Psalm chapter three, we're going
through the Psalms, we're on the third Psalm, and I don't
know how long we'll continue on this, but I am not at all
ready to leave the Psalms yet. Psalm chapter one was about the
blessed man, and we saw then that that blessed man can be
none other than the Lord Jesus Christ, and yet we are blessed
in him. Psalm chapter 2 is about the
Lord Jesus Christ as God's anointed, the Christ of God, and God has
set Him on the throne of glory and honor. And even though all
people on earth were opposed to His rule and reign as God,
yet some were turned in their hearts to trust in Him. We find
that at the end of the psalm. Blessed are all they that put
their trust in Him. What a blessed thing it is that
God would give us His grace to trust His Son. There's nothing
in our lives or in our eternal life that's going to be more
blessed for us than to be able to kiss the sun. As it says in
Psalm chapter two and verse 12, kiss the sun lest he be angry
and you perish from the way when his wrath is kindled but a little
blessed are all they that put their trust in him and how blessed
it is when we shall see him face to face, the one we have trusted
with our eternal life according to his word. Now in Psalm 3,
we go from the blessed man in Psalm 1 who kept God's law and
delighted in it, to Psalm 2, who the Lord Jesus Christ was
exalted to the throne of glory. And now we're in Psalm 3 and
we see a different kind of prayer. This is a cry from a man under
affliction. So let's read it together, beginning
with verse 1. Psalm 3, verse 1, Lord, how are
they increased that trouble me? Many are they that rise up against
me. Many there be, which say of my
soul, there is no help for him in God. Selah. But thou, O Lord, art a shield
for me, my glory, and a lifter up of mine head. I cried unto
the Lord with my voice, and he heard me out of his holy hill.
Selah. I laid me down and slept, I awaked,
for the Lord sustained me. I will not be afraid of ten thousands
of people that have set themselves against me round about. Arise,
O Lord, save me, O my God, for Thou hast smitten all mine enemies
upon the cheekbone. Thou hast broken the teeth of
the ungodly. Salvation belongeth unto the
Lord. Thy blessing is upon Thy people. Selah. Now this psalm, according
to the words just under the title Psalm 3, it says it's a psalm
of David when he fled from Absalom, his son. The words of this psalm
and this little subtitle under Psalm 3 are all inspired by God. And so we know that David wrote
this psalm and further we know that it was written at the time
when he fled from his son Absalom. I wanted to remind you though,
first of all, that the Psalms were written by not only David,
but specifically it was by the Spirit of God who moved him to
do so. In 2 Peter 1, verse 21, holy
men of old, they spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. And most of the Psalms were written
by David, and he himself said in 2 Samuel 23, verse 2, So it's
clear that David was a man who knew God spoke by him. He wouldn't boast of that and
it be recorded in scripture had it not been the case that God
truly spoke by him. Moreover, in the New Testament,
not only did the apostles refer to the Psalms as speaking of
Christ, but the Lord Jesus himself used the Psalms to explain how
they spoke of him. And you can read about that in
Luke chapter 24 and verse 44. And there's many places in the
book of Acts and in Hebrews where the Psalms are quoted as speaking
of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Psalms not only speak about
Christ, but they express his words, words that he himself
spoke. For example, when he was on the
cross, when he said, I thirst, or when they gave him vinegar
and gall mixed with vinegar for his drink, or when he said, into
thy hands I commit my spirit. And all those things are in the
Psalms, but they were quoted by him when he was on the cross
or in other places in the New Testament. So they not only speak
about Christ, but they express words that Christ himself spoke. And he didn't speak just as a
man here in the Psalms as an example of one who prayed, but
he was as the anointed one, the man who kept God's law and delighted
in it, the blessed man, the one God appointed to be our mediator. So the Lord Jesus is the Son
of God, but in his role, his office as our mediator, he writes
in the Psalms, so that the Psalms not only express truth about
his life, what he would do, but also express his words and his
life, but they express most importantly, significantly, his prayers. And
in that way, the Psalms are the intercessions of Christ for his
people. So when you read a prayer in
the Psalm, The man speaking first and foremost in history was David,
but Jesus was David's son, so he's speaking as a prophet, and
he's speaking the words that Jesus Christ would speak as our
intercessor. So when he prays in the Psalms,
he prays as a man in the first person for himself, but as a
man anointed by God to stand for us in the matter of our salvation. Therefore, when he prays, and
his prayer is heard in the Psalms, the answer to his prayer is not
just for himself, but for his people also. So that in the Psalms,
Christ prays as our covenant head, our mediator. So his prayers
are not only as our intercessor, and they concern us, but we see
in them our own prayers to God, because whatever the Lord Jesus
prays for us, that becomes our prayer to God. So we can pray,
we can take the words of the Psalms and borrow them and use
them in our own prayers knowing this is the will of God for his
people. And that's a great comfort, a great comfort. Now, in order
to understand the Psalms though, we need to understand when God
has given us this background that this is a Psalm of David
when he fled from Absalom, we need to understand something
about that historical context so that we can see from that
context how the Spirit of God moved David to speak of Christ
and his people. Because when David wrote, he
wrote as a man, but he wrote concerning Christ so that in
the first place, the Psalm, Psalm 3, is about the Lord Jesus Christ
in his prayer. But David prayed it, experiencing
what all of God's people experience in a similar fashion that the
Lord Jesus preeminently experienced it. And I want to say this at
this point, and hopefully it'll stick with you, maybe I'll find
it in my memory to repeat it to you, but the Lord Jesus Christ
has the preeminence in all things. He has the preeminence in all
things. He is the preeminent one when
it comes to suffering, and He is the preeminent one when it
comes to the glory. So God has exalted Him, and we
see that in the Psalms, He Himself prays perfectly. He expresses
the will of God from His heart perfectly, and the Spirit of
God has recorded this. This is doctrine, this is truth
expressed by Him. But when we see him praying here
and supplicating to God in trouble, we know that he suffered preeminently. He himself suffered more than
any man. And so it says in Lamentations
chapter one and two and three, he suffered more than any man.
