David's Prayer for Deliverence From Evil Men
Notes
Transcript
To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.
Deliver me, O Lord, from evil men;
preserve me from violent men,
who plan evil things in their heart
and stir up wars continually.
They make their tongue sharp as a serpent’s,
and under their lips is the venom of asps. Selah
Guard me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked;
preserve me from violent men,
who have planned to trip up my feet.
The arrogant have hidden a trap for me,
and with cords they have spread a net;
beside the way they have set snares for me. Selah
I say to the Lord, You are my God;
give ear to the voice of my pleas for mercy, O Lord!
O Lord, my Lord, the strength of my salvation,
you have covered my head in the day of battle.
Grant not, O Lord, the desires of the wicked;
do not further their evil plot, or they will be exalted! Selah
As for the head of those who surround me,
let the mischief of their lips overwhelm them!
Let burning coals fall upon them!
Let them be cast into fire,
into miry pits, no more to rise!
Let not the slanderer be established in the land;
let evil hunt down the violent man speedily!
I know that the Lord will maintain the cause of the afflicted,
and will execute justice for the needy.
Surely the righteous shall give thanks to your name;
the upright shall dwell in your presence.
Introduction
Introduction
The psalms are full of different genres of poetry.
There are praises, wisdom, thanksgiving, royal, and lament psalms.
Out of the 150 psalms, David wrote 74 of them, and 43 of those are lament psalms.
This is one of those psalms.
In a lament psalm, we see the author crying out to God for help in a hard situation.
There are hard situations and trials for all of us, as believers.
God uses trials in our lives to grow us and mature us. He uses them to shape us into the image of Christ.
Lawson says, “Christians are like tea bags, our real strength never comes out until we are put into hot water.”
David seems to be constantly in hot water. It seems that whenever we open the Psalms and the psalm is by David, he is going through another trial.
To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.
How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?
A Prayer of David.
Hear a just cause, O Lord; attend to my cry! Give ear to my prayer from lips free of deceit!
To the choirmaster: according to The Doe of the Dawn. A Psalm of David.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.
And here it is no different for David.
He is surrounded by evil and violent men, who want his destruction.
This is a time of great desperation for David, and in the middle of his desperation he cries out to God for help.
The psalms show us a full range of emotions, from sheer joy to sheer terror, and they teach us how to react and where to turn in each of these times in our lives.
We all, like David, will experience the hot water of trials in our Christian lives.
Let us learn from David’s experience how we can turn to God for help and grow in strength and maturity.
First, let’s look at David’s complaint.
David’s Complaint v. 1-5
David’s Complaint v. 1-5
Deliver me, O Lord, from evil men;
preserve me from violent men,
who plan evil things in their heart
and stir up wars continually.
They make their tongue sharp as a serpent’s,
and under their lips is the venom of asps. Selah
Guard me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked;
preserve me from violent men,
who have planned to trip up my feet.
The arrogant have hidden a trap for me,
and with cords they have spread a net;
beside the way they have set snares for me. Selah
Deliver me! No introduction, David get’s right into his need.
Rescue me! He cries out to God for help.
David, the man after God’s own heart, has adversaries that are after him.
He seems to have no where to turn, no where but to the Lord.
And he pours out his heart to God.
He is surrounded by evil men who are seeking his harm.
He is being overpowered by them. The Hebrew word for deliver here is to pull out of the grasp of an enemy.
His enemies have him down and are holding onto him, and he needs a stronger man to come and pull him out.
David is coming to the Lord knowing that he can’t handle them. He is over-powered and overwhelmed.
The men he is wrestling with are violent, and he cries out that God would preserve him, or keep watch over him.
These men are evil.
We have the problem of thinking that the enemy thinks in the same way we do, or or that they desire the same things.
But this is not the case, evil men desire evil things, evil men think in evil ways.
Verse 2 says
who plan evil things in their heart and stir up wars continually.
The evil that bubbles up in their hearts is intentional. They are not accidentally bumping into evil circumstances, they are orchestrating them to happen.
While David is sleeping, they are up planning.
While David is going about his life, they are stirring up wars continually.
Another psalm speaks to this
Too long have I had my dwelling among those who hate peace.
