Psalm 3 Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community and service.

Today's message is by Associate Pastor Kyle Douglas. If you'd like more information about our church or would like to access our sermon archive, please visit recastchurch .com.

I decided to start the sermon today by embarrassing myself.

What better way to begin, right? In high school, I was a little bit of a romantic, and I wrote poetry.

And that's the embarrassment, that I wrote poetry in high school. I came very close to actually digging some of them out and possibly reading them to you, but I couldn't suffer it, okay?

So just know that I wrote poetry. I actually ended up kind of assembling like this little book.

It was very handy with the ladies, right? I gave the book to my wife, almost under the pretense that I had written them for her.

Some of them I had, some of them I had recycled. But I wrote poetry because here

I was, I was a high school student, I had all these feelings and emotions going on, and I liked

English. That was one of my better subjects, and I liked words and all that. So I would write poetry, and I would express my feelings through words in the hopes that maybe some lady would see how sensitive

I was, that kind of a thing. Anyone else write poetry? Go ahead, don't be afraid.

Only under duress, right? Only when a grade is riding on the line.

Some of you write poetry, but why do people write poetry, right? I mean, poetry is really an essential piece of our culture.

It's this artistic expression that means a lot, not just to our culture, but cultures all over the world. But why write poetry?

A way of expressing your feelings. And music, essentially, is, or songs at least, are poems set to music, right?

So Ray is saying it's a way to express our feelings. Sometimes it just needs a little bit more, right, than just blurting it out.

Sometimes you need to craft something that really gets at the essence of what you're feeling. Anyone else?

Any other motivations? I like that.

Dude, it's a poem, okay? Chill, right? So yeah, so it's a commonly accepted art form, it's a way, yeah, right.

What are some of the emotions that drive people to poetry? For me, it was romance.

Anyone ever written a poem out of anger? No? All right, yeah, sorry, dude, right.

That was the other thing that would drive me to poetry is when life was going difficult, when

I was depressed, it would just seem like when I was depressed and I had my journal,

I'd go out into the woods and it would just be, it would just start flowing, you know? Some people talk about their muses, right, you know, the things that drive them.

Well, I think we've kind of landed on it and I just wanted to put in your mind, you know, what causes your heart to want to express itself in words and poems?

Well, it's generally emotions. It's the stuff on the inside and just about everything you could probably find in a poem, you could say more concisely and more clearly and more logically, right?

And yet, I don't know that you could always say it more truthfully than when you say it in a poem.

And there's something about these word stories and these metaphors and these pictures that actually capture the essence of what we're trying to say more clearly than just stating something in hard, cold fact.

And so we come to the book of Psalms. The book of Psalms is 150 of these poems, of these expressions from people who were following God, who had something bubbling up inside them that they needed to say to the

Lord, that they needed to express to Him. And we really, we get the whole gamut of emotions in the

Psalms, don't we? We have sheer joy and praise. Someone walks outside on a beautiful day like this and they see the trees and the color and the wind hits them on the face and the sun is warming their skin, and they just burst forth with praise towards God.

They just want to let Him know how awesome His creation is because they see God's beauty in creation.

So they write a poem of praise or maybe they were saved from something very dire or significant and they want to capture that and express themselves.

But there are other poems, Psalms, that talk about really hard times, that talk about feeling far from God, feeling like He's not around, like He doesn't care about them anymore.

Then there are other Psalms that call for vindication on enemies. The Psalm that we're going to read today has this line that's just like, really?

You can say that in a poem to God about another person? And I think one of the most powerful things that we learn from the

Psalms is that God is okay with us being authentic in our expression to Him.

He can handle our emotions. He can handle what you're feeling on the inside.

And He wants you to share those things with Him, raw, real, the good stuff, right?

And the key is the fact that you are sharing them with God. So these artistic expressions of emotions and truth find their power in the fact that they're directed towards God, that they are rooted in Him.

And they're the foundation of a relationship with God. How many of you know that if you are trying to build, let's say, a strong marriage or some kind of relationship between another person, you get very far until you begin to communicate openly and honestly?

