The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): Today on the Bible Study Hour we'll witness King David in the depths of despair, pleading with God simultaneously for both forgiveness and vindication. His prayer is sincere and defenseless as he presents his case to the ultimate judge. Let's listen in together to find out how, by the end of Psalms 4, David has found peace in the midst of adversity and rest in knowing that God hears his cry.

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. We all have dreams and aspirations, but today Dr. Boice will encourage us to simplify our life mission to one simple goal: pleasing God.

Dr. James Boice: We come to Psalm 4, and Psalm 4 is described as an evening psalm because of the very last verse: "I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety."

It's very tempting to give an historical setting to Psalm 4, and a number of the commentators have tried to do that. Although in my opinion, there's no justification for it. When we were looking at Psalm 3, we saw that there was. The title to Psalm 3 says, "A Psalm of David when he fled from his son Absalom."

I argued when we studied that psalm that we should take that literally, if for no other reason than that those words are part of the canonical Hebrew text. And also the psalm bears it out. You can understand how this would have been written on that situation in which David had to flee Jerusalem as a result of the rebellion of his son.

Nevertheless, as I say, a number of commentators have tried to link the two. Some of them just assume it. Spurgeon is one. Franz Delitzsch, the great German commentator, is another. A man named H.C. Leupold, whom I've referred to on a number of occasions as being a very astute student of the Psalms, tries to show the parallels.

He says that in the fourth psalm, David is obviously in distress as he also is in Psalm 3. His honor is assailed in Psalm 4 as it seems to have been, at least indirectly, in Psalm 3. He speaks here to his enemies in a very paternalistic way, as you might have expected him to speak to his son Absalom, and so on as he works through the psalm.

But the big objection to that kind of link-up between Psalm 3 and Psalm 4 is that the problems described in the two psalms are entirely different. Unless we understand the difference, we really aren't going to understand how Psalm 4 can speak to us.

What was the problem in Psalm 3? Well, David was under attack by enemies. He was in physical danger. The psalm is filled with military metaphors. He has had to flee Jerusalem. Thousands of armed soldiers have risen up against him. He needs God to be his shield against his enemies, and he uses the word. He needs God to be his deliverer. He calls upon God for deliverance.

It's not the case in Psalm 4. The problem in Psalm 4 is one of his reputation being under attack. It's a question of slander and lies. What he needs here in Psalm 4 is not deliverance from a physical foe, but reassurance from God that God really is on his side, and he has favor with God, and that he can trust God even when his enemies are saying the kind of things they are saying. So in order to understand this psalm, we have to look at it in that way. It's not a psalm of penitence or other psalms for that purpose. It's a psalm of a person who has been wrongly attacked. Slanderous things have been said against him, and he needs reassurance. He is an innocent sufferer.

As soon as I introduce the word "innocent," the question that naturally leaps to our minds is whether anybody is ever really innocent. We talk about a righteous sufferer. Is anybody really a righteous sufferer, except of course for the Lord Jesus Christ, whom incidentally some commentators perceive this psalm as being about? They see virtually all the psalms as being about Jesus Christ, but that's another matter.

The question is, is anybody ever really innocent? The answer, of course, is no. None of us really are ever really innocent in the absolute sense. And yet there are times in life when we are attacked unjustly. Not that we don't have sin in us, not that we've not done wrong things, not even perhaps that we haven't contributed in some way to the situation out of which the attacks have arisen.

Nevertheless, for our times, we know that when people really do attack us without any grounds whatsoever. Someone in the work pool in your office begins to get a thing against you. It might be because they just don't like you. They don't like your looks. It might be because they're jealous. Maybe if you're a woman, the man that they're interested in is interested in you, and so they don't like you for that reason.

Or if you're somewhere on the way up in the hierarchy, someone else who wants to get your position or wants to get the position you're headed for tries to undermine you in some way. And so rumors begin to circulate and memos go around the office that represent you in an unjust light. Those are the things I'm talking about, and those are the things that are sometimes very hard to deal with.

Preachers get them from time to time too. If we're honest, we acknowledge that among ourselves. Sometimes things are said that really do hurt. And the question is, how do we deal with it? How do we rise above it?

David tells us how to do that here. In the Psalms, we have different kinds of psalms. Those who categorize them generally put them in seven different types. It varies from commentator to commentator, but some of them would say this. Tremper Longman, who is a professor up at Westminster, divides them this way. There are hymns, laments, psalms of thanksgiving, psalms of confidence, psalms of remembrance, wisdom psalms, and kingships or Messianic psalms.

