Dennis Tuuri

Sermon text today is Psalm 71. However, I think that Psalm 70 and 71 are one psalm. And I think this for several reasons, among which are that as we mentioned last week, in the second book of the psalter, the first few psalms are priestly ones and the next larger group, 51 to 71, are kingly ones. And of the kingly ones, this is the only one that doesn’t have an inscription. Psalm 71, that is. Psalm 70 does have an inscription.

Psalm 70 is very short and doesn’t end with the confidence that 71 does, but seems to be kind of the crying out that begins what happens in 71. So whether I’m right or wrong, it’s certainly appropriate and all right to read several psalms in order. So please stand. And if you have a handout, if you follow along, on the handout, you’ll see the sense of the flow, at least from what I can tell, in these psalms.

So, we’ll read Psalm 70 and 71. To the chief musician, a psalm of David to bring to remembrance. Make haste, oh God, to deliver me. Make haste to help me, oh Lord. Let them be ashamed and confounded who seek my life. Let them be turned back and confused who desire my hurt. Let them be turned back because of their shame, who say, “Aha, aha.” Let all those who seek you rejoice and be glad in you. And let those who love your salvation say continually, “Let God be magnified.”

But I am poor and needy. Make haste to me, oh God. You are my help and my deliverer. Oh Lord, do not delay. In you, oh Lord, I put my trust. Let me never be put to shame. Deliver me in your righteousness and cause me to escape. Incline your ear to me and save me. Be my strong refuge to which I may resort continually. You have given the commandment to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress. Deliver me, oh my God, out of the hand of the wicked, out of the hand of the unrighteous and cruel man.

For you are my hope, oh Lord God. You are my trust from my youth. By you I have been upheld from birth. You are he who took me out of my mother’s womb. My praise shall be continually of you. I have become as a wonder to many, but you are my strong refuge. Let my mouth be filled with your praise and with your glory all the day. Do not cast me off in the time of old age. Do not forsake me when my strength fails.

For my enemies speak against me, and those who lie in wait for my life take counsel together, saying, “God has forsaken him. Pursue and take him, for there is none to deliver him.” Oh God, do not be far from me. Oh my God, make haste to help me. Let them be confounded and consumed who are adversaries of my life. Let them be covered with reproach and dishonor who seek my hurt. But I will hope continually and will praise you yet more and more.

My mouth shall tell of your righteousness and your salvation all the day. For I do not know their limits. I will go in the strength of the Lord God. I will make mention of your righteousness, of yours only. Oh God, you have taught me from my youth, and to this day I declare your wondrous works. Now also, when I am old and gray-headed, oh God, do not forsake me until I declare your strength to this generation, your power to everyone who is to come.

Also, your righteousness, oh God, is very high. You who have done great things. Oh God, who is like you? You who have shown me great and severe troubles shall revive me again and bring me up again from the depths of the earth. You shall increase my greatness and comfort me on every side. Also with the lute I will praise you and your faithfulness, oh my God. To you I will sing with the harp, oh holy one of Israel.

My lips shall greatly rejoice when I sing to you and my soul which you have redeemed. My tongue also shall talk of your righteousness all the day long. For they are confounded, for they are brought to shame who seek my hurt. Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this wonderful psalm of old age from David. We pray you’d bless us as we think about it, Lord God. Transform our lives. Help us to understand what’s happening in this psalm and its flow to the end that we may be those who see David and emulate him and ultimately emulate the greater David, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Christ who was a finisher. Transform us today from being the Adamic fallen non-finishers that we are of tasks into the power of those who are victorious finishers of what you’ve given us to do including our whole life. Help us Lord God to do this by the power of the Holy Spirit who comes upon us to cause us to finish the tasks that he calls us to do. In Jesus name we ask and for the sake of his kingdom. Amen.

Please be seated. We have been going through the Canons of Dort, and what I’ve tried to do in this series is to take a set of doctrines that are normally thought of and actually probably written in the express purpose of a fairly narrow purpose talking about the sovereignty of God in salvation. So becoming a Christian, going to heaven, that kind of thing. And what I’ve tried to do is broaden out the implications of these five heads of doctrine.

Perseverance is thought of in terms of, you know, finally persevering to the end in terms of faith in Christ. And as we see in today’s psalm, we can think of perseverance a little more actively than that, not just getting by and, you know, being saved by the skin of our teeth, but persevering in the calling and election. God doesn’t elect us to dog paddle for the rest of our lives.

He elects and calls us to salvation, but salvation is broad in its implications. It means we’re restored to our original calling. And so that calling, which involves itself in being dads and moms and husbands and wives and businessmen and workers and pastors and teachers and all kinds of things. Those callings are part of what we’re to persevere in.

We saw last week, well we saw a couple weeks ago, we looked at David and perseverance. And I thought it’d be good to kind of round this out with David this Sunday. A couple weeks ago, we talked about Psalm 19. Actually talked about it for two weeks. And there we looked at David’s prayer that he’d be kept from hidden sins, sins that he hides from others, but primarily sins that he doesn’t even know he has. And we looked at the secondary means of perseverance, of avoiding the small sins, at least they appear to be small or nonexistent to us.

And we talked about those secondary means and we talked about David’s reliance upon the law of God, the word of God, to instruct him in what he’s doing wrong. And I know that several of you have talked to me, and that means if I get a couple people talking to me, there’s probably a larger group that are doing it, not talking to me. I know that several of you in response to that wrote down or made a little note in your heart to be more active in your reading of the scriptures, in your knowledge of the scriptures, meditating and studying, but at least daily reading of them.

David saw it necessary that God’s word was necessary to persevere. We can say that. And so I know some of you made that commitment. Follow through on it. Today’s text is about David being a finisher. And you should be a finisher. Follow through on that task that you might have set yourself to two weeks ago. And if you didn’t, well then consider making that a goal of yours today. Reading God’s word regularly.

