l. INTRODUCTION -- BACKGROUND OF THIS PSALM
-The background of this Psalm is almost assuredly one that was hastily written as David began to have to flee from his own son, Absalom. We gather this from v. 11, where he identifies himself as “the king.”
-David is now well into what would be a forty year reign over Israel. He has been busy extending the kingdom and most importantly he has gathered much material to build the Temple of Solomon. But during this time of purpose, some loose ends had started fraying around the edges of his kingdom.
-These frayed ends would send him into the wilderness. There are fifteen stories that are told out of David’s wilderness years. Much encouragement can be gained when we look to his wilderness tales.
A. Absalom At The Gates
-Very needlessly, his son Absalom has began to come into the gates of the city and gain the ears of those who are disgruntled with the king.
-History bears out that the public hearings were always held in the morning in a court that was held just outside the city gates. Absalom begin to position himself in such a matter that he would get the ear of the people. The Bible states that Absalom “stole their hearts” (2 Sam. 15:6).
• If I were the king then your situation would not be this bad.
• If I were able to make a decision in this matter it would have turned out differently.
• If I were representing the real needs of the people we would not be in this predicament as we are now.
-As Absalom continued to make these sorts of remarks, he found a market for a greater audience who in turn would begin to speak for him. It was not long until he had marshaled his own group of men.
-It was no mistake that Absalom went after this key group of men. He knew that if he could form a conspiracy out of some of David’s most trusted leaders, he would apparently have some credibility to his cause. In the early stages it all looked very good to him. But as we shall see, time is always the great revealer of secrets.
-2 Samuel 15 (v. 12) indicates to us he worked tirelessly trying to pull off this revolt. Interestingly enough, Absalom was basing his revolt out of Hebron. Hebron should have been a place of worship and sacrifice. Hebron was a religious place and David granted permission to Absalom to go. David knew that there was trouble brewing under the surface and he thought that by sending Absalom to Hebron would have been good enough to correct the problems within.
-There is a real principle laid out before us: Worship and sacrifice can never make up for a lack of character. Going through the motions of worship will not sustain you. For real worship to occur we have to put our hands on the head of the sacrifice (Lev. 1) and tie it down to an altar.
-So it was that Absalom managed to pull off the greatest coup when he lured Ahithophel into his camp. Ahithophel was one of David’s closest and most trusted political advisors. For years, he had demonstrated great faithfulness in serving David.
-But Ahithophel had an old wound that periodically flared up and served up much pain in his life. This pain came from the old sin in David’s life for Ahithophel was Bathsheba’s grandfather. Over and over, as the years rapidly passed, he would feel her pain as David added another wife here and another concubine there. But he suffered in seeming silence until there came a time for him to take advantage of his bitterness.
-When he was initially approached by Absalom, he was a little skeptical, but Absalom had a winsome way about him and Ahithophel joined him in the course of time.
B. Revolt!
-Once Absalom had his men in place, he pulled off his coup. He swept into Jerusalem and David fled. This rebellion proved the exact character of both Absalom and David.
-David is humiliated into his place to flee. Yet, in his flight, it seems to pull out the high points of his character. It proves to us once again that David as a man after God’s own heart.
-Clues to his character and relationship with God are dropped all throughout his powerful psalms. Written under pressure of his great affliction he continually remarks on the firm confidence that he has in his God. Throughout all of these psalms, David is constantly reiterating the very nearness and protection of God.
• Psalm 41 proves his anguish about Ahithophel’s desertion but it does not give any hint of fear in David’s heart.
• Psalm 63 shows that Jerusalem is lost but God is not. He will be in the wilderness.
• Psalms 3 and 4 are his morning and evening prayers that he came to when he was running from Absalom.
• Psalm 55 pours out David’s soul. There are feelings of panic expressed. He longs to escape the turmoil of his life. He lists his grief at those who have given up on him. These were men that he had worshipped with. These were men whom had fought beside him in battle. But in the end of this psalm, he finally casts his burdens upon the Lord and finds relief.