Well, this psalm is probably to be placed in two classes. Classes aren't always easy to distinguish. It's a song of lament, individual lament, because David, the author, is in trouble and he's calling to God to help him. But it's also a psalm of confidence. And the secret to understanding it is to realize that it moves from the one to the other.

It starts out as a song of lament because David is being slandered. He's being hurt by the things that are said against him. His reputation is under attack, and unjustly. But as he presents his cause to God and begins to work his way through the things that are said, you find that in the end he comes to a position of great confidence and says those words for which this psalm is called an evening psalm: "I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety."

Because you and I experience things like this all the time in our lives, when we have days like this, when people attack us unjustly, there are many days in our lives when as we come to the end of the day, we need a psalm like this. And above all, we need to be able to pray as the Psalmist prays.

Now he asks the question, how does he deal with the problem? The outline of the psalm is easy to follow. He has an appeal to God, which occupies verse one. And then secondly, he makes an appeal to his enemies, which begins with verse two and continues through verse five, a longer second section. It doesn't follow the stanzas in our Bibles as they're divided. And then having appealed to God and secondly, having appealed to his enemies, he ends in verses six through eight with an expression of quiet confidence in God, telling us all who read the psalm what God did for him in the circumstances.

Now that's the outline, but the flow of it is something that goes beyond that. Although that's the progression he uses, what we actually see is that as David presents his case to God, God actually answers him. And as he prays for his enemies or advises them, he actually finds his advice to them having comfort for his own heart. So he finds himself moving to confidence in the psalm as a result of what he does.

Now let's take it in each of the parts. First part one, his appeal to God. "Answer me when I call to you, O my righteous God, give me relief from my distress, be merciful to me and hear my prayer." I suppose I could start by asking the question, who do you go to when you find yourself in a situation like this, when someone is attacking you, when you're unjustly accused?

Who do you go to? Many of us go to our friends, and that's not bad. Certainly if they're Christian friends, they ought to be able to hear us out. Some of us don't go to anybody. We simply attack our enemies. They fight with us, we fight with them. They attack, we attack.

Here's David going to God. And I want you to think about that and why that's important. Because you see when you go to your enemies, well, all you can do is respond as they respond. If you go to your friends, well, you can tell a little bit what's in your heart, but you and I can't really ever fully unfold what we're feeling or the hurts we have to other people.

You know that yourself. If you would say really how you're hurting to most people, you would find that they wouldn't understand or they would think less of you. You're supposed to be strong. You're not supposed to have that kind of feelings. Your hurt? Oh come on, stand up there, be a man, don't act that way. That's the sort of thing that you're told. And so most of us understanding that, hold back. We don't say what we're really feeling. If we're hurting, we don't really tell it.

But the point I want to make, you see, is that if you go to God you can tell it all. Why can you tell it all? Because he knows it all already. Nothing is going to surprise God. God, if I may say so, is the only individual in the universe in the company of whom you and I can really be fully honest. And the reason is that he knows us already. He knows our heart, he knows the situation, he knows our hurts, he knows our weaknesses, our sins. He knows our strengths. Above all, he knows what he's going to make of us. He knows what he's trying to accomplish even in the difficulty we're living through.

So you and I can go and we can pour it all out. That's what David does here. He talks about his distress, does it in shorthand of course. These psalms are meant to be used by other people, so in the psalm itself he doesn't elaborate upon all the details. Certainly he did that personally, but he's acknowledging that he's distressed by what's said.

I think that's nice on his part that he can be so honest. When we were young, you know, and our friends used to say nasty things about us, we went home and we talked about it. You know what mother used to say? She said next time they say something like that to you, you just go back out there and you say this: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." And so we went out and did it. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. And then you go, "Oh, but they hurt." They do hurt. And we know that.

David was hurting. He had tried to live for God and indeed he had lived for God. He was a most exceptional man and a great leader. And here he's under attack. And so he pours out his distress before God. He can be absolutely honest.

He acknowledges that these people who are arrayed against him are significant people also. He doesn't make light of them. That's a little hard to see in the English text, but it's evident somewhat in the Hebrew. It's in that phrase "O men," actually in the Hebrew it's "sons of men," B'nei Ish. And the significant thing about that is that it is B'nei Ish rather than B'nei Adam. Adam is the word Adam, it means of the earth, Adam was made from the dust, and that's a common way of speaking about mere men, mortals. B'nei Adam, sons of the earth. But this is B'nei Ish. It's a higher level of word and it means men of some importance.

