Would you turn please to Psalm 3, so we come to a morning prayer that opens up the Psalter. After the twin pillars that introduced the Psalms, Psalms 1 and 2 there is what is called the Body of the Psalter, and it begins with the morning prayer called that because of verse 5, I lay down and slept, and I woke again for the Lord sustained me. Because of you who may, like I, have grown up using a prayer book, you'll always find at the beginning of these prayer books, whether it's the Book of Common Prayer or some other prayer book, there's always a series of morning prayers. John Stott, who went to be with the Lord a few years ago, had a morning prayer that he said for over 60 years, every morning. He said that he would wake up to his alarm and he would swing his legs over the side of the bed. He ended up, he would say, this prayer, good morning, Heavenly Father, good morning, Lord Jesus, good morning, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Father, I worship you as the creator and sustainer of the universe, Lord Jesus, I worship you, Savior and King of the world, Holy Spirit I worship you, sanctify over the people of God, glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit as it wasn't the beginning is now and never shall be for ever more. Heavenly Father, I pray that I may live this day in your presence and please you more and more, Lord Jesus Christ, I pray that this day I may take up my cross and follow you, Holy Spirit, I pray that this day you will fill me with yourself and cause your food to ripen in my life, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, holy, mighty and glorious Trinity, three persons in one God have mercy upon me for Jesus' sake, amen. What a lovely morning prayer, it's a good way to start the morning and this particular Psalm is considered by most commentators to be a morning prayer and it's that way because of the context in which it's given. This is a Psalm that says at the beginning, when David fled from his son Absalom, it's a prayer that he said on a dangerous and dreary morning when he woke up having been expelled from his own capital and his own family and friends had rebelled against him to take the kingdom away from him. In this first book of the Psalms, it's called the collection of David because of the 41 Psalms in this collection, all but four are attributed to David and the overriding theme of this first book, believe it or not, is conflict. And in 30 of the 41 Psalms in book one, there will be some explicit reference to enemies or to opposition or to those who are intending to hurt David or David's people. And of the remaining 11 Psalms, there are three that imply the presence of enemies in five that directly talk about impending death. These are sometimes called by commentators, the eye Psalms because David talks so personally in them. He talks about eye and me and my and mind, not because he's egocentric as one commentator said, but because he's writing and praying and composing songs as the representative of God's people, David is so prominent in all of the Psalter. Because he is a messianic king, he is a type, a symbol of forerunner, a foreshadowing of Jesus Christ. And he comes at a point in redemptive history when the covenant of grace has reached its climax in the Old Testament. At each stage of this covenant, God will reveal a greater measure and extent of his saving grace through a specific individual. Obviously, the covenant of creation for all of mankind is made with Adam, their federal head. The covenant of preservation for the earth is made with Noah. The covenant of promise is made for the patriarchs through a man named Abraham, the covenant of the law, through the people of Israel and the man named Moses and then the apex, the covenant of the kingdom for the nation Israel through their king, David. We know living in the New Testament that there's one and even a greater phase of the covenant that comes called the New Covenant, made with the church through our Lord Jesus Christ, who is a type of David, it's interesting that Jesus Christ is not called the son of Adam or of Noah or Abraham or Moses, he's called the son of David. And it's because he sits in this messianic role that he writes on behalf of the people of God's kingdom. David himself realized this, for he realized that God had made him a promise, and I will give you rest from all your enemies, moreover the Lord declares to you this day that he will make you a house. When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my named and I will establish his throne, the throne of his kingdom forever and ever. Of course, God was not referring to Solomon, but for Jesus Christ, the son of David would come and become the king of the kingdom of God. And so Palmer Robertson writes a large number of the Psalms in book one and elsewhere in the Psalter, appear under the first person and the name of David. This is by no means pointing to some egocentric perspective in which David can think only of his own personal problems, quite the contrary. David's centrality in these Psalms rests firmly on the reality that he is the anointed king. And as the anointed king fares, so fares the people of God in their totality. We could say that about Jesus Christ as Jesus Christ fares. So fares the church as it goes with Christ so it goes for us. There's a principle here. There's