Christ Church Washington D.C.

Well, first of all, greetings from the saints of Moscow. It’s Moscow, Idaho. It’s always a pleasure to be with you all. It’s wonderful to hear and continue to see the growth and the fruit that God is granting to this body of believers. And I want you to know that all of us back in Moscow, Idaho are praying for you and grateful for your testimony and witness, even through all the difficulties.

twists and turns that you’ve had to endure, the insults and all that sort of thing that you’ve had to endure as you come to church and go from church each Lord’s Day. We’re very grateful to see your testimony, your witness, and we’re just enthused to see God’s kindness and grace in this body. So with that, I want to begin with a few stats.

Now, that’s a dangerous thing to do. We live in times that we just went through the whole COVID nonsense, right? And so you have to be careful whenever somebody says studies show or experts show, you should reach for your wallet because they’re probably about to rob you, right? They’re about to take your stuff. So I want to be careful in giving some stats, but I think it’s helpful in framing the psalm that’s before us this morning.

A CDC study found that 15.4%, that .4 is very, very important, of course, of adults had trouble falling asleep most days or every day. Just under 1 in 5, 18% of adults had trouble staying asleep most days or every day.

Another survey found that nearly 4 in 10 adults here in the United States have trouble falling asleep three or more nights per week. And almost half of adults have trouble staying asleep three or more nights per week.

Taking that all together, we are a sleepless nation. We are a nation that has trouble sleeping. And in many respects, we’re told that foregoing sleep is somehow virtuous and courageous and that sort of thing. We even name cities after it. Sleepless, the city that never sleeps. Sleepless Seattle, that sort of thing.

This hymn, this psalm before us is a nighttime psalm. It’s a hymn for going to bed. It’s a hymn for going to sleep. It’s a hymn for the evening. But all too often, our experience is that at nighttime, when the din and the clamor of the day dies down, we’re left in the stillness with our own thoughts.

And that can be a frightening thing. That can be a dangerous thing. That can be a haunting thing. And you twist and turn all night long and sleep eludes you.

All throughout history, depriving prisoners of sleep is a well-proven torture method, right? Keep people from falling asleep and you can manipulate them and get information out of them. Sleep deprivation is a well-worn tactic for torture.

Some of you new moms have felt the pang of that as your newborn infant awakes for the fifth time that night and your mind is clouded and you go, I can identify with the fact that sleepless nights are a sort of torture. Certainly, when the lights turn off, all too often, the clamoring voice of our own fears, guilt,

Regrets and worries all come shouting. And sleep eludes us. These voices of fear, regret, shame, worry, all come crowding in and they torture and they deprive us of rest. They give no quarter. They give no rest.

But I want to show that in this Psalm, David exemplifies for us in this Psalm, how to sleep in heavenly peace.

So I wanna work through this Psalm and then make a couple applications from it. In this Psalm, we have David addressing four different people. He addresses God, he addresses his enemies, he addresses his companions, and then he talks to himself. And that’s not crazy. That’s a good thing to do. Martin Lloyd-Jones talked about grabbing yourself in hand and preaching to yourself. And we see here at the end of this Psalm, David talks to himself, he preaches to himself. So David addresses God, he addresses his enemies, he addresses his companions, and then he addresses his own soul.

So first, let’s look at David addressing God. In verse 1, it’s a prayer. He’s calling out to God. Hear me when I call, O God. Now, some context for this psalm. I take this psalm to be when David was on the run from his son Absalom. So his son, the guy with flowing locks of hair and very impressive hair, apparently, wants to overthrow his father’s kingdom, wants to…

overthrow David’s, uh, uh, David’s throne and he, he, he revolts. He, he has this, um, uh, this coup that’s taking place. David is on the run from his own son. Talk about an awkward Thanksgiving dinner, right? There’s, there’s tension here in the Davidic family and much of it was, it was due to David’s own apathy and, and his own sins had brought about Absalom’s revolt.

