Show Notes
Psalm 3
Pastor Christopher Chelpka
View Full Transcript
Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Let's pray.
[00:00:06] Our Heavenly Father, we very much need strength for today and hope, bright hope for tomorrow.
[00:00:16] It is easy to be discouraged when we look at ourselves, our own foolishness, our own sin.
[00:00:23] It's easy to be discouraged when we have so many around us who would lie to us, tell us untrue things about your word, about your character, about our salvation in you.
[00:00:38] It's easy to lose heart. It's easy to experience the spiritual blindness and fog.
[00:00:48] We ask, Lord, that your light would shine brightly today, that your faithfulness would be made known, that we would see the mercies that are all around us and recognize that you always provide.
[00:01:02] We ask for that now and that you would impress these things even more deeply into our hearts and in our lives. As we hear your word read and preached, we pray for other congregations here and around the world.
[00:01:18] We ask, Lord, that your light would shine in all the dark places in our hearts, in our neighborhoods, in our world.
[00:01:27] May you be honored, may you be glorified, may your word be proclaimed and may we be saved. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:01:39] Let's remain standing this morning and turn to Psalm 3, Psalm 3.
[00:02:00] We're taking a little journey outside of 2 Samuel for a moment to hear a psalm that David composed in the midst of the events that we've been considering. If you've been following along with us, you remember and the psalm will give us in the title.
[00:02:21] In the moment we are in second Samuel David, a coup has been conspired, is happening. David hears about it and he runs.
[00:02:32] His servants, his household.
[00:02:34] He runs. And there's various things that are expressed in that narrative about his own thoughts, his feelings, things that are happening.
[00:02:44] And here we have some of that and those events put to a psalm.
[00:02:50] So let's give our attention to it.
[00:02:53] So Psalm 3, a Psalm of David when he fled from Absalom, his son.
[00:03:00] O Lord, how many are my foes?
[00:03:03] Many are rising against me. Many are saying of my soul, There is no salvation for him and God.
[00:03:11] But you, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory and the lifter of my head.
[00:03:18] I cried aloud to the Lord, and he answered me. From his holy hill I lay down and slept. I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.
[00:03:27] I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around.
[00:03:34] Arise, O Lord, save me, O my God. For you strike all my enemies on the cheek. You break the teeth of the wicked.
[00:03:43] Salvation belongs to the Lord. Your blessing be on your people.
[00:03:49] Amen. You may be seated.
[00:04:14] We believe In God.
[00:04:16] We trust God.
[00:04:18] We read our Bibles, we go to church, we have conversations with other Christians. We follow him.
[00:04:26] And then suddenly there is a crisis.
[00:04:31] Something happens.
[00:04:33] It might be a sudden. Most crises are sudden, but it might be the kind that you weren't expecting.
[00:04:41] Sort of out of nowhere, a thing happens.
[00:04:45] Sometimes crises happen that you kind of are expecting developmental. Over years, things building, building, building, building, until something happens where things break.
[00:04:59] Things can sneak up on us. Things can happen in a moment. But in that moment, you find yourself at a kind of turning point.
[00:05:06] You have some decisions to make. What am I going to do? Who am I going to trust? What will I trust? God?
[00:05:13] Maybe it's a health event. Maybe it's a relationship thing.
[00:05:18] Maybe you're tired after years of fighting a sin or struggles at work.
[00:05:25] And then there's this voice, this voice that comes and says, there's no salvation for you and God.
[00:05:35] A voice of despair, a voice, a voice of doubt.
[00:05:40] David finds himself at a moment like this, right? He's been following the Lord. He's been seeing the Lord at work. The Lord has brought him through so many things.
[00:05:52] And now David is fleeing the holy hill. He's fleeing Zion, he's fleeing Jerusalem.
[00:06:00] His Son, whom he might have expected to follow after him. He might have expected the Son to establish on the throne, to fulfill the covenant, to bring Israel and all of the people of the world into this great state of peace and joy and eternal rule and reign under God.
[00:06:22] Now his own flesh and blood is trying to kill him, trying to remove Him.
[00:06:30] Thousands of people are coming against him.
[00:06:35] And he is in this moment. And people are saying to him, there is no salvation for him and God, no doubt there was his flesh also saying similar things. As our flesh wages war against the Spirit, there are, in moments of crisis, liars.
