Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / June 16, 2024 | Summer in the Psalms - Psalm 3: King on the Run

Transcript

June 16, 2024 | Summer in the Psalms - Psalm 3: King on the Run · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Morning.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Good to be with you.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's gonna be a very ironic statement here in a morning in a moment because the story that we're looking at has to do with uh King David and uh his son Absalom trying to kill him.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: So happy Father's Day takes on a new meaning.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um imagine for a moment that you are the king of Israel, though, right?
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um you are you're fabulously wealthy, um you have the respect of the nation, um, your kingdom is secure.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you have many of your sons um in positions of leadership around you, and um I mean really everything is going well, other than the occasional like Philistine uprising, which you kind of handle pretty quickly.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um your kingdom is secure, everything is going very well.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: And on top of all of that, and most importantly, you are God's anointed, and you have a very personal relationship with him that's beautiful.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you do have one son uh who has been uh you had a really big bad falling out with them a couple years ago for some really terrible things that happened.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't handle it well, he didn't handle it well.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but since then you've kind of made up, you patched the holes.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: And he's been living in Jerusalem, though you guys don't talk very often.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so um he's pretty prideful, and you know that about him, uh, but for all intents and purposes, he's kind of harmless.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then one day, a messenger runs into your throne room and is panting because they see that this son has gathered an army and is marching towards the capital and has every intention of overthrowing you and ultimately killing you so that he can become king.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, with the way things stand, it re uh you realize that he has been building this army for years, that not only is this just betrayal and deception, but that truly his intent is to murder his father.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that because he's going to catch your uh faithful royal guard sort of unprepared, you need to flee.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: As God's anointed, as the king of Israel, you need to run away, basically in the dark of night, because Absalom's army is going to come and would overwhelm your forces if you just stayed behind.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is the kind of context.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um we find that story in 2 Samuel 15, but this morning we are in Psalm 3.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And Psalm 3 is David's prayer to the Lord as he is fleeing from his son Absalom.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: What was it like to sort of be in that space?
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: How would you process um having your son trying to kill you, having uh the greatest source of God's favor taken away from you for a time, all of these things.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: In Psalm 3, it'll be great this morning because for the last two weeks, in Psalm 1 and 2, they haven't really felt like Psalms.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: They have this part of the Psalter, beginning it.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they have been, you know, they have had a lot of depth and themes that are important, but Psalm 3 is where we really kind of see the first example of the human emotion, what it is like to walk through pain and anguish and loss and betrayal, all of those emotions, and then respond to God out of that.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so as we look at Psalm 3 this morning, you can be asking yourself kind of the question: if you were in David's shoes, how would you be responding?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um as this, we won't get too much into the story in 2 Samuel, because really our focus this morning is what was David's relationship with God in the midst of betrayal?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: But if, you know, after this morning, if you go and read 2 Samuel, it starts in 15, it'd be a great sort of addition to Psalm 3 as you can see David walking through all of these struggles, and even still how he's turning to the Lord.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: So David begins by crying out to God.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Lord, how my foes increase.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: There are many who attack me, many say about me, There's no help for him in God.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Selah, you'll see that quite a bit in the Psalter.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's sort of an unknown musical notation.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: So remember the Psalms were sung.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: This would be the temple worship.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so it could be for the choir, it could be for those playing instruments, it could be for the congregation, but it's some kind of musical notation.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: For our purposes, it just kind of means a break in the text.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: But anyhow, as David begins here, he is lamenting.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, remember, he's on the run.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is not after things have been settled with Absalom.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is in the middle, and he is away from his kingdom.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: He has seen his royal advisors, people who have been faithful to him, turn, uh, like pull a Benedict Arnold and go over to the other side and support Absalom.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Even some, he has one advisor named Ahithophel, who is now plotting how to kill him with Absalom.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so he has seen some of his closest people, uh, some of the elders of Israel support this new king.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: So all of these enemies are popping up everywhere, right?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so he is crying out, Lord, how my foes increase.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: There are many who attack me.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Many say about me, there is no help for him in God.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And though it's like very important to the story to remember this is a military coup d'etat, that they are trying to overthrow David's rule, the greatest pain for David is that his enemies are saying that the Lord is no longer with him.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because, I mean, to be fair, that has been a sign of God's favor with David, is his established rule as King of Israel.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is true when David took over for Saul.