Psalm 3
Date: January 21st, 2023
Speaker: Samuel Crites
Scripture: Psalm 3
Exegetical Outline
MIT: The Lord saves his anointed from his enemies and gives him restful peace.
1. 1-2; 7-8: The Lord can save his people from their enemies.
1-2: Enemies rise and mock the Lord’s anointed saying the Lord cannot save him.
7-8: The Lord rises to strike the enemies on the cheek and save his anointed.
3-4; 5-6: The Lord hears his anointed and shields him from his enemies so that he can rest in peace.
3-4: The Lord is a shield to his people and lifts the head of his anointed when he cries for help.
5-6: The Lord sustains his anointed and allows him to lay down his head in peace in the midst of his enemies.
Homiletical Outline
MIS: God will save his Church because he saved his Son.
The Lord saved David.
The Lord saved Christ.
The Lord will save his people.
Introduction:
A year ago this week, our sending church experienced a catastrophic tragedy. A small private plane carrying the senior pastor, the executive pastor, a founding elder and two members crashed in Yoakum, TX. Kennon Vaughan, the senior pastor, was the only one that walked away. In one phone call, our church lost men that were like fathers to us. Men without which our church would not exist. This was their vision and dream. They trained us and prayed for us and supported us every step of the way, and they were gone. In one phone call, death unexpectedly crashed into our lives. Of all the trials and struggles of starting a new Church, this is not what I expected to happen 3 months into planting.
This week was the anniversary of the crash. So as I was preparing for the sermon, I kept reflecting on the similarity between the crisis taking place in David’s life and the crisis that was going on then. In a moment, David went from being king of Israel to fleeing for his life before his son. You do not know what tomorrow brings. Tragedy might strike in an instant. Do not be got unprepared. David shows us in Psalm 3 how to trust and hope in God. Let’s read it together.
3 A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son.
1 O Lord, how many are my foes!
Many are rising against me;
2 many are saying of my soul,
“There is no salvation for him in God.” Selah
3 But you, O Lord, are a shield about me,
my glory, and the lifter of my head.
4 I cried aloud to the Lord,
and he answered me from his holy hill. Selah
5 I lay down and slept;
I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.
6 I will not be afraid of many thousands of people
who have set themselves against me all around.
7 Arise, O Lord!
Save me, O my God!
For you strike all my enemies on the cheek;
you break the teeth of the wicked.
8 Salvation belongs to the Lord;
your blessing be on your people! Selah
If anyone doubts the salvation of the Lord, all they must do is read Psalm 3. How foolish do the enemies of God’s anointed look when God confuses their plans and saves those they thought were beyond protection? Church, take heart in the truth that your God saves. No one and nothing can prevent him from rescuing his people. I hope our sermon text this week gives you as much comfort and confidence as it has given me. The main idea of our sermon is this: God will save his Church, because he did save his Son.
Psalm 3 is like a ballast in the bottom of a ship. It will keep you steady when the storms and trials of life attempt to sink you. It is like a song sung by a parent, long forgotten from your childhood, that reminds you who you are and that someone out there loves you; thinks about you; prays for you. It is like a promise from someone who has shown themselves to be faithful before that you remember in the moment when you realize you are in desperate need of their help. This is a rich psalm.
But to see it’s richness, we must first see God’s faithfulness. This psalm that promises that God will save his Church is built on the fact that God did save Christ. God kept his promise in Psalm 16 to not abandon Christ to Sheol or let his holy one see corruption. This psalm gives voice to the pleas of the Messiah as he was crucified, buried, and raised from the dead.
But to understand the mystery of how David could speak on behalf of Christ, we must first understand how this Psalm fit into David’s own life. What was going on in the life of David that typified the struggle of the Messiah on the cross? So, first we will examine David’s life and remind ourselves of how God saved David from Absalom, then we will consider how the Psalm speaks in the voice of Christ as he sacrificed himself on the cross, and finally, we will consider how God’s faithfulness to David and to Christ should give us the confidence to trust him when he tells us that he will save us. Psalm 3 reminds us that God will save his Church, because he did save his Son.
God saved David.