You don't. You might be able to ride it with some other things for a while, infatuation or duty or whatever.

But it's not until you begin opening up to that person and bearing your soul and letting them in, letting them know how you're really feeling, that a relationship can begin to really solidify.

And it's the same with God. Some of you feel like you're far from God and like you pray and prayers are just bouncing off the wall and it's like there's nothing there.

And I wonder maybe if it's just because you haven't gotten to the point where you're willing to actually open up to Him, to the point where you're actually willing to do what the psalmist do and just bear their soul before the

Lord. That's what we learn from the

Psalms. That's what these books are about. So a couple of things that I think that we can take away just as a general introduction to the

Psalms is number one, it takes time to write a poem, right? I think what

Nikki may be appreciated about some of the poems that I wrote specifically for her was that I took the time to put something down on paper and form thoughts and dwell on what

I loved about her, right? So someone gives you a poem and it's about you and you immediately know or at least subconsciously know that that person spent some time with you in their mind, right?

Does that make you feel good? That you were worth that person's time and effort to spend some time doing that?

So all of these Psalms are expressions of things that people have crafted for the

Lord and I think He takes pleasure in that. It shows us that we ought to put a little bit of effort into our relationship with God.

We ought to put a little bit of effort and time into communicating to God who He is and why we love

Him. But secondly, we go back to that open communication thing, right?

If you want to foster a relationship with God, you got to be real with Him. You have to be authentic. Authenticity is one of our core values, all right?

The Psalms help us because they show us that you can say things to God that you didn't maybe think that you were supposed to be able to say, right?

You can let Him know what's on the inside, what's in your heart. But then the last thing, and this is just kind of repetitious, but the last thing is that the

Psalms are rooted in God. They bring you back to a relationship with Him.

I could say it like this, it's okay to get in the rant mobile, but you got to be careful where you park it, right?

So we can be authentic towards God, and we can complain, and we can spit out the violence that's inside our heart about the injustice that we're receiving, all of that.

But if it doesn't land back in God, in trust in Him in our circumstances, or in humbling ourself for Him to change us on the inside, then we've gotten off base.

So as we get to one of these Psalms this morning, I want you to just think about that, that this is an opportunity for David, the

Psalm that he wrote, to express himself openly and fully to the Lord. And the cool thing about Psalm 3, which is where we're at, is that we actually have the context that it was written in.

We actually have the story in 2 Samuel of David fleeing from his son Absalom. And it's in that context that he writes this

Psalm. And so it's very instructive for us. It shows us how to process despair.

It shows us how to be in a bad spot, and what we ought to do with our emotions and our worries.

How to build our faith. How to communicate to God when it's all hitting the fan.

So we're going to read Psalm 3 here, and then we're going to worship, and then we'll come back and work through this.

So if you can turn with me to Psalm 3, and it should be in the seat backs behind you.

Can someone throw out the page number in the seat back Bible? 384. It's on page 384.

Psalm 3. And if you don't have a

Bible at home, feel free to take that with you. We always want you to have a copy of the Word of God handy. Psalm 3.

A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom, his son. 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.

Arise, O Lord, save me, O my God. For you strike my enemies on the cheek.

You break the teeth of the wicked. Salvation belongs to the Lord. Your blessing be on your people.

Selah. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for these

Psalms. We thank you for a book, one of several in the

Bible, God, that gives us emotional expressions of our faith in you.

And Lord, I thank you for what it teaches us, and for what it gives us permission to do. It gives us permission to call out to you,

Lord. To be real with you and honest, and to pay attention to our emotions, and to work through the truths of who you are in spite of the circumstances around us,

Lord. And I thank you, God, that we can call out to you for salvation. And I pray this morning,

God, that as we come to worship you, Lord, that we would get someone else wrote and set to music, and we would make them our own, in an honest expression of our hearts to you.

God, you are worthy of all of our praise. You have redeemed us and saved us through the blood of your Son, Jesus Christ.