I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war!
Our culture, as we are all aware, is at odds with what God has created. They hate every expression of His reign over His creation.
In that battle to not submit to our Sovereign Lord, they have rebelled against the truth.
One of the very basic truths that they hate, is that by nature we are not good. We see this all around us.
We see a culture of excusing evil because of circumstance or education.
We can educate the evil out of the population.
On the road to utopia, we cast off all thinking that man has a problem with his nature, and teach the error out of him.
So many of our world’s political and philosophical systems work on this fantasy.
And while they educate and nurture to their ends and goals, the world that runs on reality, whether you like it our not, crumbles around them.
The reality is man is hopelessly corrupt in himself.
Verse 3 is quoted by the Apostle Paul in Romans 3 where he is directly speaking to the issue of the depravity of man.
as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one;
no one understands; no one seeks for God.
All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”
“Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.” “The venom of asps is under their lips.”
“Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
in their paths are ruin and misery,
and the way of peace they have not known.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
And there should be, we ignore reality at our own peril.
Verse 3, as Paul quoted, likens these evil men to snakes.
They make their tongue sharp as a serpent’s, and under their lips is the venom of asps. Selah
They are like snakes in there tongues and mouths, where the venom is.
They use their words to get to their ends. They lie and slander and gossip.
Verses 4 and 5 further his complaint
Guard me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked; preserve me from violent men, who have planned to trip up my feet.
The arrogant have hidden a trap for me, and with cords they have spread a net; beside the way they have set snares for me. Selah
His enemies would like nothing more than to see us trip up.
How many times do you hear people calling Christians hypocrites, when they themselves are hypocrites as well.
They want to see you fall, because it salves their conscience.
Notice the language in verse 5:
The arrogant have hidden a trap for me, and with cords they have spread a net; beside the way they have set snares for me. Selah
The wicked are like hunters, hiding traps, spreading nets, and setting snares.
Christ dealt with this problem with the Jewish leaders.
The scribes and the chief priests sought to lay hands on him at that very hour, for they perceived that he had told this parable against them, but they feared the people.
So they watched him and sent spies, who pretended to be sincere, that they might catch him in something he said, so as to deliver him up to the authority and jurisdiction of the governor.
Christ was aware of the game, so He answered them wisely, but this is sport to the evil men.
And we as Christians have to fight the same battles.
There really are evil people, that seek harm. In their quest to fend of their conscience and the blazing reality that they are subject to an almighty God, they distract themselves by inflicting pain on others.
This is the real battle we are in, against evil men and violent women in this world.
So David complains to God about being overpowered and hated by evil men who actively seek his harm, but in the next part of this psalm we see Davids unshakable confidence in God.
David’s Confidence v. 6-8
David’s Confidence v. 6-8
I say to the Lord, You are my God;
give ear to the voice of my pleas for mercy, O Lord!
O Lord, my Lord, the strength of my salvation,
you have covered my head in the day of battle.
Grant not, O Lord, the desires of the wicked;
do not further their evil plot, or they will be exalted! Selah
David’s confidence lies in reality.
In contrast to his foes, which live in fantasy, he knows the there is a God.
Yahweh is real. God listens to his prayer.
The real God who created everything, and is sitting on His throne with power over every inch of this expansive universe, is David’s God.
He is not a false idol made with the hands of men, a figment of evil imagination.
Isaiah describes the foolishness of idolatry.
The ironsmith takes a cutting tool and works it over the coals. He fashions it with hammers and works it with his strong arm. He becomes hungry, and his strength fails; he drinks no water and is faint.
The carpenter stretches a line; he marks it out with a pencil. He shapes it with planes and marks it with a compass. He shapes it into the figure of a man, with the beauty of a man, to dwell in a house.
He cuts down cedars, or he chooses a cypress tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it.
Then it becomes fuel for a man. He takes a part of it and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Also he makes a god and worships it; he makes it an idol and falls down before it.
Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the half he eats meat; he roasts it and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says, “Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire!”
And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, “Deliver me, for you are my god!”
They know not, nor do they discern, for he has shut their eyes, so that they cannot see, and their hearts, so that they cannot understand.
