Answer Me! (Psalm 4)

Spring 2026 - 3/18/26

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Yes, answer me when I call. 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 honor be turned into shame? How long will you love vain words and seek after lies? But know that the Lord has set apart the God before 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 they're gray and lying about. In peace, I will both lie down and sleep. For you alone, O Lord. Make me dwell in safety.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Amen. Thank you, Maggie. Friends, I believe that's God's word. Let's pray and ask for his help, and then we'll dive into it together. Father, we come tonight eager for a spiritual feast to be fed by your word. And so we pray that you would speak, Lord, for your servants are listening. Amen. The book of Psalms is a collection of 150 prayers right in the center of the Bible. It is the Bible's prayer book. And in short, the Psalms teach us both how to begin the journey of prayer, and they show us what that journey will look like so that finally they can teach us how we can finish that journey, how we can live a life of prayer. And Psalms 1 and 2 are sort of the gateway, the doors that open the Psalter, the book of Psalms, and they show us that in order to pray, we must begin in meditation on God's word and on God's King, Jesus, his Messiah. That is how we enter the life of prayer. The life of prayer is not only one of speaking to God, but also one of listening quietly, humbly, meditatively, to God. And in that listening, to God's word. And in that pondering, God's King, in thinking about Jesus, the Word of God, and fleshed and incarnate, we are then moved to speak to God. And the rest of the book of Psalms, 3 through 150, essentially, they show us what it will look like to be prayerful people. And they show us that no matter where life takes us, we have resources in our faith. We have resources in what God has revealed in His Word to sustain us and to nourish us, no matter how much we don't feel like praying, no matter how hard it is to pray, no matter how much we struggle to know what to do and say in prayer. Because I can confess, as I'm sure many of you would, that I'm not very good at praying. I'm really not. And the book of Psalms is our guide. The Psalms we'll be exploring in the next five weeks come from the first collection of Psalms. The Psalms are actually divided up into five books. Book one is Psalms 1 through 41. And these Psalms are collected together as a group of psalms that are intensely personal. They're intensely personal prayers of King David that reveal what he went through through so many stages of his life, but especially the hard moments. They invite us in to what he calls in Psalm 38 the tumult, like the revulsions and essentially the violence and the turmoil, the tumult of his heart. He lets us in on the mess of his heart, of his emotional and spiritual life, and shows us how to pray through that stuff. One commentator says that book one of the Psalms, Psalms 1 through 41, they teach us how our faith cannot sink under sorrow. Don't you want to know what that might look like? How you could do that? And tonight, as we begin exploring how can faith not sink under sorrow, we look at Psalm 4, which explores how faith can not sink, particularly under the weight of unbelief in the world around us. That when we look out at the world, and very often when we hear what the world thinks about our faith, there is so much cause to despair. It can be disorienting and unsettling. And David shows us how to deal with that. What do we do when unbelief, when those who abandon God and mock God, surround us and scoff at us and very often seem to be succeeding, even and especially when we aren't? What do we do? Psalm 4 shows us, and there's three things that we learn from David here. That when we feel the weight of unbelief in the world weighing us down, we first boldly seek God's answer. Second, we remember God's promise. And third, we take refuge in God alone. This will essentially be verse 1, verses 2 through 5, and then verses 6 through 8. First, verse 1, we boldly seek God's answer. The main section of this psalm is verses 2 through 5, where David addresses his enemies, the people who are questioning and mocking his faith, and we'll talk about that. But before he turns his eyes on them, he first lifts his eyes to God. Before he gives an answer to those who mock him and scoff at his faith, he seeks God's answer. And he is bold in seeking God and asking for an answer in verse 1. The petition for God to answer that he makes in verse 1, answer me when I call, means that David expects God. And he believes God to be not just his personal deity, but the creator and the ruler over all things. He expects that God to attend with fatherly care and focus to his specific burdens. God for David is apparently not too busy for David's problems. David expects divine attention, expects that God will care. And we can expect that too. But I want to consider why, from verse 1, David is so bold as to expect an answer from God. Why we can boldly seek an answer from God in times of trouble and when our faith is called into question. Notice, first of all, that David refers to God in verse 1 as the God of my righteousness. To be righteous here most simply means to be right. And the many voices questioning and mocking David's faith and ours are essentially challenging whether he's right. Right about who he is, right about who God is. And friends, if you're a follower of Jesus, have you ever heard voices, whether in your own head or in the world around you, questioning whether you're right. But David is bold in his prayer because he believes that in God's eyes he is right. He's saying that no matter what the world thinks or says, no matter how bad his circumstances, God will prove him to be right. That is a bold thing to believe in the face of the Almighty God. It's important to understand