Psalm 4
Psalm four is a Psalm of David
and let’s read it together. It says in the heading at least,
answer me when I call. And then it says to the choir
master with stringed instruments, a Psalm of David. Answer me when
I call, oh God of my righteousness. You have given me relief when
I was in distress. Be gracious to me and answer
my prayer. Oh men, how long shall my honor
be turned to shame? How long will you love vain words
and seek after lies? But know that the Lord has set
apart the godly for himself. The Lord hears when I call to
him. Be angry and do not sin. Ponder in your own hearts on
your beds and be silent. Offer right sacrifices and put
your trust in the Lord. There are many who say, who will
show us some good? Light up the light of your face
or lift up the light of your face upon us, oh Lord. You have
put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and
their wine abound. In peace, I will both lie down
and sleep, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.” Let’s
pray together. Our God, we pray that you would
bless our study of the scriptures tonight. May it encourage us,
may it give us strength, and we pray that we may learn to
trust you more through this, your holy word. We pray in Jesus’
name, amen. Have you ever found yourselves
in a tough spot? The answer, I’m sure, is yes.
The question is, how did you get through it and how did you
get out of it? And in our Psalm tonight, Psalm
4, we see David in a tight spot, in a tough spot. And as he talks
himself through it, we see a couple of things. One is this, that
he, always seemed to trust the whole way, but he just had to
work his way through it. You know how that is. Sometimes
we have to clear our heads, we have to let off steam, we have
to talk to ourselves, we have to let our minds wander, our
thoughts go through their course. We sometimes have words that
are all over the place. And if we listen to ourselves,
we’d say we make no sense. We’re crazy in the head. But
we work it through, we talk it through, we get it off our chest.
It’s muddy, it’s messy, but it ends well. That’s exactly what
this passage is. It’s a messy conversation that
has a good conclusion. And we see that King David probably
trusted God all along, all the way through it. He just needed
to say some things. He just needed to get them off
his chest. Now remember that Psalm 3 and
Psalm 4 go together. Psalm 3 was what we called a
morning psalm, and Psalm 4 is the evening psalm. Psalm 3, the
king wakes up after a night asleep under the stars. Remember Absalom
had run him out of Jerusalem because he was trying to steal
the throne. And so David has slept under the stars. He wakes
up and says, I’ve slept with a good sleep of peace. There’s
chaos all around, but God has given him grace. And this next
Psalm, the one we have tonight, Psalm 4, David is being slandered,
he’s being attacked. The words and hatred of his enemies
are great. And he’s having to go to God
and say, look at what I’m enduring, help me through this. And it
brings up some questions for us. Maybe the question comes
to your mind, why do I suffer? Why do I suffer as a righteous
person who loves the Lord, and why do unrighteous people not
suffer? Or at least so it seems. Why
is the world unfair? Why do others have plenty and
I have just a little bit? Or maybe to the point of this
passage tonight, why do people attack my honor? Why do they
turn my honor to shame? Why do they slander? Why do they
speak vain words or seek after lies? Now think about David. He’s the king of Israel. There’s
no social media. You can’t slander him on Facebook. You can’t tweet about him. There’s
really even no water cooler. to gather around and speak of
him. He’s in a very tough spot, a
very difficult situation. And I think the point, one of
the points we should see in the Psalm is that we should let God
fix the situation. We work our way through it, we
get our way through it, but we let God fix the situation. One of the things I think David
is gonna work through as he gets to the end of this Psalm is he’s
gonna finally say, I’m better off than my enemies. I get sleep,
I get peace. They continue to get plotting
and chaos. But here’s this, God will see
you through your hardship. God will see you through your
struggle. And so if somebody does come
and slander your name or dishonor your credit or go on a smear
campaign, as it were, against you, Do you respond in kind or
do you let God work it out? Do we smear them worse? Do we
offer a rebuttal at every turn? I think we would lose. But if
we let God win, God, as the Apostle Paul says, will stand by our
side. And so we may hear lies all around
us. We may be exasperated by the
shame that others have brought to our name. Things may look
gloomy, but we can let God work it through, and we can not only
rise above it and endure it, but we can let God see it through
