In the Day of Fear
Pastor Tan Thai · Aug 22, 2021
This sermon based on Psalm 56 explores David's fear when captured in Gath among enemies, while showing that faith does not eliminate fear but enables believers to keep walking even while afraid. The central message is that in 'days of fear,' God's people are invited to pour out their hearts before the Lord and hold fast to His promise that He is always present.
The sermon opens by sketching the historical background of Psalms 56 and 34, belonging to a group of nine psalms David wrote during the darkest period of his life, when King Saul hunted him for ten to twelve years. The pastor traces the sequence of events in 1 Samuel 19–21: David surrounded at home, fleeing to Samuel, tearfully parting from his closest friend Jonathan, and finally falling into the hands of King Achish at Gath — Goliath's own hometown. This desperate situation forced David to feign madness to survive, and it is in that very crisis that Psalm 56 was written.
The central section of the sermon analyzes David's fear both theologically and practically. The pastor emphasizes that fear is a universal human emotion dating back to Adam (Genesis 3), and that even Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane displayed extreme anguish to the point of sweating blood. Therefore, believers feeling afraid in the face of pandemic, economic hardship, or crime is entirely natural. The issue is not learning to stop being afraid, but learning to keep living and functioning while afraid. David chose to pour out his heart before the Lord (Psalm 62:8) and declared, 'In the day of my fear, I will put my trust in You' (Psalm 56:3).
The pastor explains two ways God resolves fear: sometimes He calms the storm by changing circumstances, and sometimes He lets the storm rage while calming His child within it. The reason David's fear diminished was not certainty that circumstances would change, but confidence in God's promise to be present in every place and situation (Deuteronomy 20:3-4; Joshua 1:9; John 14:27). The image of the 'tear bottle' in verse 8 — an ancient custom of collecting a grieving friend's tears in a flask — illustrates the moving truth that God Himself is the closest Friend who catches every one of David's tears and records them all.
The sermon concludes with a lesson on the purpose of fearful days: God uses trials to teach His people to depend on Him and to mature in faith (James 1:2-4; Hebrews 5:7-8). A psychological study of 400 famous twentieth-century figures (Goertzel, 1962) is cited to illustrate that the majority of those with great influence grew up in adversity. The pastor calls the congregation to look toward the ultimate promise of Revelation 21:4 — the day God will wipe away every tear — and to walk in the light of life with gratitude, knowing that God has never left their side.