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: The reason David became king and Saul did not continue is because the Lord's favor had left Saul because of his sin.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And David has done some really terrible things, even as a great king.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so there are those who are around him who are saying, uh, God no longer is caring for David.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord's hand is no longer with him.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And from kind of an external perspective, that's what could possibly be true, right?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: The greatest sign of God's sort of love and affection for David being brought through his security as king of Israel has been taken away from him.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: He is a deposed king when he is writing this psalm.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so for David, the hardest thing is not even the enemies around him, though that is relevant, but it's the fact that they are saying that the Lord is no longer with him.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now, before we go on, it's kind of important to look, especially because last week we were in Psalm 2.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: In Psalm 2, you might remember we had that three-layer cake.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: There were all these different things about it.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: But that first layer was simply that David had received the covenant from God and was going to continue to be the king.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, there are those phrases in Psalm 2 like God would help David to break his enemies with an iron scepter and shatter them like pottery, right?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so we look at now Psalm 3 and we go, like, what's isn't there a big difference here between the two?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Where are all the shattering them like pottery things when it comes to Absalom?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a great reminder to us that God's promises for us, but also for David, there's sort of this overarching promise, right?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately David does pull through this, but in the moment right here, we have to understand that God never promises us nor David a trouble-free life.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: David was going to experience problems because of the sin of Israel.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: He just had to deal with them as being king.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: And also, like this one, he had to deal with problems that his own sin had brought about.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: God never said that, you know, David's life was going to be stress-free, pain-free, you know, easy peasy.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: But rather, what we're seeing in David here is as he's walking through these valleys, as he continues to experience them, we learn so much about his faith and what it means to have a strong one in God.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, as we're moving forward, right, we see David is lamenting, Lord, this situation that I'm in right now.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: The odds are stacked against me.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody is there, nobody is really in support of me, and furthermore, my greatest enemies are saying that you have left me.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: How does David respond to that?
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: He says, But you, Lord, are a shield around me.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: My glory and the one who lifts up my head.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: I cry aloud to the Lord, and he answers me from his holy mountain.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: So Psalm 3, as we continue to walk through it, it transforms over time.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it begins, like so many of the Psalms, with lament, anguish, pain, right?
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is what's going on, Lord.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Still speaking to God, right?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Don't lose the force for the trees.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is all the Psalm is one huge prayer.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: God is speaking to, or excuse me, David is speaking to God.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: But it begins with him going, Lord, my enemies surround me, and now it kind of becomes his personal relationship.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: And how does he describe God but a shield?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Which is such a beautiful illustration to use at this particular moment, because what he definitely needs in a military battle is a physical shield, right?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Later on, he he, David's armies, and Absalom's armies are going to fight against one another.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: And David is even tries to go out to battle against Absalom's forces.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: His general is sort of helpful, and he's like, that would be a really bad deal if they took you, so let us go and fight.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: But the idea that David has people who are actively trying to kill him right now means that a physical shield is a great idea.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: But instead, for David, it is the Lord who is the one that is protecting him.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the Lord is working through these other means, yes, but the Lord is the one who is protecting David, just like he has done throughout all of his life.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is not the first scrape that David has gotten into, nor the first valley, and God has been with him every single time.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord is his shield, and on top of that, he says that, God, you are my glory, right?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: That is also, that's an amazing thing to say, too, because he is this deposed king.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: He is on the run for his life.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: People are saying the Lord has left him.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: And what David isn't doing is he's going, Oh Lord, my glory has left me because I'm no longer, you know, the most popular.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm enemy number one right now in Israel.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: And yet God's presence with him has meant that his the glory that he finds in the relationship with his heavenly father is something that is staying with him even as he is wandering through valleys and hiding in caves.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: The glory of the Lord has not left him.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, if anybody is going to restore his kingdom to him, it will be God.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: He is the one who lifts up his head.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's a phrase describing sort of one that is lifted up in esteem and praise, right?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: If anyone, if he is ever going to return to the throne of Israel, the Lord is the one who will do it for him, right?
