"Tracks 3 & 4: Resting in God's Rescue (Psalm 3-4)"
Psalm 3-4 | 5/12/24 | Will DuVal
Before we moved to St Louis, I was a youth minister at a boarding school in a little town in Indiana. And I LOVED it - it was my dream job. But it all fell apart in my 5th year there when I got sideways with my boss, the head chaplain. She was a very liberal PCUSA minister, but for 4 years I had managed to fly under the radar until she discovered that one of my friends and youth group volunteers from the Math department attended an evangelical church that took a public stance against abortion and gay marriage, so she tried to get him FIRED. When the administration said, “No”, she told ME to fire him from helping with the YOUTH group, and when I asked questions, she tried to get ME fired. So I spent about a WEEK sitting trial before the head of HR, the Dean of Faculty, the head of SCHOOLS, listening to my boss lob allegation after allegation at me… at one point, she was literally screaming obscenities across the conference table at me. And for the next MONTH or so, I woke up every morning not knowing if I still had a job.
I know SOME of you can relate. You stepped up to serve as a foster parent, only to have the birth parents ATTACK you through the court system. A fellow coworker competing for that promotion bad-mouthed you to the boss while taking the credit for YOUR work. You invited the neighborhood kids to Vacation Bible School, and then subsequently discovered that you STOPPED getting invited to the neighborhood block parties. A once-close family member cut you out of their life for confronting them about their sin, or simply for talking too much about JESUS.
Maybe you CAN’T relate. You say, “Pastor, I’m a pretty low drama person. I’ve never really HAD an ‘enemy’.”
You’re WRONG. God’s WORD says, “Be watchful; Your ENEMY the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” (1 Pet 5:8)
You DO have an enemy, friend.
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“We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against… the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Eph 6:12) As we’ll see, the Psalms are gonna be FILLED with “enemy” and “foe” language, including Psalms 3 & 4 for this morning. But more than MY boss, or YOUR neighbor, or David’s son ABSALOM, we can’t lose sight of the REAL enemy, the enemy BEHIND all those lesser “enemies”. And the question isn’t “IF” that lion is gonna pounce, but WHEN, and moreover, how are WE gonna RESPOND when he DOES?
Here in Psalm 3 & 4, God - through the inspired words of King DAVID - is gonna show us how to respond in a godly way when we’re under attack, whether spiritual or otherwise (but as Ephesians 6 just said: it’s ALL spiritual, really!). David offers us the “ABC and D”s here of a biblical response.
Now if you’re like ME, your NATURAL reaction in the face of opposition is the ABC & D’s alright:
Anxiety
Belligerence
Controllingness, and
Defensiveness.
We might even add an “E” in there, to - get EVEN. EYE for an EYE.
But God’s got a BETTER “ABC & D” in mind this morning, a better way.
Would you STAND with me for the reading of God’s word - I will read it for us this week… from Psalm ch3 AND ch4; they are so similar, so many parallels we’ll see here, that many scholars lump them together, as we will this morning.
Hear the word of the Lord, Psalm 3-4:
A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son.
3:1“O Lord, how many are my foes!
Many are rising against me;
2 many are saying of my soul,
“There is no salvation for him in God.” Selah
3 But you, O Lord, are a shield about me,
my glory, and the lifter of my head.
4 I cried aloud to the Lord,
and he answered me from his holy hill. Selah
5 I lay down and slept;
I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.
6 I will not be afraid of many thousands of people
who have set themselves against me all around.
7 Arise, O Lord!
Save me, O my God!
For you strike all my enemies on the cheek;
you break the teeth of the wicked.
8 Salvation belongs to the Lord;
your blessing be on your people! Selah
[and ch4] To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments. A Psalm of David.
4:1 Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness!
You have given me relief when I was in distress.
Be gracious to me and hear my prayer!
2 O men, how long shall my honor be turned into shame?
How long will you love vain words and seek after lies? Selah
3 But know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself;
the Lord hears when I call to him.
4 Be angry, and do not sin;
ponder in your own hearts on your beds, and be silent. Selah
5 Offer right sacrifices,
and put your trust in the Lord.
6 There are many who say, “Who will show us some good?
Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord!”
7 You have put more joy in my heart
than they have when their grain and wine abound.
8 In peace I will both lie down and sleep;
for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.”