Okay, so let's get into this psalm. In verse one it says,
Lord, how are they increased that trouble me? Many are they
that rise up against me. Now, as believers, we may experience
some persecution in our lives, we may experience forsaking,
we may experience mocking, and we may experience the loss of
goods or any number of things. But it pales in comparison to
what is said here in verse one. Lord, how are they increased
that trouble me? Many are they that rise up against
me. David was king. But in 2 Samuel
chapter 11, what happened was he committed a great sin. He
took another man's wife, committed adultery with her, and to cover
it up, tried to get the man to be with his wife so that he could
say that she was pregnant because of the man, the husband. But
since that didn't work, the man was too honest and faithful to
God to do that when he was supposed to be fighting the enemies of
the Lord. Uriah went back out in the battle
and so David sent the command to Joab, the captain, to put
him in the forefront of the battle so that the enemies would shoot
and he would die. And he did die. So David murdered
Uriah. The man who, I mean, the husband
of the woman he committed adultery with, he murdered him, and then
he tried to cover it up. He didn't say anything about
it until Nathan the prophet came and discovered it. Now, because
of that, God said, not only that he was displeased with David,
but he said, the sword shall not depart from your house all
the days of your life. What a consequence for that sin.
Because the name of God, because of David's sin against God in
the matter of Uriah and Bathsheba, was such a dishonoring thing
to do, to both take the name of God and then act that way,
would cause the enemies of God to blaspheme, to speak against
God. They would speak against God.
If this is one of God's servants and he acts like that, how great
can God be and let him live? Well, he caused these enemies
to blaspheme God. And so the sword never departed
from David's house. It was always there. Amnon, David's
son, after this thing with Bathsheba, Amnon raped his sister, Absalom
killed Amnon, and now Absalom has, over a space of a long time,
has put himself in a place where he's going to try to win over
the people of Israel to himself against his father. He's planning,
and for a long time it occurred, he's planning a coup against
his father. So Absalom was David's son, and
yet his son rises up in his heart, he hated his father, and he didn't
have any true interest in the people of Israel. He wanted to
be their king, but not because he was trying to serve them.
He wanted it for his own exaltation and his own greed and lust and
all these things. David was a shepherd of the people.
He served God by God's appointment and anointing, and he did it
with a true heart. He loved the people of Israel.
He laid his life down for them. Remember, he killed Goliath.
He fought the battles of the Lord. He was the favored king. But Absalom took advantage of
his place as the king's son and he went and stood in the gate.
And whenever people would come to him, he would say, where are
you from? And they would tell him, oh, we're one of the tribes
of Israel. And he'd say, oh, well, I wish that I were made
a judge over that tribe. Because if the people would come
to me, then I would judge rightly. And so he would pretend that
he was capable of being a judge and a wise judge, like his father
really was. And then when the people would
come to him, he would always grab them and kiss them. and
make them feel welcomed by the king's son. They came to do honor
to him and he would lift them up and he would kiss them so
he would humble himself as if he was humbling himself, pretend
to be a humble man before them and he won over the people of
Israel. And he did this behind the scenes
to his father. And what this led to was a time
when Absalom came to his father and he said, I made a vow to
the Lord when I was in such and such a place, and I need to go
down to this place and fulfill my vow. He said, I vowed to the
Lord that I would serve him if he brought me back to Jerusalem.