And for that, we're thankful. And so as we worship you now, Lord, we offer this up to you as a

Thanksgiving offering, Lord. And we pray that you would meet us here. Whatever we came in as, whatever we brought with us,

Lord, we pray, God, that you would heal us. And it's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Thanks to the band, as always, for leading us in worship. It takes a lot of time to get all that ready and use their skills, and thank them for it.

So here we are, Psalm 3, Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom, his son.

This psalm is basically put in about four stanzas or strophes, is kind of the technical term there, but you can see that, at least in my

Bible, they're kind of broken up into paragraphs. And then there's this word that kind of breaks each section, and that word is selah, but you'll notice that there are only how many selahs?

Three, right. So what that helps to point out is that this was a psalm that was built for music.

So there's, in a sense, we don't always get the full power of the psalms, maybe, in the sense that these were actual songs that were sung by people, many of them were.

So sometimes you'll see a title that says this was written for the lyre, or the harp, or something like that.

But this was a musical psalm because of the selah. Now selah, we don't actually know what that means.

That word is kind of a mystery to us. There's kind of two general ideas. One is that selah is a pause or a break, a time of reflection, so maybe the instruments would keep playing and you would dwell on the words that you just sung.

Some people, though, think it's kind of an octave change or a kick up. So as the song goes, there's a building.

But whatever it means, it is interesting to note that there, in between three and four, there's no selah.

It's like there's no break, no pause, no change, and that serves to kind of emphasize what's happening there, and we'll get to that.

It's also often referred to as the morning psalm because of that, when we'll get down there to verse, where'd it go, five.

He says, I lay down and slept, and so some people think that he's actually, this is part of David's morning devotions, which is interesting.

I don't see that specifically here, that he had to write it in the morning or it was a morning devotion, but there is a lot of significance to that term.

So how did David get to this point? How does he come to write

Psalm 3? Well, I mentioned the story about his fleeing from Absalom is found for us in 2

Samuel, and we'll kind of keep going back to that periodically because there are just certain parts of that story that line up so well with what he's pouring his heart out, how he's pouring his heart out here.

We certainly don't have time to read the whole story, but let me give it to you in a nutshell. King David was a very successful king.

He took over for King Saul. King Saul was kind of a screw -up, okay? The Lord anoints

David. David eventually becomes king. He's very successful, routes his enemies, establishes

Jerusalem as the center of Israel, and he's there in his palace at one point, and it begins with, at the times that kings go out for war,

David was at home. And many of you know this story.

What happened next? He's home, he's bored, he's up on top of his roof, he's looking around and he sees a woman bathing, and that's

Bathsheba, and his heart lusts for her, and because he's king and he has power, he sends servants to go get her.

She comes into the palace. Stuff happens, right? And then a little bit later, she sends word to David and says,

King, I have some news. I'm pregnant. Uh -oh. David takes things into his own hands, decides that he'll figure out a scheme to take care of it, calls her husband home, who's fighting

David's war for him on the front lines, brings him back, say, how's it going?

Oh, fine, King, you know, we're out there, we're fighting battles, and just, you know, God is protecting us, et cetera, et cetera, and he says, well, you're doing a great job.

How about you go home to your wife, right? Because if he goes home to his wife, then maybe he can pass it off as not his baby, and this guy, right, is such a stud, he doesn't go home.

He's like, if my men are out in the field, I'm not going anywhere. I can't go home and enjoy my wife and my home if my fellow soldiers are out there sleeping under the stars.

So he doesn't go home. David tries again the next night, tries to get him drunk, sends him home, nope, sleeps right on the porch.

So David's like, well, I got to figure this out. Sends word to one of his officials, has him go, and say, and the name is totally blanking.

What's Bathsheba's husband? Uriah. Uriah, thank you. Holy cow, I just totally slipped my mind.

Uriah. He has Uriah sent to the front lines, and he says, go put him in the front, and when the battle gets heavy, withdraw from him.

And what's he doing? Committing murder. He's planning a way for one of his own soldiers to die in battle.

And I think the commander of the army knows where there's some heroic men where he can place

Uriah, and he does, and Uriah ends up dying. And so he sends for Bathsheba, and he comes and takes him as his wife.