[00:06:58] Sometimes they're inside, sometimes they're outside.
[00:07:02] Liars, tempters, faith shakers who come along and desire to hurt you, desire to separate you from the Lord.
[00:07:15] Now, they actually can't do that.
[00:07:18] They can't do anything to affect the object of your faith.
[00:07:26] They're just. They can shake your faith.
[00:07:29] It'd be like standing on a giant.
[00:07:32] The Golden Gate Bridge, right?
[00:07:35] To stand on that bridge. And if I come up to that bridge and go, try to shake it, watch out.
[00:07:43] You're gonna look at me with those giant beams and those huge bolts and all those cables and everything, and you're going to. You're not going to shake this bridge, right? There's nothing that you can do to undermine this, right?
[00:07:58] But sometimes people will ask us, should you really trust that bridge?
[00:08:06] Right. We can't. They can't actually do anything to the thing in which our faith is in. They can't actually do anything to shake God.
[00:08:13] God's unshakable, but they try to shake our faith.
[00:08:18] What do we do in these moments? What did David do in this moment?
[00:08:22] And one of the answers is that you can oppose naysayers, liars, faith shakers. You can oppose them, and you can be steady in a crisis by knowing, by remembering and believing the actual truth and the actual truth that is on display here in Psalm 3. The truth that David is clinging to and the truth that you can cling to is very simple.
[00:08:53] God sustains you.
[00:08:55] He keeps you.
[00:08:57] He's faithful.
[00:08:59] He's done it in the past, he's doing it in the present, and he will do it in the future.
[00:09:05] Let's think about each of those three things this morning as we think about how God sustains us.
[00:09:13] David is in a crisis.
[00:09:16] David is leaving Jerusalem sad, burdened, crying.
[00:09:24] He's mourning.
[00:09:26] But God has sustained him in the past, and he remembers this.
[00:09:31] Verse 4, I cried aloud to the Lord, and he answered me from his holy hill.
[00:09:38] This is something that David has experienced many, many, many times in his life. It's one of the advantages of age. You get experience with the Lord that you can remember. You can say, I've seen this happen before. I've been in these spots before. I've cried out to the Lord, and he's answered me in this particular moment, David, this is happening very fast, even in the present, which we'll get to in a moment.
[00:10:04] But David also remembers the past.
[00:10:08] He cries out to the Lord and the Lord answers him in this moment. He's asking that the Lord would undo the counsel of Ahithophel. And the Lord sends people to do that. David mentions a second thing regarding the past.
[00:10:23] Verse 5. He says, I lay down and slept. I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.
[00:10:30] If you've never thought about sleep, this is really an amazing thing.
[00:10:35] You go to bed at night, I'm going to scare you a little bit.
[00:10:40] You go to bed at night and you're totally vulnerable, right? You're not aware of. You hope you'll be aware of things, right? You hope you'll wake up. You hope that things will be okay, but there you are just laying there, right?
[00:10:56] At least these are the things I think about.
[00:10:58] You're just laying there for hours and hours and hours in the dark. All right, I'll stop. All right, so you get the idea.
[00:11:06] And then you wake up.
[00:11:09] How many times has that happened to you?
[00:11:12] A lot.
[00:11:14] If you're one year old, it's happened to you. A lot.
[00:11:21] If you're 40 years old, 60 years old, 80 years old, 90 years old.
[00:11:30] How many times have you gone to sleep and woke again because the Lord sustained you?
[00:11:38] That's an amazing thing to think about. And that's just sleep, just everyday boring sleep.
[00:11:48] What about the spiritual forms of sleepiness?
[00:11:51] How many times have you been asleep at the wheel spiritually?
[00:11:55] How many times have you been wandering and you didn't even know it and the Lord sustained you and woke you up?
[00:12:04] And I think too, coming up on Easter here, and think about the resurrection from the dead.
[00:12:11] The Lord promises in this really grand way that for all of those of us who are in Christ, we will awake to eternal life.
[00:12:26] Our confession says that when the. When God's people, when his saints die and their bodies are buried, they are as if they were sleeping in their beds until the Lord comes, because he keeps them. Our literal bodies, even whatever state they may be in, whatever horrors happened in this life, or just normal decomposing decomposition doesn't matter to the Lord. He watches us, he keeps us, and he will cause us to rise again as our Lord did.