So David, you see, is saying that he's in distress and his distress is caused not by mere nobodies, people he could neglect, but rather by people who had quite a hearing. And these people as he says in verse 2 were turning his glory into shame, that is they were slandering him. They loved delusions. The Hebrew actually means lies. They were dishonest enemies. And if when he says they seek false gods, that's to be taken in a literal way, they weren't even real worshippers of Jehovah. They were his enemies spiritually as well as in terms of the life he was trying to live, enemies of his reputation and of his God. He lays all of that out before God.

So I recommend that when you're troubled in that way you bring it before God. At least when you bring it before God you'll have one who really understands and indeed the only one who really can.

But I want you to see something else about his appeal to God. I've said that it is honest. The very fact that he comes to God allows him to be honest, but I want you to see secondly that it's also balanced and balanced in a most remarkable way. Because at the very end of verse one, after he says "give me relief from my distress," he says "be merciful to me and hear my prayer."

Mercy is what he's calling for. Now isn't that significant? Mercy is what God shows to those who are undeserving, to those who are sinners. And here in the very verse, one verse, in which he's appealing to God to vindicate him against these unrighteous slanders of his enemies, he himself being righteous, he appeals to God not as a righteous one, but as a sinner who comes only seeking God's mercy.

You say, isn't that contradictory? Well, no it isn't. Because you see, although before his enemies he really was a righteous man, they were the ones who were lying, they were slandering him, they were the worshippers of false gods. None of that was true of David. He really was a righteous man. So although before his enemies he really was righteous compared with other men, before God he was not.

And so he holds both of those things together. He wants to be vindicated on the human level, but he recognizes that he must come even with that request as a sinner seeking mercy from God. And God, of course, is merciful. When you come to him, when you unfold your hurts before him, when you tell him what you really feel, he not only hears, you're not only known that, but you know that he will be merciful and will minister to you out of his abounding love.

Now that's the first part. The interesting part, I think, and the real heart of this psalm is in his appeal to his enemies, what he has to say to them. You find it as I said in verses 2 through 5. I've mentioned verse 2 in reference to his appeal. Look at verse 3. The first thing he wants them to know is that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself.

Now I want you to see how this operates. When David says the Lord has set apart the godly for himself, what he's really talking about there is election. And election, of course, is a doctrine that's widely hated by those who are not the people of God.

In David's case, when he said "The Lord has set apart the godly for himself," he would mean God chose me to be king. I became king not because I was more powerful than the other king, the king before me, and because I defeated him, but rather because God anointed me in my youth and I waited for him to raise me to the throne. That's election. That, of course, is the very thing his enemies most hated. They despised him, they wanted to get rid of him, but he was God's anointed. He's reminding them of that.

In our case, of course, it has to do with salvation. We're Christians, if we are Christians, by the electing grace of God, and the world does not like that. The world hates the doctrine of election. And yet it's true. It's true. And it's something that not only we but the world need to be reminded of. And that's what David is doing with his enemies. He's reminding them of the truth.

You see what he's saying to them is this: God has set me apart. It's God's doing. And if God chose me to be king, then the God who chose me to be king is certainly going to take care of me as king. You need to know that. And so when you begin to think about these things, he goes on to say when you're lying on your beds and searching your hearts, remember that. Remember that. And if it sinks in, if you begin to get the truth of it and what it really means, then you'll know how unsuccessful your attacks against me are going to be.

Now remember when I began, I said that in the course of this psalm as David thinks about others, he's ministered to himself. That is exactly what happens here in verse 3. He's told the godless, his enemies, that the Lord takes care of the godly. The Lord sets them apart for himself and he's certainly going to take care of them.

I suppose at that point he must have said as he was thinking through the words of the psalm, well, if that is true, if the Lord really does care for the godly and set them apart unto himself, that includes me. And he does care for me. And therefore, notice the second half of the verse, "The Lord will hear when I call to him." Now put that together with verse one and notice the progression.