The superscriptions at the beginning of the Psalms were not put in your Bible by the English translators. They are part of the original text and should be treated as Scripture. So, when the superscription of our Psalm credits David as the author, we should believe it. David wrote Psalm 3. We learn that David wrote this psalm while he was fleeing from Absalom. The confidence to know that God will save his people in the future is rooted in the fact that he has saved his people in the past. God saved David, so David wrote Psalm 3.
To better understand this, we must first remember Absalom’s rebellion against David. Absalom’s rebellion against David is recorded for us in 2 Samuel 15-18, but the story actually begins in 2 Samuel 11. In Chapter 11, David sins by sleeping with Bathsheba and conspiring to have her husband Uriah killed. In the next Chapter, Nathan the prophet comes to David and tricks David into passing judgment on himself. Nathan asks David what he would do to a rich man with vast flocks who stole the only lamb of his poor neighbor. David says that such a man deserved to die and David would make him pay back the price of the lamb four times over. This is what Nathan says to David in verse 7:
2 Samuel 12:7-12
7 Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul. 8 And I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your arms and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. 9 Why have you despised the word of the LORD, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. 10 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.’ 11 Thus says the LORD, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house. And I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. 12 For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun.’ ”
This curse defines the rest of David’s reign. Many years later, Absalom had a sister named Tamar. One of David’s other sons, Amnon, was infatuated with Tamar. Through trickery and malice, he lured Tamar to his bed chambers and raped her. Afterward, his infatuation turned to hate and he shunned Tamar. When Absalom found out about what happened to his sister, he took it to David, who was angry, but did nothing to punish or avenge Tamar.
This did not sit well with Absalom, so Absalom took matters into his own hand. Two full years later, he convinced David to send his sons out to shear sheep with Absalom, and while they were drinking wine, Absalom had his servants murder Amnon. All the brothers fled and Absalom went into hiding for three years.
Eventually, Joab convinced David to bring Absalom back from exile, but when Absalom comes home, David will not see him. It took David another two years to invite Absalom into his presence, and once he does, David kisses Absalom. Now something changes in Absalom at this point. It seems that his anger and hatred for Amnon is transferred to an anger and hatred for his father. Scripture does not say why, but I speculate that Absalom expected David to punish him, and when David kissed him and welcomed him home, he saw the weakness in David that allowed Amnon off the hook for his treatment of Tamar.
So as soon as Absalom left David’s presence, he put on his best clothes, got a chariot, and fifty men and went to sit in the gate of Jerusalem. He set up court at the entrance to the city and started to play king, dealing out justice as if he was David to all who came to petition the throne. In this way, 2 Samuel 15 says that Absalom stole the hearts of the people. He did this for four years until he had enough support to declare himself to be king. As soon as he does, David realizes that he has made a terrible mistake and flees the city.
This is the context into which Psalm 3 was written. David’s family is being torn apart by his own inability to deal out justice and his own son who has gathered the elders and David’s closest counselors to raise a rebellion against him. So as you think about what this Psalm says to us about trusting God and the assurance of God’s salvation, know that it is coming to us on what is most likely the worst day of David’s life.
What was your worst day of your life like? Can you sympathize with the crushing doubt that David probably felt as he fled? Did you wonder if God had abandoned you? Did you retreat into your own pain and sorrow?
On David’s worst day, he declared the salvation of God. Out of the mess David had made of his own life, David said:
Psalm 3:5-6
5 I lay down and slept;
I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.
6 I will not be afraid of many thousands of people
who have set themselves against me all around.
What happened in David’s flight that inspired him to pen these words? How was David’s reaction so different from what I assume I would do in that same situation?
Well, 2 Samuel tells us. But first, I need to introduce two more characters. The first character shows up at the end of 2 Samuel 15 and is David’s number one advisor, Ahithophel. Ahithophel betrayed David early on. When Absalom was playing king to the people, it says Ahithophel was out in the country rallying people to Absalom’s cause. When David finds out that Ahithophel is against him, he cries out to God, asking that Ahithophel’s counsel would be turned to foolishness. David was very concerned that Ahithophel had turned against him.
The second character to introduce is Hushai. Hushai is on David’s side, but is probably old or frail in some way. He wants to go with David, but David says that he would be a burden in the wilderness and it would be better for him to stay behind. So David sends Hushai back into the Jerusalem as a spy to confuse Ahithophel’s counsel and to feed information to David through a network of spies.
