Amen. Again, we are in Psalm 4. Let's hear the word of God. To the choir master with stringed instruments, a psalm of David.
Answer me when I call, O God, of my righteousness. You have given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me, and hear my prayer. O men, how long shall my honor be turned into shame?
How long will you love vain words and seek after lies? Say, Lord. But know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself. The Lord hears when I call to him.
Be angry and do not sin, ponder in your own hearts, on your beds, and be silent. Say, Lord. Offer right sacrifices and put your trust in the Lord. There are many who say, who will show us some good?
Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord. You have put more joy in my heart than they have when they're grain and wine abound. In peace, I will both lie down and sleep. For you alone, O Lord, make me dwell and safety.
The grass withers in the flower falls. The word of our God stands forever, and ever thanks be God. At the age of 17, Johnny Ersen taught a dove into the water swimming with her friends, and she broke her neck. She lost motor functions in her arms and legs, and was forced to face life as a quadriplegic.
She recounts that that wasn't all she lost that day. By her own words, she lost the will to live. Just a couple of years ago, she wrote an article for the Gospel Coalition entitled Reflections on the 50th Anniversary of my Diving Accident. I highly recommend to you, and I can try to find that link if you would so like to read it.
But where this in this article, she not only expressed her hope in Christ that changed her life, but she recalls a conversation between her and a volunteer from one of the John Ian Friends family retreats. This attendee asked Mrs. Johnny, do you ever think how none of this, meaning her ministry and her access to the world of disability ministry, how none of this would be possible or would not be happening were it not for your wheelchair? She flashed a smile and said, it's why I thank God every day for my wheelchair.
It's an profound statement that Mrs. Todd with Erickson, Todd, would praise God and give praise to the Lord every day for her wheelchair. That she would look at God as suffering as a gift for the Lord, that she might not only use it to draw her closer to him, but that he might be glorified, that he might be praised. I think Johnny Erickson, Todd, gives us some insight for what it looks like to persevere in patience, waiting upon the Lord to deliver us from our suffering.
And this is the attitude of David, who is waiting for deliverance, as he is suffering under the hand of those that would seek ill of him. That's the attitude of David. And yet what we find tonight, or what I want you to see tonight, is this is also the business, the Christian, that it's good, and it's right for us to wait upon the Lord for deliverance. In fact, Lord is most near to us when we feel the heat, the pressure, and the woes of this world.
First, what I want you to see from this passage is that the Christian's confidence as we wait up on the Lord to deliver us, we say that, or we say that, that we have a confidence in the Lord as we wait for him to deliver us. If you were to take just a quick survey of David's life as it's recorded in the scriptures, that would show us that David lacked no opportunity to learn from where his help comes. Surely David knew the Lord would be his help in times of trouble. Psalm 3 is attributed to David.
An occasion for his fleeing from Absalom's own son, who sought to usurp David's reign, his father's reign. Some connect Psalm 4 to Psalm 3, and consider that our text this evening could have been pinned in light of that context. But rather, Psalm 4 would be David's reflection upon the evening upon his bed as Psalm 3 might have been maybe pinned in the morning. John counted himself with the state of the context of the Psalm to be David's fleeing Saul's rage, and his wrath who sought his life and sought to extinguish the threat of his rule in reign.
And still others don't find any discernible indication to the exact occasion of the Psalm. And yet, we need not necessarily know the events which led the spiritual impresses of on David's heart. But David was not lacking reason to cry out to the Lord. This isn't David's first rodeo.
In fact, I think you and I find hope that this is for we, don't lack reason. We lack no reason to cry out to the Lord. David's experience with suffering unjustly serves as the basis of this plea. Answer me when I call, oh God of my righteousness, you have given me relief when I was in distress.
Be gracious to me, and hear my prayer. David can with such confidence cry out to the Lord and call upon his name, because as much as he has known such hardship, he's known such relief in the Lord. And even say even greater relief in the Lord. Even when it was as if life was crowded around him, as he felt that he'd be smothered by trial and by tribulation, the Lord would give him life and room to breathe.
