Psalm 3 - Wild Bible Stories and God Slapping People

Podcast Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

Welcome to Tabernacle Talk, and we are in Psalm 3 today. We are in Book 1 of Psalms, and that is Psalm 1 through Psalm 41. And each of these individual Psalms are kind of unique works.

They're not kind of built on the others, so you don't have to have listened to Psalm 1 or Psalm 2 before you get to Psalm 3. There are no new characters that were introduced in Psalm 1 or 2 that you come to in Psalm 3.

However, there is a story, and I'm going to give kind of a little bit of a background on the Psalm from the heading, and the Psalm says this, a Psalm of David when he fled from his son, Absalom. Now, David was the king of Israel.

He was the second king. The first was Saul, who was from the tribe of Benjamin. He was a very tall man.

Everyone kind of looked at him and went, wow, he's head and shoulders above everyone else. I think there's particularly a verse that mentions that. His stature, his height was above anyone else in Israel.

And so he looked the part of a king.

However, as his reign went on, he didn't follow God, even though God was the one who, through the prophet Samuel, had anointed Saul as king and said, okay, Israel went from having a theocracy where God, through the prophets, through the judges, told

them, hey, here's what you need to do. Follow, you know, follow the law, everything will be good.

And they, through continually failing God, through continually abandoning his law and his goodness and following him, again and again, they began worshiping other gods and they would get in trouble.

Eventually the people got tired of kind of this cycle, but instead of saying, okay, we're going to turn to God, they said, we want a king like all the nations around us. And so God said, all right, I'll give you a king like the nations around you.

And that's who Saul was. And Saul repeatedly rejected the Lord, rejected his word, did not obey. And as a result, God said, I'm going to take away the kingdom from you and I'm going to give it to David.

David was one that was from the tribe of Judah. There's kind of 13 tribes in Israel. We'll get into that some other time.

I'm certain there's a Psalm that deals with some portion of that. David, as a young boy, we know about the story of David and Goliath, where David accomplished great things. David became a dynamic warrior for King Saul, served him.

The people were very happy with that set up, and they began to sing songs about the greatness of David. And they would say, Saul has slain his thousands and David his ten thousands. And the thought was just how much greater David is than Saul.

Saul became insanely jealous and tried to kill David on multiple occasions. David didn't strike back against Saul, but ran away. And he had a conviction from his heart that he wasn't going to attack the political leaders that God had put, had set up.

And so he went on the run for many, many years. And there were many things that will interact with in Psalms.

Time, I can think of Psalm 16 right offhand, one of my favorite chapters in the entire Bible, where David is far away from home and he's talking about his heart to be where God has placed his family there in Bethlehem, which obviously we would know

from Jesus who was a descendant of David. And so all of that takes place. David is on the run for many years. Finally, Saul is killed in battle and David finally becomes king over Judah.

There's another grouping of the tribes. I think it's about 10 of them that don't want David to be their king yet. There's about six or seven years of kind of a civil war of some people attacking Judah and lots of things taking place.

There's some moves by some generals that are seeking to foster kind of war and they're trying to get authority. And at the end of it, God has David sitting on the throne of all Israel and that all Israel is accepting him as the king.

So this has gone on for a number of years. David's finally on the throne. However, some troubles happen.

We would know about the story of David and Bathsheba, that David took the word that is used in that passage. It's almost like kind of a kidnapping of... He kidnapped the wife of one of his closest soldiers, closest guards.

He had a group called the Thirty, which as you read in the scripture, occasionally there were so many great guys that were in the group, the Thirty, that it was more like the Thirty-Three or the Thirty-Six.

And he took one of his closest men that was in that core group of soldiers and advisors, the Thirty. He took his wife while the soldiers were out at war and impregnated her, not to mention she was the granddaughter of one of David's closest advisors.

And he impregnated her, had her husband killed on the field of battle by having everyone else draw back from the husband during the battle. The Bible says that what David did greatly displeased the Lord.

And as a result of his sin, God told David, hey, like violence and stuff is not going to leave your house because of your actions, that there is a cost to sin. And you can choose to sin, but you can't choose the consequences of your sin.

One of those things that took place was that David had many, he had many wives, which was something that in the Old Testament law, God said, your kings are not to do this. This was never God's design. This was something that went against God's law.

And David had done it anyway, had multiple wives and concubines. It was very popular in those days for kings to do that.

