God: Our Safe Space
1 Samuel 19:1–24; Psalm 59:1–5
We have been studying in 1 Samuel
19. In that chapter we saw that David is under assault from his father-in-law,
Saul. Saul attempts to kill him. This is his fifth attempt to kill David.
That’s the meaning of the superscription at the beginning of Psalm 59, because
David wrote the psalm at this particular time. Today as we get into this psalm
we’re going to look at it, we’re going to see that biblically speaking God is
our safe space.
It's always interesting that
in different cultures there are always things that pop up within the culture
that give us opportunities to talk about the Lord. That’s exactly what this
psalm is talking about. God is our defense. He’s our high place. He’s our
tower. He’s our shield. He’s the One who protects us. All those concepts are
there.
What we see now with the
things that are happening on campuses the last year or two, we see a whole
generation of young people, teenagers, college kids, and those up into their
thirties … they classify them as “millennials”. They include a lot of people
who are middle-aged as well who don’t know how to live in a world where they
don’t get their way.
They don’t know how to live
in a world where, for example, they don’t get their way. These people have been
very, very happy because of the way the president has done many things in the
last ten years and now that there’s going to be a change with perhaps a major
shift in focus, they just don’t know how to handle that—any more than a lot of
conservatives knew how to handle it when things went the other direction.
That’s because their stability is in the wrong things.
Our stability isn’t in the
Constitution of the United States. Our stability isn’t in a particular
interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. Our stability isn’t in
the kind of tax code we have. All those things are nice if they’re done the
right way, but our stability is in the Lord.
When you have a generation
that has never heard anything about God, I believe that’s the generation we
have now more than ever before, they are more divorced in a broad sense from
Judeo-Christian truth than any previous generation in this country’s history.
They’re even more divorced from biblical Christian truth, which focuses on the
fact that we live in a fallen world.
I’ve said this many times
and I usually quote Thomas Sowell’s book A Conflict of Visions when I do so, [you don’t
need to read the whole book but just his preface] where his focus in writing
that book was to find out why it was that no matter what the issue was, whether
you’re talking about immigration, whether you’re talking about certain aspects
related to war like the declaration of war and national defense, whether you’re
talking about tax policy, whether you’re talking about abortion and right-to-life
issues, or whether you’re talking about medical care and health care and how
the government should regulate the health or insurance industries, many very,
very different topics, he noticed that the beliefs of the group was largely
stable.
He said that if you take a
group of 100 people and you say those who believe in the death penalty go over
here and those who don’t go to the other side and split the group into two
groups and then if you say that those who come into this country illegally should
be deported or there should be some major penalty, there may be a few people
who change groups but most of those groups will stay the same.
Then if you ask about how
many people think we ought to have nationalized healthcare, the groups won’t
change. If you talk about abortion, the groups won’t change. There may be one
or two people who switch sides but generally the same people stay on the same
side. Conservatives are on one side; those who are liberal in the modern sense
of the term are on the other side.
He posed the question of
what is the belief system, the underlying belief system, the
undergirding presupposition that informs how they answer all these other issues
in life. He traced it back to a couple of key thinkers and writers in the late 1700s.
He uses that as sort of his benchmark.
As he explores what they
wrote, he comes to the conclusion that what makes the difference is that those
who are conservative believe that basically man is inherently evil and liberals
believe that man is inherently good. Everything else flows out of those two
presuppositions.
As far as Judaism goes,
there are several distinctions. Starting with Reform Judaism, it doesn’t
necessarily believe that man is inherently evil nor does Conservative Judaism
(Conservative Judaism is not the same as conservative Christianity). In the
history of Reform Judaism, it went from Orthodox to just about as far left as
you can get. You can believe almost anything and still be a Reform Jew. You
don’t have to believe in the Torah or Mosaic Law or any of those things.
There were a number of Jews
by the end of the 1700s who couldn’t go all the way to
the left with Reform Judaism because they were a little more conservative, so
by the early 1800s you had the development of conservative Judaism.
Conservative Jews are not conservative like conservative Christians are.
They’re just not as liberal as Reform Jews. Then there’s another group of Jews
who started in the last thirty or forty years called Reconstruction Judaism and
they’re way to the left end of the spectrum. So that’s how to understand
Judaism.
By the Judeo-Christian
heritage I believe we mean the historic beliefs of Orthodox Judaism and the
historic beliefs of biblical Christianity emphasizing the elements of what is
taught in the Torah in relationship to government, in relationship to absolute
standards of right and wrong, in the role and relationship of government to
citizens and freedom, and things of that nature.