a principle in every one of the Psalms that can be drawn out and one of the principles is that the enemies of the kingdom of God, the enemies of Christ are our enemies. And so there is in the Psalter a number of prayers that teach us how to pray when life implodes around us and our enemies make their presence very, very felt. Psalm 3 is also unique in this sense. It's the first of 14 Psalms that has a historical reference attributed to it. This is a Psalm of David when he fled from epsilon to his son. Now you and I know this tragic story, David at the pinnacle of his power, his influence and his wealth, fell in love with some other man's wife, woman named Bathsheba. And so he took her and he forced himself upon her to be candid with you, he raped her. And then to cover up her pregnancy, he conspired to have her husband, you're right, they hit tight. One of his most loyal subjects, one of the 600 mighty men killed in battle so that he could marry her. And through the better part of a year he got by with this until Nathan the prophet came to see him. Nathan said this, why have you despised the word of the Lord to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down your riot, hit tight with the sword and have taken his wife to be yours and have killed him with the sword of the eminites. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house because you have despised me and have taken the wife of your riot, the hit tight to be your wife. 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 and the sight of the son for what you did secretly. I will do this thing before all Israel and before the whole world as they watch. Years later we know what happened. David's heir apparent, the crown prince Amnon fell in love with his half sister, the daughter of another wife, not his mother and he wanted her. So he raped her and David did nothing. How could he? He was a rapist himself and Tamar's brother, a man named Absalom, wanted the king to exact justice and when he didn't he told Tamar, wait and I will take vengeance and so he did. To your period he set up Amnon in a compromising situation and he killed him and David did nothing. Absalom fled and David had nothing to do with that boy for two years and to finally his general said you ought to forgive him and bring him home and David did he brought him home but he had nothing to do with him but only made Absalom more bitter and to finally Absalom led rebellion and Nathan's prophecy was fulfilled. Absalom said to Hathapal, his advisors, give me your counsel, what shall I do? And Hathapal said to Absalom, go into your father's concubines whom he had left to keep the house and all Israel will hear that you have made yourself a stench to your father and the hand of all who are with you will be strengthened. So they pitched a tent for Absalom on the roof of the palace and Absalom went into his father's concubines in the sight of all Israel. At very day David with his family and a few supporters and his 600 mighty men always loyal to him in spite of what he did to Euryah that crossed over the Jordan River and hid in the wilderness where they used to hide when they were young men fleeing from Saul. And the next morning David wrote a prayer, O Lord, how many are my foes? Many are rising up against me, many are saying of my soul, there is no salvation for him in God but you, O Lord, are a shield about me. My glory in the lifter of my head, I cried aloud to the Lord and he answered me from his holy hill. I lay down and slept, I woke again for the Lord sustained me. I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around. O rise, 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. There are three stanzas in this little hymn, three paragraphs. Each one distinctly marked out from the others by a little word that I did not read but is in the text called Selah. I didn't read it because we don't really know what it means. We think it means pause or perhaps musical interlude but it seems to be there for the director of the choir when this Psalm was sung in the temple but it's not read when the Hebrews read the Psalms. So in this little prayer or actually three prayers, a prayer of lament that begins with Lord, how many are my foes? Many are rising against me. Many are saying of my soul there is no salvation for him and God. Selah, stop and think. David complains, this is a lament that his foes are more and they seem to be gathering steam and gathering number by the day his son, Absalom. One of his visors, O Hithofel, Shema who came out to curse him, a man from the from the family of Saul whom David spared and was good to. Hamasah, one of the generals of the rebels and many people who sided with Absalom including court officials and priest and Levites, more and more, they seem to join this rebellion and they're saying there is no salvation for him and God meaning God cannot save this man because of all the wickedness he did to Bashima and her husband Euryah. He has this coming, there is no deliverance for him in God. That kind of begs the question, doesn't it? Can any of us ever pray prayers as innocent people, sinners that we are? Can we actually pray that God would defend us and even strike down our enemies when we are sinful? And the answer is, of course we can, or these things wouldn't be in the salter. We can't for four reasons. Our sins do