Meditating on God’s Faithfulness

I’m not going to place the Psalm for us, other than that it’s after 3 and before 5. But there is a good case to be made that it is one with Psalm 3 in its historical setting as is demonstrated by the language and the fact that it closes the day that Psalm 3 began. I’ll leave that for your own personal study.

What we want to see this morning is how david in distress finds relief and peace through prayer and meditation on God’s special favor and faithfulness toward him.

Psalm 4. “For the choir director; on stringed instruments. A Psalm of David.

Who is the choir director? Who leads the people in singing? The king does. King David did. And our King, the risen Lord Jesus does and is our choir director. Remember, the book of Acts is rightly called, the Acts of the risen Lord Jesus Christ, because it is by His Spirit that he works through guides, sends and speaks through the apostles to bring the gospel to the then known world in the first century. It is the same risen Lord Jesus, who tells us through the apostle John, that he walks amongst us. And if Jesus is walking amongst the church on the Lords day, what do we suppose he is doing as our King? Leading us. He is singing God’s praises in the great congregation.

Spurgeon- “in all the holy songs of his saints [Jesus] is the chief musician.”

Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness! You have relieved me in my distress; Be gracious to me and hear my prayer.

David as we see so often in the Psalms, brings his whole self to God. This is the pattern of the righteous. They are marked by earnest prayer and pleading. The Christian is to fly to God frequently and earnestly, their whole life. If there’s one thing that must mark the Christian, it is that they call upon the name of the LORD. It marks genuine faith, flowing out of a recognized destitution of the petitioner. You’re coming to the God who can provide you with all of your needs, especially spiritual needs.

And David looks back to God’s faithful dealings with him in the past. God has relieved him before. The phrase communicates being pressed in on, and then being brought into the open, into relief.

If you’ve ever hiked through backwoods or heavy brush, you know this feeling. We were pushing elk for a friend a number of years back in Northern ND near the Canadian border. The elk like to bed down in these areas of thick brush, so we go push through them. The feeling that comes over you is, I need to get into open space, I don’t care where. That’s what David is recalling, he has been in tight, suffocating situations before, and the Lord freed him. He stirs himself up by considering God’s past faithful acts. This is a theme throughout the Scriptures. The past acts of God will be repeated in the future. Our own little individual histories, are to be microcosms of God’s faithful dealings from OC to NC. With the exception that Israels failures are examples of how not to respond. Francis Folks has a wonderful article were he lays out some of this principle in an article titled the “Acts of God”. Wonderful little article. See me if you’d like me to send it to you.

The God of my righteousness.

The God of my right cause could be the sense. God is righteous and upright in his dealings. The God who will deal justly with his cause. Or the God in whom all my righteousness is possessed as gift, freely.

We’ll go with number three. We call upon the Father only in and through Jesus Christ. The Lord our righteousness. We see ourselves in him here. Jesus prayed to God. He did, very faithfully, in fact we believe this is more his prayer than it is ours. More than it is Davids in one sense. David is praying in the Spirit of Christ is he not? But it is Davids by faith in the Messiah. And isn’t it wonderful that you get to pray it as yours as well. And not alone, but in and through Christ. Christ intercedes for you. Let that be an encouragement to more fervent and diligent prayer. Jesus as your covenant Head, brings your prayers to God the Father. And he hears them for Jesus sake. He is your God your Father in Christ. The God of your righteousness. He will hear you, he will answer your pleading.

O sons of men, how long will my honor become a reproach? How long will you love what is worthless and aim at deception? Selah.

These are men of high standing, powerful persons. Saul and Absolam distressed David very much. For Jesus, it was from all quarters, the highest religious and political authorities were constantly a distress to him, the prince of this world, that is the devil himself and all the powers of the air. His instruction to his disciples confirms that we can expect the same strong enemies:

John 15:18–19 ““If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. “If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.”

The flesh, the devil, and the principalities and powers are still of great distress to us this day. The gates of hell will not prevail against us, but it will press against us, they will assault us. And their assaults make us often feel ashamed or reproached. We have the dignity and honor of being adopted Sons of God in Christ! But yet, how often it doesn’t feel that way or seem to be the reality. In the middle of the week weighed down with spiritual warfare. How long Lord. Maybe you are in the work place surrounded by unbelievers, and it’s not even that they are persecuting you or trying to trip you up, there is a weariness and exhaustion from being in that environment. It weighs on you, their conversation and worldview are both heartbreaking and exhausting to constantly be in the midst of. In the midst of men and women living their lives in perpetual rebellion against God and his Christ. How long?

