Psalm 31:1-5 “Prayer for Protection”

I need to start with giving you all a long homework assignment. I should have probably given you this assignment last week so that you would be ready this week! To understand the context of the Psalm that was read, I would love for you all to go back to 1 Samuel 16-24, yes all those chapters, to understand why King David needs prayers of protection.

So, let me summarize to make a long story short: After the young shepherd boy David (who would become King of Israel) killed Goliath, King Saul, the first King of Israel, was jealous and thought that his political power was being challenged by David. So, as we can read in the Bible, the reward that the young shepherd boy got for defeating the Goliath Philistine and saving all of Israel was that King Saul tried to have him killed. In fact there were multiple attempts on his life. David had to flee from Judah. Of course his reputation preceded him, so the kings of those other lands also wanted to kill him. Saul tried to get David’s own loyal men to turn against him. He hunted him down.David went to hiding out in a cave and pretending to be crazy.

I do not know if you have ever had to live with someone else basically hunting you down to take your life. One really is left with only a prayer to God for protection at times. I remember back in Los Angeles being attacked by a homeless woman with a long kitchen knife. She threatened to kill me. She knew where we lived and came and slashed up the door and cut up all the flowers in the garden. She threatened to kill my dog, and indeed we found hotdogs in the backyard that had been filled inside with some pink pills. Of course, we called the police. She was gone by the time LAPD arrived. The officer said that I had to go down to the courthouse and get a restraining order against her. I did that. I just was not sure how that little piece of paper was going to stop the crazy woman from killing me or my loved ones.

She stalked me. I would look across the street from the church office and see her walking on the sidewalk there. I would call the police again, but she would disappear. Finally, one day one of the pre-school teachers saw her and called the police for me. This time they caught her and put her in jail–twenty-four hour hold. During that one-day hold, two detectives from Venice Homicide Division showed up in my office and asked me if I knew this woman. They ran a list of twenty-eight aliases that she was known by. I said that indeed I knew her and knew exactly where she was–in the jail in Santa Monica–which they did not seem to know about. AS it turned out, she was wanted by the police for murder. Thank God it was not me that she murdered!

Was I praying to God for protection during all that time? You know it! A little piece of paper from a judge or the absolute power of the King of the Universe, I knew who could help me more! The detectives did pick her up and brought her to Federal prison.

I would never wish for anybody to be stalked and threatened. I would always hope that we live safe and secure lives. However, this whole scenario repeated itself later once again, but this time it was with our eldest daughter Carolyn who was being stalked by a young man. Again the police were called in. Again the restraining order was issued by the court. Again, we felt as if that little piece of paper was not really enough to give us that sense of protection and well being in our lives again.

It was time to move away from the environment in which we felt threatened. I applied to another church and was called to that church in another state. This was on the mainland. Then, however, Jim Cassell Sr. from Waimea, Kauai, Hawaii, called me on the phone and convinced me to just come out and take a look at this congregation–despite the fact that I had already been called by the other church. And, I will be honest with you, one of the biggest draws to coming to Waimea then was the fact that we knew this young man could not drive his truck across the Pacific to continue stalking Carolyn. Waimea became our God-provided refuge from attack.

Just as a follow-up, within two weeks of moving here, my daughter Carolyn got a subpoena to appear in court back in Grant County, Washington. The stalker wanted to have the judge rescind the restraining order. Of course that was just a ruse to get Carolyn back stateside. So, we asked the judge to rule ex parte since our residency was outside of the court’s jurisdiction anyway.

The nice thing about being protected by God is that there is no legalese involved. Just bow down before the Lord and ask “God protect us.” Guess what? God may be protecting us then and we might not even ever realize it! I like to think that.

I just want to affirm for you that I do believe that God has protected me in my life already. I have shared with you all before that I can count up many times when I could have or should have died already. I have crash landed twice in airplanes. I have been shot at. Just missed a mortar barrage in the city of Chiang Dao, Thailand. I have had the homeless woman come after me with a knife–and the list goes on and on.

I think back to David’s story of seeking refuge while being attacked by Saul, and I realize that God must be protecting my life for a reason. Somehow God has need of me. I fit into some plan. In that very thought, I take the greatest refuge. God protects me for a reason. God protects us for a good cause.

I have to mention that in Bible Study on Tuesday morning I asked the question I always like to ask: “What word appears most often in the text?” I thought for sure it would be “refuge” or “fortress.” Then, Mary quickly responded “ME”! Indeed, I had to look again, but sure enough the word “me” appears nine times. That means that this text is about “me”! We cannot read this text and without coming to the conclusion that it is all about us. We read it and we start relating back to all the times we have taken refuge in the Lord. God has been our fortress in times of trouble.

Now today, we do not have fortresses like in times of old. In order to be safe and secure, people used to build fortresses of stone with thick walls. They built these fortresses high upon scraggly rocks. When Martin Luther wrote the hymn we sang this morning, “A Mighty Fortress,” he was hiding out in a fortress. He was kidnapped by sympathizers who moved him to Wartburg Fortress near Eisenach, Germany. There he was safe because the Pope himself had named as a heretic subject to execution. I find it ironic that Luther had to have protection from being killed by the Pope–who was supposed to be God’s voice on earth!

That sounds like verse 4 of our Psalm. People are always going to trap us in a net somehow. So, we pray to God to be taken out of the net. By the way, today I believe the net is a reference to the Internet. It is really easy to get trapped in the Internet. God release us from that trap. That was the nice thing about camp last week in Kokee–we were released from the net! No signal on the mountain! Yeah!

The last verse, that is number 5, seems to be about Jesus and his power to release us, redeem us, or pay the ransom when we do find ourselves trapped. So, if you feel yourself trapped right now in your life, then simply commit your spirit into God’s hand. That is the key that unlocks every trap.

This is so beautiful of an idea that it has been captured into the regular liturgy of the church. You know these words as the “Prayer of Committal” at memorial services. We say these words when we say our final goodbyes to the earthly existence and take on life with Jesus in heaven. So, catch this thought, please: If I can look back on my life as it is up to this point and see that God’s hand has been on every aspect of my living days, then why should I or even could I doubt that I will be in God’s hand right on through the moment of death and into eternity?

These are the last words that Jesus himself spoke on the cross, “Into your hands I commit your spirit.” Matthew 27:41-43. Yes, Jesus himself is taking his last breath on earth and he recites these exact words from the Psalm of David. Yes, from Jesus’ birth in the stable, to his reading Isaiah in the Temple as a boy, to his baptism, to his miracles of healing, to his preaching of heaven, to his mock trial, his being beaten and crucified, and right into the tomb of death has been in His Father’s hands. With these words Jesus passes into the everlasting hands of His Father.

This is exactly what St. Paul said in Romans 14:8, “If we live, we live unto the Lord. If we die, we die unto the Lord; so whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.” Is that not the greatest protection policy you could ever afford? “You are in good hands with Father, Son, and Holy Ghost” This is your After Life Insurance!

Amen