He has. Now I'm going to go down there to Hebron and I'm going
to do this. And David gave him leave to go and Absalom went
down there. And while he was there, he gathered
people to himself out of Israel. He gathered them to himself in
order to overthrow David. And after a while, one of David's
trusted counselors named Ahithophel also joined Absalom. So that
Absalom had a lot of people in Israel who were duped. They were
beguiled by this trickery man and they came and they pledged
allegiance to him until he finally told them, we need to go and
overthrow David in Jerusalem. Now, when this was happening,
David got wind of it And he heard that Absalom, his son, was coming
with a large number of people in Israel to overthrow him, so
he abandoned Jerusalem. He left the city. And he took
with him most of the people that were there in his court, but
he left some of his concubines behind to take care of the household
and such. But he himself went out. And
all these men went with him. And the account of this is back
in 2 Samuel. Remember, in 2 Samuel 11 was
David's sin. And it wasn't too much longer
after that that we find it in 2 Samuel 15 that this is happening
with Absalom. And I'll read just a few verses
to kind of give you a flavor of what I just said from the
scriptures. It says in 2 Samuel chapter 15, it came to pass in
verse 1 that Absalom prepared him chariots and horses and 50
men to run before him. He's the king's son, so he has
the authority and the wealth to be able to do this, to get
50 men and horses and chariots to run before him. What an arrogant
man! And Absalom rose up early, and
stood beside the way of the gate. And it was so, that when any
man that had a controversy came to the king for judgment, then
Absalom called unto him, and said, Of what city art thou? And he said, Thy servant is of
one of the tribes of Israel. And Absalom said to him, See,
thy matters are good and right, but there is no man deputed of
the king to hear thee. Absalom said moreover, O that
I were made judge in the land, that every man which hath any
suit or cause might come unto me, and I would do him justice.
And it was so that when any man came nigh to him to do him obeisance,
he put forth his hand, took him, and kissed him. And on this manner
did Absalom to all Israel that came to him, to the king, for
judgment. And so Absalom stole the hearts
of the men of Israel. He interposed himself between
the people and the king, and he tried to get their hearts.
Verse 7 of 2 Samuel 15, it came to pass after 40 years that Absalom
said to them, said to the king, I pray thee, let me go down,
or let me go and pray, I'm sorry, let me go and pay my vow, which
I have vowed unto the Lord in Hebron. For thy servant vowed
a vow while I abode at Gishur in Syria, saying, if the Lord
shall bring me again indeed to Jerusalem, then I will serve
the Lord. It's always interesting to see how someone will lie about
what God said in order to convince others that their way is holy. This is like the lowest form
of deceit, isn't it? God sent me, then he didn't at
all. And so the king said to him, go in peace. So he arose
and went to Hebron. But Absalom sent spies throughout
all the tribes of Israel, saying, as soon as you hear the sound
of the trumpet, then you shall say, Absalom reigneth in Hebron. And with Absalom went 200 men
out of Jerusalem that were called. And they went in their simplicity,
and they knew not anything. And Absalom sent for Ahithophel,
the Galenite, David's counselor from the city, even from Gilo,
while he offered sacrifices and the conspiracy was strong for
the people increased continually with Absalom. All right, so you
can see that's the background. And there came a messenger to
David, saying, The hearts of the men of Israel are after Absalom. And David said unto all his servants
that were with him at Jerusalem, Arise and let us flee, for we
shall not else escape from Absalom. Make speed to depart. lest he
overtake us suddenly, and bring evil upon us, and smite the city
with the edge of the sword. And the king's servants said
to him, the king, behold, thy servants are ready to do whatever
my lord the king shall appoint. And the king went forth, and
all his household after him. And the king left ten women,
which were concubines, to keep the house. And the king went
forth, and all the people after him, and tarried in the place
that was afar off. They tarried in some place that was far off.
And all his servants passed beside him, and all the Cherethites,
and the Pelethites, and the Gittites, six hundred men which came after
him from Gath, passed on before him. Okay, so you see, there's
a company of people going with David, and he's fleeing from
Absalom. And I would exhort you to read through this on your
own and see the background for it. But I want you to see now
what happened after David gives instruction to several of his
men, his faithful men. It says in verse 29, Zadok therefore
took Abiathar, carried the ark of God again to Jerusalem, and
they tarried there. So Abiathar was the priest, and
he And Zadok helped him to carry the ark back to Jerusalem after
they first thought it would be right to take the ark from Jerusalem.
And David said, no, you take it back because if the Lord is
pleased, he'll bring me back and I'll be able to worship the
Lord there. Okay? Now look at verse 30, 2 Samuel
15 and verse 30. And David went up by the ascent
of Mount Olivet, and wept as he went, and had his head covered,
and he went barefoot, and all the people that were with him,
that was with him, covered every man his head, and they went up,
weeping as they went up." Interesting. David walked up Mount Olivet,
the Mount of Olives, barefoot, weeping, and his head was covered,
and the people were with him, also weeping, and their heads
were covered. That's significant. Why is that
significant? They were in sorrow. Why were
they in sorrow? Because there had been this overthrow
of the kingdom. The king's son, Absalom, was
trying to kill his father And he was trying, not directly,
not with his own sword, but that was his intent. He was going
to kill his father. What a crime. And so the sword
wasn't departing and David knew that it was a consequence of
his sin with Bathsheba. And then he also learned, in
verse 31, one told David, saying, Ahithophel is among the conspirators
with Absalom. And David said, O Lord, I pray
thee, turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness. Now, Ahithophel
is a type of Judas. We know this from Psalm 109.
