Tonight, Lord willing, in our trek through the Old Testament, now in the book of Psalms,

we'll get through four Psalms starting in Psalm 56, and Lord willing make it all the way through to Psalm 59.

Pardon me. Why don't we pray before we jump in and we'll ask God to bless our time together in His Word.

Excuse me, just a moment here.

Loving Heavenly Father, we're so grateful to you for these Thursday nights that we can just come together in this your church as your people and put aside all the busyness of our lives and the cares and the affairs of the day

and of the week and just focus our attention on you and on your word and that which you have

for us in your word. Lord, we're looking to you, the author, the finisher of our faith, to minister to us and to speak into our lives through the amazing book of Psalms and these Psalms that we have before us tonight.

So, Lord, we're looking forward to you doing that, and we ask you to do that.

In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, let's jump in.

So, verse one, actually, we have the, all of these Psalms, interestingly, have a very descriptive

and even detailed title that tells us a little bit about them. So Psalm 56

is to the chief musician and it's set to a song that apparently was known in that day,

the song, The Silent Dove in Distant Lands. And we're told it's a mihtam of David, a meditation

of David. And it's specific to this experience when the Philistines had captured him in Gath,

where he had no business going to in the first place, as we'll

talk about here in a minute. So verse one, be merciful to me, O God, for man would swallow me up.

Fighting all day, he oppresses me. My enemies would hound me all day, for there are many

who fight against me, O most high." Verse three, and I love this. He writes,

whenever I am afraid, I will trust in you.

In God, I will praise His word.

In God, I have put my trust, I will not fear.

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