Meditation on Psalm 3

Note: At our regular midweek Evening Prayer service, we have begun working through the Psalms. This is not exactly what I preached tonight, but something close to it. Also, I freely adapted from Reardon’s “Christ in the Psalms” as well as “Reading the Psalms with Luther.”

We took a few weeks off for the great graduation black-out and then the Call Service, but now we’re back on our journey through the Psalter. Tonight we take up Psalm 3; feel free to look it up in the hymnal and follow along.

Psalm 3 is prescribed in both Eastern and Western tradition to be said first thing in the morning, so that the child of God begins his day by saying, “I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.” Rising from sleep to praise God is a symbol and type of what we will do in the resurrection.

Sleep is symbolic of death; it is a gift to us – few things are better gifts than to be able to sleep the entire night undisturbed – but our very need for sleep is a sign of our weakness. It also keeps us from the praying that we are to do without ceasing. So we are called by the Psalter to begin the day, first thing, with prayer and praise to God.

Psalm 1 showed the difference between the blessed man and the unjust; the blessed man meditates on the Word of God day and night, while the unjust man walks in the counsel of the wicked.

Evil counsel is what we see in Psalm 2 – the rulers of the world take counsel together against the Lord and His Anointed, that is, against the Christ.

Now, Psalm 3 reveals to us that we are engaged in that battle, and it gives us the cry that we, the children of God, are to make so long as that warfare endures, i.e., throughout our life. Rising in the morning, we are called to acknowledge, “O Lord, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me; many are saying of my soul, there is no salvation for him in God.”

The original context of this is as a prayer of David, who cried out in distress when his son Absalom drove him from Jerusalem. In this prayer, David glorifies God for being a true helper of His people; and as we recall David’s deliverance, and its fulfillment in the deliverance of our Lord Jesus from the sleep of death in the resurrection, we go into our own warfare with confidence that as God heard their prayers, so will He also hear and answer ours.

What we see opening up for us now is that the Psalms are prayers for warriors, for soldiers, for people in distress, assailed by many enemies. Just as Luther bids us to pray first thing in the morning for deliverance from the wicked foe, so Psalm 3 summons us from our bed to fight against our enemies. This is no moral or political crusade, but a spiritual battle. St. Paul says in Eph. 6, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

And in this fight, we see that our deliverance comes not from ourselves: “But you, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head. I cried aloud to the Lord, and he answered me from his holy hill.” You are engaged in a terrible struggle – a struggle for your soul, and for the souls of men all around you. Left to yourself, you will stumble and fall. But the Lord is your helper; call upon Him, and He will answer; and so you can even lie down in sleep, for whether you wake up tomorrow morning, or wake up in the day of resurrection, He will sustain you, and you will awake to His praise and glory.

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