A King on the Run
There once lived a king who led a great nation. His rise to power was unpredictable, but he was celebrated by many. He loved and followed God and was trusted by those he led. But then, seemingly out of nowhere, something happened that threatened to undo this king’s rule. One of his own sons began slowly turning the hearts of the people against his dad, telling people that the king wasn’t doing things the right way and that he could do better. It was subtle. It was slow. And it was effective.
Eventually, after years of sowing seeds of distrust and discontent among many in the nation, this son proclaimed himself king and many who’d innocently and ignorantly followed him, not realizing what he was up to, helped him form a new imposter government.
This son, the new self-proclaimed king, kept up religious rituals all while turning the true king’s friends against him. Once the true king learned what was happening, realizing that the hearts of the people had been turned against him, he and his household fled the capital city. Many people from other countries who were in the city followed him out, while many from his own country betrayed him. These outsiders insisted on following the true king no matter what it cost them, even to the death.
The king, though heartbroken, believed that if God wanted him to come back to the capital city, he’d bring him back. He believed that God knew what was best for him and would always do what was best for him. His faith, however, didn’t negate action, as he sent several of his friends back into the capital city to be his spies in the phony government that his son was setting up.
Nonetheless, the king believed that the future of the city and the future of his kingship was squarely in the hands of God. But his faith didn’t mean he wasn’t devastated. As he left the city, he walked barefoot with his head covered in shame, weeping as he went. All the people following him did the same. The coup left the king crushed; his son’s treachery left the people in tears.
Would the king return? Would those who’d turned against him be victorious? Would the people get to live in peace again? Would God save the king?
A Father’s Broken Heart
This king on the run is King David. His son who led the coup against him was Absalom. You can read the account for yourselves in 2 Samuel 15.
There we learn that King David fled Jerusalem when his son Absalom led a revolt against him, and that David was understandably crushed by what was happening. Verse 30 of 2 Samuel 15 says that when David left Jerusalem, he went up the Mount of Olives, “weeping as he went, barefoot and with his head covered. And all the people who were with him covered their heads, and they went up, weeping as they went” (v. 30). A coup is one thing, but one led by his own son shattered David’s heart.
Interpreting this Event
This was a life-changing and traumatic event for David, his family, and those who followed him. What did he think about what was happening? What were his thoughts and feelings and prayers like in that time of agonizing grief and anger and loss? Psalm 3 tells us (in the heading).
Psalm 3 is David’s prayer to God during this time. It’s his short and sweet honest assessment of where he’s at, what he needs, and what he believes. Psalm 3 tells us that, though David was crushed, he was also confident, not in himself, but in the Lord. Psalm 3 is the cry of a man who has nowhere else to go, so he goes to God. It’s a confession of faith when everything falls apart.
The main point of Psalm 3 is that we must meet injustice with faith and that God will meet injustice with justice. The injustice David was experiencing led him to pray and confess his faith in God. In this psalm, we see a coup (vv. 1-2), a confidence (vv. 3-6), a cry (v. 7), and a confession (v. 8).
A Coup
First, in verses 1-2, David briefly describes the coup. I’ve already outlined what was happening to David during this time. In these verses, he summarizes 2 Samuel 15, saying he was surrounded by overwhelming hostility. This is why he uses the word “many” three times in these verses. Verse 6 puts a number on his enemies, “many thousands” (NIV, “tens of thousands”).
Absalom’s slow but steady work of sowing seeds of dissension against his father had worked. And Proverbs teaches us that it always does: “A dishonest man spreads strife, and a whisperer separates close friends” (16:28). Absalom deceived the people under David’s care, telling them that he rather than his father really cared about justice. Many believed him and followed him instead of David (2 Sam. 15:1-6). People rose against David because Absalom convinced them to do so, not because David did something wrong.
Hostility and antagonism are part of life, whether in families, neighborhoods, jobs, politics, and unfortunately even in the church. It may not always rise to the level David is experiencing here, but wherever we go, we’ll find hostility, we’ll find people like Absalom. Such is life in a Genesis 3 world.
