Psalm 3
Okay, let’s read together from
Psalm 3. We’ll read the psalm in its entirety.
This is a psalm of David when he fled from Absalom, his son. The story we just read from Samuel
chapter 15. King David says, O Lord, how
many are my foes? Many are rising against me. Many
are saying of my soul, there is no salvation for him in God. But you, O Lord, are a shield
about me. my glory, and the lifter of my head. I cried aloud to
the Lord, and he answered me from his holy hill. I lay down
and slept. I awoke again, for the Lord sustained
me. I will not be afraid of many
thousands of people who have set themselves against me all
around. Arise, O Lord, save me, O my
God, for you strike all my enemies on the cheek. You break their
teeth. You break the teeth of the wicked.
Salvation belongs to the Lord. Your blessing be on your people. Amen. Psalm 3 is of course our
third psalm as we make our way through the Psalter, but it’s
really the first psalm. Psalm 1 and 2 going together
show the blessedness of the one who fears God and walks in his
ways as well as a blessing to the one who follows the Messiah. And Psalm 3 is a first in many
ways. It’s the first of King David.
It’s the first of getting sort of past the entry psalms of Psalms
1 and 2. And it’s also the first psalm
that we find where there’s a context to it. There’s a back story.
There’s a story behind the psalm. And the introduction of the psalm
is it’s printed probably in all your scriptures where it says
a psalm of David when he fled from Absalom his son. You can
go and read the story. You can read several chapters
in 2 Samuel of what was taking place, what led up to the writing
of this psalm. Now, Psalms 3 and 4 are likely
meant to go together. Psalm 3, a morning psalm, and
Psalm 4, an evening psalm. And the way we know this is,
well, we read them both and you say, wow, those sort of go together.
But if you look at Verse five, it says, I lay down and slept
and I woke again. And so these are probably the
words of David after he woke up from a night of restful sleep
in the midst of hardship. I’ve titled this message for
us tonight, Peace When There Is No Peace, because God himself
will give us peace even when the world around us is falling
apart. There may be utter chaos in the world, there may be destruction
all around us, but God can bring us peace in our hearts and our
minds by His truth and grace and Holy Spirit. And so we come
to Psalm 3 and we realize that if there had been a situation
room in Jerusalem, we’ve just entered into that picture. The
situation in Israel is that Absalom, the son of David, at least by
account of 2 Samuel 15, has been He’s been creating a loyalty
to himself for at least four or five years. He’s been judging
the nations. He’s been giving them what they
want to hear in order that their allegiance would be his and not
David’s. And so as we come to this Psalm, we recognize that
David is in great trouble. Now the sad thing about it, it’s
trouble of his own making. Where would we be without Bathsheba? Well, there’d be no Absalom.
And where would we be without Absalom? There would probably
be a peaceful reign for King David, but here we are. David’s
eyes, his heart, his lust, his desires got the best of him.
He committed sin with Bathsheba. He put Uriah the Hittite to death. Absalom is the son of the making
of that mess, and so now he is dealing with a very treacherous
situation. He’s in great trouble, and he
leaves the city under great duress. Did you notice the condition
of the king? He’s weeping, he’s barefoot, and he is going out
of his own house, which he built in the great city of David, in
the middle of the night, because he knows not who is for him or
against him. What a terrible, what a terrible
spot to be in. Now, last week when we read Psalm
2, we realized that the enemies of the Messiah, and remember,
David is a Messiah. He is God’s anointed king. He’s
not the Messiah, but he is a Messiah. He is under attack. And what
does God promise? What does God foretell in Psalm
2? He says, enemies will come from surrounding nations. Remember,
why did the nations rage? Why did the peoples plot in vain?
Well, this is not the surrounding nations. This is his own household.
These are his own people. These are the ones he has ruled
over with great integrity and justice for some years now. And he’s not under attack from
outsiders, but from insiders. And so what this psalm shows
us is that when the waves from the storms overtake us, we fix
our eyes on God and he brings peace when there is no peace.
And we have to remember, as we think of that picture of the
storms of life, we have to remember Peter. Remember, he walked out
on the sea to the boat. And if he kept his eyes on Christ,
he stayed afloat. He stayed on top of the water.
But what happened when his faith was weak? He sank. He cried out. And the waves were tempted to
wash over him. And there is much to that, I
think, in this passage where we hear the words of Christ,
we see the faith or the wavering faith of Peter, and we see our
own way in life. Now, some of you young folks
got it pretty good. You wake up every day and there’s
cereal on the table. There’s somebody to wash your
clothes. There’s great blessings in being in your parents’ house.
