Psalm 5
Date: February 4th, 2023
Speaker: Sam Crites
Scripture: Psalm 5
Exegetical Outline
MIT: David petitions his king for forgiveness based on his steadfast love and for guidance and protection from his enemies.
1-2: David petitions his king for help.
3-7: David first petitions his king to accept his sacrifice.
3: David petitions and humbly waits.
4-6: God does not delight in the wicked; he will destroy them.
7: But he does delight in David because of his
steadfast love.
8-11: David makes his second petition for guidance and protection.
8: David petitions God a second time.
9-10: David needs help because his enemies are deceitful liars that love destruction and he asks God to turn their counsel back on them and judge them harshly.
11: But he asks the Lord to spread his protection over those that take refuge in him.
12: God blesses the righteous and covers them with favor.
Homiletical Outline
MIS: The Lord hears the prayers of the righteous and saves them by grace.
God hears all the prayers of the righteous. (1-2)
The righteous are those that cast themselves on grace. (3-7)
The righteous pray according to the will of God. (8-11)
The Lord graciously saves the righteous. (12)
Introduction:
I feel like I need to correct a misunderstanding I had last week when preaching Psalm 4. Two weeks ago, we studied Psalm 3. We saw that David wrote Psalm 3 when he was fleeing from Absalom. In the first 7 psalms, there are only two psalms that give us a clue to the historical context in which the psalms were written: Psalm 3 and Psalm 7, both of which have to do with David’s flight from Absalom. As I was preaching Psalm 4, I made much of the thematic connections between Psalm 3 and Psalm 4, but I assumed that there was no historical connection. Psalm 4 does not tell us when it was written or why. So, I credited any thematic relationship between the Psalm 3 and Psalm 4 to the mysterious person that put the Psalter in its final order sometime around the time of Nehemiah.
Whenever I write a sermon, one of the last things I do is consult commentaries. I don’t do it early on in the process because I want to wrestle with the text on my own. I don’t want the commentaries to cloud my interpretation, rather, I want them to be a sounding board to challenge or confirm what I have already seen in the text.
This week, I consulted Jim Hamilton’s commentary on the Psalms and he makes a very interesting argument about the historical context of Psalms 3-7 that I find convincing. He argues that all 5 of these Psalms are a unit that took place as David was fleeing from Absalom. Psalms 3 & 4 were written on the night that David fled. Psalm 5-7 were written in the days immediately following his flight. His argument is that the historical information we get in Psalm 3 and Psalm 7 bookends all 5 psalms. The thematic connection that is so obvious is because the all 5 psalms share the same historical context.
This historical context changes the way that I read the Psalms because it intensifies the connection between them. All the persecution and betrayal that David experienced at the hands of Absalom is meant to typify the persecution and betrayal that Jesus Christ experienced on the cross, so that Psalms 3-7 are meant to give us insight into the atoning work of Jesus and the hope of the Gospel.
This highlights why we are preaching the Psalms in order. We would miss the greater story that is being told in Psalms 3-7 if we were not reading them together as they were intended to be read. So let’s read Psalm 5 and look for the Gospel implications of David’s prayer.
Psalm 5
5 To the choirmaster: for the flutes. A Psalm of David.
1 Give ear to my words, O Lord;
consider my groaning.
2 Give attention to the sound of my cry,
my King and my God,
for to you do I pray.
3 O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice;
in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.
4 For you are not a God who delights in wickedness;
evil may not dwell with you.
5 The boastful shall not stand before your eyes;
you hate all evildoers.
6 You destroy those who speak lies;
the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
7 But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love,
will enter your house.
I will bow down toward your holy temple
in the fear of you.
8 Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness
because of my enemies;
make your way straight before me.
9 For there is no truth in their mouth;
their inmost self is destruction;
their throat is an open grave;
they flatter with their tongue.
10 Make them bear their guilt, O God;
let them fall by their own counsels;
because of the abundance of their transgressions cast them out,
for they have rebelled against you.
11 But let all who take refuge in you rejoice;
let them ever sing for joy,
and spread your protection over them,
that those who love your name may exult in you.