to a great ending. So there’s another good thought
for us. Not only just let God work it
out, but we can let him ease our anxieties through it. Okay,
so let’s walk our way through this Psalm. The first thing we
see, we’re gonna look at it in three Sort of three slices. The
first slice, as it may come to us, is in verses one and two,
and it’s David’s appeal. He appeals to God and he says,
answer me when I call, oh God of my righteousness. You have
given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and
hear my prayer. Apologies, that’s actually just
verse one. But verse one is David’s appeal
to God. And he appeals to him, He appeals
to him based on past experience. You’re God, you’re the righteous
God, and you have delivered me before. So when I call on you,
answer me as you have done before. Sometimes we wonder, does anybody
hear our complaints? Does anybody hear our groanings? Does anybody know our sighs and
groans? And here’s a wonderful example
where David has many sighs and groans. They are deep sighs and
groans, and he takes them to the God of his righteousness,
who has given him relief before and has been gracious.” He’s
saying, be gracious and answer my prayers. There’s a sense in
the language of the Old Testament here where it says, God answers
me as I call to him. Now we open the back door of
the house and holler for the kids to come in for supper. And
usually have to do it a couple times, right? We had that at
lunch today. Nobody was coming to lunch. We had to go a couple
times. We had to send out messengers, all the rest. But the language
here of the Old Testament seems to say that as I am calling,
God is responding to me. Now that’s pretty precious, that
God has up to the minute, moment by moment, care for his saints.
When you get in a little health problem at home and you dial
911, it’s gonna take them 15, 20 minutes to get there. But God, as we call Him, as we
are in need, He is responding in real time. He knows every
detail already. Remember how Jesus says it, I
know the sparrows of the air. I know the lilies of the field.
I know the hairs of your head. I know everything before you
ask. And so what’s the challenge for us? It’s to tell God what
we need. It’s to tell Him of our sighs
and groans. It’s to tell Him of our hurts
and our hardships. And so here we have David appealing
to God, answer me when I call, or answer me as I call, oh God
of my righteousness, for you have given me relief before when
I’ve been in distress. I don’t know why it is, it’s
a strange movie, but I like the little movie, Brother, Where
Art Thou? And I forget what George Clooney’s character’s name is
in the thing, but over and over he repeats this line in the movie. He says, we’re in a tight spot.
And so when David says here, you have given me relief, he’s
saying I was in a tight corner. That’s literally the word picture
in the Hebrew Bible. I was in a tight corner and you
gave me breathing room. You gave me room to live and
room to work out these issues. And so that’s what he’s asking.
Give me some space. I’m crowded. I’m cornered. I’m
pressed down. I’m in a tight spot. I’m in a
bad way. And he pleads the past mercies
of God. He says, you’ve done it before
and you can do it again. So what does he appeal to? He
appeals to God’s character, God of my righteousness, his past
actions, you have delivered me, and his future promises, you
promised to be a God to me. So here I am, I need something,
help me. And so there’s the appeal that we have from God. But how
do we run this through, how do we run David’s appeal through
the New Testament? We’ve just spent a couple weeks
in Hebrews on having a high priest who can sympathize with us. He’s
lived the human life. He has suffered. He has been
wrongly accused. He’s had his name and his honor
shattered. And what does God do? He hears
his cry for mercy. He delivers him. He does not
leave him in the grave. And so we have a high priest
who is sympathetic. He knows before we ask. And so,
as David has done here with God, we can also do, but with greater
knowledge and assurance, we can cast our cares upon Christ Jesus,
our great shepherd. He knows our anxieties and hurts
before we even ask. There’s a sense where Psalms
three through seven are what we call disorientation Psalms. What will disorient you? Well,
life will. You’ll get out of whack. Your
tires will get out of balance. Your front end will get out of
alignment. And that’s true of the Christian life. We become
disoriented because something shakes us. And where do we go
to become oriented or reoriented? We go to the Word. And so David
in some sense is saying, this thing has got me all out of whack. It’s got me all misshapen. And
so I come to you for help. Be gracious to me. And so that
leads us to the second section, which is a rather large section.
