As I’ve told you, I’ve worked on a book on the Psalms. It will be re-released next month. I have a copy now that the publisher sent me ahead of time. And I’ve done it with a man by the name of Bruce Waltke. Many of you won’t know that name. A few of you do. In the world of Old Testament scholarship and Hebrew, there are a few people who stand taller than Bruce Waltke. And it is one of the honors of my life that I’ve been able to work on this book with him. It’s just been a wonderful treat for me to learn.
To give you some perspective, he began teaching the book of Psalms on the graduate level in 1958. That’s the year I was born. He’s 92 now. He’s still living. I first became—we’d communicated a couple of times—but I first became really acquainted with him several years ago when I was editing the series of concise commentaries for the Gospel Coalition, and I invited him to do the commentary on the Psalms. It was really a shot in the dark. I didn’t think we’d get him at his age, and all that he has to do to get him to undertake doing a commentary on all 150 Psalms was quite the request. He wrote back immediately, was glad to do it, and he has now completed that just recently. That will be online and available soon. A wonderful man, a giant of a scholar, a godly man. He’s told me many times on the phone when we speak about how he’s been blessed studying this psalm or the other and whatnot. It’s just been one of the honors of my life, really, to be able to work with him.
His own understanding of the Psalms, of course, grew and progressed in some significant ways over the decades, and now we who follow after him and study after him are able to learn from that. The book—I did all the writing, so you know how it comes about—I did all the writing, then I would send it to him and he worked through it, made suggestions here and there, but a great part of what is in the book is just what I’ve learned from him. There are some chapters that were just mine, and throughout there are things that I’ve expanded on of his, but the great bulk of the material is stuff that I have learned from him and from his teaching over the years that was never in print.
Just before it was time to turn in the manuscript—actually just after the manuscript was turned in—I talked to him on the phone and I said, “We never discussed who we’re going to dedicate the book to.” And he said, “Oh.” He said, “Well, who did you have in mind?” Typically, with two contributors, two authors, you know, sometimes you’ll have two dedicatory statements. But I said, “Well, if I had it my way, I’d dedicate it to the Reformed Baptist Church, Franconia, Pennsylvania. They’re the ones that listen patiently through all of this when I teach and preach on it.” He said, “Let’s do that.” So on the dedicatory page, you’ll see “From Reformed Baptist Church, Franconia, Pennsylvania.” That’s you guys. And I suppose all of that also to say, if there’s anything about these lessons and messages that you appreciate and has been helpful, you can be thankful for Dr. Waltke. If there’s anything that you don’t find helpful, you can blame me for that. I’ve messed it up somehow.
But today we look at Psalm 3. Psalm 3. I’ll begin reading, you follow along. The superscript reads:
A psalm of David when he fled from Absalom, his son. Oh 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. Selah. 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. Selah. I lay down and slept. I woke 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 the teeth of the wicked. Salvation belongs to the Lord. Your blessing be on your people. Selah.
And then you’ll remember as we discussed early on in our Sunday evening lessons, when you have on a psalm a superscript, and it begins—we have two items of the superscripts, that is authorship and then performance. And the performance matter of the superscripts always appears first. And we showed that that is to be understood and should be understood as actually a postscript to the previous psalm. So the performance matters, like “to the choir master” or notes with regard to the instruments that are used—those are actually, they always come first in the postscript and they actually should be understood as a postscript to the previous psalm. And so we have in Psalm 5 in our Bibles “to the choir master”; that should be understood then as the postscript to Psalm 4. I’m sorry, Psalm 4, then it should be the postscript of Psalm 3.
The superscript here is extremely important for us. There are 14 Psalms where David tells us the setting, the historical setting of the Psalm—”I’ve written it in these circumstances.” We spent some time early on talking about the importance and the genuineness of the superscripts. And I think we’ll see today how important that is because it provides the necessary setting for understanding the Psalm. And he tells us here that this is a Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son.