So this Psalm took place in that moment when David’s own family and nation, he had rescued from the Philistines. He had delivered from the Philistines. He had brought the Ark of Covenant back into Jerusalem and he had fed all of Jerusalem with one of my favorite descriptions is when they bring the Ark of Covenant in, David feeds all of Jerusalem with raisin cakes.

whatever those are. I just imagine like a cake full of raisins. And that’s like the worst thing when you eat a chocolate chip cookie, thinking it’s chocolate chip cookie and ends up having raisins in it. So I think it was well-received by Jerusalem, but he feeds them with meat and raisin cakes. And it’s a feast that David spreads for all of Jerusalem. He’s the great psalmist. He’s given them songs to sing. The

The tent of David is established there in Zion. David has defended Israel and established Israel. And then things change, things shift. David falls into some apathy, falls into the whole thing with Bathsheba. He’s…

absent from the situation with Amnon, his son, and Absalom rises up to overthrow his father. This is a tense moment in David’s reign. Turmoil was abundant. Everything was unsettled. Everyone was pointing fingers. And we see that in the story in 2 Samuel. Everybody’s pointing fingers at everybody else. But instead of listening to the accusations, the speculations, the discontent, and the lies, what does David do?

David calls out to God. David calls out to God in the midst of one of the worst moments of his life. He calls out to God, asking God to hear him. He asks God to hear him and he gives God two reasons why God should listen to him. David calls out to God and he gives two reasons for why God should hear him. First, he says, hear me, O God, because you are my righteousness. Hear me, O God, the God of my righteousness.

The only reason I can come to you is because you reckon me as righteous in you and by the sacrifices that I offer unto you. I’m reckoned as righteous in your sight. First, God is his righteousness. Secondly, God is merciful. He says, have mercy upon me and hear my prayer.

And of course, when God revealed himself to Moses, that was the language that God used in revealing his name, his character to Moses, the Lord, merciful and gracious, righteous, abundant and steadfast love. David is appealing to God’s own nature and character as the basis whereby he can come and make all these requests to the Lord.

Now David is painted into a corner. He’s on the run. He has no resources. All of Israel has turned against him except for a motley band of about 600 bodyguards, friends, family, and loyal followers. He has about 600 people and the rest of Israel is going with Absalom. David is painted into a corner.

The sort of corner that perhaps you’ve been in where life is tough, bills are due, work projects are breathing down your throat, and medical issues are frightening you. You’re painted into a corner and David says, oh God, you have enlarged me when I was painted into that corner.

David is painted into a corner, but he knows God has gotten him out of such scrapes before. And he asks God for this enlargement, this deliverance once again, because, and he addresses God and says, because you are righteous and because you are merciful, deliver me.

He cries out to God first and then he turns and addresses his enemies. And you sort of wonder like, what would that have been like when they went to church that Sunday? And he’s written this Psalm and he’s singing and it’s like aimed at the enemies. Could be fun. In verses two through five, he addresses his enemies. With prophetic bite, David rebukes the wicked for two things. First, they turned his glory into shame.

They turn the Davidic glory of the kingdom, everything he accomplished, they twist it and they pervert it and they turn it into this thing that’s a source of ridicule. All of the deliverance that David had brought about for them, they’ve turned into a shame. And secondly, his enemies, these wicked men, love vanity and lies. They’ve given themselves to vanity and lies, spinning tall tales, living by lies.

He rebukes them for turning glory into shame and for loving lying. His enemies have imagined up all sorts of tall tales about David. But David reminds them of the peace that the saints have in divine election. He says that the Lord has set apart him that is godly for himself. There in verse 3.

His enemies are saying all sorts of things about him. And yet he takes comfort in the fact that God has set apart the godly for himself. And he then challenges his enemies to search their hearts in the stillness of the night. When their head hits the pillow, he says, search your hearts and see what’s in there. What’s in your heart here?

Search their hearts in the stillness of the night and see if they have the same peace that David has from knowing that God has set apart his people, the godly, for himself.