But, as one scholar points out, the main hostility in David’s situation was against God, not against David: “Hostility takes many forms, but the hostility with which this prayer is concerned transcends hostility understood as conflict between human beings. At root it concerns an assault on God.”[1]
What does that mean? The end of verse 2 says that many are saying that there’s “no salvation for David in God.” The claim is that David can’t or won’t find help from God. So their attack isn’t just against David, but against God. This is the central theological issue in this psalm. David’s enemies are saying that he’d be a fool to trust in God in this situation. This is why these enemies are called “wicked” in verse 7.
The specific meaning of this accusation isn’t clear. Are David’s enemies saying that his situation is hopeless? Is this cynical scoffing that David’s God is unable to help him? Or is it an accusation that David has no right to appeal to God for help or expect God’s help, that God could help but David is disqualified and God won’t help?
Whatever the specific meaning is, the main point of this charge is that David is without God and therefore without hope. This, the enemies say, is the real trouble beneath the tangible trouble. The enemies’ primary charge concerns God’s ability and desire to help his anointed king.
Do you see how dangerous and deadly this charge is? These enemies are saying God doesn’t care about David.
For David, and for us, we have to ask, is hope in God warranted when things go sideways in our lives? The claim that there’s no hope in God often finds an ally in our hearts, in our doubts, fears, anxieties, and in our guilt and shame. Is hope in God warranted when you’re struggling to believe if God even exists, if he can protect you, if he’ll defend you, if he’ll provide for you, or if he’ll forgive and cleanse you? Is hope in God warranted when everything in us and around us seems to suggest otherwise?
A Confidence
Hope in the midst of hostility is warranted, and verses 3-6 tell us why. David contradicts the claim of his enemies (“But…”) that hope in God isn’t warranted. He says hope in God is warranted and then gives six reasons why in verses 3-6.
David has lost his earthly glory, being driven out of Jerusalem by his own son and having lost the trust and respect of a large part of the country. But in verse 3 he says his real glory remains. The surrounding presence of God is the glory that animates his life.
Notice that it’s something outside of David, not inside David, that gives him confidence. Dane Ortlund says it like this in his devotional on this Psalm, “What strengthens David…is not strength mustered up from within. What stabilizes him is not self-generated optimism…he looks to God…Only in this way does David’s internal frenetic anxiety die away so that he can sleep in peace once more (v. 5). Self-divesting trust in God is the channel through which the deliverance and power of God may flow.”[2]
David’s hope is in God because he’s confident that there are things about God that are true, “But you, O Lord, are…” (v. 3). Turning to truth about the Lord is, as Alec Motyer says, “step one in dealing with the troubled day.”[3] In his summary of Psalms 3-7, Motyer pointed out something that was so good for me to see and so I want to share it with you. He says:
“Of the fifty-five verses in these psalms, about fifteen are devoted to enemies and their threat, but about thirty to truths, thoughts of God and descriptions of prayer and praise. In whatever form trouble comes – the hostility of others, circumstantial problems and tragedies, personal sorrows – its tendency is to drive us inward, to make us ‘retire hurt,’ urge us to find some corner in which to moan over our lot, marvel how unfair life is, ‘chew the fat’ of our own misery! David is too practical to say ‘forget your problems.’ Neither his nor our difficulties are negligible or inconsequential. No, don’t try to forget them, but rather face and describe them – as these psalms do. The vague is so often more alarming than what is candidly and specifically faced. But always outweigh the problems, hurts, sorrows – whatever – by the great truths about the Lord, and by the practice of prayer and praise.”[4]
Do you see what he’s saying? He’s saying that we need to face and describe our problems with honesty. Spiritual bypassing problems is not what to do. Rather, we come to God with an honest assessment of what’s happening, but then we rehearse the things we know to be true about God and we marinate on those things in prayer and praise. As we put our eyes on the Lord, the size of our problems is seen with more proportional accuracy. We must meet injustice with faith.
