Glorifying God in the cave

When we began our study of Psalm 57, David was inside a cave.

He's still there.

Nothing's changed.

Oh, wait. Something HAS changed.

He's singing praise songs!

Like we said before, as far as we know, Saul is still king. And if David so much as pokes his head out to see if the armies are still around, he will probably be spotted and killed! 
But in spite of all this, David is not whining in self-pity. He's not complaining. He is praising God.  David's making sure that God is glorified, even in his trials. 

We saw yesterday that praise in difficult times is a matter of deliberately focusing on the Lord, and on praising Him. Today, we will study and see that David says praise is a matter of testifying to others of God's goodness: 

I will praise you, Lord, among the nations;
    I will sing of you among the peoples.
10 For great is your love, reaching to the heavens;
    your faithfulness reaches to the skies.

David wants the "nations," that is, the people who don't know God, to hear his praise. Even though he is going through extreme difficulty, David wants to sing about how good God is -- not only does he want to praise God, but he wants others to hear and glorify God, too.

We saw in verse three that David picked two aspects of God's goodness to exalt:

He sends from heaven and saves me,
    rebuking those who hotly pursue me—
    God sends forth his love and his faithfulness. (v. 3)

And we see this again in verse ten, up above this text. David is praising God's love (lovingkindness) and faithfulness.  Scratching aside some cobwebs, we remember from a previous study that the Hebrew word for lovingkindness is related to the stork. The Hebrews saw the diligent, loyal love of the stork for its young and said, "God's love is like that - only greater!"  God the Father cares for us and nurtures us with His never-ending love.

 Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments. (Deuteronomy 7:9)

 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. (I John 4:16)

When David mentions faithfulness, he is pointing to God's being consistent. He is trustworthy. He never, ever fails His children. He may allow us to be in severe situations, and even to premature death; but there is not one person in history who has trusted in our Savior and been disappointed. Even those who have suffered persecution have testified to God's abundant love and faithfulness which has sustained them. Paul was in prison and facing execution when he said what he desired:

I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. (Philippians 1:20)

In the midst of our trials, Satan will tempt us to doubt. We must focus on God's love and faithfulness to us, because those are exactly the avenues the devil will take, to try to get us to fall away from our Lord. "Love? Faithfulness?" he will sneer into our ears . . . "If He loves you, why is this happening?"

But if our eyes and our hearts are fixed upon Jesus Christ, we will sing with David from the cave, "God, Your lovingkindness is great to the heavens and Your truth to the clouds!" We will praise and glorify Him. Anyone who has a conversation with us will walk away knowing that we love and worship a great God Who is loving and faithful.

If we focus on our purpose: to glorify God -- He will give us a song in the cave.