Not good. Not good. And Nathan the prophet comes to David with a word from the

Lord, and he tells him the story about this wealthy man who had all these sheep, his fields are covered with him, and then there was this poor peasant who had one sheep.

And the wealthy man, when he had to throw a party, instead of taking from his abundant flock, he goes and he takes the one peasant sheep and has him killed, uses that sheep for food.

And David is outraged, and he says, this is infuriating. How could anyone do this? And he goes, hey, you're the guy.

Uriah had a wife, his precious wife, you can take from any virgin in the land, and yet you chose to take his.

And David, convicted of his sin, says, I have sinned greatly, and confesses his sin.

And it said that the Lord was angry at David for what he had done, but the

Lord doesn't hold it against David after he confesses his sin. But there are going to be consequences, all right?

And turn with me to 2 Samuel, I think it's chapter 12, Nathan rebukes

David. David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. This is 2 Samuel 12, verse 13.

And Nathan said to David, the Lord also has put away your sin, you shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the

Lord, the child who is born to you shall die. Then Nathan went to his house.

So, David is at a point in his life where he has stumbled big time.

And thankfully, word has gotten out and he's been corrected, and how many of you know how difficult that is, when your sin gets exposed?

Is it easy to have your sin exposed? No. But thank the Lord when it does, because you have an opportunity to humble yourself and repent.

If you don't have that opportunity, then it will continue to eat you alive until you get it out into the open.

And so, I believe that God is working in David's life here to heal him.

But there are significant consequences to his sin, isn't there? He's going to lose his child that was born in adultery.

But now David has kind of this scar. It says that the Lord has forgiven him, has taken away his sin, but now he has to kind of live with the fact that he's done this, okay?

And I think that's going to come into play here as he writes this psalm, because he has this past sin now that's going to hover over him and want to accuse him.

Well, this kind of begins a downward spiral, this Bathsheba episode for David. In some ways, his family begins to become in disrepair.

He has some children born to him from some of his wives. One of them is Absalom, his oldest. And then there's this episode with Absalom and another son of David's named

Amnon. And then the sister of Absalom named Tamar. Amnon lusts for Tamar, and he can't have her because she's a virgin and it's not appropriate.

But day after day, he's pining away for her, and finally this sneaky guy comes up and gives him a plan.

He says, well, just pretend you're sick and tell your dad to have her go and make some cakes for you. And then when she's there, you can have her, do whatever you want with her.

And so he executes this plan, and he rapes his sister. Amnon rapes his sister Tamar, Absalom's sister.

Absalom is furious about this, and not the kind of furious, like I'm going to go over there right now and take care of business, but the kind of furious that I'm going to bide my time, and when the time is right,

I'm going to take Amnon out. And it says that David heard about these things and was displeased, but we never hear of any kind of correction that David brings into the situation.

So, what I think is beginning to happen here is Absalom is beginning to lose trust in his father David over the way that he's handling his family affairs, plus he's furious that his sister was violated.

So long story short, again, Absalom bides his time, it's a couple years later, he decides to throw a party because he's going to shear his sheep, and everyone knows you throw a killer party when you've got to shear your sheep, okay?

And he tells his dad, send them all, I want all my brothers to come and we're going to party at my place while we shear the sheep.

And David's like, no, son, we don't want to be a burden to you, I mean, that's just going to be too much, and I don't know what David's deal was, but he didn't want to go, and he goes, well, all right, if you guys aren't going to come, at least send

Amnon. And he says, okay, fine, and so he sends Amnon to the party and Absalom has his servants rise up and kill his brother.

Absalom takes off and David is distraught over children fighting, children murdering each other, houses falling apart, but now

Absalom, who's this beautiful kid and kind of the apple of David's eye, is off, estranged from him, and he's mourning, and eventually

Absalom comes back. David is convinced to take him at least back into the city, and even though he doesn't see him personally, he allows him back in, but Absalom's heart isn't healed, and pretty soon he starts going after his dad.