You would have as large of a house as possible, and people would go, wow, you must be very powerful and how great you are that you have so many children. But this was not God's way. And one of David's sons raped one of his daughters.

And that daughter whose name, if I'm remembering correctly, her name was Tamar, and she had a brother named Absalom. And Absalom was furious about what happened.

David, in a case where he was not, again, following God's law, the price to pay for rape under the Old Testament law was death, and he did not put his son to death. There was no justice that was done. David was the king.

He was the one in charge of carrying out God's law. He did not do it, and Absalom took things into his own hands, and he killed his half brother that had raped his sister, and he fled. Quick pause.

I'm sure many of you, if you kind of don't know this Bible story, are going, whoa, all of that's in the Bible? It's all in the Bible. The Bible records life as it really happened.

It's not an idealistic book of just, hey, here's wonderful things that take place where there are great heroes and super evil villains.

There's a little bit of the villain in all of the characters, that even King David, the man who's after God's own heart, is also a failure in so many ways, and it goes to show us there can be only one perfect king. There's only one perfect judge.

There's only one perfect person, and it's Jesus.

And we desperately need him because even our heroes, the ones that define who we are as a people, they are flawed and they are failures in ways, and we need a perfect person, and Jesus is that perfect person for us. So all that takes place.

Absalom goes far, far away. David misses his son greatly. He loved Absalom.

He eventually calls him back to Israel. So Absalom had went and he had lived with his mother, was from a nearby nation, and so he went to live kind of with his grandfather in that nation.

I think he was a king or something in that nation, if I remember correctly. So David calls him back to Israel, but then David doesn't bring him into the court for, I think it's about two years. And this would be something that would be just normal.

Like it's a sign of reconciliation that, hey, I am not ashamed to be with you in front of people. And Absalom had not carried out mere like vigilante justice. Like this was the thing that David was responsible for accomplishing, and he did not do it.

So Absalom then accomplished what David did not and what he should have done. Absalom, once he eventually had some form of reconciliation with David, he was sitting in the gate, which was where a lot of conversations would take place.

There was lots of commerce and the gates going into the city, and he would talk with the men.

And it says that Absalom basically stole the hearts of the people of Israel, and he got them to take his side and go, oh man, if only Absalom was king instead of old King David, it would be so great if we had Absalom.

And so Absalom took the throne, took I think it was 10 of David's concubines, and he basically ran David out. And David and some of his men, they fled and David now doesn't know, hey, am I going to die?

Are the armies of Israel going to pursue me and kill me so that they can put my son on the throne? And it's into that that we find ourselves now in Psalm 3 and verse 1.

I promise this is not a long Psalm, but you need that backstory of this is David when he fled from his son Absalom. It's absolute rock bottom. Like all of that story, all of the terrible things that took place.

Now he's running for his life. He's kind of an old or older man at this point. All of this is taking place.

And he says this, Yahweh, how my enemies have increased. Many are rising up against me. Many are saying of my soul, there is no salvation for him and God.

Man, how much would it feel like that? Like God has abandoned him. He's not rescuing him this time.

He is toast. He has failed God. He has failed his children.

He has failed Absalom. He has failed his nation. And now, like, he's done for.

God's not saving him. He says, but you, Yahweh, are a shield around me, my glory, and the one who lifts my head. Think about that.

This man that was running, that had enemies on every side, the nearby Philistine places hated him.

Nearby nations hated him that had been subdued by Israel, those nations that so often throughout Israel's history would come in and dominate and take people's crops and all of those things.

Now they had been subdued, but he can't run to them for help. His own son, his people that at different times, they didn't want him to rule over them. Or you have his own family and advisors and things.

He says, you are a shield around me. That whatever angle of life we're getting attacked from, whatever angle of life there's hardship or struggle, know that God is a shield around you. He protects you from that ultimate harm.

He says, you are my glory. He says, you are the one that I look to as having ultimate worth. You are the thing that I am proud of.

I am proud of God. I'm proud of who he is. I'm proud of what he's done.

I'm not proud of my status as king. I'm not proud of my status as the psalmist. I'm not proud of my status as whatever.

God is his glory. And he says, and the one who lifts my head, that when we are downcast, all we see is we look down and we see trouble. We look down and we see things coming at us.

And he lifts our head to see ultimate reality, that he is on the throne, that our home is not here on earth. Our home is in heaven. Our home is with him back in his presence forever.

