Resting In Our Sovereign God (Psalm 3)
I don’t think I’ve lived through a time period with such prolonged turmoil among its people. I really think that if I could manage to turn off the news and just not think about it then I wouldn’t have this turmoil in my life anymore. But here we are with an increasingly intrusive Federal Government and constant riots on the national scene for most of the last year. And that means that things have gotten crazy.
This doesn’t even consider the things that have been going on with Coronavirus. The hospitals are filling up in certain parts of the state. And you all likely know someone who has either had a close call or died with Coronavirus. And that is on top of all the other things that happen in life. Life itself, without all of these additions, can be very hard. And so, we read Psalm 3 and see that we need to rest in our Sovereign God.
David wrote this Psalm during the very trying ordeal with Absalom. Absalom conspired to overthrow David (2 Samuel 15:6). And, it was obvious that the conspiracy was strong (2 Samuel 15:12). The supporters of David were diminishing while the supporters of Absalom were growing. On top of this Ahithophel conspired with Absalom to pursue David and take his life. Everything was going wrong for David and he and those sympathetic to him fled for their lives.
And in the midst of this David rests in His Sovereign God. This is what we should do when the troubles begin to overtake us.
Rest in our sovereign God.
Read Psalm 3.
Tell God Your Troubles (Vv. 1-2)
Notice what David does here. David begins by taking his troubles to God. In the beginning of this text he is not asking for help, or necessarily know what it is that he is asking God for, but He is going to Him with His troubles. In other words, the first two verses of Psalm 3 are a complaint about how everything seems to be going against him.
I think that we are sometimes hesitant to do this. But in the Psalms we see examples of a person going to God and what that is like. And here, we see that we are to go to God. When the troubles of life seem to overtake us, we go to God with them.
I know that there are times when things are just not working out in my life. I have struggled at times being able to do little more than complain and then say, “God I don’t even know what I want you to do in this. I can’t see past the problems.” But there are oftentimes situations where this is how my prayer started, but not how it ended. As if God brought me to clarity through the act of praying.
And here, we see as well, one of the great privileges of being a Christian. We are the blood bought bride of Christ. Through the finished work of Christ we have been given entrance. Because Jesus paid for my sins on the cross and rose from the grave I have the ability to go to God in prayer. The perfect salvation that Christ accomplished for us made a way for us to take our troubles to God, and that’s a privilege that we should not waste. Before I was a Christian, I could utter words of prayer, but I only did that from afar. Now, I can go before God with confidence, knowing that God will hear my cries. Like I said, this is a privilege that I dare not waste.
Here is the problem. We would like to go to a whole host of places before going to God in prayer. As Americans we tend to want to pass laws that will solve our problems or look to the government to solve all our issues. There is also an American tendency to go to a bottle or a pill that will help us not think about the problems at hand.
I believe that we are fallen and so our bodies are affected. I also believe that our minds are affected by the fall. So, there are times when medication is needed. But we should not be seeking to deaden ourselves through drug or alcohol abuse. We should be going to God with our troubles. Yes, there are times when medications are needed to fix ailments because we live in a fallen world. But we should not be seeking a deadening of proper functions because we can’t handle a situation. We should be going to God with our troubles.
And boy, do we have a lot of reasons to be in prayer. The country has a massive load of problems. We have children growing up in this world that is now being created. We struggle to know what to do next. We have to take those things to God in prayer.
I am encouraged because I believe that our church goes to God often in prayer. A few days on GroupMe convinced me of that. I love that this church supports one another in prayer, that we go to God when struggles come upon us. I hope and pray that this continues and even broadens for it is good and right for us to go to God with our struggles.
Be Confident That God Is For You And Hears Your Cry (Vv. 3-4)
Notice that there is a distinct change in the Psalm. Suddenly things change for David. He moves from a complaint to God to having confidence in God. I can’t describe the number of times in my own life that I was moved from deep sorrow to overwhelming confidence in God during a prayer. And this seems to have happened here to David.
He says that God is a “shield about” him. Another way of saying it would be that the Lord is a “shield that protects” him as it is said in the NET Bible. It is as if to say that God shields him from trouble that may come from any direction. Or, as Paul put it “If God is for us, who is against us?” (Romans 8:31 NASB)
And then David calls God “my glory, and the One who lifts my head.” (Psalm 3:3 NASB) David understood that it was God who made him King and it was God who held the future. He fully believed that God would reinstall him upon his throne. So, he trusted God.