And he starts sitting by the gate, and as people come in to hear a judgment from the king, he pulls him aside and says, what's the problem?

Maybe I can take care of it for you. And it says that Absalom steals the heart of Israel, and he begins to grow in power, and he basically gets to the point where he forms a conspiracy against his dad, and he runs his dad out of town.

David flees for his life. So you had David on top of the world,

David and Bathsheba, and then now his family is in a sad, sad state, and this glorious king, who had everything, is now running like a dog from his own son.

Some of you this morning are on the run. You may not be a king of a nation, and you may not have a political and familial fiasco going on.

Someone may not actually be trying to kill you, although some of you might question some of your children sometimes. But some of you are on the run.

For some of you, life seems to be going from bad to worse. Not all of us, but some of you.

Some of you have foes rising up around you, increasing.

Things are going badly. People are fighting you. You're fighting yourself.

It's like your world is crumbling. So David is on the run.

He gets to the point of the Jordan River, and I love what it says there. By the way, as he's leaving the city, as he's fleeing, right,

I mean, this is emotional. People are weeping. They're tearing their clothes because the king is shamed, and his glory is being trodden on the ground, and this isn't how kings are supposed to act, right?

And he's going out of the city, and people are coming up and hurling stones at him, and a family member of Saul's comes up.

Remember Saul? He took the throne from Saul, and he's like, you are a man of blood, cursing him and throwing stones at him.

Get out of town. You get what you deserve. And David walks out of town with his head down, worships at the

Mount of Olives, calls out to God, and then continues, and he gets to the

Jordan River, and he stops at the Jordan River with his camp, and it says, there David refreshed himself. And I think, in my humble opinion, that's where we get

Psalm 3. He's at the lowest of the low, his son is on his tail, he's at the

Jordan River, and he refreshes himself, and he refreshes himself by speaking his heart to God.

And that's where we get this first stanza, right? He just says it like it is,

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.

And I think those of you who might be on the run, and are having those hard times, isn't that one of the first questions you go to?

Does God hate me? Where is he?

I confessed. I know I'm a sinner, I screwed up, but God, is this punishment?

Should I believe that accusing voice in my own heart? Should I believe what other people are saying about me?

Charles Spurgeon said this, it is the most bitter of all afflictions to be led to fear that there is no help for us in God.

And David is here at the Jordan River wondering if there's any help for him in God, wondering if the curses are true, that God has forsaken you,

David, because you are worthless. You thought you were a king, but you're a scumbag sinner.

You're a man of blood, and you get what you deserve. And I think we all have a choice, right, when things are going badly for us.

We can believe the voices of people around us, we can believe that own accusing voice in our own minds, or we can throw in a, but you, oh

Lord, verse 2, verse 3, excuse me, stanza 2.

So he says it like it is, he admits that everything is terrible, his circumstances, but then he gets to this point, but you, oh

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. But you, oh

Lord, are a shield about me, my glory and the lifter of my head.

See he was able to admit that his circumstances were dire, he was able to be real about them, to name them, to confess them, but he doesn't stay stuck there.

He reminds himself through worship of who God is. The reality of God's character says three things, a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head.

Now what's interesting is that each of these things confront some part of the problem that he's suffering, don't they?

Do people want to attack him? Yes. There's about 20 ,000 guys, more than that actually, tens of thousands, 20 ,000 will fall later in a battle, but there are tens of thousands of men literally being led by Absalom in pursuit of him.

And there's all this like kind of secret service stuff going on under the surface.

People are politicizing and there's like secret guys in the castle, you know, like you don't know who to trust.

You don't know who's on your team or who's on the other, working for the other guy. And so he literally feels surrounded, but he says, no

God, you are a shield around me. Not just a shield in front of me, but it's like you're surrounding me, a shield about me.

Isn't that one of the scariest things, right? When you think about what could potentially go wrong in your life. It's one thing to know what could go wrong.

It's another thing to have no idea what's coming. To have no idea what's sneaking up behind you.

I heard some stories this week, cancer diagnoses, right?

Never saw it coming, out of the blue. Maybe you just lost your job.

