Psalm 3 “Saved By Grace”

Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ The Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS, 06 April 2014, 30 Nov. 2025 Omitting greyed-out text should bring presentation time down around 45 minutes.

Introduction

As we look at Psalm 3 there are a couple of things that I would like to introduce it with.

• First, is just to mention that when there is a superscription in the Hebrew and Greek versions of the Psalms, they make that superscription verse 1 and then they make the beginning of the text of the psalm verse 2, so, at some point if my verse numbering is one verse off from your Bible that's probably why. I'm just trying to correlate this all to our English Bible verse system but I may slip up from time to time.

• This is our first Psalm with a superscription. It tells us that the psalm is a is a psalm - ‘mismor’ means that it's accompanied by stringed instruments or some kind of music.

• The superscription also tells us that it's David's psalm, as in, he's the writer.

• And it even gives us the occasion of this Psalm: when he was a fugitive from his own son. 2 Samuel 15 gives us the story of David's son, Absalom, who usurped the kingship. David did not intend to make his son Absalom king, but Absalom stood out in the gateway of the city of Jerusalem, and whenever somebody would come in with a court case and wanted to get King David to help them, Absalom would tell them, “David's not going to help you. But tell me what your case is, anyway, and I'll see what I can do. And hey, you know, you are right! You ought to win this case. But I know my father, David, would never give you the win in this case. But if I were king I would give you the win.” In doing this, he won over the hearts of the people of Israel and turned them against his father David. Then he got one of David's most-trusted counselors, Ahithophel, to help him become King. Absalom threw a big coronation party, off in Hebron, and basically crowned himself King. Meanwhile, David realized, “Absalom is going to be ruthless. He's already been totally disrespectful, and he's not going to cut me any slack.” David realized, “I've got to run for my life.” So, he took off out of the city of Jerusalem across the Kidron Brook over the Mount of Olives and out into the wilderness to escape from being killed by his own son who was trying to forcibly take over the kingdom. So this is the circumstance in which this psalm was written – at least it's the situation that it is about.

• Now, as I mentioned in last week's sermon, the Psalms can be applied in three ways:

  • You can look at it in terms of the situation in which it was originally written: David fleeing from his son.

  • We also can see the psalms generally as the words of - and in terms of the life of - Jesus, the Messiah, David being a type or a precursor of the kind of life that Jesus would lead and the kind of issues that Jesus would deal with as the Messiah.

  • But then we also can apply this to ourselves.

• This is a trouble song. David's in trouble. And we can apply this to ourselves when we are in trouble and under stress. There are times when other people have undermined us and we know they've done it purposefully. There are people who don't like you and they're going to be mean to you. There are people who will violate you, verbally, cut you down with what they say, maybe psychologically, maybe even physically. And when you bear the brunt of that kind of abuse, you begin to wonder, “Do I have any dignity? Do I have any hope? Does God offer me any hope? Is there any way out of this?” This psalm speaks directly to these kind of feelings and issues.

• It's an intensely personal song: there are 17 first-person personal pronouns (“I/me”) in just eight verses. There’s also the personal name for God, which is probably spelled in most of your Bibles as LORD, in all capital letters. In Hebrew it's the letters Y. H. V/W. H. (V and W are the same letter in Hebrew), pronounced “Yahweh/Jehovah,” depending on whether you're Asian or German. But His name, His personal name, is in almost every verse. It is a very personal psalm about me and God, whose name was known to David.

• It's also related to the next psalm; Psalm 4 is kind of on an evening song, after the conflict is over. Psalm 3 is more of a morning song, before the conflict begins, getting prepared.

• It's also the first psalm with a ‘Selah’. There's three of them in this psalm, and there's a wide range of interpretation of what the word ‘Selah’ means (see appendix).

  • Some people say it's pointless to try to figure it out.

  • It seems a lot of good commentators say this is kind of an instruction to lift up your voice - maybe modulate up in the key of the song, or maybe get louder, or maybe start singing or something. Raising the tone.