But when you get a little older, when you get children of your
own, you get a mortgage, you get some of the responsibilities
of life. Life, as the TV commercial says,
can come at you pretty fast. And it overwhelms at times. It overwhelms us physically,
maybe financially, emotionally, spiritually. And so when those
storms come upon us, we need to put our eyes on God. And King
David gives us a great example here. what to do when there is
no peace in the world. We go to God and he can give
us peace. There’s five parts, I think,
to this psalm that’ll help us sort of pick it apart and it
just flows from one verse to the next. The first part we find
in verses one to two, that’s David’s lament. We get a picture
here that the floodwaters are rising. and that the flood has
not yet crested, but it’s about to, and it’s up to here. He’s in a bad way, and he must
escape the city of Jerusalem. Did you notice as we read 2 Samuel
15 that as David was leaving Jerusalem, who was coming in?
Absalom. He must have had some good intelligence
to know what was taking place at some level. But this is a
must escape situation, a cutthroat situation. We, because of Adam
and Eve’s sin, have left the garden and we are now living
in the jungle. And how do we play in the jungle?
It’s by whatever rule works. It’s by whatever means are necessary.
We’re not in the garden right now. It’s not a place of peace,
but it is, excuse me, a jungle. And so we read of David’s lament
in one and two, it says, Oh Lord, That’s the covenant name for
God. Oh, Yahweh, how many are my foes? Many are rising against
me. Many are saying of my soul, there
is no salvation for him in God. I want you to notice, you might
be able to trace your way through your Bible as you have it open,
depends on how your text is laid out, but notice the word many.
How many are my foes? Many are rising against me. Many
are saying of my soul. And then when you get to verse
three, it says, but you. It doesn’t appeal to the many. It doesn’t appeal to the masses.
You, O Lord. And then if you skip down to
verse six, he says, I will not be afraid of many thousands of
people. So it’s David versus the many.
But really it’s Yahweh versus the multitudes. But that’s one
interesting thing to notice. But how many are my foes? They
are rising against me. And so David here speaks of enemies.
He speaks of enemies who have risen against him. It speaks
of opponents, those who are his foes. It speaks of the skeptics. What is their skepticism? God
won’t save you. He can’t do this. There is no
salvation in God for him. But if you read verse two, and
look at verse eight, you kind of have to chuckle a little bit. Salvation belongs to God. It’s not up to them. It’s not
up to his enemies. It’s not up to his foes. It’s
up to God. But we notice the enemies, the opponents, and the
skeptics, and their sarcasm. You compare verse two to verse
seven. Many are saying of my soul there
is no salvation, but David can pray, arise, O God, save me,
O God, strike my enemies on the cheek, break their teeth. We’ll
come to all that in just a moment. But you see the compare and the
contrast, the strength of God and the weakness of the foes.
They may rise against David. They may scare him to death,
but God is great and strong. And so here’s his lament. And
there is their sarcasm. What’s at stake here? David’s
neck is on the line. The kingdom may be a bit shaken,
but really God’s honor is at stake. They say there is no salvation
for him in God. So what would it behoove God? There’s a good word. What would
it behoove God to do? It would be great if God would
save David because then it would prove his enemies wrong. It would
prove the people of God who have risen against David wrong. So
there’s his lament. And so what do we do when we’re
distressed? What do we do when the crowd has it pretty good,
so to speak, but those who follow Yahweh are under it? We go to God, we go to prayer,
we go to worship, we go to the word, and we find peace when
there is no peace. So there’s David’s lament. The
second thing we see is his prayer, verse three. He says, you oh
Lord are a shield about me, my glory and the lifter of my head. I cried aloud to the Lord and
he answered me from his holy hill. Now you know a king or
a president or somebody’s gonna have a security detail. And for
sure as David goes out of the city, he’s got a few men with
him. He’s got some people surrounding
him. praying against Ahithophel and his council to Absalom, but
he’s got Zadok and his boys, the priest, who are gonna keep
their eyes and ears open. He’s got, no doubt, some men
around him. And this little security detail
is gonna take him out into the wilderness. They’re gonna go
out to the fort or to the crossroads where the river can be crossed.