And so that Ahithophel, as a type of Judas, means what? that David,
of course, is a type of Christ, and Judas betrayed Christ as
Ahithophel betrayed David in this history. And so when David
goes up the Mount of Olives, what is it teaching us? The Lord
Jesus Christ. when he went into the Garden
of Gethsemane, that was a place on the Mount of Olives. He went
up to the Mount of Olives, and he went up there with his disciples,
and then he walked away from them about a stone's throw. He
said, you stay here while I go and pray yonder. And he left.
He took with him Peter, James, and John. He told them, you watch
and pray. And of course, you remember, he said, my soul began
to be very heavy and sorrowful, even unto death. And he prayed,
Father, if it be your will, let this cup pass from me. So that
was the time of Christ's suffering in his soul when he
went up the hill, the Mount of Olives, into the garden of Gethsemane
with his disciples. And so we have a parallel to
that here. So now when we read Psalm 3, it begins to take on
a whole new color to it. David is fleeing. The people
that went with him were few, far fewer than the people who
were left in Jerusalem and in all of Israel. Hundreds of thousands
of people were left in Israel. There were people in the whole
nation that weren't part of this coup, but they were not with
David. David had only a few, even though
there might have been a few hundred with him. And with Absalom was
the strength. And so when it says in Psalm
3 verse 1, Lord, how are they increased that trouble me? Many
are they that rise up against me. We can see here that there
were thousands. In fact, in a little bit later
in the Psalms, it says in verse 6, I will not be afraid of ten
thousands of people that have set themselves against me round
about. Think about how David felt now. He's running from his
son. His son has taken over his kingdom. He knows in his mind that this
is the result of his own sin with Bathsheba, that God is going
to bring the sword into his own house and leave it there. The
sword is not going to depart from David's house. And he knew
in his conscience that this was a result of his own foolish behavior. And you can imagine how his heart
was broken for two reasons. First of all, because of his
sin and the guilt of that. Secondly, because he thought
about the welfare of the people of Israel. And he was greatly
concerned that they were going to be treated so as Absalom would
treat them. They were gonna be under a wicked
man ruling over them. And who knows what would happen
about that? Was his life about to end here? Was his whole kingdom
about to end? And so out of that difficulty
comes this psalm. Now I want you to see first of
all about this man David. What a man of faith. What a man
of faith when he is under the consequences of his own foolishness
and the whole nation is suffering because of what he did. Notice
what he says, Lord, he prays to God. He pours out his trouble
to God. And you would think that all
he could say is, Lord, I know this trouble has come upon me
because of my wickedness, and so just let it come. But that's
not the way he prays. Lord, how are they increased
to trouble me? Many are they that rise up against
me. In fact, here's what they say. Many are they which say
of my soul, there is no help for him in God. Selah. I can identify with the fact,
with the way David felt here in some small degree, but I've
never been in charge of an entire country. I've never been in charge
of people. I was raised up from among them
as a little shepherd boy and given grace by God to defeat
their enemies almost single-handedly most of the time. God gave amazing
victories to this man David and then blessed him with wisdom
and so that the Spirit of God spoke by him, gave him wisdom
and judgment. In so many cases, it's incredible
what God did with this man. I never experienced those blessings
as this man has. I can identify in some sense
with the sorrow he must have felt and yet realize that this
psalm was penned by David as a holy man of God through whom
the Spirit of God wrote concerning the sufferings of Christ and
the glory that would follow. Who is that man of sorrows? the
Lord Jesus Christ. Why did David suffer these things? Because of his foolishness. And
why did the Lord Jesus Christ have to come under this kind
of treatment? Remember, Pilate, Herod, the
rulers of the Jews, all the people of the Jews, and the Gentiles,
the soldiers, the Romans, they were all against him. David had
a nation against him, Christ had the world against him. Notice
how he prays here. Lord, how are they increased
that trouble me? Many are they that rise up against
me. Many there be which say of my
soul, there's no help for him in God. What did they say? He trusted in the Lord that he
would deliver him. Let him deliver him now, seeing
he delighted in him and trusted in him. What a painful, mocking,
cruel slander to say. Look at him now. On the cross,
we're able to do whatever we want. Spit in his face, use our
fists to hit him in the face. to beat his back until his bones
show, put a crown of thorns on him, mock him with the robe of
a king and put a reed in his hand, and bow down before him
in pretended honor, and then strip him of the robe and make
him walk naked and bear his own cross. and accuse him so falsely. The whole nation rose up, crucify
him. And now you can see these words.