“How long”? And how long is a cry of faith toward God. Because David, and Jesus, and we, know that the flood waters will subside. That God will hear and help.

And David knows that their whole purpose, their chief loves are all worthlessness and vanity. It is as stubble. The wicked themselves are like chaff that the wind drives away, and the Lord scoffs at their plots against Him and his Anointed.

Selah.

Perhaps we are meant to think back and meditate on what we’ve just mentioned from Psalm 1&2. Do you ever stop and think of what havock is going on in the world, what havock is going on in the spiritual realm, the spiritual warfare that ever rages on in our members. And to know that again, as fierce as it is, their evil schemes are all in vain, their plots will come to nothing and fall short, because your dear Christian have been sealed by the Spirit of God. They cannot defeat God’s anointed. They cannot touch Christ. And if you be in Christ, then you will not be touched or defeated either. Because you are his body. All of their troubling of you(human or spiritual enemies) is all in vain. It is empty! Take that to the bank, take that to your pillow tonight.

But know that the Lord has set apart the godly man for Himself; The Lord hears when I call to Him.

The reason we can have this confidence is because our Lord Jesus has been set apart to God the Father by covenant. Ultimately, this is him, the righteous man from Ps 1, the King from 2 & 3. But of course it is those in Him those who take refuge in him.

He says, “Know this!” It is the Lords doing. He set you apart in Christ. His covenant love, his covenant faithfulness is upon you, because he was pleased to love you. Why did he love you? Because like Israel, he loved them because they were mightier and more in number than all the other nations? No. Because it pleased him to set you apart for himself. Full stop. He is ready to hear because you are sons and daughters whom he loves in Christ. How could he not hear you if you are in the Son of His love? Know this dear believer! If God hears your prayers, know that he does it by free grace, and that to have the Father by grace is the greatest privilege in all the earth. The only true God is your God!

Tremble, and do not sin; Meditate in your heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah.

Therefore, if that be true of your circumstance, of your privilege, then be angry, but do not sin.

Do you get frustrated with indwelling sin, with temptations, and with trials, with the ongoing warfare inside you. Do you have a tendency to get angry when you do not rule over them by the Spirit. Do you ever feel like shouting out, “come on, not again!”

Do you feel the same frustration over the unbelief and sin that you see and encounter everyday. Workplace, family, friends.

There is a sense in which that is good. We are actually commanded to feel and think thus. But do not sin. Do it quietly. In your heart. Do not break out into sinful anger. Ephesians 4:26 “Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger,”

Grammatically very similar to this verse in the LXX.

Jesus instructs us here as the choir director, just like he instructed the Ephesians. Like a parent instructing a child in a sense.

“I want you to go to your room and calm down for a while, leave your ipad here, take some time to think.”

We need this, to sit and think and search our hearts, undisturbed by all the noise. Our culture is obsessed with noise and entertainment. We have a culture that can’t handle the sober silence that befits the Christian life. Not the peace and quiet that your grandpa wants. But meditative silence. Where God will reveal things to your heart. About himself, about you, about the world around you, about the coming judgement, the glory to follow.

The Selah is most fitting here. Pause. Meditate.

Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, And trust in the Lord.

Then we will bring a right sacrifice. A right sacrifice is offering a sacrifice in faith. Offer it and trust the Lord. Not the thing in itself, not your service. Though we know God is particular about what is brought. He does not accept will worship. Cain, Nadab and Abiu, Saul “felt like offering something different”. How did that go? So what is brought is important, very important, but also how it is brought. Able seems to have offered both a right and acceptable sacrifice. He offered a sacrifice of righteousness because it was done in faith and done according to what God asked. We are to offer ourselves as living sacrifices in faith. All that you are is to be to God. In light of the mercies of God towards us in Christ we give ourselves over to his service. We enlist in the Lord’s army. And freely, willingly, done in faith. Our offerings, our thank offerings as Christians are faith working through love. We need to beware and watchful lest we slip into a going through the motions in our service and worship. Or we try to work out sanctification through the flesh. If we just go through the motions and are wearied with serving the Lord, then like with Israel the Lord will become weary of us, weary of our gatherings. And if we try to work on our own, it will be like trying to produce outside the vine, which bears no fruit. John 15:5 ““I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.”

If your work, if your offerings are in and through the Lord Jesus Christ, then you have all the reason to boast in the Lord, and all the reason in the world to have confidence. Anything other than this is not acceptable.