And he challenges them to see if they have that same peace. They’re given to all sorts of tall tales. They’re given to turning glory into shame. They’re given to lies. And he says, when you are alone with yourself, with your own thoughts, can you have the same peace that I have in the fact that God has set apart his people for himself?

And his last word to his enemies there in verse five is very much an evangelistic invitation to his enemies. What we New Testament saints would call the altar call, right? He calls out to his enemies and he summons them, put off your hypocrisy, offer true sacrifices of righteousness and put your trust in the Lord. Stop trusting in your lies and your schemes and your conspiracies and start trusting in God alone.

He summons them to put off their hypocrisy and offer righteous sacrifices by putting their trust in the Lord. So he’s addressed the Lord, he’s addressed his enemies, and now he turns to his companions. Verses 6 and 7.

So having defied his enemies, David now must rebuke his companions. And when you read the account of this in 2 Samuel, it’s quite striking. They really are alone. This band of David’s followers, as they’re on the run from Absalom and his henchmen and from all Israel, you can kind of understand where David’s companions would be a little bit jittery.

Think about it. The whole nation is against you and hunting you down, and you don’t know where to turn. You don’t know if this city up ahead that we’re going to, are they going to be friendlies or are they going to try to kill us? Are they going to turn us in? Is the Absalomian Gestapo going to turn us in? So David has to rebuke his companions for their flakiness, for their jitteriness, for their failure of nerve. He has to rebuke them.

Though they showed loyalty in fleeing with David into exile, you hear echoes of the complaining Israelites in the wilderness from the days of Moses and the hard times that they had that they were facing. Notice there in verse six, David says, there’ll be many that say, talking about his companions, there’ll be many that say, when will anyone think about me? When will anybody think about my needs?

Who will show us any good? You can hear the complaints. Boy, we have it hard, don’t we guys? We’re being hunted down. We’re being despised. They’re telling all sorts of lies about us. When is anybody going to do us any good? And David rebukes them. David says, there’ll be many that say, when is anybody going to be nice to us? When are any of these Israelites, our fellow Israelites, when are they going to finally turn and help us?

And David rebukes them for this flakiness. They’re asking, when will anybody think about us? And David sets himself in contrast to these bellyacres. And he says, for him, there’ll be many that say, who will show us any good? And David says, Lord, lift up the light of thy countenance upon us.

They’re looking for human help. And David says, guys, remember, consider that God’s smile is more delightful than a harvest time feast. Yes, our supplies are running low. Yes, all of Israel might turn us in and kill us if they discover us. Yes, things are hard, but God’s favor and smile is upon us. And that’s better, as it says, than their corn and their wine.

Then they’re feasting. For we have God’s favor upon us. God smiles upon us. And therefore, we need not fear. Therefore, we have all in that. We have everything we need in God’s smile. In God’s favor resting upon us. There are verses 6 and 7. Lastly, David talks to himself. He says to himself, time for bed.

The Hebrew is quite lovely here. There in verse 8, it says, I will both lay me down in peace and sleep. And in the Hebrew, the indication is that the laying down and the falling asleep are simultaneous. Doesn’t that sound nice? Doesn’t that sort of peace of conscience sound glorious?

I will both lay me down in peace and sleep. Are his enemies all gone? Are the supplies filled back up? Have his problems gone away? No. But he lays down in peace to sleep. Why? Well, by the mercy of God, David can go right to sleep.

His enemies can keep spreading their lies about him. His companions can keep complaining. In a few regards, David is quite alone. But though isolated and alone, David curls up in the safety of God’s favor.

of God’s smile, for thou Lord alone makes me dwell in safety. There’s an indication here that word only or alone there could also be translated as loneliness. For thou Lord in my loneliness, and of course it’s true that God alone is our dwelling place of safety. But the indication here is that David says, though I’m quite alone,

Lord, you make me, because your favor is upon me, you make me dwell in safety. So I wanna make a few applications from this psalm. This psalm presents us with two radically different images of man. It gives us a picture of man in his sin and man in God’s mercy. Man in his sin and man in God’s mercy.