We also talked about prayer then because this is another secondary means of how God preserves us, to persevere, but ultimately as David makes very clear in Psalm 70 and 71, it’s God who preserves us. But he preserves us through secondary means, and one of those means is prayer. This is a heavy burden to me in terms of our church. I want us to become that community of prayer that our strategy map says. That’s a big deal to us and it is a big deal to me.

And you know, I know some of you are concerned about the going away of the prayer groups and turning them into fellowship times. Well, it seemed to us important to sort of experience a death and resurrection. You can think of it that way in prayer. To mature, to go from glory to glory frequently requires deaths and resurrections. That’s how we work. And certain things are put away and new tasks are taken up. And so that’s what we did there.

But you know, it should not be thought that we’re deemphasizing. If anything, we’re trying to re-emphasize prayer. And if you made a commitment to regular times of prayer and if you made a commitment to maybe talk to the guys at the pastimes table that you’re doing, whatever it is, or talk to your family about how are we going to do this thing? How are we going to get regular in prayer? Then I encourage you to be a finisher of that task as well. It’s part of the secondary means of our perseverance.

David tells us a little bit. We could instead of doing perseverance, we could look at Psalm 70 and 71, or one psalm that I think it is, and learn a little bit about prayer. David prays a lot about a particular thing, you know. One thing that we did, and why I think it’s good that we’re transitioning—hang with me here, I know it doesn’t—but what we trained ourselves to do through the kinds of corporate prayer, the monthly prayer meetings we had, we trained ourselves to what some call popcorn praying. Everybody, you know, to get around the whole group and to make it less than a two-hour prayer meeting, we had to each kind of pray for somebody and then the next person pray for somebody else.

And so it’s sort of like little tiny short prayers for different things. And that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I think a lot of times it’s useful in a group to pray everybody about a particular thing a little bit. Not long. That was good. What we did at the prayer meetings, it did train us to pray short. That’s good if you’re going to have corporate prayer. It taught us to pray loud so that people can hear what you’re praying and join into it.

But I think that as we resurrect prayer groups or making prayer part of our normal pastimes and our family activities here, Psalm 71 is a reminder that we sort of pray for a while about something and we sort of come to some degree of agreement on it. And so that’s an example of how I hope that this kind of death and resurrection of how we handle corporate prayer at our church will impact us for a positive development.

I think that our prayer groups began to be—and whether we could have changed them in another way is fine—but while they began with a heavy emphasis upon sort of, you know, being a little more—well let me just say that by the end, our prayer meetings, a lot of them became pretty surface stuff. And so we are, and when you do that’s okay, pray about surface stuff, but when you do that and that’s the main model on the Lord’s day for you, then you tend to sort of get surfacy in your prayers, I think, during the week. And this psalm gets a little deeper and would be, as I say, a useful thing to talk about in terms of prayer.

But anyway, Psalm 19: David, secondary means, Bible, prayer. If we put ourselves to a task, you know, I know that some of you young men say, “Well, we get together and we’re doing fun stuff and it’s a little embarrassing to pray together or to talk about how our spiritual walk is going.” Well, I guarantee you that if you are too embarrassed to talk about that with your friends, Christian friends, how well equipped are you going to be to talk about it to your pagan coworkers that you know and relationships?

Now, I know some of you can punch through that, but you know, you just have to sort of get over that and you have to say, you know, we’re Christians, dog on it. This is what warrior guys are like, and this is what we’re committed to. It’s good to have leisure times, but let’s always pray a little bit for each other and kind of hold each other accountable a little bit.

So, Psalm 19. Then, we looked at David and secondary means in terms of those hidden sins that I’ve talked about. And then we looked at David’s monstrous sins, murder and adultery in Psalm 51 last week. And so we’re looking at the life of David. And we saw another secondary means is the small step that David mistook that become the great sins. He talks about that in Psalm 19. He didn’t go out to head his army in warfare. And it didn’t seem like a big deal, but the text seems to tell us it is a big deal.

Normally, you know, I’ve heard statistics—remember Rushdoony, he talked about this years ago—that as a culture becomes more leisure oriented and as men work less, then what they do is they engage in sexual sin more. There’s a connection with that. In prison, you know, prisons are just notorious for the sexual aberrations and horrific stuff that goes on. Why? Because guys are sitting around doing nothing all day. And same thing’s true of mice and rats and stuff.

Well, so David applied himself to—if he had applied himself to the task, he wouldn’t have fallen into that sexual sin. You know, Matt and I went to the Veritas symposium Thursday night and it’s really good. And Marvin Olasky was saying that we need a new Christian urbanism. That one of the big problems in our culture is that Christians abandoned the cities in the 50s, let’s say. But the cities are where the impact upon culture, arts, and education—that the symposium is about—those things typically come from cities. And so when we abandon the cities, we abandon the cultural engine that then eventually works its way out to the rest of the country into the rural areas as well.

And so cities have become, sort of in our minds, inherently evil, but they’re not. As Olasky was pointing out, as Jordan has pointed out, we start in a garden, move to a city. The epistles are written in cities, yada yada. God’s into cities, and he thinks we need new urbanism. It reminded me of some talks I heard years ago, and some of the older guys might remember this: Oz Guinness on modernity and its impact on culture generally and Christianity specifically.

And one of the modern things about modernity is this 40-hour week that we’ve got. And what’s happened is we think of this big difference between our private lives at home and our public life in the workplace. And for Christians, this can be particularly intense because the workplace is sort of seen, unfortunately, as a place just to make money and pay for the bills. But this big cleavage, and along with that, Guinness said, is that we tend to think of being productive in the workplace, and when we get home and clock out, we’re clocked out from being productive.