[00:13:01] I lay down and slept and woke again, for the Lord sustained me.
[00:13:06] I imagine that we'll say something like that in the resurrection glories to God, who caused us to rise from the dead to conquer death, and not by our own strength, but in him.
[00:13:23] He gaining the victory, he winning the battle. He bringing us from life to death.
[00:13:32] God protecting us over and over and over again in temporal matters, in spiritual matters, in eternal matters.
[00:13:41] These are things that we Hope for.
[00:13:43] Lamentations 3:22, 23 says this. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to end.
[00:13:54] They are new every morning.
[00:13:56] Great is your faithfulness.
[00:14:02] Every morning.
[00:14:04] The mercies of the Lord, the joys of the Lord, the songs of the Lord every day.
[00:14:15] He's done this for generations and generations and generations.
[00:14:19] He did it on that day for David.
[00:14:22] He did it all the way through Christ.
[00:14:25] And he's doing it today until, as I said, this great and glorious ending.
[00:14:32] God hasn't abandoned his people.
[00:14:35] He of course did not abandon his Son, but caused him to rise from the dead, who is now seated at the right hand of the Father and is coming again.
[00:14:45] He's not going to abandon you because of what he has done, because of these Past events, you can have confidence that the Lord sustains you.
[00:14:57] We've overlapped a little bit already and thought about some of the things that God's doing in the present.
[00:15:03] David addresses some of those things when he talks about the character of the Lord.
[00:15:09] I'm thinking about verse three in particular.
[00:15:12] David knows that God not only has helped him in the past, but in the present as well. You, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head.
[00:15:24] Let's think about each of those things. Shield, glory and lifter of my head.
[00:15:30] A first shield. God doesn't always remove the danger from us, right?
[00:15:36] Sometimes the fiery darts of the evil one come at us, but he does promise to protect us from that. He promises to stand in between us and the things that would do us harm.
[00:15:53] Amazingly, the Scriptures testify that even when we feel what would we would consider harm, bad things happening in our bodies and our souls, in our lives, these kind of things, that God is somehow able to take the fiery dart of an evil one and by the time it lands, turn it into a blessing, even if it hits.
[00:16:16] That's an amazing thing, right?
[00:16:19] That the Lord would be able to take the accusations, for example, and the troubles and all of the heartaches and sorrows that Job experienced, and then turn them into something that would bless people for thousands of years as well as Job himself.
[00:16:36] That's the kind of thing God can do in his faithfulness.
[00:16:40] And of course, Jesus, right? What man intended for evil, God turns into the greatest good the world has ever known.
[00:16:49] How could crucifying the Son of God on a cross ever turn out for good?
[00:16:56] Well, it can when the Lord is at work. He is a shield. He protects us. He is also our glory.
[00:17:05] A lot of times when we are in crisis moments like David is in, we focus on what people are saying or might say. We feel embarrassed. We feel ashamed.
[00:17:14] David is running from his own son. David has been caught off guard. David is being overwhelmed, and it's bad.
[00:17:23] David could very easily focus, and he is, in some ways, and rightfully so, focusing on things he's lost, things that are threatening him, things that are shaming him.
[00:17:37] But God tells us to identify ourselves not with the things that we've lost, not with the sins that we have committed, but with him.
[00:17:52] He tells us that he is our glory.
[00:17:57] Not just our protector or our forgiver and our sanctifier, but our glorifier.
[00:18:03] He takes people and their situations like us, who are shameful and broken and despised, and brings glory to them.
[00:18:17] When God is Your glory. You can remember, even if you're fleeing Jerusalem in mourning and fear, you can remember that you are more special to the Lord than you could ever imagine.
[00:18:36] That in him you are loved, you are beautiful, you are wonderful that he has set his love on you, his glorifying love before the foundation of the earth.
[00:18:51] And he cares about you. He considers you his workmanship.
[00:18:55] And he is taking you through these moments, through the valley of the shadow of death, and will one day perfectly glorify you, so that no creature in heaven, on earth, will be mistaken about who you are in Him.
[00:19:12] No one, including yourself, will be mistaken about how glorious you are in Him.
[00:19:22] Jesus loves you.
