Psalm 11—An Immoveable Confidence
To the choirmaster. Of David.
1 In the Lord I take refuge; how can you say to my soul, “Flee like a bird to your mountain, 2 for behold, the wicked bend the bow; they have fitted their arrow to the string to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart; 3 if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?”
4 The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord’s throne is in heaven; his eyes see, his eyelids test the children of man.
5 The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence. 6 Let him rain coals on the wicked; fire and sulfur and a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup.
7 For the Lord is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face. (Psalm 11, ESV)
The Jewish Christians that the book of Hebrews addressed went through some trying times. The cradle of Judaism they'd grown up in had turned on them, and they found themselves cast out from their home culture. But their lives were also incompatible with the way most people in Roman society lived. As a result, many of them found themselves scratching together a life on the margins, which is why Hebrews told them not to forsake gathering together with other believers (Heb. 10:25). In an age like theirs, Christian fellowship was of utmost importance.
And so was endurance. So Hebrews said, "You have need of endurance. God's righteous one must live by faith. But if he shrinks back, God is not pleased. But we are not of those who shrink back, but of those who have faith" (paraphrase of parts of Hebrews 10:36-39).
It is this endurance, this unshrinking and immoveable confidence, that our psalm addresses. It is a confidence we desperately need today. Rather than be anxious about life and the future, we must have faith and confidence in what God is doing (Matt. 6:25-34).
That faith leads to the kind of life found in this psalm because "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Heb. 11:1). And that's precisely what David looked like in this song of prayer—he was sure God was working and convinced God's goodness was coming.
But there were reasons not to think with such confidence, and someone talked to David about it. We don't know what situation threatened David, but whatever it was, it was so bad that someone exhorted David to protect himself by fleeing like a bird to his mountain (1). His enemy—maybe Saul, maybe someone else—had their finger on the trigger. The bow was bent, the arrow was loaded onto the string, and the assassin was ready to shoot from the shadows (2).
And not only was David under threat, but the very foundations had been destroyed—this is likely a reference to the foundations of society (3). The very foundations of David's society were being ruined. We don't know the specific background to this psalm, but David certainly felt the shakeup of his world multiple times. His father-in-law Saul and, later, his son Absalom, had both overturned righteousness in Israel and cultivated a chaotic and lawless environment.
Whoever spoke to David had come to a frightening conclusion. They had scrolled through their news feed and had seen the signs. The wicked were on the rise, aiming at everyone who was upright in heart (2). And the foundations of society itself were crumbling. So they concluded: what can the righteous do? (3). It all felt so hopeless and impossible.
But for as logical and reasonable as this person sounded when they rattled off the list of despairing current events, they were wrong, and David knew it. He could not believe they were trying to manipulate his soul to feel all was hopeless, which is why he started this whole psalm with a note of resolve: In the Lord do I take refuge (1).
This is the same attitude that pushed David to run out to slay Goliath when everyone else peed their pants because of Goliath. That day, he was the only one to mention God's name or believe in God's power (1 Sam. 17:6).
But that was David. For all his faults, he was a God-hearted man who was willing to put God in the complex equations of life. Sure, without God, the situation was precisely as his counselor said. But with God, the situation was entirely different, so David decided to take courage by finding his refuge in the Lord.
I believe this immovable confidence is important for our day as well. We live in a time where the very foundations of society are under siege. We are taught that we're, in essence, highly unlikely cosmic accidents, bags of bones and fluids and—somehow—desires. If we have no designer, we might as well rewrite all the pillars of society—the sanctity of human life, sex, gender, family, and many other categories get rewritten and rewritten again.
But the foundational chaos David felt in Israel finds its best corollary today when there is foundational chaos in the church. Israel was God's chosen people. The church is God's chosen people. And when the church drifts from the fear of God, doctrinal soundness, gospel clarity, and lives filled with good works, the very foundations are corrupted. We live in a day when many believers would have a much easier time defending their political positions than the doctrine of the Trinity or eternal judgment or justification by faith. The foundations, so often, feel as if they have been destroyed. This is the true tragedy of our time. When the world acts like the world, it's expected. But when the church acts like the world—when societal chaos and moral decay happen in the church—it's an atrocity.
This state of things is the very reason we must recover an immovable confidence in our God. David decided to take refuge in the Lord, and we must make the same decision every day. When we hear the despondent question, "What can the righteous do?," we should bolt up and say, "With God's help, anything!"