As David is fleeing in Chapter 16, Absalom asks Ahithophel what should be done with David. Immediately, Ahithophel advises that he should lead 12,000 men to pursue David and kill him. He reasons that David is weak and confused and now would be the perfect time to defeat him. This was true, David was weak and confused, and he would have lost the battle if Absalom had listened to Ahithophel. And the text even says that this counsel seems right to Absalom and the other elders.
However, then Absalom asks Hushai his opinion and Hushai says that Ahithophel’s advice is foolish. First, David is an expert warrior and has likely already abandoned the people, so Absalom would never find him. Second, David is enraged and will fight with the ferocity of a mother bear that has lost her cubs. And finally, he says that pursuing David is a trap, because David has left the innocents as a decoy. As soon as Absalom attacks them, the people will no longer see Absalom as the good guy that deals out justice and peace, but as a ruthless tyrant attacking the elderly and the infirm.
Absalom listened to Hushai. He decided not to pursue David. Listen to what 2 Samuel 17:14 says as to why:
2 Samuel 17:14
And Absalom and all the men of Israel said, “The counsel of Hushai the Archite is better than the counsel of Ahithophel.” For the LORD had ordained to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel, so that the LORD might bring harm upon Absalom.
Why did Hushai prevail and why was David protected? Not because Hushai was so eloquent or because David was so clever. Ahithophel’s counsel was disregarded because David cried to the Lord, as he said in verse 4 of Psalm 2, and the Lord heard him and intervened on behalf of David, confuses the counsel of Ahithophel so that David could escape. He raised his shield against David’s enemies and saved David from certain destruction.
Psalm 3 is David’s response to God, praising and worshipping him for genuine deliverance. God did for David all the things that David recounts in the Psalm. This makes Psalm 3 an incredible song for the Church to sing, because if God saved David, he will most definitely save us. But this is not the greatest meaning of the Psalm. Psalm 3 is about more than David’s flight from Absalom.
God saved Jesus Christ.
As we transition to the second point of our sermon, consider this question, if the first and second book of the Psalms are the prayer book of David, wouldn’t you expect Psalm 3 to come at the end of Book 2 instead of at the beginning of Book 1? Absalom’s rebellion takes place at the end of David’s life. Wouldn’t it make more sense for Psalm 3 to be replaced by a Psalm about Saul? Or to expect Psalm 3 to come after a Psalm where David repented from his sin with Bathsheba? Such psalms do exist.
Psalm 51 is a Psalm of David when Nathan the Prophet went to him, after he had gone into Bathsheba. And Psalm 52 is a psalm about when David was betrayed to Saul by an Edomite as David was running away from Saul. Why did the final organizers of the Psalter put Psalm 3 after Psalm 2? Especially considering that the Psalter found its final form in the time of Nehemiah, after the Davidic kingdom had failed. The Davidic dynasty was no more and the hope of the Davidic covenant seemed to be lost.
It would seem that the shape of the Psalter is designed to make us associate the only begotten Son in Psalm 2 with the one needing salvation in Psalm 3. What if we read Psalm 3 not merely as an account of God saving David, but as a greater moment in history where God’s only begotten Son cried for aid?
This is the second point of our sermon. Psalm 3 is not just a psalm about God saving David. It is a psalm about God saving Jesus Christ. Let’s reread the psalm thinking about how Psalm 3 gives voice to the passion of Christ.
Psalm 3:1-8
3 A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son.
1 O Lord, how many are my foes!
Many are rising against me;
2 many are saying of my soul,
“There is no salvation for him in God.” Selah
3 But you, O Lord, are a shield about me,
my glory, and the lifter of my head.
4 I cried aloud to the Lord,
and he answered me from his holy hill. Selah
5 I lay down and slept;
I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.
6 I will not be afraid of many thousands of people
who have set themselves against me all around.
7 Arise, O Lord!
Save me, O my God!
For you strike all my enemies on the cheek;
you break the teeth of the wicked.
8 Salvation belongs to the Lord;
your blessing be on your people! Selah
The first thing I want you to notice is the parallel sections of the psalm. First, in verses 1-2, Christ enemies gather around the cross and mock him. Remember what they said when he was on the cross? Mark 15:29-32 says:
Mark 15:29-32
And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, 30 save yourself, and come down from the cross!” 31 So also the chief priests with the scribes mocked him to one another, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. 32 Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.” Those who were crucified with him also reviled him.
