This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Psalms” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, May 24, 1987.

We are continuing our reflection on familiar Psalms, and we’ll be looking towards Psalm 8. We’ll read that Psalm this evening, but we want to read a few others on the way to it. We’ll read, first of all, Psalm 3, and then we’ll read Psalm 4 as well. O Lord, how my adversaries have increased!

Many are rising up against me, many are saying of my soul, there is no deliverance for him in God. But Thou, O Lord, art a shield about me, my glory and the one who lifts my head. I was crying to the Lord with my voice, and He answered me from His holy mountain. I lay down and slept. I awoke, for the Lord sustains me. I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people who have set themselves against me round about. Arise, O Lord, save me, O my God, for Thou hast smitten all mine enemies on the cheek.

Thou hast shattered the teeth of the wicked. Salvation belongs to the Lord. Thy blessing be upon thy people. Psalm 4. Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness. Thou hast relieved me in my distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer. O sons of men, how long will my honor become a reproach? How long will you love what is worthless and aim at deception? But know that the Lord has set apart the godly man for himself. The Lord hears when I call to him. Tremble and do not sin. Meditate in your heart upon your bed and be still. Offer the sacrifices of righteousness and trust in the Lord.

Many are saying, who will show us any good? the light of Thy countenance upon us, O Lord. Thou hast put gladness in my heart more than when their grain and new wine abound. In peace I will both lie down and sleep, for Thou alone, O Lord, dost make me to dwell in safety.” O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Thy name in all the earth, who has displayed Thy splendor above the heavens!

From the mouths of infants and nursing babes Thou hast established strength because of Thine adversaries to make the enemy and the revengeful cease. When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained, what is man? that Thou dost take thought of him, and the Son of man, that Thou dost care for him. Yet Thou hast made him a little lower than God, and dost crown him with glory and majesty. Thou dost make him to rule over the works of Thy hands. Thou hast put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, the fish of the sea, whatever passes through the paths of the seas.

Our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth. Let’s pray. Our Father, servants of yours, you have raised up to proclaim your word. And truly. To the ends of the earth, that word is proclaimed. On your day, especially that word is expounded. And Father, in its exposition, may there be clearly placed before your own and before those whom you are calling, the splendor and majesty of Jesus Christ. O Father, we pray that your household would be full and that you would be gathering your own, and that quickly. so that you may bring to conclusion all of your purposes. Father, we ask these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Tonight I want to continue in our series on familiar Psalms, and we are moving towards Psalm 8, certainly a familiar psalm to us all. But in order to make our way to Psalm 8, I have chosen to introduce this evening a single thought, if you will, one to which I can only give passing notice since to investigate it in depth would take so much time. that we wouldn’t be able to get on with the matter of creating the familiar psalms. That familiar psalm, Psalm 8, before us tonight is part, then, of a series. We’ve considered Psalm 2, as we will be considering Psalm 16 and Psalm 19, maybe Psalm 23 and We will not be considering the beginning and ending psalms of the first of the five books of Psalms, because I have dealt with those in a previous series. At any rate, this evening, as we move along towards our consideration of the eighth psalm, I want to ask you a question, a question of whether or not there is any development, whether or not there is a logical connectedness between the Psalms as we move from one to another. In other words, are the Psalms arbitrarily dumped together, or is there some kind of cohesiveness as we move from one to another?

For example, look at Psalms 1 and 2. We all know Psalm 1 and its exposition of the two ways, the way of the wicked and the way of the righteous. That spelled out for us throughout the psalm, but also mentioned, spoken of specifically in the last verse of that first psalm, verse 6. Now look at Psalm 2. follow of itself from Psalm 1. Could it be that Psalm 2 appears where it does, in the Psalms, because together these Psalms make a very powerful point?

Namely, that the way of the righteous is the way of the Lord’s anointing as well. You may then want to compare the last verse of each of those songs. Psalm 1, the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but is that way not the same one on which the nations find themselves if they are in obedience to the Lord and His anointed? The same one on which the nations find themselves as they are obliged to pay homage to the Son, the Lord’s Anointed, lest he be angry, and they perish in the way when his wrath is quickly kindled.

If this is the case as we move from Psalm 1 to Psalm 2, do we find similar things when we move from Psalm 2 through to Psalm 8? or at least as we take up Psalm 3 and move to Psalm 8. Well, at the very least, we can say this. In our move from Psalm 2, Psalm 3 to Psalm 8, we do in fact encounter a recurring thought.

It almost seems that in deliberate fashion, these psalms have been placed together, it seems almost that in deliberate fashion, the undimmed certainty, the untroubled serenity, the buoyant confidence that we find in those first two psalms is now contrasted by a nearly overwhelming, overwhelming encounter by the psalmist with personal disaster.

In the midst of these devastations, the psalmist, and we will call him David, fights within himself to keep before him, to remember, to maintain his perspective through his faith. He fights within himself to recall, to remember, to maintain his trust in God. Now as he makes that progression through these psalms, there is this single image that he uses repeatedly. It recurs again and again.