• Psalm 27 finally gives out what David notes as the constant presence of God and fickleness of men.
-How? How? How? How, one will ask, does a man willingly consent to such a spirit of liberty and freedom in his life? It all comes down to one thing. . . . . . You must embrace your wilderness! You must learn to worship in the wilderness! You must hunger for the God of the wilderness!
• Love your afflictions.
• Cater to your trials.
• Pursue God instead of retaliation.
• Hunger for God, instead of longing for revenge.
• Embrace misunderstanding.
ll. WILDERNESS WORSHIP LESSONS
-Scattered throughout this story of David fleeing from his own son and his most trusted advisor, there are some “wilderness worship lessons.”
A. There Is A Sanctuary in the Wilderness
-David did not start out in the wilderness, nor did he end up in the wilderness. However, we gather this fact all throughout the Scriptures: Any man who is great for God will have to take a “wilderness bypass” at some point in his life.
-Great men are noted for the fact that they spent some very significant years of their lives “waiting in the wilderness.”
• Abraham -- A wilderness that held a city whose builder and maker was God.
• Moses -- A wilderness gave him the Law, a pattern of worship, and place for doubters to die.
• Jesus -- A wilderness would give him power of his flesh, this world, and the devil.
• John the Baptist -- A wilderness would be the birth place of a spiritual revival.
• David -- A wilderness where he would learn to worship.
-David did not choose the wilderness, he was chased there. Don’t curse the things in life that drive you into a depth of prayer. You can count on one thing: God will test you before he will promote you.
Nancy Newhall -- “The wilderness holds answers to questions man’s not yet learned to ask.”
-David running from his home had left Jerusalem running along the Jericho road. His journey would take him to some of the wildest, most barren, and discouraging scenery in the world. His flight only sharpened his hunger for God.
-David is looking for a literal sanctuary in his wilderness. It would come to him very rapidly that the real sanctuary is wherever that God chooses to show up. We put God in a box when we do not let Him out of these four walls.
-What does Paul say?
2 Corinthians 6:16 KJV -- . . . . for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
-The sanctuary is within. There is a sanctuary in your wilderness.
B. There Is a Paradox of the Wilderness
-But just as beneficial as the wilderness may be, there is also something that is very terrifying about the wilderness.
• The wild is breathtakingly beautiful but it is also dangerously unpredictable.
• A storm can turn an angel-caressed sky into a devil’s cauldron.
• An animal can be an elegant icon in one moment and just quickly turn into a fierce killer.
• A mountain stream can delight the eyes with a light snow one minute and just as quickly convert a single, slipped step into an icy drowning.
-The wilderness can find a hundred different ways to injure, maim, or even kill.
-The wilderness is a confrontation, it is a test. This test when it challenges us will cause us to become more or less. We either grow or we regress.
-The wilderness gives God the opportunity to strip things out of our lives. The further we get into the wilderness the more we discover about ourselves.
1. The Bet -- Anton Chekhov
We live in a world that knows little about what’s truly valuable. People all around us are pursuing things that have no lasting value. That pursuit is ably treated by Anton Chekhov in his classic short story The Bet. This story gives us great insight into the value system of most people.
The plot involves a wager between two educated men regarding solitary confinement. A wealthy, middle-aged banker believed the death penalty was a more humane penalty than solitary confinement because “an executioner kills at once, solitary confinement kills gradually.” One of his guests at a party, a young lawyer of twenty-five, disagreed, saying, “To live under any conditions is better than not to live at all.”
Angered, the banker impulsively responded with a bet of two million rubles that the younger man could not last five years in solitary confinement. The lawyer was so convinced of his endurance that he announced he would stay fifteen years alone instead of only five.
The arrangements were made, and the young man moved into a separate building on the grounds of the banker’s large estate. He was allowed no visitors or newspapers. He could write letters but receive none. There were guards watching to make sure he never violated the agreement, but they were placed so that he could never see another human being from his windows. He received his food in silence through a small opening where he could not see those who served him. Everything else he wanted—books, certain foods, musical instruments, etc.—was granted by special written request.
