and worship music?

My desire is that every believer within the sound of my voice would become so theologically and doctrinally astute that we would hunger for praise and worship like this. The kind of praise and worship that is filled to overflowing with the deep doctrines of grace and salvation in Christ Jesus.

This kind of theologically informed praise and worship cannot be contained – it can only explode more and more into a crescendo of music that fills the air with magnification of the God who is mighty to save and to preserve those who have trusted in him.

This is why our Psalmist wraps things up in a seeming explosion of instruments and singing and even shouting in verses 22 – 24 where he mentions the use of a harp and a lyre (or flute) as he loudly proclaims the faithfulness of God in redeeming his people by his righteous right hand as he disappoints our enemies and puts them to shame for seeking our demise. Satan, Sin, and Death, our mortal enemies, have been vanquished by the work of our crucified, risen, and returning Savior, who suffered in our place at the cross of Calvary. In Christ our enemies have been laid to waste, and we have much reason to praise the One who is mighty to save!

KEY TAKE AWAYS…

So as far as key take aways are concerned, we can see that when we are feeling weak, and helpless, and alone, we can come to God in prayer and if our prayers are doctrinally and theologically informed, our hearts will be moved to pure unadulterated praise and worship of the God who is mighty to save. With that in mind, here are a few things that I think we can apply to our lives that will help us to approach God in prayer and praise the next time we are feeling weak, helpless, and alone.

#1: STUDY AND MEMORIZE THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE

When I use the term “Doctrines of Grace” I am referring to what Charles Spurgeon called the historic gospel and to what most Reformed theologians would call the doctrine of salvation. The Doctrines of Grace lift high the sovereignty of God in saving those who call upon him for salvation as well as preserving them until the end. I believe we can see these doctrines overflowing from the desperate prayer and hope-filled praise of Psalm 71.

Most people will call these Calvinistic doctrines – and they are for the most part – but I see them as Spurgeon did – as the containers of the historic gospel which proclaims God’s might in saving and keeping those who belong to him. The depths of our sins, God’s unconditional choice of those whom he has adopted, the intentionality of Christ’s atonement, God’s irresistible grace, and the preservation of the saints – these are the historic doctrines of grace that should be studied and memorized as foundational and formative rocks of refuge amidst weakness, loneliness, and helplessness.

#2: PRACTICE PRAYING SCRIPTURE

It should be obvious to all of us that the desperate prayer and hope-filled praise of this Psalm is full of the language of Scripture. Our Psalmist has so filled his heart and mind with the words of the Scriptures, that it overflows from deep within him as he surveys his sense of weakness, loneliness, and helplessness. When we practice praying the words of Scripture, we are training our hearts, our minds, and our lips to center themselves on the very Word of God which is powerful to sustain us in the face of our greatest seasons of suffering and hardship.

#3: LISTEN TO THEOLOGICALLY INFORMED MUSIC

It seems clear that our Psalmist filled his mind and heart with sound theology so that when suffering left him feeling weak, helpless, and alone, he could rest his weary soul on the life-giving truths of the gospel. Our media intake is higher than ever before in the history of the human race and yet we are also living in a time when mental illness is at an all-time high despite an overabundance of mental awareness.

Could it be that at least part of the problem is the kind of media intake we are conditioned to, even as it relates to so-called Christian media? I believe that we would be better equipped to endure our own seasons of suffering, weakness, loneliness, and neediness if we filled our hearts and minds gospel centered, theologically informed media – especially as it relates to music because music often relates to the rhythms and desires of the heart and soul.

It would seem that in the absence of any kind of mental health awareness in David’s day, that he weathered the kind of storms that would cripple most of us, simply by filling his mind with the gospel. Therefore, we would do well to do the same! Jus as we should be selective and limit the intake of fast food or un nutritional foods, we should also limit and be selective about what we feed our souls with.

#4: EMBRACE GENERATIONAL DISCIPLESHIP

All too often in the church today, young people are written off as too immature for ministry, and older people are written off as too stuck in their ways. It should not be this way. Young people need to be given the grace and room that is needed to grow, and older folks need to be respected and looked to for their wealth of knowledge and wisdom.

This Psalm is a great example of an older, mature believer who is passing on his wisdom in prayer and praise amidst really difficult circumstances, and he has the desire to continue passing his wisdom on to the next generation. For a church to be healthy, it needs to possess people from all age groups who are laser focused on following Jesus together and passing along a wealth of knowledge in prayer and praise to younger generations.

It is important that all of us have spiritual children, parents, brothers, sisters, and grandparents. My prayer is that the Lord would continue to cultivate this kind of generational discipleship in our church family. 

CONCLUSION…

In conclusion, when our strength is spent, when we feel weak, alone, and helpless, we can follow the example of our Psalmist as he approaches the Lord with a desperate prayer that is centered on God’s mighty to power to save, to transform, to shelter, and to preserve all who call on him for Salvation.

And if we would come to him with the bloody cross, the empty tomb, and the promise of heaven in our view and overflowing from deep within our being, our hearts will explode in hope-filled praises of the One who is not only mighty to save but is also faithful to preserve. – Amen!

1 Unless otherwise specified, all Bible references are to the English Standard Version Bible, The New Classic Reference Edition (ESV) (Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, 2001).

2 Richard, Philips, Psalms 42 – 72, Reformed Expository Commentary, (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing, 2019), 321.

3 Ibid., 321 – 322.

4 Christopher, Brian, Garton, Ash, The Psalms: A Christ-Centered Commentary, Volume 3, Psalms 51 – 100, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2024), 254 – 255.

5 Ibid., 255 – 259.

6 Ibid., 259.