that David is not here claiming sinlessness for himself. But he's simply saying that he trusts God. And he entrusts himself to God. And that those who trust God are right and righteous in God's eyes. And David knows that God accepts him as righteous. He knows it because, he says in the next line of verse 1, because he's experienced God's deliverance in the past. God's shown up for him in the past. Literally, this line says, God, you have made a way for me when I was stuck in a tight place. That's what the Hebrew literally says there. And friends, that's what the Bible teaches from cover to cover. That God makes a way for his people when there is no way. God delights to save. And David had experienced several saving acts of God in his life that proved that God was really for him, that he was really right, that he was really God's king. But friends, we know a more final saving act of God that proves that we, that first and foremost, that Jesus, but also that we who trust in him are God's anointed children. That we belong to him. We've seen, we've known, we've experienced, we've heard, the testimony is solid. Jesus got up out of the grave. God made a way when there was no way. And so David and we too can pray boldly because we know that God has already delivered. He's already said that we are right if we trust in Jesus, that sin and death have no claim on us. And so we too can pray boldly. And David knows that this is all of grace. It's not because of his own worthiness or holiness or goodness. He concludes verse 1 saying, Be gracious to me, Lord, and hear my prayer. He knows that his boldness before God cannot be grounded in any sense of his worth, but must be grounded in God's track record of graciousness. He knows he's unworthy of God's fatherly care and attention, and yet he knows from past experience and from what God has revealed, that God is gracious and that he will answer. And so, friends, when we feel our faith called into question, when you do on this campus or in this life, whether that is from unbelievers or whether that is voices in your own head that raise the question, you don't belong, you can't be right with God. The answer is that we go to God right away in prayer with a boldness grounded in His grace, and that He will indeed answer. You go humbly to God in prayer, knowing that you need grace. That's our first response when our faith is called into question. Not to give an answer most of the time when we are offended by others, when others push on us. What's our first instinct? It's to give an answer, it's to defend ourselves. But David is showing us that the instinct of God's people is first to seek from him the answer we need. And friends, I don't know what David was expecting exactly. On the one hand, he might have been expecting God to give an answer in some specific way, like to do something to show to the people who are mocking him that he's right, to somehow prove that David is right, like to do something here and now. We're allowed, we're invited to ask for things here and now from God. God will sometimes say yes, and sometimes he will say no, and often he will say, wait. But on the other hand, David may, and as this Psalm leads us, lead, like as we follow it, I think this is probably more what he has in mind. David may be praying not simply for a change of circumstances, but for an experience of that grace, so that he might know in his heart, that he might experience an answer from God. He knows what God has said, but he wants to hear it again. Friends, you can do that too. But you do it by prayer. And so are you praying? Are you so bold as to go to God when you're pushed against, when the world pushes against you, or when your own voice raises accusations, your conscience tells you you don't belong, you can't be right with God. You can be bold in prayer. Seek an answer from God. Psalm 4, obviously, the Psalms are going to teach us how to pray, but they begin by showing us that we pray boldly and expect an answer from God because God is an answer in God. Which leads to our second point. So we seek God boldly. We seek an answer from God boldly. But second, we remember God's promise. This is in verses 2 through 5. Look at verse 2, the first part of it. David says, He's sort of not praying now, he's sort of meditating and speaking to people. He says, O men, literally, O sons of man. Actually, I'm making sure I got that right in my Bible, my translation. O men, how long shall my honor be turned into shame? This is the key issue for David. The challenge that David faces here, and that David, if you read about his life, that he faced throughout his life. He faced it from unbelievers, both in the church of his day and outside of it. And the issue is this many people doubted and denied his claim to the throne of Israel. David was Israel's great king, but in his lifetime, especially in the beginning of it, many doubted it, and many denied it. He had this special anointing from God, this status as God's chosen and beloved king. And yet even his own dad in 1 Samuel 16, when David was first anointed king, did not believe that his youngest of seven, this puny shepherd boy, could be Israel's king, God's chosen man. And it is clear when you read 1 Samuel 16, and when you read of young David, that though he was a godly man, yet in so many ways, humanly speaking, he didn't choose the throne, he didn't deserve the throne, he didn't earn the throne. And so many people mocked him for claiming that it was his. And what he saw as his honor or his glory from God, they saw as an embarrassment. Friends, does the world find the claims of your faith embarrassing? But David pushes past, or you might say, he hears past the voices of ridicule, and he remembers the promise of God. Verse 3, the whole psalm's awesome, but verse 3 is the beating heart at the center of this psalm. The theological truth that David holds fast to in the face of his faith being mocked. As many were mocking and sneering and