How do we know that God is for us today?
How can we be confident of God’s love for us and have the confidence that David had?
We look to the cross. We see and know the depth of God’s love for us because we see the lengths to which God went to save us. His own son died on the cross to take upon Himself the punishment that we deserved.
God loves you, Christian. He cares for you. He is for you and not against you. You can go to Him in prayer and be confident that God is for you. We need to drive this idea deep within our souls. God is for us and hears our cry. And we will be victorious because God is for us. So, we rest in Him.
God answered David’s prayer. And it was obvious that God was on David’s side. But God’s answer to the prayer is not exactly what David wanted. If you’ll remember how everything ended, it wasn’t pretty. And it happened this way because of David’s sin with Bathsheba. Here is what God said would happen because of this sin.
“Thus says the LORD, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household; I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight. Indeed, you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and under the sun.”—2 Samuel 12:12-13a NASB
And the judgment of God came upon David in the form of Absalom’s rebellion. Absalom fulfilled what God said would happen here. And the answer that God gave to David’s prayer was not something that he was happy to see at the time. It ended with the death of his son Absalom. And so, God’s answer to prayer also caused David to have deep groaning.
“The king was deeply moved and went up to the chamber over the gate and wept. And thus he said as he walked, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”—2 Samuel 18:33 NASB
Sometimes God’s answer to prayer is painful. Sometimes it is pain that we brought upon ourselves. But what is never in doubt is that God is for His people and not against them. So, even if we are in the middle of a temporal punishment for something we’ve done in the past we go to God and trust that He is for us and hears our cries.
Rest In God (Vv. 5-6)
One of the more difficult things to do when the whole world feels like it is caving in on you is to sleep. But that is the next thing that David does. The trouble drove him to find shelter in God and there he rested his head. Though David had to flee and an army pursued him and it seemed like Absalom would have the victory, David could rest peacefully because God was His shield. He understood that God was for him and so no one could stand against him.
Like David, the Christian can find rest for their weariness because God is for them. Christ has saved the believer from their sins. He has redeemed them from all unrighteousness. He has brought them into a right relationship with God. And because of this we can rest no matter what hardship may come. God is for us and not against us.
While everyone else is obsessively scrolling the news of their phone let’s rest our head down on the pillow. It may be drenched with tears because of something that has happened, but we can sleep and wake knowing that God is working all things out for our good.
We can rest in Christ. We can rest from our labor to achieve God’s favor. We can rest from our fear because we are redeemed in Christ. And we can rest because we have safety in Him.
Pray For And Trust In God’s Intervention (Vv. 7-8)
David now cries out to God for salvation. He awoke from his rest with vigor and without fear. And now he calls out to God to arise and give him deliverance. He is surrounded by enemies but he fears not because God is on his side. And David is so confident in what God is going to do that he envisions the enemies that surrounds him like wild beasts who’ve had their weapons broken…their mouths. David understood that only God could save. When all seems lost God can save.
Salvation belongs to the Lord. If you are in an impossible situation then only God can rescue. He can do the impossible. If you are in situation and think you can do everything on your own, God will likely show you otherwise. If you are going to find salvation from sin then you are going to find it in God and nowhere else. There is no other name under heaven by which men can be saved.
It is God alone who can save when all is lost. God is the only one who could have saved Daniel from the Lion’s Den. God is the only one who could have given Israel Jericho. God is the only one who could have brought Israel out of Egypt. And God is the only One who could make you right with Him.
And here, at the end of Psalm 3, I can’t help but think about the victory that Christ achieved for us. His intervention to conquer sin. His destruction of the forces of darkness. And that intervention for me gave me the right to go to God in prayer. And because of what Christ did, God loves me, cares for me, and is for me.
So, though we may begin by just telling God our troubles. And at times that may be all that we feel we can do. Don’t stop there. Don’t just tell God your troubles. Ask Him to intervene and trust that He will. Here, David prayed for God’s intervention and the answer was the death of Absalom and the end of the rebellion. We may not quickly get there. In fact, it may take us a while to get there, but eventually we need to be asking for God to intervene.
Conclusion
What are we to do when troubles come our way? We rest in our sovereign God. He is in control. He is our shield. He is our comforter. He is the One who can and will get us through. And we trust Him amid the turmoils of this life because He is in complete control and He is for us.
So, when troubles come our way, we go to the Lord. We pray. We pray for God to intervene and we have faith that He will because He loves us and is for us.
R. Dwain Minor