Psalms 3:5-8

Psalm 3. I’m going to read the whole Psalm looking at verses 5 to 8th this morning. A Psalm of David when he fled from Absalom, his son. Lord, how are they increased that trouble me? Many are they that rise up against me. Many there be which say of my soul there is no help for Him in God, Celah. But thou, Lord, are to shield for me, my glory, and the lifter up. of mine head. I cried under the Lord with my voice and he heard me out of his holy hill, Celah. I laid down, I laid me down and slept. I awakened, or I waked, for the Lord sustain me. I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people that have set themselves against me roundabout. Arise, O Lord, save me, oh my God, for thou hast smitten. all mine enemies upon the cheekbone. Thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly. Salvation belongeth under the Lord. Thy blessing is upon thy people, Seela. May God bless to us his sacred and holy word this morning. There’s an old Arab tale about pestilence, overtaking a caravan on the desert on the way to Baghdad. The chieftain of the caravan asked pestilence and pray, where are you going to do in Baghdad? To which pestiless replied, I shall claim 5,000 lives. When the caravan arrived several days later in Baghdad, the chieftain discovered that some 50,000 people had died. Later on, the chieftain again meets pestilence out there on the desert on the caravan trail, and the chieftain says to him pestilence, you were unfair. You promised only take 5,000 lies to which pestilence replied, I kept my word, only took 5,000, 45,000 died of fright. In Psalm 3, David relates the troublous times he’s enduring. The preface of the preface of the time. of the Psalm provides the historical context for all David’s troubles. There was such great grief in his life because his beloved son, Absalon, was attempting to steal the kingdom away from him. This turn of events, as we saw, was actually the chastening hand of the Lord upon him, for he has great sin with Bashiba, the sword of events. would not depart from his house. It was a massive revolt. The conspiracy was strong. Many of those in the military, the army of David, defected to Absalom’s cause and joined his army. And so great were the odds against him that people were saying, even God cannot help him. This is enough to shake your own. faith to cause you to die out of fear of what is going to happen around you. However, David here at this point places his hope in God. And we see him turning to the Lord in prayer, seeking God to protect him, to be his shield, to restore his joy, to lift up his head, and he seeks for divine and intervention here in all his troubles. God is his glory. If he gains the victory, it is God that has given him this victory. Now I want to talk about your comfort and troublous times from these last verses. Verse five, I laid me down and slept. I awake for the Lord sustain me. What is suggested here by this restful sleep? of David. Any suggestions? Yes. Randall, did you have something to add? Christ? Keith. Yeah, I think both of those things we’ll be mentioning here. Certainly, having prayed to the Lord, he’s in perfect peace about the situation. And that’s, I think, the first part of this. And we’ll get to the second part in just a second. So he’s committed his cause to the cause to the first part. the Lord. I think his faith in God enabled him to lay down and to rest. I don’t know about you, but anxiety as a way of keeping you up, keeping you awake, stealing sleep from you. Much there was to disturb David’s rest. He had to think about the unkindness of his son, this loyalty of his son. of his subjects, the treachery of many of his friends, the threat on his life, being a frantic fugitive at this particular time and on the run, and the uncertainty of the outcome event of events. And yet he gets a restful sleep in the midst of his troubles, and it seems as if the Lord, hereby his spirit, calmed David’s heart, so that he could be in perfect peace. You know, the scripture says, he giveth his beloved sleep in Psalm 127, verse 2. There are times when we may be full of tossing and turning, and we cannot sleep. American spend, I believe, over half a billion dollars a year on sleep AIDS. There’s over 200 types, I’m told. of sleep aids that people take. The National Institute of Mental Health claims that over 800,000 pounds of barbiturates are consumed each year by this country. So when man is troubled, he turns to drugs, but when the Christian is troubled, he should turn to the Lord and seek for God’s help. The secret to overcoming our fears, the Bible indicates, It says to cast our burden upon the Lord. Let him carry it for us. Place it on his shoulders. Psalm 4 talks about, you know, not to be anxious for anything, but to pray, and then the peace of God will comfort your hearts and so forth. That’s what follows in Philippians chapter 4. There’s an order there. You’re fearful, you pray, and God, and God, gives you peace. And I think that’s sort of illustrated here by David’s circumstances. God’s peace can be given to his children, and certainly beyond what man comprehends. Now, we’ve already answered this. I was going to ask why you especially need