The relationship between distress and relief means something like being provided away out from a trap. The language paints a picture of people surrounded by an imposing army, and yet away is to be made clear for escape. That is the way the Lord works, isn't it? He is a deliverer.
What if you recall Paul and Silas being imprisoned in Philippi? Paul had cast out a legal spirit from a local servant claiming the ability to predict the future. And this servant was apparently known for their value to local businessmen. And yet in that session of acts, this healing would have brought only her great relief, but had brought businessmen and local entrepreneurs great distress.
This servant was considered profitable by local entrepreneurs and had lost her ability to fortune tell, which would have been perceived by demonic influence. They blamed Paul and Silas and threw the pair in prison. There they were confined, restrained, and shackled in some way and put behind lock and key. But as the account goes, you may remember, about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymn to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.
And suddenly there was a great earthquake. So the foundations of the prison were shaken, and immediately, all the doors were opened, and every one's bonds were unfashioned. Well, God opens wide the way of salvation. And whether it's David being redeemed and rescued and from his enemies, or Paul and Silas free for the sake of the Philippian jailer's salvation and his family, and a continued proclamation of the gospel, we can't recount from the scriptures the Lord's faithfulness to rescue and to redeem.
And here we see from the psalm that David's confidence is the Lord's faithfulness. David's confidence is the Lord's faithfulness. And friends, your confidence is the Lord's faithfulness. David is tasted, and he has seen, he has known the goodness and the grace of God.
David has heard God's promises and can rest assured that they will be kept. Note the intimacy with which he knows the Lord in this passage. He calls him the God of my righteousness. And the glory of David's hope is that he knows that Yahweh will not only keep his promises, that he will do so in the splendor of all of his character, that he will do so according to his goodness and his mercy and his grace and his holiness and his power and his long suffering, he will make himself known to the world by how he even would rescue David.
This is the point. David's confidence isn't purely in the Lord's track record. It's not as if David cries out to the Lord only because he's batting 1,000. As if his fingers are crossed, that maybe this time will be like the last time.
You see, David's own experience is not driving his confidence, but rather it's who God is. And it's the same for you and for me, for there are days in which we will suffer under the heat and toil under God's provenance in this world. We wonder if God is powerful enough, if he hears me, if he will provide for me, and wonder if surely he can see any through. What David tells us is that in those moments, we're not called to merely look to past accounts of God's faithfulness, but to dwell in the one who is faithful, who will never leave us nor forsake us.
It's really a too-pronged approach of David here. He remembers what God has done, and he rests upon who God is. And friends, God is the same yesterday, the day and forever. I wonder what that might mean for our prayer life.
If we committed more of our heart to dwelling upon God's character, rather than upon our circumstances, please note, I don't intend to diminish or discredit the real suffering and hardship we face in this fallen world. But as we trod and march through this wilderness of this world of the glory, might our steps be more short, might our direction be more certain, might our resolve be stronger as we behold God who leads us all the way home. Or this does not give us a little bit more confidence that our perfect God keeps us perfectly. Our perfect God keeps us perfectly.
And that's such that every promise of God finds us yes in amen, in Jesus Christ, whose perfect righteousness served as the grounds for our atonement. This God of his righteousness that David sought would one day become the very propitiation for his own sin and for yours. And so friends, we cry out to the Lord in confidence because of who God has been and who God is. And we know that he will deliver us.
For surely God can deliver us from the estate of sin with which we fell in Adam. Surely he will bless us and deliver us in confidence for a cry out to the Lord. Secondly, what I want you to see this evening is not just the Christian's confidence as we wait, but the Christian's call as we wait. Not just the Christian's confidence, but the Christian's call.
This song not only underscores the confidence which we have in the Lord, but it also gives us instruction for what we are to do as we wait upon the Lord. I wonder if you have ever been lost. And I mean, like really, really dangerously lost. Back in college, I used to go backpacking from time to time.
