Obtaining God's Deliverance Series

INTRODUCTION

A. Here is a dog that needed deliverance:

A Tacoma, Washington, newspaper carried the story of Tattoo the basset hound. Tattoo didn’t intend to go for an evening run, but when his owner shut the dog’s leash in the car door and took off for a drive with Tattoo still outside the vehicle, he had no choice.

Motorcycle officer Terry Filbert noticed a passing vehicle with something dragging behind it: it was "the basset hound picking [up his feet] and putting them down as fast as he could." He chased the car to a stop. Tattoo was rescued, but not before the dog had reached a speed of 20 to 25 miles per hour, rolling over several times.

Too many of us end up living like Tattoo, our days marked by picking them up and putting them down as fast as we can.

It’s time to learn another way to live.

B. The need for deliverance is normally even more urgent for us.

1. When we went to the Dominican Republic in 1987, we had a couple of situations where we thought we would need deliverance.

a. Nancy was in 5th grade when we took the trip. She was traveling in a over packed mini-van on a trip home from the beach on Sunday afternoon when the mini-van, filled with nearly all women and children, broke down. We were in another vehicle, not sure where the mini-van was. All the people in the mini-van, except one, only spoke Spanish, and he left with his family. We returned to where we were staying, only to get a phone message from the family who had left the mini-van about what had happened. We could not stay and wait to see how things turned out because we were scheduled to be at a church across town where I was to preach. When you have that kind of uncertainty, you feel like you need deliverance. Everything turned out fine by the time the evening was lover, but we had some uncertainty for a while.

b. On that same trip, our missionary friend was stopped in a speed trap late at night by policemen with menacing rifles. Billy refused to give the police bribes, which is why they stopped Americans. Christine especially had a few anxious moments. I had been riding that trip every night for over a week by that time, so I was not quite as concerned, but we were still anxious. In the end, again, everything worked, as Billy can talk like a native Dominican, and he got everything resolved.

c. All of us have had anxious moments of varying degrees. With many of them, we realize later, that we did not need to be as anxious as we were. At the moment, though, we feel a need for deliverance.

2. Other situations are even more demanding. My missionary friends, Marty and Tina Ganong, in Conakry, Guinea, where Jane Fisher is going for her internship, have had some anxious moments recently due to the turmoil of the political situation there. Almost a year and a half ago (early 2007), while Ganong’s were in the U.S., missionaries were evacuated from Guinea. Now the unrest has developed again, and they were forced recently to spend a few nights in a safe house. The airport was closed for a few days. By last weekend, they were able to safely return to their home, but no one knows for sure how things will develop in the coming days. Sometimes you feel like you need deliverance.

3. We all have such moments in the ordinary affairs of life where you feel that life has gotten a hold of you, and you need deliverance.

• That is what this Psalm addresses. It tells about a person who faces physical danger as a new day dawns.

C. There are some important things to know about this Psalm.

1. This is the first Psalm to have an inscription: The inscription tells us the Psalm was written by David, and gives us the occasion of its writing.

a. This is the first Psalm attributed to David.

b. This is also the first time the word psalm is used. The Hebrew word means a poem to be sung to musical accompaniment.

c. This is also the first Psalm where the word selah is used. It is used three times, and I will discuss it later.

2. The inscriptions for the Psalms are important. They do not appear in all the English translations, which is too bad, since they do appear in the Hebrew Bible.

3. In this Psalm, we also clearly see four movements, which are similar to our hymn verses.

KEY STATEMENT

Psalm 3 has four movements which show us, from David experience, the nature of God’s deliverance.

I. WHEN WE NEED DELIVERANCE, THERE IS A CRISIS– Vss. 1,2.