We go home and we’re consumptive. You know, all we want to do is have a good time, and when tasks are required, when the wife needs attention or, you know, wants to engage in conversation or the kids need attention, wife’s telling us is what the kids been doing, take care of it. Or at the house, you know, faucets are leaking or the lawn is mowed or whatever it is, we say that as an intrusion, you see, on our private consumptive time.

Well, you know, in the Bible, of course, the biblical perspective is that all of this time is supposed to be productive for the kingdom. There are seasons. You do have wine at the end of the day and bread at the beginning. That kind of happens. You know, there is a rejoicing time at the end of the day, but this big cleavage is a modern phenomena and really we shouldn’t do that.

And what we tend to do is when we have just 40 hours of productive work out of, you know, however many hours there are in the week, what is it? 168, I guess. And we got some sleep in there, but we have a lot of leisure time. And what we tend to do, not always, what we tend to do at the leisure time is engage in sin.

So anyway, Psalm 51: another part of the secondary means is attention to vocation and calling. And not just your work, but your calling as a householder. And I want to talk about that today. And then we also, so we talked about that, and so now and I mentioned last week that in the second book of the Psalms in the Davidic collection, you know, Psalms 42 to 72 rather are the second book of the psalms. They’re marked off by doxologies at the end. It’s very obvious. This isn’t anything weird. This is everybody knows this who studies the psalms.

And in this second book there’s a definite structure. There’s some priestly psalms and then there’s some kingly psalms. And the kingly psalms—the priestly psalms end with a particular individual name. They were the sons of Asaph and Ethan, and they were by those guys, I think. The Davidic songs are all by David, but the last is for Solomon. So there’s a transition in the end one.

And so if you look at these, they sort of match up. There’s lessons as we put them together in that order. In 51, the last David psalm that says “of David” as opposed to “for Solomon,” the very last one is 71. And so in 51 we begin with great contrition and heartfelt confession of sin. And then in 71 it ends with old age. And so 71 is a psalm about finishing, about David wanting to finish the race well and to finish his task.

And so 71 is sort of a balance for 51 and moves to conclusion. And David, when he’s old, wants to be faithful and God provides for that. And then we’ve got Solomon taking up the task in 72. So that’s where Psalm 71 is in the context of the cannon here.

And I, as I say, this is a psalm of old age when David prays that he’d be a good finisher. Now, he was—we read, yeah, you look at turn to 2 Samuel 23, the first eight verses. I’ve preached on this before, but let’s look at it. These are kind of David’s last words. So, how well did it turn out? This prayer for him being a good finisher in 71. And again, I think it’s Davidic because it’s matched with 70. And I think that identifies it as David’s.

So, in 2 Samuel 23, we kind of have the end of the story, the rest of the story, the conclusion. You know, you can’t tell a man’s life ultimately until he dies and then you sort of know how it all worked out. And here we have in 2 Samuel 23 the last words of David. And it’s kind of fun here. There’s sort of a completeness to the first couple of verses.

Thus says David, the son of Jesse. Thus says the man raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob and the sweet psalmist of Israel. Now he gives himself four designations there. And you know, in the Bible, four is kind of a number of wholeness or completion. The world has four corners. The Jews had four corners on their garments, etc. And so as David speaks his last words, he speaks in a four-fold fullness of his life. This is how his life now is to conclude. And it’s wonderful stuff. He was raised up by God on high. Though he was the son of Jesse, he was raised up. He was the anointed of God of Jacob, the sweet psalmist of Israel.

And then he says, “The spirit of the Lord spoke by me and his word is on my tongue. The God of Israel said, the rock of Israel spoke to me. He who rules over men must be just. Again, there’s a four-fold designation there. Spirit spoke, his word is on my tongue. God of Israel said, Rock of Israel spoke to me. And what’s the message? He who rules over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.

So, David’s ending well. He’s ending speaking prophetic words again here. He shall be like the light of the morning when the sun rises, a morning without clouds, like the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain. Although my house is not so with God. So he’s not, you know, he’s humble, but he’s saying, “Yet he has made with me an everlasting covenant.” David was aware of his sins at the end of his age, but he was also aware that God had preserved him through those things and still used him as the sweet psalmist, ordered in all things and secure.

For this is my salvation and all my desire, will he not make it increase? But the sons of rebellion shall all be as thorns thrust away because they cannot be taken with hands. But the man who touches them must be armed with iron and the shaft of his spear. They shall be utterly burned with fire in their place. And that’s it. And then we have the name of David’s mighty men who are going to carry out this stuff.

So David’s last words are significant. They show us his steadfastness with the God of Israel. And they show us his steadfastness to pass on to his son a desire for the righteous to be planted and the enemies of God and his people to be destroyed. Now we see that as primarily through conversion, of course, but God providentially works in different ways. But it’s the same thing with us. Our last word should be one seeking the magnified visibility of the kingdom of God. And that’s David’s last words.

And so David finishes well. And Psalm 71 is kind of this psalm that talks about him wanting to finish. So turn to the handout. We’ll look at Psalm 71 now and go over it briefly. Again, as I said, I think the scripture at the top of 70 belongs to both, and you know there’s a little structure there to the first one that’s kind of obvious. You got “make haste” at the beginning, “make haste” at the end. “Make haste, oh God, make haste to me, oh God” and then a reference to “make haste to help, oh Lord” and then “make deliver, oh Lord, do not delay.”

I’m looking at verses 1 and 5. They clearly match up. There’s a little, you know, set of bookends, and in the middle of it there is a prayer and it talks about two groups of people. The bad guys: they’re to be ashamed and confounded, those who seek my life. So there’s a three-fold prayer for the bad guys, and then in verse 4 is a prayer for the good guys. Let all those who seek you rejoice and be glad in you and with those who love your salvation say continually, let God be magnified.