So that takes us back then to 2 Samuel chapters 14 to 18. And that’s why last week I took the time to back up to 2 Samuel 11 and following for the larger story of David. But in 2 Samuel chapters 14 to 18 we have the account of Absalom who had usurped his father’s throne. In the background we have chapters 11 and 12, David’s sin with Bathsheba. Nathan the prophet comes and he confronts David with his sin. David is repentant of his sin. Nathan tells David that he will not die, he’ll be forgiven, accepted by God, but there are consequences to his sin. And so in the following chapters, 13 and following, we have the consequences of David’s sin.
Chapters 11 and 12 of 2 Samuel are the turning point in David’s life. As I mentioned last week, this takes us to that third major period of David’s life. And the prophet Nathan said to David in the aftermath of his sin and repentance, Nathan says, “Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.” And so in the following chapters we find David’s son that is born to Bathsheba dies. In the following chapters we find Amnon who raped his half-sister Tamar. And then we find then the account of Absalom, who is Tamar’s brother and wants to wreak vengeance on Amnon for what he has done and eventually, some time later, arranges to have Amnon slain for what he has done. And the result of that, then Absalom is out of sorts now, of course, in the family, and he’s forced into a kind of exile.
Finally, Absalom is allowed to return to Jerusalem, but there’s no real reconciliation with his father, David. And through that period, then, Absalom grows increasingly resentful of his father. And finally, then, Absalom leads in a revolt against his father. And so in chapter 15 of 2 Samuel, Absalom begins his long scheme to take over. If you’d like, you can glance through these chapters as I highlight it for you, 2 Samuel chapter 15.
First of all, what Absalom does is he undermines the people’s confidence in his father. Really a dastardly kind of thing to do, but he would talk to the people in such a way as to steal their affection and their confidence away from David, his father, to him. He would make political promises. “Too bad Dad didn’t treat you well.” When people come to judgment, he would talk to them on the way out. “Too bad my father didn’t give you what was right. When I become king, I’ll do what’s right. I’ll treat you right.”
Now, why David didn’t deal with this is just unimaginable. Why David didn’t deal with Absalom as he should have is unbelievable. Back in the first place, why he didn’t deal with this insurrection that Absalom is doing outside the palace and outside the temple where he would minister justice. It’s inconceivable that David didn’t know about this. Of course he knew about it. Maybe he felt secure in his position as king that it didn’t matter. Or maybe it’s just another failure on David’s part to deal with his children as he should have. We see that a lot in David’s later life. But whatever the reason, David didn’t address this as he should have. And we read in 2 Samuel 15 and verse 6, “Thus Absalom did to all of Israel who came to the king for judgment.” And then the narrator adds the statement, “So Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel.”
Second Samuel 15 verse seven: finally, after four years of this, the moment arrives. And Absalom pretends himself to be very pious and to have spiritual concerns. And he says to his dad, to David, he says, “I made a vow when I was in exile, that if the Lord would restore me, I would offer a thank offering and sacrifice to him. Let me go to Hebron to do that.” And so David says, “Yeah, it sounds like a good idea. Go do that.”
Now, Hebron was a strategic choice for Absalom. It is 19 miles southeast of Jerusalem. It is a safe distance. Hebron was also David’s initial capital city when he was king over just the southern tribes, the tribes of Judah. So it’s a strategic location. It’s politically important, a safe distance, politically shrewd; and he goes to offer this sacrifice in Hebron. And then during the sacrifice, Absalom’s cohorts make their way through the crowd. And then at the sound of the trumpets—remember, we’ve talked about David bringing instrumentalization to the sacrifices as well as the songs and the psalms. All right, now we have this public ceremony, this thank offering being given. It’s a big event. People have gathered. The king’s son is to offer sacrifice and thanksgiving to God. And he signals his cohorts: when it comes time for the sound of the trumpets, start shouting, “Absalom is king! Absalom is king! Absalom is king!” And so they do.
