Sermon Tone Analysis

Psalm Three

“The Lord Our Shield and Glory”

Introduction: Good Morning Redemption Church.

It is good to see you all this morning.

I love seeing our people gather together.

I love the fellowship that takes place in our service.

This truly is a church where our people love one another with the affections of Christ Jesus.

If you are new to Redemption Church or are watching online for the first time, my name is Noah Toney, and I am the pastor here.

Here at Redemption Church, we exist to proclaim the gospel and make disciples for the Glory of God.

That is our vision statement, and that is what we are all about.

If you have your bible, please turn to Psalm three.

We are continuing our summer sermon series called “Summer in the Psalms.”

So far, we have looked at an overview of the Psalter.

The Psalms tell a story.

They are not just a collection of individual poems, but they have been arranged in a way that when they are read together, they tell a story of redemption.

Then we looked at Psalm one, which describes the perfect citizen of God’s kingdom.

He is this “blessed man” and the ideal person who loves God’s word, delights in God, and does not listen to the ways of the wicked.

Then last week, we looked at Psalm two.

Psalm two is like David zooms out from the blessed man and examines all of the kingdoms of the earth at once.

Last week we learned that God’s Messiah-King will rule and reign in spite of the nation's plans to rebel against him.

That is the message of Psalm two, and now as we go into Psalm three, we will see a first-person example of the nation’s raging against God’s anointed king.

Read the Passage:

3 A PSALM OF DAVID, WHEN HE FLED FROM ABSALOM HIS SON.

1 O LORD, how many are my foes!

Many are rising against me;

2 many are saying of my soul,

“There is no salvation for him in God.” Selah

3 But you, O LORD, are a shield about me,

my glory, and the lifter of my head.

4 I cried aloud to the LORD,

and he answered me from his holy hill.

Selah

5 I lay down and slept;

I woke again, for the LORD sustained me.

6 I will not be afraid of many thousands of people

who have set themselves against me all around.

7 Arise, O LORD!

Save me, O my God!

For you strike all my enemies on the cheek;

you break the teeth of the wicked.

8 Salvation belongs to the LORD; your blessing be on your people!

Selah

Pastoral Prayer:

Jump In: if you can think back to the first sermon on the psalms, I compared the Psalms to individual pictures in a photo album.

If you have a picture, it can tell you a lot of information, but if you turn over the back of the picture, it has writing on it.

The writing often has the names of the people in the photos, but it also could mark the occasion, and this little bit of information fills in the detail of the picture.

In the same way, Psalm three gives us that information.

Look at the superscription above verse one, “A PSALM OF DAVID, WHEN HE FLED FROM ABSALOM HIS SON.”

These superscriptions in our English Bibles do not have verse numbers; they are used more like titles.

But these are in the ancient Hebrew; there is not one manuscript of the psalms that historians have that do not have these superscriptions.

This tells us that whoever wrote the psalms, mostly David, intends for us to read the Psalms in light of the referenced historical event.

This superscription tells us that this psalm is meant to be read with the story of Absalom’s revolt in mind.

For those who might not know the story, allow me to give a summary of the events leading up to when David wrote this Psalm and prayed this prayer.

You have the story of David.

He was the youngest of his brothers, he was small, and he was just a boy.

Out of his twelve brothers, he was the least impressive; he was so unimpressive that when the prophet Samuel came to his father’s house to look for the next king of Israel, they did not even bother calling up instead they left him in the field to watch the sheep.

David is anointed as the future king of Israel while he is still a young man.

But King Saul is still on the throne; latter on in the story, David comes forward and kills Goliath, but after that, David started to gain fame in the eyes of the people.

But David never sought his fame, he would not lift a finger against King Saul because it was God who had put Saul on the throne.

Saul grew jealous of David, and over and over again we have these stories of Saul trying to kill David.

David had many chances to kill Saul but would not lift his finger against him.

Ultimately Saul is killed in battle.

David becomes King over the nation of Israel.

When David is king, we have a climax with God making a covenant with David.

God comes to David and promises David that he will have an heir of someone from his lineage who will go after him and will be raised up as the true and better King of Israel forever (2 Samuel 7).

After God makes this promise to David, it looks like David might be the perfect king of Israel; the immediate chapter after God’s promise to David is a list of military victory’s that David won as the king.

This list illustrates how David defeats the enemies to the west, the north and the south.

For the first time in Israel’s history, David is expanding the borders of Israel and casting out those who before him failed to.

For a while, it looks like David might be the true messiah, King.

Then we have David’s sin with Bathsheba.

David sees Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife, and he desires her, and he takes her for himself.

And to cover it up, he uses his power to murder Uriah in the heat of battle.

This is a grievous sin; God has given David everything he has asked for, yet David wants more.

As a result of David’s unfaithfulness, God comes and speaks to David through the prophet Nathan and promises that he will raise evil from within David’s own house and that for all of David’s life, he would battle the surrounding nations and never see peace.

Enter Absalom.

Absalom was David’s second-oldest son.

David’s oldest son Amnon rapes Absalom's sister Tamar, and this makes Absalom furious.

Absalom makes a plan and kills his half-brother Amnon.

This is just the beginning of the familial strife in David’s family.

Then Absalom is never dealt with for killing his half-brother; there is no reconciliation and no justice.

David sits passively and does not deal with all of the injustice in his own house, and Absalom starts to steal the hearts of the people of Israel.

When people would come to see David, Absalom, who was handsome, would stand at the city gate and stop people on their way to the king.

When Absalom stopped people, he would lie and manipulate and deceive them into believing that the king was not interested in their dealings, and over time the people believed him, and Absalom stole the hearts of the people of Israel through politicking.

Absalom gathered many horses and chariots and devised a plan to send secret messengers through the whole kingdom.

Eventually, they were going to eventually announce that Absalom had been made king.

When David hears about this plan, he knows that he must flee from Jerusalem, so he takes up and flees into the wilderness.

When David flees, he hears that one of his chief councilors Ahithophel is siding with Absalom.

This is a big deal because Ahitiphels council was counted as the word of God in that day.

He had a well-known reputation for being shrewd, smart, and crafty, everything he put his mind to happen.

And now he has sided with Absalom.

When David hears that Ahitiphel is against him, 2 Samuel says that David stopped and “asked God, please turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness.”

Then coincidently, David also meets Hushi, a close friend and counselor to David.

Hushi wants to follow David into the wilderness, but David tells him that he will be a burden on him.

Instead, David tells Hushi to return to Jerusalem and go serve Absalom so that he might undermine Ahithophel’s council.

This is what he does.

Absalom calls together a meeting to make a plan to defeat David and Ahithophel's plan is to go immediately gather 12000, men and run after David, burst into the camp, send it into confusion and slay David with the sword.

And after David is dead Ahithophel says that the people with David will come back to Absalom like the bride coming to her husband.

Which is interesting.

Almost like there is a relationship between the king of Israel and the people of God?

So when the time comes Hushi gives his council that it is unwise to pursue David and that if Absalom lost his first battle the people will remember it as the day that their new King Absalom lost his first battle to David the mighty warrior.