laughing at him and dismissing his claims as ridiculous. Any people still treat God's people like that today? David says, but no, that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself. David's not saying that he is special, but he's saying that God said he's special. David's not saying that he has exalted himself to the throne, he's saying God did. David is not saying that he earned his way into God's service. He's saying that God set him apart for himself. Faced with doubt and disdain, David remembers that God is the one who made him what he is. And therefore, David is confident that God will remain committed to him no matter what. That no matter how loud the mocking gets, there is an unbreakable promise of God which he must remember and hold fast to. And that's how it is for us too, friends. We must see through the fog of doubt in all the mockery and all the doubt in our own minds to the sure and solid promise of God that we are his. Not because of what we have done, but because of his free choice to make us his. Friends, we're talking about this great biblical teaching of election. That is not a made-up word, it's God's word in Scripture. And it's this that we do not make God ours. God makes us his. The Apostle Paul thought about himself like this. He said in Galatians 1 that God set him apart before he was born. And Paul wrote about all of us like this in Ephesians 1. He says, In love, God predestined us for adoption as his children. And far from being some philosophical complexity to avoid at all costs, election here is a truth to be embraced at all times, and especially in times of temptation to doubt, when the world calls your faith into question. Because it's only if we have a sure and unchanging promise of commitment from God that has nothing to do with our faith or our choice, but that's purely his good and free pleasure. It's only if we have that to hold on to that we can face the mockery and the doubt without giving in. We need to remember that God's word is more sure, his commitment is more reliable than anything else in the world. Friends, the world will always doubt our claims, as so many doubted King David's. Most importantly, everyone doubted Jesus' claim to be God's son and God's king. And let's face it, when we think about ourselves, and even when we think about Jesus humanly speaking, we aren't the obvious choices. We don't seem from worldly standards to fit the description of the divine family. The world standards of honor, which David says in verse 2, are vanity and lies, are what? Wealth, success, beauty. But these are not what we lean on. These are not what bring us honor and glory. We glory in the promise of God, of his electing love, that he has set apart the godly for himself. And the godly doesn't refer again to those who are sinless. It simply refers to those who are gods. It's often translated saints. The idea is that God has made us his special possession, like the king's personal jewels, that he sets apart and keeps apart from the castle collection. The point being that though all the world belongs to God, yet God is committed to his people in a special way. That God's love for you, when we talk about God's love, is not some generic love of a spineless creator who's far removed from the world, but it is the jealous and protective, saving love, gift-giving love of a husband for his chosen bride, of a father for his firstborn child. And we must always remember, when faced with the mocking voices of unbelief, that God has promised to keep us as his own. And then in verse 4 through 5, David even shows us, we won't talk too much about this tonight, that David, reminding himself of this truth, also then turns to the world and says, So why are you so proud in yourselves? God has made this claim to be for those who trust in him no matter what. And so he invites the mockers, he invites unbelievers to turn to God. That's what verses four through five are. On the one hand, that's always an invitation to us who ridicule and mock Jesus still in our hearts. But also, friends, as God's child, when your faith is called into question, when the world thinks you're ridiculous and stupid for following a first century Jewish king who is crucified. You need to remember that your ground for hope is not in how much people are for you in this world, but in how powerful God's promise to you really is. So you remember God's promise. Wow, and third and finally in Psalm 4, we see that in the face of doubts from the world and even from within, we take refuge in God alone. This is in verses 6 and 7. Here David faces one of the hardest realities, I think, of being surrounded by unbelief and sin. And that is that the priorities of the world are very different than the priorities of those who are loyal to God, are they not? We see here that the many in verse 2, like the men, he's just talking about people who don't follow God, that the many seek their good in an abundance of earthly comforts. Look at how he puts it at the end of verse 7. He says, that the sons of man seek their safety and their satisfaction in grain and wine abounding. Grain and wine. Is that what gets you out of bed in the morning? Grain and wine. Look, grain and wine are sort of a metaphor. They're very real, but they're a metaphor for all that represents security and satisfaction in the ancient world. Bread and wine are the staples of security and satisfaction. Famines were common and supermarkets weren't thought of yet. So an abundance of grain gave you the safety of having plenty to eat, like Kamamei. Also, entertainment was limited. TV, the internet, even electricity were nonexistent. So an abundance of wine meant fun for the long haul. Grain and wine meant, or felt like it meant, safe families and good weekends. And David is saying that the world seeks all of its good in these things. Many scholars, in fact, believe, if you read between the lines in Psalm 4, that this Psalm was probably written during a time of famine in