No one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, “Half of it I burned in the fire; I also baked bread on its coals; I roasted meat and have eaten. And shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?”
And man is just as foolish when creating idols of a false god that will not judge them for the sins against the true God that they commit.
Notice he has confidence that God is able to hear his prayer, unlike the false gods.
I say to the Lord, You are my God; give ear to the voice of my pleas for mercy, O Lord!
David trusts that God is his salvation.
And placing trust in God is never misplaced trust.
O Lord, my Lord, the strength of my salvation, you have covered my head in the day of battle.
Confidence in the Lord is what keeps your head on straight in battle.
Have you ever run into something with your head? You see stars, your vision goes out, it takes a minute to regain your balance.
This is why helmets were so important on the battle field. You had to stay aware of your surroundings at all times, and if you got whacked upside the head, you would lose that awareness.
When Paul uses armor as a metaphor in Ephesians 6 he tells us to “take the helmet of salvation.”
Without it we aren’t protected from the blows of the battle.
Our small group knows of my issues with driving. I am constantly aggravated by the way that other people drive. Aggravated may be too nice of a word.
My brothers would always make fun of me for it.
And I always regret the way I act. This is why it was brought up in small group.
How can a believer act this way? How can I not mature to the point in my Christian life where this doesn’t bother me?
This is just a small sample of the problems with myself, trust me, it gets worse.
But I can cling to my salvation when I begin to get distracted by the darts of the accuser. And that is what David is doing.
When it looks like it’s too much, like the battle is too hard he is reminded that his head is covered. When he takes a blow, he remains in the battle with his wits because he is firmly planted in the reality that God is the strength of his salvation, not his ability to stay calm on the road.
He is confident in the reality of God, that God hears, that God is his salvation, and that God is in control.
Grant not, O Lord, the desires of the wicked; do not further their evil plot, or they will be exalted! Selah
The biggest reality of their being a real God to worship, is you know the blessed fact that He is in control.
You can know that everything is in His power.
The Lord sits enthroned over the flood; the Lord sits enthroned as king forever.
The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.
On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.
He is on the throne. He does what He wants to do for His purposes, and the great thing is… we know that His purposes are good.
Yahweh has the last vote to grant or not to grant the desires of the wicked, and He does so to work out His own plans.
After Peter and John were released from the threat of prison for preaching the gospel, they told the early church and they recognized this truth.
And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them,
who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, “ ‘Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against his Anointed’—
for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel,
to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.
Davids confidence was well placed, in the true God who is in control of everything.
And he knows that God does not turn a deaf ear to the cries of His people.
What they mean for evil, God means for good.
Then David calls on God to judge them. Verses 9-11 show us David’s curses.
David’s Curses v. 9-11
David’s Curses v. 9-11
As for the head of those who surround me,
let the mischief of their lips overwhelm them!
Let burning coals fall upon them!
Let them be cast into fire,
into miry pits, no more to rise!
Let not the slanderer be established in the land;
let evil hunt down the violent man speedily!
This is what we call imprecation, or more commonly a curse.
There are psalms that are focused on cursing the enemies of the author, and we call them imprecatory psalms.
David calls on curses to fall on the evil men for all that they have done to him.
Verse 9 says
As for the head of those who surround me, let the mischief of their lips overwhelm them!
He calls back to the covering God had provided for his head, God’s salvation, to not be placed on theirs.
Instead, he wants all of their mischief that they have spoken, intended for him, to come back on them.
The venomous slander and their evil plans, he wants to come back to them.
He calls for God’s direct judgment on their plans.
Let burning coals fall upon them! Let them be cast into fire, into miry pits, no more to rise!
He uses 3 different methods of judgement for them: burning coals, casting into fire, and to be thrown into water filled pits.
These are all ways that God has judged wicked people or promised to judge wicked people.
Sodom and Gomorrah had rain of sulfur and fire that destroyed them.
In Ezekiel, God promises that He will judge Gog
With pestilence and bloodshed I will enter into judgment with him, and I will rain upon him and his hordes and the many peoples who are with him torrential rains and hailstones, fire and sulfur.
The key to recognize here is that David is asking for God to do the judging and the avenging, not David.
Vengeance is not ours to give. To the Holy God alone belongs the vengeance, and it will be done on His time frame… not ours.
