Psalm 4: The Crisis Psalm

2 Samuel 15:6 – background for Psalm 4. The Word of God, in talking about Absalom’s rebellion, calls it stealing. He stole the thinking part of their minds and in this way he was able to set up a revolt against his father. Here is a man who was going to be the king of Israel. He had everything going for him, including the love of his father. And yet because he failed to understand some principles of Bible doctrine he became very bitter in his mind. His attitude toward his father was one of bitterness, and in his bitterness he really destroyed himself rather than his father. He failed to learn the lesson his father practiced through Bible doctrine many years before him. As a result he began to foment rebellion.

In verse 13 – “And there came a messenger to David, saying, The hearts of the men of Israel are after Absalom.” In other words, the revolt has taken place. Between verses 6 & 13, the beginning of the revolt and its completion we have the fact that Absalom made a request of his father that he might go down and offer sacrifices. In this manner he completely deceived his father. In reality he was simply going to Hebron to complete the plot, and from Hebron he would start the great revolt. As a result of this David had to flee for his life.

Verse 23 – how not to handle a problem: “And all the country wept with a loud voice.” This goes back to the time when the Jews were at Kadesh-barnea and the spies brought back a report from the land. In their report they said there were giants in the land, that it was too much for them, they could never conquer. And then we read how the people wept all night.

“and all the people passed over” – i.e. the people who followed David when he fled from Jerusalem. There were those who were faithful to David and they went with him. But they have already given up in their minds, they assume that there is no hope, and David only had with him those who were crybabies.

Verse 30 – “And David went up by the ascent of Olivet.” He went over the Mount of Olives. “… and they went up weeping as they went.” The march of the crybabies. David is doing the only smart thing at the moment, he is getting out of town. Apparently, as he went over the hill and he was crying too he was ashamed of himself. Here is a long line of cry-babies going out over the hill toward the wilderness and David looks back at the line and suddenly realises he is crying too. And he stopped his crying immediately, and the very second that he stopped crying he began to think doctrine. The very moment that he thought doctrine Psalm four was written in his mind. Psalm four in a sense is a statement of how one great believer reached out for doctrine and stopped being a crybaby.

Psalm 4 – “To the chief musician on Neginoth, a Psalm of David.” That is verse 1 in the Hebrew. The chief musician is the choir director. They had a professional and permanent choir. These words in Psalm 4 comprise the words of a mental attitude of a man who stopped crying. The words “on Neginoth” mean that the stringed instruments were to accompany this. (In Psalm 5 the Nehiloth is the wind instrument group) The accompaniment is the weeping and the wailing of the stringed instruments. This is the Psalm of David in a crisis and under maximum pressure, accompanied by hysterical people who fall apart.

In the first three verses we have the crisis prayer. In verse 1 is the principle of pressurised building.

Verse 1 – “Hear me when I call, O God.” David is praying in the midst of people who were crying and wailing. There is so much noise that it is very natural for David to cry out, “Hear me.” Often many of the crises of life are accompanied by lots of noise, and noise can be pressure in itself. The prayer requires concentration and it is very difficult to concentrate when everyone else around you is yelling and screaming.

And he calls Him, “O God of my righteousness.” God is the preserver of David’s salvation. The righteousness which is mentioned here is ⁺R, a righteousness which David received at the moment of salvation. That same righteousness belongs to God. God is the preserver of His own character, David has a piece of His character and God is the preserver of David in any situation in life. God is David’s security in the crisis of time just as God is his security for all eternity. Right then and there the tears dried up and that was the end of it immediately. No more tears for David.

“Thou hast enlarged me in distress.” Thou hast enlarged is in the hiphil stem which is causative. The word enlarged means to give happiness—inner happiness, but inner happiness that causes one to grow up; in distress is in pressure. You do not grow up in pressure unless you have inner happiness. This inner happiness comes from Bible doctrine and from no other source. Therefore David grew up and became a great man through pressure because in any type of pressure he had inner happiness. David had …

The pressure of prosperity—1 Samuel 16:19-23. David had gone from being a shepherd with a small flock of sheep to the armour bearer of the king.

The pressure of mental attitude—1 Samuel 17:34-37. The attack of the lion and the bear.