[This is the word of the Lord… Seated…]
So how do we RESPOND when we’re under ATTACK?
Step #1: ADMIT your distress. (3:1-2; 4:1-2)
Remember there are 3 ways to interpret every psalm: historically, personally, and Christocentrically. So let’s start with the HISTORICAL context, DEFINITELY for Psalm 3, and PROBABLY for Psalm 4 as well.
You’ll notice these are the first psalms we’ve looked at that BEGIN with a “superscription” or “title” - a “HEADER”. SOME of our Bibles include TWO headers, for instance, for Psalm 3: “Save Me, O My God” and then BENEATH it: “A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son.” It’s important to note that only ONE of those is God-breathed; the LATTER. Your Bible may include section headers in ITALICS, at the start of a new chapter, that try and SUMMARIZE the subsequent passage for you. That’s FINE, it’s usually HELPFUL. But it’s NOT God-inspired. That is a later English translator’s synopsis. However, when you see a “superscription” BELOW it, like “A Psalm of DAVID” or “To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments”, THOSE titles ARE found in the earliest Hebrew manuscripts, inspired by God himself.
And the title HERE, for chapter THREE in particular, reveals the historical context that OCCASIONED David’s writing of these psalms; NAMELY, he PENNED them when he was on the RUN from his SON, ABSALOM. You can find the FULL story in 2 Samuel 15-18 but here’s the Cliff Notes: David had a BUNCH of kids from a BUNCH of different wives; ONE of them, Amnon, fell in love - or in LUST - with his HALF-sister Tamar, and when she refused his advances, he RAPED her. Tamar’s FULL-blooded brother, Absalom, KILLED Amnon in revenge, but then he FLED Jerusalem in fear. And while he was in self-imposed exile, Absalom hatched a plan to USURP his father David’s throne. And sure enough, a few years later, Absalom returned with a whole army of Israelites he had amassed by LYING and SLANDERING David’s good name; they MARCHED on the capital, forcing DAVID now to flee in fear. But Absalom and his rebel militia PURSUED King David OUT into the wilderness, to try and finish him off. And David wrote Psalm 3, very possibly, on the morning of the battle, just before it all went DOWN. Psalm 4 is a little harder to pinpoint, but it READS as though David could have written IT in the EVENING just AFTER the battle, while David is still vulnerable.
But whatever the exact context, what is CERTAIN is that David is in “DISTRESS” - that’s the word he uses in ch4, v1 - “I was in DISTRESS”!
Ch3, v1: “how many are my foes… rising against me” – the Bible doesn’t tell us EXACTLY how many - in v6, David mentions “many thousands of people” - Spoiler Alert: God will RESCUE David by DELIVERING him from Absalom’s army, and 2 Samuel 18:7 tells us that 20,000 of those who rose AGAINST David were KILLED in the battle, including Absalom himself. But the point is: David didn’t KNOW the outcome of the battle when he was writing ch3 here. All HE knew was a big army is COMING - at LEAST 20,000; ch17 suggests that Absalom had conscripted “all of ISRAEL” to join the fight (17:13). That’s a lot of FOES!
And what are they SAYING?
““There’s no salvation for him in God.” Even GOD can’t save you NOW, David!” Maybe they thought God had ABANDONED David. After all, there was the whole AFFAIR with Bathsheeba, and then David MURDERED her husband Uriah. You better believe that Absalom was using that now as ammunition against his Dad, to galvanize his militia: “Brother Israelites - remember when King SAUL showed too much MERCY on the Amalekites back in FIRST Samuel 15, and God punished him by tearing the KINGDOM from him? Well that’s NOTHING compared to the sin my DAD is guilty of; just listen to THIS…!”
And Absalom managed to CONVINCE nearly all of ISRAEL that God really had FORSAKEN his father.
So David LAMENTS in ch4, v2: “O men, how long shall my honor be turned into shame? How long will you love vain words and seek after lies? Selah”.
By the way, that Hebrew word “selah” occurs 71x in the psalms. We’re not really sure WHAT it means; our best guess is it comes either from the verb for “lift up” OR from the verb for “be silent”. Remember, these are SONGS. So it’s a musical notation, like a “crescendo” or a “grand pause”, for you musicians. So it EITHER meant “lift up”, like make your voices, your instruments LOUDER… OR it meant “be SILENT” - like, take a LONG pause here, and allow for a moment of silent reflection, for the lyrics to SINK IN. So pretty much OPPOSITE instructions (Wiersbe, 875). We’re not sure. It’s kinda fun to GUESS, though; based on the LYRICS, I’m going with “grand pause”, for effect.