And then in chapter 15, verse 13, we find a messenger comes to David saying, “The hearts of the men of Israel have gone after Absalom.” So David’s kingdom that was previously so appreciative of him and so loyal to him, the kingdom that he had expanded and done so much for, now has turned on him in favor of his scheming son. And so, Chapter 15 again, David is forced to flee Jerusalem. It’s no longer safe for him to be there. There will be spies, no doubt, within the palace. There’ll be possible acts of treason, attempted assassinations. He has to leave the city, opting instead to settle the matter out on the open battlefield.
On his way out of the city, we find again in chapter 15, many loyal people within Jerusalem followed David out to the gate of the city, and then he moves on beyond, but the people are weeping and mourning as David has to leave the city. And in chapter 15, verse 30, we read that David left the royal city weeping, barefoot, and with his head covered in shame. And then verse 31 of 2 Samuel 15, things get still worse when David learns that Ahithophel has joined the conspiracy. It probably was not difficult to recruit Ahithophel. It seems that he was Bathsheba’s grandfather. And he’s probably still resentful over what all has happened. But Ahithophel was a brilliant advisor. He was insightful, he was very wise. David himself considered Ahithophel to be the equal of a prophet. And we read in chapter 16, verse 23, “In those days, the counsel that Ahithophel gave was as if one consulted the word of God. So was all the counsel of Ahithophel esteemed, both by David and Absalom.”
So Absalom has recruited a key player in this rebellion, and learning of it, David immediately prays in chapter 15, verse 31, “O Lord, please turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness.” Well, the first piece of advice that Ahithophel gives to Absalom is to set up a tent on top of the palace roof, and one by one bring in his harem and have his way with them. And this was the broadcast. They didn’t have talking heads on the newscast each night on the television. They didn’t have Google to get the news. This was the newscast that the coup was in. A new king has taken over. David’s out. Absalom is in.
Well, all of this then is the background for David’s lament in Psalm 3. He expresses his lament in verses one and two: “Oh 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.” The situation seems to be hopeless. Everyone recognizes it. Even God can’t help him now, or so it seems.
Now as we’ll see in verses three to six, David affirms his confidence, his trust in God. That’s one of the standard elements of the Lament Psalm that we’ve seen. And so David will affirm his trust in God. But already on his way out of the city, God gave a series of encouragements to David through some providential encounters with some key people on his way out of the city.
First of all, this is chapter 15 of 2 Samuel, verses 19 and following. He runs into a man by the name of Ittai, a Gittite. And he’s going along with David, gets to the gates of the city. He keeps going out with all of his entourage, his people, his family, his men, his servants. They all go out with David beyond the gates of the city. David turns to Ittai and says, “Go home. What’s the point? You can’t go with me with this. It’s not going to profit you.” And Ittai, a very loyal, completely loyal man, says, “No, where you go I’m gonna go. If you die, I’ll die with you.” No doubt an encouragement to David. His own people are rejecting him, and here’s a Gentile from Gath, the hometown of Goliath, being loyal to him, siding up with him.
2 Samuel 15 verses 24 and following, Zadok the priest comes also with David and he’s carrying the ark of the Lord from Mount Zion. David says, “No, you go back with the ark, take it back to the house of the Lord.” And he says, “The Lord will bring me back to the house of the Lord to see it again or not.” It’s sort of what he says. Instead of bringing Zadok alone with him, David sends Zadok back, not only with the ark, but he sends him back to be a spy in Jerusalem so he can bring word to David and his men as to what’s going on in the city with regard to the rebellion.
Verses 32 and following, David is ascending the Mount of Olives and he meets up with another person and his name is Hushai. He’s an utterly loyal servant. The passage demonstrates that in several different ways. But David sends him back to Jerusalem as well as a counter-spy to work against Absalom, to work alongside of Absalom, ostensibly to help him and to advise him, but also to send then word back to David for what’s going on. In fact, David says to Hushai, “Then you will defeat for me the counsel of Ahithophel.”
Then verses 35 and following, we have two more priests that come along that are named Abiathar. They team up with Zadok. They have sons who are runners. And so the older priests are gathering this information, using their position to collect the information of what’s going on in the rebellion. They send their younger sons running out to the field to find David and give report of what’s going on. And so David’s spy ring is in place.
