From Lament to Trust: David's Journey in Psalm 3

As was pointed out before class started, this is a great Psalm for reminding ourselves of the goodness of God, the trustworthiness of God in any time of suffering, oppression, danger, risk. So even with what's going on in Israel, these last eight days, nine days, it's a good reminder that we can trust in God. He is good, even though the world around us doesn't feel like what we studied in Psalm 1 and in Psalm 2, which laid the ethical, the moral foundation of creation, and the eternal rule of God. [00:01:14]

I want to make sure that we understand the difference between lamenting and just complaining at God. A lament is a deep stirring of the heart because we know who God is and what we experience is in conflict with what we know to be true. A complaint is, I don't like what's going on, right? There's a difference there. It doesn't always sound different, but we'll see that a true lament can be resolved, and it does come back to what is true. [00:03:08]

We repent, but we still have to deal with what we call the temporal effects of sin, the effects of sin that are natural to our experience here on earth and in time. And obviously, when kids start to see parents sin, it encourages kids to sin. And we see two or three children of David involved in this. The first one is Amnon. He's in a very bad situation. Amnon, one of David's sons, starts to notice his stepsister, half-sister, and ooh, she's pretty. [00:04:52]

We can trust in God because we can trust in God when we see that the world doesn't line up to God's ideals and we have despair. We have that dissonance. We have that questioning. We see that in the New Testament when it's like, Lord, I believe. Help me in my unbelief. When we have those moments, when we have the darkness, the dark night of our souls, we can trust in God, and that's why we can voice our laments. [00:09:45]

Everything's wrong, so I'm just going to grit and I'll figure it out, and that never goes well. A lot of... Bad regimes were started on the principle that I can make things right. The reality is we can only make things right in as much as being in God's will. And so the more we submit to God, the more we lean into God, the more we trust into God and rely on His plan to save the world, that's when we can actually do good instead of, as a local Denver band once said, create my own evil plan to save the world, which is what good intentions often lead to. [00:10:29]

And when my face and my eyes are turned inward, you're the one that lifts my head. So we're already seeing that. We had the down, now we're going back up to his holy hill. We're going back to Zion. This is really interesting. Okay, so I cried aloud to the Lord. Please, please, please, when you're feeling lament, cry out to God. God, so many times, we're just like, no, I'm just going to, I'll bury it, I'll deal with it. No, God wants not only our emotions, but as Wendell pointed out, he wants our bodies to match our emotions, because there is no that, we've talked about this every week, there's no separation in how God sees us between our bodies and our souls. [00:26:11]

And he can despair, but when God lifted his head, he turned it back to the holy hill. And that's what we need to be doing too. When we get to those moments of despair, and we will be in those moments of despair if we're not in them right now, we will be there, and our response needs to be constantly bringing our attention back up to God. And now we get this weird interlude that feels out of place. It's that C that we talked about in our chiasm, trusting in the Lord. It says, I lay down and slept. I woke again, for the Lord sustained me. [00:29:28]

And it's because of verse 5 that he can say verse 6. So when we're deep in those throes of depression, when we're deep in that despair, and God chooses for us to wake up in the morning, and we have that morning lament, right? Because this is in the morning. He's risen. He's still feeling this lament. He's reminding himself of the truth that God didn't take me overnight. I'm still awake. I'm still here, which means God's got something for me. I'm here with purpose. [00:35:06]

So salvation or deliverance, God will not save you. It was used once at the beginning, but it's used in both places on the end. So because I can trust in God, I know God will save me. I know God will deliver me. But look at this. He's not saying my salvation belongs to the Lord, my deliverance belongs to the Lord. Right? So he starts there. He starts there. But we're going to see why David was a good king. Because salvation belongs to the Lord. Deliverance belongs to the Lord. [00:46:43]

And that's where we should get to. And we all have people that are God's people around us that we should be more concerned about than ourselves, whether that's our kids, grandkids, our neighbors, spouses, whoever it is, like just the friends in our lives, the people that God has brought into our lives. It's so easy for despair to make the focus all me. And I'm not talking at any of you. I'm talking at me when I say this. It's so easy for me to make this all about me. But that's not what God wants. [00:49:21]

Because I know the darkness of my soul. As Paul says, I'm chief among sinners. We should have that focus. The more we know God, the more we see who we're not. We're not God. We're seeing what we're not. But the more we focus on us, the less we're seeing God. We have to look. We have to lift our eyes. But it's not us that starts that. You go back, right? The lifter of my head. That is not me. And thank God for that. [00:50:23]

We always want to be on the mountaintop. We always want to have that beautiful view. We always want to feel closer to God. But you've got to go through the dark valleys, and you've got to trudge up the mountain. And that's peaks and valleys today. So he starts in the valley, and he lifts his eyes to the hill. He goes to the peak. [01:02:31]