And they’re gonna be out in the open. but he’s got a better security
detail than the strong men of Israel. He has God himself, the
faithful covenant-making, covenant-keeping God who rules over the heavens
above and the earth beneath. So David doesn’t really know
who’s in and who’s out, who’s with him, who’s against him,
but he knows God, and that’s all he needs. And so in verse
three and four, we see a prayer of his confidence. God is a shield
or a protector. And if you think back to the
life of Abraham or Abram at this point in Genesis 15, Abram’s
pretty scared of life. He’s pretty scared of whether
the promises of God are going to come true. This comes after
Abram has to go to war to rescue Lot from the kings. And God comes
to him and says in chapter 15, verse 1, After these things,
the word of the Lord came to Abram in a dream or vision and
said, Fear not, Abram, I am your shield, and your reward shall
be Very great. And so we we recognize who God
is and we rely on his character. We rely on his actions and we
rely on his promises. And that’s exactly what David
does. You’re my shield. You’re my protector. You’re my
glory. What is hidden in the heavens
is revealed now in your goodness. And it’s a bright spot in the
midst of darkness for David. You’re also the lifter of my
head. I’ve been cast down, but you have lifted me up. Not only
have you lifted me up, you’ve upheld me. By your right hand,
we’re told, God upholds the righteous. I appealed to you, I prayed to
you, and God did what? He answered me from his holy
hill. So we can enter the presence
of God and ask for help in our time of need, and he answers
us. We cry, and he hears. Remember Psalm 2. God made a
promise to his anointed one. Here it’s David. In years to
come, it will be Christ. But God says, ask of me, and
I’ll give you. Ask of me and I’ll give you what
you need. And so here’s David saying, I need your help. I need
your aid. Keep your covenant promises.
I need your help in this very hour, this very moment. And so we see David, he moves
from lament to confidence. He’s no more or no longer despondent. He’s no longer cast down. Now
this is a mess of his own making. And do you think he knows that?
Do you think as he’s marched out of Jerusalem barefoot, As
he probably sat in tears for a couple of days before the decision
to leave, as he’s made his way out into the wilderness, he said,
I shouldn’t have done it. You know, my own sin, my own
foolishness, my own wickedness. You know, he’s rehashing all
these things in his mind. He’s probably got to think of
God’s goodness to him too. He’s given me the kingdom. He’s
let me build up a great nation. He’s let me build a great city
for the glory of God. And yet here, here’s stupid me. I’m the one who’s done this.
This is my own mess. This is my own flesh and blood. But no, he goes to the Lord.
You’re my shield, my glory, the lifter of my head. And it leads
us from not only lament to prayer, but to the third section, which
is trust. We find that in verses five and six. You can imagine
David sleeping out in the open. Any of you have slept out under
the stars? Just a bag and a pillow or something. You think of Jacob
putting his head on a rock, wrestling with God in the night. But here’s
David out in the open, and he’s running for his life. When you’re
running for your life, you don’t want to sleep in the open. You
want to be in a cave. You want to be somewhere where
you are protected. But he is under siege. He is
in the minority of Israel. The loyalty of the kingdom is
no longer his. It reminds us of Martin Luther’s
hymn, A Mighty Fortress is Our God in Dovis. world with devils
filled should threaten to undo us. We will not fear, for God
is with us. He is our shield, our fortress,
and our protector. And so in verse five and six,
we get to the center of the passage. We move from lament to prayer. to a sort of a centerpiece of
trust. And what does he say? He says,
I lay down, I slept, and I woke again, for the Lord sustained
me. I will not be afraid of many
thousands of people. All those people in verses one
and two. who’ve risen against him. I will not be afraid of
many thousands who have set themselves against me all around.” So here’s
a man who’s on the run. Here’s a man whose sin has caused
danger to the kingdom, has caused hardship to his own rule, and
he’s laying down asleep in the middle of the wilderness, and
he awakes the next morning, and he can say confidently, I lay
down, I slept, and I awoke again, for the Lord sustained me. He
granted me sleep. Now, it’s pretty significant
to think that he could lay down and sleep. I’m sure there were
others who were not asleep. They were watching his back.
They were keeping an eye on the shadows and the darkness all
around. But David can say, I lay down,
I slept, because the way of God, the covenant loving way of God
is to keep those he loves and to give you sleep. I’m sure everybody
in here has had a sleepless night, maybe because of the flu or a
stomach bug Maybe some of you who are a little older because
of some trouble that’s upon you, and you know what it is to not
sleep and to have those butterflies and empty stomach feelings, but
you also know what it is to wake up refreshed because God did
it. And that’s what we see of King
David here. God sustained him in the night. He gave him sleep.