But returning to the point, the first thing David DOES in the face of adversity, isn’t to get ANXIOUS… He doesn’t get ANGRY… David gets HONEST, and he ADMITS his distress.
You’re probably familiar with this meme by now - the DOG, in the HOME, that’s on FIRE, who’s still SMILING, sipping his COFFEE, insisting that everything is FINE.
Friends - that kind of response in the face of trouble - SERIOUS trouble; “tens of thousands of TROOPS coming for your LIFE” kind of TROUBLE - that doesn’t make you really STRONG… it doesn’t mean you’re really SPIRITUAL… that kind of response just means you’re really in DENIAL, about the very real DANGER you’re IN.
David was in REAL trouble here, and he KNEW it; he acknowledged it.
Some of you have real problems this morning - crippling debt; like, “I don’t know how we’re gonna MAKE it” financial problems… endless MARITAL strife; “all we DO anymore is FIGHT”... seemingly insurmountable ADDICTION; “I’ve been battling this demon for YEARS now”... life-threatening HEALTH problems; I got that text about Joe’s dad collapsing on Thursday night, and by Saturday afternoon they were taking him off the ventilator. I’m guessing he was in his late 50’s…
And God’s ANSWER in the FACE of your problems ISN’T to just bury your HEAD in the sand and pretend like they don’t EXIST! That’s BUDDHISM’s answer: the way to ESCAPE your problems is to believe they don’t really EXIST; just meditate until you achieve nirvana and realize this whole material world is just a lower plane of existence that can be TRANSCENDED.
I don’t know about YOU, but I find the Bible’s outlook here on suffering to be much more REAL, sensible, HELPFUL.
Cuz I don’t care HOW hard David tried meditating while Absalom’s army was chasing him down… when my boss was coming for ME, I could have shut my eyes as TIGHT as you like, emptied my mind as MUCH as you like, “Ommm”-ed as DEEPLY as you like, but guess what: the minute I OPENED my eyes again, she would’ve STILL been there SCREAMING in my face.
We can’t just WISH our problems away, can we?
But God invites us to bring our problems to HIM - 1 Peter 5:7 encourages us to “cast all your anxieties on [the LORD], because he cares for you”. What a beautiful invitation. But you can’t really DO that if you can’t even bring yourself to admit that you’ve GOT problems, now CAN you?
We’ve gotta get HONEST - not only about the EXISTENCE of our problems, but about the EXTENT of them as well. We’ve ALL heard that “God won’t give you more than you can handle”, right? WRONG! Actually, God’s WORD tells us that He SPECIFICALLY gives us more than we can handle, oftentimes, for the expressed purpose of forcing us to rely on HIS strength to carry us through, when WE don’t POSSESS the strength. So HE gets the glory.
But again, you’re not gonna bring those problems to him if you can’t bring YOURSELF to admit you’ve GOT ‘em.
So THAT’S the first step…
Then, #2 - We BESEECH the Lord. (3:3-4; 4:4:1-3)
David doesn’t just admit his DISTRESS, even more importantly, but often more DIFFICULT for us, David admits his NEED FOR HELP, his need for RESCUE FROM that distress!
Our electrical outlet on our front porch hasn’t worked now since DECEMBER, when I had to move my inflatable Jesus holding Santa in a CHOKE-hold over to the SIDE of our yard - it was a real bummer. And I KNEW there was a PROBLEM. I’ve known it for almost SIX MONTHS now. But what I HAVEN’T been able to bring myself to do - until NOW! I am practicing what I preach this morning, Church; consider this my SHEEPISH way of asking for HELP! If you just LOVE doing ELECTRICAL work, have I got a fun project for YOU! (See, this is the perk of being the PASTOR; I got a PLATFORM for publicizing MY problems… 🙂)
But my POINT is: it’s one thing to know you’ve got an issue; but it’s ANOTHER thing to call the ELECTRICIAN.
Who does David turn to? What’s the first word out of David’s MOUTH in ch3?
“O SELF, time to get psyched up for battle…” - does he turn INWARD?