There’s only two stanzas there, and I don’t know why that is, but maybe David’s the third and he wants to pride himself in that category. But at the end he says, “But I am poor and needy.” But the point is, you know, it’s kind of like at the beginning of this psalm. It’s like the introduction. It’s like things are really bad and he immediately begins, “Make haste to save me. I need help. I need it right now. Please.” And he ends that way in this first little introduction. In the middle, his basic prayer is given to us: God’s judgments upon the unrighteous who attack God’s people and then God’s blessings upon the righteous. Let them be confounded. Let us do okay.

So that’s kind of the way it works. And then in Psalm 71, what we call Psalm 71, there’s a movement in terms of it as well. And maybe that’s why they broke them up. The people that edited the Psalter—those are not inspired division breaks. But maybe that’s why, because there’s a nice structure. Look at verse 1: In you, Oh Lord, do I put my trust? Let me never be put to shame.

That’s how it starts. And this word “shame” is used three times in this psalm. And one of those times is at the end. If you drop down to the end of Psalm 71, in the matching section, what do we have in verse 24? My tongue shall talk of your righteousness all the day long, for they are confounded. That’s New King James version. Same Hebrew word. I don’t want to be ashamed, but they are ashamed by the end.

See, he’s fearful of his state in terms of being confused or shamed, but at the end they are confounded. And the only other place this word is used is right in the middle, where is it in the middle? Look at verse 13. The very central section, I think, of Psalm 71, the way I look at it, at least. Psalm 71, at the very heart, is again kind of a two-fold statement. The way that the introduction had a two-fold statement.

Verse 13: Let them be confounded. That’s the same word, shamed. Okay. So, the way this psalm works is it starts out by saying, “Don’t let me be ashamed.” Then he prays that the enemies of God be ashamed. And so what he’s praying for is he not be an enemy. And then by the end, he’s confident that the unrighteous are ashamed. So he moves from difficulty and troubles to praying and then to assurance that prayer is answered. So the psalm has a definite movement in that.

Now if we look then at that center section, it’s kind of like the center section of Psalm 70, kind of two-fold here. So let them be confounded, but verse 14, the transition now happens. You know, up to this point, most of the psalm has been about “I need help. I need help. Help me. You’re my rock. You’re my strength. I will trust in you. Now help me.” Now it’s a prayer for deliverance.

But at verse 14, it changes. “But I will hope continually. I will hope continually. I will praise you yet more and more. My mouth shall tell of your righteousness and your salvation all the day. For I do not know their limits. I can’t count them up. You know, there’s that old song, ‘Count your blessings, name them one by one.’ Well, that’s what David does. And he says there’s so many, I can’t name all of them. I can’t count them all.

See, the life of David, if we’re going to be a finisher, then it tells us we should be counting our blessings. That old song’s a good song. David has been aware of what the blessings of God are to him. In fact, he’s recited them well enough that he knows there’s no end to them, but it’s not as if he’s just sort of vague to him. He knows them in detail. He does this. His mouth speaks about these things. He’ll speak of the salvation of God all day. I don’t know their limits.

And then he says, “I’ll go in the strength of the Lord God. I will make mention of your righteousness, of yours alone.” And then as we back out, he talks about young age and old age again in the next section. But the rest of this, the second half of Psalm 71, doesn’t have all these intreaties that the first half does. There’s movement. David is going from fear to confidence, you see. And he does this by these prayers seeking God’s judgment against the wicked. But more than that, he does it by reminding himself of God’s faithfulness all of his life, and the end result of that is he becomes confident. The middle, that confidence builds and crescendos, and then the last section is all about worship.

Verse 21: You shall increase my greatness, comfort me on every side. Also with the lute I will praise you, your faithfulness, oh my God. I will sing—yes, I will sing to you. Rather, I will sing with the harp, oh holy one of Israel. Kind of a corporate designation. Just as we saw in 51, 71 moves from like an individual difficulty that occupies most of it, but by the end he’s now talking about corporate worship. He uses the word “praising” God a few times earlier, but now he’s praising him with musical instruments and he’s using “the Holy One,” not “his God,” not “his Lord”—”the Holy One of Israel,” corporate Israel.

So David is moved from kind of isolation in his pain and suffering to confidence, and that confidence happens in the context and it finds its greatest expression in worship. And we could say Lord’s Day worship. Now I put that. “You’ll increase my greatness.” The cycle of time that God puts us through as we finish things each week: God increases our greatness on the Lord’s Day. He comes be with us to increase the amount of Jesus we get from the Holy Spirit, the amount of how we’re transformed.

I don’t care how old you are, every Lord’s Day, God gives you increased gifts and abilities through the worship service. So our greatness is increasing in the context of worship, and we use that then in the context of our work week. So there’s this movement of David. So he doesn’t want to be ashamed. He prays they’re ashamed, they get ashamed. He begins in isolation and with difficulties, and by the end he’s moved to corporate praise and worship of God.

Now, and now that’s sort of the general movement, and specifically in terms of our consideration of finishing. Well, this sort of helps us to frame, and actually I started framing it this way. It’s a little more—these sections are obvious in verses 5 and following. So, look at the third section, not marked as third. But verse 5, the third indented section of 71. And this gets us to finishing.

What does he say? You are my hope, oh Lord God. You are my trust from my youth. By you I’ve been upheld from birth. You are he who took me out of my mother’s womb. My praise shall be continually of you. Now, okay, so he’s praying about troubles. He’s praying that he finish well and that the enemies of God get finished, that they’re cut off.

And as he prays this, he remembers the faithfulness of God for all of his life. One of the keys to finishing is to remember to recount the blessings of God over your life. And David, just as he did with his great sin—remember David, you know, when David confesses in Psalm 51, it’s not a, you know, Psalm 51 is one of those texts, like the one from Corinthians, that we should use to show people what biblical repentance looks like. And one of the significant things was David got down to the heart of the matter.