During the first year the piano could be heard at almost any hour, and he asked for many books, mostly novels and other light reading. The next year the music ceased and the works of various classical authors were requested. In the sixth year of his isolation he began to study languages and soon had mastered six. After the tenth year of his confinement, the prisoner sat motionless at the table and read the New Testament. After more than a year’s saturation of the Bible, he began to study the history of religion and works on theology.
The second half of the story focuses on the night before the noon deadline when the lawyer would win the bet. The banker was now at the end of his career. His risky speculations and impetuosity had gradually undermined his business. The once self-confident millionaire was now a second-rate banker, and it would destroy him to pay off the wager. Angry at his foolishness and jealous of the soon-to-be-wealthy lawyer who was now only forty, the old banker determined to kill his opponent and frame the guard with the murder. Slipping into the man’s room, he found him asleep at the table and noticed a letter the lawyer had written to him. He picked it up and read the following:
Tomorrow at twelve o’clock I shall be free . . . but before leaving this room . . . I find it necessary to say a few words to you. With a clear conscience, and before God, who sees me, I declare to you that I despise freedom and life and health and all that your books call the joys of this world. . . . I know I am wiser than you all. . . . And I despise all your books, I despise all earthly blessings and wisdom. All is worthless and false, hollow and deceiving like the mirage. You may be proud, wise and beautiful, but death will wipe you away from the face of the earth, as it does the mice that live beneath your floor; and your heirs, your history, your immortal geniuses will freeze or burn with the destruction of the earth. You have gone mad and are not following the right path. You take falsehood for truth, and deformity for beauty. To prove to you how I despise all that you value I renounce the two million on which I looked, at one time, as the opening of paradise for me, and which I now scorn. To deprive myself of the right to receive them, I will leave my prison five hours before the appointed time, and by so doing break the terms of our compact.
The banker read the lines, replaced the paper on the table, kissed the strange, sleeping man and with tears in his eyes, quietly left the house. Chekhov writes, “Never before, not even after sustaining serious losses on change, had he despised himself as he did at that moment.” His tears kept him awake the rest of the night. And at seven the next morning he was informed by the watchmen that they had seen the man crawl through a window, go to the gate, and then disappear. (From John MacArthur, www.gracechurch.org/sfellowship/pulpitcm/article.asp?id=20&aid=80, Article “Praying For the Right Things; Accessed 04/09/06)
-Some people have to learn the hard way what is of value, and there are some who never learn.
-That is why great wisdom and personal growth can come from the wilderness. This is the paradox of the wilderness. We gain so much more than what we expected.
C. Worship In a Hiding Place
Psalms 63:7 KJV Because thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice.
-Early on in the wilderness, Zadok and Abiathar, had brought the Ark of the Covenant from Jerusalem into the wilderness. It was the most sacred object connected to the Tabernacle.
-They had put the staves between the rings of the Ark and had brought it in all it’s majesty to the place of David’s exile. David thanked them for their efforts but encouraged them to return the Ark back to Jerusalem. What David needed was God not the Ark.
-So as he pens verse 7, he remembers the last time that he seen the Ark. It was when the priests were carrying it on their shoulders back to Jerusalem.
-Yet it is significant to understand that on top of the Ark was the Mercy Seat. It was made of the purest gold and on it were two angels that faced each other. Their wings stretched up over the top and overshadowed the mercy seat on the Ark.
-David now looks to his God and says, it is here, in the wilderness that I will rest under the wings of my God. His wings stretch over this terrible place and cover me with mercy. He covers the whole wilderness with His power and His mercy.
-From the words of Paul to the Corinthians, we can remember one thing when we are in the wilderness:
2 Corinthians 4:7-8 – Phillips Translation -- We are hard pressed on all sides, but we are never frustrated; we are puzzled, but never in despair. We are persecuted, but are never deserted: we may be knocked down but we are never knocked out!
Philip Harrelson
April 9, 2006
barnabas14@yahoo.com