Verse one he's in distress and anguish. He comes to God, he says, "O God, answer me when I call to you! I need an answer. I'm in trouble, I'm in distress, I need help." But as he begins to think about his enemies and directs some wise counsel to them, that counsel comes back upon himself, and he's assured that God really is going to hear him when he calls. And so he says "the Lord will hear me." God is going to answer this prayer. That's why I recommend that you go to God. If you go to God, you'll find one who is ready to listen. It's why I would also in the second place recommend this kind of concern for those who are your enemies. Because as you're concerned for them, God will express his concern to you.

Well, not only does he remind them of this great truth that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself, he begins to tell them what to do to deal with the anger they have. Three things in verses 4 and 5. First of all, in your anger do not sin. And second, offer right sacrifices, and third, trust in the Lord. Now that's good advice for anybody. Let's look at it one of those items at a time. In your anger do not sin. That's a bit of a problem to us as far as interpretation goes because it can mean two different things.

One thing it means is this: you can be angry all right, but don't go on to sin. Don't let your anger in a certain situation carry you into outright sinful actions. That's what it seemed to have meant to the translators of the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament, which is what the Apostle Paul seems to quote in the fourth chapter of Ephesians: "Be angry but sin not," and it seems to be exactly what he meant because the very next verse in Ephesians goes on to say, "don't let the sun rise upon your wrath." In other words, deal with your problem in the anger stage. That's one thing it can mean, and apparently that's what it meant to Paul.

On the other hand, that word "be angry" is actually the word "tremble." Now it can mean to tremble with anger, which is why it's translated that way and it's often used that way, but it can also just mean tremble. And if you're not trembling in anger, you ask, well, how else can you tremble? And one way you can tremble, of course, is before God, in awe of him. Leupold, whom I mentioned earlier, one of these insightful commentators on the Psalms, takes it that way, and he says what the verse really means is "tremble before God and stop sinning."

Now I don't know what way to take it. It's something that divides the scholars and I suppose in terms of Paul's use of it in the New Testament, you would tend to take it in the first way. I tend to think it probably should be taken in the second way because of the context of the psalm.

You see what David goes on to tell them to do is to offer right sacrifices and then to trust in God. And I think the flow of the thought therefore would be something like this: tremble before God, realize whom you're dealing with. I've already said to you the Lord sets apart the godly to himself, and he does. If you're setting yourself against me, you're really setting yourself against God. Tremble with that thought and then stop sinning. And for the sin that you have already committed, offer right sacrifices, that is coming to God in the way that points forward to the atonement, and when that is done, then stop living as a sinner, begin to trust God.

I think that's the flow of it. And that's what David had to say to his enemies and of course it's what we can say after we have first of all said it to ourselves. You see what gives David his great strength in these psalms, some of them as you know which have very strong language against his enemies. He wants God to bring down wrath upon the heads of his enemies. We're going to have to deal with that at greater length when we get to them, they're called the imprecatory psalms.

But one reason why David can do that is that he's first made his heart right before God. You see if he's telling them tremble before God and don't sin, or in your anger do not sin, however you take it, and make right sacrifices and trust God, that is something he himself has done. And so he's not speaking off the wall, he's not offering advice out of a textbook. He's saying this is the way I live, it's what God honors, and this is the way you should live too. It really is the way of blessing.

Now what I said earlier happens here a second time. Remember how I've said that the motion of the psalm is this: when David gets concerned for the others and he begins to think about them, he finds the answer himself? When he began to remind them that God cares for the godly, he said "well, God's going to answer my prayer then," and that was the assurance he needed of the question he first began where he said "answer my prayer, O God," and now he says "God is going to answer my prayer." He's moved a long way. The same thing happens all over again here because he's told his enemies how they may come to trust God. And having told them that, he comes to the position of trusting God himself. It's what he talks about in verses 6, 7 and 8.

There are three things he says that God does. First of all, God shows him favor. The enemies weren't showing him any favor, but God has. Those who were standing around him didn't even think that God would, but God was doing it anyway. You see, those who were around David were saying "who can show us any good?" I don't know what kind of a situation this he was in when he was saying these things, if it wasn't the situation described in Psalm 3. But whatever it was, it was bad enough that the people who were around him, his counselors, probably his friends were saying "look, this situation is so bad, I can't see how any good can come out of it."

And of course, humanly speaking, he would have had to say the same thing himself, "I don't see how any good can come out of this, what could possibly make this situation right?" Or you get into such a turmoil in your family that you say, "I don't see how anything is ever going to make this good again." Well, humanly speaking, that may very well be true.

