September 15, 2010
Psalm 11 – Learning the Fear of the Lord
Instead of doing a blog post, because I don’t have time, I just thought I’d stick up the sermon I wrote for preaching class the other day. This was the very first day of a 2 year preaching course and marks a starting point, so apologies if its not terribly clear. Maybe a better blog post will follow soon.
Learning to fear the Lord
Living the Christian life leads us into difficulties and dangers of many sorts, temptations, tiredness and testing, sickness and sadness, doubt and depression, and many unforeseen and unique challenges along the path home. The Psalms deal with a myriad of these circumstances, recording the reactions and the prayers of many saints as they seek to grapple with how their Lord leads them through life.
Many things we know are a result of living in a fallen world or an attack from the enemy, and we know many Bible truths that help us deal with these and pray for strength through them. But many times our difficulties come at the hands of other people, from personal attacks, insults, fear of rejection of even being driven by a desire to please or earn the respect of other people. When the fear of other people determines and drives our behaviour we are not honouring Jesus as our Lord, and the conflict between our earthly experience and heavenly duties can lead us into temptation and sin, and blunt the edge of the distinctive lives we are called to lead as Christians.
In Psalm 11, we see David in the midst of such a conundrum, and as we read we learn from ‘a man after God’s own heart’ how to deal with the trials and battles we face when we encounter other sinners in this world.
A Godly man under attack
David opens his psalm with a rebuke to his counsellors. He says ‘don’t tempt me to retreat’ for the simple reason that he has already taken refuge and hidden himself in the Lord. He quotes his tempters, who pile up misery upon misery in describing his situation, dragging him to despair and fear, persuading him that the worst case scenario has come true and there’s no hope left.
And it is clear that things aren’t great for David; and he makes no attempt to deny the earthly reality of his situation. He seems to be under some personal, secretive attack, quite probably social as well as physical.
It is thought that this psalm was written at the time David was serving in the courts of King Saul, suffering violence as well as character assassination attempts at the hands of the green eyed monster. Saul ‘shoots in the dark’ at David, resorting to surprise javelin throws or suicide foreskin fetching missions to try and get rid of him, never coming face to face with his adversary.
Although the idea of having ‘enemies’ seems unpalatable to us today, we do often know what it’s like to come under attack from other people, particularly as we look to serve God in our lives, as David was doing.
In the workplace we might see exclusion, ridicule and slander, at university the refusal to join in with normal student behaviour could be greeted with hostility, in the media Christians are denounced as ignorant, racist, homophobic.
Isn’t it often the case as well, that in these attacks our enemies, like Saul, wont step out of the shadows to shoot? A work colleague who scorns your waste of money in tithing will never compare the cost of nights out, cigarettes and Sky TV. The family member who presents the newspaper article and demands that you defend your archaic views on homosexuality and abortion will rarely question their own cultural assumptions and stereotypes. The girl or boy who shows their disgust at your refusal to obey the sexual norms of modern teenage life won’t admit to you how hurtful, hollow and dissatisfying they find their relationships to be. Comedians attack and ridicule Christianity, enjoying the immunity from rebuttal that their art form gives them and ignoring the burning questions about their own mortality and sinfulness.
In the midst of all this, we, like David can be tempted to flee to our mountains, taking refuge away from the people, the places, the media and art that threatens us and chips away at our earthly foundations.
For David, the mountains represented safety, to which he did eventually flee when his life was under threat to live as an outlaw hiding out in caves from his pursuer. But for now, they represented a temptation to trust in something other than his covenant Lord for safety, like Saul who consulted the witch of Endor when in fear for his life and kingdom.
David was a man of honour and saw that his place was in the courts, humbly serving the king he always considered to be the Lord’s anointed, even when the same king was the biggest threat to his own existence.
If our place, like David, is one of service in a difficult or dangerous environment, then the temptation to retreat can be similarly appealing as well as wrong.
In our evangelism to those around us we are called to be in difficult situations, living distinctive lives and speaking boldly, risking attack and ridicule as we put ourselves, our reputations and possibly even our lives on the line. It is easy to be overcome by the fear of man, being controlled and paralysed by how we perceive other people will treat us, whether it is a real or imagined threat.
When our foundations are destroyed, when being a Christian looks like the weakest and stupidest thing to do, when your enemies come upon you with the more intelligent sounding arguments, funnier jokes or damning news stories, we might cry along with David: “What can the righteous do?”
The Fear of the Lord
Well David has an important lesson to teach us. From the crumbling foundations beneath his feet he lifts his eyes and sees his covenant Lord, “The Lord is in his holy temple; The Lord’s throne is in heaven”.
Unlike the earthly house that is coming crashing down around him, the Lord’s house is established and firm, beyond the reach of the wicked and their arrows. What is more he sees God in His role as righteous judge of all the earth, His piercing gaze scouring the depths of even David’s own heart and ruling over them from His heavenly throne. David knows the perfection the Lord demands, and His hatred and intolerance of evil and wickedness. What he paints then is an awe and fear-inspiring picture of the God who is. David knows what it is to fear the Lord.