Historic Judaism, although
it doesn’t have the same view of total depravity that Christians have, they do
have a view more consistent with that. They do have a view that believes in
inherent evil in man.
That was what informed the
thinking of the Founding Fathers. When you get into the views of Marxism, views
of socialism, views of Darwinism, everything is just natural and that’s there’s
no fall from any kind of grace. In Darwinism all the evil that’s in the world
is just a manifestation of the survival of the fittest. It doesn’t at all
explain the arrival of the fittest.
In Darwinism under natural
selection, the main thing is that all this struggle and fight is good because
that’s how you advance is through one group taking power and control over
another group. There’s no basis for right or wrong. That’s just the way things
are.
When we get into looking at
these kinds of distinctions then Christians are going to look at things very,
very differently. Our security is not grounded in human institutions. Our
security is not grounded in political parties. Our security is not grounded
even in education, success, or our career. Our security is grounded in God and
God’s plan for the human race and God’s ability to provide and protect us
individually no matter what those individual circumstances are.
We have a whole generation
who doesn’t understand that. When things don’t go their way, they don’t have
the internal mental attitude tools, the spiritual tools to handle disagreement,
to handle people who challenge their belief system, which is often formed in
the bubble of a university classroom or university philosophy class.
I was very pleased weeks ago
that the University of Chicago came out and said there would be no safe space
there. A university is a place where you forge ideas in the matrix of debate
and discussion and disagreement. That’s how you learn to think. Now we’re
seeing this outrage from a lot of young people.
I read an article today that
most of the protesters in Portland, Oregon didn’t register to vote, could not
vote, and did not vote. Now they’ve been stirred up by outside forces that they
don’t really understand or know anything about. A philosopher said many years
ago that the only way a finite reference point, something that is limited,
something that is finite, can have any meaning is in reference to an infinite
reference point.
In other words, none of us
can find meaning in our lives apart from some eternal absolute. You take away
that eternal absolute and you’re left with the inability to answer life’s
questions. What are we here for? What is the meaning of life? What is our
purpose? Am I just here to do the best I can and to beat others in competition
or am I here for some higher, more significant purpose?
As I talk about the problem
of evil and the reality of evil and depravity, that also brings to our
attention a major theme of this particular psalm, that is the issue of
injustice. So, God provides security for the believer who is living in a fallen
world where we expect to see unrighteousness.
If you don’t believe in
total depravity, you don’t expect to see unrighteousness. You want things to go
well and you expect things to get better and better because we’re improving
things. That’s the nature of humanity and that’s where this idea of
progressivism comes from, that we can progress toward utopia.
We can improve things, but
we’re not going to have major progression because if we just look at history,
that doesn’t happen. There’s improvement in certain areas but not in every
area. Every civilization usually regresses and falls and is replaced by another
one.
We have to understand that
as Christians this gives us a great tool if we can work the conversation
correctly by asking the right questions to talk to a lot of young people. How
can a university provide you with security and safety? How can politics and
political position ultimately provide you with security and safety?
The only One who can provide
us with security and safety is God. Only God is more powerful than all the
details of life. Only God is truly righteous. Only God as truly sovereign is
able to bring about genuine justice. It may not be according to what our
timetable is, but we’re assured in Scripture that it will take place.
That’s one of the major
themes of Psalm 59. God is our security. When I was thinking about this
somewhat facetiously I thought about the fact that we’re studying this as a
lament psalm. That’s the scholarly term. Using the word “lament’” in this kind
of our context isn’t always something that’s part of our everyday language and
I wondered how we could bring this back into the vernacular? I’m not sure that
a “whining song” is the correct term, but it gets pretty close.
David is in a tough spot and
he starts to cry out to the Lord, which sounds pretty close to whining at
times, but then he re-orients his thinking to the character of God. That’s what
provides stability. Many of us may not quite get to the point where we call it
whining, or will admit that it’s whining, but it’s part of our sin nature
proclivity so anyone can get that way.
We just don’t like the way
things are going so why doesn’t God straighten things out? What we see here is
a particular type of psalm called a lament psalm. There are two kinds. There’s
a national or communal lament and then there’s an individual lament. This has
elements of both.
It comes out of an
individual situation with David. But as he’s expressing his complaint to God of
being the victim of injustice even though he’s blameless and innocent, he also
is able to extrapolate that to the situation of Israel as a nation that they
are, as it were, within the plan of God, blameless.
They haven’t done anything
to generate all the jealousy and hostility that the Gentile nations express
toward them and so God also needs to defend Israel.