  • There are others that say this is indicating a repeat.

  • Others suggest it's a pause, to pause and reflect on what has just been said. Others have suggested that this pause would be an instrumental interlude, where the flutes or the trumpets or the strings (depending on which commentator you read) do a little instrumental tune, where you can pause and reflect on what's just been said.

  • I like what William Plumer said in his commentary about the Selah. He said that Selah is “designed to fix the minds of the godly on the matter which has just been spoken of… as well as to regulate the singing in such a manner as to make the music correspond to the … sentiment.”

  • Whatever the Selah is, it’s traditional not to read the word “Selah “aloud when you are reading a Psalm out loud.

• The organization of this psalm can be looked at in terms of the three Selah’s. (Maybe there's also a fourth section that doesn't end with Selah.) As I was looking at it, I was struck by the way there’s these three ideas of introducing a subject, talking about a rising motion and then talking about salvation. You can see the three iterations of those ideas:

  • introducing the oppressors, they're rising, saying there's no salvation,

  • introducing Jehovah, He lifts my head, I call; He will answer in a saving way.

  • What do I do? I wake up. There's his own person's rising nature because he's been saved, he’s been upheld, sustained by the Lord.

v.1 How should we respond to stress that's building up uncontrollably?

• For some of the people in our own church, war is a very possible situation that you could be in, where people are actually shooting at each other. There's a situation where you can't control the guns that are shooting at each other, and you could get killed. The stress in an environment like that can be tremendous, and it’s commonly understood that post-traumatic stress disorder is something that soldiers really do experience.

• It could be in a job. You're working in the office, and everybody's shifting the blame to you. Everybody's shifting their responsibilities to you. You can't possibly fulfill everybody's expectations. They're threatening you with losses or problems if you don't perform the way you should, and the stress gets heavier and heavier until you can't control it. How do you handle that kind of stress?

• Politics; for the last several years we have been seeing the freedoms which were standards of our republic consistently eroded and, some of us worry how much more is going to be eroded? Are my children even going to be able to grow up in a free country? Are my grandchildren going to live in a free country? Or are they going to all be slaves?

• Family issues can be overwhelming too: The pressure, whether it's from unreasonable demands from a spouse or parents, or overwhelming needs of parents that are just getting more and more difficult to deal with, or it could be the children are out of control and loud and making messes and dirtying diapers - and it seems like it just compounds and gets worse and worse and harder and harder as the day goes on. How do you deal with that kind of stress when it builds up?

• It could be in your own personal life: there are sins that you are aware of - that you hate - and yet you keep doing. You vowed you would never do such a thing again, and yet the circumstances fall out, you fall to it, and you despair. “Will I ever conquer this sin in my life? Will God ever be able? Do I have any hope before God?”

• We all deal with uncontrollable stresses and enemies in some way or another, and this Psalm tells us how we can respond.

Call upon the name of the Lord

• The first thing we need to do - the very first thing - is the very first word of this song. What is it? “Yahweh/LORD” is the very first word out of David's mouth when he is in experiencing this out-of-control stress. The name of the Lord is the first thing out of his mouth, and that's a lesson to us all when we're in trouble. We need to begin by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus.

• Then he talks to God about his problem; he tells Him these “oppressors/afflictors/adversaries/ troublers/foes” are increasing - they're getting more and more, and they're rising up against me. Oh the pressure is getting higher; my enemies are getting more numerous; I can't handle this, God; it's too much for me! Please help.

• We see in 2 Samuel 15 that the conspiracy was strong: “for the people increase continually with Absalom.” That's David's situation: more and more and more people are going over to Absalom, and David is losing control of his own kingdom. But David has a clear-headed sense of the truth of the matter. He complains about the “many,” but he's complaining to the One - to the Lord, and when we look at that “One” vs. the “many” as in a seesaw balance, we see that the weight of the “many” - all the people out there, all the problems out there is much lighter than the weight of the One True God. We need to consider that. For many of us it's easy to fear that the weight of the “many” is way stronger and more powerful than the weight of the One God, but David realizes, No, the one God is greater/heavier. If He is on the seesaw across from the “many,” He's going to be the one that goes down, and they're the ones that are going to go up, because He is “stronger/heavier/greater” than any number of people. We need to keep that that bedrock truth in our minds when we when we encounter these kinds of overwhelming stresses: the One is greater than the “many.”