“O ARMY, let’s go GET ‘em!” - does David turn OUTWARD, to HIS OWN troops, for rescue?
Or he could have turned outward in FEAR - “O ABSALOM, my SON; pretty pretty please don’t attack me!”
NO; who does David ADDRESS? “O LORD”, O YAHWEH!
Not inward, focused on his FEELINGS; not OUTWARD, focused on his CIRCUMSTANCES. David looks UPWARD, and focuses on his GOD.
David first ADMITS his distress. But he ALSO knows that as long as he KEEPS his eyes on his problems, he’s gonna DROWN.
We all remember the story of Peter walking on the water, don’t we, in the middle of the storm. As soon as he fixed his eyes on the WAVES, what happened? He SANK, like a STONE!
Where do we fix our eyes if we wanna keep our heads above water? On THE LORD!
“I cried aloud to the Lord” David says in ch3, v4;
v7: “Arise, O Lord! Save me, O my God!”
Ch4, v1: “Answer me when I call… Be gracious… and hear my prayer!”, he implores God.
And then David REASSURES his own heart in v3: “But know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself; the Lord hears when I call to him.”
Same thing in ch3, v4: “[God] answered me from his holy hill. ”
Did you know that God DOESN’T listen to EVERYONE’s prayers? You know the DIFFERENCE between King Saul and King DAVID? Sure, BOTH of them sinned. And by any objective metric, David’s sin with Bathsheeba and Uriah was actually WORSE than SAUL’s with the Amalekites - Absalom had a point there. But he was forgetting one very important thing; what did DAVID have that Saul DIDN’T? [**???**]
REPENTANCE! Saul may have felt REMORSE for HIS sin; he was SORRY about it (at least about the CONSEQUENCES he had to SUFFER because of it!); but DAVID found true REPENTANCE - he TURNED from his sin, and RE-turned to the LORD.
In Psalm 32, David confesses “when I kept silent, my bones wasted away… For day and night your hand was heavy upon me…
[But] I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not cover my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.
Therefore let everyone who is godly
offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found”, David exhorts us (32:3-6).
That’s ONE reason God might not listen to a person’s prayers, according to James 5:16 - if they have UNCONFESSED SIN living in their heart.
Or UNBELIEF, Matthew 17:20 says.
Or if the prayer comes from DECEITFUL LIPS, Psalm 17:1 says.
Or a SELFISH HEART, James 4:3 says.
Or if you turn your EAR away from GOD’S word, then Proverbs 28:9 says God’ll turn HIS ear away from YOURS.
Or it could be your failure to FAST, Matthew 17:21.
Or your failure to honor your SPOUSE, 1 Peter 3:7.
Or your failure to abide in CHRIST, John 15:7. (see David Guzik, “Psalm 4”, https://enduringword.com/bible-commentary/psalm-4/ )
There are actually LOTS of reasons God might not listen to a person’s prayers; what’s MORE amazing is that He EVER listens to ANYONE’s prayers! Especially when you consider what David says here in ch4, v3 about whose prayers DO get heard: “the Lord has set apart the godly for himself; [THAT’S why] the Lord hears when I call to him.”
Church: the only reason God hears US today, when WE pray - 1 Peter 3:12 declares “the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer” - and yet the Romans 3 reminds us that NONE of us in righteous, on our OWN merit. So where do we GET our RIGHTEOUSNESS, that empowers us to BOLDLY approach God’s throne of grace in time of need, and know for CERTAIN that God will hear us, and ANSWER?
In CHRIST ALONE! That’s why we PRAY “in Jesus’ name”; we can ONLY be HEARD BY God, through CHRIST, because we can ONLY be RIGHTEOUS WITH God through Christ.
We beseech God the Father THROUGH Christ, the Son, in the POWER of the Holy Spirit.
Listen: TRIALS will either drive us TOWARDS God, or they’ll drive us AWAY from him; there’s really no standing STILL. When pain and disappointment and heartbreak and ATTACKS come - not “IF”, but “WHEN” - the only question is: do we let it drive us back INTO God’s arms, or OUT of them? Do we draw CLOSER to the SHEPHERD, as he’s leading us through the valley of the shadow of death - sometimes the words there of Psalm 23 are so flowy and beautiful that we gloss right over the MEANING - the SAME Shepherd who leads us beside still waters, and makes us lie DOWN in green pastures… he ALSO, at OTHER times, leads us through DEADLY VALLEYS! Do we draw CLOSER to him - CLINGING to him, like our lives DEPEND on it! - or do we BLAME him and PUSH him away?
