Larry Siegle
Link to sermon video: The God of All Seasons – L Siegle
God in the Difficult “Seasons” of Life
Psalm 71 — “In you, O LORD, do I take refuge; let me never be put to shame.” (v.1)
I. Introduction — A prayer that only gets prayed in the dark
- Psalm 71: written by a man with gray in his beard and trouble at his door
- Decades of walking with God — and still asking to be rescued
- Not weak faith; honest faith. For the diagnosis, the wayward child, the empty chair
- It begins in trouble and ends in praise
II. Background — The Psalm of a Lifelong Believer
- 24 verses of raw, unedited honesty
- Spans a lifetime: from the womb (v.6) to gray hairs (v.18)
- Three times he cries “rescue me” / “deliver me”
- No superscription, no title — just a soul, and a God who answers
III. Five Points: How God Comes to Rescue
- God Is My Rock of Refuge — vv. 1–3
- “Be to me a rock of refuge, to which I may continually come” (v.3); cf. Ps. 18:2; Prov. 18:10
- “Continually come” — the door is never closed; a rock does not move when circumstances do
- Refuge is not escape from trouble; it is shelter inside it
- Where you run first reveals what you truly trust
- Application: In this week’s trouble, did I run to God — or only to God last?
- God Hears the Cry “Rescue Me” — vv. 4–6
- “Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked” (v.4)
- “Upon you I have leaned from before my birth” (v.6)
- The God who carried you before you could ask has not lost His grip now
- God Never Casts Me Off — vv. 9–13
- “Do not cast me off in the time of old age” (v.9); Isaiah 46:4; Hebrews 13:5
- The enemies said, “God has forsaken him” (v.11) — they were wrong
- Feeling forsaken is not the same as being forsaken
- Christ was truly forsaken at the cross so that you never would be
- God Renews My Hope — vv. 14–16
- “But I will hope continually and will praise you yet more and more” (v.14)
- “But” — the hinge word of faith: the facts are real, and so is God
- “Continually” — hope is a habit, not a mood
- “More and more” — rescued people do not get quieter about God
- God Revives Me Again — vv. 17–24
- “You…will revive me again; from the depths of the earth you will bring me up again” (v.20)
- “Again” — He has done it before; He will do it again
- Purpose: “till I proclaim your might to another generation” (v.18)
- The psalm changes key — vv. 22–24 end in singing
IV. Illustrations
- “Rescue Me” — Brush Arbor, 1981: Psalm 71 set to music; cry out, then praise anyway
- Deliverance / Rescue / Comfort — He acts, He comes near, He stays (v.21)
- Jessica McClure, Midland TX, Oct. 14, 1987 — 22 feet down, 58 hours; rescue had to come down to her
V. Conclusion — The Psalm Ends in Singing
- “My lips will shout for joy, when I sing praises to you” (v.23)
- God did not answer him with an explanation; God answered him with Himself
VI. Your Response Today
- Name it — say the trouble out loud to God
- Run to Him — make the Rock your first stop, not your last resort
- Hope again — “This is true — but I will hope continually”
- Tell someone — proclaim His might to another generation
“You will revive me again.” — Psalm 71:20