We looked at some of the
characteristics that are expressed here, that it’s addressed to God. Second,
there’s an introductory petition or cry for aid. Third, there’s a great
expression of confidence toward God. Fourth, is an expansion of the basic problem:
the lament section. Fifth, there’s a main petition and a specific request of
God and it closes with a vow of praise.
Now not all the elements
will be there. Those vary but those are basically the characteristics of a
lament psalm.
We saw the outline of this psalm
that it is basically in the form of a chiasm. A chiasm refers to the letter
that looks like “X” in the Greek alphabet and the center of the “X”, the “chi”,
are verses 6–8 and 9–10, focusing on the wicked and God in verses 6–8. That is
a description of the wicked in contrast to God in verse 8. They’re described as
wild dogs in verses 6 and 7 and then the contrast in verse 8 says “But You, O Lord,
will laugh at them.”
Then it shifts to an
expression of hope in God in verses 9 and the first part of 10. We’ll see that
when we get there. I had hopes that we would be able to get through most of
this psalm tonight, but I don’t think we will. I don’t want to rush through it.
I’m a little bit disappointed in that. These were written to
be sung at one sitting, just as most of the epistles were. Of course,
you have Romans and 1 Corinthians, which are a little bit longer.
Going through seventeen
verses in Psalm 59 is a little bit more of a challenge and there are some
difficult things here. So just by way of introduction, which I didn’t get to
last time, we need to understand some things about God versus our problems. I’m
going to go through about five or six things here.
First of all, when we face
adverse circumstances, when we face adversity, we need to understand that
adversity can come from a lot of different sources. It can come from people. It
can come from your parents. It can come from your children. It can be a result
of their volition and their rebellion or it can just be a result of getting
older and your parents are older, they may have bad health, they may have
financial reverses, things like that, and children need to help them.
It can be problems from your
children because they’re rebellious or because they reject what you believe.
Maybe you have children that have serious health problems and you need to help
them. Their problems may be no fault of their own. They may have other
problems, loss of a job, a divorce, or things of that nature, and you have to
help them. You may have a good relationship with them and you may not have a
good relationship with them.
Government. Government may
be your major problem. I know we have people who listen to these Bible classes
all over the world. We have people in Africa and Asia and India, countries in
the Middle East, people in Russia and Ukraine. Some of them are under
oppressive types of government and they have a very difficult time.
In some of those places they
are under attack, under assault from governments to limit the overt expression
of their Christianity. So government can be a very real, in-your-face enemy.
Other places government has just encroached a lot upon religious freedom,
especially in the liberal democracies of Europe and in the United States.
Hopefully some of those things will change. The government forces people in
many different ways.
Sometimes this is through
policies that are enforced in human resources that come down from cabinet
departments in the White House through bureaucratic decisions. Sometimes it’s
legal decisions or judicial decisions. Sometimes it's
just systems.
You go to work in different
environments and the company has every right to limit your speech, to limit
other things, because it’s a private institution or a private company, not
government. Then you have people within those particular bureaucratic
structures in the company that limit you. It can be a large company like Exxon
or Apple or IBM or it can be just a small company with five or six employees.
The way they structure things may not be to your liking.
You may have problems with
technology. I don’t think I need to describe that too much. I think everyone
here has had a computer crash or a phone crash or all kinds of problems to deal
with. There can be all kinds of situations. We look to something to solve those
problems. They bring a lot of adversity and difficulty and stress in our lives,
but God is the only solution because God gives us the ability to put everything
in the right perspective so that we don’t get all wrapped around the axle and
bent out of shape.
Speaking of wrapped around
the axle, this last Saturday night I spoke at Country Bible Church in Brenham
for their 25th Anniversary and I spoke on Psalm 37. Psalm 37 is a
great psalm for most of us to memorize. It begins, “do not fret because of evildoers”. That
word for fret basically means not to work yourself up
into a snit. Don’t work yourself up into a position of anger and worry and
resentment and being upset because of evildoers.
We find that same word
“evildoers” here in Psalm 59. “Don’t fret because of evildoers or be envious of the workers of
iniquity for they shall soon be cut down like the grass and wither like the
herb.” They may look like they’re doing well right now, but we have to have
a long-term perspective on this. When it’s all over with they’re just going to
enjoy some material blessing and power for a very short time and then God will
bring things right again.
So, we’re not to fret. We’re
not to get all worked up about whatever is going on around us. God is the only
solution. We have to focus on that. Several things that are brought out about
God’s character are emphasized here. One of the things that struck me many,
many years ago in reading the Psalms is that the way David faces his problems
is he thinks about God’s character.
We think about His
attributes. God is sovereign which means that He is ruling and whatever is
going on now He must be allowing. Whatever it is, whether it’s small or large,
God has allowed this. Therefore, I need to think in terms of how God wants me
to respond and how He’s going to use this for His glory.