But how can we get there? The same way David did—by fixing our eyes on who God is. Panic will always set in when you have a small view of God. Immoveable confidence is only found by diving into an understanding of God. So what did David know about God? Three things:
1. God is the Ultimate King (4)
First, David recognized that God is the ultimate king. Though chaos unfolded around him, he saw past all that into God's holy temple in heaven (4). And what he saw there was the Lord seated on the throne (4). From his throneroom vantage point, God could see everything—and as he saw everything, he tested every work of the children of man (4).
In the Bible, God's throne is a symbol of his universal rule and authority. As David considered his predicament, he was relieved from his distress by the knowledge that God has a throne way beyond the realm of man.[^1]
In the book of Daniel, King Nebuchadnezzar had a dream about Jesus' kingdom. First, he saw a statue with a head of gold, a chest of silver, thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of iron and clay (Daniel 2:32-33). In his vision, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and the whole thing was broken in pieces (Daniel 3:34-35).
Daniel declared the various metals represented various world powers and kingdoms. But the stone represented God's kingdom:
"And in the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever..." (Daniel 2:44, ESV).
This is the kingdom Jesus brought. And in days like ours, we must remember the forever nature of Jesus' kingdom.
The knowledge that God is in control, seated on his throne, and moving the universe to his desired outcome should be a source of great relief to his people. But this doctrine is meant for more than a therapeutic effect on our psyches; it is meant to make us into a non-anxious presence in an angry and divided world.[^2] Without an understanding that God is sovereign, in control, and seeing all things, we inevitably become easily frightened and jostled. But when it becomes a settled fact that God is on the throne, you become calm and confident in him and his work on earth. As Isaiah said:
Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who have an anxious heart, “Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.” (Isaiah 35:3–4, ESV)
This knowledge that God is enthroned is what we need much of in our modern time. The church has long adopted the strategy of trying to be relevant to the world as a way to reach the world. It is a strategy that will not work for the emerging generations. The chasm between Christianity and culturally accepted norms is too big to bridge with relevancy. Instead, we must recognize that God is on the throne, maintain a quiet confidence in him, and live as if he is the King of our lives. This resilient life is what's needed to face the pressures of the day.
I know many of you regularly become overwhelmed by what you perceive as bad news. But I want you to know that amid all the cultural chaos you see happening, there is a remnant revival happening. God is reaching people. I believe many of them would never have become opened up to the gospel without the chaotic events we often bemoan. Let's be a people who are confident that our God cannot be stopped. He is moving and reaching and stirring the hearts of men to bend their will to him. He is on the throne.
2. God is the Ultimate Judge (5-6)
Second, David recognized that God is the ultimate judge. Not only did God see everything about the children of men, but he also tested the righteous while hating the wicked and the one who loves violence (4-5). In other words, since God is good, holy, and righteous, he is predisposed against wickedness and violence. He—in his pure and untainted way—hates wickedness. This led David to pray that God would use his predisposition to righteousness to rain coals on the wicked (6). Fire and sulfur and a scorching wind was just the trifecta David had in mind (6).
I recognize many of us become uncomfortable with these imprecatory prayers that call down catastrophe or violence on anyone—and others of us might be wrongly happy about them—so I would like to offer you some tools to aid you in understanding passages like these.
First, you should determine what genre of the Bible you are studying. For example, these verses are in the Psalms, the prayer journal of the ancient people of Israel. This helps us remember that we are not in the mountain peaks of doctrine as we would be in Romans but are in the valleys of human emotion and feeling. This is a prayer, a wishful and human longing that God would judge.
Second, you should determine the context of the passage. For this psalm, you could consider how David lived out the feelings and prayers of this psalm. If his antagonizer was Saul, as many people think, it is telling that he never lifted a finger against Saul but instead committed Saul's judgment into God's hands. He went to God with his request, but he left that request with God.
Third, you should determine if there is further revelation found later in the Bible. And here, when it comes to God's judgment and his people's attitudes toward the lost, there is. At the cross, we learn that Jesus took the fire and sulfur and east wind of God's wrath into his body on the cross so that any who would repent and trust him would be accepted by God. And after the cross, we learn that God's people worked as hard as they could for a humanity sitting under the crosshairs of God's judgment. The church wanted everyone to hear the gospel so they could be saved from eventual judgment.
Again: genre, context, further revelation. Dan Kimball does this in his defense of the Bible by explaining Psalm 137:9's statement: "Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock" (Ps. 137:9).