Lord, how are they increased that trouble me? Many are they
that rise up against me. Many there be which say of my
soul, there's no help for him in God. And nothing penetrates
our sorrow more deeply than to think for a moment that there's
no help for us in God because of our sin. And we can identify
with David in his sin, can't we? But can we really think that
the Lord Jesus Christ would suffer in any way with a sense of sin
on him as David did? He wasn't a sinner. He did no
sin. He knew no sin. In him was no
sin. He was holy, harmless, undefiled. And yet, he bore the sins of
his people. himself carried our sins in his
own body up to the tree." 1 Peter 2, verse 24. That's what it says
in Scripture. The Lord laid on him the iniquities
of us all. And that's why he cries in Scripture
this way. In so many places, mine iniquities, my foolishness,
my guiltiness, these are the words from the Psalms, Psalm
40, verse 12, and Psalm 69, verse 5, and it's replete throughout
Scripture, the Lord Jesus Christ, so took our sins, that he himself
owned them before God and felt the weight of them and the forsaking
and the opposition of wicked men against him when he was a
righteous man who kept God's law, but he did it in submission. His bearing our sins was an obedience
to God of the highest order of submission and love. He loved
his father. He loved his people. David could
do nothing about the nation of Israel that he so deeply loved
and cared for and was a shepherd over. Because it was his sin
that this trouble from Absalom, his son, came on Israel. But
the Lord Jesus Christ did no sin. He was bearing our sins
and that's why as the shepherd of his people, he was taking
their sins from them in order to reconcile them to God by his
own death. And so you see here, the Lord
Jesus Christ first and foremost is praying in prophecy through
the mouth of David as a man moved by the Spirit of God to speak
of God's will concerning him and him bearing our sins in order
to take them from us. he felt the full burden of the
opposition of those that hated God and those were brought upon
him as one who had committed those sins and God bringing the
consequences of our sins upon him just like God brought the
consequences of David's sin upon the whole nation of Israel God
did it here to the Lord Jesus Christ what a thing now look
at second second Samuel chapter 16 When David had gone back up this
hill, the Mount of Olives, and he learned about what was happening
in Jerusalem, it said that all sorts of things happened here.
Not only were the people of Jerusalem and the nation against David
at this point, and his own son and so forth, But Saul's servant,
he had a servant named Ziba, who was a wicked, little, squirmy,
weaselly man. It doesn't use those words in
scripture, but you deduce that by reading about this man. Ziba
was a servant of Saul, and he was supposed to serve Jonathan's
son Mephibosheth. But he was a covetous man who
operated out of conniving self-interest. So that when David, and I wanted
to get into the whole background here of Ziva and Mephibosheth
and stuff, but it's too far askew from the main topic. But Ziba
was commanded by David to take care of Mephibosheth and make
sure he had all this because David was kind to Mephibosheth
for Jonathan's sake. Remember, Jonathan and David,
their hearts were knit together in love and they made a covenant
between each other. And David swore to Jonathan that
he would do kindness to Jonathan's household after Jonathan was
dead. And so that David did that kindness,
he brought Mephibosheth into his own place as the king and
set him down at his own table. And every time David looked at
Mephibosheth, he thought of Jonathan and remembered the covenant he
made with Jonathan on behalf of Mephibosheth. And so that
Mephibosheth was treated as one of the king's own sons. And Don
Fortner pointed out in a sermon on that same subject that when
God the Father looks at His people, when He looks at us, He sees
His Son and the covenant He made with His Son for us, and so He
treats us. as one of his own sons because
he made us his sons that way. So there's a whole background
there but Ziba was a conniving little pipsqueak of a man who
was always self-motivated to do his own thing. And so when
David comes in to this place he asks Ziba what was going on
and where Mephibosheth was and Mephibosheth, I mean Ziba, lied
about Mephibosheth and accused him of wanting to overthrow David
too, with Absalom, which was not true. But notice in chapter
16, 2 Samuel 16, verse 5, notice what happens here. When King
David came to Bahiram, behold, thence came out a man of the
family of the house of Saul, whose name was Shimei. the son
of Gera, he came forth and cursed still as he came." So first of
all, Ziba is, you know, notice David's got to be at a very low
ebb in his life. And the people have forsaken
him and overthrown. His own son's trying to kill
him. He's running. He's out on his own. He's like a felon. And Ziba pulls the wool over
his eyes in a certain sense. He lies to him. The one that
David had showed kindness to, they say, he's forsaken you too.