It is the image, the figure of the night, the night time. Obviously, this image signifies more to David than that segment of time after sunset and before dawn. The night, the nighttime, according to David, provides him a powerful image and an appropriate setting in which then there arise, in all their fierceness, the fears and the doubts that stalk him. In such a setting, in this darkness, David’s anguish of soul is intensified. It is magnified.

He appears in this nighttime as a solitary soul. reflecting in and upon the darkness that surrounds him the nighttime of his life. But it is precisely in the night, it is precisely in the darkness, surrounded by his fears and doubts, that he rallies in his recollections and in his trust of the Lord. Psalm 3. This psalm uses the image of the night time. It does so twice. Verse 5, again in verse 7. David says, I lay down and slept, having been kept. by the Lord. Verse five.

In other words, the nighttime. The nighttime provides now David that image, that image that is appropriate to his circumstance, the circumstance of adversity in which he is assaulted by his enemies. But in the night when his fears and distress are greatest, he has found God faithful. Now, as he arises in praise, working on towards the end of that psalm, as he arises as if from sleep, as he arises as if the night is over, as he arises in praise, he bids God as well arise.

You too, O God, awake in judgment against my enemy. You too, O God, awake in blessing upon your people. Arise, O Lord, and save me, O my God. Thou hast smitten my enemies on the cheek, thou hast shattered the teeth of the wicked. like the dawn, belongs to the Lord, by blessing be upon thy people, like the rays of the morning sun.

A strange image is utilized here at the close of that psalm, verse 7, For the Lord himself is pictured here as having been asleep. We may even be able to draw it out further that he has been asleep with David. The Lord’s sleep is sleeping. In this psalm is an image as well. For by this image, David is speaking poetically about the Lord’s delay. the Lord’s delay in action, the Lord’s delay in coming to the rescue of his people, the apparent delay of the Lord while the night prevails. But you see, his delay in acting is as certain to end as the night, for When the light comes, the Lord arises in response to the call of His Lamb, and He rescues them out of all of their troubles. The image, then, of the nighttime and sleep.

It appears again for us in Psalm 4, and in this Psalm It appears two times as well as it did in Psalm 3. Verses here are 4 and 8. David reflects upon troubled sleep, and the fact that more than his worries about his worrisome adversaries and enemies, more than his worries about those who oppose and oppress him, is the fact that his soul is at the edge of bitterness. Bitterness! And that bitterness is getting the best of him.

Now, I will admit that verse four New American Standard translates it, tremble and do not sin. King James translates it, stand in awe and sin not. I will admit that that verse is very difficult to interpret, to translate appropriately. Some have suggested with regard to that fourth verse that it is actually the Apostle Paul who has captured the sense of it in Ephesians 4 verse 26, where he writes, Be angry and sin not.

You know that verse. The idea is that this text not so much questions the justice of David’s anger, but warns against David’s plotting out his own revenge. So pressing is this warning that the Apostle Paul tells us in his rendition of it, not even to allow the night to overtake us with our anger brooding upon revenge. Getting even. Plotting our schemes. Psalm 4, verse 4 then, as you read it through to conclusion, instructs us not to lie in our beds hatching plots, but instead to rely upon the certain inevitable triumph of God. With such trust, with such food for thought, we are to meditate in our hearts, commune with our own hearts upon our beds, and be quiet.

Have you ever told yourself to shut up? Have you ever had enough of your own talking? Have you ever heard enough of yourself? Have you ever found yourself crying out before God, enough of it, enough of this out of myself? on the certain inevitable triumph of God, He will vindicate you if your cause is just, you need not fear. For He will justify you in the end.

Rather then than living on the brink of bitterness, or even within that bitterness, in the knowledge that God’s cause shall prevail. Note how the psalm progresses. For David’s strain beneath the weight of his bitterness is relaxed, as he takes his own and quiets his soul in the knowledge of God’s triumph, and he breaks forth in praise and ends in a change, in a change to the way in which he even greets the night, so filled with trust and gratitude, so filled with confidence in God’s triumph, he is able to lie down without a worry. Sleep becomes peace. rather than brooding turmoil. Sleep becomes a festival of light rather than darkness breeding deeper despair. I will both lay me down in peace and sleep, for Thou, Lord, only, makest me to dwell in safety. Here, the night time is inferred.

David opens this psalm with words descriptive of an excruciating suffering of soul. Consider my groaning. So translates the New American Standard. Consider my groanings,” David says. But as if the groanings belong to the night, the resolution of those groanings belongs to the first light, to the morning. In the morning, verse three, O Lord, Thou wilt hear my voice. In the morning I offer my sacrifice and look for Thee. The magnificent thought here is that though David’s distress is extreme, it will surely end as the dawn follows the night.

In Psalm 6, David’s complaint reaches a new intensity. He sounds in this psalm as if he is unable to find relief, any relief. His confidence of immediate and certain resolution, that we’ve already seen, gives way to a protracted agony. He says, In verse 6, I am weary with my groaning, not just all night, but apparently night after night. We get the impression that the night here is perpetual. So it is. Night after night, all night, I make my bed to swim with the tears of my grief, with the sense that I have been forsaken by God. In verse 7, David speaks as if he were one who had cried his eyes out. His eyes have actually aged, become old, because he has worn them out through weeping. But then, as protracted as that agony has appeared, as perpetual as it has seemed to be, as permanent as it seemed to be. It’s apparently an eternal night.