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: So we can see that David, in the midst of all of this problem, his first thing is he's going to God and he is submitting to him.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: And there's some there's some language in 2 Samuel 15 that's really beautifully applies to this, where David basically goes, Lord, I don't know what your will is in this moment.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is why he's running away from Jerusalem, right?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, I don't know what your will is in this moment.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's possible that you don't want me to be king any longer, and it's also possible that you will redeem me from this, deliver me from Absalom, and I will be king again.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: But either way, Lord, it is your will that is going to be done.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this amazing sort of humility that is coming from the king of Israel as his crown has been taken away, and he's going, Lord, what you will is what will happen.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so David submits, he puts you know, he puts all of the chips, he goes all in on the Lord being the one who will deliver him.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: And as he submits to God, what also happens is that he finds over and over again reminders that the Lord hasn't left him.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: It says, I cry aloud to the Lord and he answers me from his holy mountain.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: He would be talking about Jerusalem, right?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is where the Ark of the Covenant currently is at this point in time.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so what David is saying is, I cry aloud to the Lord and he answers me.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: That his active experience in the middle of one of the worst periods of time in his whole life is that God is answering his prayers.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: The only way, by the way, that he knows that God is answering his prayers is because he has been praying to God.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's something that we often forget, right?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: In the valley are we communicating with the Lord?
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: But David says, God has been answering my prayers.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: There are many, we don't know exactly what he's talking about.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Here, there are a lot of things that happen in the story where it's obvious that God is taking care of David.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, he has some faithful few who remain in Jerusalem and actually inform him about Absalom's military plans.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh David is able to find a few strangers that kind of don't really know him who are extremely generous in feeding him and clothing him and hiding him while he's on the run, even though it's risking their life.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh David is able to plant, it's kind of some sort of high-level like espionage.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: He plants one of his advisors in to go and sort of turn the wisdom of Absalom and give him counteradvice to Ahithophel so that David would be able to sort of thwart Absalom's plans.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Anyhow, point being, there are a lot of things that were going on in David's life.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Before he is out of this big situation, David is counting up all of these little blessings that the Lord is bringing his way.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so what's so amazing about that is that even though his rule was still in question, God was answering his prayers, and for David, it was just building one upon the other that this claims of his enemies that the Lord had left him were not actually true.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, we're emboldening him as he kept moving forward that even though the situation wasn't resolved, he could have confidence in God.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: As we go on, we see a perfect example of this.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I lie down and sleep.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: I wake again because the Lord sustains me.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: I will not be afraid of thousands of people who have taken their stand against me on every side.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so one of the greatest, I mean, it seems kind of silly at first because you go, well, David, uh, the Lord has not delivered Absalom, or delivered you from Absalom.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, your armies are still on the run, you're still in distress, you don't know what's going on.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: And yet the praise of David is that God gave him a good night's rest.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: And this is beautiful because it displays, one, his confidence in God.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you have somebody who's chasing after you with an army, I doubt you would sleep very well.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, David is so sure that the Lord is protecting him that he's able to lie down and sleep and rest.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: But second of all, as a sign of praise, when he wakes up the next morning, it was a blessing from the Lord.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because, as we've already said, right, for all intents and purposes, David is the underdog here.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of like how he's not truly the underdog with David and, you know, the story with Goliath, right?
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the Lord is with him.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: But from the outside looking in, David has everything stacked against him here.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: And furthermore, it's so easy for us to look back at Bible stories where, you know, the good guys prevail, and we're just like, well, yeah, like why didn't they believe that the entire time?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, imagine you being on the run.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine you having an entire army after you.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine you having your great friends and advisors for decades turn against you.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like things are cloudy at best.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: And yet David says, Lord, you have given me sleep.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so he is stacking all of these signs of God's faithfulness on a way to combat the narrative from his enemies.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: And later on, we're going to sort of distill pull out some of these elements for us, but I just want you to see this from David that his situation didn't need to be resolved for him to be able to express courage and hope in the Lord's plan.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: As he says here in the last two lines, I won't be afraid of thousands of people who have taken their stand against me on every side.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Notice that his statement is not yet one of victory.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: What he is saying is, I will not be afraid of them.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's not, I will defeat them, I will have victory, I will, all of my problems will be solved exactly how I want them to be.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: But it's when the thousands come against me as they're about to.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so he is taking the past promises of God, right?
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because the Davidic covenant is still, Psalm 2 is still active, right?