Now, this man by the name of Hushai is particularly important. He’s a crucial player in this whole affair. It’s through Hushai that God will frustrate the counsel of Ahithophel. In 2 Samuel 16, verses 16 and following, Hushai is making his way back into the city, and as God would have it, he comes back into the city gates just as Absalom is coming into the gates. And Hushai, making his way in like a good spy will, says something like, “Long live the king!” And of course Absalom thinks he’s speaking about him. And of course Hushai is thinking, “I’m thinking about David.” But “Long live the king!” And Absalom takes it, he bites on it, and he brings him into his council. And he’s part of this inner circle then in counseling Absalom, pretending his loyalty to him.
Now what Ahithophel then advises next is to go out against David right away. Take the army, go out now and overrun David while he’s on the run. He’s still weak. Go take care of this now and stamp this out. Finalize the coup. That was good advice. It was wise counsel, and Hushai knows that it’s good advice from their perspective. And so Hushai quickly comes up with some counter-advice to give Absalom. And he plays up David’s reputation as a warrior. Everybody knows that he’s the best warrior out there. He’s a military genius, and if you go out to him now, surely he’s going to start defeating this soldier, that soldier, the next, and next, and it will be no time at all before the rest of your soldiers become scared, and they’ll be disheartened, and they’ll run back, and it won’t work. Just wait. Wait and gather the biggest army that you can get, and then just go out and find him in overwhelming force and squash it.
Well, that was not good advice, but playing up on David’s reputation as a warrior worked. Absalom takes Hushai’s counsel instead of Ahithophel’s counsel. Ahithophel is wise enough to know that Hushai’s counsel will defeat Absalom, and so Ahithophel goes home and hangs himself, and that’s the end of that. Well, that’s the background then of Psalm 3 as David writes it.
All right, so far as an overview of the psalm, we have the usual structure of a lament psalm that we’ve seen before. Verses one and two, you have the lament with the direct address: “Oh Lord, how many are my foes?” Then verses three to six, we have his statement of confidence or trust in God: “But you, O Lord, are a shield about me.” Verse 7, we have the petition for deliverance: “Arise, save me.” And then verse 8, we have the praise. And so we’ll work our way through the psalm with that.
You’ll notice also, though, that the psalm is framed around the idea of deliverance. Verse 2, we have deliverance denied: “Many are saying of my soul, there is no salvation for him in God.” That’s the lament. Salvation’s been denied. Deliverance won’t come. But then the end of the psalm, verses seven and eight, we have deliverance affirmed: “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.”
All right, let’s work our way through it.
The Lament
First of all, the lament in verses one and two. “Oh 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.” So here we have the exiled king in danger of his life. And I think to appreciate the psalm and the lament and the grief that David is experiencing, we have to at least highlight the situation. Try to step into his shoes here. This is David, the great king. He’s the rightful king. He’s been anointed by God to be king. God has given him a promise of his kingship. He’s the champion who defeated Goliath for Israel. He, in fact, is the warrior who defeated more enemy soldiers than anyone else has. This is the man who is celebrated in song by the women of the nation. This is the man who expanded Israel’s kingdom to be a vast empire.
And now his people are not only unappreciative of what he has done, but they’ve turned on him, and they want even to see him dead. His kingdom is no longer safe. He has to leave, run for his own life in shame, leaves the capital city, fleeing from his own son. And so we can’t miss, I don’t think, seeing the background that the superscript gives us. We can’t miss the sense of grief that David feels as he writes verses one and two. It’s not an overstatement at all when he says, “Oh Lord, how many are my foes? Many are rising against me.” Verse six: “Many thousands of people have set themselves against me all around.” You can sense the deep desperation on David’s part. Everyone’s turned against me. Of course not everyone exactly, but it seems that everyone is gone; thousands of them are turned on me.