[00:19:25] And not some future version of you. That maybe one day you'll be nice enough, get your act together. Not that. Not some future version of you. He loves you. And in that love, it is a glorifying love.
[00:19:41] You have the name of Christ put on you.
[00:19:46] You belong to the family of God, the chosen people of Israel.
[00:19:54] To you belong the covenants and the promises and all of these things. Through faith in the Messiah who has come, you are glorified.
[00:20:07] In a moment when it seems like the world is against David, a moment of shame, a moment of humiliation, he's remembering the truth There is salvation for him in God. Not only because God is his shield, but also God is his glory.
[00:20:25] And finally, in this moment, he is the lifter of his head.
[00:20:33] Sometimes we can't see the nature, the work of God in us. We can't see the fruit of the Spirit. We can't see reasons for hope, you know, bright hope for tomorrow. We sang in great of My faithfulness. It can be hard to see it, but one of the things that God does in the present, in these moments of crises is. Is he lifts our head and helps us to see we're down. And remember, David is mourning. He's crying. He's literally going down into that valley, the Kidron Valley, before he goes up the Mount of Olives.
[00:21:11] And in that moment, God says he lifts his head, which is to say, he lifts his heart. He helps him to see what is going on. He helps him to see what is true. He cried aloud to the Lord. He answered it from his holy hill. Because the Lord is a lifter of his head.
[00:21:29] It's one of the things that we can remember when our hearts are broken and we cry out to the Lord. The Lord is helping you in that moment. You may not totally feel like it yet. You may not feel as lifted as you want to be, as comforted as you want it to be. But even in those prayerful cries, even in that calling out to the Lord, take just a moment and notice what he's already doing.
[00:21:57] He's lifting your voice. He's lifting your head. He's helping you to see. And he will continue to do that.
[00:22:06] In Second Corinthians 4, verses 8 and 9, Paul says this, reflecting on his own heartaches and sorrows and brokenness and all the things that were around him. He says, we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed.
[00:22:24] Perplexed but not driven to despair. Persecuted but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed.
[00:22:33] That's a man whose head has been lifted.
[00:22:39] That's the kind of work that God does in the present.
[00:22:42] Paul's eyes have been opened. He's been allowed to see the truth. He's been allowed to see the reasons for hope that come to us through Jesus Christ.
[00:22:57] The reasons we have hope are because of what God has done in the Savior, has done in the past and is continuing to do in the past, in the present.
[00:23:07] And these, of course, are reasons why we know God sustains us in the future.
[00:23:12] This is our last point, Paul. Sorry. David says, I will not be afraid. This is verse six. I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around.
[00:23:28] And then he prays. He says, arise, O Lord. Save me, O my God, for you strike all my enemies on the cheek. You break the teeth of the wicked. Salvation belongs to the Lord. Your blessing be on your people.
[00:23:44] God hears and answers our prayers. And there is a coming vindication and victory that David is so certain about. He puts it in the present tense.
[00:23:54] He knows this happens and will happen, that the enemies that persecute the people of God, that would seek to break apart the bonds between the Lord and his anointed one Christ and his anointed people who are in Christ. It's not going to happen.
[00:24:14] And so I'm quoting Psalm 2. If your Bibles are open, you can look over there.
[00:24:19] But we see the Lord saying things like, he who sits in heaven laughs at his enemies. Verse 4. The Lord holds them in his derision. He will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury, saying, as for me, I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill. That's an amazing thing to think about in light of Psalm 3, isn't it?
[00:24:40] Some people think that Psalm 2 might have been a coronation psalm, right? A psalm that was used when David ascended to the throne. Maybe a song that was sung at that time.
[00:24:52] As for me, I have set my Son on Zion, my holy hill. And then Psalm 3, David evacuating that holy hill.
[00:25:00] And yet his confidence is still in the Lord, because his confidence is not in himself.
[00:25:06] His confidence is still in the Lord, because his confidence is not in himself, it's in God, it's in his promises. And he knows that God will do what he has said he will do that the ends of the earth are his possession. And then verse 9 in Psalm 2, you shall break them with the rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.
[00:25:31] I've been speaking a lot of comforting words to you from God's word this morning, from the perspective, and rightly so, from the perspective of the Lord sustaining his people.
[00:25:42] But if you are not his people, you have a lot to be afraid of.
