248. Encountering the Book of Psalms: Psalm 9 Teaching Our God of Refuge in the Face of Injustice

Hey everyone.

Welcome back to Holistic Hearts.

I'm your host, Kristin Chadwick and I'm welcoming you to episode 248.

We are jumping back into the Encountering the Book of Psalms.

And how that's gonna play out is I'll do a teaching on this episode and on the very next episode, I will have an encounter that is based off of Psalm 9.

So.

So I don't know about you, but the world feels a little or a lot heavy right now.

And every time that I open social media right now, there's another story of injustice, another story of suffering, another story of the oppressed being overlooked or ignored or taken advantage of.

I mean, you can think of human trafficking, of war, of violence, of corruption, people being used and abused.

And if I'm honest, and I don't talk about politics or anything like that very often, really at all.

But I will say at times it can feel absolutely overwhelming and it can feel like too much.

And maybe you are feeling that too this week, or maybe you're not just watching injustice on the news, but maybe you're living out in the real day to day life.

Maybe you're facing your own situation where you feel overlooked or forgotten or mistreated or oppressed in some kind of way.

And the question that you and I might be asking is, where is God in all of this suffering?

Does he see?

Does he care?

Is he going to do anything about it?

And that's what we're talking about today.

Because as I've been sitting in Psalm 9 and friends, this psalm has an answer for all of us.

I have just felt this like, okay Lord, thanks for meeting me right here.

As I'm thinking about human trafficking or what's happening in the news.

So I want to read it to you.

So grab your Bible if you want and you can follow along or just listen as I read, I'm going to read out of the Passion translation.

I did some digging.

I. I really sat with this in the new King James Version for quite a bit.

And then I picked up my Passion translation and was like, you know what this feels like?

My heart can grasp this a little bit more.

The other version that I recommend too would be the message translation.

That one is good as well.

But right now I'm going to read out of the Passion translation.

So here we go.

Psalm 9.

Lord God, I will praise you with all my heart.

I will tell everyone, every, everywhere about your wonderful works.

I will be glad and shout in triumph.

I will sing praise to your exalted name, O God.

Most High.

For when you appear, I worship you.

While my enemies run in retreat, they stumble and perish before your presence.

For you have stood up for my cause and vindicated me when I needed you the most.

From the righteous throne, you have given me justice.

With the blast of your rebuke, nations are destroyed.

You obliterated their names forever and ever.

The Lord thundered and our enemies have been cut off, vanished in everlasting ruins.

All their cities have been destroyed.

Even the memory of them has been erased.

But Yahweh, our mighty God, reigns forever.

He sits enthroned as king, ready to render his verdicts and judge all.

With righteousness, he will issue his decrees of judgment, deciding what is right for the entire world, dispensing justice to all.

All who are oppressed may come to Yahweh as a high shelter in the time of trouble.

A perfect hiding place for everyone who knows your wonderful name keeps putting their trust in you.

They can count on you for help no matter what.

O Lord.

You will never, no, never neglect those who come to you.

Listen, everyone.

Sing out your praises to the to God who rules in Zion.

Tell the world about all the mer.

Tell the world about all the miracles he has done.

He tracks down killers and avenges bloodshed.

But he will never forget the ones forgotten by others, hearing every one of their cries for justice.

So now, O Lord, don't forget me.

Have mercy on me.

Take note of how I've been humiliated at the hands of those who hate me.

You are the one who can snatch me away from the gates of death.

Then I will sing your praises as I pass through the gates of the Daughter of Zion, rejoicing in your deliverance.

For the nations get trapped in the very snares they set for others.

The hidden trap that.

That they set for the weak has snapped shut upon themselves.

Yahweh is famous for his justice.

While the wicked are digging a pit for others, they are actually setting the terms for their own judgment.

They will fall into their own pit.

Don't forget this.

All the wicked will one day fall into the darkness of death's domain, including the nations that forget God and reject his ways.

He will not forget the needs of the poor.

One day the needy will be remembered and their hopes will not be forever dashed in disappointment.

Yahweh, it's time to arise and judge the nations who defy you.

Don't let rebellious men triumph.

Make them tremble in fear before your presence.

Place a lawgiver over them.

Make them know that they are only puny Frail humans who must give an account to you.

Wow, there's so much in this psalm, isn't there?

And I want to draw your attention back to verse nine and ten.

All who are oppressed may come to Yahweh as a high shelter in the time of trouble.

A perfect hiding place for everyone who knows your wonderful name keeps putting their trust in you.

They can count on you for help no matter what.

O Lord, you will never, no, never neglect those who come to you.

Did you catch that?

All who are oppressed may come to Yahweh as a high shelter.

You will never, no, never neglect those who come to you.

This isn't someday, this isn't wait until heaven and everything will be okay.

This is now, this is today.

This is in the midst of the message.

And David wrote this psalm in the middle of his own battles.

He was hunted.

He was facing enemies, legit enemies.

I mean, there's just so many things that David faced and suffered through and chose and repented.

He knew what it felt like to be oppressed.

He knew what it felt like to be afraid.

And what does he do?

He brings it to God.

He runs towards God.

He doesn't pretend that everything is fine.

He doesn't spiritualize his pain away and ignore it.

He brings a reality of injustice and oppression to the God who sees.

And here's what he discovers.

He discovers that God is a refuge.

God is a high shelter.

And God never, never, no, never forsakes those who seek him.

So what does that mean for you and for me today?

First, God sees injustice.

Nothing is escaping his sight.

Not the trafficking of victim, not what happened to you, not what happened to a child that's being abused, not the person being overlooked at work, not the injustice that you're facing personally, not the case that was just brought up.