He's actually opposed to you. All these things are piling up
in David's mind. And now another servant of Saul
comes out and begins to curse David, to curse him. You can
imagine David the king with all of these mighty men who are still
with him. And this little man, Shimei,
is cursing David. What's your first reaction? Well,
let's see what happens. Verse 6, And Shimei cast stones
at David, and at all the servants of the king David, and all the
people and all the mighty men were on his right hand and on
his left, on David's right hand and left. So he had the power
to do something. Verse 7, And thus said Shimei when he cursed,
Come out, come out, thou bloody man, and thou man of Belial,
Satan, in other words. The Lord has returned upon thee
all the blood of the house of Saul, in whose stead thou hast
reigned. And the Lord has delivered the
kingdom into the hand of Absalom thy son. And behold, thou art
taken in thy mischief, because thou art a bloody man. That's
a pretty harsh thing to say against someone so honorable and true
as David. And this man, this little guy
from the house of Saul, he's coming out now. He's got venom
in his words here. He wants David to die. He wants
God to curse him. And he openly curses him in front
of David's strong servants and captains and everything. Verse
9. And David had these three mighty
men, Joab, Abishai, and Abishai's brother, who was killed by Abner,
Saul's captain. I'm trying to remember his name.
He could run fast. But anyway, it says, Then Abishai,
the son of Zeruiah, said to the king, Why should this dead dog
curse my lord the king? Let me go over, I pray thee,
and take off his head. Now, how would he do that? Well, he'd probably take his
sword out and cut his head off. Who is David? He's the king. He had the right to take off
this guy's head. He was obviously cursing him. It was not true.
He wasn't a cursed man. So you would think that, I mean,
if I was the king, if I was David, I'd say, yeah, go ahead, Abishai.
I mean, I feel lousy this day. Everybody's against me. Go ahead
and take this guy's head off. He's a nobody. He deserves it. But notice verse 10. And the
king said, what have I to do with you, you sons of Zeruiah? So let him curse, because the
Lord has said to him, curse David. Who shall then say, wherefore
hast thou done so? Now think about this. What is
David saying here? God sent this man to curse me.
How dare you cut off his head? How often has someone done us
wrong? You know, they just say something.
It can be, or maybe they don't say something, and we expected
them to say something. We're, I could speak personally,
we're so prone to be so critical of others that when they, for
some slight infraction that we've imagined that they've done to
us, we're ready to cut them off. David says, no, he said that,
but God sent him to say that. If we could just take whatever
people say as from the Lord, how much humbler we would be,
wouldn't we? I thought about that when I read
this today. So who then would say, why have you done this?
In verse 11, David said to Abishai and to all his servants, behold,
my son which came forth out of my bowel seeks my life. How much
more now may this Benjamite do it? Let him alone and let him
curse, for the Lord hath bidden him. It may be that the Lord
will look on my affliction and that the Lord will requite me
good for his cursing this day." And isn't that amazing? Isn't
that amazing? Here David, fleeing for his life
and for the life of most of the people he was shepherded over,
has this attitude towards the Lord. Many are those who rise
up against me. How are they increased that trouble
me? Many are they that rise up against me. Many are they which
say of my soul there's no help for him in God. Selah. And what
does he do? He comes to the Lord and asks,
basically asks, he brings his supplication to the Lord as if
the Lord favors him and will have mercy upon him. He's confident
that God will do this. Because look at the next verse
in Psalm 3, verse 3. Psalm 3, verse 3. But thou, O
LORD, art a shield for me, my glory, and the lifter up of mine
head. How could David possibly say
that when someone is cursing him, embarrassing him, shaming
him in front of the whole people that had been loyal to him now,
He had most of the people had risen up against him, only the
few that were left. Now they see and they hear the
reproach that came upon him. Wouldn't they be offended? Wouldn't
they also join in the cursing and leave him? Remember what Jesus prayed? Lord,
let not those who seek your face be offended for my sake, because
for thy sake I've borne reproach. Remember Psalm 69? That's the
Lord Jesus Christ. So here, even though all are
against him, instead of striking back, David entrusts his case
to God, and think of the Lord Jesus Christ now, and even under
the curse, He trusts God will save him. That's his only hope. He doesn't go to another idol
god. He doesn't begin to look around
and say, the Lord's abandoned me and I'm going to abandon God. He didn't do that at all. And
you would think that almost everyone else in scripture who's ever
been treated this way did. But the Lord Jesus Christ is
being spoken of here because he said, prophetically, in Job
13, 15, though he slay me, yet will I trust him. He trusted
in the Lord that he would deliver him, and the Lord Jesus Christ
did. There was never a time, even when he felt that God had
forsaken him, he still trusted in the Lord. And that faith of
Christ is the faith of Christ by which we're justified. It's
his obedience, his faithfulness, his prayer, not ours, his sorrow
for our sins and the affliction that God brought upon him by
which we're saved. And so he says in verse three,
but thou, O Lord, art a shield for me, my glory and the lifter
up of mine head. The Lord is my shield. What does
a shield do? It takes all of the things that
come against it, don't it? It takes the nails, the bullets,
the spears, the swords, the rocks, everything. It takes what should
have been brought against us, the shield. The Lord is my shield. All the people have risen up
against me. They're saying there's no help
for him in God, but the Lord is my shield. And if God is for
us, who can be against us? Remember Romans 8 verse 33? Who can lay anything to the charge
of God's elect? It's all about our justification
in heaven, in the court of heaven by God. That's our shield. The Lord is my shield. Did God
justify me? Then who can bring an accusation?