not justify the evil actions of other people against us. Two wrongs will not make a right. David's rape and murder was not justified by Absalom's murder in his rebellion. Secondly, God will discipline us and he doesn't need the help of other people to do it. One of the people abuse us for things we did against God or someone else but not to them. They are in the wrong. And although we are sinful, we may suffer for Christ in such a way that we are innocent people. Innocent at least in the particular context in which we suffer, in ultimately, there was no condemnation for those who were in Christ Jesus. A man who understood this better than we do is a man named Dietrich Bonhoeffer who, if you ever read his writings, is very consciously aware of his own sinfulness and his adversities, and the inconsistencies in his life, and of the poor level of religion that he has a minister had preached to people for decades in Germany. But he lived in a time when the Nazis were romping and stopping all around Europe. They had killed members of his family and prisoned his relatives, persecuted the church, and he wrote this, it is a thoroughly unbiblical and destructive idea that we can never suffer instantly as long as some kind of fault remains in us. Neither the old nor the new testament makes such a judgment. If we are persecuted for the sake of God's cause, then we suffer innocently, and that means we suffer with God, that we really are with God, and therefore really innocent is demonstrated precisely in this, that we pray for the forgiveness of our sins. But we are innocent not only in relation to the enemies of God, but also before God for we are now seen united with God's cause through Jesus Christ, into which it is precisely God who has drawn us and God forgives us of our sins so that we find ourselves always on God's side. Whenever we stand for Christ, we may sin, we do, but the anger of man cannot achieve the righteousness of God. And God does not need other people to take vengeance upon those who he has forgiven. This is a lament. There are more laments than any other genre, any other kind of Psalm in the Psalter over a third of the Psalms are laments, crying out to God as a sinner to vindicate, protect, and defend us. And David writes, say, law, pause here and think. Then there's a prayer of trust, 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, stop, say, law and think. 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. David cries out and he addresses God where he knows he is. Here again is a reference to God's address. I cried aloud to the Lord and he answered me from his holy hill, from Zion, from Jerusalem, where the temple, or in this case, where the Tamernacle was. David realized that God's presence was with him because he brought that presence into the city. That's what made it the city of God, the presence of God in the Tamernacle. When you sang about how wonderful it is to have the presence of God, but it was worth the Old Testament people. First in David's Tamernacle, then in Solomon's temple, they called it the presence. We call it the incarnation. There is a river that makes glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of her. She shall not be moved. God will help her when morning dawns. He had this unshakable confidence that the presence of God was with him. Emmanuel, God with us, despite what he might have done, what other people were doing to him and the circumstances of his lamentable life. He knew that God was with him. It's the same confidence that the author of Hebrews writes with when he addresses the church, for he has said, I will never leave you or forsake you. So we can confidently say, the Lord is my help, or I will not be afraid. What can man do to me? Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. So here is his morning hymn. He says, I lay down to sleep. I woke for the Lord sustained me and I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me round about. That's how it reads in the old King James and literally in the Greek, they have set themselves against me all around. They've surrounded him. Many times he says, evil men have risen up against us, but they did not prevail. They scared us. They hurt us. They even killed some of us, but we were not destroyed. We were not destroyed because the presence of God was with us. God is in her midst. She will not be shaken. The Lord will help her when morning dawns. He comes to this third prayer, a prayer for action, a rise, O Lord, save me, oh my God, for you strike all my enemies on the cheek. You break the teeth of the wicked. Salvation belongs to the Lord. You're blessing beyond your people. Nine times in the Psalms, David will say, a rise, O Lord. He pictures God on the throne standing up, strapping on his armor like kings did in those days and going out to war. This is God the warrior. He was a warrior king as David was, fighting on David's behalf. His verbs, his exhortations, the vocative in which he calls out to the Lord or Chris Finkler arrives, save, strike, break. But I want you to see that this is a temperate prayer, a prayer with great restraint. He wants God to stand up and he wants God to save him. He says, strike him on the cheek. If I can prayer, phrase it, slap some sense into the boy, shame him, but a slap on the cheek never killed anybody. Break the teeth of the wicked.
