Our Only Hope in Life and Death (Psalm 3)

Sermon for MHBC (11 July 2021). You can listen on Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, or our website. Live at 11:00am on Sundays. Also available as a podcast here or by searching “Monument Heights Baptist Church” in your favorite podcast app.

I have a handful of psalms I use in pastoral visits. One I use frequently is Psalm 3. It’s a short psalm that gives expression to feeling overwhelmed. It’s a good psalm when everything seems hopeless. The psalm looks at overwhelming and impossible circumstances and expresses confidence and hope in the Lord.

I think the point of this psalm can be captured in a famous catechism question. The first question in the Heidelberg Catechism asks: “What is our only comfort in life and death?” The first part of the answer is: “That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.”[1]

A more recent modern adaptation in a shorter form puts it this way:

Q: What is our only hope in life and death?

A: That we are not our own but belong to God.[2]

This is the sense of Psalm 3. David looks at his situation and declares that he has hope in the Lord because salvation belongs to the Lord. Matthew Henry summarized it this way: “[This psalm], by the example of David in distress, shows us the peace and holy security of the redeemed, how safe they really are, and think themselves to be, under the divine protection.”[3]

A DESPERATE SITUATION

Let’s take a look at the psalm, beginning with the heading. These are often original to the psalm and actually part of the psalm. They aren’t just study notes. This particular one is found in the earliest manuscripts of the psalm.[4] The heading says: A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son.

That gives us the context and helps us put a concrete situation to the language of the psalm. Now you don’t need to know a lot of the biblical background to feel the weight of this statement. Just pay close attention to the words in the head. “A psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son.” Here’s the situation: He’s fleeing from his son. That right there is enough to tell us this is a terrible situation. What could be worse? As for the background, you can find this starting in 2 Sam 15. Absalom, whose name incidentally and ironically means “father of peace,” orchestrated a rebellion against his father, the king. And what’s more, the rebellion is highly successful. David is forced to flee Jerusalem.

To this, David writes in vv. 1–2:

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

This is the reason I have often read this psalm in ministry settings. I usually say something like, “You can probably relate to David here. You feel like attacks are coming from every side. You don’t see any escape and you’re beginning to despair.” I know many of you can relate to this. The language is endlessly applicable.

And we also learn an important lesson about prayer that is evident throughout the scriptures. That lesson is that prayer should be honest before God. Sometimes I’m afraid we think it’s necessary to clean up our prayers. But notice David begins with despair. He says, “Lord, look at my situation.” Calvin counseled that “the only remedy for allaying our fears is this, to cast upon him all the cares which trouble us.”[5]

Then he goes on into v. 2 to say that they are mocking him and looking to harm him in the deepest depths of his being. They are saying he abandoned by God, left alone. Hopeless despair will destroy a person and that’s what his enemies aim to do.

And this psalm points ahead to a greater David who would experience the same. Christ himself was thought to be abandoned by God. Passersby derided him on the cross, saying, “He has hoped in God, let God save him” (Matt 27:43; cf. Ps 22:8). See, they said the same of Christ, “There is no salvation.”

But as we will see in this psalm, David affirms that there is indeed salvation in the Lord. He is not driven to disbelief despite those who would speak on behalf of the Almighty. He is driven to prayer.[6] The psalm begins that pivot in v. 3.

CONFIDENCE RENEWED

Look at v. 3: But you, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head. He makes three statements about the Lord here. First, he says the Lord is his shield, his protection. The ESV translates “a shield about me.” The sense is to be covered by him.[7] Second, the Lord is his glory. This is really a profound statement. The Lord is my glory. In other words, everything else could fall away and I would still have everything I need. Like Ps 73 says, “Whom have in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (vv. 24–25).

I have to be honest. This is really challenging and convicting for me. I believe it. I believe that nothing in all this world can satisfy us like the Lord. I believe it is a great evil to think we can find satisfaction apart from the living God. I believe the words of the old hymn, “Take the world, but give me Jesus.”[8] But I get fearful. Like Peter, I look at the waves and I take my eyes off the Lord.

I want to take this a step further still. The great news of the gospel is not that we get heaven. The great news of the gospel is that we get God. To paraphrase John Piper, if there were a place of bliss without God, we should reject it with every bone in our body.[9] The Lord is my glory. That’s what David says as the world is falling apart around him.

Practically, we must cultivate this love for God by gazing at him through the prism of Scripture, beholding his glory and being transformed by his glory. We must commune with him through prayer. We must meditate on his attributes. We must learn and be nurtured by the truths of the Christian faith, what we call sound doctrine, because it has been reliance on these truths that has sustained countless believers before us. Knowing God, that is eternal life, according to Jesus in John 17:3.

