Psalm Five "Morning Hope, in God's Character"

Scripture Reading Psalm 5:1-12

Introduction

Good morning, Redemption Church. My name is Noah Toney; I am the pastor here. If this is your first time, welcome; if you are watching on the live stream, I am glad you are here with us this morning. Here at Redemption Church, We Exist to proclaim the gospel and make disciples for the glory of God. If you have a copy of God's word, please turn to Psalm 5. I want to intentionally show you how the Psalms tell a unified story. To recap what we have learned already:

Psalm One teaches us about the blessed man who is the perfect citizen of God's kingdom, who walks in the way of the righteous and turns from the way of the wicked.

Psalm Two teaches us about God's Messiah-King, who will reign forever despite the raging nations.

Psalm Three teaches us about God's chosen king, David, who, when the nations are raging against him, responds in faith and trust in God.

Psalm Four teaches us that when God's people are in distress, we should reflect on God's past faithfulness to find future hope.

This week: Psalm Five teaches us that God's people can find comfort in the character of God.

Psalm 5:title-12

To the choirmaster: for the flutes. A Psalm of David. Give ear to my words, O Lord; consider my groaning. Give attention to the sound of my cry, my King and my God, for to you do I pray. O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch. For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers. You destroy those who speak lies; the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man. But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house. I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you. Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies; make your way straight before me. For there is no truth in their mouth; their inmost self is destruction; their throat is an open grave; they flatter with their tongue. Make them bear their guilt, O God; let them fall by their own counsels; because of the abundance of their transgressions cast them out, for they have rebelled against you. But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy, and spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may exult in you. For you bless the righteous, O Lord; you cover him with favor as with a shield.

Pastoral Prayer

Context

This morning we are in Psalm five. Before we jump in, I want to recap the history behind Psalms three and four. Psalm Five opens with the superscription, "To the choirmaster: for the flutes. A Psalm of David." This superscription is similar to what we read in Psalm four. Remember, the word "choirmaster" can be translated as "preeminent one." I believe this is David's clever way of preparing songs that God's people will sing for generations and one day will be sung by the Messiah King, the Son of David. As we learned last week, this is ultimately fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. He is the preeminent one who will lead God's people in worship forever. This PsalmPsalm was written for the flutes? This superscription also tells us that this is a Psalm of David, meaning that it was historical David who wrote this Psalm.

This superscription does not tell us much about the context. We do not have a clear or perfect understanding of the occasion when this PsalmPsalm was written. However, I believe that if we slow down and read the Psalms around Psalm Five, we will find some answers to help us better understand its meaning. By the way, this is a general rule of reading the bible well. If you are ever perplexed or confused about a passage of scripture and it is not making sense, slow down and look for contextual clues. The best skill for bible reading is slowing down. When we slow down, we notice more details, and the gaps are filled in our understanding of God's word.

Psalm five, on the surface, does not tell us much about itself, but when we read it slowly and with the psalms around it, we start to have a greater understanding of its setting and meaning. There is something special about Psalm five. It has more connection words to the first four psalms than any of the psalms that we have studied so far. Think about this in Psalm three, we learned about how Absalom stole the hearts of Israel, and they all rebelled against David. David is forced to leave into the wilderness, and it is the night while David is in the wilderness on the run that he prays Psalm three, saying, "O Lord, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me; many are saying of my soul, "There is no salvation for him in God." Selah But you, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head. I cried aloud to the Lord, and he answered me from his holy hill. Selah I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me. I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around."

In other words, David is in the wilderness and will not be afraid of his enemies, for he knows that Yahweh will sustain him. Therefore he will lay down and sleep and find rest in God. David mentions laying down and sleeping in Psalm three. We have this nighttime prayer of David in Psalm four, saying, "Be angry, and do not sin; ponder in your own hearts on your beds, and be silent. Selah Offer right sacrifices, and put your trust in the Lord." Then Psalm four ends with, "In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety." In other words, Psalms three and four are both nighttime Prayers that occur on the night of David's distress and in his dark hour of need. David wakes up the next morning. Enter Psalm Five.

Verses 1-3 A kings cry to the King

Psalm 5:1-3 “Give ear to my words, O Lord; consider my groaning. Give attention to the sound of my cry, my King and my God, for to you do I pray. O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.”

David rises in the morning, after he has laid down and slept, without fear of the thousands of enemies plotting to surround him in the night. David went to bed with confidence in God, and now we see him waking in the morning with this same confidence in God. David opens his mouth and calls out to God, saying, "O Lord: Consider my groaning." The ESV renders this word "groaning," but the KJV translates it as "meditations." This is important. What does the "blessed man" do in Psalm one? He meditates upon God's law, day and night. He is like a tree that has been transplanted from the wilderness next to ever-flowing streams of water. In the same way, David calls out to God, saying, "Hear me Yahweh, I am meditating upon you and your word. I am doing what you have asked of me, so i know that you will hear me when I pray to you."