12 For you bless the righteous, O Lord;
you cover him with favor as with a shield.
In this Psalm, David cries out to God with sorrow and groaning. He pleads with the Lord to hear his prayers, throwing himself on the steadfast love of God and trusting that God will be his shield and protector. This is the Gospel. David is completely dependent on God’s unmerited favor to protect him from the attacks of evil men, and Psalm 5 is our window into his personal prayer life with God. The main idea of our sermon and what I hope you see in David’s example is this: The Lord hears the prayers of the righteous and saves them by grace.
So, our sermon will have four points. First, we will see that God hears all the prayers of the righteous, every single one. The righteous do not have to fear that God only listens to their pretty sermons. God hears the big prayers and the small prayers, the ones that are well thought out and the ones that are half-uttered in the middle of the night; he hears the scripted prayers and the groanings of our very souls when words fail us and all we can do is cry out to him. God heard David’s prayers because he hears all the prayers of the righteous.
The second thing we will see from Psalm 5 is that the righteous are those that cast themselves on grace. If God hears the prayers of the righteous, we must make sure that we are right with him. David models this for us in his first plea in verses 3-7. David pleads with God to be counted among the righteous; he asks God to hear his prayer, not because David is sinless, but because of the abundance of God’s steadfast love. David enters the house of God and deals with his sin, so that God will hear his prayer. David is aware that his sin separates him from God, so he throws himself on grace in order to enter the house of the Lord and bow down before him in fear and reference.
The third thing we learn about prayer in Psalm 5 is that the righteous pray according to the will of God. David’s second plea is found in verses 8-11. David’s prayer is imprecatory; he is praying down a curse on his enemies. He asks for God’s leadership and guidance to walk rightly in the presence of his enemies and asks God, in verse 10, to make his enemies bear their guilt. He asks God to cast them out because they are deceivers and destroyers. Based on what David says in 4-6, this is consistent with the will of God. God does not want evil to succeed and sin to go unpunished, so it is right for the righteous to pray for God to bring an end to sin and judge sinners for their rebellion. To pray rightly is to pray according to the will of God, both for what he loves and for what he hates.
Finally, we will see that the Lord graciously saves the righteous. In response to David’s own guttural cry to be heard and delivered at the beginning of the Psalm, we see David’s dependance on saving grace in verse 12. He ends the Psalm by reminding himself that God does in fact bless the righteous and he covers them with unmerited and undeserved favor. What other word do we have for that but grace. God graciously saves the righteous.
This model prayer is an example of how to pray hard things in hard moments. David’s world is crashing down around him and he cries out to a God that is not too small for his pain. He has complete confidence in God because God is gracious toward his people. His lovingkindness cannot be exhausted, so David enters the throne room of God with confidence that he will be heard, not because of who he is but because of who God is. Psalm 5 teaches us that God hears the prayers of the righteous and saves them by grace.
God hears all prayers of the righteous.
The first thing we learn about prayer from Psalm 5 is that God hears all the prayers of the righteous. By this I don’t merely mean that he hears the many prayers that you hear. Certainly, God will never tire of hearing the prayers of the righteous, but what we see in verses 1 and 2 is that God hears the diversity of our prayers, even the ones we don’t deserve to pray. Look at verse 1 and 2 with me one more time and as we read them, think of David’s position and attempt to hear the emotion in David’s plea.
Psalm 5:1-2
To the choirmaster: for the flutes. A Psalm of David.
1 Give ear to my words, O Lord;
consider my groaning.
2 Give attention to the sound of my cry,
my King and my God,
for to you do I pray.
David is not merely asking God to listen to the words of his prayer, but he also asks God to consider the pain he feels in the moment. His cry is not the volume of his prayer. He is not shouting his prayer from the roof tops. His cry is a cry of anguish and pain at what is taking place when David makes his plea to God.
So let me briefly remind you of what is taking place in David’s life and the pain he is experiencing. One of David’s sons, Absalom, has rebelled against David. Now, the reason for Absalom’s rebellion is complex. There is a proximate cause, but there is also an ultimate cause. The proximate cause is the cause that is the closest to the effect. It is like the domino right before last domino that causes the last domino to be toppled.