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: We are we are talking about a king who knows that the Lord has promised him certain things about his descendants remaining on the throne, okay?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure he would like it if Absalom, his descendant, was not the one who remained on the throne.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: But the Lord is still with David.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: He knows that.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: He has these promises.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then in the midst of the turmoil and the pain and the betrayal, he's taking these small answers to prayer from the Lord, and he is using that to embolden him, so that as he looks to the future where a military engagement is necessary in order to foil the plot of Absalom, like it's not just going to happen through, you know, having, hashing it out as a father and a son.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: It is going to be, they've tried he has tried to kill the king.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so as he looks forward to that and he understands that there are going to be thousands who are coming against him, his simple phrase is just, I am not going to be afraid of that.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Fear plays such a role in the way that we handle the hardest things in life.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes it's not actually the disease or the thought of loss, but it is rather the fear of those things that gives us the greatest amount of pain, right?
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: What am I scared of that people will reject me?
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: I am scared of what it will mean when this person is no longer here.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: I am scared of what life will look like with this uncertainty.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so what we see in Psalm 3 is not necessarily some kind of self-help guide to a guaranteed victory, but rather the king of Israel, in one of the hardest moments of his life, walking through a process where he can say, I'm not afraid of what comes next, because God is with me.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: As we get to the final two verses of Psalm 3 here, now we see David really express all of that hope in the Lord's power to deliver him.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Rise up, Lord, save me, my God.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: You strike all my enemies on the cheek, you break the teeth of the wicked.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Salvation belongs to the Lord.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: May your blessing be on your people.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: So David's prayer of lament changes into this prayer of hope at the end, right?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just look at the difference between verses one and two and seven and eight now.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, there's some really interesting parallels there, right?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: Rise up, Lord, is going up against verse one, Lord, all of my enemies are rising up.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Save me, God, is going up against verse two, where all of my enemies are saying, You won't save me, God.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so his prayer has taken on this very specific intonation where he is going, like, Lord, these specific things, these really separate things that are going on right now in my life, I'm praying for them specifically because, God, I need deliverance from them.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: It is not just, God, save me, but it is actually, Lord, they rise up, I need you to rise up.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Or they say you won't save me, Lord, I need you to save me.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: It gives us, again, a great example of the intimacy that David has with the Lord.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I think it is fair to say that he has probably spent, as the guy who wrote like roughly half of the Psalms, that he has spent probably more time on his knees than on his throne.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so what we read in the Psalms is a familiarity with God that is almost shocking to us at times.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, how many of us have prayed to the Lord and gone, Rise up, God, save me, God, do the thing, destroy my.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, those are not normally the phrases that we attach to our quiet time.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: And yet it is only this intimacy, this relationship, this personal connection with God that David has through prayer that enables him and gives him the courage to be able to say these things and know that it's appropriate.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: So David is praying for the final end of his problem, which in this case, like we said, will be battle against Absalom.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh those middle two sentences there are very descriptive, um, but it's talking about physical engagement.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I think one thing that's very important for us to see here is implicitly David does not have an expectation that God, even being the shield, even being his power, even being his glory, he does not have an expectation that God is going to sort of have David stand back and just smite the armies of Absalom by himself.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: David's expectation is one that has borne out over an entire lifetime of working with the Lord and being his agent of change, which is that God would give David the power to accomplish his will.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so as David is praying, you know, you strike all my enemies on the cheek, you break the teeth of the wicked, what's happening in his head is he is thinking about when his army is going to go out against his son, and they are going to be victorious.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason they are victorious is because the Lord is the one who has given them victory, right?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's important for us to see that David does not have this expectation that God is just going to sort of snap these fingers.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, yes, we have these stories in the Bible.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's the Red Sea, it's the parting of the Red Sea, the bringing together all of Egypt's chariots and their army is destroyed.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: And we look at God and we go, wow, Israel did nothing in that case.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: They just walked across the open ocean floor, and you destroyed Egypt's army.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: But far more often in Scripture, and in a way that we can rely consistently upon, is the fact that God empowers and enables his faithful, his servants, to be able to carry out his will to the best of their abilities.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so that is going to be true with David.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: His prayers for deliverance, salvation, implicitly include this understanding that the Lord would be working through him to defeat Absalom's army, which you can imagine is a whole nether cascade of prayers as he thinks about having to destroy his son.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, that's actually how the story in 2 Samuel finishes is the loss of Absalom's life is something that David grieves so bitterly that the generals in David's army come to him and they say, You need to go out and talk to your troops, because all that has happened is you have had victory and you've been crying in your room, and your men are about to leave you because they feel like they've done something wrong, right?
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just to kind of paint a picture of why this situation was so brutal.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was lose-lose, right?
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: He loses his kingdom or his son is defeated, right?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so as David is doing all of this, though, he says, ultimately, salvation, and in this context, that means like deliverance from a situation, right?