This is a hard thing for us to put into practice.
We want retribution to happen now, at our hands, and for our purposes.
But we are called to a different path.
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.
Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.
If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.
Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”
We do not know the whole picture, God is still painting it.
That homosexual protester may be the “and such were some of you” from 1 Corinthians 6!
And “such were some of you” here in this room, maybe not to the homosexuality, but to the other sins on the list.
The point is we can rest assured that there will be true and perfect judgement, either through the cross of Christ or punishment of God, and because of that we can assuredly rest.
The last curse he pray on his enemies is in verse 11
Let not the slanderer be established in the land; let evil hunt down the violent man speedily!
He asks that their ways, not become the ways of the land.
That their sin wouldn’t become the normal way of the culture.
This is our cry and prayer today. May God please let the evil of the few, not become the culture of the rest.
May God put an end to the evil of our enemies quickly.
David complains to God, David has confidence in God, David curses his enemies, finally we will look at David’s conviction in vs. 12 and 13.
David’s Conviction v. 12-13
David’s Conviction v. 12-13
I know that the Lord will maintain the cause of the afflicted,
and will execute justice for the needy.
Surely the righteous shall give thanks to your name;
the upright shall dwell in your presence.
We can see a journey through this short psalm.
David starts with cries and pleas for help.
Deliver me from these evil men! Preserve me! He is powerless over his enemies.
As we go through the psalm David remembers and meditates on who God is and what He has done and his confidence grows into conviction.
In verse 12 David says “I know.”
I know that the Lord will.
He moved from crouching in the corner in fear, to standing firm on the promises of God.
This is how we go through this life, filled with evil and pain. We have something to stand on.
Maybe David remembered God’s hand when He had young David stand before the Philistine giant and kill him with a sling and a stone. Maybe he remembered all those battles won by God’s power.
Whatever he remembered, he remembered it to the point that he could stand on it.
This is why it is important to learn the truths of the scripture.
From the Old Testament to the New Testament, we see stories of men and women failing, but of God not failing even one time.
This is why we remember the prayers that God has answered, so that we can know He will answer them in the future.
So that when the time comes and our natural inclination is to be afraid, we can stand in the face of evil, not on our own strength, but on the strength of the faithfulness of our God.
I know that the Lord will maintain the cause of the afflicted, and will execute justice for the needy.
How can David know this?
God has always been on the side of the afflicted and of the needy.
All my bones shall say, “O Lord, who is like you, delivering the poor from him who is too strong for him, the poor and needy from him who robs him?”
There have always been provisions in God’s law to take care of the poor. On how you were supposed to reap your fields, through offerings and charity.
This of course is a type of how He takes care of us in our greatest need and poverty though His richest gift in Christ.
David knows that God is a God of justice as well.
For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe.
He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.
David stands in this truth, and we can stand in it as well, whatever our circumstances.
Surely the righteous shall give thanks to your name; the upright shall dwell in your presence.
The word surely parallels the I know of verse 12. It is an emphasis on the conviction has that God will do righteousness.
He is looking to the future, when the things misunderstood now, will finally be understood.
Surely the righteous will give thanks to God.
One day we WILL understand the hand of God in our lives.
When we stand for truth down here and are bitten with the venom of asps, we WILL be soothed and healed in eternity.
We will have the better part.
The psalmist in Psalm 73 realized this.
He looked around at the wicked and saw them prosper. He saw their fields produce and their families grow.
He saw them gain political and military power. Everything they touched seemed to turn to gold.
While the righteous were sick and hungry and powerless.
He began to question the reasons why God would allow this and then he went to the temple to worship and realized what the future held for both groups.
He repented of his foolishness for questioning the wisdom of God and said this
Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand.
You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory.
Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
For behold, those who are far from you shall perish; you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you.
But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works.
Surely, we will give thanks to God one day, even for the things we don’t understand now.
And all of those made upright by Christ, will dwell in the presence of God forever!
Conclusion
Conclusion
So David’s prayer was answered by God, in His time and according to His will.
David learned to trust Him to do that.
Just like William Cowper did when he wrote the words to the hymn, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way.”
“Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust him for his grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.”