It’s verses two through five, two through six, where it says,
oh men, so David is speaking to his enemies. Oh men, how long
shall my honor be turned to shame? Okay, you’ve messed with my reputation.
How long will you love vain words or delusions and seek after lies? But know this, the Lord has set
the godly for himself. The Lord hears when I call to
him. Be angry and do not sin. Ponder in your hearts on your
beds and be silent. Offer right sacrifices and put
your trust in the Lord. There are many who say, who will
show us some good? Lift up the light of your face upon us, oh
Lord. So here’s David. He’s just appealed
to God. Now there’s some sense where
he’s appealing to his enemies. He’s addressing his enemies.
Now, do we ever really get the chance to address our enemies?
You know, you’ve slandered me. You brought shame on my name.
You’ve done this or that. It’s often the case that we do
not get to do that. So we don’t know if David ever
got to give this speech. but it made him feel better,
right? You know how that works. Sometimes we think about what
we would say if we confronted the person who is our arch enemy.
We think about what we would say and how we would say it and
how wonderfully it would be delivered and how they would be weeping
and in tears and on their knees begging for forgiveness and full
repentance and all the rest. So here’s David speaking to his
enemies. And one of the things I want
you to notice is how charitable he is, how kind he is, he’s speaking
man to man. He’s recognizing that others,
though they’ve sinned against him, they are finite, they are
weak, they are sinful. Remember who his enemies are
at the time. It’s not the nations, remember, of Psalm 2 that rage
and the kings that plot in vain. It’s not the outsiders, it’s
his own son. It’s the children of Israel. And so he remembers that they
need grace, they need mercy, they need kindness, that they
need redemption. And so he says, how long shall my honor be turned
to shame? Quit talking about me. How long
will you love vain words and seek after lies? What you’re
doing is worthless, it’s empty. It will do you no good. Then he goes on to say, I know
the Lord has set apart the godly for himself. The Lord answers
when I call to him. Now, you might sort of say this
is a dig against his enemies. Joseph and his coat of many colors. His place of honor in the family
didn’t exactly win him popularity contest with his brothers. In
fact, it ended him in a pit and being sold into slavery. And
so for David, the king to say, no, the Lord has set apart the
godly for himself. The Lord answers when I call
to him. He’s in a sense saying, look, God has his elect. He has
his chosen ones. He has his privileged ones. And
not only is David one of his elect, one of his children, He’s
the king. He’s the selected one. He is
the anointed one. Out of all of Israel, out of
all of his brothers, even over and against Saul, God has chosen
him to be king. And so you can imagine that part
of the reason he’s in a bad way is the resentment of his enemies
against God choosing him and not them or not Absalom or not
some other person as king. That’s what we have David say
to them. And what does David say in this
sense? Is he taunting them with it?
Is he saying, you know, look at me, look at me, I’m the king?
No, what he’s saying, he’s reminding himself especially, God does
not abandon his children. And in this case in particular,
God does not abandon his Messiah. He will never, never leave his
Messiah. And so David, as he talks his
way through this, he’s realizing, Hey, God has chosen me. I’m his
child. Hey, God has chosen me. I’m his
king. I’m his anointed one. And so
we remember promises like this. When the world is caving in around
us, we appeal to God, but we can also appeal to our enemies
and say, look, God has his divine hand on me. Before the dawn of
time, he set his affection upon me. And my God, my savior is
the great shepherd of the sheep. He knows his sheep and his sheep
know his voice and they follow him. And so we can speak of great,
confident things like this. But he goes on to say other strong
things. He sort of preaches to them.
Notice what he says. Notice what he says in verse
four. Be angry and do not sin. Ponder in your own hearts on
your beds and be silent. So we say this is an evening
song. What does he say? He says, enemies, get on your
bed and do some soul searching. Pallets on your cots in your
tents as you’re pursuing me your enemy and think about what you’re
doing shut your mouths and think And then he goes on to say in
verse 5 offer right sacrifices and put your trust in the Lord
He’s saying to them stand in all of God Okay, stand in all
of the Holy One of Israel and be silent Think of your sin and
stop sinning while you lie awake at night not sleeping. Hopefully
as we may be saying You need to realize God will not let you
succeed against me because I’m his chosen when I’m his king.