Next, David says, "Give attention to the sound of my cry, my King and my God, for to you do I pray.O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.” This fascinates me. Look at the humility of David. If you ever wonder what genuine faith and humility look like, look at David. He is God's anointed king of Israel, yet he rises in the morning and sets his plea before a greater king. Think about how this whole situation started for David. People would come to see him set their case before David, and it was his job as the king to listen and to give a just ruling for his people. But as people would come to David, Absalom would steal their pleas and the people's hearts. But here, David is not the one who people bring their cases; no, David is the one who is going to a different King. David is looking to Yahweh as the real king of Israel. David is rising in the morning, and he is going to God. This time, no one will steal or distort the truth or who will swoop in and steal David's prayer. He is not going to an earthly king. No, David is looking to the real king over the whole earth. Our English Bibles render this "I prepare a sacrifice before you." There is no mention of a sacrifice in Hebrew, but this is an idiom. The most literal translation would be, "in the morning, I set it before you, and I will watch." This is a word picture of the priest before they start their day of sacrifices. The priest lays out the animals and the tools, and the supplies that are needed for their day before they start. David is saying, "I am laying out my case before you, and I know that you will receive it just like you receive the offerings from the priest."

This is how we are to approach God. Wake up in the morning, and set out your day before him like a priest setting out a sacrifice. Arise every morning, look up to the heavens and bring God your prayers. Set your case before Him. He is not too busy to hear you. Bring God things big and small. Set your case before him, and watch. Look and wait, expecting that he will do something. When you pray to God, he always answers us; if you are not watching, you will miss it.

Verses 4-6 There is no evil in God

Psalm 5:4-6 “For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers. You destroy those who speak lies; the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.”

As David is praying, he is setting out his case before God. In verses 4-6, David meditates upon God's good character and the reality that there is no evil in God. As we read this, I want to give you two ways to understand this. First, if you are a Christian and are in Christ Jesus, this should provide comfort and be encouraging to meditate upon. This should cause a reverence for God and prompt you to examine yourself. Second, if you are not in Jesus Christ and are prone to the evil and wicked patterns described, this should cause you to tremble in holy fear.

David is pondering rightly upon the justice and perfect holiness of God. "You are not a God who delights in wickedness." What a good and pure thing about God. The God of the bible is good and faithful, and just. He is perfect, he loves good, and he hates evil. God does not look upon sin and wickedness with joy. David is in distress; he is on the run from people trying to take his life. David finds comfort in the fact that God does not delight those acting wickedly against him. God does not find pleasure in evil plans or wicked schemes. If you are a believer and someone is setting themselves against you in an evil way, and you indeed are innocent in the situation, you, like David, can pray, "God I know that the enemy has no hope because you do not take pleasure in wickedness."

"evil may not dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes." Not only does God not delight in wickedness, but evil may not dwell with God. This is one of the most incredible things about God, but it also is our greatest problem. God is good and perfect; there can be no evil with him. He cannot look at sin, turn his head away, and pretend that he did not see it. If there was a judge who the court found guilty of murder, and he set the murderer free, we would be right to be outraged because the judge had acted wickedly. God is Holy and righteous. He is like all of the light in the universe has been gathered together and shines so bright that there is no place for a shadow to dwell with him. God is good and perfect; there is no evil within God's character. If you think that there is, then it is not God's good character that has a problem; it is yours.

David is hurting, and his son is trying to kill him. He has had to flee Jerusalem, where the tabernacle, the dwelling place of God, stands. I think David is reflecting, "you wicked ones think that you now have God on your side because you have the ark of the covenant, but I know Yahweh and God do not dwell with the wicked. So even though you are in the Holy city, it is irrelevant God has left the building. He is with his faithful ones in the wilderness where he has always been. God was in the wilderness with Abraham, Moses, and Joshua, and now he is with me. Absalom boasts about his beauty, he boasts about how many chariots and horses and wives he has, but I know that there is no boasting apart from God.