God to sustain you while you sleep. Well, I think Keith has hit on it. Anything can happen while you. You’re unconscious. You don’t know what’s going to happen. People can break in. People can harm you. you. I mean, the enemy could have overcome him in the night. I mean, that’s what Hithrafell’s plan was. I’ll run him down tonight before he can get his army ready, while he’s still all discombobulated from leaving here in such a haste and so forth. I read a story years ago about a young woman that would sleepwalk, and she happened to have a little room up at the top of the house. And one night she opened the skylight while she’s asleep, dressed as if she was going to a party and went out and was dancing on top of the roof. And the neighbors happened to see it, and they tried to race over and wake up her parents because evidently they could hear her singing and she was sort of like dancing up there, but she was in a precarious situation. But before help could come, she off the roof to her death. We never know when we lay down to sleep what’s going to happen. I remind you of Cicera, the captain of Jabin’s army, who hid out in Jail’s tent and fell asleep thinking all was well till the tent peg was driven through her skull. Ishbosef, the son of Saul, lay down to sleep at noon in the heat of the day believing all was well, and two captains of his army snuck getting and killed him in his sleep. David was certainly a precarious situation, but he awoke in the morning because the Lord sustained him. Jehovah was on guard all night, protecting David here. We often don’t think about all the things that could happen to us while we’re sleeping. Death can come suddenly and unexpectedly. Think of the sustaining power of God while you sleep, the beating of your heart and the flowing of your blood, the movement of your lungs, the continuance of your mental faculties and so forth. You’re a Bolivia’s all that’s taking place around you. Evil men perpetrate their crimes when people are sleeping. We often take it granted that all will be well. We ought to thank God when we get a good night’s sleep and God, and God has sustained us. Peace comes, I think, when we know that our times are in God’s hands. So God will grant you peace. I think that’s what verse 5 indicates to us, and we’ve touched, I think, on the two main points of that. Let’s look at verses 6 and 7 here. I will not be afraid of 10,000 of people that have set themselves against me roundabout. Arise, O Lord, save me, oh my God, for thou hast smitten all mine enemies upon the cheekbone. Thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly. Why is David so confident and bold when the enemy is so great? How should this relate to you and I? He certainly doesn’t underestimate his enemy. He sees that there are a great multitude. He reckons there are tens of thousands of mighty force that’s arrayed against him. It seems to God standing… Yeah, his enemies may be great in many, but God’s all powerful, and God can stop them here. It’s interesting. The Bible says in Proverbs 281, the righteous are as bold as a lion. Holy boldness doesn’t come naturally. It comes from God. And there’s nothing like a God given boldness in the time of trouble. You know that God is standing by your side. He energizes your spirit. You confidently confront your problems unconcerned about the odds, humanly speaking. I mean, when you have Elijah against the 400-some prophets of bail, it’s one prophet against many. Was he fearful? Was he worried about the situation? No. With Christ, certainly we are more than conquers. At one point, Martin Luther, was called the worms by the emperor. And the Pope’s lawyers had promised him safe travel, but they wanted him the answer for his heretical teaching. His friends had warned the reformer not to go. His one friend met him right outside the city and begged him not to go. For John Husse had been given supposedly safe conduct. not long before, but it ended up being burned at the stake, so they didn’t really honor it. We find that for their sake, the way they looked at it, you know, heretics sought not to be given safe conduct as the way the enemy looked at it. So he was told not to enter worms. Luther told the messenger, tell your master that even if there should be as many devils and worms as tiles upon the housetops, still I would enter worms. years later, a few years before his death, Luther said about this particular moment, he said, I was then undaunted. I feared nothing. It must be true, too, because it was at worms. He made that classic reply to the Diet, the Catholic Assembly there. Unless I be persuaded by the words of scripture and sound reasoning, I cannot and will not recant. Here I stand, I can do no other God help. me. Amen. Where did Luther get the courage? I think he found exactly where David did. He found it with God. And the Lord grant us such holy boldness when we are confronted with troubles. What is David doing here in verse 7? What is this all about? What does this mean? Arise, O Lord. Save me, oh my God. What’s that all about? What does it mean? Why is he telling God to arise? The second part is, you’re saying what he’s done in the past. Yeah. I think it is, stir