And then furthermore, he says, repent, make sacrifices, quit
doing the evil that you are doing. You notice the gospel love that is in David’s response.
What do we say about our enemies? And sometimes what does Psalms
say about our enemies? May your teeth be broken. May
your babies be dashed against rocks. you know, may God give
you a divine bellyache, something of that nature. We want revenge,
we want punishment. What is David saying here? He’s
saying you need to lie on your beds, you need to shut your mouths,
and you need to repent of your sin, and you need to hope God
will be gracious to us. And that’s a good reminder to
us. Sometimes we don’t answer a fool according to their folly,
we just move on. But here’s an example where David speaks to
his brothers, his fellow Israelites, maybe this is just in his mind,
Some of them may read the psalm later, who knows, but he’s saying
you need to repent. And what a great, what a great
mercy that is to have someone that we hate with a great hatred
turn into our face, instead of punching us in the nose, they
say stop, hush, think, and repent. I mean, talk about heaping, burning
coals upon the enemies of your head, but what a godly example
this is. There is no better message to
an enemy than to encourage them or even command them to repent
and believe the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. What else does he say here? He
says to offer right sacrifices and put your trust in the Lord.
Quit your self-reliant life. Quit trusting in your plots.
Quit trusting in your evil schemes. Trust in God. Trust in God and
level your head. Quit living a hot-headed, fickle
life. So there’s David’s appeal to
God. Answer me when I call. There’s
his address to his enemies. Quit doing what you’re doing,
which is destroying me, and repent. And then finally, there’s an
affirmation. David ends up settling things. These Psalms begin messy
and choppy. It’s like writing the waves of
the sea. It’s up and down, up and down,
until you get to calm water. And when you get to the end of
the psalm, we see the seas begin to get calm. And David asked
this question in verse six, there are many who say, who will show
us some good? Lift up the light of your face
upon us, oh Lord. That echoes back to verse one,
where he says, be gracious to me. You hear the words of the
benediction, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his
face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. And the Lord
lift up the countenance upon you and give you peace. That’s
the thing he needs. So there are many who say, who
will show us some good? Lift up the light of your face
upon us. You have put more joy in my heart than they have when
their grain and wine abound. So he’s comparing himself to
these wicked enemies. In peace, I will both lie down
and sleep. He’s probably adjusting the sheets
on his little cot at this time. In peace, I will both lie down
and sleep for you alone make me dwell in safety. So here’s David settling in for
the night. He’s spoken as peace, God help
me. He’s spoken his angst with his
enemies. How long are you gonna do this?
Repent, stop. And then he says, who can show
us good? It’s God. He’s talked his way through it.
Who can show us good? And maybe David is speaking to
his entourage. He’s speaking to his aides and his advisors.
He’s brought the war room of the Jerusalem White House with
him out into the wilderness as they fled. But he’s saying that
God can shine the light of his face upon him. Now remember in
David’s prayer, he appealed to God’s character, God of righteousness,
his actions or past actions. You’ve delivered me and then
he appeals to the promises. Answer me, hear me when I call. Well, here we see sort of some
of the answers to that prayer. The first thing is he sees favor. Even when he’s surrounded by
enemies, God can dispel the darkness of that difficult situation by
bringing his light to bear in their little temporary encampment
as they escape. So God brings favor to them,
and he affirms that. Light us up with the light of
your face. But there’s also joy. Notice
what he says in verse seven. You have put more joy in my heart
than when they have grain and wine. They’ve got something to
eat and something to drink, but I have joy that comes from God
himself. And then he speaks of peace.
His enemies are restless. They’re not gonna go to sleep
well. They can’t accomplish their ends because if he’s anointed,
if he’s God’s chosen one, God is gonna stand by him and their
plots and their plans are gonna be in vain. But what does he
say? I have peace. I can both lie down and sleep.