"you hate all evildoers. You destroy those who speak lies; the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man."  David is simply praying the truth. God hates all who do evil. This is not something that Christians run around and sing in the morning. This is not something we get tattooed on or wear on a t-shirt, but make no mistake, this is the Word of God. This in fact, is my greatest problem, and it is your greatest problem. I ask that you please do not tune me out for the next few minutes; give me your ear and listen to me because this is life and death. If you get this wrong, it could cost you your soul. Our greatest problem is not that the bank is going to take the house, or that we don't have a penny to our name, or that we have cancer or anything else. Our greatest problem is that God is righteous and holy, and we are not. Our greatest problem is that God is righteous and holy, and we are not. This is the gospel; in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Everything was perfect, everything was good, and it was paradise. God set man in a garden, and God dwelt among man and woman; it was perfect and complete. Then Man was deceived by the serpent and intentionally and purposefully disobeyed God and broke his command. As a result, sin entered the world, and the intimate relationship between God and man was shattered. Because God is just and Holy, it is against his character to not punish sin. God's justice and perfect righteousness require that he punish sinners. God's good character cannot tolerate sin. It is a common phrase today "Hate the sin, love the sinner." This is commonly how we view sin, but I want to challenge you that this is not how God looks at sin. God abhors wickedness; God hates, detests, and stands in stark opposition to all sin. The total weight and wrath of God stand opposed to sinners. How then shall we come into the courts of the Lord? How, then, are we to dwell again with God? Where is our hope? What hope do we have?

Verses 7-8 "But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house. I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you. Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies; make your way straight before me."

For David, the attributes of God that are his greatest problem are also where he finds his greatest hope and joy. God's attributes stand in this mysterious tension. On the one hand, God's justice and holiness demand payment. It demands satisfaction. God's righteousness and holiness stand over us like a high mountain that cannot be climbed; we are not able. We do not have the strength nor the volition to make the journey. If we tried to climb this mountain, it would prove too difficult, and we would fail and perish. It is a long treacherous journey. Where does David find his hope?

If our curse is God's wrath, then the only remedy can be found in God's love. "Though the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house." David looks up to God in the morning and says, "I am estranged from Jerusalem. I am in the wilderness with thousands of enemies around me. All hope appears lost; I see no hope. Yet, even then, I find my hope in God's steadfast love!" God's "hesed" love is the word we learned last week. God's covenant faithful love. God has made a covenant with his people, and he will keep it. Again, this could also be translated as "though the abundance of your loving kindness." Christian, do you see the abundance of God's love that has been poured out to you? Here today, God is extending you his abundance of steadfast love. We do not understand how rich, deep, and perfect this love is.

God's love is complete, it is flawless, and it is pure. Just like David, this is our only hope to enter the house of the Lord. Our lives are like the wilderness we are in, and all around us, standing ready to condemn us is our sin and our shame. Enemies of our own making surround us. David looks up to the heavens, looking for God as his righteous King. When David calls upon the King, the King bestows love and mercy. For us, the only way that we can enter God's dwelling place is through his mercy and steadfast love, which in the New Testament we call grace.This abundance of grace and love flows freely from the fountain of Jesus Christ, our God, and King. We are enslaved by sin and death, and when we call upon the King, we are given the true and better King. The real person of Jesus Christ, who was the fulfillment of all of God's attributes. He was perfect goodness, perfect light, fully human, and fully man. He was true God of true God; he was perfectly wise, perfectly beautiful, and the sum of all created things could not compare to the worth and value of Jesus Christ. If the justice of God is our greatest problem, then Jesus Christ is the greatest solution. From the abundance of His steadfast love, came down to earth, he was born of a virgin, being so marvelous, so glorious at his birth the angels in the heavens declared the glory of God. He lived the perfect life, walked in perfect righteousness, served God perfectly, and kept all of God's laws completely. He, unlike us, did not deserve God's judgment. He did not deserve God's wrath. He was spotless. And yet, because of His great love for us, he walked to the cross. He walked to the cross, and the judge of the universe was counted as a common criminal. The perfect King of glory and righteousness as slandered, maligned, mocked, scorned, and nailed to a tree. As Jesus was on the cross, he took the full weight and fury of God's wrath. He took the cup intended for us, and he drank it down to the dregs. Every inequity, every sin, every secret bad intention of our hearts, Jesus paid for them from the abundance of his steadfast love so that we might be reunited into fellowship with him. This is the gospel, and it is good news indeed.