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: Salvation belongs to the Lord in many ways, right?
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: But in the way that David is speaking about it, he's talking about out of this valley, that solution belongs to the Lord.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: And may your blessing be on your people, right?
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: Even how David finishes, he has asked for these specific things, but really he finishes with a general prayer.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: It almost goes back to Psalm 1, where it's just like, Lord, the blessing and joy of satisfaction is upon the righteous.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's how David finishes.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody who has submitted to God's will.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: So as we kind of close Psalm 3 and we look at how this connects to us, right?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: We are still reminded that David did have victory over Absalom.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: David was restored to the throne, but ultimately it was this kind of bittersweet exchange, right?
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it was, it was borne out by, it was complicated by sin and by the actions of those people who were supposed to be faithful to David and all a manner of things.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: But as we look at Psalm 3, what we're supposed to take away from it is in the bottom of the pit, what did David do so that he might not fear the future and he might have confidence in God so that he could walk through this problem with faith?
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: That is what we're going to pull out here.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: And as we look at that, though, before we kind of distill that, before we look at Psalm 3 and summarize, we do need to add in one other thing, which is that when we go through problems today, we don't walk through them the same way the King of Israel did.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: And this is one of those kind of disparities between looking at stories in the Old Testament and the New is everything in our life is now beautifully touched by the grace and sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: In a positive sense, right, we now have an even greater hope because we are looking at the finished work of Christ on the cross anytime we are thinking about pain and suffering in our life.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: The reason it's different, though, is because we are not relying upon the Davidic covenant like David was to sort of base our hope, but instead we have the new covenant.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: So this is going to kind of play a role here in just a second because the way that we think about walking through pain needs to be affected by our thoughts on the cross of Christ.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Second Thessalonians 1, 5 through 8 says, It is clear evidence of God's righteous judgment that you will be counted worthy of God's kingdom, for which you are also suffering, since it is just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict or attack you, and to give relief to you who are afflicted, along with us.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: This will take place at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his powerful angels, when he takes vengeance with flaming fire on those who don't know God and on those who don't obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: So this is significant because it gives us an expectation of timing for when God will solve all of the pain and suffering in the world, right?
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: And what we are to do as Christians is we look forward to the return of Christ as the time when all of God's kingdom will be made new, and all of evil will be destroyed, and everything that is included within it, including loss and pain and disease and betrayal and missed expectations and all of the other brutal circumstances of this life, that they find their final end in defeat when Jesus returns.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is why Jesus at the Sermon on the Mount, he says, for those who hunger for righteousness, they will be fed.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: The expectation was not that they will be fed right now, even though a glimpse of God's glorious kingdom was shown through the ministry of Christ.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: But rather, all of those those statements about the poor and the hungry and the meek and the mild and the needy and the and the fatherless, all of those who are struggling, he says, what you are doing is you are awaiting the culmination of my kingdom.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so that is an absolute truth that we have to keep in mind.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: That there are certain things that happen to us in this life where the satisfaction of renewal only comes when Jesus returns.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: Having said that, there are still many valleys that we walk through in this life where we are looking for an answer for how to do it with faith in God, right?
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean not to be trite, but like think about when your last time your AC busted, okay?
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's always during the middle of summer, it's never in winter.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: And you call somebody to get it fixed, and they're like, I can be there in like two to three days.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, okay, it's 95, you know, it's 100, it's Kansas, it's 105 tomorrow with humidity.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so the question is not necessarily, um, will it ever get fixed?
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: I know it's gonna get fixed in two to three days, but what do I do for the next two to three days while I'm sort of walking through this?
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then you find all these, you, you know, you go outside, you you uh at night, you go to the pool, you eat ice cream, you do all of these things to sort of uh sustain yourself until ultimately they see is fixed.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's a measure here where Psalm 3 is kind of like, man, what do we do living in a fallen world?
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: What steps can we find as we await the coming king?
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: What do we do when we walk through pain now?
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because there are still many ways that the Lord is with us.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so the first thing, you're not gonna like number one, but the first thing that we need to do is that we expect suffering.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: We expect suffering because that is what Genesis tells us is going to happen.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: We expect suffering because we live in a fallen world.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: We expect suffering because other people sin.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: We expect suffering because we sin, because there are just a number of things that happen that remind us that this is not our home, nor is this God's perfect reality.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: That comes later.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you can have an expectation that there will be suffering in this world, right, that there will be pain, that there will be loss, it doesn't necessarily make it easier to walk through that road, but when it comes, it reminds us of the blessing when we don't have suffering and also how God is working through us all the promises that He has given to us for how we are supposed to go through this natural and expected part of human life, right?
