This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

(upbeat music) Welcome back for week one, day three of our first section of the
book of Psalms, Psalm 3 today. And I'd like to start with the title of this
Psalm. The title of Psalm 3 is A Psalm of David when he fled from his son,
Absalom.

There's a couple of interesting things in this title. First, the word psalm, a
psalm of David. The Hebrew word there is the word mizmor.

It has the root idea of instrumental music, of a melody. It looks back
historically to the first mizmor, the psalm, the song that Moses sang when the
people walked through the Red Sea on dry ground. Psalms is the history of God's
faithful work in our lives.

And Psalms is meant to be sung, it's instrumental, so that they would go
straight to the soul. So as you study through this book of Psalms, there should
be some kind of a song in your heart that goes along with each of these Psalms.
Sometimes it's a happy song, a joyous song, a glorious song.

With this, it's a painful song. It's a lament. When he fled from his son,
Absalom.

This is one of 14 Psalms that are linked to historical episodes in the life of
David. When David fled from Absalom, you can read about it in 2 Samuel 15. You
might remember the story.

His son, his own son, came and took the palace, took the throne from him. He
made friends with everybody in the palace, so David had to flee for his life.
Can you imagine what that would be like?

David's the king, his own son has tried to take his place, has successfully
supplanted him, and now he's running, fleeing from his own son. And so Psalm
chapter three says this. Oh Lord, David writes, sings, how many are my foes?

How many rise up against me? How many are saying of me, God will not deliver
him, Salah. Salah is a interjection, just a sort of a musical pause for a
moment.

We'll talk about that word more in a later psalm. David goes on and says, but
you are a shield around me, oh Lord. You bestow glory on me and lift up my head.

To the Lord I cry aloud, and he answers me from his holy hill, Salah. I lie down
and sleep. I wake again because the Lord sustains me.

I will not fear the tens of thousands drawn up against me on every side. Arise,
oh Lord, deliver me, oh my God. Strike all my enemies on the job.

Break the teeth of the wicked. From the Lord comes deliverance. May your
blessing be on your people.

This is a psalm for when you're overwhelmed by trouble. Maybe you're overwhelmed
by a trouble right now. Maybe it is like David in your own family or in your
circumstances or in your own soul.

When you're overwhelmed by trouble, you turn to Psalm 3. David's own son had
betrayed him. And not only that, many were saying God will not deliver him.

He had everybody that was in his life telling him, oh, not only has your son
betrayed you, but we see what's happening. We see the handwriting on the wall.
All is lost.

He was in trouble and everyone was telling him there was no way out. One more
thing on top of that. We don't always know why we face trouble, but in this
case, David knew.

God had told him that there would be bitter trouble in his own house because of
his sin with Bathsheba. So David knew that he was facing overwhelming problems,
that everyone was telling him there was no way out, and that it was his fault.
So what does he do when he faces this kind of overwhelming problem in his life?

I want you to notice the two things that David does. One, he cries out to the
Lord, and two, he lies down and sleeps. He cries out to the Lord and he lies
down and sleeps.

First, he cries out to the Lord. He cries out to the Lord as the one who answers
from his holy hill. That's extremely important here.

The holy hill, the ark was there, the ark of the covenant. It was where the
temple would be built. It's God's house.

It's the place of real power. So see what's happening here? The palace was now
his son's.

Absalom had taken the palace, but God was still on his holy hill. So David looks
to the holy hill. He looks away from the palace, and he looks to the holy hill
where the real power is.

One of the big questions in my life, in your life, is where are you looking for
answers? Are you looking for answers from the palace or from God's holy hill?
The palace is the place of human power, the place you've gone to before, the
place that's worked very easily.

It was a place of a certain measure of power, but David wasn't there anymore.
And maybe you're in a place where something you used to rely on for power or for
strength or for significance or for a sense of contentment in this world, it's
been taken from you. Where are you going to look to for strength?

You don't have to get back to the palace to find strength. You can look to God's
holy hill because his strength is greater. He cries to the Lord, and he looks to
God's holy hill for answers.

But he also, did you notice, he also lies down and sleeps. He gets the physical
rest that he needs. The Bible says that I will lie down and sleep, David says in
verse five, and then I wake again because the Lord sustains me.

When you're overwhelmed, any of us, we tend to overdo it. We want to make up for
it all, and then we get exhausted, and then we feel even more overwhelmed, and
we think, how am I ever going to get out of this? Ask God for a good night's sleep.

Because in sleep, we recognize the truth of those four words, the Lord sustains
me. We're going to look at this more in the next psalm because this is so
important. One of the reasons that God has you sleep is so that as you sleep,
you realize that he is the one, not you, not your circumstances, not the bank
account you've built up, he is the one who sustains you.

And through this prayer, crying out to the Lord, and through this time of sleep,
David comes to recognize the simple truth of verse eight, from the Lord comes
deliverance. He needed a way out, and from the Lord comes deliverance. If you're
overwhelmed, you're certainly not going to deliver yourself.

You need God to deliver you, and he's the only one who truly can. Now it's
interesting, this phrase, from the Lord comes deliverance in verse eight, Jonah
quoted verse eight while he was in the fish. Same situation, no way out, it was
his fault, he's in the belly of the fish, it's all over.

And he quotes this same phrase from this psalm, from the Lord comes deliverance.
I don't know what circumstances you might be in right now. You might be betrayed
by somebody that you love, like David.

You might be caught in the worst of circumstances and it looks like there's no
way out like Jonah. From the Lord comes deliverance. Let's take a moment to pray
those verses back to him right now.

Our Father, we recognize and trust and in prayer that when we're in trouble, we
need deliverance. Deliverance comes from you. That's why Jesus died on the
cross, to deliver us from our sins.

That's why there's a heaven, there's an eternity to deliver us from this world.
And even while we're in this world, although we do face problems, you deliver
our soul from anguish. And even many times deliver us out of those problems.

And so God, we look to you. We know you may have something for us to do, some
step of faith for us to take, but we know in the end, the deliverance comes from
you and not from us. So we trust in you.

God, give us a sense in our soul that you will deliver us. Give us a trust in
you that brings a spark of hope, of confidence, of strength. We ask for this, we
trust for this.

In Jesus' name, amen. Tomorrow, we're going to look at Psalm four, which is a Psalm
about how to get a good night's sleep.