And there’s, I forget which, Theologian it was who said this
but God’s hand I think it may have been John Calvin God’s hand
was David’s pillow out there in the middle of the wilderness
And that’s a precious thing for us to remember that our God Our
God will put his hands under our heads and hold us up in the
midst of our hardship So there’s lament and there’s prayer and
there’s trust here Absalom trust in many who over time he has
drawn to himself through doing whatever it takes to gain their
popularity and their allegiance. But David trusts in God and God
alone. This leads us now to the fourth
little section, and that’s the prayer. What does David actually
pray in verses three and four? Well, we find that in verse seven.
What’s his prayer? What’s his prayer on his pillow
as he goes to sleep? Is it, now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep, and if I should Be killed by
Absalom before I awake. Pray the Lord my soul to take
them in. That’s probably part of it. But what’s his prayer? No,
his prayer is this. Arise, O Lord, save me, O my
God, for you strike all my enemies on the cheek, and you break the
teeth of the wicked. Every time we read a psalm in
our house and we come to the word arise, we ask what does
the word arise mean? And it’s a word that literally
means go to war. This is a prayer of David saying,
God, Yahweh go to war. All the many who surround me,
including who? Absalom, break their teeth. You punch them in the jaw and
you make them useless. And that is his prayer. He asked
God, he makes a war cry and says, do it, arise, oh Lord. It’s an imperative in the Hebrew
Bible. It’s a God, you must do this.
Now it’s interesting, you think back to our history of the Reformation. Remember old Martin Luther put
his 95 theses on the door and he’d been a troublemaking monk.
And the Pope issued his papal bull against Luther, and he said,
Arise, O Lord. You hear the same language? Make war against this pesky little
monk, for there is a boar loose in the vineyard. They called
Luther of war, but there’s that language of go to war against
the enemies of the church. Problem is, the Pope was the
enemy and not Luther. But here is David, the messianic
king, saying go to war against my enemies. This is not a battle
for me. This is not a battle for the
fighting men of Israel. Arise, O Lord, and save me, or
deliver me. So he’s begging God to Fight,
he’s begging God to save and deliver from the treachery that
is his. But he’s saying two things. One is humiliate them. If you
ever get punched in the jaw. It’s not a term or a sign of
endearment, right? It’s not a kiss on the cheek
or a handshake. To get punched in the jaw, particularly
in the days of the Old Testament, the ancient Near East, that was
a sign of humiliation. But to break someone’s teeth
or to break the teeth of a ferocious animal, what does that mean?
It means they’re useless. They can no longer pursue and
overcome and eat their prey. And so he’s saying, not only
humiliate them, but destroy their ability to be an enemy, render
them useless. And this is especially precious,
I think, for David, because he says, there are many against
me, but I go to the one. I go to Yahweh, who is the one
who they said couldn’t do this, and I’m saying you can do this,
and so please do. And this finally leads us to
the last verse, which is a symbol and a sign of hope. And so what
do we read in verse eight? Salvation belongs to the Lord. Salvation belongs to Yahweh.
We find in there the Hebrew word that’s related to Joshua. Yeshua
is related to Jesus. And what does that mean? It means
salvation belongs to the Lord. Where can salvation be found?
It can be found in no other name but the name of Jesus. can be
found in no other place but in Yahweh. And so King David here,
the Messiah of Israel is saying, I and Israel, me the king, me
an individual, but also Israel the nation, we need Yahweh for
his Messiah, his king is under attack. It’s a dirty war. There’s
treachery. We’re surrounded on all sides.
The enemy is in the city of God. The enemy is attempting to sit
on my throne. And so this is a good reminder
that when the world becomes disoriented, when the world becomes turned
upside down and topsy-turvy, we go to God, we go to Yahweh,
and he reorients us. He orients us in the way we ought
to go. He is our true north. And so
here’s a Psalm where David is taunted, but he trusts. And what
do we see as the outcome? It’s simply this, that God can
give peace when there is no peace. and so let’s pray together. Our
father, we thank you for this wonderful psalm that shows us
hard times, but also great hope, and we thank you that you are
the God who saves, that you are the God who acts on behalf of
men and women and boys and girls who call on your name, and so
we pray now that this would comfort us and assure us, and we thank
you in Jesus’ name, amen. Let’s stand together and sing
from psalm three, This is from the Trinity Psalter, and the
tune is New Britain, which also translates as Amazing Grace,
How Sweet the Sound. So I think you’ll recognize the
tune. you. and promised him to be his ancestor.
I lay down, slept, and woke again. The Lord is leading me. 10,000 men and troops surrounding thee.
♪ God, you punish all my foes ♪
♪ You strike the face of men and men ♪ ♪ Their teeth break
with your blows ♪ from the Lord. Salvation gives
the Lord. Oh, let your blessing evermore be on your people’s shore.