Verse seven, he calls them “wicked.” The wicked—and keep in mind that the wicked here is his son, Absalom. And I’d say “wicked” states it pretty well. To turn on his father, to lead in a rebellion against him, to rape his wives, seek to have him killed. This is one of the most awful chapters of David’s life. Most hurtful of all, verse 2, God won’t deliver him. The situation was so extreme that it seems beyond even God’s help. And the enemy is just bursting with confidence. David is God’s own anointed. He’s received the promise, 2 Samuel chapter 7. But now it just doesn’t seem like it’s so, and both his people and it seems God himself has turned on him. So in sum, his lament is the enemy is too powerful and God won’t help.
Confidence In God
And then we come to his statement of confidence in verses 3 to 6. Verse three: “But you, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory and the lifter of my head.” Notice that little introductory phrase, “But you.” “But you, O Lord”—this is common in the Lament Psalms. It begins the contrast. It’s where the attention turns from the lament to God. And so instead of keeping his eyes fixed on the circumstances and lamenting them, he turns his attention now to God. “But you, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, the lifter of my head.” This looks to be the end; it seems that the promise has failed. “But you, O Lord, are my shield and my glory.”
Verse three: “You, O Lord, are my glory.” That’s a reference to God’s electing grace. He’s the one who chose David. He’s the one who made him king. David is saying, “You’re the one who made me king. You promised this to me. You’ve given me this glory. You are my glory.” Verse three, the first part of the verse: God is a shield of protection on all sides. “You, O Lord, are a shield about me.” Verse 3b: “You, O Lord, are the lifter of my head.” This is interesting with regard to what we saw in 2 Samuel 15, verse 30, where David fled from Jerusalem barefoot and with his head covered and in shame. Here he’s saying that when I return, God will see to it that my head will be lifted high.
Verse four: “I cried aloud to the Lord and he answered me from his holy hill.” Remember, David had sent Zadok back with the ark to Mount Zion. God has now heard me from his holy hill. Just how that answer came, how that assurance was given, we’re not told. But David prays and he says, “God has heard me from his holy hill.” This is David’s expression of confidence in God against all of the contrary evidence. He trusts God’s promise. And that, by the way, is what faith is. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. It is confidence in God despite the circumstances. Faith does not judge God by the circumstances. Faith views the circumstances in the perspective of what God has said and who God is. And David has a settled confidence in God’s word and God’s promise.
And he goes away from his prayer, verse four, with a settled confidence that he expresses now in these verses, verses five and six. We have a validation of his trust: “I lay down and slept. I woke again for the Lord sustained me. I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around.” Now this is significant. You read through this quickly and you don’t catch, perhaps, the significance of his remark that he’s going to lie down and sleep. This is the validation of David’s trust. His trust in God was so firm that he lay down and slept. Out in the open, on the run, his life’s in danger, and his trust in God is so firm that it doesn’t interrupt his sleep. This is what a person who trusts God can do.
Commentators in Psalm 3 regularly point out what’s called the “emphatic I.” The pronoun “I.” The emphatic I. What that means is in the Hebrew, in the word order in the verse, the word “I” is fronted. It’s put in a different order from what it usually would be in order to draw attention to it, so that you see that it’s there for some kind of emphasis. And what he’s saying here is, “As for me”—it’s that kind of thing to bring it out—”As for me, I will lay down and sleep.” This is not some kind of a triumphalistic bravado on David’s part. It’s just—it’s not self-confidence. It’s simply the calm assurance of a robust faith. God is my God. He has made promises. He’ll keep them. I’ll go to sleep.
David had failed God in many ways, but his trust in God never wavered. And his trust is evident in that he goes to sleep. This, by the way, is very reminiscent of something in the Gospels. Mark chapter four, you remember the disciples with Jesus out in the boat and the storm blows up and they’re all in a panic over it all. Jesus is down below sleeping. That’s fascinating in and of itself, and of course the climax of the story is what kind of man is this who stops the storm. But it’s also interesting in the story that when Peter wakes Jesus—”Don’t you care? We’re gonna die out here!”—and Jesus gets up, calms the storm, and then he says to Peter, “Oh you of little faith.” That’s fascinating. “You’re out here panicking,” and Jesus says, “You don’t have enough faith.” Our confidence in the providence of God ought to be such that it keeps us from panic.