Against thee, against thee, only have I sinned and done this great evil in thy sight. My sin wasn’t ultimately against Bathsheba or Uriah. It was. But he knew the core of the matter was that he was a rebel against God. And when we sin, we spit in God’s face. That’s what David knew he’d done. So David got down to the core. And David talked about, you know, that God—that he was conceived in sin. Now he doesn’t mean the sexual act. He means that the Adamic nature we have, sin. Our environment is sin. David gets down to the heart of the matter. We have rebellion against God.

And the heart of the matter is we’re going to always have to work in this life using the secondary means and prayer and the word and all that stuff because our context both in terms of our own Adamic old man and the fallen—the implications of that for man and our culture. The context is one of sinfulness.

But he talks about the womb. Well, now we’re back to the womb. And remember, I told you last week that in Psalm 51, when he talks about the loving kindness of God—you’ve multiplied these kindnesses to me—that the word means wounds. So he’s talking about God as a mother, essentially, in what he says in Psalm 51. And in counting, recounting God’s tender mercies to us, it’s the mercies of a mother.

And of course, we just sang about that, right? Another portion of scripture that God won’t forget us. He’s like a mom who can’t forget her child. And here it’s the same thing. Although it’s not the mom now—now it’s the midwife. You are he who took me out of my mother’s womb. You’re my midwife, he says. So again, it’s kind of a feminine designation, I suppose, but one that’s very comforting to us, to know that the Lord God actually brought us out of the womb and God has upheld him from his birth.

So in order to be a finisher, we recognize that in spite of whatever it seemed like when we were young, that what we were doing in learning to trust in the womb and beyond was ultimately coming to a realization of the loving kindness of God, the tender mercies he has for his people, and that even the birth is essentially God bringing us into existence. So to be a finisher, we grow in our knowledge of the love of God and his providence for us in all of our lives.

So David does that. He recounts that and then he says, “I become as a wonder to many, but you are my strong refuge. Let my mouth be filled with your praise and with your glory all the day. Do not cast me off in the time of old age. Do not forsake me when my strength fails.”

Okay, so this section matches with the late—he’ll go back to this theme about young, early age and old age. And here we got early age and old age. They match up. And so what he says here is this is very instructive. Do not cast me off in the time of old age. Let me be a finisher. We could say do not forsake me when my strength fails. His strength is failing. He’s getting old. And those of us that are getting old know what that’s about. Our strength fails.

And as we move to the later portions of this psalm, what he sings about in the sections as he moves ahead is the strength of God. Look down at verse 17. And this is the matching section. You have taught me from my youth, okay, so taught in the informal sense and maybe the formal sense too. David knew the scriptures, but God teaches us from his youth, and to this day I declare your wondrous works.

Now also, when I am old and gray-headed, oh God, do not forsake me until I declare your strength to this generation, your power to everyone who is to come. Same basic motif: he’s talking about when he was young, now he’s old. And he wants to do this. But see the difference in the third section that we just referenced in verses 5 and following. He describes his old age as having no strength—”my strength is gone. Don’t forsake me.”

And after the triumphant middle section, where he’ll hope in God continually, the declaration is another one of strength, but it’s not his strength. It’s the strength of Yahweh. Now also, when I’m old and gray-headed, oh God, do not forsake me until I declare your strength to this generation.

God diminishes our strength as we mature and get old and move toward death to the end that we might not rely upon it, and we might more explicitly know—we try to do it when we’re young. But it’s a lot realer when you get old and frail. But what you do then is you haven’t lost your usefulness to God. And this psalm says you’ve increased your usefulness to God when strength fails. Paul says the same thing. When I’m weak, then I’m strong.

And so he says that old age doesn’t mean you have less of an opportunity to do work for God. You have more opportunity because it’s obviously not your natural physical strength or your emotional stability, whatever it is, that does this thing. It’s the strength of God you proclaim. So David is a finisher. He’s praying that he’d be a good finisher.

And David shows us in the structure of this psalm some really important things. He chose us that to be a finisher, you have to trust in God. That’s how he starts. In you, I put my trust. There’s a faith in God that will enable us to be the finishers that God has called us to be, to persevere till we take our last gasp of breath. That’s what we’re talking about here. So there’s a perseverance that’s based upon a trust of God.

Secondly, so trust of God is necessary to be a finisher. Secondly, David hopes in God. It’s different. We trust God, you know, we have faith in him, but hope means there’s positive things coming. Trust sort of gets us by the difficult times, but hope means that we have the confident middle of our lives, the middle of what David writes here, knowing that indeed he’ll be established and all God’s enemies will be put to shame. That’s what prays for him. That’s what he’s confident of. To be a finisher, you have to have hope for the future.

Kind of obvious, but it’s important. The psalm tells us it’s important. The word “hope” is found several times throughout this psalm, this psalm that teaches us how to finish. It’s a psalm about old age, the only one I know of. And so it’s about finishing. And what it says is that hope is quite important to being a finisher, to have hope that your task, your work is significant. And God says it is. Does you don’t rely on your strength, you rely upon his strength.

And so a finisher has to be a man of trust. He’s got to be a man who has positive hope for the future. And he’s obviously here a praying man, right? If this is the model for us of how to be a good finisher, how to get to old age and do what’s right, then what he’s told us over and over again is you got to be praying. You got to pray to make it through the day. If you want to go womb to tomb in faithfulness to God, which is what David’s talking about, yeah, there were sins, all his sins.

But if you want womb to tomb, finishing, strength from God, then you got to pray. You got to ask for it. You got to cry out to him when difficulties come up, not rely upon your own strength ultimately, but rely on the strength of God, etc. If you want to be a finisher, and every Christian should, then you have to be someone who prays and prays regularly.