Maybe a friend bailed on you and you're like, where did that come from? But David reminds himself that no

God, you are a shield about me and you'll protect me all around, what's in front of me, what's behind me.

If I rest in you, Lord, I don't have to see everything. I don't have to be aware of all of my problems because you are in control and you'll guard me front and back.

He says that he is his glory. A king is meant to be glorious. A king is meant to be esteemed.

And right now David is in torn clothes with ashes on his head with nowhere to go. Not very glorious.

But what's he reminding himself here? I don't have any glory but you

God. It's not about my circumstances. It's not about my reputation, what people think of me.

It's about you. And see what he does when he places his treasure, his hope, his love, his confidence in God.

No one can get at it. No one can take it.

He's had his earthly glory stolen from him. But if God is your glory, you will never be disappointed because he's the only one that matters, right?

His opinion of you is the only thing that counts. And he's working to put his heart back in the right place, not caring about his earthly situation but about what the

Lord has for him. And he says that he's a lifter of my head and I thank God that sometimes in the deepest darkest moments when you are depressed and you are down,

God can come into your life and he can lift up your head. He can help you look up again.

And literally the story says that as David was leaving the city, he was hanging his head in shame, weeping and crying.

And then he worships and he takes his eyes off of the ground and he looks up to the sky again and worships the

Lord who will protect him. And there's such hope in that. The picture that this brings to mind is of me and my kids and I don't, some of you maybe can empathize with this, but there are times when my kids get really down, right?

I mean, you know, toy broke or a neighbor kid said something to them or whatever, you know, and they come home and they're all sad.

One of the things I love to do as a dad is just to reach down to my kid's face and cup their cheeks and the palms of my hand and just tilt them up and look them in the eye and say, it's okay,

I love you. Daddy's here, right? You'll be all right, kid.

I think in a way, David is acknowledging that God sometimes, and I don't know how he does it, he does it to each of us differently, but he reaches down and he just, he grabs her chin and he just lifts us up like, hey, right, you and me, we'll get through this.

He says, I cried aloud to the Lord and He answered me from His holy hill. So again, in that song, he gets out, he spends some time on the

Mount of Olives as he's passing out and he worships the Lord. He says, they landed on the

Mount of Olives where he worshiped the Lord, spends that time, he cries aloud to God on the hill. And what's interesting is as he's worshiping there, calling out to God, I am so forgetting these names, they're just so bad,

I spent all week in this story, Hushai, right? This guy comes up to him, chapter 15, it says, while David was coming to the summit where God was worshiped, behold,

Hushai the archite came to meet him with his coat torn and dirt on his head. And so basically he flees and David says, you know what, you're going to be a burden to me if you come with me, but what you can do is you can go back and tell

Absalom that you want to serve him. And he gets a man on the inside and Hushai ends up saving

David by relaying some information about what was planned and schemed, gives it to the priest and they get it to David and David's life is spared.

Could it be that as he said, I cried aloud to the Lord and He answered me from His holy hill, he's literally referring to the fact that I was before you in worship,

God, on the hill, desperate, calling out to you and you sent a dude for me, right then and there.

And what's also unique about this is that David decided to move on without the ark of the covenant. So that thing that represented

God's presence and His provision, he sent back to the city. And so David was not at the temple, he was not right in the traditional place of the presence of God, but he's still saying,

I called out to God and He heard me. God hears, He's everywhere and He will sometimes answer us in the most unique ways.

We can call out to God and He can answer us anytime. And one way you could put it is that we have an advantage over David because we have a high priest at the right hand of God the

Father and Jesus Christ. We don't need a temple anymore, we don't need an ark of a covenant,

God is all around us. He's in us by His Holy Spirit and whenever we need something, we can call on Him and He will hear us and answer us.

Verse 5, 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.

Do you see the transition that's happening as David is working through these emotions? At first, oh

Lord, save me because I have a million people surrounding me. And then he reminds himself of the goodness of God and then he gets to a point where he's so wore out and he's so tired, but he's confident enough in God that he can go to sleep.