I was crying out to Yahweh with my voice, and he answered me from his holy mountain, Selah. I was crying out to Yahweh with my voice. God wants to hear you cry.

Many of us think I can only come to God with a very happy or with a very penitent attitude, but the truth is we can come to him full of emotion. We can come to him in anger. We can come to him in tears.

We can come to him fearful and scared. We can come to him with disgust at our world. We can come to him genuinely with our emotions and with our failures.

And when we cry out to him, he will answer. He will hear. He will interact with your prayers.

It says from his holy mountain. This was where, especially in these days, people thought, okay, the gods must be on mountains. Mountains are really hard to climb.

They're really high up. So the gods are in the skies, and so mountains are kind of where, like, the skies and the earth overlap. So God heard me from where he is.

It's his throne. It's his place where he interacts with earth. He answered me from his holy mountain.

I mentioned that word, sailor. It's stop, pause. Wait a minute.

Think about what was just said. David says, I laid down and slept. I woke for Yahweh sustains me.

If you lay down, if you sleep, if you wake up, it's because God loves you and he sustained you. He gave you breath. He gave you sleep.

He gave you the opportunity to open your eyes again. If you woke up this morning or if you're about to go to sleep, then God has sustained you that he's not done with you. He's not abandoned you.

He is the one who sustains you. He's keeping you alive moment by moment. If he still has you here, there is still purpose.

There's still hope. You can still rest in him as your glory. And we ought to be thankful for when God sustains us.

He says, I will not be afraid of 10,000s of people who have set themselves against me all around. He says, if God's on my side, I'm not going to fear the biggest army.

So, Saul has slain his thousands, but David his 10,000s, and here he says, I will not be afraid of 10,000s of people who have set themselves against me all around.

He says, if all the people that I've defeated my entire life, every battle that I've ever faced in my life, all came against me all at once, all over again, he says, I'm not going to be scared because God is with me. He says, arise, Yahweh.

Save me, my God, for you have struck all my enemies on the cheek or on the on the jaw. To me, as I'm reading it, all I can think of is a slap. My God's like, what are you doing?

It's meant to be more oomph than that. You've struck all my enemies on the cheek. You got them with a good uppercut, God.

You've got a good swing. You've struck all my enemies on the cheek. You have shattered the teeth of the wicked that God will defeat.

God will defeat our enemies if they're, and I want to clarify this isn't if you have a person you've got a grudge against, a person that said something mean to you that God's going to break their teeth. That's not the thought.

As Paul would say in Ephesians 6, we don't fight against flesh and blood. Like, humans aren't our enemies. Our enemies are the demonic powers that we heard about yesterday.

He says principalities, powers, those beings in the heavenly places, in the spiritual realms. Those are our enemies. He says, you struck all my enemies on the cheek.

You have shattered the teeth of the wicked. God is able to save.

If God has brought you to this point, the God that brought you through every battle that you have faced in your life so far, every difficulty that you have had to overcome, if God has brought you through all of it, He is still with you.

He has not abandoned you. It says, salvation belongs to Yahweh. May your blessing be upon your people.

Selah. Salvation belongs to Yahweh. Salvation does not belong to us, to our cleverness, to our good works.

Salvation belongs to Him alone, because He is the only one worthy of it, and He has given it to us freely. So let's be ones that as He has blessed us, let us bless Him right back. Let's offer Him praises.

Let's offer Him obedience. Let's offer Him surrender. Let's offer Him trust.

Let's bring other people into relationship with Him. God loves you today. If you have screwed up in so many ways over and over and over again, just like David did, realize that if God has made you still be alive, God is not done with you.

He has not abandoned you. It's not forsaked you. He has sustained you.

So turn to Him, obey Him, realize God, I have failed, but you bring salvation that you forgive, you restore, you are never done with a person.

And so if that's true, then we can come to Him with full hearts today asking God, save me from the difficulties that I'm going through. As I walk through these difficulties, God, I'm asking for you to work as only you can.

Hope that be an encouragement to you today. I was blessed today thinking again about David and Absalom.

David was a man who was not perfect by any means, but he knew that there was a God who didn't base his love off of human perfection and human righteousness, but on his steadfast, unbreaking covenant love.

And because that's our God, because that's who he is, we can run to him again and again and again in times of trouble. No matter what trouble we've made for ourselves, we can turn to him. So see you tomorrow as we look at Psalm 4.

Thank you watching