So, David teaches us things here, a finisher. And then finally, so a finisher has to have trust, which is based on a recounting of what God has done. A finisher has to have hope for the future. A finisher has to be somebody who prays. And then the final—we could take a lot of things—but the final point I want to make is a finisher. To be a finisher, you got to be a servant to others.

It’s the same thing we read in 51, right? When I’m restored, I’ll strengthen my brothers. Same thing Jesus said to Peter. Forgive me of all my horrible sin, then I’ll show sinners the way. Your ways, not my ways—your ways. And what does he want to do? Why does he want to be a finisher? What is finishing to him? Finishing to him is verse 18. When I’m old and gray-headed, oh God, do not forsake me, not so that I can have a nice old age of retirement and hanging out and just doing my own thing in isolation.

Don’t forsake me until I, in my old age and gray-headedness—in other words, declare your strength to this generation and your power to everyone who is to come. A finisher has to be a servant. And very specifically, who’s he a servant to here? He’s a servant to the next generation. Men, you know, we’re maturing as a church. We got guys now. They’re going to start, you know, lying down in the eternal sense. And when we move that way, part of our job as finishers at RCC is to do what David did, to show the strength of God to the next generation, that they’ll be finishers in the future.

So Psalm 71 is a great psalm that teaches us about finishing. It teaches us the structure. And I’m not going to belabor the point, but for those of you that are interested in such things, if you look at the seven-fold structure, you’ll see analogies to the seven days of creation. It starts off with hope in God. It moves to division with enemies. Then we have the first of the what will mirror in section five, the first fruits of his desire to be faithful and a finisher.

And at the middle we have his continual hope and God will rule and destroy the wicked and lift David up. Five: we see the maturation of his desire to serve in the old age. And then in six he says you’ll raise me up from the dead. You’ll raise me up from decomposition. Sixth day: sin, death. And David says I’m going to be resurrected. And then the seventh day: worship. God comes close. David worships God. I think it works that way because usually a lot of times in scripture—because the Holy Spirit moves in a seven-fold fashion.

The spirit moved over the waters in Genesis 1, and he does it in seven phases. And in Revelation, the spirit of God, there are seven spirits who go out into the world. This isn’t a theology problem for us. It’s a reminder to us the spirit works in the seven-fold sort of action. Not, you know, there’s also other ways he works, but it shouldn’t be surprising to us to find these sort of structures, and it helps us to realize that the spirit is moving in our lives to make us finishers.

And then the last thing is the finisher is one who engages in corporate worship. This is what drives him to finish. This is what moves it all along. So Psalm 71 has great lessons for us in terms of being a finisher. And that’s what I want you to walk away with today: repentance from failing to be a finisher in tasks that you’ve set your heart to. And instead a renewed commitment to be a finisher of tasks.

You know, there are plans that we all make. We’re going to have an officer retreat in November as a church. Pick up the stuff we began in 2004 with strategy map and initiatives, develop it, try to move toward finishing some of the goals we’ve established, and then setting new ones. We want to be finishers. Great plans are just great. You know, men have a particular problem this way, I think. Well, I have a particular problem this way. Let me just say that a few men have shared with me they have the same problem, but I’ll just leave it personal.

You know what we do is we have problems and as family, whatever it is, and we make a plan to take care of the problem and we might even write it out in a piece of paper, put make a spreadsheet or something—let’s say financial, for instance. You make a plan and you think it’s done. You think it’s all over. You think that your fiat word, so to speak, your declaration of “oh yes, I can see the way out of this”—and you think you’re already out of it. You’re not.

You got to be a finisher. You got to do the plans. It’s not enough to have a plan. If you don’t do it, you’re in worse shape than if you didn’t even have a plan, because now you’re a hypocrite as well. Men have a trouble doing this. Wives, you know, if your husband does this kind of thing, you know, I’m not going to say don’t get upset at him, but understand it’s kind of endemic. It’s one of those besetting sins of men.

I think that maybe it’s rooted in the idea that, you know, God begins things with Adam, but it takes a woman to finish them, right? She comes along and she finishes the thing in Genesis 1. He needs someone who is, you know, a finisher. And wives tend to be better at finishing. And so what does it mean? It means that men should listen to their wives. And it means that their plans should be shared with their wives because they’ll help bring it to completion.

So you know, plans, you might have plans for some aspect of your life or your business. Finish them. See them through to conclusion. It’s not enough just to set up a nicely looking plan. You may have hard tasks. There’s stuff you might have put off for days, weeks, months, years, because there’s just—you can’t figure your way around it. As a purchasing agent, I used to have tough jobs that I’d have to do. Tough big things I’d have to purchase. I knew anything about. Every Monday, first thing I’d do Monday morning, I’d work that stack. I’d do the hard tasks. I try to finish that stuff up.

You got to build in a cycle to do it. Some of you men have projects at home and maybe you’re not doing it because you’re lazy, but maybe you’re not doing it because you don’t have hope and you’re not quite sure how to go about it. And it’s better just to sort of shove it off the desk to the side. You know, I’d urge you today to consider on a regular basis working the list of hard tasks that you need to have done in your family, with your wife, in your home, whatever it is. Hard tasks.

Small tasks are also things we don’t tend to finish because they’re so small. I could always do that. And so we end up with houses where there’s little tiny things around the house that are never done. And after a while, it’s kind of depressing. Remember the sluggard. The sluggard’s not a finisher. The slothful man doesn’t finish. He goes out and gets something in hunting, but then he doesn’t cook it. And I think he eats it raw, maybe. Maybe he doesn’t even eat it because another part of the sluggard is he won’t even bring his food to his—he’s depressed, they say. But the Bible calls him a sluggard. And he’s characterized as not finishing the hunting project and cooking so he can have a good tasty meal. He doesn’t finish.

