In The Darkness Of His Cave, David Sought His Covenant God In Prayer.

Here I need, congregation, to take you to the cross of Calvary. David’s struggles in the cave were acutely real; we have little difficulty feeling along with him. Yet when all is said and done, the turmoil in David’s soul as expressed in the cry of our psalm foreshadowed but weakly the turmoil within the soul of the Son of God as He hung on the wretched cross. As David moved through the darkness of the cave to the little light at the end of the tunnel where Saul lay asleep, David could cry out to God, could gush forth his complaint. And –as we’ll see in a moment- his covenant God heard him. But not so Christ on the cross! While darkness thicker than that of David’s cave enveloped the cross, heaven refused to hear any cry that would escape the lips of the Son of God. The advice for Jesus written on the faces of those around the cross was to curse God and die, and how tempting, how tempting that will have been for the reject on the cross! But He on His own strength resisted the temptation to curse His God and bow before the devil; instead He bore the wrath of God against the sins of God’s own –against David’s sins also- and so opened the way for God to hear the cries of His own – be it David in the cave long ago, or you and me in our crises today.

For hear David the Lord in heaven certainly did. That’s our last point this morning:

3. The answer of his God

Our text told us that David cried out to his God, and the verses 1-4 gave us the details of that cry. Vs 5 tells us also God’s answer to David’s prayer. For I read these words in the second half of the text:

“I said, ‘You are my refuge,

My portion in the land of the living.”

Notice first of all, congregation, the sense of peace communicated through these words. The first two verses of the psalm portrayed for us a David who couldn’t get his words out fast enough; in his effort to express the turmoil within David “cried out”, he “pleaded”, he “gushed forth”, he “declared”. But now David uses a more neutral word; he says, “You are my refuge, my portion.” Here is the first indication that the pressure is off.

And what does David say? He describes God first as his “refuge”, then as his “portion”. His companions in the back of the cave encouraged him to get rid of the Saul who’s seeking to kill him and that advice was a snare for David so that there was for him no refuge at all with his companions; none of them cared for David’s soul. But God, says David now, is my “refuge”, is my shelter in the midst of the storms. By describing God as his “refuge”, his “shelter” David expresses his trust in God; it is God who gives safety.

Similarly, David confesses that God is his “portion in the land of the living.” His friends at the back of the cave fail him, the man at the mouth of the cave hates him. What’s David got on this earth? He’s alone, his life in danger…, and the temptation so great for David to stick his foot in the snare his friends have laid…. But God has said in the covenant He established with David that He would be “God to you,” and that’s to say the LORD is David’s God and David is His child; hence David’s confession that the LORD is “my portion”. “Portion”: the term played such a central role when Israel entered the Promised Land. God, you remember, gave to each tribe its “portion”, and to each family within each tribe the family’s “portion” too. The point is that each got a plot of land to call their own, to build a house and make a living. That block of land represented security, food, shelter, and your place within Israel; that’s why your portion, your inheritance had to come back to you in the Year of Jubilee. Well, David in the cave had nothing, no land, no shelter from the storms of life, no security. But he had the LORD who had established His covenant of grace with him for Jesus’ sake, and that, says David, is enough. If this God for Jesus’ sake would be his God –and that’s what the sacrament of circumcision impressed upon David, and what the sacrifices in the tabernacle proclaimed also- than David was safe, this God would give him sufficient - even in the face of the dangers around him. For God is an inheritance no one can take away.