Psalm 4 Sermon From January 2012 Prayer Service

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Rev. Ted A. Giese / Wednesday Jan 4th 2012: The Season of Christmas, Psalm 4. “Trust in the LORD”

           Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness!

                   You have given me relief when I was in distress.

                   Be gracious to me and hear my prayer!

          O men, how long shall My honour be turned into shame?

                   How long will you love vain words and seek after lies?

          But know that the LORD has set apart the godly for Himself;

                   the LORD hears when I call to Him.

          Be angry, and do not sin;

                   ponder in your own hearts on your beds, and be silent.

          Offer right sacrifices,

                   and put your trust in the LORD.

          There are many who say, “Who will show us some good?

                   Lift up the light of Your face upon us, O LORD!”

          You have put more joy in my heart

                   than they have when their grain and wine abound.

          In peace I will both lie down and sleep;

                   for You alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety.

                                                                                                         (Psalm 4 ESV)

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Good Christian Friends. The purpose of Psalm 4 is to rouse you, to urge you, to entice you, to provoke you as a solider is stirred up to battle by the drum and the horse by the sound of the trumpet, as Job says in Job 39:25![1] But what is Psalm 4 rousing you to? Why are you being urged, to what are you being enticed? What should it provoke you to?

You’re being roused to trust in God when things go wrong! Psalm 4 urges you to trust in God when it looks as though God has abandoned you! It entices you to cling to God and His promises when your faith is tried. This Psalm works to provoke you to trust God when your patience is being tested. When the world and its people work against you, when nothing is going your way, Psalm 4 says ‘trust in God.’  Trust that the LORD will hear your prayer.

                  “Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness!

                   You have given me relief when I was in distress.

                   Be gracious to me and hear my prayer!”

Underpinning Psalm 4 is the theme of the Righteous and the Unrighteous as set up in Psalm 1. Those who have been made Righteous by the work of God - a gift given to them - and those who spurn the work of God and remain in their wickedness; whom because of Pride wish nothing from God and then are confirmed in their Unrighteousness. This boils down to the first Commandment, “Thou shall have no other gods before Me!” The Righteous Trust in God and ask for forgiveness when they fail in trusting; the Unrighteous have no trust in God and find such trust to be foolish, they put their trust in other things: they put their trust in themselves and in their own words, which is vanity, the Unrighteous seek after things that look like truth but are in truth lies. Real truth is in God and not in themselves: Jesus says, “I Am the Way the Truth and the Life!”   In Psalm 4 the LORD asks: “O men, how long shall My honour be turned into shame? How long will you love vain words and seek after lies?” In other words, how long will you turn in on yourselves and not turn to Me says the LORD! How long will you trust in yourselves and not trust in Me, says the LORD?

In prayer the Christian displays their Trust, listen carefully to something King David says to the LORD in Prayer, “Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness! You have given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer!” You have given me relief when I was in distress. We do this too. We have a standard sort of prayer we use when praying for travelers, we pray: “Lord God our Father, You kept Abraham and Sarah in safety throughout the days of their pilgrimage, You led the children of Israel through the midst of the sea, and by a star You led the Wise Men to the infant Jesus. Protect and guide us now in this time as we set out to travel, make our ways safe and our homecomings joyful, and bring us at last to our heavenly home, where You dwell in glory with Your Son and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.” David is doing a similar thing, as David asks for something from God in the present he recalls to God our Heavenly Father what God had done for him in the past, “You have given me relief when I was in distress.” Remember likewise when you pray to recount those things with which you’ve been blessed, recall those things God has done before for you and for His people, with whom you are numbered in your baptism, in this you display the remembrance of your Trust in God and your firm hope that He will answer you when you call.

Your heavenly Father desires that you Trust Him in season and out of season, when times are good and when times are bad, that you turn to Him with Thanksgiving and with a heavy heart – this is steadfast Trust, it is the pattern of Righteousness. But I’m not so steadfast you think, I do not display such Trust in the LORD, I’m in dire need of forgiveness for I have put myself first and broken the first commandment! I, in my pride, have trusted myself before trusting the LORD! There is good news for you: First off, be roused, do not display timidity in your despair over sin, get angry with you sin! It is alright to have righteous anger towards the sin that assails you: King David says in Psalm 4: “Be angry, and do not sin; ponder in your own hearts on your beds, and be silent. Offer right sacrifices, and put your trust in the LORD.” Do not passively let sin have its way with you, fight back! You’re a child of God and in your baptism stand against evil! But remember you are not David against Goliath, you’re a soldier in the army of the Lord and your Captain is Christ Jesus. It is Jesus Who squares off against the giant that is your Pride, against the giant that is your Vanity, against the giant that is your Sin; it is Jesus Who puts stones into the sling and takes aim against the lies of the world; in perfect Righteousness Jesus extends His mighty arm and destroys your sin forever, landing His lethal shot into the scull of death and Jesus does all this for you as He hangs nailed to the cross. He is the Life who conquers death; He is the Truth that defeats all lies, He is the Way upon whose road no vanity or pride is found.

In your prayer appeal to Him ... for Jesus is the right sacrifice we cannot make for ourselves and He is the One who makes us righteous in His Righteousness. “[Jesus] is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.”[2] [In loneliness, in distress, in danger, in peace, in joy, in happiness.] “For Christ [Jesus] has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.”[3]When you put your Trust in Jesus you can be sure that God the Father will hear you when you call.

David in the midst of trouble Trusts in God: and because of His Trust He knows that in peace he will both lie down and sleep; David prays with confidence in the face of trouble, “for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety,” David says. Yet from looking at the account of David’s life from Scripture we would be hard pressed to say that his life was one of safety, and there were many nights when David went to sleep with a serious and eminent threat upon his head, nevertheless, this is how he prays, even in the midst of violence and hardship.  The peace David found in God, and which He shows in the words of Psalm 4 reminds me of the words of Hymn 724 from our hymnal, verse 1) says “If God Himself be for me, I may a host defy; For when I pray, before me My foes, confounded fly. If Christ, my head and master, Befriend me from above, What foe or what disaster Can drive me from His love?” verse 8) “No danger, thirst, or hunger, No pain or poverty, no earthly tyrant’s anger Shall ever vanquish me. Though earth should break asunder, My fortress You shall be; No fire or sword or thunder Shall sever You from me.”[4]

                   Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness!

                   You have given me relief when I was in distress.

                   Be gracious to me and hear my prayer! Amen. 

Let us pray: Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen.

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[1] Luther’s Works (American Edition) Volume 10. Pg 42-43.

[2] Hebrews 7:25

[3] Hebrews 9:24

[4] Lutheran Service Book, Hymn 724 “If God Himself Be For Me” verses 1, 8.