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we think of suffering, we also have to understand that as Christians, there is a very real possibility that we will suffer more than those who don't know God, because on top of the, you know, just natural things that happen in this life, we are also persecuted because of our faith and given greater constraints because we are trying to walk the road that God has called us to.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: And even though we have freedom in Christ, that sometimes means that we are unable to pursue things that other people are, which leads to sin.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so, in all of this, right, what I'm getting at is that even the king of Israel had terrible days, and you will too, and I will too.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that that is not a sign of God's dissatisfaction, that is not a sign of God's anger, that is not even necessarily a sign of your failure, as much as it is a sign of living in a world that is filled with sin and bearing the consequences of those sin, even in our own personal lives.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, number two, we pray to God.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: Praying to God is one of those things that is kind of like hand-waved, and you're just like, yes, I'm praying to God.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: Are you praying to God in the way that David prayed to God?
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: Are you praying to God with the frequency of David?
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: Are you praying to God with the intensity of David?
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Are you praying to God with the submission of David?
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like, the way that David is praying to God is different than most of the way that we're handling our quiet times.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the ways that we go before the Lord, and it's, God, thank you for this.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: I ask that this would happen.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: Please give me a good night's rest.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like, amen.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: And David is going, Lord, like I'm about to die.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: I am submitting my life to you.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm giving gratitude, even though it feels like there's nothing for me to be thankful for right now, but yet I am.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, I want to see you destroy my enemies, like bold prayers.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: And as we move forward, there are a couple other things to get to here, but to remove prayer from the equation is taking God out of the situation for your solution, right?
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: So God is here.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: You are not removing God by not praying to him, but if you cut off that communication, Psalm 3 doesn't exist.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: All of the things that David was then able to move forward with his confidence, his hope, his assurance, his satisfaction in the Lord, his peace, those are things that came through his personal relationship with God, which was built in prayer, both in times of ease and times of pain.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so David was praying to the Lord.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: He was inviting God into the healing process, and he was seeking wisdom from the Spirit.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, we submit to his will.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 2 talked a lot about submission to the king.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 3 is what it looks like in practical terms, right?
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 2 said, submit to the king lest he be angry.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: Kiss the son.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: And Psalm 3 says, this is what it looks like in the hardest moments of your life, to submit to God.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: To say, Lord, you have, it seems like this has been taken away from me, and yet your will be done.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is Jesus in the garden praying, God, take this cup from me, but not my will be done, but yours.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: That is submission applied to pain in life.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: And this is also what gave David confidence.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: Ironically, his willingness to just hand everything over to God and give him every aspect of authority and say, Lord, it is your will, what your desires, like all of that, God, that takes all of the weight off of my shoulders.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean I don't have a preference here.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: And God often does give us the desires of our heart, but by giving everything over to the Lord, whatever happened, David could be confident that it was God's will.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: There are many times where we build expectations for resolved situations that take away our ability to be submissive to God.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: What I mean by that is we head into these valleys and we, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not, we create scenarios in our head, and it's like, well, if God is faithful to me, then this is going to happen.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: If God really loves me, then this is how this situation is going to resolve, right?
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes when we do that, we lock ourselves into a scenario where no matter the situation, no matter how much we say that we are submitting to the Lord, when it doesn't go the way that we thought it would go, then we're angry with God.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: But if you give everything up to Him, if you have open hands, then you will be okay with the outcome that God chooses.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: Understanding that even if it is bittersweet, like the loss of the death of Absalom, right?
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: That God will ultimately restore everything when He returns.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: Number four is we give thanks for blessings.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think if there's one thing, I mean, I hope you take all of this stuff away, right?
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not just doing this for nothing, but I mean, if there's one thing that you take away from the lesson that is most easily applied to your life, it would be this.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: You can develop an attitude of gratitude that will change the way that you handle both joy and pain in your life.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: Hannah and I have this habit now that we took from a good friend where just at the end of our day, we just we go, what are three things that you really appreciated and were thankful for about today, right?