After all, we see lying enemies and bellyaching companions. First, consider that when you love lies, you must tell more lies. Lies never stay put. Lies must be told and covered and tracked. And you end up like that meme, the conspiracy guy meme, trying to make sure you’ve kept them all straight and you’re not contradicting yourself.

When you love lies, you must tell more lies. But sin, the nature of sin is such that it always weighs down on your conscience. We are a nation weighed down with guilty consciences for sexual sin, for all the lies we’ve told, for the bitter outbursts of anger. We are a nation weighed down with sin, with guilty consciences.

We’ve told lies and we have to keep telling more lies. It’s like that board game Risk, which I don’t know if anybody has ever actually completed, right? That’s one of those games that is ever really, has that game ever really been played to its completion? Think about the board game Risk. You’ve got this certain, you know, YOLO strategy where it’s like, I’m going to just,

I’m going to camp out in Australia. And when I get enough troops here, I’m just going to YOLO it. And I’m going to try to kill everybody all at once in the board game. But if you shrewd strategic game players know that if you overextend your troops and you have like one little guy in each troop in each country, you’re just a sitting duck for your friend across the table. They’re going to wipe you out on the very next turn.

That’s what telling lies is like. You overextend yourself. You thin out the troops. You make yourself and your entire army vulnerable to destruction. Each sin is a lie.

Sin is a lie to yourself. You say, God doesn’t see, and I deserve this. This is something that I need to do. Everybody else shouldn’t do it, but in this case, in this instance, it’s justified for me to do this thing, and God’s going to be okay with it. Every sin you’ve ever committed is a lie in that way. You’ve told a lie to yourself that somehow you deserve it, you need it, you must do it, and everybody else shouldn’t do it, but it’s okay for you to do it. With each lie, you expose yourself further.

Now, this room, news alert, this room is full of sinners. It’s full of sinners who by necessity hide their sin. That’s what we as people do. We hide our sin. Some of you think that the passage of time will absolve you of your sin. Some of you think you can inch closer to sin than other immature Christians.

Some of you think that your sin isn’t as bad as others’ sin. Some of you sinned this week in a way you promised yourself you never would again. Some of you keep telling yourself that you couldn’t possibly confess that sin. Some of you keep insisting that you should keep taking those pills or that booze or that joint in order to just keep functioning. Some of you keep cherishing some ancient grudge.

And you tell yourself lie after lie as to why your sin is a special sin, needs special treatment. But when the night hushes and the noise of all the distractions diminishes, your guilt, shame, and fears are a megaphone that won’t let your troubled conscience sleep.

And this leads to two equally wrong approaches to how the wicked man views the godly man. So someone that’s all twisted up in lies and is covering their sin and is lying about their sin is given, as the text says here, is given to vanity, loves vanity and seeks after lies. When they’re telling themselves lies and others lies,

the wicked man gets all tangled up and he begins to view the godly man a certain way. First, he has to make up stories, all sorts of twisted tales about the righteous man. They blow the faults of the righteous man out of proportion. They insinuate. They turn the glory of the righteous into shame. You’ve likely experienced such things with the protesters outside over these last several months.

They go, those Christians can’t be as happy as that. They must be hiding something. They can’t just be worshiping God in there. There’s something twisted about what they’re doing. And the wicked man, all tangled up in lies, has to say of the righteous that there’s something twisted there in the righteous man, in the people of God. There has to be something twisted. Marriage is between one man and one woman till death do them part. That’s got to be some twisted, oppressive thing, right?

And they spin up all sorts of lies about why the righteous are actually the twisted ones. They blow faults out of proportion. They insinuate. They turn the glory of the righteous into shame. Those Christians can’t be as happy as all that. They must be hiding something sinister in there, like bread and wine. Or, like David said, that’s the enemies that are all twisted up in lies.

Or David’s companions, who are all self-focused. They’re giving way to their mere appetite. Like David’s companions, they try to drag the godly man into a pity party. When is anybody going to think about us? We’re getting the short end of the stick. And I think this is much like the excuse-making and the sulking within modern evangelical circles, both amongst the woke and the based bros.