Challenge what “the many” say:

• They're saying, “There's no deliverance for him. There's no deliverance coming his way from God.”

• That “deliverance/salvation/help” is the Hebrew word Yeshua ¹

• Gerald Wilson, in his commentary, notes that the concept behind the Hebrew word for salvation (shua’) is a “removing of restrictions and giving room to breathe.”

• But the enemies are saying David is never going to get that space; it's just going to get tighter and tighter and tighter until he just explodes or squishes or whatever. He's never going to get breathing room. Have you ever wondered that in the stresses that you experience? “Am I ever going to get any breathing room from this?” “No” is what the enemy is going to tell you.

• But there's an irony in here for those of us who have read the New Testament: What is the name of Jesus? It is Yeshua; that's “Jesus” as the Hebrew name - that's what Mary and Joseph named Him. Jesus is just a Latin form of that Hebrew name Yeshua. The enemy says, “There's no yeshua from God.” Well we know, yes there is; yes - there was!

• David, in the midst of his situation had reason to wonder.

  1. He has committed adultery with Bathsheba.

  2. He has committed the murder of Bathsheba's husband.

  3. And, how many other of the Ten Commandments had he broken? He has reason to believe that he should stand condemned before God because he has been in flagrant violation of God's law - some of the most basic of God's laws.

  4. Is there any hope for someone who has broken God's law in such awful ways as David?

  5. That’s why he’s escaping over the hills away from Jerusalem. Then this crazy man, Shemaiah, comes out and starts accusing David: “There is no hope for you in God! You have sinned against God! God hates you! You have killed people!”- and he's throwing rocks and dirt at David as David goes down the trail. David's bodyguard says, “Should I just go up and kill him?” David says, “No, I deserve this.”

• But we need to ask ourselves, “Does the ‘many’ define what is true? Do their accusations hold that there is no hope for you in God?”

  1. Whether that's the Devil himself speaking right into your mind, saying, “You cannot be forgiven. You will never overcome this one. You will never escape from this pressure,”

  2. or whether it is other people saying these kinds of things, do the “many” know the way to be safe? They don't even know God's name. Here David calls Him Yahweh, but what did the enemies call him? “Your God…his God.” They don't even know His personal name. The enemies don't know what the truth is. The adversaries don't know the way to safety and security - to the “breathing room” that God offers us!

• So what are the lies that you're up against? We're all up against some kind of lies. Take heed to this Psalm, because truth comes from God; it doesn't come from the “many.” It doesn't come from the radio and the TV – now, there may be some good Christian speakers who do speak some truth on the radio or the TV or the Internet or whatever, but we need to be very careful not to believe what the many say just because there are many people saying it.

  1. “As long as our dignity and honor come from what we are able to do and accomplish or from what others around us think, we are unprotected from attack. Only God provides the shield that is both before and behind.” ~Gerald Wilson, NIV Application Commentary

• Only God can give us that security that we're looking for. Now we have a selah, and we need to switch gears and begin stating the truth.

State the Truth

David states several things that are true:

• He says, “You, O Lord, are a shield about me [or beside me].” He's quoting God's Word to Abram in Genesis 15, after Abram has been attacked by a coalition of five allied armies, and Abram, together with the slaves of his own household, attacked those five armies and beat them and got the spoils from them. God spoke to Abram and said, “Do not fear, Abram, I am a shield to you; your reward shall be very great.” David now says, “I believe that God's Word to Abraham was true” (God is a shield to those who take refuge in Him). I will claim that truth for myself because God told Abraham that.