And so David sleeps, verse five. Verse six, he’s refreshed, he’s ready to meet the enemy. “I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around.” So look how far we’ve come from verses one and two. “Everyone’s against me, thousands, they’re all after me, I’ve got nothing.” And now verse six: “I’m not afraid of all thousands of them who set themselves against me.”
Petition For Deliverance
And so verse seven, we come to the next regular feature of the Lament Psalms, the petition. “Arise, O Lord, save me, O my God, for you strike all my enemies on the cheek. You break the teeth of the wicked.” So his petition here is twofold.
Number one: deliver from the enemy. “Deliver me from the enemy.” That’s verse seven. “Arise, O Lord, save me, O my God.” That expression “arise,” that’s generally used in military connotations. “Arise, go out in the battle, go battle on my behalf. Go to work, arise, get up and get at it for me.” And then he says, “Save me, O my God.” And notice how that recalls verse 2: “Many are saying of my soul there is no salvation for him in God.” And notice he says, “my God.” That’s the whole basis of David’s confidence. God will not abandon him. He’s made a promise. God is still God. God is still who he says he is.
There are also some judicial connotations to it as well. David recognizes that God has made certain promises. God has chosen David to be king. He’s made promises concerning his kingship. If David is overthrown, God’s promise is overthrown. It would be entirely wrong for David to be defeated. And so there are judicial connotations to this. “Arise, O Lord. Go to work on my behalf. Save me. Because if you don’t, it’ll be a wrong that is done. Lord, accomplish what you said you would accomplish.” So his first request is, deliver me from the enemy.
His second request: punish the enemy. This isn’t quite an imprecatory psalm, but he does ask him to punish the enemy. Last part of verse 7: “For you strike all my enemies on the cheek, you break the teeth of the wicked.” Strike them on the cheek—that’s the idea of humiliation and utter defeat. You can almost see somebody smack—you’re done. It’s over. Strike them on the cheek. Break the teeth—what that means is that the enemy now has been neutralized. They can’t bite. They’re unable to attack again. So, defeat them, neutralize them so that they can’t come back again. And he doesn’t quite ask for their death, just for their utter defeat.
Concluding Praise
And so, verse 8, we have the concluding praise. Praise for deliverance which has not yet come, but he’s confident that God will give it. Verse 8: “Salvation belongs to the Lord. Your blessing be on your people.” The situation might seem bleak, but God is still God. His character is still unchanged. His promise is not changed. He will deliver. And David offers praise to God for that deliverance, even though it hasn’t quite yet come.
Well, we read the rest of the story in Samuel. After this psalm, David’s men defeat Absalom’s army. Absalom is on the run. He’s caught in the tree, you remember, and Joab comes, runs him through with a javelin, and the rebellion is over. God did, in fact, deliver David.
Now, it’s worth pointing out here—and Dr. Waltke makes this point here in this context; in fact, I’ve heard him make this point in a similar context several times over—it’s worth noting how God delivered David. Just how did he deliver David? The deliverance for which David prayed and which God gave came through diligent, shrewd actions on David’s part. What we don’t find here is David praying, “God deliver me,” and David just sitting there waiting for it to happen. But he acts responsibly on his own as well. He organizes this spy ring, men took risks, and still, and maybe even especially given the odds, David sees behind all of his efforts the hand of God at work to bring deliverance. All the while he’s running this spy ring, he’s looking to God to bring deliverance through it all. And after it’s over, he gives God praise for it. There’s no self-congratulation here at all.