And I went with my roommates all the time. And both of them were over six feet tall. And just by nature of physics, they hyped and they walked a lot faster than I did. Their legs were longer.
My former roommate who was a Marine and then an Army officer would always be at least two hours ahead of me on a trail. I recall one time hiking and going on my merry way by myself through the wilderness through the woods. And I found myself in the thick of it without a trail to follow without a blaze to point me. And in that moment, I realized that I was extremely, extremely lost.
And if you've ever been lost, you know that it can be disoriented, right? It can be frightening. It can make you a question and doubt. And it can really bring up a sense of hopelessness within you.
But by God's grace, I backtracked. I found my blaze. And I got back on the path and got into our camps like well, well, well after dark. But you have to understand that as we are wandering through this world, we can feel that disorienting difficulty of weathering trials and weathering difficulties.
And it can make us feel a whole host of feelings and cause us to doubt in great ways. And yet when we feel as if we are listless, when we feel as if we're drifting, when we feel as if we are lost, what God does is He gives us instruction for how we might set our feet and set our hearts and minds towards the Lord. Church, understand that God does not call us to twiddle our thumbs or to scroll our phones as we await His return or Him calling us home to glory. But we have real, concrete imperatives that help us to understand what it means to wait well, to be at work.
It's not feel the sense of listlessness and waltzness. In the verses three, verses three through five, we begin to see David build upon that strong foundation, that confidence which is founded upon God who is and what the Lord has done. First, we need to see the Christian's calls to be content with what God says about it. The Christian's call is to be content with what God says about them.
We read in verse two, oh, man, how long shall my honor be turned into shame? How long will you love vain words and seek after lies? We're given inside the occasion of this song. Apparently, David's character is being maligned and bosses are being led by David.
And so David faces down not chariots of men, but flaming tongues and arrows of accusation. And if we're honest with ourselves, words aren't as harmless as we make them out to be. Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me. I don't think that's very much of a true statement.
It's not true for me at least. But we know that words can sting and they can shake us to our very core. They discourage us, they weigh upon us, and they distort and erode our very understanding of our being made in God's image. And yet in verse three, we see David's heart for what is true in light of these false lives.
He rests upon his identity or who God says he is. Or as one commentator puts it, we learn from David, the weapon against slander is to remember how God regards you to hold on to what he has said about you. And repeat that. The weapon against slander is to remember how God regards you to hold on to what he has said about you.
And here in verse three, David rests upon the very covenant promises that the Lord has granted to him, that has set David apart by his loving kindness. And he has bestowed upon David his very promises. And surely the Lord will protect him and care for him. And if you are in Christ, the loving, we ponder here the great mystery of the gospel.
For we know that David is not sinless. For there was only one who was without sin, and that's Jesus Christ. That there not be a little truth. And even the worst thing said about David, that there not be even a little bit of truth and the worst thing said about us, about me.
Is sin not so pervasive and radical in us that not one aspect of our whole being is left unmarked in our fallen estate. And yet we hear the words of Jack Miller as we ponder the presence of sin and the truth of what can be said of us. Jack Miller, comic please, let's cheer up. You're a worse sinner than you ever dared imagine.
And you're more loved in Christ than you have ever dared. Hope. And this is the truth to which we hold tightly when we might begin to believe the accusations of even the evil one, the great cylinder, and the accuser himself. Believe what God says about you, that if Christ has called you as his, if you've heard the voice of your shepherd, as his sheep, as if you were a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a son or daughter of God justified, forgiven, co-air with Christ.
The sheep of his pastor loved, chosen, redeemed, rescued. You ponder upon what the Bible says, about what it means to be plunged beneath that flood, to be covered in the blood of Jesus. To have received an alien righteousness that's not of my own, that could never be said of Zach, but could be always said of Christ. We delight in what God says about us.
So what do we do while we wait? What's our call and our call first and foremost is to be content with what the Lord says about us. Secondly, in verse 4, there's a call to patient restraint. What does David say, be angry and do not sin?