  • Moses says the same thing in Deuteronomy 33: “Blessed are you, O Israel. Who is like you, a people saved [There's that “Yeshua/saved” word again] by the LORD, Who is the shield of your help and the sword of your majesty, so your enemies will cringe before you, and you will tread upon their high places.”

  • In the use of the word “shield” throughout the Bible, the shield cannot really be separated from weaponry, so the concept that God is the shield implies that He is your offensive weapons as well as the defensive ones. God is the “shield of your help.” He is your salvation. Your enemies will lose.

  • Earlier in David's life he said the same thing: “God is my rock; in him I take refuge - my shield and the Horn of my salvation.” This saying in Samuel 22 was after David had been hiding in the cave of Adulum, and Saul with his army had been scouring the wilderness looking for David and trying to kill him. David is hidden away in this cave, trusting in God to deliver him - and he wakes up in the morning, and Saul hasn't killed him! Saul goes back home in peace! David knows from past experience that God is his shield, and he trusts that he will continue to be his shield in the future

  • In the New Testament, the only time we find a shield is in the armor of God in Ephesians 6: “the shield of faith.” God is our shield; He is the one who will protect us from being overwhelmed by the enemy. We appropriate that protection by faith; we trust Him to shield us.

  • Now, we also see in Ephesians 6 the offensive weapon of the “sword of the Spirit,” and “salvation” shows up again in “the helmet of salvation.” The truth is also what you gird your loins with - the truth that the many is not more powerful than the One; the heavier one on the seesaw is God!

  • We also see in 1 Peter 1:5 a verb that's translated “shielded through faith” (NIV). “We are shielded with God's power until the coming of the salvation that's ready to be revealed in the last time.” You see those Psalm 3 elements again there: “faith,” “shielded,” “salvation.”

• God is a shield; He's also “my glory”

  • When I survey the Psalms, it appears to me that, in the parallel statements where glory occurs, it seems to be referring to himself - his inner-self, who he really is.

    • Psalm 7 “Let him trample my life and lay my glory in the dust [life and glory are synonymous there]; my heart is glad my glory rejoices [heart and glory are synonymous terms there].” God is my glory. He made me who I am and has given glory to me.

  • As we look at the way glory is used in the New Testament, we see it's reciprocal; when we glorify God, God gives glory to us.

    • Jesus’ high-priestly prayer: John 17: “All things that are mine are Yours and Yours are mine. I have been glorified in them [the disciples].” The disciples are glorifying Jesus, and He's sharing with them the glory that He has from the Father.

    • John 5: Jesus tells the Jews “How can you believe when you receive glory from one another and you do not seek the glory that is from God?” They should be glorifying God and receiving glory from God, but instead they're giving glory to each other and receiving glory from each other.

    • Romans 5 “We've obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we exult in the hope of the glory of God.” Paul and his fellow apostles are hoping for God's glory to come to them even as they glorify God.

    • 1 Peter 1: “So the proof of your faith being more precious than gold which is perishable may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

    • 1 Peter 4: “If you're reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God is on you.” You uphold the name of Christ, and you're reviled for it, but the Spirit of glory rests on you! When we give our glory to God, He will give His glory to us.

• He's “the lifter of my head [the one lifting my head].”

  • “Lifting” is a present tense participle in Hebrew, so he's talking about what's happening right now. This is what God is doing right now, even as David anticipates more pressure - even as David is in the midst of difficulty right now, God is lifting his head.

  • I see this as related to the to the “rising up” theme that I mentioned earlier: the enemies are rising up; he's calling God to rise up, and now he himself is lifted up by God - the God who upholds him.

Salvation will come

• “I will see Him,” [verse five] This is a direct rebuttal to what the enemies have said. They've said, “There's no salvation for him in God.” David says, “No, my glory - my head - is being lifted up by Him.” He's directly contradicting the lies of the adversaries. That is a great example for us.

• David is barefooted and bare headed as he heads out from Jerusalem. He has been shamed by his own son, and yet what he's seeking is the lifting of his head – which, figuratively, would be a public demonstration of support from the King of Kings.