Who can condemn one for whom Christ died? None. The Lord is my shield. He's for
me. He took the blows. He took the
chastisement for my peace. And so, even though David in
history was being chastised by God for his sin with Bathsheba
and the whole nation suffered, yet he trusted God historically
because the Spirit of God gave him that grace to do so, even
in his suffering. And then, preeminently, that
was fulfilled infinitely more in the Lord Jesus' suffering
for our sin. When he took all of the accusations
that should have been against us, and he protected the sheep
by doing so, he actually saved them from their sins, he didn't
forsake them, and God gave him a blessing for that curse. Shimei
cursed David, God turned it for a blessing both to David, but
infinitely more, God turned the curse that he brought against
his son for a blessing for us. because he exalted his son to
the highest place, because his cursing, in David's case, he
submitted, didn't he? He submitted to the cursing that
came upon him from God. In Christ's case, he submitted
willingly, obediently, with meekness. He didn't open his mouth like
a sheep before the slaughter. and he accepted that for us.
It was for us. Christ did this for us. He is
our shield, and he's our glory. In John 17 and verse 22, the
Lord Jesus said, the glory that thou has given me, I have given
them. The Lord Jesus Christ is our
glory, and that glory is what he did in our justification. God's grace and his glory is
seen in our justification. 2 Corinthians 4 verse 6, The
God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness and shine
in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory
of God in the face of Jesus Christ. What is the glory? It's the revelation
of God's grace and His justification of us in Christ. Our salvation
in Christ. That's God's glory. And He has
given us His glory. The glory God gave to His Son
to fulfill, He has given to us to know it and to live upon it
and to see His face in it. He's not only my shield and my
glory, but He's the lifter up of my head. And so I cried, in
verse 4, I cried to the Lord with my voice and He heard me
out of His holy hill. What is God's holy hill? That's
the place where God rules. Where does God rule? He rules
in the midst of His people. The temple of the Lord is His
people, the body of Christ. They are His members. He lives
in them. and he lives among them, they're
one, and that's the temple, the city of God, the hill of God,
the kingdom of God, Christ reigns there, and it's the collective
body of Christ, the people of God. And so he says in verse
five, I laid me down and slept, I awaked for the Lord, sustain
me. Now I wanna say just something about this, because I know it's
late, and we're past our time a little bit here, but he says,
I laid me down and slept, You've probably experienced this. You've
probably thought about sleep. I've thought a lot about sleep
because I sleep a lot. Every night I go to sleep. And
I'm one of these people who can sleep pretty well. I really appreciate
sleep. My wife can't sleep as well as
I can. She gets up earlier and she's more fitful than I am at
night. But I sleep pretty good. But
you know something I've experienced when I'm asleep is all these
thoughts You know, it seems like I'm disconnected from the real
me. In the daytime, I seem to be under control, but at night,
my mind is uncontrolled. It seems like when I sleep, I'm
very near to a condition. My body's at rest, but my mind
is out of control. And you wonder, really, what
right do I have to think that I even know the Lord? Because
everything's all tangled up and confused, and it's pitiful. It's
a terrible thing. But the good thing is that the
Lord never slumbers. He never sleeps. So when we sleep,
we're kept. In fact, God uses physical sleep
as a way to restore our physical bodies to their strength. The
next morning you feel much better, don't you? You get a good night's
sleep, you wake up, man, I just feel much better. Got a good
night's sleep. Denise is like, I didn't sleep well last night.
I feel sorry for her. But the point is, is that sleep
is a condition we enter into where our bodies are at rest,
and there's a sense of recovery, but the Lord's the one who gives
that to us. If we sleep too deeply, we just cease, don't we? We just
die. That's the way sleep is. It's
almost like we've entered into a near-death experience because
we're asleep. I mean, someone can come in the
room and they can just do whatever they want to. You don't even
know they're there. They beat you up. They chop off your head or whatever. Where do these things come from? But the point is here is that
there's another sleep, right? God keeps us in that physical
sleep. It teaches us how much more does he keep us in the sleep
of death, right? Think about it. When we lay down
to sleep, why are we able to rise up again? from physical
sleep because the Lord sustained us. We understand that. That's the baby experience. All of us are like little children.