And his finishing affects small tasks, right? So, at the end of the middle section of Proverbs, the words the wise—he goes by the place of the sluggard and a little sleep, a little slumber. He’s not sleeping until two every day. He’s just taking an extra hour maybe every day. And the implication is he’s not doing the little tasks over a period of a lifetime, the end culmination of which is he now has his house collapsed. It’s all broken down. It doesn’t work.

So, small tasks. Again, we think we know how to do it and it’s a done thing already. It’s not. You know, finish through on small tasks. Your children, you know, it’s easy when they get old enough to get on their own or that age to sort of think, well, my job’s done. 18, they’re done. 20, it’s done. 21, it’s done. 30, it’s never done. There’s always some kind of relationship between father and mother and their children.

Finish the task. Dads, you treat them differently when they’re 20 and when they’re six. You don’t command them in the same way. I know older kids, it’s so hard for us to remember that. You have to understand time goes by real fast at our age, and to us you’re still kind of like 12, even though you’re 25. I mean, it’s just—it’s hard for us. We will try to do it better. But dads, understand you still should be talking to them. You should have influence in their lives and them on you. There’s a relationship that will last until your death. Finish the job with your children. Get them ready for schools.

We’ve been talking a lot about universities and colleges. Well, you know, get them ready. Don’t assume you’ve gotten them ready. Another fellow and myself were talking this week. It’s easy at this church to think that the next generation by osmosis has picked up everything we know, we’re ready to go to University of Idaho, but our kids may not be. Have you done your job? As I said last week, do they even know the five points of Calvinism, the implications for, you know, political action, etc.? So you know, finish the kids. Don’t sort of tail off as they get into their teen years. Increase the effort to put the right spin, to give them the right equipping so they go off to university if that’s what they do, or to the workplace eventually. They’re done. Finish things with your wives.

There’s probably things that or with your husband or wife, your spouse, that you’d sort of like to help them do, and maybe you had some ideas at one point in time and now they’ve just kind of gone the way of all flesh. Finish working with your spouse to bring to security certain things you’d like them to be able to do, that would be a blessing to them and that they would be a blessing to others in. Finish your day. The end of the day, don’t fall into consumption mode at the end of the day, as I said earlier about Oz Guinness, but now there’s relaxation. There’s wine at the end of the day sure there is, Miller time in a proper sense, but you know, when you come home, you take off the vocation hat and you put on the householder cap.

And while part of that’s rest and relaxation, part of that is overseeing the projects on the house, making sure the things get done, listening to the wife, encouraging her, thinking about your kids and how you should deal with them. You see, be a finisher of your productive day tomorrow, so that when you go to bed, you finished well, and you can look back on the day and say, “Praise God, this is what he’s done for me.”

Well, you know, that’s what I—that’s an implication of the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. The saints are finishers. The saints are finishers. Why? Because we serve a lord who is a finisher. You know, at that Veritas symposium, Michael Medved really stressed this. He talks about this occasionally, but he is one of the big problems in our culture is we follow our hearts rather than doing our duty. So, you know, it’s kind of everything now is “follow your heart” where it leads you as opposed to in the old days it used to be “do your duty.”

A finisher finishes typically with a high sense of duty. He finishes because he has duty and obligations given to him to complete a task. You know, like Medved said the other night, the end of boot camp with the Marines, the drill sergeant does say, “All right, you guys, now go off to Iraq and when you get over there and all the bullets start flying, follow your heart.” No, he doesn’t tell him that. He says, “Do your duty.” Are we in a culture war? Are you in a war for your family? Are we always in a in a sense the host of God, the army of God? You bet we are.

And God says we’re going to accomplish this. We’ll be finishers by doing our duty, not by first and foremost following our hearts. Now, I know there’s a blend of that in the scriptures, but duty. Ralph Waldo Emerson—not somebody who would normally quote—but Medved did, so I’ll quote him. So nigh is grandeur to our dust. So near is God to man. When duty whispers low, “thou must,” the youth replies, “I can.”

When duty whispers to us in our old age, David wanted that in his old age. He wanted to be the man that would finish. And when God whispers duty, it’s of the essence of who we are as God’s image bearers—Emerson was saying correctly—to reply, “I can. I can do the task that God has called me to do and to finish.”

Medved said that in the Jewish training of children, they asked them, “Who is the true hero or warrior or victor? What is he?” And the answer is, “He who controls his inclinations. He who controls his inclinations.” Isn’t that great? Our inclinations tend not to finish, and we control those inclinations where our heart might want to go and we finish the task.

Young men and women, children today, when mom and dad give you a task to do, remember David was a finisher. Remember, pastor said you should be a finisher. Don’t do it halfway. Don’t cut most of the grass. Don’t wash most of the dishes. Don’t sweep most of the floor. Finish the job. I guarantee you—well, I no—I don’t. God is wonderful and miraculous, but it is a difficult thing to be a finisher in old age, the way David was, if you have not been a finisher in your training.

Parents, train your children to be finishers. This is who we are to be, to be. And this is direct implication of the doctrine of perseverance. Now man, I know a lot of you are feeling you know guilty. I am. There’s stuff I haven’t finished. I know I should. You know, I know that I preached this several years ago and I know some of you made a commitment then to be a better finisher. Follow through on that commitment. If you didn’t, make it today as you come forward.

The rest of the outline is all about how Jesus Christ is the finisher on the cross in John 19. What does he say? It is finished. And I give you some stuff there what it means it’s finished. All kinds of things were finished. The list did not exhaust him. But he accomplished: it is finished. Well, his task that his father had given him to do ultimately is what he’s talking about.