• In Genesis 40, the cup-bearer had that dream and told Joseph about his dream, and Joseph said, “Pharaoh is going to lift up your head and restore you to your office.” This is what David is anticipating when he says that God is the lifter of his head: an expectation that he will be restored to his office of king.

• See the same progression as Psalm 3 in Psalm 27: “One thing I've asked from the LORD and that will I seek: that I might dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, for in the day of trouble He will conceal me in His tabernacle. In the secret place of His tent He will hide me, and He will lift me up on a rock, and now my head will be lifted up above my enemies around me, and I will sing praises to the Lord.” He's trusting God - believing that the One is greater than the “many;” he's seeking after the One, and he's finding refuge and is being concealed in the day of trouble. Then he'll be lifted up and saying praises - giving glory to the LORD.

• Jesus warned us that there's trouble coming, and in Luke 21, in the Olivet Discourse, on the same mountain that David is fleeing over, Jesus says, “They will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with power and great glory, but when these things begin to take place [when these afflictions and troubles begin to take place], lift up your heads because your redemption is drawing near!” We too can lift up our heads because we expect Jesus's return to make all things right.

• Now in verse four we have a little bit of debate among different versions of the Bible. some people put this in the English past tense or perfect tense (“I was crying out and He answered” or “I cried out and He answered”), and there is certainly truth in that in the past: David has cried out to God for help and God has answered him. So there's nothing necessarily wrong with that translation; it fits with the rest of Scripture. But, due to the Hebrew grammar there, I think that it might be more technically precise to make it future tense². Before his deliverance, he's saying, “I will cry, and He will answer.” This is a statement of faith.

• He says, “I'll cry with my voice.” That phrase “with my voice” is omitted in some English translations, but in the Hebrew it is actually placed first in the sentence, and that's an emphatic position. Some people think it means he cried out loud – not merely in secret prayer, but he's crying out loud for God's deliverance. It reminds me of the story of Jesus, when He was on this same road David was, but going the other way on His triumphal entry from the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem and being received as king by the people, and the people were crying “Hosanna [save us]” and giving him glory as the Messiah, and the priests said, “Shut these children up! This is blasphemous for them to be saying this!” and Jesus said, “If they don't cry out, the rocks themselves would cry out.” When we are in trouble, let it be your voice that cries out; don't wait for rocks to go crying out for you! Take the opportunity that God gives you when you're under stress to cry out to Him. He loves to hear when you call, and He loves to answer, because He loves our faith. He loves it when we express our faith in Him and call out for His salvation. “Without faith it's impossible to please God,” Hebrews 11 tells us.

• “He will answer/He heard.” The Hebrew word for “answer” is anan, which is normally translated “answer.” We're not alone and defenseless against the “many;” the One that we cry out to will heed when we cry out to Him.

• “He'll answer from His holy hill - from his har qidshu, literally the “mountain of His Holiness.”

• We've already seen that hill in Psalm 2:6.

• There's a literal sense in this. When David fled away from Jerusalem, the priest started following after him with the ark, and David said, “No, go back into Jerusalem leave the Ark there; keep worshiping God there while I'm gone.” So David, can see the hill of Jerusalem on the other side of the valley and knows that God’s ark and His presence are still there, and He's still going to answer when called upon.

• We can also take this figuratively, that the mountain of holiness symbolizes God’s separation from man - how much greater He is than we are, both morally and in terms of His power.

• In the visions that God gave to John and to Ezekiel, when they're taken up to heaven, there's this high mountain involved in the vision that that shows them the separation, that this is heaven, nowhere near what's going on upon the surface of the earth.

• After another selah we have this interesting comment, “I lay down, and I woke up.”

  • This can be talking about sleep.

• In Psalm 17, it seems to seems to be speaking of sleep, “I shall behold Your face and righteousness; I'll be satisfied with Your likeness when I awake.”