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: And even in hard days, it causes you to go, yeah, but the blessings of God still flowed forth.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like the Lord did not leave us today.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: There was a hard thing that happened, but God was still present.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what David was doing up and until the point where God ultimately resolved the situation, it was like, Lord, you gave me a good night's rest.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, even that is kind of a pretty small thing to be thankful for.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: But yet it was like, Lord, you have sustained me, you have brought me here, you've given me another day.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: God, thank you.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: And when we're able to intentionally practice gratitude for these answered prayers, we gain a greater awareness for God's presence in our life, and we have an increased ability to trust in the promises that he has already made to us.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: We see him answering prayers far more often than we think of it, right?
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: We see him active and blessing us in ways that we often didn't consider.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then when it comes time to go, okay, but hope comes from trusting in the promise, we go, well, it's easier for me to trust in the promise because I see him working right now.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: Fifth is that we face the battle.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think that it is so important to see David's situation wasn't finished before he proclaimed courage to face Absalom's forces, right?
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: That David is relying on the power and presence of God to give him confidence in the battle.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord is his shield, the Lord is his power, the Lord is the one who has this in control and in his hands, okay?
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so David is able to give this for all the reasons we've talked about, right?
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: He is able to have this confidence, but he is able to have it before things are finished.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's easy to look back on your life, like hindsight's 20-20, and be like, oh, I see how the Lord delivered me through that.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I see what God was doing there.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I see how that thing that I thought was really hard and it was, but this is how God used it for good.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's so easy to look back with faith and be like, yeah, I faced the battle, but in the middle to face the battle, trusting that God is going to work these things out, that takes some real faith.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: Sixth and finally is we act in faith.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: And this is um, this is the part of Psalm 3 where David understood that he still needed to go out to battle, even though God was with him and God's power was behind him, right?
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: That sitting on the sidelines in our situations oftentimes does not resolve them.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not trying to be flippant.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: I know that some of the pains that we're talking about here are things that you don't have necessary control of, like you're fighting uh cancer, right?
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: You don't necessarily have all the control to be able to go out to battle against this thing.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, when we are taking any of these situations, the battles that we go through are often not the physical battles themselves, but rather the emotions and the spiritual things going on behind them.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's what David said in verses 1 and 2.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, My enemies rise up, but it's them saying that the Lord has left me.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's what's been hard.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we act in faith, it is a sign that God's faithfulness is going to continue to be with us and that we will see it.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: And furthermore, that there are actions that we can take.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: We can be actively pursuing God in the midst of trial and know that he will be there for us and that he has not left us.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: So when you take these six things together, uh it's not a path to guaranteed victory.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't a BuzzFeed article.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this isn't like Sun Tzu's art of war, but these are the steps that the king of Israel took so that he would not be afraid in the midst of one of his greatest trials.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: A commentator summarized Psalm 3 this way.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Psalm 3 is the confident prayer of a true believer who found his enemies increasing in number and resolve, but who was not afraid of them because the Lord was on his side.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: So you don't need to be afraid of the challenges facing you.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: But if you are walking through a challenge right now and you're not praying to God, you need to understand that you are missing the most critical aspect of faith, hope, peace, joy, all of those things.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: To remove that from the situation is to say that Psalm 3 never existed.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: But Psalm 3 can be applied to your life because even though he was the king of Israel, David was a sinful human being just like we are, who needed to rely upon God in the hardest moment of his life.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: So you can do these things too.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: Lift up your burdens, trust in him, follow his leading, and see what happens next.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we come before you today.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you that you are a great and perfect Father.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: On this day, God, we are reminded of that in the way that you do not leave us, you do not forsake us, you do not let your righteous ones, Lord, just sort of wave in the wind.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: You are with us, God.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: You are trustworthy and steadfast.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: But Lord, sometimes in the midst of struggle, it feels it's hard to see those things.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: We need to be reminded of them, Lord.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I pray that Psalm 3 would be a way that your spirit would draw us back to your presence.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: Help us to see, Lord, that you do not leave us in the midst of pain, but rather, Lord, you are even closer than ever before.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: And God, that we can reach out, we can trust in you, we can have hope.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because, Lord, you are faithful to carry out your promises.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: And God, I pray for anyone right now who is going through a real valley, that they would have the peace of knowing, Lord, that you are with them in this moment, and that whatever their situation is, God, that ultimately it will be fully resolved when you return in glory.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_00: God, I thank you for the way that you walk with us until that moment and the promises that you have given us through Christ to be able to have confidence and faith.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, love you.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: See you next week.