Trusting God does not mean sitting idly by. And here’s the application that Dr. Waltke would give. You might wonder, how does a towering Old Testament scholar play with his children? And the answer is: like anybody else, except there’s one added dimension. Come home from work and he’s had these events from the Old Testament on his mind, and so with his children he would have them act out the various episodes in the Old Testament stories. And one of them, of course, one of their favorites, was David and Goliath. And he would give the kids a dish towel for the sling. And he’d give them a ping pong ball for the stone. And they sling the thing and let it go. And of course, it might hit the window or whatever. But come at him, and he’d fall down. And he’s done. And the best part of it came, he said, when they would come with a sword and cut off his head.
But he said sometimes the kids would come, and they’d come with the sling, and he’d throw it, and he’d stand there. “Dad, we threw the ping pong ball.” “Yeah, but you didn’t say, ‘I come in the name of the Lord.'” So they go back and they try again. They come back—just little children—they come back again, “I come in the name of the Lord.” And he stands there. “Dad, we said we’d come in the name of the Lord, but you didn’t throw the ping-pong ball.” “You gotta do both.” He said, “I wanted to teach them that trusting God is not sitting by idly, but acting responsibly, and both are there in the events of David, and both are here in this psalm.” David acts responsibly. He works shrewdly as the military genius that he was, creates this network of spies, and all the while trusts God and gives him the praise for it when it’s over.
More importantly, David also prays in verse eight, not for his own deliverance only, but for the deliverance of his people. Do you see that in verse eight? “Salvation belongs to the Lord. Your blessing be on your people.” In reality, the welfare of the people of Israel was caught up on the welfare of their king. And David knew that. And there’s bound to be some rebellion that’s left, division caused by the rebellion left in the nation, some unrest of various kinds. And David, as the big-hearted king that he was, prays, “Not only bring my deliverance, but your blessing be on your people.” And that’s a prayer, of course, that God continues to answer still today.
And now we have the postscript. David hands his psalm eventually over to the choir master for us to sing with him. So the question then is: how do we read and how do we sing this psalm? How can this psalm become ours? Not too many of us have Absalom-kind of enemies trying to kill us, nor do we have the same promises that David had from God. David was promised kingship; he was promised a greater son who would reign the world over, and his confidence expressed in this psalm was grounded in those promises that were given to him. Often in David’s laments, we’ll find David, despite the odds, coming out with this robust expression of confidence and faith in God. “God will bring me through this. God will restore me. This will work out and God will see to it.” And he’s confident of it.
Now, we have some enemies, but we don’t have that kind of enemy, so how does a psalm like this become ours? Well, we do have spiritual enemies, and under Satan’s direction, a host of them as well, and their objective is our spiritual ruin. And in many ways, our culture has set out to cancel the church and silence the church in every effective way that it can. And like David, we must be wise, we must be diligent in spiritual warfare, and carry out our strategies carefully. And like David, we must look to God to keep his promise to preserve his people in the hostility and enable us to persevere through to the end. Like David, the Lord is our shield and he keeps us from falling. And in danger of every kind, like David, we must entrust ourselves to the God who has promised our ultimate success and vindication with such a settled confidence that it won’t interrupt our sleep.
Psalms everywhere call us to a robust kind of faith, a settled trust that whatever the circumstances are, we will honor God with the trust that he deserves. A settled sense of peace that God is still God. He’s ruling over it all and directing all things according to his own will. And it’s surely one of the great lessons we learn from all of the lament psalms. In all of David’s laments, there’s this expression of confidence, expression of praise to God. We learn that lamenting without praise would be entirely inappropriate. But David throughout—he can lament, but it’s also tied with praise.
And then there’s another way we should look at this psalm. We should also recall that the Psalms, first of all—remember we saw this in our Sunday night series—Psalms, first of all, are not about us. And when you read the “I” and the “us” in the Psalms, it’s first of all, not about you. It’s about the King and his people. We find that everywhere in the Psalms. The enemies that he faced are military enemies, and it’s nations that are in consequence of the outcome. It’s the king that’s in view throughout the Psalms. There are exceptions to that, of course, but pervasively, the perspective is that of the king. We pray for the king, the king is to be protected, and so on. And throughout the Psalms, the king is prospective of the King.