The pressure of criticism—1 Samuel 17:28, when his elder brother began to criticise him and to malign him, to downgrade him. David did not get out of fellowship.

The pressure of bullying—1 Samuel 17:43-47, from Goliath. Many believers do not pass this test and therefore they go no further in the Christian life—the bullying of tabooism, the bullying of pseudo spirituality, the bullying of legalism and religionism.

The pressure of responsibility—1 Samuel 22:1,2. After David slew Goliath he became a very successful person in Israel. Once again he faced the prosperity test. Once again God removed him from the scene of the palace and David found himself in the cave of Adullam. Once David separated himself from Saul and from an apostate palace those who were hungry, persecuted, maligned and had in many ways suffered from the present administration of Saul, came to him. David suddenly found that he was responsible for many of the downtrodden people and he passed the pressure of responsibility.

The pressure of waiting. David learned in a marvellous way to wait on the Lord—1 Samuel 24 & 26 David had the opportunity of slaying the king, Saul, but he refused to do so. He knew that he was to be the king of Israel but he refused to do it in a way that was dishonouring to the Lord.

The pressure of maximum disaster—1 Samuel 30:1-8. When David and his men had returned and found that everyone in the camp has disappeared, that a band of marauders had come along and captured everything. The 600 men began to weep and to wail, and David with them, just as he did on this occasion going over the hill. And then suddenly David stopped crying, and he “strengthened himself in the Lord.” David stopped crying and got with doctrine.

“have mercy upon me” – he is asking God to deal with him on the basis of grace. “Have mercy” in the Hebrew simply means that David is oriented to the grace of God. He uses the qal imperative; he demands mercy from God. Mercy is grace in action. He demands that God treat him in grace and he is on doctrinal grounds when he makes his demand to God. And finally he says, “Hear my prayer.”

Verse 2 – the nature of the crisis. He now refers in this prayer to those who have followed Absalom, those who have turned against him. He addresses, as it were, this part to those men—“O ye sons of men,” those who followed Absalom in the revolt.

“how long my glory into shame?” In other words, everyone who followed Absalom took the glory of David, his kingdom, his crown, his modus operandi as a king, and they have converted it into shame.

“will ye love emptiness and seek after lies?” By following Absalom they have accepted nothing instead of something. In other words, Will you put Absalom and his beautiful personality above that which the Lord has ordained? The Absalom revolt was built upon the lies of Absalom, and the basis of starting the revolt was the religious lie of Absalom when he said that he wanted to go and offer sacrifices in Hebron.

Verse 3 – “But know that the Lord hath set apart him who is godly for himself; the Lord will hear when I call unto him.” The great tragedy of this verse in David’s analysis is that those who revolted against David and followed Absalom were following a personality, and that is why he says at the end of verse two, “you love emptiness.” When you love a personality and follow him when he is false and contrary to doctrine you love nothing. David is not claiming here that he is a great spiritual giant. The word godly here means belonging to God. God has set aside someone who belongs to Him for a purpose, and that purpose is to rule Israel. When David can no longer fulfil that purpose God will remove him, not Absalom. If Absalom had had everyone in the country on his side he could not have won the revolt, he could not have taken the crown from his father. Absalom failed to learn this lesson of waiting on the Lord. He would have been a greater ruler than Solomon but he could not wait until the right time and as a result he lost out altogether.

Verses 4-8, results that will come out of this crisis. David enumerates these results even before they occur.

Verse 4 – one thing that has happened immediately is the operation of the faith-rest technique. “Stand in awe” means literally, Be angry.

“and sin not” – this same phrase occurs in a little different language in Ephesians 4:26 where we have righteous indignation against heresy, legalism and ignorance of doctrine. Here we have it directed toward Absalom. This is a qal imperfect directed to David himself. This means you have a right to be indignant; you have a right to be angry with Absalom. But you have no right to seek vengeance on Absalom. This was one reason, apart from David’s great love for his son, why David gave his command to not kill Absalom. David was not going to have anything to do with killing his son or taking vengeance out on his son. In other words, “be angry and sin not” means to avoid bitterness, avoid pettiness, avoid spitefulness, avoid implacability, hatred, hostility and vengeance. It means to put the problem in the Lord’s hands, for the Lord says, Vengeance is mine, I will repay. This means the use of the faith-rest technique. Therefore, since he is now relaxed about that he says, “commune with your own heart” – don’t lower yourself to Absalom’s level, commune with doctrine in your own soul. The word commune is a qal imperative and it means to speak in your heart, to think, think doctrine.