Break their bite. Make their bark worse than their bite, we'd say. Disempower their influence. These evil men over young Absalom. It is amazing with what restraint he prays for. Not that Absalom would be ruined or hurt or even killed, just shamed into doing what is right and delivered from the jaws of evil ones who control him. Listen to what he said to his generals in those days. Deal gently for my sake with the young man. Absalom. Deal gently with my enemy. Remember that this enemy is my son. Of course they didn't. They had an opportunity to spare Absalom's life from fleeing through the woods on horseback his hair, had that long thick hair that his mother and father had. He got tangled up in the branches. They could have cut him loose and brought him back to David alive, but Joab and others killed him. David said, oh my son, Absalom, my son, my son, Absalom, would that I had died instead of you, oh Absalom, my son, my son. In praying for justice, David praised for mercy. If that sounds familiar to us, it should, because brother James writes to us in his epistle, whoever keeps the whole law but fails at one point has become accountable for all of it. For he who said, do not commit adultery, also said, do not murder. If you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, you have become a transgressor of all the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy for the one who shows the mercy, mercy triumphs over judgment. The vast majority of commentators think that when he talks about adultery and murder and mercy and justice and mercy, triumphing over judgment that James has absolute and solemn in this situation in his mind. He's praying as David did that our enemies be treated with justice and with mercy and that mercy would triumph over judgment. Now, how do we pray this prayer? I know it's popular and it's laid back today to say, well, we really have no enemies. There are really not any bad people, just people who need to be understood and to be loved but not in my world and not in the real world where you look at life through the spectacles of the Psalms. There are real enemies. Jesus talked about them and he said that if they hated me they will hate you and they will come to a point when they think they are offering service to God by killing you. There are enemies because they are enemies of Christ because they don't know God, Jesus said. We'll be looking at this on Monday, Thursday in our Holy Week services and because we are united to Christ because we have been crucified with Christ and we no longer live but Christ lives in us because we share in the power of this resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings the enemies of God and those who would undo the work of Christ in the world. They become our enemies in real fashion when they treat us with evil and with violence and with injustice. Michael Wilcox says and he is clear. David installed on the holy hill by God himself who defies the rage of the nations is now chased off that throne by an impudent upstart like Amsterdam. In theory, unthinkable but in our time a very common experience. We are given Psalm 3, my friends, to pray the morning we wake up and our spouse who loved us and pledged before God till death do him or her stop that they would stay with us. Who once loved our children finds an old flame on the internet and leaves us because they need to be happy. We're given this song when we get caught between two powerful personalities and the office politics at work and the very people who gave us an excellent review last year fire us for convenience sake six months later. This is a prayer for parents when children who've turned against them in pursuit of a sinful lifestyle. Children they love more than their own life. Find that their children love their sin more than they love their parents and God. This is for times when friends betray us. Enjoying with others and seeking do us harm. This is when we are put in the position of leadership by God and there is an open rebellion. Simply because people don't want to do what God wants done. This is a prayer you pray. When on Sunday they say, Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord and on Friday they say crucify him. He is blood beyond us and on our children. It's based on the confluence of Psalms one and two and three. Psalm one tells us that such betrayals and opposition are moral and ethical issue because they are unjust. Psalm two tells us that such battles have a theological dimension because they oppose God's order for the world and family and church and in state. Psalm three tells us that these fights have a very personal dimension they are designed to hurt us or ruin us individually. And so we pray. And here's how we pray as we pray through the song first. We need to see our sufferings in the events of our life and the times that we live in as attacks upon the person of Jesus Christ to whom we are united. When they say there is no salvation for him and God, they somehow acknowledge. They somehow acknowledge that David is in God. And all of the sudden when they strike David, they strike God. Isn't it interesting that when Paul the scripture says was ravaging and breathing out threats of murder against the disciples that Jesus slapped him off a horse right on the cheek. Blinded him with glory and said to him, Saul, why are you persecuting me? When we are persecuted by other people, Jesus Christ takes it personally and we can pray that way. Secondly, we have to pray always with a view to what is best for Zion in the church. David is less concerned about his own welfare as he is concerned about the order of the kingdom that he has been given as a stewardship from God. This thing called the Old Testament Church. Paul the Robertson says, from the example of David as a messionic king, God's people in every age must learn a valuable lesson about the most acceptable way to pray in times of great personal suffering and distress. Whenever the believer feels a need for God's special intervention, let him focus on the well-being of all God's people as the proper framework for seeking personal deliverance. We need to ask God to help us in a way that strengthens his church most of all. Thirdly, we must pray with the belief and confidence that God who always does what is both right and merciful will come to our aid and do season. I lay down and slept. I woke again for the Lord sustains me. I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who set themselves about me all around. Even if we need to pray this prayer every morning, we pray it until deliverance comes forthly. We pray with moderation and with grace. We do not ask the Lord to destroy our enemies, but simply to strike them on the cheek. Maybe it was to break the teeth of their power, but the best case scenarios that they are saved, that the enemies of Christ become the children of God, and that our enemies become our brothers and sisters in the Lord. And finally, we realize that our deliverance from evil is part of the great saving work of God. Salvation belongs to the Lord. Here's this word again for the third time. Your blessing, beyond your people. Selah. David is praying as Jesus prayed. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
I'm not saying that this is an easy thing to do, but whoever said that prayer was going to be easy. It's hard when we're trying to sort out right from wrong, and we know that our sins have contributed to something in this scenario. And it's even more difficult when the enemies that were struggling against were once our family and friends, perhaps, as David said, my brother who ate at my table and broke bread together with me. I know. I prayed this prayer many times, not because I'm always certain who the good guy is, because I'm not always the good guy, nor because I'm always innocent. But I've prayed it because I belong to Jesus Christ, and that makes all the difference in the world.