In that moment, it looked like there was no hope for Christ. He was nailed to a tree. His enemies had won. His life blood was dripping from a thousand wounds and he was suffocating under the weight of his own body.
But Psalm 3:1-2 is paralleled by Psalm 3:7-8.
Psalm 3:7-8
7 Arise, O Lord!
Save me, O my God!
For you strike all my enemies on the cheek;
you break the teeth of the wicked.
8 Salvation belongs to the Lord;
your blessing be on your people! Selah
These mockers are struck on their mocking mouths by God and their mocking is silenced. God does save. Three days after Christ was crucified, he walked out of the grave. Their jeers were endured for a while, but they were forever silenced when God brought Jesus back from the dead. The last two verses answer the first two. Can God save? Yes, he can and he does.
Now turn your attention to verses 3-4. Verses 3-4 and 5-6 are also parallel verses. In verses 3-4, Christ cries out to the Lord, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Did God forsake Christ on the cross? Psalm 3 says no. When Christ called out to the Father from the cross, the Father answered him. At that moment, Psalm 3:5 says that Christ laid down his head. The Gospel say he gave up his Spirit and died.
But he didn’t give up his Spirit in defeat. No, Psalm 3 describes it as falling into a peaceful sleep, and just as he laid down to sleep, God woke him up again. Christ has no need to fear because God promised in Psalm 16:10 not to abandon Christ to Sheol or let him see corruption. God had made a promise to the Son and the Son trusted in the promise that was made to him. This death would not be permanent. It was always going to be temporary. So Christ could lay down his life with the confidence you and I might take a nap, that soon we will rise again from this slumber and go on about our lives. David, speaking on behalf of Christ, gives voice to the confidence and peace the Son has in the providential care of the Father. He will not fear, though thousands have set themselves against him. He will trust in his God to save him even when salvation seems impossible.
Psalm 3 is not just David’s response to God for saving him from Absalom. It is David giving voice to his greater Son’s greater trial. This relationship is called typology. Jim Hamilton calls typology in the Bible “promise shaped patterns,” and Scripture is full of them. Meaning, there are real historical events in the past that are promise shaped patterns for greater realities and truths later in salvation history. David’s flight from Absalom is a type, a pattern, of the anti-type, Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. David was paying the penalty for sins, Christ was paying the penalty for sins. David cries to the Lord, Christ cries to the Lord. God saves David, God saves Christ. David does not defend himself or reestablish his kingdom, God delivers David and brings him back to Jerusalem. Christ goes like a lamb to the slaughter and God established his kingdom on Zion’s holy hill, as Psalm 2:6 says. David’s real life prefigures and in this case gives voice to the very same patterns in Christ’s life.
This should change the way that we read the Psalter. We cannot merely ask the question, what does each individual psalm mean. We will miss the greater meaning of the Psalms in relationship to each other. If we did not have the category of the Blessed Man from Psalm 1 or the only-begotten Son from Psalm 2, we would miss the importance of God’s deliverance in Psalm 3. When we read the Psalm through the passion of Christ, the Psalm opens onto a whole new vista of God’s grace and kindness, because if God saved David, and God saved Christ, than the promise in verse 8 carries so much more weight. If God saved them, will he not save you?
God will save his Church.
This brings us to our third and final point: If God has saved Christ, he will save his Church. God will save his Church because the Church is the body of Christ. If Christ cannot see corruption than neither can his body. Turn with me to 1 Corinthians 12:12-13. Let’s read it together.
1 Corinthians 12:12-13
12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
Paul says that your physical body and Christ’s spiritual body are very similar. Your physical body is made up of many members. It is a complicated system of a bunch of smaller systems that work together to make your body function. Those systems are made up of body parts or members that if any one of them stopped working would have deleterious effects on your whole body. If your hamstring was injured, you would no longer be able to walk. If your diaphragm spasmed, you would get the hick-ups and have trouble catching your breath. If an artery ruptured in your brain, the bleeding would cause your brain to swell and you would die. You need practically every member of your body to be functioning exactly as God intended for the whole to be able to continue to function. The many members of your body are unified and function as one unit that we refer to as our body.