"I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you. Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies; make your way straight before me." David trusting in God's steadfast love, looks to God's temple and bows towards it in holy fear. It is like David knows that he cannot enter it yet, but one day he will be able to go into the temple and worship the Lord completely perfectly. This knowledge gives him a reverential fear towards God. This should do the same for us. If you only knew the cost and the debt that had to be paid, you would stop what you were doing and prostrate yourself on the floor in humble submission to God. Because of this holy fear and reverence, David looks to God and says, "Lead me, in your righteousness because of my enemies, make your way straight before me." The Christian life is dangerous. Make no mistake about this. We are constantly surrounded by temptations and idols on every side that only want to steal our hearts away from God. We are surrounded by powers and principalities of darkness that cannot even be named and that wish to deceive us and walk us freely down the road to hell. We need to have the same mind as the Psalmist, look to Christ, and say, "Lead me, Guide me O God. I cannot make it on my own." Hold my hand, precious savior, walk with me, talk with me, teach me the way that I should walk, and may I never depart from it. This is the level of intimacy we need to have with Jesus through the Holy Spirit, or else we are just wandering around aimlessly in the wilderness.

Verse 9-10 "For there is no truth in their mouth; their inmost self is destruction; their throat is an open grave; they flatter with their tongue. Make them bear their guilt, O God; let them fall by their own counsels; because of the abundance of their transgressions cast them out, for they have rebelled against you."

In verses nine and ten, David reflects upon the enemies that surround him. Look at verse nine "For there is no truth in their mouth; their inmost self is destruction; their throat is an open grave; they flatter with their tongue. " David sees the wicked and says they are consumed with lies. Their speech reflects lies and evil. Think about all his enemies at the meeting with Absalom and Ahitophel, who are plotting to kill him. The words in their mouth are evil; why? Because their inmost self is destruction. They are speaking evil against God's anointed King because they do not know God and do not have the life that God provides. By the way, this is not only an Old Testament thing. Jesus says almost the exact same thing in Matthew 15:18, "But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone." In other words, Jesus understands that the way we speak reflects how we feel on the inside. If we are angry on the inside, we will speak words of anger. If we are sad, we will speak words of sadness; if we are dead inside, our words will be rotten and a reflection of our dead hearts. But if we are made alive in Christ, then our words have tremendous power. Our words can reflect life, our words can reflect joy, hope, peace, love, and gentleness, and they can be used to encourage and build up the downtrodden.

Verse Ten: "Make them bear their guilt, O God; let them fall by their own counsels; because of the abundance of their transgressions cast them out, for they have rebelled against you."

David looking at the wickedness of his enemies, cries out, "make them bear their guilt." This is a cry for justice. This language makes some people uncomfortable, and I think that it is because they don't fully understand it. David is not crying out for God to take vengeance on the innocent, for that would be wicked. David cries out, "do not let evil ones escape judgment." November 5th, 2017, I stood in a pulpit and preached. And on the car ride home, the news broke that there had been a mass shooting at a small baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Devon Kelly killed 26 people and wounded 22 more before running away and being chased down and killed. Many of his victims were women and children. The next Sunday morning, I was scheduled to preach at a very small Baptist church, similar in makeup and demographics to the church in Texas.

I got in the pulpit, stood up, opened the Psalter, and prayed from Psalm five. It is good, and it is just, to pray for justice and never regret it or feel ashamed of it. Look at what else David says "let them fall by their own council's." David is not even praying for God to destroy them; he is just saying they have made their beds, now let them lie in them. This is how sin works. We fall by our own councils; we can be our own worst enemy. Those who live by the sword die by the sword. Those who drink a case of beer a day ultimately die from their own councils. Those prone to violence and robbery, when they rob the wrong person and get killed, their councils destroy them. We often depict God as someone who is wrathful and is standing over us with lighting bolts just waiting for us to slip up, then he is going to, like a cartoon, strike us and turn us into dust. But this is not how the Bible depicts God's judgment. The Bible depicts judgment not as God striking us, but as God handing us over to ourselves. We do not need God to destroy us; we are pretty good at destroying ourselves, and all of human history can attest that we are our worst enemies. "because of the abundance of their transgressions cast them out, for they have rebelled against you." This is just a reminder that when we sin against each other, we are not only sinning against our fellow man but against God.

Verse 11-12 "But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy, and spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may exult in you. For you bless the righteous, O Lord; you cover him with favor as with a shield."

In verse 10, David cries out for justice against the wicked, but in verse 11, David confesses that those who take refuge in God do not have to worry about God's judgment. The wicked have no place of refuge, no place of safety. But those who trust in God, he is our refuge. When you realize the colossal scale of deliverance we have in Jesus, it makes you want to sing for joy! This is why we sing, church because we have a great savior king who loves us and protects us from the evil one. Therefore, let us extol his great name. Let us lift the name of Jesus as the perfect lamb that takes away the sin of the world. Extol your King, cherish him in your hearts and your speech, for he is preeminent in all things. God blesses the righteous, and he covers us with favor like a shield. Even in the wilderness, we know that if we have Christ, we have everything we need.