Be watchful, watchful over your hearts and affections. Be reminded that whenever you come to serve or worship God in any way, you come as an already redeemed child of God. You have been made a new creature by the triune God. So your worship should always come from the gratitude and gladness that ought to flow out of a redeemed sinner. Due preparation on Saturday evening is a good thing to do before the Lords day. Lord make me ready to joyfully receive your Word. Bless our fellowship. Let us encourage each other. Make us glad in you together.

Many are saying, “Who will show us any good?” Lift up the light of Your countenance upon us, O Lord!

This could be the clamor of the enemies again rising up in the Psalmists consideration, or it could be his friends who are concerned and beginning to be filled with doubt. But whoever these folks are their complaint is disoriented as Krause puts it. They have no regard for YHWH. They are merely throwing their situation into the sorry hands of fate. This is not the way the faithful covenant servant responds.

Numbers 6:24–26 “The Lord bless you, and keep you; The Lord make His face shine on you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance on you, And give you peace.’”

This great benediction of the triune LORD is what David turns to. For David, he only sees it as a threefold repetition which certainly communicates the faithfulness of the covenant LORD. Two times is emphatic, 3 times is especially emphatic. It communicates, completeness and perfection. The preservation, gracious presence, and peace, are enduring toward David, even when clouded by circumstances. And it’s the same for us but with greater revelation. It is a trinitarian benediction. The Father has blessed us and preserves us, the brightness of the Fathers glory has shown on us through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit has given us peace by turning us to the smiling face of our Father in Christ.

We see all 3 characteristics of this priestly blessing displayed in the rest of this Psalm. The priestly blessing is taken up by David the King( interesting thought). And ultimately by Jesus our greater Prophet Priest and King. But even more, Jesus has made us priests , the priesthood of each believer gives us the ability, not only to take and pronounce this gospel blessing to ourselves, but to one another. Our function as priests does have admonitory obligations. We are, as priests of the new covenant to be exhorting and admonishing one another. Hebrews makes this plain throughout. We are to admonish in considering how we hear the Word, to hold fast your confession, stimulate one another, encourage one another. And I would argue, one of the ways we do this-in addition to our fellowship in between worship and during the week- is during corporate worship, particularly in singing the Psalms and hymns to one another, even as we’ll sing this Psalm to close worship.

We sing to each other, “Show us the light of your Son, O, Lord! Show us the light of the world. John 8:12 “Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.”” Lighten us with the gospel of your Son. Make us to once again see the glory of Jesus, in seeing him be conformed to him by his Spirit, and further finding rest and peace for our souls in him, finding our gladness in him.

You have put gladness in my heart, More than when their grain and new wine abound.

A gladness that far exceeds the gladness of harvest. We have probably never lived in a predominantly agricultural society. So we don’t exactly know the joy that would come from a fruitful harvest. Perhaps the closest thing would be when dad gets a big Christmas bonus and declares that the family is going on this vacation or we’re getting a bean shaped pool, or whatever. It would have been a time of exuberant joy and merriment. When God shines his face on the justified sinner, the justified sinner struggling through a trial, in suffering, all temporal joy’s seem trivial, even such as would be experienced at the fruitful harvest.

In peace I will both lie down and sleep, For You alone, O Lord, make me to dwell in safety.”

And the Psalmist now with such joy and gladness, and now at peace, almost dozes off in front of us. He is so confident in his God. His faith is rightly planted in the only object that can deliver that he lies him down to sleep. Even though 10,000 enemies surround. Because the Lord is his protector and keeper.

And as we know about sleep, sleep has a reference to death, sleep is a type of death. And the blessed picture here is that the believer need not fear death, the believer can even go peacefully to their death. Because we are in Jesus, and the Lord did not allow Jesus-who is the center of this Psalm- to undergo decay. The believer is not only united to Jesus in his life and death, but in his resurrection. Death is only the path into life. The believer passes through the valley of the shadow of death, into the path of life, in the Lords presence, with fulness of Joy, and pleasures forever.

We’ll conclude by reading from Psalm 16 which “i’ve just quoted at length, starting in V7 to the end. Psalm 16:7–11 “I will bless the Lord who has counseled me; Indeed, my mind instructs me in the night. I have set the Lord continually before me; Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my glory rejoices; My flesh also will dwell securely. For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol; Nor will You allow Your Holy One to undergo decay. You will make known to me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; In Your right hand there are pleasures forever.”