Psalm 140: I Know

 

David’s life was anything but boring. His story is filled with some of the most unexpected triumphs in the Bible. When Samuel went to Jesse’s house to anoint the next king of Israel, no one even thought to call David in from the fields, no one even considered that he might be the son that God had chosen. When he offered to go and fight Goliath his brother rebuked him and King Saul tried to dissuade him, once again, no one expected the shepherd boy to slay the giant. David led the armies and nation of Israel to heights they had never known before. God used him to establish the nation, the city of Jerusalem and a tabernacle of constant worship that housed the Ark of the Covenant. But David’s life wasn’t only lived on the heights, there were also very deep valleys. Just as unexpected as his anointing was his exile, David could have never expected to be chased from Israel by the murderous threats of the king he served. The man after God’s own heart allowed his heart to wander and fell into sin that changed the course of life for many. His family was often in turmoil, one son raping his sister, another son then murdering his rapist brother and then, that same son, leading a rebellion against David that saw him flee from the throne and the city that bore his own name. David’s life was filled with victory and defeat, joy and pain, adulation and accusation, obedience and disobedience, peace and trouble. Maybe the greatest lesson that he has taught us is how to trust the God of our joy in the middle of our trouble. 

Psalm 140 was written during one of those times of trouble. David prayed for God’s protection and deliverance from men that he described as evil, violent, arrogant and slanderous. He didn’t go into great detail about what was happening, but twice he used the Hebrew word “nasar” which means “to guard, watch, watch over, keep”, it pictures not just protection that fights against enemies, but also that hides from enemies. In the first stanza it seems as if David’s enemies were coming against him, coming for him to do violence to him, but in the second stanza he changes the language a bit, saying that they sought to trip him, set a trap for him, had cast a net and built a snare for him to fall into. You can hear in David’s words that he was fighting against both fear and anxiety, watching his back and his steps, unsure if he was about to be attacked or accused. 

In verse 6 David turned from his enemies to his heart, from those that were against him to what lied within him, “I say to the LORD, You are my God”. In that statement, the situation didn’t change, but the anxiety started to fade. That simple statement, “You are my God”, was a blanket of trust and a statement of fact. It was as if David was talking to himself, “they are against me, but God is for me; they seek harm, but God promises good; they are many, but God is more”. Possibly more than anything else, David was telling himself, “I am God’s”. It’s not a declaration of victory nearly as much as an exhale of trust. 

David was praying, He was singing to God, but at the same time, he was talking to himself, “O LORD, my Lord, the strength of my salvation, you have covered my head in the day of battle.” Often, we fear what we might lose because we forget just how much we have gained. David hadn’t made himself king, he had not risen up and overcome Saul, he had not proved himself a great warrior and been chosen by Israel. It was God who had chosen him, God who had prepared him, God who had put him in place, which meant that no matter who or what came against him, only God would remove or displace him. It had been God who had saved him from the lion and the bear when he shepherded his father’s sheep and God who had not just protected him but delivered Goliath into his hands. It was God who hid him when he ran from Saul and God who exalted him when it was time for him to reign. David had never saved himself, exalted himself or won a victory for or by himself. Every battle he had survived was only because God had covered his head. 

Our fear and forgetfulness tend to run side by side. Sometimes our issue is not that we fully forget but that we don’t actively remember. For Israel there came a point when gathering manna was simply what they did rather than what God had done for them, they were so used to the miracle that they forgot it was miraculous. What if the key to quieting the voice of anxiety is constantly reminding ourselves of God’s goodness? What if Israel, every morning, when they walked out into the open places to gather their manna, stopped and said, “Look what God has done for us today!”? What if we did more than count our blessings, what if we recounted them? I’m not talking about telling our story to someone else, but telling it to ourselves, regularly, daily, constantly. I think that if we told our testimony to ourselves more often, we’d have more opportunities to share it with others. 

Don’t you think that’s what Paul did? I can hear him alone in prison cells reminding himself of the day that Jesus met him on the way to Damascus, that if he wasn’t alone when he was in his sin, he certainly wasn’t alone in those jails, that if God had worked to save him, God would certainly continue to work to keep him. 

This is the point that David gets to in verse 12, “I know that the LORD will maintain the cause of the afflicted and will execute justice for the needy.” There was so much that David was unsure of and anxious about, he poured his heart out to God, he cried for help, for protection, for God to come and not just save him but to take vengeance upon his enemies, but then, he turned back to his heart again and simply said, “I know . . .” The Hebrew word used here is “yada”, it means “to know (properly, to ascertain by seeing).” In the middle of the unseen David turned his attention to what he had seen. When he closed his eyes he probably saw Goliath fall, felt the oil from Samuel’s horn running down his head, heard songs of Israel as the Ark of the Covenant was being carried to Jerusalem, he remembered what he had seen, remembered what God had done and settled his heart to trust whatever God would do.  

Most of us love the words of Romans 8:28 and quote them, “all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” (NKJV) But that’s only a partial quotation. When we quote it this way we are being hopeful of what will happen next, but I’m not sure that’s the way it’s written. The first few words of the verse are often left out, but they are the foundation for everything that comes after them. Paul wrote, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” We are not waiting to see if or how things will work for good, we know because we’ve already seen. This verse is a call to remember what God has done, to call to mind what we have seen, to tell our hearts that the God who brought us this far will lead us all the way through. 

The theme of Psalm 140 is not the enemies, the violence or the traps, it’s our trust in the God we’ve seen and known. In our uncertainty will we call to mind all that we are certain of? In our fear and anxiety will we fight against our tendency to forget and make remembering and reminding disciplines for our faith? Will we tell ourselves the story of the miracles we are living in while we wait for the miracles we have not yet seen? Will we trust God enough to lean on what we know while He works to do more than we’ve asked or imagined? There are always questions that could be asked, but sometimes we must simply live in the truth we know.