David knows HIS answer, and it brings us to step #3 in responding to attacks:
ADMIT your distress…
BESEECH the LORD… and then…
#3) CONFIDENTLY TRUST in God’s deliverance. (3:5-7; 4:4-7)
That’s the OVERARCHING point here; as David puts it in ch3, v3: “But you, O Lord, are a shield about me,
my glory, and the lifter of my head.”
Or even more succinctly in ch4, v5: “put your trust in the Lord.”
That is God’s COUNSEL to us as well. But if we focus in even more acutely here on his WORDS, David answers for us the very next question that SHOULD be on our minds: “What does it actually LOOK LIKE to “confidently trust” in the Lord?”
Cuz we ALL know the platitudes: “Let go and let God”... “Jesus, take the wheel”... But I DON’T recommend getting in the car BLIND-folded and hitting the GAS and simply PRAYING, and I don’t think DAVID or GOD would EITHER. So what does it MEAN then, practically, to “put your trust in the Lord”?
I see 11 marks here, of confident trust in the Lord:
1) As we already pointed OUT, in step #2, for starters, trusting God means crying OUT to Him. Prayer should be the believer’s FIRST RESPONSE, not our LAST RESORT. And I believe David offers us a worthy EXAMPLE here, in ch3, v4, when he “cries ALOUD”. Silent prayers are FINE; God can hear them ALL. But I can almost promise you that YOU will be more focused, more sincere, more fervent, more CHANGED… when you pray OUT LOUD.
2) Second - and I’m just highlighting these in the order we find them in the psalms - SECOND half of v4 now, is God’s ANSWER to David’s cry. And I think the takeaway is that it’s not ENOUGH for us to cry OUT to God; we need to actually WAIT and LISTEN for his RESPONSE! And part of that means knowing which direction to train your EAR. In DAVID’s day, God spoke from “his holy hill”, from Mt. Zion, where the tabernacle resided, with God’s manifest presence. But TODAY, friends, God speaks to us from HIS WORD. And part of what it means for us to “confidently TRUST” him is simply to LISTEN; to read, to KNOW, and to OBEY God’s word.
3) Third, v5: if you wanna know if you are TRULY trusting in GOD to come THROUGH for you in a given predicament, here is a surefire litmus test: Can you lie down and go to SLEEP? David ENDS there in ch4 as well, v8: “In peace I will lie down and sleep.”
If you’re tossing and turning, you’re not TRUSTING… at least not in THE LORD. You may be TRUSTING… trusting in YOUR ability to fix the problem, if you can just chew on it just a little while longer… trusting in YOUR ability to control the situation - manifest the desired outcome - or at least account for all the variables that could go wrong, so you can’t be caught off GUARD.
How much BETTER to trust in GOD, and SLEEP SOUNDLY. King David here - sleeping like a BABY, knowing full-well that the entire army of ISRAEL is bearing down on him, and likely to catch UP to him come daybreak - he reminds us of the apostle PETER, who somehow managed to fall asleep on the cold, hard ground of a jail cell in Acts ch12 despite being CHAINED to a Roman soldier on either side of him and oh, by the way: this was the night before he was scheduled to be EXECUTED in the morning! Slept like a BABY! Or JESUS HIMSELF, in Mark ch4, who fell asleep in the back of a boat while a STORM was raging all around him.
HOW? He trusted GOD.
4) Fourth thing it means to trust God: it means recognizing God’s SUSTAINING grace in your life. That’s the second half of v5: not ONLY did David trust God enough to lie down and SLEEP; when he WOKE UP again, the first thing he did was PRAISE God for SUSTAINING him through the NIGHT.