yourself. You know, stir yourself up, Lord, and act on my behalf. Yes. In action. Yeah. There are times we use the idea as if God needed to be somehow stirred or moved to do something. You see that sometimes in the Psalms. Why do you think he uses this language about their jaws and their teeth being broken by God? Yeah, I think that would devire the sheep. And in this case, he’s the sheep. And, yeah, these guys are like wild beast. And what did their, what did they use? What did they say with their jaws and their teeth? According to earlier in this chapter. What did they say? here in verse 2. Didn’t they say there’s no hope for Him and God? So, shut their mouths, basically. I think he’s what he’s saying here. Touched on why he uses the past tense. I think there’s something that Russell has mentioned here. It is true that this is, he could look back and see what God has done in the past. It’s also true that sometimes, sometimes the psalmist speaks as if it’s already done when it hasn’t been done, as if if it’s a sure thing. There’s a certainty to. Both of those ideas, I think, are true, and we could look on both of them. We should look to the past and see what God has done to encourage us in the present, and we should be assured that God can do these things. And so I think both of those would be fair interpret. interpretations of this text. Let’s look at verse 8. Salvation Belongeth unto the Lord. By blessing is upon by people, Seela. How did God actually work out David’s deliverance? What happened that David gets delivered? So you’re going to look at the end of the situation how he actually dies. I was looking at the beginning of the situation. I was thinking about how Hithrafell’s counsel was rejected. We read it last Sunday morning when I read that passage from 2nd Samuel where it says that the Lord defeated the council of Hithrafel because he was going to bring about Absalom’s downfall. So the Lord is working. He’s working all through this obviously, but this is the way that Absalom ends up not doing what he should have done. if he was going to be successful, humanly speaking, and he should have followed to Hithrafel’s advice, but he didn’t, and this gave David time to recover, and God prepared things for his victory, and then he ends up getting, of course, caught in a tree. And took care of a Hithel, too. Yes. The problem in the future. Yes, his counsel being rejected, he saw the, he always saw the handwriting on the wall, and he takes his own life. That’s right. And then we know that David’s victorious, he is restored to the throne and God’s blessing rests upon him. Now, what do these trials and troubles that come into our life allow God to demonstrate? What did this do? What benefit came out of this? You know, what was God able to demonstrate by these trials that came upon David at this time? Can we think attributes? It’s good to have those in the back of our minds because they’re going to at times in your life and you’re in a situation where there’s no wins. You don’t see any way out of it. And yet God is able to, by his mighty power, overcome the enemy. And so through these kind of events, God gets all the glory because there’s no way, humanly speaking, you could get out of this, or you could escape this dilemma. And yet God somehow works it out on our behalf. Now, why should we look beyond earthly deliverance and see something about spiritual salvation in this verse as well? Is this simply about physical deliverance? Why should we see something about spiritual salvation in this? We have to remember. Go ahead. That’s right. Sins that God. Right. What is the last enemy that Christ is going to put down? Now, that’s, that’s, you know, we think about physical enemies a lot of times, and I guess death that could be looked upon as a physical enemy too, but we begin to realize Satan is an enemy. We realize that the flesh is our enemy. The world is our enemy. And so we can put those in this category, as we’ve mentioned before. But you notice he says, thy blessing, here is upon thy people. And I think we should take this blessing beyond the physical things and realize that it is all the spiritual blessings that we have are found in whom. In Christ. And so all these blessings that we have are not all related to physical things, but spiritual. blessings are found in Christ. And that’s where our hope lies ultimately. And so when we see, when we would sing this particular Psalm, you know, we’re not just singing, well, help me with my physical deliverances in this life. But hopefully we’re also thinking beyond that, I think we should be thinking about praising the Lord for the salvation in Christ that he’s given us. Yes. about its death that he is on. Yes. There’s another death we have to be subpoeer from too, right? Which is second death. Eternal death. That’s right. Now, another CELA here comes at the end. Pause, think about this. Contemplate this a little bit. Three CELAs in this. Contemplate this. Contemplate this. Contemplate this. Now let’s take a look at the last few minutes here. Let’s look about Christ in this Psalm. August. said this. He interprets the Psalm, and he says in a threefold sense. As Christ ahead, two, as Christ and