A Cry
After David rehearses the things he confidently knows about the Lord, in verse 7 he cries out for help. Petition follows praise. “Arise, O Lord” is a direct quote from Numbers 10, when Moses was leading the Israelites to set out from Mount Sinai: “And whenever the ark set out, Moses said, ‘Arise, O Lord, and let your enemies be scattered, and let those who hate you flee before you’” (v. 35).
It’s instructive for us that David repeats this ancient marching cry. He seems to be suggesting that his tiny and fleeing band of followers are the people of God marching onward with the presence of God.
It’s instructive for us that David quotes this verse from Numbers 10 because, whether we’re the mighty and triumphant throng that left Sinai or the tiny and defeated band fleeing Jerusalem, the Lord goes with us. Wherever God’s people go, there will God be because he lives in the presence of his people. Which means the size of our church or the circumstances of our lives aren’t what reveal God’s blessing and presence with his, nor do they mark us off as belonging to God or not. Those who’re faithfully following God and his word are his people, no matter how big or small, how triumphant or beleaguered they are. The Lord gets up and goes with his people because they’re his people.
In the last part of verse 7, David says that the Lord will strike his enemies on the cheek and break their teeth. The strike on a cheek is a rebuke. The breaking of the teeth is a disarming and disempowering of the enemies, rendering them harmless, making them toothless as a tiger.
David says that when the Lord gets up to save his people, their enemies will be rebuked and disarmed. It’s what will happen, not what may happen. God will never let the enemies of his people go unpunished. Absalom experienced this when his hair got caught in a tree and Joab, one of David’s generals, came and put three spears in his chest (2 Sam. 18). No one gets away with injustice in God’s universe. God will always meet injustice with justice.
A Confession
Then finally, in verse 8, we see David’s confession of faith. He knows he’s warranted to hope in God because “salvation belongs to the Lord.” Many are telling David that God has no salvation for him (v. 2). But he knows that God owns salvation and freely gives it to his people.
David’s confession of faith, his confidence in and cry to the Lord in the middle of this coup reveal that he was truly a man after God’s heart. But David wasn’t a perfect king. The family dysfunction that set Absalom on this path was the result of David’s unwillingness to correct him after he murdered his brother Amnon (2 Sam. 13-14). He wanted his son’s love so much that he never confronted him for his sin.
But now he realizes that a son’s love can’t provide him the security he craves. Because of this ordeal, he’s forced to relocate his hope and glory to God who alone gives him hope. God is working a coup in David’s heart through this familial and national tragedy. He’s removing an idol and retaking the throne in David’s heart. He wants David to realize again that he alone is worthy of his trust.
Another Coup Against Another King
The coup led by Absalom is a precursor and shadow of a later coup in the same city against one of David’s sons. On the night he was betrayed, David’s greatest son also journeyed out of the city, across the Brook Kidron and up the Mount of Olives where he would weep over the impending destruction of the King.
Like David, Jesus followed the same path of sorrow in the midst of many enemies. Psalm 3 gives us language for Jesus’ humiliation and betrayal. How many were his foes who rose against him, who said God wouldn’t save him. But the Lord was a shield around him, keeping him on the path ordained for him, being his glory, and lifting not just his head but his entire body from the grave. He laid down in the grave but the Lord woke him from death so that we don’t have to be afraid of anything that comes against us.
God eventually brought David back to Jerusalem and saved his king. By raising Jesus from the dead, God saved his King again, and all those who follow him no matter what it costs.
In Jesus, the Lord has arisen and saved his people. He let himself be struck on the cheek by his enemies. He allowed himself to be overrun by those who hated him. He allowed himself to be put on a Roman cross, all so that everyone who believes in and follows him will find that the threats of their greatest enemies, sin and Satan and death, are emptied of their power.
God has saved his King, and he will save everyone who cries out to him like David does here. God will always answer the one who honestly prays, “Save me, O my God!”
[1]James L. Mays, Psalms, Interpretation (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), 52.
[2]Dane Ortlund, In the Lord I Take Refuge: 150 Daily Devotions through the Psalms (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2021), 16.
[3]Alec Motyer, Psalms By the Day: A New Devotional Translation (Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2016), 15.
[4]Ibid., 24.