[00:25:47] Because the same powerful, sustaining, glorifying Lord who is lifting up his people, rescuing his people, all the opposite happen to those who are fighting against him.
[00:26:01] The enemies who are trying to destroy his people, hurt his people, murder his people, persecute his people are not going to be lifted up.
[00:26:13] They're not going to be helped and sustained and encouraged. They're going to be put to death.
[00:26:18] They're going to be put in hell.
[00:26:21] God will not stand back and simply let his children be harmed.
[00:26:28] Vindication and victory are coming.
[00:26:32] God for God. So in this we have, of course, a warning and an invitation.
[00:26:41] God tells us throughout the Word that the Lord Jesus came to call us unto salvation.
[00:26:49] So if you imagine yourself kind of in this moment of history, you're in Absalom's party, maybe you woke up and went, whoa, what am I doing here?
[00:26:58] Or maybe you planned to be there and you got caught up in the conspiracy and you were all excited and you thought this was going to be great and. And then you realize who David is, what's happening, and the Lord's protection on him and his people, even in his persecution, it's time to switch sides.
[00:27:18] And there's time leave Absalom, leave that party, leave that army and flee to the people who are being persecuted.
[00:27:29] Ah, that might be hard, won't it?
[00:27:33] Like, why would you go from the quote, winning side to the people who are flowing down, then down into the valley, to the people who are crying and mourning to the people because the Lord is on their side.
[00:27:45] It really comes down to not, how do things seem externally in this moment. But are you going to trust the Lord or not?
[00:27:54] Does the Lord have the back of David?
[00:27:58] Will the Lord have This victory and vindication of his works or not.
[00:28:04] I'm telling you that he will, and he does.
[00:28:08] We know that in part, from this moment in history, David will return to the throne, Absalom will be put to death. And that's one event of many where this happens over and over and over again.
[00:28:22] And if you need any more clarity about this again, again, just look to the cross.
[00:28:28] They tried to kill Jesus, and they did.
[00:28:33] And he rose again from the dead.
[00:28:36] No one is stopping him, and no one will stop him from coming again.
[00:28:42] When you see that, it doesn't matter how hard the saints have it, it doesn't matter how difficult their life is. It doesn't matter how hard the persecution is that you might experience.
[00:28:54] You want to be on the side of the Lord because a complete and total victory is coming.
[00:29:03] And you can hear it in the voices of his saints because they sing songs like this.
[00:29:08] They talk like this, they act like this, they hope like this, they die like this. And they will live again like this.
[00:29:18] And for us who do belong to the Lord, we sing, we believe, we hear, we remember that God sustains us in the past, in the present and the future. And then we say things like this. From Philippians 1:6. I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ or Jesus in John 16:33. He says, I have said these things to you that in me you may have peace.
[00:29:51] In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart, I have overcome the world.
[00:30:00] I'll give you one more verse, Revelation 7:17. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
[00:30:18] At one point, Jesus says to his disciples, he says, why are you so afraid?
[00:30:25] Have you still no faith?
[00:30:28] It's a good question for us sometimes, isn't it?
[00:30:32] When we find ourselves in moments of overwhelm and difficulty and crisis, and we don't know what to do. And there are people telling us there is no salvation for them. And God, believe them, don't believe them.
[00:30:47] God is not weak.
[00:30:49] God has sustained you. He is sustaining you. And he will sustain you. And he will wipe away every tear from your eyes, and he will bring everything that he has begun in you to perfect completion, all to the glory of his name and the enjoyment that we will have in Him. Let's pray.
[00:31:09] Our Heavenly Father, we praise you, that our salvation belongs to you, and that our salvation is not dependent on our ability to bring glory and honor to ourselves, our ability to bring victory to ourselves, or fame or security.
[00:31:26] For we would be totally lost at the mercy of all the wickedness and evil that is around us and in us.
[00:31:35] But you, O Lord, are a shield about us.
[00:31:39] You are our glory. And you are the lifter of our heads.
[00:31:43] I ask, Lord, that you would lift the head and heart of every single person here today.
[00:31:49] That you would make your face to shine upon us and help us to remember that you have overcome the world.
[00:31:56] So that even when we face trials and tribulations in our lives, we would remember the one who leads us.
[00:32:06] We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