He sees all injustice.

And you heard it in the psalm that God judges the world with righteousness.

He holds people accountable.

He sees what's happening and he cares.

Verse 12, it says, God, the great avenger, will remember those who suffer.

He doesn't forget the cries of the needy, of all those in distress.

Your pain matters to him.

The suffering of the world matters to him.

He's not distant and he's not uncaring.

He sees all of it.

The second thing of what it means for us today with Psalm 9 and what is true about who God is is that God is our refuge right now.

When David says high shelter and perfect hiding place, he's not talking about escaping reality.

He's talking about running to God.

In the reality.

It's like, you know how if you were in a storm and you run inside of a shelter, you don't deny that there is a storm that is brewing around you.

You just find safety in the storm.

And that's what God is doing for the oppressed.

And you can bring your fear, you can bring your anger, you can bring your confusion, your.

This isn't fair to him.

He can handle it all.

He invites it all.

Charles Spurgeon wrote about Psalm 9.

We have here before us, most engagingly, a triumphal hymn.

May it strengthen the faith of the militant believer and this and stimulate the courage of the timid saint.

This psalm isn't just information and like, oh, that was a cute, poetic thing of David.

It's actually meant to strengthen us and to give us courage.

Because when we know that God sees, when we know that he's our refuge, when we know how he will never forsake us, that changes everything.

Number three.

God calls us to partner with His.

His justice.

We're not just passive observers or bystanders.

We don't just pray and hope.

We act.

So we speak up for the voiceless.

We support organizations that are fighting injustice.

We use our.

Our voices to.

To speak up for those that cannot speak for themselves.

We become part of God's rescue mission.

So as I was preparing for the Psalm 9 and really reading and asking the Lord, like, what do you want to bring up?

One thing that he shared with me was, what is the cause that I'm calling you to partner with?

This is January right now, as this is released, and it is also Human Trafficking Awareness Month.

There are organizations that my husband and I both support and are 100% backing what they do.

Exodus Road is one of them.

And they literally are rescuing people from trafficking.

Right now, I'm on a text thread of their organization, and they text out, like, almost weekly.

It'll say, four traffickers were freed in Thailand today.

And that's powerful.

Being able to support the people that are actually on the ground, boots on the ground, doing the hard work of setting captives free.

That's beautiful.

So when you think about, as you read Psalm 9, what is that cause or that movement or organization that you have thought about supporting?

Or even if you volunteered to help pack bags for trafficking victims, or maybe it's the homeless shelter that is right down the street from you, or it's foster care.

What are those things that you have had on your heart?

And asking the Lord, how do you want me to partner financially, prayerfully, supporting the people that are running this organization.

What is it?

So maybe it's through giving financially, and maybe it's through that prayer, like I said.

But I want you to know that you can be part of helping set captives free.

And he wants to partner with you in the movement of justice.

God invites us to be a part of what he is doing as the body of Christ.

So here's what I want you to hear.

If you are facing some kind of injustice right now, a personal injustice, not just what you see on news, but something that is deeply, You know, you're struggling to walk through right now, I want you to know that God sees you.

He has not forgotten you.

He is with you in the midst of it.

And I can think right now, in my own life, there have been seasons when it has felt so oppressive to walk through some of the things that we've walked through as a family, as a woman, as a mom, that it really did feel like, are you there, Lord?

It's me, Kristen, asking for help.

And he shows up, my friend, he does show up.

He does show up.

The needy shall not always be forgotten, and the expectation of the poor shall not perish forever.

From verse 18, that word expectation in Hebrew is tiquah, T I Q U, A H. And it means hope.

Not just wishful thinking, but.

But expectation, something that you're yearning for.

And it comes from a root word that means to stretch like a rope.

I don't know if you know the story of Rahab, but Rahab was essentially a secret spy.

And she hung a scarlet rope out of her window as her hope of rescue.

And that rope was her tequa.

So, friend, God is stretching a rope of hope into your situation right now.

Right now.

And I can think of just a personal example of this is when we were walking through a really tough season with one of my kiddos.

And we were desperate for hope.

We were desperate for a change.

Life was tough on the day to day and just throwing.

Knowing that God was throwing a rope to help me grab and that one day it would actually turn into this story of hope and faithfulness of who he is and God as the healer and the God who sees and the God who knows, and the God who created beauty out of such hard mess.

That's beautiful.

Tiqua, right?

It means hope.

Even in the valley of Achor, there's.

There's a.

So the valley of Achor, if you go into the new King James version that 18, it says the valley of Achor, which is the valley of trouble.

Hosea 2:15 says, God gives us a door of hope.

The Valley of Acor is the door of hope.

So whatever brought you trouble is now a door of hope.

And like in our situation, what we walked through with our son and the hardship is now hope for other people who are walking similar roads, who are walking in similar situations where they are suffering.

So your trouble can become your doorway to encountering God as your refuge.

He's not asking you to deny the pain, to deny what you're going through.

He's actually inviting you to bring him into.

Bring him into this situation so God sees, He cares and he acts.

And he is your refuge.

He is your high shelter, your perfect hiding place.

And you can come to him with all of it.

The news that overwhelms you, the injustice that you're seeing or that you're personally facing, the feeling of helplessness or hopelessness.

Bring it all to Him.

The next episode 249 is going to be an encounter with him as our refuge.

We're going to practice bringing our burdens to God and experiencing him as our shelter.

But I want you to sit with this as we close out this episode.

You will never, no, never neglect those who come to you.

That's what it says about who God is.

The Father will never, no, never neglect you who come to Him.

You are seen, you are not forgotten.

And you are not alone.

All right, I'll see you on the next episode.