• Proverbs 6 seems to be talking about sleep, too: “When you walk about, the command­ments will guide you. When you sleep, they will watch over you. And when you awake, they will talk to you.” (It's kind-of like Deuteronomy 6, “Talk about these Command­ments when you sit down and rise up and you walk by the way…” God's truth is going to inform you throughout the course of your daily life.)

• The concept of sleeping is also applied figuratively to death

  • 1 Thessalonians 5: “God has not destined us for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we're awake or asleep we will live together with Him.”

  • Job said, “Man dies; he lies down… does not rise… [Those are all the same verbs as verse 5 here in Psalm 2] He will not awake or be aroused out of the sleep.” Job is talking about death here, and that applies to David's past: there was that time when he went to sleep in the cave while Saul was after him, and Saul didn't find him and kill him, so David woke up the next morning and survived.

• There's also a veiled prophecy of Jesus's death and resurrection. A number of the earlier church fathers commented that this is also saying that the Messiah is going to lay His life down, and He's going to take it up again, and this is part of our salvation.

• Why could David fall asleep in that cave when Saul was chasing after him? Why can David fall asleep now, while he is running away from his son? Why could Jesus lay His life down and go to the cross? Because they expected God to sustain them! “God will uphold me.”

The LORD sustains

• We can't rely upon other people to uphold us. The prophets in 2 Kings reminded the Kings of Israel, “If you rely on other men, It’s gonna be like leaning on top of a sharp stick. They're not a reliable source to put your weight on; they'll just pierce your hand! The prophet Isaiah told King Hezekiah of Judah that King Sennacherib of Assyria, the greatest king in the world with the biggest army in the world, he's only got “an arm of flesh but with us [Jews trapped in the city of Jerusalem] we have the Lord our God to help us.” Which is greater, the “many” or the One? The people believed that the One was greater; they believed Hezekiah's words and trusted in the LORD, and what happened? The LORD destroyed that vast army of Assyrians, and the surviving Assyrians ran home in shame.

• “[W]e will not be hurled headlong because the Lord is the one who holds [our] hand” (Psalm 37).

• We see that concept of the upholding, sustaining power of our Lord on into the New Testament:

  • Hebrews 1: Jesus “upholds” or literally “carries all things by the word of His power.”

  • Philippians 4: “I can do all things through Him who strengthens/empowers me.”

• See the pattern here? In stress, call upon the name of the LORD, and carry on with everyday life - lie down, go to sleep, wake up again – keep doing the everyday life that God has called you to do, and don't be afraid. That is what God has called us to do. That's the example we have in this song.

Don’t Be afraid

• He says, “I'll not be afraid of the ten thousands.” The Hebrew word here is literally “the manys’ ravim, and I think that refers back to the “many” adversaries in verse 1 – the “many” rising up, and the many saying there's no salvation – all these “many's.”

• He said, “I will not be afraid of them… A thousand may fall at your right side, ten thousand [which is this ‘many's’ word] at your right, but it shall not approach you.”

• “I will not be afraid of the ten thousands of a people...” What people is he talking about? It’s the people that David is king of; it's the Jewish people – his own subjects that he's tempted to be afraid of! Do you ever have that situation where it's your own kids that you're afraid of? Or your own employees?

• “I will not be afraid of the people who set themselves up/draw themselves up against me round about on every side.” Official after official had gone over to Absalom, and David must have wondered, “How many more officials are going to desert me? How many more are am I going to be betrayed by even today?”

• There are things that cause real fears in our hearts:

  • In the late 20^th century, in my growing-up years, folks had fears of Communist spies everywhere.

  • Now in the early 21^st century, it's been the sleeper terrorist cells that could wake up and bomb us anytime. We don't know who they are; they're all around us!

  • It could be a fear of people with predatory natures that are after our kids everywhere.

  • Will our kids even be safe with all the spiritual forces out there everywhere? We may not be as aware of them, but the demonic forces are real and powerful and scary.

  • It could be your own sin that has dogged you, and you can't seem to conquer what are you afraid of. How can you not be afraid of those things?