We understand sleep and death in that sense. We lay down, we
feel better, we get up. We were completely unaware of
what was going on in the next room because we were sound asleep.
But here, the Lord says, the reason why we're able to get
up in the morning is because the Lord sustained us. But now
he's talking about another kind of sleep. Because the Lord Jesus
laid down and slept, and he awoke. Remember, I laid down my life
for the sheep. My Father has given me this commandment.
I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up
again. And this is why he did it, for the sheep. The Lord Jesus
Christ, through David the prophet, is saying, I laid down, I slept,
he finished the work of God, he rested in sleep. And then,
at that moment, in the tomb, when no one was there, but the
Lord Jesus Christ, He rose again. He opened His eyes. He brought
Himself back to life. The Father, by His power, raised
Him up. And in that resurrection, what
was He saying? Justified. So pleased with you. He gave Him life, He exalted
Him, He set Him on the throne of glory. And with Him we died,
and with Him we were buried, and with Him we rose. Therefore,
He says, I laid me down and slept, I awoke, and the Lord sustained
me. The Lord sustained me through
all this. He's going to sustain His people through physical sleep.
He's going to sustain them through that sleep we call death. But
the believer never dies. Jesus said, whosoever liveth
and believeth on me shall never die. We don't die. Our body goes to sleep. The body
is dead because of sin. But the spirit is life because
of righteousness. And if the spirit of God is in
us, then he who raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken
our mortal bodies by his spirit that dwells in us. The spirit
can't die. Jacob is still alive. He's the
God of the living. God is the God of the living.
And so the Lord Jesus Christ, he laid down and slept. He conquered
death, he awoke, he was justified, the Lord sustained him. And notice,
now I'm just gonna say this, in the Psalms, when Christ is
praying here, as our intercessor, as our mediator who experienced
all these things, as our substitute, he's also talking about the blessing
too that God gives not only to him, but his people. Therefore,
he says, I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people that
have set themselves round about me. God raised me from the dead.
God justified me. Arise, O Lord, save me, O my
God, for Thou hast smitten all mine enemies upon the cheekbone.
that has broken the teeth of the enemy. That's quite a punch,
isn't it? God has hit in the face the enemies of Christ and
his people. Remember what Jesus said in Matthew
25? If you've done it unto me, you've done it unto the least
of these, my brethren. But if you have not done it unto
me, you have not done it unto the least of these. I mean, if
you have not done it unto the least of these, my brethren,
you have not done it to me. And so the Lord says, if you're
opposed to Christ, then you're opposed, then God's gonna smite
you on the cheekbone and break your teeth. But if you are for
Christ, then you're going to be saved. And this is the way
that God describes it here. All who oppose Christ are the
enemies of the Father. They're the enemies of God's
people or the enemies of Christ. They're the enemies of heaven.
And so he says in verse 8, salvation belongs to the Lord. Thy blessing
is upon thy people. Selah. So we're going to close
with that. Selah, as I pointed out when
we were going through the book of Obadiah, it was a place in
Edom. And the Edomites trusted in their
high places. They thought they were safe because they lived
in the mountains. God brought them down. Selah refers to something
prominent. And God is saying, Selah, this
is important. Pay attention to this. This is
about Christ and the salvation of His people. Consider it well,
what God has done in His Son to save His people. He bore their
sins. God exalted Him. He justified Him. He raised Him
from the dead. Salvation is of the Lord. The
Lord is going to destroy His enemies. And this is all true.
And we can pray like David, even in his sin. Even knowing that
he suffered the chastisement of God because of his sin, he
knew his sin was forgiven, but he trusted in the Lord. He said,
God will turn the curse into a blessing if it pleases Him.
And that's where we leave it. Lord, turn the curse into a blessing.
You put my curse upon my Savior, turn that curse upon Him into
my blessing. And so we come to him, and we
trust the Lord to receive us for Christ's sake. Let's pray.
Lord, thank you for your word. Help us. I feel so foolish sometimes
in my understanding, and completely inadequate and insufficient in
what I say. But I pray, Lord, that you would
bless your people in spite of me. and that you would turn all
of my foolishness into a blessing for them from your word, and
that you would cause them to consider the Lord Jesus Christ,
that if he, under this infinite weight of our sin, was accepted
according to your eternal will, and you saved him and saved his
people with them, therefore we can, like David, come to you
in all of our afflictions, even the chastisement that comes upon
us, knowing we're guilty, and that it's done in order to teach
us and correct us and bring us back to you. Help us, Lord, to
so follow our Savior and to come to you on this basis that you've
received us for Christ's sake, and trust him, and never turn
to other gods, never turn away in unbelief, but to always come
to the Lord Jesus because he gave us that promise that he
will not cast out any who come to him, not in any wise, but
he will in fact save us to the uttermost, and so we trust him
to do that. In his name we pray, amen.