There’s a Psalm for That

Maybe some of you can remember Apple’s ad campaign “There’s an app for that” – came out in 2009 for the iPhone 3g. I remember the ads. And about every other tech news story began with “there’s an app for that” and then someone ran a new story about news stories overusing “there’s an app for that” in their stories. Honestly people probably still pull it out from time to time. Sometimes when I come up with a unique idea I catch myself saying, “there’s an app for that.” If there is anything you need, or desire, any strange hobby you have, any task you need help with, any question you need the answer to, there’s an app for that.

Well far more important than knowing “there’s an app for that”, I want you to learn a different slogan: “there’s a psalm for that.” God has given us 150 Psalms to sing and read and pray. And he gives them to us so that we can take all different circumstances and emotional states to him. And while lots of them share lots of similar language to Psalm 31, about trusting in the LORD, making the LORD your refuge, having troubles, each Psalm is uniquely suited to address different experiences. For every human experience, “there’s a Psalm for that.”

Psalm 31

What is it for Psalm 31? A brief overview of the Psalm might help us:

• Verses 1-8: these verses feel like they could be a standalone Psalm. The Psalmist is crying out to God for deliverance, with a posture of confidence. There are problems, but God clearly will deliver him.
• But then in verses 9-13 David plunges back into deep distress as he describes his issues.
• Verses 14-22 he reasserts his trust in the LORD.
• Verses 23-24 he calls other to love and trust in the LORD.

But even after this turn in v14, you keep hearing references to his troubles all the way up to verse 23, where he mentions “those who act in pride.” Pain, struggle, evildoers, keep casting their shadow in this Psalm. This is someone who is living life, and even though he’s confident in the LORD, his faith isn’t a neat and tidy faith. It’s faith in the midst of persistent struggles.

That’s Psalm 31, So what would we miss if we didn’t have Psalm 31? This Psalm particularly encourages our faith as we wrestle with the persistent presence of evil in our lives. Maybe you have a day where every little thing goes wrong, or a season where you can’t quite shake the sense, the cloud of pain, failure, foreboding. Maybe you’ve had prolonged times of suffering. Or maybe you feel like your faith is real but you’re constantly discomposed by the concerns around you, and you’re even made quite anxious by long-term problems in your life, and you’re starting to question, “Is my faith real? How can it be if I’m so troubled by other things”

If those descriptions fit your experience: there’s a Psalm for that. Psalm 31

Now if I could boil down the takeaway into one sentence: here’s what I want you to know:

Christians can take refuge in the Lord Jesus Christ in the midst of persistent problems.

That sentence backwards will be our outline:

1. The problems we face     2. The Lord we take refuge in      3. Taking refuge in the Lord Jesus