This is what David says, and this is what Paul quotes to the church in Ephesus. This seems to be instructive more so than reflective. It seems as if David is kind of turning his attention from his own self to instruct others. Whoever it's know less applicable to David himself, that he might feel such anger towards those that slander him.
But the command here is to a righteous anger without sin, and we tend to think of anger in itself as a bad thing, don't we? But to say, for example, the Lord is slow to anger, is not to say that he is never angry. And surely if God is angry, it can't, it has to be, it must be without sin. Even if you Psalms after this one, Psalm 7 proclaims that God is a righteous judge, and to God who feels indignation every day.
And we have to understand that anger, righteous anger, is a part and aspect of God's holiness. And in the scriptures to what is God's anger directed, quite simply God's anger and wrath is served up towards sin, towards wickedness, towards unrighteousness, towards injustice. What you see from this portion is that we're called to be angry as God is angry against sin and wickedness. But beloved, we must first find that sin and wickedness in us, to be killing sin, but to be killing us.
But notice this doesn't lead to vengeance or retribution. Often while we're waiting for the Lord, we may see wickedness, or we may even experience it receiving it. But God says, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. So on the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him, if he is thirsty, give him something to drink for, by doing so you keep burning coals on his head.
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. And so Paul hits the nail on the head with what David is communicating here. And I don't want you to understand me. This doesn't mean that we don't seek earthly justice, or we don't pursue lawful or legal recourse.
God has rendered us worldly governance and justice, but there's a quiet and steady check of balance against sinful tendencies in our hearts, towards retribution. It's that inward refusal to go tip for tack, to not gossip against those who gossip against you, to not steal from those who have stolen from you, to not lie against those who have lied about you. And ultimately, this is how we learn more of the suffering, and of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We submit ourselves to the Lord of being united and enemies.
We enjoy all the benefits, but we still pick up our cross and follow Christ. But also here in verse 4, there's a call to patient reflection, repentance. It seems to be that the antidote to not being angry and not sinning is pondering on your own bed in your own hearts and being silenced. Part of what David is getting at here, I believe, is an introspection into our own hearts, our own human condition, our own sin.
Part of encountering sin is searching our own hearts out for it. Whereas David would later put it, search me of God and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the ways of everlasting, recognizing our own need for the grace of God. There was a truly humbling reminder in the gospel that indeed we have all sinned, and we have all fallen short of the glory of God. And the answer to our long suffering, our weathering our trials and difficulties, our checking our anger towards others is to remember the grace of God and the sanitoning work of Christ that has been received by faith and is now mind to enjoy and delight in how the things of this world fade away when we behold the glory of God in Christ and the gospel, that your sins have been forgiven, that you have been made righteous in Christ, and that you have an assurance forevermore that God would persevere you through the end.
And what I think is really interesting is that if this song is intended to be offered up in the evening, then to say ponder in your own hearts on your beds and be silent literally means to dwell upon these things of God as you lay your head down on your pillow or as Paul says to not let the sun go down on your anger. I think we've all been there, right? We've all been there. We've had sleepless nights filled with fret or worry.
I hope you've ever been so consumed with frustration and anger that in the still the evening hours, that's all you can think about. Worrying and wondering is such a regular part of our waiting upon the Lord in this life. But like God speaking to Elijah as he hid in the cave from the wrath of Jezebel sometimes in the quiet of the Lord whispers to us. And there we're convicted of our sin.
There we find confidence and comfort in the Lord. There we reflect upon who he is and what he's done. There the embers of faith so often are fed and sustained. So stop and reflect and meditate and pray.
This is one of the major ways that we listen to the Lord. And the emphasis here I think is that we need to listen in times of hardship and lament and uncertainty when we know the intensity of the burdens of the world. We cry out, we plead, and we seek the Lord, but sometimes we don't listen. Do you have a friend that can talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and then talk some more?