For you alone make me dwell in safety. And so he can rest the
night. So here’s a couple questions
for you. Work through a problem like this, where you’ve been
overwhelmed and you didn’t know what to do. Now, on paper, in
theory, you knew the answer. God is good. God is gracious. He’s the one I need to turn to
and pray to. But you’ve got to talk through
it. You’ve got to cry through it. You’ve got to angst your
way through it. This is a passage that helps
us see our way through it. There’s hardship. There’s ambiguity. There’s a lack of clarity. Maybe
you’ve been in a situation where you say, I don’t know if I’m
gonna live through this. I don’t know if I can stand another day
of this hardship or mess. I’m probably gonna be in tears
tomorrow just like I was today and just as I was yesterday. So there’s hardship, there’s
ambiguity, but then there becomes clarity. We see the sun shining,
we see the light at the end of the tunnel. And what do we see
David do? we see him call on others to
trust God just like he has. So maybe you’ve been through
this before. Well, here’s a second thing for you to consider. Have
you bumped into somebody who’s in the thick of it now? Maybe
you can come beside them and say, you know what? God will
get you through it. And it’s not just a little pat
on the back, I’ll say a little prayer for you. But you can encourage
them and you can say, you know, I’ve been there and God has been
with me. It’s painful, it’s full of tears,
it’s fretful, it’s hard, it’s miserable. It seems like all
is lost and God is not on your side, but just you wait, just
you trust, just you give it some time. You call on God, but we
also, we call on others to trust God just like we have done. Here’s a third thing just to
take home, and this is probably the most important. We let God
shoulder our problems. You know, we’ve got our checkbooks.
We’ve got our skills from project management at work. And we know
how to get something done. We know how to stay ahead of
the game. That’s all well and good. God wants us to work, doesn’t
he? He wants us to be involved in our lives. But we let God
shoulder our problems. We cast our anxieties and our
cares upon him. Our own sin will bring us plenty
of problems. Our enemies will bring us trouble
enough. But think about how Jesus has shouldered our greatest problem,
our sin. Okay, is there an infinite pool
of tears that you could cry to get God off your back for your
sins? There’s not. Could you earn enough
money to pay the debt for your sins? No, you couldn’t. Could
you die on the cross for your own sins? No, because you’re
not a perfect sacrifice. You’re a blemished lamb. And
so there’s this question in the passage, who will show us any
good? What’s the answer? This is where
you say Jesus. Jesus is the answer. Who can
show us some good? It is Jesus. And you think of
this passage in light of the Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you.
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
What did Jesus experience on the cross? Who could show him
any good? Nobody. For what did he experience? He experienced the Lord curse
you. The Lord turn his back on you. The Lord not give you peace,
but utter hell. The Lord not be gracious to you,
but be unmerciful and relentless, casting you into the depths of
hell itself. In order what? In order to give
us peace. And so we see how A blessed thing
it is to have relief from God when in distress. We let Jesus
shoulder our troubles. We let God himself see us through. So who will show us some good?
The answer is for sure Jesus. But what’s the bottom line here?
We trust God. All hell may break loose, but
we trust in God. And so we’re thankful for a psalm
like this where we have an example from David on how to make it
through these hardships. Let’s pray together. Our God,
we do thank you for this psalm of David. We thank you for the
precious words. Who can show us any good? It’s
none other than Jesus and the light of his face, the light
of his countenance can for sure shine upon us as we live in him
and walk with him. We thank you for this in Christ’s
name. Amen. and distress. Display your mercy
now to me, and answer my request. The glory of my neighborhood
I’ll honor in disguise. Will you take your choices, still
searching? ♪ Be angry and from sin depart
♪ ♪ Uncertain and mysterious ♪ ♪ Resented by just sacrifice
♪ ♪ And laid upon His bed ♪ ♪ Of who can show us any path ♪ ♪
I hear surely ♪ Oh, shine your light upon us, Lord, and show
your face, we pray. You fill my heart with greater
joy than others may ever know. ♪ Rejoice at your mistake ♪ ♪
And praise Him right above ♪ ♪ In peace I will lie down and sleep
♪ ♪ My heart will rest secure ♪ ♪ For you alone, O gracious
Lord ♪ ♪ Will keep me safe ♪ Yeah.