It is the same with Christ. The body of Christ is a spiritual reality, not made up of organs or systems of organs, but made up of people. Through baptism, we are united to Church, which is the body of Christ. To have the Spirit is to be in the body and to be in the body is to have the Spirit. If God went to such great lengths to save and protect Jesus Christ, we can have the same confidence that he will protect Christ’s body. He will not let his body face corruption.
This is what the Church is. We are the body of Christ. That is not only important as we think about spiritual gifting, serving each other and fighting for unity. It is also essential as we think about salvation and our interactions with the psalms. We can pray Psalm 3, a psalm about Jesus Christ, because we are Christ’s body. The same salvation that preserved him from the corruption of death and gave him peace, preserves us and gives us peace.
But how? How do we pray through the Psalms? It starts with understanding what the Psalter is. Many of us have never sat down with our Bibles open on our laps and prayed through Scripture, but that is what the Psalter is meant to be. It is meant to be the prayer book of the Church. Because you are the body of Christ, you have the right to open this book a pray these prayers back to God.
But it is not a simple book. It is extremely complex because human emotions and experience are complex. This book covers them all. It does not shy away from the darker and the harder parts of life; Psalm 3 being the perfect example. You must know this book, Church, so that when the ups and downs of life come you know where to go to give voice to your joys and your sorrows.
And then you open it up and you read it and you pray. You pour out your heart to God like David did in verse 1, “How many are my foes! So many rise against me and they are saying that there is no hope for me, that you cannot save! God I feel hopeless.” And then you read verse 4 and you are reminded that your feelings do not dictate reality. You are not without hope, because God is a shield, he lifts the head of his people and he hears them when they cry out to him, so you redouble your efforts. You say, “God you have protected before. You saved David from Absalom, you saved Christ on the cross. I am choosing to trust that you will save me too.” And then you look at verse and see that David laid his head done and rested. He was not given relief from his troubles, at least not immediately, but he was given the peace necessary for simple sleep. The ability to not be afraid because his future is certain. And so you say, “Lord, give me rest. Even though I do not understand it, let me be at peace. Give me such a clear hope in my future salvation that I can lay my head down on my pillow tonight knowing that you will wake me up.” And finally, you come to verses 7 and 8, and you praise God that he has answered. He has defeated the great enemy of his people. For those that are in Christ, death no longer holds sway in our lives. What once was man’s greatest terror has become the means by which we will follow Christ in resurrection. So you pray, “Thank you God for saving me and defeating my enemies. What I could not do, you have done. You have saved me and given me a future.”
This is what it looks like to be in the body of Christ. The confidence and assurance that your God will save you is the core of your identity. If God saved David, and God saved Christ, he will most definitely save Christ’s body, the Church.
Conclusion
As we close, I hope this message was encouraging to the Church. Your union with Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit means that you are prepared for whatever life throws your way. Not only can you have the confidence to endure any trial, but you also have been given a voice to express your joys and your sorrows. This would be my encouragement to you. If you want the blessing that God has promised to his people in the Psalms, you must know them. You must make use of them. And that discipline must be developed before the day when death crashes into your life. It will happen. Death, pain, and sorrow are inevitable in this life, but you have been promised a peace that will carry you through if you will just cling to the One Who Saves.
For our guests in the room that are not followers of Jesus Christ, and by that I mean those of you that genuinely do not follow him. You might have been raised in the Church or even prayed a prayer at some point, but you do not think of him as the Lord of your life. You do not seek to live your life by his teachings or follow him on a daily basis. First, I want you to know that we are so thankful that you are here. It is a gift to us to get to share our worship service with you. But the peace and the confidence that I have been speaking of today is not for you, at least not yet. The ability to weather the ups and downs of life and the assurance to lay your head down on your pillow at night in peace regardless of what is taking place in your life does not apply to you. You are far from God. Psalm 3 and all that we have discussed today belongs to God’s people.
But the good news is that you can join us. You can stop following your own path and start following Jesus. He paid the penalty for your sins so you didn’t have to. All you must do is put your hope and trust in him to save you from the consequences of your sins, and you can know peace. If you would like to discuss that more, please find me after the service and let’s discuss it.
Let’s pray.