So you see it kind of on both sides of the spectrum within evangelical circles. On one side, they are perpetually fearful that they’re not diverse enough. They’re not meeting some diversity, equity, inclusion quota. They want to make the church a certain shape. They’re worried about what people think. And so they’ve twisted themselves into knots of lies, hoping that they can assuage guilty consciences.

Or on the other side, there’s this sort of black pill doomer mentality. You see it in things like the perpetually concerned bloggers who are worried about our witness if we aren’t diverse enough, gay enough, or feminist enough. On the other hand, the Theo bros also play the victim card and bemoan how the deck is stacked against us wasps. They try to use the jargon of the perpetually online. They’re black pilled over everything.

Both sides of evangelical complainers want you to join them at a Denethor-style bonfire. They’ve despaired.

They think we can’t go on. What about our witness? Or the deck is stacked against us. On either side, you have this complaining, bellyaching, when will anybody think about us trying to pull the righteous away from the comfort that is found in God’s favor and in God’s righteousness and mercy as seen through Christ and shown to us through Christ and given to us in Christ and to pull the righteous down into this pity party of when will anybody think about us? They want you to blackpill.

But both making up stories about the righteous or trying to drag the righteous down into your pity party are inadequate to deal with your shame. That’s not how you deal with your shame. And this is why David tells them a couple times in the Psalm, this is why David tells them to offer righteous sacrifices. Stop the hypocrisy. Stop fondling all your lies. Stop your belly aching and complaining.

Stop trying to pull the righteous down into your misery. Stop trying to discourage others from walking in the life-giving peace of God’s righteousness. None of that will soothe your conscience. So that’s man and his sin. That’s what he does. He either twists and tells lies about the righteous, or he tries to pull the righteous down into his misery. And neither of those approaches work.

will soothe your conscience, will give you rest, will bring you peace, which raises the question, what will bring peace to your conscience? And David shows us man in God’s favor. And David, of course, stands here as a shadow pointing us to his anointed heir, the Prince of Peace. Consider the portrait of David here.

First, his glory is mocked as a shameful thing. All the good that he had done for Israel is mocked and derided. If this psalm is, as I think it is, during Absalom’s revolt, think of the mockery which was hurled on David. And we get a picture of it when Shimei, this wicked man, shouts all sorts of things at David as he’s fleeing from Jerusalem.

When King David, 2 Samuel 16, when King David came to Baharim, behold, thence came out a man of the family of the house of Saul, whose name was Shimei, the son of Gerah. He came forth to win friends and influence people. No, he came forth and cursed as he came and he cast stones at David and all the servants of King David and all the people and all the mighty men were on his right hand and on his left.

And thus said Shimei when he cursed, come out, come out thou bloody man, thou man of Belial. David, one who killed Goliath, the one who wrote Psalm 23, the Lord is our shepherd, I shall not want. Good King David, come on out. What are you running from, David? David?

Yeah, you’re getting what you deserve. I saw it coming from a mile away. You’re actually in league with the devil, David. I knew it. I just knew it. Earl’s curse is upon him.

And he says, the Lord has returned upon thee all the blood of the house of Saul, in whose stead thou hast reigned. And the Lord hath delivered the kingdom into the hand of Absalom thy son. And behold, thou art taken in thy mischief. All your schemes, David, everything you did, all it’s coming back to bite you. What goes around comes around, David. I knew this was coming. You are a bloody man.

The same David of whom the pop songs of Israel were Saul has slain his thousands, David his tens of thousands, is now all sorts of these sorts of insults and taunts and twisted tales about David are swirling. His glory is mocked as a shameful thing. Insults and mockery and curses are hurled upon him.

The glory, peace, and prosperity of David’s kingdom is twisted by his enemies into something grotesque. And evil men do the same with Christ, both in his own time and Christ’s time and down to the present. The Jerusalem crowds pass by hurling all sorts of falsehoods upon the very one who was sent for their deliverance. I mean, when you think about Christ on the cross and the taunts and insults that were hurled upon him, bring yourself down from there.