We can get so CONSUMED by the big, looming problems facing us that we sometimes lose SIGHT of all the seemingly SMALL, but in matter of fact, really SIGNIFICANT ways that God has ALREADY come through for us. I don’t want to minimize the TRIALS that you may be up against this morning. But I will just REMIND you that just by virtue of your BEING here this morning, that means God SUSTAINED you for 8 hours - or 6, or maybe only FOUR; maybe you stayed up HALF THE NIGHT worrying about your problems. That still means God managed to keep you ALIVE without ANY help from you - you were completely UNCONSCIOUS - you weren’t thinking about BREATHING, and yet God made sure you kept getting the oxygen you needed; you weren’t thinking about your HEART beating, and yet God made sure your limbs kept getting the oxygen-rich blood they needed pumped to them; you couldn’t even manage to form a conscious thought about your BLADDER being full, and yet - if you’re like me; even IF you only slept 4 hours last night like I did - God was STILL gracious enough to wake you up to make sure you didn’t wet the bed.
Can we just stop and APPRECIATE all that for a minute - God’s SUSTAINING graces, in all the little AND the big ways, in our lives?
And David JUMPS from the little TO the big with sub-point…
#5) now, in v6: “I will not be afraid of many thousands of people”. Why not? Because David knows, as Martin Luther put it, that “One with God is a majority” - ME PLUS GOD… DAVID PLUS GOD… is a majority. It’s not even a fair FIGHT, for those “many thousands of people” who would oppose GOD’S army of ONE! No contest. God wins. Every time.
So trusting God means no INSOMNIA, and it means no FEAR.
But notice now what trusting God does NOT mean:
#6- it does NOT mean we remain PASSIVE. David is PRAYERFUL, but please do not confuse PRAYERfulness with PASSIVITY here; he prays in v7: “Arise, O Lord!
Save me, O my God!”. David’s action is to call GOD to action.
And here’s the crazy part about that: God actually tells us in His word that OFTENtimes, this is EXACTLY how He chooses to accomplish his WORK and his WILL in the WORLD, is THROUGH the prayers of his PEOPLE! James 5:16 says “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” Prayer WORKS. It is POWERFUL. What if God has been WAITING to fix your DEBT problems, your MARITAL problems, your HEALTH problems… waiting on YOU to start PRAYING? Really, earnestly praying. Or waiting on you to enlist OTHERS to pray for you; James 5:14 says, “Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him”. I’m not suggesting that everyone who suffers from chronic illness, chronic sin struggles, chronic trials of ANY kind - that it’s ALWAYS because they haven’t PRAYED hard enough. I’m just saying if it’s still a PROBLEM, then it’s still a cause for PRAYER.
If God’s not done RESTORING, then WE aren’t done IMPLORING.
If there’s still a NEED, there’s still a PLEAD.
Let us keep BESEECHING Him.
Sometimes that even means prayers of imprecation; we’ll talk about this in greater depth NEXT week, with our first imprecatory psalm in ch5. But even here in ch3, v7, David prays: “you strike all my enemies on the cheek; you break the teeth of the wicked.”
Sometimes that’s what “confident trust in the Lord” looks like: wanting the personal satisfaction of climbing across the conference table and breaking some TEETH, but INSTEAD, “leaving it to the wrath of God,” as Romans 12:19 instructs us; trusting God’s promise that: “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.””.
#7- into ch4 now; trust in the Lord means we look BACK to his PAST FAITHFULNESS as the GROUND of our present confidence in his FUTURE PROVISION.
God’s past faithfulness gives us a PRESENT confidence in God’s future provision.
Notice the verb tense David uses here in v1: “You have given me relief when I was in distress.” David cries, “God- I’m in distress NOW! So where do I look? YES- I look UPWARD to YOU, but I also look BACKWARD, on all of your past faithfulness; all the PREVIOUS times I was in distress, and you came through for me. You haven’t failed me YET, all these many YEARS, so I’m trusting that you’re not gonna start NOW!
#8- We kinda touched on this already with step #1 “admitting your distress”, and then again with that imprecatory, “break their teeth” language, but in 4:4 now David gives himself PERMISSION to “Be angry, but do not sin”. Confidently trusting in God does NOT mean we don’t respond emotionally and APPROPRIATELY when we get ATTACKED. When your own SON steals your THRONE, and as if that wasn’t enough, then he chases you out into the WILDERNESS to try and hunt you DOWN like some kind of ANIMAL - it is appropriate and RIGHT, even GODLY, to get ANGRY. God gets angry… LOTS in the Bible. Jesus got ANGRY, NOT infrequently. WWJD? “What Would JESUS Do?” We may not still wear the bracelet, but it’s still a good question to ASK ourselves. And a LOT of the time, the honest answer is: he’d get MAD. He’d be ANGRY, but he WOULDN’T SIN.