For Absalom, that proximate cause is that he thinks his father is weak. You see, David did not give Tamar, Absalom’s sister, justice. Tamar was raped by her half-brother Amnon, but David was too soft on Amnon so Absalom took matters into his own hands and slew Amnon himself. Absalom went into hiding, but was then welcomed back and forgiven. David did not hold Absalom responsible in the same way that he did not hold Amnon responsible. Absalom decided to overthrow David because he perceived David’s mercy as weakness.
While this is the proximate cause, it is not the ultimate cause. You might say, it is not the “real” reason that Absalom rebelled against David. The real reason was David’s sin with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah. Listen to what Nathan the prophet said to David in 2 Samuel 12:10-14:
2 Samuel 12:10-14
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.’ ” 13 David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the LORD.” And Nathan said to David, “The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die. 14 Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the LORD, the child who is born to you shall die.”
Absalom rebelled against David, because David is a murderer and an adulterer. He was so selfish and prideful that in spite of all that the Lord had done for him and given him, he used his power to take the one thing he could not have: Bathsheba.
So two things must be recognized about Psalm 5: David is greatly suffering and David deserved to suffer. Every parent and grandparent in this room’s blood should boil at the audacity of what Nathan says to David at the end of 2 Samuel 12. After seducing Bathsheba and murdering Uriah, God simply puts David’s sin away? In Psalm 5, David cries out to God because he is suffering the just consequences of his actions? David’s misery is his own fault, and yet he still throws himself on the kindness of God to hear his prayers. David’s righteousness is not dependent on what he has done, but what God has done for him to show him grace.
In some ways, that is completely scandalous, but in others it should be comforting. Christian, you can have confidence that God will hear your prayers, not because of what you have done or who you are, but because of what Christ has done. That means, God hears all your prayers. Even the ones where you are suffering the consequences of your own foolishness and failure.
God hears you. He hears you when you pray out loud and when you pray in your head. He hears you when you have been disciplined, careful to follow all his commands, and he hears you in the moment of your sin. God hears you when you mean your prayers and he hears you even when your prayers have become stale and repetitive. God hears the prayers of the righteous, not because they deserve it, but because he has decided to be gracious to them.
David’s prayer in Psalm 5 is so instructive because it reminds us that God is big enough to handle any kind of prayer. They do not have to be refined or even make grammatical sense. God doesn’t just hear your words; he hears the groaning of your very Spirit even when those groanings are your own fault. So pray to him with confidence because God hears all the prayers of the righteous.
The righteous are those that cast themselves on grace.
So, if we want God to hear our prayers, we must be righteous. So what makes one righteous? The second point of our sermon is that the righteous are those that cast themselves on grace. Meaning, they recognize their own unrighteousness and without seeking to defend themselves, they rely on the steadfast love of God, on his grace, to save them in their moment of need. Let’s read verses 3-7:
Psalm 5:3-7
3 O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice;
in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.
4 For you are not a God who delights in wickedness;
evil may not dwell with you.
5 The boastful shall not stand before your eyes;
you hate all evildoers.
6 You destroy those who speak lies;
the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
7 But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love,
will enter your house.
I will bow down toward your holy temple
in the fear of you.
In Psalm 5, David enters the throne room of the king through prayer and he makes two formal pleas; this is the first. Let’s look at what David asks for and why. First, look at the actual plea in verse 3. He asks God to hear his voice. Which is not to dissimilar to verses 1 and 2. The difference comes in the second half of the verse. He clarifies when he is asking God to hear his prayer. He is asking God to hear his prayer in the morning after he has made a sacrifice for his sin. He says he is going to patiently wait before God until his sacrifice has been accepted. So David’s request in the first plea is that the Lord will accept his sacrifice for sin so that God will hear his prayer.
The context for this first plea is because of who God is as revealed in verses 4-6. God does not delight in wickedness and David’s sin has become a separation between him and God. So David must humble himself in prayer and the offering of sacrifices so that God will make him stand in his presence. The alternative is destruction. God hates evildoers and will destroy all who speak lies; he abhors the blood thirsty man.