  • My daughters have a window next to their bed, and I often hear a fear expressed by my little girls that somehow somebody's going to reach through that window and get them. Time and time again, I have to remind my children, “God told us: ‘What time I am afraid, I will trust in you, in God Whose word I praise.’” That is what God calls us to do, and we can be unafraid because the Lord sustains me.

Tell God to Save

• In verse 7 he says, “rise up and save.” How can we command God to get up? How can we command God, “Save me”? This seems a little presumptuous!

• But Moses himself presumed to do so; this is actually a quote from Numbers 10. Some two million Jews were wandering in the wilderness from Egypt into the Promised Land, and God's presence with His cloud would rise up into the air in the morning and start floating towards the Promised Land, and everybody would pack up and start following the cloud. Moses would be out front and say, “Rise up, O Lord, and let your enemies be scattered, and let those who hate You flee before You.” And then, at the end of the day, when the sun set and the cloud turned into a pillar of fire and settled down on the ground and everybody started setting up their camp, they'd hear Moses saying again, “Lord return to the myriads of Israel.” What gave Moses the audacity to command God to rise up or to return?

• What gave Peter the audacity, when he was walking on the lake and started sinking, to say “Lord, save me”? Was that inappropriate? I don't think so.

• 2 Timothy tells us about God's nature: “The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and He'll bring me safely to His heavenly kingdom. To Him be the glory.” This is God's nature: to save. It's what He does.

• And so, if you are in trouble and you're calling out for Him to save you, He's going to save you. All you're doing is egging Him on to do what He’s already going to do.

• When you're running a race, and your family or your friends are on the sidelines saying, “Go, go, go!” are they the ones that are making you go? No, but you love it when they're cheering you on, because it feels great, and God, I think, has a similar experience when we say, “Arise, O Lord, and save us.” I think His response is something like, “Yes that's what I'm going to do; that's what I'm doing, and I love it when you when you cheer me on like this!”

• So cheer God on in His saving work!

God will punish evil

• This “hitting/smiting on the cheek” appears to be symbolic of one aspect of the justice system. Slapping somebody on the cheek doesn't really physically hurt them, but it humiliates them.

  • In Job 16 where there's also that slap, it’s talking about public humiliation, as if it's a humiliating circumstance.

  • And we see Jesus Himself is slapped on the cheek when he's standing before the high priest. Jesus, as our representative carrying the weight of our sins, was slapped on the cheek as part of the whole process of God's anger and justice which rolled down upon Him instead of rolling down upon us.

• The “breaking/shattering the teeth” also seems to refer to the justice system.

  • Exodus 21: “Eye for eye and tooth for tooth” is part of what is just and fair. If the bad guy broke your tooth, he should get his tooth broken; that’s what’s fair.

  • In Job, God's justice is pictured as “breaking the teeth of young lions… those who plow iniquity and sow trouble, [they’ll catch it - they have it coming!] By the blast of His anger they come to an end, and the teeth of the young lions are broken.” This is speaking of God's justice.

  • Jesus Himself mentioned teeth being ground in hell, in His Olivet Discourses in a couple different points in the Gospel of Matthew. The place with the hypocrites is hell, “where the fire is not quenched, and there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.” This is part of God's justice.

  • Lamentations 3 pictures this too, “I am the man who's seen affliction. Because of the rod of His wrath He's broken [it's actually a different word here for ‘broken’] my teeth with gravel. Let him give his cheek to the smiter. Let him be filled with reproach.” And he says that this is justice in the presence of the Most High, “because we have transgressed and rebelled.” But at the end of the story there's hope, “You drew near when I called on you. You said, ‘Do not fear.’ O Lord you've pleaded my soul's cause, and you've redeemed my life.” This is what Jesus did; He took that curse of the smiting upon Himself. He paid it to redeem us so we could be saved. And He said, “Do not fear.”

• So we need to remember God's acts of justice in the past to face the future with confidence. He's broken the teeth of the wicked in the past; He's going to do it again. So what's the scariest thing you face in your future now?

