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Psalm 3
Somehow or another, every good movie finds a way to place the main character(s) in an excruciating dilemma with seemingly no way out.
After squeezing out every last second of agony and horror from the audience through the twists and turns of the crisis, the plot finally resolves in some clever, unexpected way which the audience did not anticipate.
With this Psalm, we see how David felt as he experienced a frightening and painful dilemma.
Though we don’t see the end of the story, we do see how David believed – even knew – how the crisis would resolve in the end, no matter how greatly the odds seemed stacked against him.
This is “a psalm of David when he fled from the presence of Absalom his son.”
This preface tells us who wrote the poem and why he wrote it.
David wrote this psalm, and he wrote in response to a very difficult experience in his life.
While Psalm 2 envisioned foreign nations and kings plotting to overthrow David and his descendants from being king, here David faced an internal threat instead.
He was being threatened not only by someone in his nation but within his own family – by his own son.
Sadly, Absalom had led a revolt against his father.
This revolt was so severe that Absalom had forced his father to leave his home and go into hiding outside the city.
To make matters worse, David’s close advisor, Ahithophel, had sided with Absalom.
This poem features a sequence of four sections that express David’s feelings and thoughts as he worked through internally a very difficult external problem.
From these comments we see that no matter how greatly the odds were stacked against him, David trusted in God with fearless resolve.
His example then reminds to intensify our trust in God as opposition to his king increases.
No matter what people say, what plans they may form, or what actions they may take against God, his king, or his people, we know that God rescues his people and his blessing rests upon his people.
Therefore, we can pray to him with increased confidence even when the odds are stacked against us and rising.
Many question God’s ability to rescue his people.
Yahweh, how many are my foes!
Many rise up against me!
Many say about me,
“No rescue for him from God!” Selah.
In this opening section, David describes the nature of his problem.
He doesn’t say anything about this being a family or internal problem, nor does he say anything about being expelled from his home and palace.
In this difficult moment, David struggled to cope with the growing number of people who opposed him.
Three times he says “many.”
This repetition reveals that David was not focused exclusively on Absalom’s rebellion.
He focused on how Absalom’s rebellion had marked the peak of a rising opposition to his reign.
David describes his opposition as “foes,” which envisions people as hostile enemies attacking him.
To “rise up against” portrays people as being concerted and deliberate in their opposition to him.
They didn’t just dislike or disagree with him, they defied him.
This opening section of the poem also describes what kind of attack David was facing from large number of people.
It wasn’t a military attack that troubled David the most, it was a war of words – a smear campaign, a program of propaganda.
A rising number of people were openly questioning God’s support for David as king and this discouraging trend was growing in popularity.
If a weekly poll had been run asking whether people in Israel believed God supported David as king, the percentage of those saying ‘no’ would have been growing significantly and steadily.
As David wrote this poem, he was facing a painful situation.
His reputation was plummeting.
His family was divided.
His kingdom was crumbling.
His own life was at risk.
Yet the attacks which he focused on were none of these.
He recognized that all these threats were merely extensions of a greater attack, a war on his personal faith in God.
We’re not David and we’re not citizens of the nation of Israel either.
So how does this psalm connect with our lives today?
How does it touch our own experience?
As followers of Christ, we are following him who is the ultimate Davidic king.
He himself was also taunted by thousands of people in Jerusalem who called for his execution.
They mocked him at his trial and taunted him as he hung on the cross (Matt 27:37-44).
“Over his head they put the charge against him, which read, ‘This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.’
Then two robbers were crucified with him, one on the right and one on the left.
And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, ‘You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself!
If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.’
So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, ‘He saved others; he cannot save himself.
He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him.
He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him.
For he said, I am the Son of God.’
And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way.”
(Matthew 27:37-44)
As followers of Christ, we also experience hostility and opposition.
From a numerical, statistical standpoint, social and vocal opposition to God is on the rise.
To follow Christ is to place ourselves in a place of increased isolation, marginalization, and opposition.
Are you okay with that?
It’s a difficult and painful place to be, especially when following God’s king puts you at odds with those closest to you – not only your neighbors and fellow Americans but your own immediate family, even your children.
How should we respond when we experience such discouraging and painful opposition for following Christ?
His people ask him to rescue them anyway.
But you, Yahweh, are a shield around me –
my glory and the lifter of my head.
With my voice to Yahweh, I cried out,
and he heard me from his holy hill.
Selah.
In response to his plummeting public approval numbers and family rejection, David turned his attention to God more intensely not less.
Though growing numbers questioned his closeness to God, he didn’t allow their skepticism to diminish his trust in God.
In response to growing criticism, David didn’t defend launch a public information campaign.
He spoke to God instead.
Though many people had turned against him, he turned to the only one he needed on his side – Yahweh himself.
Here David describes what Yahweh means to him in three ways.
He is a “shield around me.”
He is “my glory.”
He is “the lifter of my head.”
As a shield, David viewed God as a superior alternative to an actual military shield or a fortification to defend him against a physical assault.
Though his military advantage was greatly diminished, he knew that God was the only defense he would need.
As his glory, David viewed God as the source of his personal and royal reputation.
As such, he believed that no amount of propaganda or strikes against his reputation could undermine his role as God’s chosen king.
Despite the temporary smear campaign against him and threat on his life, David knew God would preserve his reputation.
As “the lifter of my head,” David viewed God as the one who would lift his head from both a slumped-shoulder, bowed-low position in a physical sense and from a humiliated, dethroned position in a royal sense.
He believed God would lift his spirits and restore him to the palace and throne in Jerusalem with his head held high.
Here David further describes his speaking to God as an external, vocal prayer, not an internal, quiet one.
He prayed out loud and very loudly, too.
This degree of unbashful, unreserved expression reveals the intense degree not only of David’s struggle and but of his trust in God as well.
To say God “heard me from his holy hill” reminds us that David was hiding outside Jerusalem.
He was away from Jerusalem, his palace, his home, and most importantly the mountain where he worshiped God.
Yet his closeness to God was not limited to a geographic location.
He affirmed God’s closeness even from his undisclosed location.
Does the growing unpopularity of trusting in God inspire you to ask God to deliver you or does it persuade you to side with the majority instead or to be afraid?
Are you afraid of what people will say and think about you for following his king?
Or do you speak with him with greater resolve and trust than before?
They rest well as they wait for him to rescue them.
I will lie down, and I will sleep,
I will wake up because Yahweh has sustained me.
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