We think about His
righteousness. God is absolute righteousness. That’s the standard of His
character. God is going to always operate on the basis of his righteousness and
there’s a reason for it. Because God is just He is going to eventually right
all the wrongs. We don’t know exactly how all of that is going to happen.
We may have an excellent
idea. I’ve certainly been wronged at times and I’ve had some really good ideas
on how justice ought to come about. But since God is omniscient by definition,
He’s going to have a better idea, so we just have to rest and trust in Him.
God is omnipotent. That’s
emphasized in this Psalm that God is all-powerful. Three times there’s a
reference to His power. Twice it talks about Him as a
strength (verse 9 and verse 17), and in verse 11 He’s going to be
referred to as being mighty. The omnipotence of God is emphasized.
His justice is emphasized.
That’s a key issue in this psalm because David declares that this is happening
to him, that Saul is attacking him, and he hasn’t done anything wrong. There’s
neither sin nor iniquity in him. It’s not from any fault of his. Fault here is
another word for sin.
David says God needs to
intervene and protect him and eventually bring about justice. By the time he
gets to the end of the psalm he’s going to praise God because He knows that God
will bring about justice. Even though he may not see it, he’s so convinced it
will happen that he speaks of it as if it has already occurred.
The third character of God
that he focuses on is the sovereignty of God. He recognizes that God is the Yahweh Sabaoth.
He is the God of the Armies. Often we think of that in terms of angelic armies,
but that’s a limitation we put on that. He’s the God of all the Armies. God is
in charge of the Russian army, the German army [which I understand is pathetic
these days], the U.S. military, the Chinese army, which is pretty well armed,
the North Korean army, and the South Korean army. None of those armies are
going to do what they want to do unless God allows them to.
There’s a great trilogy out
on World War II by Rick Atkinson. The first volume is called An Army at Dawn.
The three volumes together are called The Liberation Trilogy. It’s an award-winning
author. He talks in detail about all the logistics and the logistics’ failure.
It’s a wonder that we even did anything positive in the attack in North Africa
before we went to Sicily because of all the malfunctions. But guess who’s in
charge—God.
We defeated the Germans who
in many cases had their act together and we didn’t. But God is in charge
because God is the God of the Armies. The same thing can be applied to what
happened in America during the War of Northern Aggression. God was in charge no
matter what.
God is in charge. He’s in
charge of the armies, the politics, and the politicians. He rules over the
affairs of men. Psalm 59:5, “You, therefore, are Yahweh Elohim Tsabahoth. Elohim Israel. Awake to
punish all the nations.”
He calls upon God to bring
justice against all the Gentiles, all the nations. There he’s applying what’s
going on in his life, extrapolating it to what will happen to Israel. And he
says, “Don’t
be merciful to any wicked transgressors.”
He talks about God’s mercy,
which is a product of His love in action. “God is a God of mercy.” The word
that is used primarily here for mercy is the word chesed, which is the Hebrew word for
God’s covenant faithful love. He calls upon the God of mercy not to be
merciful.
We say, “Oh, isn’t that
terrible?” There is a time for no mercy. If you go through Revelation you will
see that the angels and the twenty-four elders, the church, which are in Heaven
during the Tribulation are constantly praying to God to bring justice to the
earth dwellers and the Antichrist and the False Prophet and all of their forces
to vindicate the believers. God finally does this by the end of the Tribulation
period.
That’s why I chose this
verse, Revelation 6:10, to put up here talking about the martyrs who cried with
a loud voice to God, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, until you judge and avenge our blood
on those who dwell on the earth?” These are the martyrs who have been martyred
during the first part of the Tribulation period. They’re calling upon God to
harshly judge the earth.
A technical term for that is
called an imprecation or a curse. So you have these imprecations that are
brought down upon the enemies of God. Some people say that Christians shouldn’t
pray these psalms that call down curses. We’ll talk about that. I think you
should, but we need to understand how and why you do it. It’s not done from
personal reasons.
Revelation 16:5 continues that train of thought. He said, “And I heard the
angel of the waters saying ‘You are righteous, O Lord, the One who is and who
was and who is to be, because you have judged these things’ ”. That’s
toward the end of the Tribulation. They are praising God because He’s judged these
things. “For they have shed the blood of the saints and the prophets”.
They deserve these things because they have killed believers. “And You have given them blood to drink.” That is a strong
image. “For it
is their just due”.