This is poetic and some of the early church fathers, especially one,

I'm not going to remember any name the whole rest of the morning, so just don't worry about it, but there's this old guy that said this thing and he's like, of course, this is a prophetic word of Christ, otherwise

David is giving us the very important information that he went to sleep and woke up.

And we'll get to that. But I do think there's something, and those of you going through tough times know this, how tough it can be to go to sleep, how tough it can be to let go.

And there's a point that you can get to where you can just say, okay, God, if you want to take me tonight, if you want to break my heart and send me, take me home, okay, but I got to go to bed.

I got to escape. I can't fight anymore today, God. And you lay yourself down and you trust

God that he's going to wake you up in the morning. And how many times maybe have you had troubles and you finally get to a point and you just go to sleep and you wake up and you thank

God you got another shot. So I think

David is just thanking the Lord in the midst of being pursued by an enemy that he can lay his head down and he can sleep.

And he acknowledges that it is God who sustained him. God, you woke me up again.

I guess I got to fight another day. He stopped at the Jordan and he refreshed himself.

And look what happens when he comes, when he gets awake. I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around.

He's ready. He's given himself to God and he's ready. Anyone who's played high school football kind of knows the picture here, right?

You get some little guy and you're in the locker room beforehand and you're getting ready to go out there and play and everyone's getting all pumped up and smacking each other in the face, you know, and rawr, you know, let's go, let's get them.

And there's always like some little guy that you're like, you're going to get laid out the first time someone touches you, right?

But he's like the cockiest, just ready to, yes, you know, and he leads the charge out there and he's ready to go.

You know what I'm talking about? Anyone? Maybe you were that guy, right? David, David can't win this battle.

David can't fight 10 ,000s of people. He's a little punk. He's a nobody.

But with God, he's ready to fight and he's saying, come what may, I'm going out into the battle and I'll take them all.

The Lord is his confidence. And I feel like this is really the, this is what we're looking for in worship, right?

We come in bedraggled and broken and beat up and we sing to God. We're reminded of who he is.

We're reminded that he loves us and the truth of who he is. And we stand again.

And we don't just stand, but we stand strong because God is our salvation.

Arise, O Lord, save me, O my God. Arise there, the same

Hebrew word that Jesus uses when he raises the little child from the dead, Tabitha koum, koum

Yahweh. It's a command, you know, David, can you order the

Lord around? Well, he does. He's saying it's time to go, God.

It's time to get active. It's time for your salvation to hit the ground. God doesn't sleep.

He doesn't slumber. He's not lazy. But we're just seeing here David saying,

God, I need it. I need it now. I need you to save me. And I would encourage you that when you're going through the hard times too, don't skip this verse.

Don't leave this stanza out of your song. There comes a point where you have to call on the name of the

Lord. There's such great power when you finally get to that point where you just say,

God, I need you. I need you to help me in this interview. I need you to help me go home to my kids tonight.

I need you to help me figure out life without my significant other.

I need you to help me beat this cancer. So he shouts to the Lord, arise, oh

Lord, save me, oh my God, save me. What a great word. That word is

Yeshua. Yeshua, Yahweh, save me, oh my

God. And then this is one of the most intriguing verses here to me.

For you strike all my enemies on the cheek. You break the teeth of the wicked. David's a warrior and he's about to go into battle.

I think this is a little bit of a pep talk, right? But is it okay? Can he ask for something like that?

Should we be praying that? God, break the teeth of my employer.

Dude's a jerk. A couple of things.

Number one, getting your teeth broken is no fun. My dad, one time we were wrestling around. We're in the living room and we were whipping those little alphabet blocks at each other.

It was just something we did. It was like roughhousing, right? And at one point I'm out of ammo. I'm like,

I got to do something. And I see him kind of turn around to gather up his blocks and I'm like, okay, now's my time. And I jump out from behind the chair and I go to charge him.

And he weighs 300 pounds more than me. And I have no hope, but I'm going to do it anyway. And he must have eyes in the back of his head because he never looked at me, but he must have heard me coming.