his body, the head and the body, Christ in the church. And three, as the private Christian, an individual member of the body. So he sees it like in three categories here. What would you say about verse five? How would you relate verse five to Christ? Yes. Look at, with me, Psalm 16, just a few pages over in verses 8 through 11. I remind you that this particular Psalm is quoted in Acts chapter 2 by Peter and says it’s about Christ. It’s not about David because why he’s still in the grave. But it’s about Jesus Christ and it’s about his resurrection. Notice how he places, he states it here. I have set the Lord always before me because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad. My glory rejoiced. My flesh also shall rest in hope. We have the idea of he’s going to sleep. We use the word as has been mentioned here. For death as well, we rest. For thou will not leave my soul in hell. Neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life. In thy presence is fullness of joy at thy right hand. There are pleasures forevermore. This passage relates to Christ, the grave, the resurrection, and so forth here. And so this idea is similar to what we have in our text here, in him being able to lie down and yet awaken. What is indicated by the fact that I awakened? He thought, on that? Right. No man, I lay down my life for the sheep. No man take it from me, but I lay it down, he says, in John chapter 10. So we have that idea also. That he has the power to lay it down. He has the power to lift it up. That’s John 10, 15, and then verses 17 and 18 would indicate to us that. Go ahead. It does say here in Psalm 16 that the Lord, sustained him, didn’t allow him in his body to see corruption, but at the same time, Christ being divine, he has the power laid on his life and lift it up too. And so I suggest that. How would you relate six and seven of this Psalm back in Psalm 3 to Christ? All gathered there for the feasts, I don’t know exactly how many people were all under Christ’s crucifixion, but they were certainly a large a number of them. They were a large number of them. They were the Lord did before had been, you know, is added the son of David and one to be a king, and now we stirred up. And, you know, the number of that also, it’s got the, you’ve got the, you know, Jews and the Romans and authority, and then, you know, by extension, there’s underneath them. Right. Look at Psalm 22, and beginning with verse 11. Here we have Christ, this Psalm begins with, you know, My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me. It’s certainly speaking about Christ. He says, be not far from me, for trouble is near. There are many, there is none to help. Many bulls, notice he has some wild beast here. Many bulls have come past me about, or come past me, strong bulls of the shan have beset me round. They gaped upon me with their mouths as a ravening and a roaring lion. I am poor. poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It’s melted in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like a putcher. My tongue shall cleave to my jaws, and thou hast brought me into the dust of death. For dogs have come past me. The assembly of the wicked have enclosed me. They pierced my hands and my feet. I may tell all my bones they look and stare upon me. They part my garments of my eyes. them and cast lots upon my vesture. Be, but be not thou far from me, O Lord. O my strength, haste thee to help me. Deliver my soul from the sword, my darling from the power of the dog. Save me from the lion’s mouth, for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorn. I will declare thy name unto my brethren in the midst of the congregation while I praise thee. Ye. that fear the Lord praise him, all ye seed of Jacob, glorify him, and fear him, all ye seed of Israel. For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted. Neither hath he hid his face from him. But when he cried unto him, he heard. Very similar ideas from Psalm 3. Here. Then we can talk about how God is the Savior of his people. we’re blessed in Christ, we’re blessed through Christ, we’re blessed with Christ. And he is our substitute. And all spiritual blessings flow to us through him. Salvation belongs unto the Lord. There’s a passage in Isaiah 63 where he stomps out the enemy, Edom, and he’s covered with blood from stompingping out the enemy, Edom. And he’s covered with blood from stomping out the enemy. and when this figure is speaks, this person speaks about what it has done. He says, there was none to help me. I had to do it myself and win the victory. And many refer that to Christ and how he overcame the enemy and his power was exalted alone in that victory over the enemies of God’s people. and I think the same idea could be seen here with the salvation. There’s nothing here about man and it’s all about God and his salvation. Any thoughts? Perhaps I miss something. Perhaps something else you could add to this text of script, to this passage to enhance what we’ve already studied. All right, well, let’s close with a word of prayer. Keith, would you close this, please? Father, we thank you. for these, from your word, our salvation, the one who will resurrect us on the last day.