Israel. And that while David sought to remain faithful to the Lord during this time, many others turned to the gods of the surrounding nations to provide and mocked or shamed David for holding fast to the true God who didn't seem to be providing fast enough or full enough. Friends, are there any ways in your life right now that you don't think God is providing fast enough or full enough? Some sort of grain and wine, whatever that is, for you? Whether or not this was written during a famine, it seems likely to me. The psalm is written to transcend that circumstance only and is a prayer for all of God's people in any season in which the world calls our faith particularly harshly into question. And so, whatever the challenge may be, whatever you feel you are lacking, David is showing us here how to resist making the world's priorities our priorities. How to resist attaching our faith in God to our own versions of grain and wine. Whatever it is you think you need to be happy, who will show us some good? And David says, I'll show you how to find a good that is not so fleeting and fickle as grain and wine, as the earthly sources of security and of satisfaction. David says at the second half of verse six and in verse seven that there is a more sure and permanent source of joy and comfort in this life for you to claim and to lay hold of. And then I think David prays the second line. And so he says, Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord. You have put or you put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound. Lift up the light of your face. That's a Bible way of saying, smile at me, God. Let me see your smiling face. It's a way of talking about God's pleasure in us as being like a father's smile as he beholds his children thriving and happy. And David is saying that God feels about us like that if we will consider him. Lift up the light of your face upon us. That's what we need. This is like what Paul says in Colossians 3 to fix your eyes on the heavenly places where Jesus Christ sits at the right hand of God. That you can know that God smiles upon you because he sent his son for you, who suffered, died, and was raised for you, and now rules for you. You can know God's pleasure. And so one writer put it this way that the faithful, although tossed amidst many troubles, are truly happy, were there no other ground for it but this, that God's fatherly countenance shines upon them, which turns darkness into light. Friends, in what ways have you been tempted in the face of faith not working like you think it should? And other people saying, hey, you're missing out. Hey, what are you doing? Hey, it's foolish for you to get up on Sunday mornings and go to church. Hey, it's foolish for you to come to a Christian ministry on Wednesday nights and to be in a small group. It's foolish for you to care so much about obeying God in your sexual life and in how you handle substances and in how you live, in how you do your studies, and how you refuse to use AI for everything, whatever it may be, whatever it may be, when you hear those voices, is your instinct to turn to God and to remember that He is pleased with you. And to get from that pleasure all of the joy and satisfaction that you need. Friends, you can. If you're not feeling that right now, I sympathize with you. There is something in our hearts that resists looking at God, that wants to stay down here and try to prove ourselves to God so that He'll smile at us rather than remembering that He's already smiled upon us in Jesus Christ. Won't you look to Him? Take refuge in Him alone, friends. I know that getting that experience of God's smiling face, that can take work. It can take work to silence the other voices and to focus your attention on Him spiritually. I know that that can be hard. And I too struggle to remember God's smiling face every day, but the invitation is still there for you. Whatever's got you down, God is for you. He is with you, He loves you, He has set you apart for Himself and not just to be His servant, but to be His son, to be His daughter. He loves to smile on His children. And so we draw near to God to enjoy His presence as our only refuge. And if you do that, if you learn to do that, every day, it takes work. But if you learn to do that, nothing will shake you. And you can say what David says at the end of this prayer in peace, I'll lie down and sleep. For you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety. That with God and with his good pleasure, with his smile, you're as safe no matter how surrounded you are by sin and unbelief. You're as safe as if all the armies of heaven were there with you in your room, as all the voices are speaking at you, you're still as safe as if all of God's angels were protecting you. Because he's got you. He's for you. You're safe. He alone can make you safe. Friends, this prayer ultimately belongs first and foremost on the mouth of Jesus Christ, whose holiness, whose claims to be God's beloved, were called into question every step of the way. Every step of the way from the manger to the cross. And Jesus prayed this prayer, and he experienced God proving him right. If you'll look to him, you can know that too. You can be bold in prayer. You can ask God for an answer, an experience of his grace, help in your circumstances. He's for you. And remembering his love for you, you can also experience a joy, no matter how bad your life is, that is unshakable. Won't you look to him? Let's pray. Father, thank you for this word, this invitation to turn to you when we're tempted to despair, when we're tempted to turn away, when others and even voices in our own hearts and heads call into question whether faith is worth it, whether we're right. Lord, remind us that you are our righteousness. You accept us, you call us sons and daughters. You've made a way. Help us in that to know the joy of your smile, of your being pleased with us as you are pleased with Jesus. We pray in his name. Amen.