Thirdly, David says the Lord is the lifter of his head. The world may deem him a disgraced king. His own son may have usurped his throne, but his head need not stay drooped in dejection because the King of Glory is his eternal possession.

And that King will hear David’s cry. Verse 4: I cried aloud to the Lord, and he answered me from his holy hill. Selah

The holy hill is a reference to the place where the king of Israel was installed and where the Ark of the Covenant was located. Absalom may sit on the throne, but it is the Lord who will determine the course of events.[10]

This is an interesting verse as we consider the narrative in 2 Samuel. As David is fleeing the city, the priest Zadok comes bringing the Ark of the Covenant. But David instructs him to return the Ark of the Covenant. And then he says this: “If I find favor in the eyes of the LORD, he will bring me back and let me see both it and his dwelling place. But if he says, ‘I have no pleasure in you,’ behold, here I am, let him do to me what seems good to him” (2 Sam 15:25b–26).

David has completely resigned himself to the sovereignty of God. Matthew Henry comments: “A cheerful resignation to God is the way to obtain a cheerful satisfaction and confidence in God.”[11] We see this exemplified in Christ, who sleeps in the boat during the storm.

Now David appeals to the LORD, but we have an even greater means of appeal. We have a greater confidence in God’s answer because it is Christ who constantly mediates for us. Remember in Ps 2, the King, the Christ, is set on the holy hill (v. 6). Our confidence in receiving comfort and protection lies in Christ’s finished work on our behalf.[12] He ever lives to make intercession for us (Heb 7:25). He is the perfect mediator between God and man, the perfect priest, who can carry our prayers into the holy of holies.

And for that reason, we can have the confidence of this psalm. Look with me at v. 5: I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me. David is able to rest because he has resigned himself to God. But his sleep is not final. The Lord sustains him.

Here we see a shadow of the gospel. It was Christ who slept the sleep of death, but it was not the end. He, too, woke again.[13] And we have the same confidence. Whatever trials we face, when we shall take our final breath, the Lord will sustain us and we will wake again. We will be raised with Christ.

It is important that we remember this when times look bleak. Scripture makes no promises that we will be spared from suffering. David here suffers. Christ suffered on the cross. Everything looked hopeless. But after the night had passed, eyes were opened, and the Lord had provided a new day.

So David can say that he will not be afraid. Verse 6: I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around. There’s no escape from many thousands. But even under such circumstances, he says he will not be afraid.

PETITION

Then he makes his petition to the Lord. Verse 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. David’s enemies may say there is no salvation in God, but David knows better. “Save me, O my God, for you are the one who brings victory over my enemies.” Now this language may seem sharp, but consider how we might apply it to our troubles. Consider how we might apply it to the spiritual battles we face. I think it’s still quite appropriate.

Then there’s the final verse. Verse 8: Salvation belongs to the Lord; your blessing be on your people! Selah. David’s enemies said otherwise, but now David affirms what he knows to be true. Salvation belongs to the Lord. One commentator writes, “He looks to Him as the sole bestower of deliverance or salvation, and the sole source of His people’s blessedness.”[14] David doesn’t look to his army or his supporters. He doesn’t expect human means to do a thing for him. Salvation belongs to the Lord.[15]

This psalm doesn’t promise deliverance from trouble or even from death. But it promises something so much deeper, something more sustaining. It promises rest and refuge in the midst of sorrow. It promises rest in an all-satisfying God. It reminds us, by pointing ahead, that there is one who bore the sorrows and grief of the world, one who was surrounded by enemies as he died, and yet, he now lives so that you and I might be righteous before God. What is our only hope in life and death? That we are not our own, but belong to God.

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[1] Question 1. https://www.crcna.org/welcome/beliefs/confessions/heidelberg-catechism

[2] New City Catechism, children’s mode, question 1. http://newcitycatechism.com/new-city-catechism/#1

[3] Matthew Henry’s Commentary, 3:201.

[4] See LXX and VG for example.

[5] Calvin’s Commentary on the Psalms.

[6] The phrasing here is indebted to Motyer, “The Psalms,” in New Bible Commentary, 453.

[7] NEB: “to cover me.” Cited by Kidner, Psalms, 1:70.

[8] Fanny Crosby, “Give Me Jesus,” v. 1.

[9] See God Is the Gospel.

[10] See Kidner, Psalms, 1:71.

[11] Commentary, 3:203.

[12] See Matthew Henry, 3:203, for a similar interpretation.

[13] Though this thought originated without consulting resources, I discovered that Henry made the same connection, 3:203.

[14] Motyer, 453.

[15] Poole: “I expect not salvation from my forces, but from thy power and favour alone.” https://biblehub.com/commentaries/poole/psalms/3.htm