“and be still” – faith-rest it, have a relaxed mental attitude.

Verse 5 – the proper mental attitude. This is offered to his son, Absalom. It is too late now but this is what Absalom should have done. He should have offered sacrifices unto the Lord. The sacrifices of righteousness refer to the last two of the Levitical offerings: the sin offering—Lev. 4; the trespass offering—Lev. 5-6:16. These two offerings are rebound offerings.

“put your trust in the Lord” – once you have rebounded you turn all of your problems over to the Lord, forget it, and move on. Verse 5 is the verse of tragedy, the good advice that was never given, the good advice that Absalom never took; this great tragedy of failing to get doctrine to the right place at the right time.

Verse 6 – confidence when others are falling apart. “Many that say, Who will show us good?” David stops to listen to the crowd. Who will show is us literally, Who can experience good? This is an idiom that says, We’ve had it. It is an expression of their hysteria, of their human viewpoint as they were running out of Jerusalem. And David says as he hears this….

“Lord, lift up the light of thy countenance upon us.” That took nerve, except for the fact that David was oriented to grace. In other words, David speaks for the crowd: Lord we are all human, we have all failed thee. We have never done anything to earn anything from thee. Now look down on us with thy countenance [with thy blessing]. This is a challenge the Lord never ignores. He cannot because of His perfect character. It is impossible for Him to ignore the challenge of grace because grace emphasises who and what He is.

Verse 7 – David expresses his own inner happiness. “Thou hast put gladness in my heart” – gladness is the Hebrew word for inner happiness. Right now David is relaxed; no more crying for him.

“more than in the time that their grain and their wine increased” – this means a time of prosperity. In this moment of the greatest tragedy David has ever known, in this hour of disaster and catastrophe, David actually has greater inner happiness than he ever had in prosperity. That is what Bible doctrine does.

Verse 8 – “I will at once [right now] lay me down in peace.” That is a mental attitude of inner happiness that comes from Bible doctrine. David has lost everything but the clothes he is wearing and yet he has great inner happiness because of doctrine. He hasn’t lost the doctrine, it is right there in his soul. He has started to use this doctrine so he stops his crying and says, “At once I will lay down in peace and sleep.” This is the point at which the Absalom revolt died. It died when a man in a hopeless situation with all of the pressures that one person can have could say “I will lie down and go to sleep.”

“for thou, Lord, only” – he doesn’t even have an army at this point or a weapon. He doesn’t have food, a palace, anything; “makes me to dwell in safety.” Your security and my security is in the Lord. Our security is not only in the person of the Lord but the principle that emanates from His person—the principle of grace. Our security and our blessing is located in the grace of God.

_______________

{Note: II Samuel 15:6 is the background for Psalm 4. The Word of God, in talking about Absalom's rebellion, calls it stealing. He stole the thinking part of their minds and in this way he was able to set up a revolt against his father. Here is a man who was going to be the king of Israel. He had everything going for him, including the love of his father. And yet because he failed to understand some principles of Bible doctrine he became very bitter in his mind.}

1``To the chief musician on Neginoth, a Psalm of David.
Hear me {David} when I call, O Elohiym/Godhead of my righteousness
  {this righteousness - +R - a righteousness which David received
  at the moment of salvation}

You have caused me to be enlarged {have happiness}
when I was in distress {under pressure}.
Have mercy upon me
 {an order - claiming a promise from God - deal with me in terms
  of grace},
and hear my prayer.

{Note: The words "on Neginoth" mean that the stringed instruments were to accompany this - in Psalm 5 the Nehiloth is the wind instrument group. The accompaniment is the weeping and the wailing of the stringed instruments. This is the Psalm of David in a crisis and under maximum pressure, accompanied by hysterical people who fall apart.}

2`` O you sons of men
  {referring to those who followed Absalom in the revolt},
how long will you turn my glory into shame?
How long will you love emptinesses/meaninglessnesses,
and seek after lies? Selah {means a 'musical rest'}.