This is how the Psalter works. They’re about the king, but David himself—and here it is—David himself, but the King, throughout the Psalms, points forward, anticipates the actions of the great King who will come, David’s greater Son. We find that everywhere in the Psalms. Sometimes we find direct prophecies, where the direct prophecy is given like Psalm 110, where, “Sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool,” speaking of the end times when Christ will return and take all of the nations of the world into his possession. Psalm 2 is another prophecy, but most often it’s not direct prophecy in the Psalms. Most often it’s more subtle kinds of anticipations where the words of David become, when we get to the New Testament, the words of Jesus. The prayers of David become the prayers of Jesus. The laments of David become the laments of Jesus. And often the events that transpire in the life of David become events that transpire in the life of Jesus. And there’s this subtle kind of mild typology that points ahead to what will happen in David’s greater Son.
And so Psalm 3 is not directly prophetic like we had in Psalm 2. And yet, like David, our Lord was driven into the wilderness to be tested. Like David, our Lord was hated without a cause. Like David, our Lord was met with a taunt: “He saved others, but he can’t save himself.” Like David, Christ cried, “My God!” Like David, Jesus recognized his kingship while being rejected by his people. Like David, Jesus was forced out of Jerusalem in shame. Like David, Jesus was rejected by his own people and then welcomed by the Gentiles. Like David, God alone was his shield and glory and the lifter up of his head, and with confidence like David, Jesus entrusted himself to him who judges righteously. And most importantly, like with David, the welfare of God’s people hangs on the success of this King.
But unlike David, our Lord suffered purely for sins of other people. He did not suffer in any way ever for any wrong that he had done. The whole reason he came was to stand in place of the sinners, and standing in their place was the reason for all of his suffering. In fact, the early church, in the early centuries of the church, when they would read verse 5 of Psalm 3, they understood it as prospective of Christ’s death and resurrection. “I lay down and slept. I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.” Like David, Jesus laid down, trusting God for vindication, and he rose again. And like David, Jesus rejoiced in that vindication, and in that vindication pronounced blessing on all the people of God.
Unlike David, whose kingdom finally failed because of the faithlessness of successor kings, the Lord Jesus, David’s greater Son, has already triumphed. He has died, he is raised from the dead, he’s ascended, he’s taken the throne, he has already established God’s kingdom, inaugurating it and will bring it to fruition in a culminating way in his return. And in fact, verse 8: “Salvation belongs to the Lord.” That expression, “salvation belongs to the Lord,” finds echoes in the New Testament, particularly in the book of Revelation. Revelation 7 verses 9 and 10: here Christ has won the kingdom and his people have come out of the great tribulation. And we read, “After this I looked and behold a great multitude that no one could number from every nation from all tribes and peoples and languages standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes and palm branches in their hands and crying with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.'”
And we find it echoed again in Revelation chapter 19, announcing the defeat of Babylon and the arrival of the King, where we read, “After this I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven crying out, ‘Hallelujah, salvation and glory and power belong to our God.'”
So we do not have the same promises that David had, but we can sleep with the same confidence because the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ is—yes, it’s under attack and we his people may well have to draw more fire because of it in the days ahead—but no worries, because Jesus has died, he’s been raised from the dead, he’s ascended, he’s taken the throne, and he will return and bring to fruition all of the promises that he has made for us and vindicate his people. And knowing this, knowing all of that, well then we can sleep at night too.
And so David then is at the same time, number one, an outstanding example of trust in the very worst of circumstances. In all of his lament psalms, he expresses praise to God and he demonstrates that faith in the fact that he can lie down and sleep. That’s what a person who trusts God can do. And it ought to mark all of God’s people. So David is at the same time, one, an outstanding example of trust. And at the same time, he’s a picture foreshadowing his greater Son who trusted God supremely. And in his death, resurrection, ascension, and his return defeats the enemy and secures eternal blessing for the people of God. And it’s precisely because of the success of this greater King that we can sleep with a settled assurance that we’re safe in God’s care forever. Amen. Let’s pray.