This is neither a persecution complex that wrote this all, more a messionic complex. This is merely an honest call for God's deliverance and aid that says, God, fundamentally, I'm on your side. Christ is with me. I'm working to bless Zion, your church. I know that Lucifer will oppose me, because I love Christ, and he hates anybody who loves him. And I know that men will purposefully or sometimes inadvertently oppose the good inside with the evil one. I pray this not as a self-righteous prayer, but as a self-disclosure before you said, I need you to help me in the church and deliver us from evil. Back in 1842, in India, there was a great uprising. It lasted for almost 15 years, from 1842 to 1857, as the Indian people rose up against the British Raj in India, the British Empire. The English, army, and governors and gentry were hardly innocent. They had wrongfully conquered India, forced themselves upon them. They had enslaved these people and made them against the real part of the British Empire. During that time, when the Indian people rose up and were slaughtering, soldier and civilian alike by the hundreds of thousands, a medical doctor who was a missionary doctor, a doctor done wrote this in his diary as he prayed in Calcutta with his family for their safety. In the midst of panic, open mutiny and secret disaffection, I myself felt a confident persuasion that though this crisis had been permitted to humble and warn us, all work in India had not yet been completed. And that until it be accomplished, our tenure of empire, however brittle, is secure. Never before did I realize as now the literality and sweetness of this psalmist assurance, I laid down and slept, I awaked for the Lord sustain me, I will not be afraid of 10,000 of people that have set themselves against me round about, arise O Lord and save me, oh my God. Dr. Dunn did not acknowledge anything but the truth about Great Britain that they needed to be humble and they needed to be warned of the wickedness they were doing. But he also saw that the British Raj was an instrument venture in which the gospel could bring millions of Indians to Christ. And even though he said he felt brittle, he also felt secure in God's sovereign will. So he writes in his diary that he prayed this prayer, went to sleep with his family and woke in the morning and he let God sort out the rest.
If you're like me, there are times you wake up in the morning and you wish it were not the morning because you're set about with what feels like so much opposition. You pick up the Psalter and you pray this, salvation belongs to the Lord. Your blessing be on your people and then you pause, say la, and you let God handle the rest. And he who does all things well will do so for you because he's really doing it for Christ. Let's pray. Father, we want to thank you for the Psalter for these poems that come from the Holy Spirit who's really the author of them. For all occasions of life, especially prayers for the morning time when we are beleaguered and beset by many things that unsettle us, even threaten us, things that would harm us.
But we know that you are greater than those who are against us. You say greater is he who is in us than he's in the world. You have promised to work all things for our good to build your church. You've also told us that part of that process us sharing in the sufferings of Christ the fellowship of this community of martyrs. And so we pray. We leave these things to you and we ask that you would spare us and prosper us, convert our enemies, destroy no one. But do good to us and bless us. Not because we deserve it. But because your Son does and by blessing us, you honor him, the slam who is worthy of all honor because he died for us and for our enemies. And so we pray this prayer. In Jesus' name.