Given all that we have heard so far about what has gone on in David’s life that has led to this moment, you have to wonder, who is David thinking about in verses 4-6. Is he thinking about Absalom and all the evil advisors and elders that have turned their back on David and rebelled against the Lord’s anointed king? I don’t think so. I think David is thinking about himself. David is the one that abandoned the presence of the Lord by turning to sin with Bathsheba. David is the one that did evil in God’s sight and lied to Uriah and everyone involved. David is the one that coerced Joab by making Uriah carry his own death sentence to the front lines where he was betrayed and killed. The blood David has in mind in verses 4-6 is not the blood that is on Absalom’s hands for murdering Amnon, but the blood that is on his own hands for the death of Uriah and the death of his unnamed infant son. In this first plea, David is dealing with his own sin so that the Lord will hear his second plea.
So what does David do about his sin? Notice in verse 7 that he isn’t dependent on his sacrifice to make atonement for his sins. No, if God is going to deal with David’s sin, it is going to be because the abundance of his steadfast love. The right David has to approach the throne is not because of works but because of grace. He pleads with God to hear him and his hope to be heard is wholly dependent on the unmerited, unwarranted, undeserved favor from God. This is the Gospel. One becomes righteous, not because of what they have done, but because of what Christ did and so David prays and casts himself on grace to save him from the consequences of his sins.
The righteous pray according to the will of God.
Which brings us to our third point and David’s second plea. When the righteous pray, they pray according to the will of God. They do not pray for their own desires but they pray for what God loves to prosper and for what God hates to be brought down. Look at verses 8-11:
Psalm 5:8-11
8 Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness
because of my enemies;
make your way straight before me.
9 For there is no truth in their mouth;
their inmost self is destruction;
their throat is an open grave;
they flatter with their tongue.
10 Make them bear their guilt, O God;
let them fall by their own counsels;
because of the abundance of their transgressions cast them out,
for they have rebelled against you.
11 But let all who take refuge in you rejoice;
let them ever sing for joy,
and spread your protection over them,
that those who love your name may exult in you.
Let’s approach this plea the same way that we approached the first by considering the request, the reasoning or the context and the conclusion of the prayer.
The actual plea comes in verse 8. He asks God to lead him in righteousness because of his enemies, which we are about to see, and that God make his way straight. Here you can hear the connections to the Psalms that we have already studied. In Psalm 1 we saw that the way of the righteous follows the blessed man and is destined to prosper. In Psalm 2 we saw that the righteous take refuge in the only begotten Son and are blessed. In Psalm 3, we saw that the righteous is salvation. And in Psalm we saw that the way of the righteous is peace and safety.
Now David is asking God to lead him in that way. That’s why he made his first plea. He wants to walk in righteousness, but he cannot find it on his own. He needs God to make that path straight and easy or David has no hope of being able to find it, let alone follow it.
But the reason David needs help is that David’s enemies would prevent him from finding it. They would cloud and obscure his path because they only speak falsehood and are attempting to use their lies to bring about David’s destruction. David uses imagery in verse 9 that is so powerful. He says that their throats are open graves; they flatter with their tongue but the end result is that anyone that is taken in by their lies does not find life and peace, but a short quick drop into a shallow grave.
One thing that has been clear in Psalms 1-5 is the difference between the righteous and the wicked. Their natures have been clearly on display in each one of these psalms and we have discussed it in almost every sermon. The depravity of man is so clearly on display in the actions of the wicked in this psalm that Paul quotes Psalm 5 in Romans 3:9-20, one of the most clear passages in all of Scripture that speaks to the depravity of man. What David is facing is evil, there is no other word for it.
So David prays the only prayer that is appropriate for unrepentant evil. In verse 10, he prays that God would make them bear their guilt, that he would bring them to justice. He asks that God give them over to their own counsel and make them fall by their own deceitfulness. Which is exactly how God judges. God’s judgment is to give the sinner what they so desperately desire, anything and everything that is not God. Listen to how Augustine of Hippo describes this in his exposition of Psalm 5:
Augustine of Hippo, Expositions of the Psalms, Vol. I, 99.