The very thing that they, if they were reading the scriptures clearly, they knew he had come for their deliverance. He had come for the salvation of the world. He had come to be the mediator between God and man. And they mock and deride and hurl insults upon the Lord Jesus upon the cross. And ungodly men, if you listen carefully, do the same down to the present moment.

They hurl all sorts of insults and falsehoods upon the very one who is sent for their deliverance. In the present day, folks will say that Jesus is a crutch for the feeble-minded. But turning glory to shame is what all of us do whenever we, made in the image of God, of the glorious and triune God, turn that glory that He’s given to us, the glory being made in His image, into shame by our sin.

And so David stands here as a picture of the son of David who would one day have all the insults of all mankind placed upon him, bearing our griefs and our sins away. Secondly, David insists that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself, and this is the source of David’s peace.

He knew that he had been anointed as king by God’s purpose and nothing his enemies said and did and no amount of complaining by his companions could thwart God’s purpose. So if it be that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself and this is the source of David’s peace, it only takes a moment of introspection then for us to go, but who amongst us is godly?

And here is where Christ shines brightly in this song. The Father set apart His Son for Himself. Your only hope is to, by faith, share in that setting apart, that sanctification of the Son. The only hope for peace of conscience is if you rest in the sanctification of the Son of God, that He has been set apart for the purpose of delivering you.

Delivering you from all your lies. Delivering you from all your complaints and worries. Delivering you from all your enemies. Your only hope is to by faith share in that sanctification of the Son. God sets apart the godly for himself because the godly are only those who have hidden themselves in the Son of God. And when you know that…

When that wonderful Calvinist doctrine that not by good that you have done, but simply by the blood of Christ, by the electing love of God towards you, when you get that down into your bones and you know that in Christ and in Christ alone, you are loved and favored and that God has cast his mercy upon you, you can walk in the comfort that you are the apple of his eye. The church is his beloved.

He will not forget His covenant. He will not forget you. If you are in Christ, by trusting in Him, the Father will not drop you through the cracks of His everlasting hands. And third, what David gives to us, what he shows to us here, is that he has a deep gladness. And it flows from that doctrine of

of unmerited grace, undeserved grace, undeserved love from God. David has a deep gladness. Why? Because he knows what God thinks about him. The enemies can say all they want. His companions can complain all they want. He knows what God says about him. This is why he can sleep peacefully. This is why he doesn’t tremble with fright upon his bed.

turning over the accusations in his mind, keeping him awake. And this too draws our mind to consider Christ, who is the mercy and righteousness of God on our behalf. God looks upon Jesus, upon his Son, with pleasure. The Father beams with joy upon his Son. David asks God to hear his pleas because of God’s mercy and God’s righteousness.

And David invites his enemies to turn from their fretful lies and to trust in God. David rebukes the fickleness of his companions for being far too easily satisfied with the corn and wine of harvest time when the only source of their peace and joy is that God looks upon them in Christ, in God’s righteousness, God looks upon them with favor.

And this is all because and only because God is merciful and righteous. And so this is how the saint sleeps. The shame of your sin, the fear of your lies being exposed, the worries about what other people think, those will torture you with sleeplessness.

But if you get this truth, this simple truth of the gospel deep in your bones, you can truly rest. You can go to sleep because Christ went down into death and he rose again for your salvation and he lives forevermore.

If you get this simple truth deep in your bones, you can truly rest. You can go to sleep, even in profound loneliness, even in a tempest of ridicule or the downpour of sulking excuses around you. And all of this is because you rest in the safety of the merciful arms of Christ. Let’s pray.

Our good and gracious Father, our guilt cannot be purged except by the blood of your Son, Jesus. As Augustine said, our hearts are restless till they find rest in thee. Where we have cherished sin and tried to hide it, bring it fully into the light that we might confess it, be cleansed from it, and so enjoy your smile that only rests upon those hidden in the righteousness of Christ. And so now we pray back to you the words that our Lord Jesus taught us to pray, saying…

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