{Note: 'My glory into shame' means that everyone who followed Absalom took the glory of David, his kingdom, his crown, his modus operandi as a king, and they have converted it into shame. David continues, 'Will you put Absalom and his beautiful personality above that which God has ordained?' The Absalom revolt was built upon the lies of Absalom, and the basis of starting the revolt was the religious lie of Absalom when he said that he wanted to go and offer sacrifices in Hebron.}

3``But know that the God has set apart him
who is godly for Himself.
God will hear when I call unto Him.

{Note: David is not claiming here that he is a great spiritual giant. The word godly here means belonging to God. God has set aside someone who belongs to Him for a purpose, and David's purpose was to rule Israel. When David can no longer fulfill that purpose God will remove him, not Absalom. If Absalom had had everyone in the country on his side he could not have won the revolt, he could not have taken the crown from his father. Absalom failed to learn this lesson of waiting on God. He would have been a greater ruler than Solomon but he could not wait until the right time and as a result he lost out altogether. }

{Verses 4-8: Results that will come out of this Crisis - David Prophesized before it Happened}
4``Be angry, and sin not.
Commune with your own heart/'right lobe' upon your bed
  {don't lower yourself to Absalom's level, commune with doctrine in
  your own soul. The word commune is a qal imperative and it means
  to speak in your heart, to think, think doctrine. }
and be still. Selah.
  {faith-rest it - put it in the Hand of God - have a
  relaxed mental attitude}.

{Note: 'Be angry and sin not' . . . this same phrase occurs in a little different language in Ephesians 4:26 where we have righteous indignation against heresy, legalism and ignorance of doctrine. Here David has it directed toward Absalom. But David knew he had no right to seek vengeance on Absalom. This was one reason, apart from David's great love for his son, why David gave his command to not kill Absalom. David was not going to have anything to do with killing his son or taking vengeance out on his son. }

5`` Offer the sacrifices of righteousness,
and put your trust in Jehovah/God.

{Note: David is addressing this to his son, Absalom. It is too late now but this is what Absalom should have done. He should have offered sacrifices unto the Lord. The sacrifices of righteousness refer to the last two of the Levitical offerings: the sin offering-Lev. 4; the trespass offering-Lev. 5-6:16. These two offerings are rebound offerings. Once you have rebounded you turn all of your problems over to the Lord, forget it, and move on. Verse 5 is the verse of tragedy, the good advice that was never given, the good advice that Absalom never took; this great tragedy of failing to get doctrine to the right place at the right time.}

6`` There be many that say, Who will show us any good?
  {Idiom meaning 'We've had it. It is an expression of their hysteria,
  of their human viewpoint as they were running out of Jerusalem.}
Jehovah/God,
lift You up the light of Your countenance/blessing upon us.

{Note: David speaks for the crowd: Lord we are all human, we have all failed You. We have never done anything to earn anything from You. Now look down on us with Your countenance [with Your blessing]. This is a challenge the Lord never ignores. He cannot because of His perfect character. It is impossible for Him to ignore the challenge of grace because grace emphasizes Who and What He is.}

7``You have put 'inner happiness' in my heart/'right lobe',
more than in the time that their corn and their wine increased
  {idiom: 'more then in times of prosperity'}.

{Note: In David's moment of the greatest tragedy - the greatest he has ever known - in this hour of disaster and catastrophe, David actually has greater inner happiness than he ever had in prosperity. That is what Bible doctrine resident in your soul does for mature believers.}

8~~ In peace I will at once
both lie down and sleep.
For You alone, O Jehovah/God, do make me to dwell in safety.

{Note: That is a mental attitude of inner happiness that comes from Bible doctrine. David has lost everything but the clothes he is wearing and yet he has great inner happiness because of doctrine. He hasn't lost the doctrine, it is right there in his soul. He has started to use this doctrine so he stops his crying and says, "At once I will lay down in peace and sleep." This is the point at which the Absalom revolt died. It died when a man in a hopeless situation with all of the pressures that one person can have could say "I will lie down and go to sleep."}

{Note: "For You, Jehovah/God, only" - David doesn't even have an army at this point or a weapon. He doesn't have food, a palace, anything; "makes me to dwell in safety." David's security and every person's security is in God. Our security is not only in the person of the God but the principle that emanates from His person-the principle of grace. Our security and our blessing is located in the grace of God.}