The last two verses in the
psalm express a vow of praise and that we should sing with joy in the midst of
adversity because God’s grace has given us everything to be joyful about. David
says, “But I
will sing of Your power. I will sing aloud of your
mercy [chesed]
in the morning
for You have been my defense and my refuge in the day
of my trouble.” [That’s a safe space, a refuge] “To you, O my strength for God is my refuge
[once again this is a cognate, not of the word refuge, but of the word tower]. God is my
defense, my God of mercy.”
This helps us to understand
the positive attitude you can have even when everything goes wrong and you lose
it all. That’s what happens to the generation in 586 BC in Israel
when Nebuchadnezzar defeated them and they were wiped out. Hundreds of thousands
were killed, and they were buried in the Valley of Hinnom, just south of the
walls of Jerusalem.
Jeremiah writes in
Lamentations 5:14, “The elders have ceased gathering at the gate, and the young men from
their music.” There is sorrow in the land because the people have been
defeated and taken out of the land and so music has ceased. In fact, the Talmud
says that when the Sanhedrin was dissolved after the destruction of the Temple,
that music vanished.
I want you to think about
this. See David is in a crisis. Does his music vanish? No. What was the problem
with the generation when the 1st Temple was destroyed? They were in
idolatry. They didn’t trust in God. They had completely failed, so when things
didn’t go their way, their music disappeared. Their music vanished. It says, “The joy of their
heart ceased; Our dance has turned into mourning.”
That can happen to the
United States if we turn away from God. We have and if we continue that because
people won’t have what it takes on the inside to have the stability to survive.
If you’re a believer and God is your security, then you can go through even the
loss of everything like Job did and have stability and have joy.
This is expressed in
Lamentations 3, in Jeremiah’s prayer where he calls for God to “Remember my
affliction and roaming, the wormword and the gall.” It’s not that we don’t
experience the sorrow and the heartache of having lost everything because he
expressed that. He looks at the burning embers of Jerusalem and his heart
sinks. He has that expected, typical, not abnormal reaction just as we do. When
someone dies we grieve, but we don’t grieve like those who have no hope.
That’s what we see here in
this dynamic. He prays to God to remember his affliction and his roaming, just
wandering around asking what he’s going to do. “The wormwood and the gall. My soul still
remembers and sinks within me.” He’s saying he remembers what happened when
Nebuchadnezzar destroyed them and the natural reaction of the flesh was to be
defeated.
“But this I recall to my mind, therefore I
have hope.” We don’t stay in the place of loss or the place of hopelessness
because of what he recalls in verses 22 and 23, “Through the Lord’s mercies we are not
consumed because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning. Great is
Your faithfulness.”
That’s part of what is going
on in the mental attitude of David as he writes this psalm. He’s focusing on
the sovereignty of God. He’s focusing on His covenants, His faithfulness, and
His chesed
love, His loyal love to David, and how He is going to protect and secure David.
We’ll start with the superscript,
which you have in your English Bible. If you look at that, you’ll see that I’ve
listed it as Psalm 59:0. In the Hebrew text it’s 59:1, so this is actually the
first verse in the Hebrew text. It just gives some information about the music
because music is important to God.
If you have questions about
music and some of you people listening may have questions about music and
worship, we had a wonderful speaker at the Chafer
Conference in 2013, Scott Aniol. He talked about music. Music is a
language. You can have the language of your music such that it contradicts what
your words are saying.
I believe that’s what’s
happening in contemporary worship music. They have bought into an existential
form of music, not a spiritual form of music, and it creates a contradiction.
I’m not talking about popular music. I’m talking about when you are expressing
doctrine and genuine biblical praise to God it should be structured according
to the norms and standards of Scripture and from a Judeo-Christian worldview.
The first thing he gives in
instruction is to the Chief Musician. This is the director of music. This would
have been one of the top Levites. We know of some of them. The Sons of Korah
would have fit into this category. Asaph would have fit into this category. This
isn’t a specifically named individual, just to the Chief Musician. This phrase
is used fifty-five times at the beginning of the psalms. On the slide you have
some of the references listed. It’s found frequently [in the psalms].
Then he says it’s set to a
particular tune. If you look in your hymnal sometimes you will see under the
title or above the first stanza, the first musical line, and it will identify a
specific hymn. Sometimes it’s in a footnote. There are several hymns in your hymnbook
that all use the same music. They all use the same hymn tune and it has that
same name.
Apparently in David’s day
there was a tune called Do Not Destroy. It’s the tune for Psalm 57, 58, and 59. In Psalm 57
it says “To
the Chief Musician. Set to ‘Do Not Destroy’. A Michtam of David when” he
fled from Saul into the cave. So that hymn is a time when David also fears for
his life from Saul.