He reaches down, grabs a cup that one of us kids had left, you know, whatever. Throws it from under his arm right at me as I'm about to jump on him.

Hits me right in the mouth. And I go, oh! And I stop. And he turns around and in a moment of fatherly compassion says, oh, yeah, right.

And I'm like, my tooth! And then I see the blood start flowing from my fingers.

Cup hit me right in the lip. Put my teeth through my lip. Snapped off one of my incisors right in half.

It hurt like crazy. Then you have to go through all the, you know, repair jobs and all that stuff.

But David is asking, David is calling on God as the vanquisher of his enemies to punch in the teeth of the wicked.

I want to be careful with this because I don't want to say that it's just okay to wish harm on someone. But something

I think that we can take away is the fact that with the wicked, do you detest wickedness enough?

Do you get angry enough about it, indignant enough about it, that you want to see wickedness destroyed?

Because someday it will be destroyed. God will vanquish his enemies.

He will take them out and it will not be pretty. But the other thing is that, again, as Psalms, these are heart cries.

And sometimes you just got to say what you're feeling. Sometimes you got to let it out. Sometimes you got to give words to the violent emotions inside of you.

But what's the key? Who did he call on to do the smashing? God. And God can decide if today's a teeth -smashing day or not.

But you put it in God's hands. You leave it to him to bring on vengeance.

And then you just follow in obedience. Salvation belongs to the

Lord. There's that word again, Yeshua. Your blessing be on your people. And so our transition is complete.

David started on his knees, broken before God, complaining about his circumstances, wondering if he was going to be alive in the morning.

And now he's praying for the very people that are against him. Who's rebelling against him?

Yeah, Absalom, but Israel. Salvation belongs to the

Lord. Your blessing be on your people. Yeshua belongs to the

Lord. Your blessing be on your people. And I thought this was amazing. One of the scholars

I was reading pointed out that this is very similar to what someone else said at one point while he was being pursued.

While his people were rebelling against him, Jesus Christ on the cross looked down and said,

Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. David, because he brought his troubles to the

Lord, because he called out to him, because he was able to say, Now I lay me down to sleep.

I pray the Lord my soul to keep. Anyone say that when they were a kid? That was my prayer every night.

It's kind of morbid for a kid to say that. I remember realizing always, I'm praying about if I die tonight?

But David says the big boy version. He says, God, I have no hope in you. I'm going to lay myself down.

I'm going to trust that you're going to take care of me. And he does. And he gets to a place where he can actually pray for the very people who are persecuting him, asking

God to bless them. That's the power of calling out to the

Lord, of trusting in him for salvation. And this

Jesus that was on the cross, we know him as Jesus, but Jesus is

Greek, Iesu, for Joshua, which was another character in the

Bible who was strong and courageous and saved his people. And Joshua comes from Yeshua, salvation.

Jesus Christ is our salvation. Jesus Christ saved us.

And he will save us. And as we close today, we're going to go to communion. And my encouragement to you is as you think about this psalm, as you think about what you're running from and where your hope is,

I encourage you to call out to Yeshua. Call out to Jesus Christ for salvation.

I promise you, he hears you. And while all of the circumstances may not be taken away, and all of the consequences might not be removed, you will have the confidence that no matter what happens,

God is with you. And someday, you will lay down to sleep.

And it will be the last time that you lay down to sleep. But in Jesus Christ, you will wake up to a glorious morning if you are in him by faith.

Amen? Amen. Let's pray. Father in heaven, as we come to communion,

Lord, we want to remember the work that you have done for us. We want to remember that you laid yourself down for us, that you went to sleep on our behalf, and the

Lord sustained you and lifted you up and resurrected you to eternal life.

And Father, we have hope that in you, if we trust in Jesus Christ and confess our sins, and we come before you humbly,

God, that you will save us too. And you will raise us up to new life. So Father, please make that real to us as we take this bread and this cup.

Pray that we put our eyes on you. And just as David began his psalm with, O Lord, and he ends with,

O Lord, calling on your salvation, Father, we pray that we would begin and end with you as well, knowing that you are our hope for eternity.