But you see, David knows better than that and as he hears their question, now having prayed for his enemies and thought about them and advising them to trust God, he remembers that he can trust God as well. And what he says is this: "Let the light of your face shine upon us, O Lord." What he's probably doing there is thinking of the Aaronic blessing that is found in the 6th chapter of Numbers, verse 26, where we pray that God will lift up the light of his countenance upon us and give us peace.

I think what happened here is that the Holy Spirit brought the text to David's mind. Here all the people standing around him, they're saying "who can show us any good?" Humanly speaking, nobody's going to show us any good, not in a situation like this. And then the Holy Spirit says, "ah yes, but remember the benediction? Lift up the light of your countenance upon us and give us peace."

And David says, "ah yes, that's what our God is like. He's a God who allows his face to shine upon us favorably." That's our God. And as he looks upon us in favor, he gives us peace. So he prays it, you see. God has said he would do it, so he takes God at his word and he says, "All right, let the light of your face shine upon us, O God." Even in the midst of the great turmoil, he finds favor, favor with God. Did he find favor from his enemies? Not likely. Had he given them the advice and did they listen? Not very likely in my judgment, enemies generally don't, although they might. But although the enemies didn't find favor with God by following David's advice, David himself did. And so in verse 6, this is what he says.

The second thing he finds is joy. "You have filled my heart with greater joy than when their grain and new wine abound." It's referring to the harvest, a time of great joy in an agricultural economy. He's saying if you look at national life, there is no time in the life of the nation in the course of a year in which we have more joy than at the time of harvest. But he says God has answered my prayer and given me more joy even than in such times.

Why? Because of God's promises and God's favor. You see, if God is going to allow the light of his countenance to shine upon us favorably, then that itself is the cause for joy. What difference does it make if my enemies are slandering my name? The worst they can do is make things difficult for me for a time, perhaps for all of life. But in the light of eternity, and I'm an eternal being, that's just a little drop in the bucket. And what matters, what is going to matter ultimately in eternity, is whether God has set his favor upon me.

You see, if I would apply that, I would say make it your goal in life to strive for the favor of God, try to please him. I remember Enoch, Enoch in the Old Testament, that man who lived before the flood, who preached a message of judgment on his generation. "Behold, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to execute judgment on the earth against all the ungodly ways of all the ungodly sinners and all the ungodly words they have spoken against him in an ungodly way." That was Enoch's message, it's recorded in the book of Jude.

I ask the question, was Enoch popular with his generation? Not with a message like that he wasn't. He had no favor from them. They were all against him, and when the time of the flood came, we know that very few had listened, probably nobody, because the only ones left that were preserved were Noah and his family on the ark. Enoch didn't have favor with his generation, but he did have favor with God, because in the book of Hebrews where he's praised for his faith, we're told "and he pleased God." You see, that's what we should strive for, that's what David came to want. And in the light of that, all of the turmoil and the criticism faded away.

And then we come to the last verse, and what we find is this picture of trust once again, actually a great manifestation of a personal peace. Favor with God, joy, yes, and peace as well. Because David says in verse 8, "I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety."

You ever go through a day when people have been out to get you? I'm sure you have. You're not paranoid to recognize it, it is often a fact of life. My favorite saying of Yogi Berra has to do with paranoia. You've heard it before. Yogi Berra said just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. And that is often true.

You ever gone through a day like that? Maybe your whole life seems to be like that. Here is a psalm for you. It's as practical as it can be. Address your concern to God. God knows and he understands, you can be honest and he hears. Direct your concern for those who are your enemies. Even if you can't speak to them, even if they won't listen, articulate in your mind the advice they should have. And then as you give them advice, you'll take it for yourself and you'll find that the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus. The Bible says pray for those who despitefully use you, and if you do, the peace of God will be yours.

Let us pray. Our Father, we thank you for such a practical psalm dealing with such a practical problem. Very few of us have anything that can compare with Psalm 3, where enemies are out to get David, armed forces where he's physically under attack. But all, all of us at one time or another live through the distress of Psalm 4. Our Father, if that's our case, if we're going through that now, use it to strengthen us and strengthen us in this way, not telling us how to have a stiff upper lip or fight back, but rather learn how to present our requests to God, all requests to you, and find that peace which passes all human understanding. We thank you for that blessing, we thank you for those promises, and we thank you for what you are going to do in our lives this day, this night before we go to bed, and each night this week, and indeed throughout our lives, for Jesus' sake. Amen.

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