Psalm 58 is one of those 73
hymns that David wrote, but not one of the twelve that gives specifics on the
historical situation. There it just says, “To the Chief Musician. Set to ‘Do Not Destroy.’ A
michtam of David.” It doesn’t give us the situation but where we see that
sometimes it gives us the situation. This is a hymn where part of what David is
saying in the psalm is “Don’t destroy me God. Defend me and deliver me.”
There’s a hymn with the
music to fit that. We don’t know what that was but it was designed to fit with
that message. Music conforms to a message, so it’s good for the words of a hymn
to be set to music where one echoes the meaning of the other and they fit
together. It’s not like back in the late 60s when there was a popular song
called The
House of the Rising Sun and some of you who may be old enough may remember
that back in those days it was popular to sing Amazing Grace to that tune. Talk about a
contradiction in messages.
The tune we sing Amazing Grace
to today wasn’t the original tune it was set to. It was one that was written
later that fit the words in a better way. It’s important to pay attention to these
things. There’s some kind of nonsense, a legend, that you will hear that’s not
true, that Martin Luther, who loved music and was a great musician, wrote songs
in the German vernacular and not Latin. The legend that’s wrong says that he
used popular bar tunes and he did not. See, that argument is used, and it’s
been bought into and it hasn’t been investigated.
They say, “Well when you
talk about contemporary hymns and music, don’t make an issue out of it because
Luther used popular bar tunes.” I’ve heard seminary professors say that. Study
your music history, people. That is not true. Luther wrote the music. He didn’t
take a popular bar tune and use it for A Mighty Fortress is our God. He wrote the
words and the music so the music fits the words. We see this exhibited for us
in this particular heading.
It’s called a michtam of
David. If you look this up in every single Hebrew dictionary it will say it
probably refers to some kind of songs, but we don’t know. No one knows what
that means. The setting is from 1 Samuel 19 “when Saul sent men, and they watched the
house in order to kill him”. What you’ll see is that people who have a
presupposition that the Bible has error in it and it’s not inerrant, they say
David is talking about the nation and in the psalm he’s talking about things
that really don’t seem to fit the scenario.
I would reply by saying that
you probably haven’t thought carefully about the scenario because you just want
to jump to this conclusion, that somehow there’s an error and you just want to
jump to this conclusion that this is describing some other situation and the
psalm doesn’t fit it. You’re flying off in to your own little make-believe
scholarly fantasy world. It’s really sad.
You have people with
multiple PhDs doing that. Sometimes I think to get a PhD you have to be able to
stretch credulity to a ridiculous point.
The thing we see in the
psalm is that David is innocent and blameless. He asserts this by saying, “God,
I haven’t sinned. I haven’t transgressed. It’s through no fault of my own. Not
only have I done nothing wrong, I’ve done everything right. I trusted You; I claimed promises; I understood what the dynamics were
on the field of battle with Goliath. I stood there, trusting You.
The battle is the Lord’s. Look what I get for it. I do everything right and
everybody hates me.” That’s when you start getting close to whining. “They’re
out to kill me. They surround my house.”
David is innocent and
blameless, and he is petitioning God, omnipotent God. The word petition reminds
us that this is a certain kind of prayer, so you can use this as a pattern for
your own prayer life. You can think through circumstances and situations that
may apply. He petitions omnipotent God, a faithful, powerful God. He called Him
“my strength” in one place and he uses the term “mighty” in two other places.
He asks His faithful and covenant love to protect and preserve him from his
evil, wicked enemies so he recognizes God has the power to save him and He’s
just, so He needs to execute justice.
In the first verse it reads,
“Deliver me
from my enemies, O my God; Defend me from those who
rise up against me.” We see instantly that this is an example of what we
call synonymous parallelism where the first line is echoed in the second line. Deliver
is a synonym for defend; enemies is a synonym for “those who rise up
against me”.
We see the use of this word natzal, to
deliver, twice. We see it at the beginning of verse one and the beginning of
verse two. If you are taking notes; if you have your Bible and a pen, I would
circle both of those and draw a line connecting them so you’re reminded of
this. You could also underline or mark in a slightly different way the word
“defend”.
He’s calling upon God to
take away his enemies, to rescue him from his enemies, or to save him from his
enemies. It’s used 32 other times in the psalms other than the two times in
this. It’s a popular word in the lament psalms to call God to deliver me from
my circumstances, to rescue me from what appears to be crushing circumstances.
The word defend, which we
looked at last time, is the word sagay. It’s in a piel stem, which is intensive.
It has that idea of something that is exalted or something that is inaccessibly
high. The noun that’s related to it refers to being set in a high tower, in a
high place, and in a place of refuge.