He was a finisher. He had persevered to the end with what God wanted him to do. He had said earlier in John 4 that his food—what, you know, what is the purpose of food? What is it? What is his sustenance? And what does he get sustenance to? His food is to do the will of the Father in heaven and to finish the work he’s given me to do, to finish it. That’s his job. That’s why he lived, to be a finisher.

And at the end of his life—he says—the end of his death on the cross for us. He says, “It is finished,” and it’s a victor’s cry. You know, I think that he doesn’t just hang his head. I think he throws his head back, according to Luke, and shouts out, “It is finished,” and then he says he commends his spirit into the hands of the Father. It’s finished. Victor cry.

When you lay down your head tonight, may God give you a victor’s cry that you finish the day well, that you finish the task. And when you get home from work tomorrow and get done with the family, when you lay down your head, I’m praying to God that the spirit of God reminds you men particularly tomorrow night as you go to sleep. I’m trying to set up an association. Think, “Did I finish well today? And will I finish well my life? Will I, when I’m old and gray-headed, be a servant who trusts and who hopes and who worships? Be a finisher of what God has called you to do.”

Jesus was. We’re Christians. We’re anointed ones, anointed for a task, a king and a priest were anointed—not just because that was cool, they got to wear the crown. David was anointed to go out with his armies to a task, to finish the task that God had given him to do. We’re anointed ones. When you were baptized, whether you like it or not, you were anointed. You became a Christian.

And the Bible says Christians follow Jesus by being finishers. And the Holy Spirit—the spirit—empowers Christ. It comes upon him to the end that he’d be a finisher. And the spirit is given to us by God to enable us to be finishers of the tasks and callings that God has given us to do. You can look up the rest of the verses on the outline, you can, but this is a truth from beginning to end of the Bible. It’s not just David. John the Baptist says he began to finish his course. Paul said, “I want to finish the course.” Jesus finished his course.

This is what we are. Old age last word speeches in the Bible are there because it’s indications to us of what kind of men finish. And that’s the kind of men we want God to cause us to be. You know, it says in the Gospels that Jesus loved them to the finish. Ultimately, his motivation, the duty he had toward his people, was one of love. May the Lord God give us a sense of love to Jesus to the finish of our lives, love for those around us, love for the work that you do tomorrow at the business place, love for these things.

And a love that causes us to be finishers of the task that God has called us to do. Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for Jesus, a finisher. We thank you that you have given us the spirit to bring us things of Jesus to make us finishers. We thank you for the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. And we pray, Lord God, that as we meditate upon these things, it wouldn’t be some empty dry doctrine, but it would be a howling indictment against us when we fail to finish and a strong encouragement to us to finish.

We thank you, Lord God, for all the warnings in Hebrews that the ones who are blessed are the ones who endure to the finish, to the end. Make us, Lord God, people who remain faithful to Jesus to the end. But more than that, may that faith come out in what we do, in finishing tasks in our homes, with our loved ones, with our houses, at our business, tasks we’ve taken up at church, whatever it might be. Lord God, may we never be content until we finish the tasks that you’ve called us to do.

Bless us as we come forward now, recognizing that apart from Jesus, we can’t do it. But because of Jesus and because of the indwelling Holy Spirit, we shall surely do it. And may we then consecrate ourselves to that end. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen.

Right. That Psalm 70 is the beginning of it. This is a psalm of remembrance, to bring to memory. And of course, those of you familiar with your Bibles and specifically with Psalm 22, would have seen lots of allusions to Psalm 22 in Psalm 71. The being, you know, who can help him? He’s got nobody to help him. That sort of stuff. Yeah, the mocking of the ungodly against the man they think is helpless is really found in Psalm 22 as well as the movement then to the hearing of God, the prayer of the psalmist in 22, and how it ends on a very triumphant note again, speaking of telling the generation to come the great things of God.

Psalm 22, of course, as well, is now then a picture of what we celebrate at communion. It’s remembrance. Ultimately, that our death—for the Lord Jesus Christ are finishing the race well—is in his stead, in his place, in his stead, in his stead rather, it is he in our stead that finished well for us and gives us that. The Lord Jesus Christ is the one who was raised up. That’s spoken of in that sixth movement of this Psalm 71, the sixth day, the resurrection from the dead.

Obviously a reference ultimately to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, raising his people from the dead through his faithful death, his finishing faithful death on the cross.

It’s a psalm of remembrance and it brings this table—it brings to memory the victor, the finishing victor, Jesus Christ, who died in victory and was raised up as King of all Kings and Lord of all Lords. It’s also a psalm. So, it reminds us of that. But it also says that the memorial idea in talking of the Lord’s supper is it’s a memorial to God. He remembers. The first five times this word for remembrance is found in the Bible is in Genesis. And it refers to God remembering certain things.

He remembered when he hears the cry of the people in Exodus, for instance, he remembered, and he brings them out of that, out of their affliction early. He remembers Noah in the ark. He’ll remember, he says, when they put the sign of the covenant in their worship, and then accompanied by the sign that God puts in the covenant, a sign of the covenant in the sky, the bow, he’ll look upon it and remember.

Remembering is what God does toward us first and foremost. And as we look at the finisher’s death, we present this as it were to remind God to treat us in Jesus Christ in terms of the covenant that he effected by being our finisher for us. So, as we come to the table, it’s a reminder of the great men and women of the past. David’s one of the ones we just sang about, wept great anguish and yet was delivered by God, a finisher.

We remind ourselves of different relatives who are finished properly through their death in faith. And ultimately, it’s a reminder to God that he treats us according to the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. And as a result of that, he doesn’t remove his spirit from us, but we are strengthened by that Holy Spirit through partaking of the sacrament to the end that we could indeed be those finishers that God has called us as Christians to be as well.

I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you that the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “Take, eat. This is my body which is broken for you. This do as my memorial.”