As for genre, he points out it is a poetic and stressed-out guttural cry to God—honesty in psalmic form.
As for context, he points out that the Babylonians had literally killed Israelite babies by dashing them against the rocks, so the Israelites were praying back to God with parental grief. They weren't making a plan, giving a command, or making a promise, but were war prisoners expressing a figurative hope that God would one day somehow avenge them. And, in their deep pain, they were speaking to God, not for God.
As for further revelation, Jesus came along and told us not to repay evil for evil, eye for eye, and tooth for tooth, but to absorb evil as he did upon the cross (Mat. 5:38-48). Again: genre, context, further revelation.[^3]
All that to say, in this movement of the psalm, David comforted himself with the knowledge that God is the ultimate judge. He is King, on his throne, and with a plan, but he will also one day judge everyone. He will hold every human soul accountable to the divine revelation they received, from the creation to the explicit gospel. He will open the books, and only those who are listed in the Lamb's Book of Life will enter into glory (Rev. 21:27). And all those who rejected God and did not want to surrender to him will be judged.
In 2010, during the Kobe years, a co-pastor friend and I rooted all year long for the L.A. Lakers to win the basketball championship. But the night of the final game of the final round against the Boston Celtics was scheduled for a church night, so he recorded the game on his DVR. After church, the two of us went to his house and proceeded to watch the game. At one point, with the Lakers down big, commercials came on, so he forwarded through them. But his finger slipped, and the game jumped to the very end. Purple and gold (the Lakers' colors) confetti rained down from the rafters, and the Lakers celebrated on the floor. We were shocked. They'd won. We rewound the game to see how it happened, but we were no longer on the edge of our seats. Knowing the outcome, we were able to calmly watch every "good" and "bad" event during the game without any anxiety or stress. Our team was going to win.
Brothers and sisters, knowing God as the judge of all should create an immovable confidence within us. He is on the throne. He is the judge of all.
3. God is the Ultimate Goal (7)
Finally, David recognized that God is the ultimate goal. He looked to God and saw how he is righteous and loves righteous deeds (7). And David knew, as much as God sees all deeds and judges all flesh, the upright shall behold his face (7). Perhaps he meant that the upright would behold God in heaven one day. Perhaps he meant a vision of God would get him through his trials. Perhaps he meant he knew he would experience God's deliverance.
And on this side of the cross, we know that righteousness comes by faith in the gospel (Rom. 3:22). And when this righteousness is imputed to us, we gain the very position of the Son of God before Father God. And though we cannot see the fullness of his glory yet, we do get to come boldly before the throne of grace (Heb. 4:16). So in a sense, by the blood of Christ, we get to behold the face of God. And one day, when Jesus appears, "we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2).
But this was David's conclusion: God is the ultimate goal. Since he is righteous, he loves righteous deeds, and upright people get to see him. And David wanted to see him. He knew that all the threats and worries and foundation-shaking activity in his world were nothing in comparison to knowing God. If David had been offered peace and security without God, he would have rejected it. He wanted God.
I believe God is calling his people right now. The foundations are shaken. The weapons are loaded. The temptation to flee like a bird to our mountain is ever-present. And the feeling there is nothing the righteous can do looms.
But, through it all, God beckons. "Thus says the LORD: 'Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls'"’ (Jer. 6:16). God wants us to get back to his "ancient paths" and "walk-in" that "good way." He does not invite us to an instant solution but a slow, long, continual process of walking with him—because that's what a path implies.
Confidently get on that path, over and over again. Each day, trade your anxiety and fear with him for confidence and faith. Set your mind on God every day. See his face and be immoveably confident in him. Without this confidence, life disintegrates into fear and anxiety. Without this confidence, we cannot know the fullness of life God intended through the cross. But we find this confidence by doing as David did, looking afresh to God.[^4]
[^1]: Rydelnik, Michael, and Michael Vanlaningham, editors. The Moody Bible Commentary. Moody Press, 2014.
[^2]: Sayers, Mark. A Non-Anxious Presence A Non-Anxious Presence. Moody Press, 2022.
[^3]: Kimball, Dan. How (Not) to Read the Bible: Making Sense of the Anti-Women, Anti-Science, pro-Violence, pro-Slavery and Other Crazy-Sounding Parts of Scripture. Zondervan, 2020.
[^4]: Craigie, Peter C. Word Biblical Commentary: Psalms 1-50. Send The Light, 1983.