We have this used in
passages like Psalm 20:1, “May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble.” See that concept of
the day of trouble also in this particular psalm. “May the name of the God of Jacob defend you. [It literally means to set you on a high place
where you’re protected, the concept of a safe space.] In Psalm 69:29, “But I am poor and
sorrowful; Let Your salvation, O God, set me up on high [NKJV].” Psalm
91:14, “Because
He has set his love upon me, therefore I will deliver him; I will deliver him
[set him on high], because he has known My name.” He has
understood who I am and "he trusted Me" is
the idea here.
We see Psalm 59:1 expanded, “Rescue me from my
enemies, O my God; Protect me from those who rise up against me.” We see
this emphasis here that the enemies are those that are rising
up against him. So that’s a parallel. In verse two we see the enemies explained
by two more phrases.
So we have enemies and then
we have those who “rise up against me”. They are stirring up trouble but
there’s more to it than just troublemakers. In Psalm 59:2 he says, “Deliver me from
the workers of iniquity.” There we have the Hebrew term awon, which
is usually translated “iniquity”.
That’s one of three words
for sin that we find in this particular chapter and it has to do with those who
are outworking evil, but it’s in parallel to the term “bloodthirsty men”. On
the slide I have the first line “deliver from iniquity (awon)” and then the
second line, “Save
me parallel to deliver and bloodthirsty men,” which is literally as we see
here men of blood.
We have four terms that are
used in these first two verses to describe them. They are enemies, they have
elevated themselves and have risen up against David, they are workers of
iniquity, and they are sinful. They are motivated by their sin nature but more
than that they are men of blood, which is an idiom for murderers. He recognizes
that these guys have been sent to execute him, to kill them.
This is important for
understanding the first part where in the first four verses David is urgently
petitioning God to deliver him or to rescue him from these treacherous, violent
enemies. It’s an urgent cry for rescue. Remember, if we read 1 Samuel 19, he’s
at home with his wife and they realize Saul's goons and his execution squads
are surrounding the house. In fact, there might even be some suggestion that
there are two groups.
Saul has his spies there who
are just surrounding the house and there’s another group and their mission is
to kill David or to execute David. That becomes a little clearer in the third
verse where David says, “For look …” He’s praying to God and he knows that God knows
everything. He’s being anthropomorphic here which means he’s using a human
phrase for action to call attention to God to act quickly, to act in haste.
He says, “For look, they
lie in wait for my life; the mighty gather against me, not for my transgression
nor for my sin, O Lord.” The first thing he’s pointing out here is that his
enemies lie in wait outside his house. They lie in wait for his life. They set
up an ambush for his life. They’re watching. They’re waiting for him. The verb
tense shows he’s describing this as it’s happening.
Another
thing that it shows is that this is intentional and premeditated. It’s not just
something that is just a spontaneous reaction, a lot like these riots we’re
seeing ever since President Trump was elected last Tuesday night. These are not
spontaneous. These are not just people erupting in anger. These are the results
of quite a few different organizations. Some of these are anarchist
organizations. Some are communist organizations. Moveon.org and George Soros
and other groups fund some of them. Their intention is to create chaos. Their intention is to
destabilize the nation. Their intention simply is to cause trouble and destroy
the stability of the nation.
We have to understand these
things are funded. It’s like what came out in a number of studies in the
situation in Ferguson, Missouri last year that most of those who came in as
demonstrators were from outside. They were paid, professional agitators. That’s
the same thing that’s going on in these places right now.
We need to pray for the
stability of our country and that God will bring justice in these situations
and shut down what they are doing. That’s the same kind of thing that David is
doing in this particular prayer.
As we look at this he
describes his enemies as the mighty. Now this word az is
a cognate of the same word that is used and translated for the strength of God
and its applied in another verse for God. So we see that he’s contrasting the
finite might of his enemies with the eternal might, the infinite might: the
omnipotence of God. “The mighty gather against me.” They’re mightier than he is. There’s
nothing he can do to rescue himself from the situation.
Then he asserts his
innocence. He says, it’s “not for my transgression nor for my sin.”
These are two other words that are used in the Hebrew to express sin. Pesha has the
idea of transgressing a law. It’s usually translated a transgression—someone
who has violated a command, someone who is in rebellion. The word sin is the
broad word for sin, which is the word chatta’t, which is the broad word for sin,
which has the idea of missing the mark. It’s used for sin. It’s used for sin
offerings. The root meaning is to miss the mark, to fall short of the goal, to
fall short of the standard.