#9- second half of v4 now, David says SOMETIMES trusting God means “pondering in your own heart… and being SILENT”. Sometimes it means PRAYING, crying OUT, PLEADING, making YOUR will known to GOD… and then there’s ALSO a time for being SILENT. For being STILL, and knowing that HE is God, and I am NOT. Not MY will, but YOURS be done, O Lord.
#10- v5: Putting your trust in the Lord MEANS “Offer[ing] right sacrifices”. We just got done studying LEVITICUS, and all its SACRIFICES - they were a TANGIBLE way of entrusting oneself to God. Talk is CHEAP; are you gonna put your money where your MOUTH is? For some of you, just being here this morning, not walking OUT on a SERMON like this, opening your MOUTH to sing lyrics like “Hallelujah, PRAISE to the One… who LOVED me… who RESCUED me”- your offering that sacrifice of praise is NOT CHEAP, because it doesn’t FEEL like God is loving you very much right now, you’re not EXPERIENCING his “RESCUE” from the PIT that you presently find yourself in, and it’s ALL YOU CAN DO to sit here without storming out in TEARS.
If that’s you: God BLESS you for being here, in SPITE of your feelings. WITH your feelings - they can come along for the ride; GOD can handle them and so can WE: go ahead- BE angry (AND… don’t SIN). And offer your sacrifices to God anyway.
Keep singing even when you’re not sure you believe it. Keep listening even when you don’t like what I’m preaching. Keep PRAYING even when it feels like God’s not LISTENING. He IS. And if it’s not GOOD, then he’s just not DONE with it yet. “For we know that God works all things together for good, for those who LOVE him and are called according to his purpose.” (Rom 8:28)
And #11- Last of the SUB-points under #3, what it means to Confidently Trust in God’s deliverance, is this: it means finding our deepest JOY NOT in God’s good GIFTS, but in God HIMSELF. Look at vv6 & 7: “There are many who say, “Who will show us some good?” God, what good GIFTS do you have for me TODAY? “Lift up the light of your face upon us” - God RAIN DOWN YOUR BLESSINGS!
But David says, as for ME, running for my LIFE out here, far from home, without my FAMILY, my best friends - my own SON - stabbed me in the BACK… and yet God, “You have put more joy in my heart than they have - than the WICKED have, those who only come to you when they WANT something, who try and reduce you to a VENDING machine, a magic GENIE; God, I’ve got more joy than they do when their grain and wine abound.” Cuz bread might satisfy for a day, and wine for a night, but friends, only the Lord can satisfy our souls ETERNALLY.
Jesus said, ““I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” (Jn 6:35)
Which brings us to our FINAL step in God’s process - the ABC D’s of responding to our enemy’s attacks:
We ADMIT our distress.
We BESEECH the Lord.
We CONFIDENTLY TRUST him to deliver us, in his own timing. And when he DOES, we…
#4- DECLARE his praises. (3:8; 4:8)
“Salvation belongs to the Lord;
your blessing be on your people!
…you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.”
And he really CAN, friend. Listen: I don’t know what enemies YOU might be facing this morning. Debt. Addiction. Cancer. SATAN.
But I DO know the greatest enemy we ALL face, and that is our own SIN. Our sin separates us from a holy God and disqualifies us - as imperfect people - from eternally enjoying the perfections of Heaven.
But here is the GOSPEL, the good news of HOPE for us, in Christ JESUS. That when we follow God’s protocol laid out for us here in Psalms 3 & 4, and we…
ADMIT our distress: you must OWN UP to your sin.
And if we BESEECH the LORD: “God, because I’m a sinner, I know I don’t deserve relationship with you; I CAN’T enjoy relationship with you. Your word tells me my sins SEPARATE me from you, in your holiness; God: I need a SAVIOR! One who can FORGIVE all my sin - past, present, and future - and SAVE me.”
Friends, when you PRAY that, you can CONFIDENTLY TRUST in the Lord’s DELIVERANCE from the guilt and the BONDAGE of your sin. That “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn 1:9).
And for THAT, friends - regardless of what other enemies may still be facing us this morning - but because JESUS has already defeated our GREATEST enemies - Sin, Hell, and DEATH - for THAT, we will declare his praises.