And he wants to teach us, and those who bid him flee a taste of what it is to know such a holy and powerful God.
Edward Welch in his book ‘When people are big and God is small’ describes the problem of the ‘Fear of Man’, which takes many forms and gives other people the controlling power over our lives.
His proposed solution is to know and grow in ‘the Fear of the Lord’, an attitude of reverence, awe and worship that comes from knowing who the true and living God really is. A man who insults you or threatens you can be a daunting thing, but if standing behind him is a real life lion, suddenly his jeering becomes of little concern.
In the same way that Aslan of Narnia ‘is not a tame lion’, David knows that his God is not a safe God, not a domesticated, sentimental old gentleman, but a furiously holy judge, to be feared by all sinners. David felt the Lord’s testing, discerning and piercing gaze upon himself, and under this gaze he had much more reason to flee to the mountains and tremble, than at the hands of any earthly king.
He considers then, the fate of his enemies, and the destruction that will come upon them at the hands of the Lord. The same wicked that shoot at the upright and persecute the righteous will suffer a fiery end. The Lord is on the side of the pure, fighting their corner and David has great assurance that his oppressors will not stand when the Lord rises to judge.
We may be tempted to vindictively and nastily wish hell on our enemies, taking perverse joy in the thought of their punishment, but whatever David’s complaint, he never shows the same vileness of loathing resentment as we do when attacked. It is remarkable, that as David brings these complaints to the Lord and contemplates the true standing place of his enemies, he turns this to pity and great love for them.
He shows us how to obey the commandment: ‘love your enemies’ by turning this anger to salvation-seeking love, through conversing with his Lord over His judgements and punishment.
We often shirk away from considering a God who punishes, thinking it to be ugly and barbaric. But David takes this thought and turns it into one of the most beautiful and profound depictions of this tough commandment, remaining in Saul’s service as long as he dared, sparing his life time and time again and mourning his death even when David himself profited immensely from it.
We can only truly reach into the shadows to embrace those who love the darkness when we have at our backs the Lord who fights for the righteous.
Our mercy
But how can David have such confidence that he will escape this himself? Clearly from the whole psalm he paints the picture of the righteous being unfairly persecuted by the unrighteous, and so we might think it a bit presumptuous for David to place himself on the prestigious side.
To us this speaks across the testaments to a garden many years later, where the other author of this psalm prayed this prayer to his Father. Read the psalm again and remember the righteous one, the upright man who was hounded, insulted and assassinated by his enemies, all in the service of God, entrusting himself to the point of death on a cross.
“Therefore God exalted him to the highest place, and gave him the name that is above every other name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on hear and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the Glory of God the Father.”
Christ our Lord, who was upright in heart and righteous, beheld the face of His Father, who loved his righteous sacrifice on the cross.
David hadn’t read the New Testament, but he knew the Word of the Lord that had been revealed to the people of Israel. He knew of the sinfulness of man, knowing that a righteous God rightly should rain down burning coals even upon himself, but still he longed to see the Lord face to face. Knowing that he could never be righteous himself, what does he do?
Look at verse one again, he takes refuge in the Lord. He hides himself in the Lord’s mercy, trusting in God to make him righteous and ultimately being found hidden in Christ, his substitute. He counts himself among, or even within, the righteous, and rejoices that he will one day see his beloved covenant protector and Father Yahweh.
What we learn
Can we follow David’s example then? We are constantly made to fear things every day, how a group of friends perceives us, whether a romantic attraction feels as strongly in return or not, who will hurt us, insult us or reject us, how people will receive us when we come bearing the Good News out of love for them.
We need then to look at our Lord again. See Him as David sees Him, as the Scriptures describe Him. He is high and powerful, unshaken and incorruptible. He sits in the judgement seat and everything is laid out before Him. Nothing wicked or impure will ever enter His presence, no malicious thought will be left unrevealed and unpunished. He is the lion of Judah and the commander of heaven’s armies, from His mouth comes the sharp sword and not even the angels can gaze upon Him. We should tremble and fall down in His presence, and we should expect our swift destruction as we consider our sinful rebellion.
But graciously, unexpectedly and astoundingly we are found hidden in Christ, through no virtue of our own. His righteousness is counted as ours and we are able to stand before our Lord and enter into His courts.
Like Moses we are kept safe in the cleft of the rock as the awesome Glory of the Lord sweeps the mountain. But unlike Moses we see the very face of our God, personally and intimately, as the transcendent Lord makes the earth to be his holy temple and establishes his throne amongst us after the great judgement we have escaped.
When we consider the Lord’s great holiness and mercy, our fear turns from blind terror, to awe, reverence, worship and finally great deep love for our covenant Lord.
David himself knew this loving fear through his life, and the Lord called him ‘a man after my own heart’, walking with him every day with assurance of this everlasting communion.
Let us then like David, put aside the fears, toils and trials that assault us, and rejoice in the Lord who has saved us.