So, they lie in wait. Then
he says, “They
run and prepare themselves through no fault of mine.” Again he asserts his
innocence. It’s a picture of the fact that they have runners who are going back
to report to Saul on David’s activities and so on. He knows that he is
completely under watch by Saul.
We see here that his enemies
lie in wait outside his house. Secondly, that they’re characterized as the
mighty. Third, that he asserts his complete and total innocence, that he’s done
nothing but trust God to gain victory over God’s enemies and Israel’s enemies.
So, it’s important to note that David recognizes that he is the victim of envy
on the part of Saul and then these lesser ones in the government.
A principle we need to
remember is that those who are promoted by God frequently are the object of
scorn, derision, libel, and gossip by others. It happens in the Christian
community. Someone does well as a pastor and builds his church and is teaching
the Word and God blesses him. Then other pastors are jealous. Someone shows
they have some intellectual acumen in studying the Scripture and they get shot
at by others.
Jealousy is a terrible thing
and you see it in the Christian community. It seems to be worse in the cosmic
system and you see people who become extremely jealous, especially when it
involves money or power. In this case, of course, it’s power because Saul is
going to lose the kingdom to David. So, David recognizes that and then he uses
these terms for sin.
The word for sin we saw
earlier, iniquity, is used in the second stanza. “They run and prepare themselves through no
iniquity of mine.” It’s that Hebrew word awon. David asserts he is without sin in
this particular situation.
Then he calls upon God to wake
up. A couple of things we ought to note here is that this concept of being
awake is typically used of the false gods in Scripture. We think of the
situation in 1 Kings 17 when Elijah is challenging the priests of Baal, saying,
“Call upon Baal and have him bring down fire upon the sacrifice and burn it up.
He can’t do it? Maybe he’s not listening and it hasn’t happened or maybe he’s
asleep.” What we learn in Scripture is that the God of Israel is a God who
neither slumbers nor sleeps.
God does not slumber or
sleep as the text says. And David recognized this and so the call to awake
might be better translated, “Arouse yourself”. In other words, he’s calling
upon God to act now, to urgently intervene in this situation and to rescue him
and help him and look at what is going on.
Then he concludes this
opening section in Psalm 59:5, “You, therefore, O Lord God of hosts …” This is
where he extrapolates from his current circumstances to that of a nation. “O Lord God of
hosts, the God of Israel, awake [arouse yourself] to punish all the nations; do not be
merciful to any wicked transgressors.”
This is what’s called an
imprecation or an imprecatory prayer, a call for God to judge and harshly
punish those he’s praying about. Sometimes people say, “Well, we shouldn’t do
that.” I think we should, but we don’t do it out of personal vengeance or
vindictiveness. We do it because the character of God is at stake.
We might pray an imprecatory
prayer legitimately when you’re coming into an election cycle, that God would
restrain and destroy those who would attack the Constitution and destroy the
nation. I think we saw the answer to that kind of prayer in this last election.
We call upon God to punish those who are guilty and worthy of wickedness.
Then David says, “Do not be
merciful to them.” This is the Hebrew word for grace. Don’t show favor to
them. Don’t show kindness to them, Lord. They deserve it. Punish them. Bring
judgment upon them.
God may of course say, “No,
I have another plan. I’m going to use them for something.” Habakkuk wanted God
to punish the Chaldeans and God said, “No, I’m going to use them to punish all
the idolaters in Israel first.” Sometimes God has a plan to use the evildoers,
but eventually God brought judgment against the Babylonians.
David says, “Do not be
merciful to the wicked transgressors.” The word there for transgressors in
context is probably traitors. They’re traitors to God’s plan and to God’s
purposes.
A couple
of things before we close.
Should we pray such prayers? I think as long as we do so within the right
context. Ultimately we realize that as individuals we long for God to punish
evil. We legitimately pray for God to punish evil and to remove it from the
world and to set up His Kingdom which is a Kingdom
where there is no longer sin.
Now does that strike a chord
of recognition? When Jesus taught His disciples how to pray. He said, “Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth.” That’s the establishment of a righteous rule
and a righteous environment. Jesus said to pray for the Kingdom to come. That
was His message at that time. “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” It was a call for
righteous rule to be established on the earth and for injustice to be removed.
That’s been postponed. The
Kingdom hasn’t come yet even though liberals have been trying to bring in the
Kingdom of God since the late 19th century. They’ll still be doing
this in the future under the guise of the Antichrist, but it won’t come until
Jesus Christ comes at the Second Coming.
We made it through the first
part, which ends with selah, which is a pause in the singing. This first part expresses
David’s prayer, his petition for God to urgently intervene and to rescue him
from his circumstances. When we come back next week we’ll look at his
description, horrible description, of those who were his enemies.