You ever get a phone call from that friend and you can set the phone down and go do something and come back and pick up a phone and they're still talking and talking and talking? Sometimes our prayer of life can be very one-sided. The call here should be still to know, to meditate and to rest upon God's word and his promises, to ask for the Spirit to be given to you in greater measure. The Lord might provide for you and do far more abundantly than you can ask for.
I want to make one last note about this passage here. How do we know that we've heard, right? How do we know that we've listened to the Lord? Well, simply in verse 5 there's a response of worship of God.
What does it mean for David to offer sacrifices from his bed? It's not literal sacrificing of animals, but an indicator of the abundant joy and thanksgiving that David knows from the grace of God. To listen to the Lord means to worship him in response and what better call do we have as we wait than to search our hearts, to listen to the Lord and to worship him accordingly. So that last bit, right, what's the call of the Christian as we suffer against trial and difficulty?
Well, it's to worship God. And thirdly here, my last point, Christian's confession as we wait. Let's call these to a confession. Laments often have a progression.
They often begin with an appeal to the Lord and then a complaint of sorts. And they often end with a confession of faith in God or the story of mourning turning into joy in some force and of difference. There's an acknowledgement that you have put more joy in my heart than they have when they're grain and wine abound to David's s. And the source of that joy is the Lord's presence and basking in the light of his face upon them.
Did you recognize those words? I'm sure Ted regularly offers them. In fact, he did this morning as he gives them an addiction. And it's probable that David hears borrowing the language of the Aaronic blessing and number six, the Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord negates the face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord of God has counted upon you and give you peace. And it's true. These words are true.
Whenever they are uttered and they are given as a benediction, they are true. And what we find is passage that they are a great blessing applied. They're more than just words to hear but words to believe. And the Christian's confession is that even in the face of hardship and difficulty, even on the receiving end of evil and wickedness, we delight in the glory of the Lord.
We love his goodness and his mercy and we find joy in knowing his love has been set upon us. David sets the quality of his joy against those other people. You see, David sets himself against those that would delight when they're grain and wine abound. These are signs of abundance and wealth.
They are material things, full bellies and merry hearts are but a shadow of the comfort and peace that God's people know in the face of adversity. Thomas Brooks calls them scraps from God's table. But the worldly man thinks will ultimately satisfy and bring peace. And so he asks the believer, should you envy the dogs and their bones?
Or should you delight in all that is in the Lord eternal spiritual blessing? When we tasted of the Lord, we know such satisfaction that wine and grain will never, will never compare. And like the newborn infant who's eaten their fill, can tent the clothes of their eyes and sleep, sometimes. And so David has feasted upon the banquet of spiritual blessings that God has so preserved for us in his word.
And so he can say in peace, I will both lie down and sleep for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety. Praise God that he would so delight us and give us such heavenly comforts in Christ that we can close our eyes and sleep. How do you think that Johnny Harrison taught to put her head on her pillow every night? How would she rest knowing that in the morning, most likely, she would wake up almost as certainly as paralyzed as the night before?
Surely her patient waiting up on the Lord knew difficulty and pain longing for a day when her body would be restored and be made new. She gives a little bit of an answer to this. How did she do this? How did she put her head on her pillow every night and sleep?
She answers this. And she responded to a letter written. She choked out of a prayer, she says, Oh God, how will Tommy do it? How will he ever make it?
Have mercy, help him find you. You see this young man who had suffered an accident and then have been made to live life in a wheelchair was seeking how she might love the Lord and seek him. Well, Johnny actually taught it tells him and she tells us, let us find and know the Lord. For it is we seek him as we wait upon the Lord.
We know a confidence that is beyond anything we can find, anything we can know this like Lord. And so we need to with David come to the Lord with confidence in our waiting that the Lord has worked and is working that we need to come to the Lord and hear our calling to be busy searching out our hearts, confessing our sin, trusting in the Lord and worshiping him. We have a confession in our waiting that the Lord is my joy. He is my good.
Might be so. Might be so. Let's pray.