When God punishes sinners, he does not inflict on them his evil but abandons them to their own evils…Therefore when God punishes as a judge, he punishes those who break the law, not inflicting on them evil from himself, but driving them out toward that very thing they have chosen to fill up there misfortunes to the brim.
Let me explain why that is so horrifying. God is good. As you think about the most simple and mundane pleasure in this life, something as forgettable as the pleasure found in being able to breathe deeply and freely whenever you want, know that the goodness of those small pleasures have their origin in God. There will be no light, no pleasure, nothing that can be characterized in any way as good, because God is good. 2 Thessalonians 1:5-10 says:
2 Thessalonians 1 5-10
5 This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering— 6 since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, 7 and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels 8 in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9 They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, 10 when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.
Hell is eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.
What David is saying in Psalm 5 and what Augustine helps us better understand is that every sinner that finds themselves in Hell will be there because they wanted it. They freely went into hell because they so completely chose anything and everything that was not God that God gave them over to that sin.
So we must ask the question. As Christians, is it right for us to pray these types of prayers? Was David right to pray for God to send his enemies into eternal destruction away from God and his glory, and the answer is, ultimately, yes. Loving God means loving the things God loves and hating the things that God hates. To pray rightly is to pray according to the will of God. It is God’s desire to bring justice to the world, so it is right for Christians to pray prayers that ask God to put an end to sinners that spread the corruption of sin. If you have ever prayed for Jesus to come back, you have prayed for God’s judgment to fall on sinners.
But notice how David ends the prayer. He says in verse 11 that he wants all who take refuge in God to rejoice. Meaning, he wants as many as possible to take refuge in God so that he will spread is protection over them. Praying for God to deal with sin and for sinners to take refuge in the Son are not mutually exclusive prayers. In the same breath that we pray for God’s judgment to be swift, we can pray for sinners to escape that judgment.
Christians should not want wickedness to prosper on the earth. It is good and right to pray that God would bring an end to sin, knowing that means the destruction of the wicked, because the hope of the Gospel is still available. We find consistency in our prayers because the cross is the place where the justice of God and the mercy of God meet. The justice of God is seen in the punishment of the Son for crimes he did not commit. Your sins could not have been forgiven if there had not been a payment. And the mercy of God is on display because, though you deserved to die, you did not; and that same grace is offered to anyone that will accept it. The sad thing is that the majority do not.
So David is perfectly within the will of God to pray that justice would come to the wicked and that salvation would come to the righteous. Not because the righteous are sinless, but because they have found the blessing that comes from taking refuge in the Son.
The Lord graciously saves the righteous.
Which brings us to our fourth and final point. God save the righteous by grace and grace alone. Look at verse 12:
Psalm 5:12
For you bless the righteous, O Lord;
you cover him with favor as with a shield.
The salvation of the Lord is a blessing that comes to the righteous simply because God has chosen to be kind to them. He has shown them favor. This is what it means to experience God’s grace. Though you did not deserve his kindness, you found it in the Person of Jesus Christ. It was unmerited, unwarranted, unexpected, but effective in turning you away from your sin and saving you from the danger of God’s judgment.
This is the foundation of a Christian’s confidence in prayer. Hebrews 4:14-16 says:
Hebrews 4:14-16
14 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
The reason that a Christian can expect that God not only hears their prayers but will save them from their pain is that they have access to the Father through the Son. The blessing that God gives the righteous is the blessing that was purchased by and mediated through the Son.
Conclusion
So, as we conclude Church, I want you to think about a question: if I have such free access to the Father, purchased by the blood of the Son, with such confidence that I will be heard and rescued from my pain and sorrow, how many of us pray enough? Meaning, you would honestly evaluate your prayer life and say that you take full advantage of the opportunity that Christ has offered you.
We say that we are a praying church. That does not just mean that we pray in our worship gatherings. To be a praying church, we must be praying members. So here is just one suggestion this week. This week, take the Psalms in 30 Days book that we passed out to everyone and commit to make it the next seven days praying through the morning, midday, and evening times of personal worship. Perhaps 30 Days is too long of a commitment, try it for just seven days and see if you do not experience the peace that David has found in the grace of the God who hears our prayers.
Let’s pray.