  • Arm yourself with Bible stories like Gideon who conquered the innumerable Midianites with a band of only 300 soldiers,

  • or the story of Hezekiah who trusted the Lord rather than be afraid of the greatest army in the world that was laying siege to Jerusalem – arm yourself with Bible stories,

  • and arm yourself with your own stories of things that God has done in your own life. Remember what God has done in your own life to deliver you in the past. Store them up somewhere so that you can use these things to remind yourself that God is just; God is bigger.

• Use this lesson for the future too.

  • Revelation 9:8 tells us in the future there's going to be locusts from the pit that have teeth like lions. Whenever we encounter these things - whatever they are - we can say, “I know God's going to break their teeth. I'm not going to be afraid of them, because salvation belongs to the Lord.”

  • There is no other source of security besides Jesus, and that's what the saints sing in Revelation 7: “Salvation belongs to our God Who sits upon the throne...”

Speak blessing

• David ends the psalm by calling for the blessing of salvation upon the people – the very people that have chased him out of his kingdom! David is saying, “God bless the people anyway.” What an amazing display of graciousness!

• “Although his subjects, unmindful of their allegiance, have sided with the usurper, he has no bitter feelings towards them and invokes upon them God’s blessing.” ~Metsudath David

• We see the same thing of Jesus, the antitype of David, on the cross outside of Jerusalem, being cruelly treated and killed. He looks at these people that are torturing Him to death and says, “Father, forgive them.” That's the kind of grace God has shared with us, and it's the kind of grace that we can share with others, whenever we experience our own moments of anger and hatred.

• “Psalm 3 challenges us to acknowledge our own moments of anger and hatred and calls us to turn them from cries of vengeance on our enemies into pleas for God to deliver the faithful and to establish His justice.” ~Gerald H. Wilson

Appendix: Commentators on Selah

• Patrick: “…cannot be certainly known… omit this word”

• Calvin: “…denotes the lifting up of the voice in harmony...”

• Venema: elevation of the voice in singing the Psalm. (cf. Rabbi Kimchi)

• Wocher, Coxe: sursum corda — “up, my soul!”

• Altrug: repetition of the word immediately preceding.

• Mathewson: musical notation - perhaps “repeat.”

• Targums, Mishna, Aquila, Syriac: “forever”

• Augustine: “interval of silence”

• Ibn Ezra, Cohen: “pause”

• Alexander: “a pause in the sense as well as the performance"

• Luther: “silence”

• Herder: “change of note”

• Spurgeon: “re-tune the harps”

• Gesenius, Delitzsch: “Let the instruments play and the singers stop.”

• Sommor: “trumpet blast” accompanies “appeal/summons to Jehovah.”

• Plumer: “designed to fix the minds of the godly on the matter which has just been spoken of… as well as to regulate the singing in such a manner as to make the music correspond to the … sentiment.”

Appendix 3: Sources

• Bible translations include Psalm 3 by Nate Wilson, NASB, and some ESV and NIV quotes.

• Commentary Bibliography

  • Augustine: Expositions on the Book of Psalms By Saint Augustin, Bishop of Hippo, Edited by A. Cleveland Coxe, D.D., 1888

  • Cohen: The Soncino Books of the Bible, vol. 9, The Psalms, by The Rev. Dr. A. Cohan, M.A, Ph.D, D.H.L, Revised by Rabbi E. Oratz, 1992

  • Delitzsch: Commentary on the Psalms by Franz Delitzsch (1813-1890)

  • Plumer: Studies in the Book of Psalms: Being a Critical and Expository Commentary, With Doctrinal and Practical Remarks on the Entire Psalter., By William S. Plumer, D.D.,LL.D., 1866

  • Spurgeon: The Treasury of David, by Charles Haddon Spurgeon,1885.

  • KDW: Kenneth D. Wilson, Pastoral Care From the Psalms, unpublished papers from the 1990’s

  • GHW: The NIV Application Commentary: Psalms- Vol. 1, ©2002 by Gerald H Wilson.

Psalm 3^A