Nevertheless, the Lord breaks through, and we have that resolution in verse 8 and following. It is as if in the telling of his plight, David now places before us the true character of our faith, and the true character of that faith asserts itself. For it isn’t the cessation of distress that brings faith, any more than the end of the night brings victory over my fears. The night returns, and my distress may continue as long as I continue in this world, but true is such that precisely in the distress, precisely in the night, in fact, precisely in the face of the perpetual threat of death, in verse five, that faith ultimately rights itself and blasts with what seems to be a miraculous boldness against the purveyors of terror. Depart from me, all you who work iniquity, for the Lord has heard my weeping. The Lord has heard my entreaty. The Lord will accept my prayer. All my enemies shall be confounded and dismayed. They shall turn away in sudden confusion.”

Now, Psalm 7, at first glance, seems to break the pattern we’ve endeavored to establish. since in it there is no obvious mention of the nighttime, as there have been in the others. But you will remember what we said about Psalm 3, verse 7, where the psalmist, where David, called upon the Lord to arise, if you will, to awaken. It is at that point that we see in the seventh Psalm verse six, an allusion to the night. Now, as we said before.

In connection with Psalm three, the image, as strange as it may sound, is intended to suggest that the Lord himself has been asleep. And it conveys the idea of the Lord’s delay in responding to his people’s cry. Now, you may be put off a bit by this image. You might be remembering the fact that Psalm 121 says that the Lord neither slumbers nor sleeps. You might be recalling the taunt of the prophet Elijah against the prophets of Baal. When there’s no response from Baal, he asks them, is your God asleep? Well, cry louder, wake him up. Only the heathen gods sleep. Only they need to sleep.

But, in order that you might get the sense of it, it may be well for us to remind ourselves of a New Testament story. A story that can help us understand this image a bit better. I have in mind the story in Mark’s Gospel, chapter 4, verses 35-41. The setting is the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

The time of day, it is night. Jesus is with his disciples and they are about to cross the Sea of Galilee. And as they put out into the night in that boat, a violent storm comes up and the disciples are terrified, but Jesus, the Lord, is asleep in the stern of the boat. The sleeping Lord. The disciples cry out, and the Lord arises. and he stills the storm.

Now, the figure of the rising Lord, the arising Lord, the awakening Lord, in Mark 4, has behind it the imagery of the Old Testament and the call to the Lord that He awakes for the sake of His people. Now, as we have said, we know that the Lord neither slumbers nor sleeps, but David is here using an image, an image of sleep, to capture the sense of the Lord’s delay. His call, therefore, is one to God that he might arise. The awakened Lord, then, to execute justice upon the weapon and save his life.

Now this whole matter of sleep and night time, sleeping psalmist, sleeping David and sleeping Lord, this whole matter of troubled sleep for the saints and the sleeping God who is called upon by his elect has a rather remarkably literal and comprehensive application in the figure of our Savior as we see it applied to his resurrection and also to his return. For in the Lord’s resurrection, we find Christ actually becoming that one to whom David pointed in all of his distress, the one who is crying out in the face of death, and who, in the midst of all of that awesome night, that awesome night of despair, relies upon God, commits his spirit to the Lord, and receives of God vindication and triumph over death and all that opposes him. So there is, then, the subjective side. of the psalmist’s plaint answered in Christ, as Christ himself is the sleeping one, the one who in the nighttime is faced with all the fears and doubts, yes, those attacking his soul, but he, in the midst of it, standing firm. This one, having identified himself thoroughly with us, What are your fears?

What are your talents? Do you imagine yourself too strong to be afraid? Was it just when you were a child that you were frightened? I remember my fears as a child and I look back at them now as somewhat humorous. I remember taking that leap from the middle of my bedroom floor into my bed I was convinced there was something, someone under that bed. I remember running as if at a hundred miles an hour up the cellar stairs because there was no light switch at the top. You had to pull the string, hold your breath, run. And I remember other times. being terrified as a child.

But what are the fears now that we’re older? Afraid of age? Afraid of want? Afraid of not having enough? Afraid of people? Afraid of what we find in the world? Terrified for our children? What of our doubts? What of our bitterness? What does the night time become for us? Terror filled?

O that in it we, through the power of Jesus Christ, would stand firm, confident in the Lord’s triumph and our own vindication. He’s led the way. He’s led the way. Every fear that you have felt and experienced, every temptation to bitterness swept past his soul. He knows it in your heart. And before it all, he stood his ground for you. Now that is the subjective side. But you see, there’s the objective side as well.

For not only is our Lord Jesus Christ the one who is numbered with us, the one who has been joined with David in his plight and distress, but the Lord Jesus Christ is also the Lord who has been called upon by his people that he might arise No, not in the resurrection so much, but that he might arise and delay no longer, and come in the clouds of glory with his reward with him, for all who have looked for him and loved the promise of his appearing. So, arise, O Lord, for the sake of your beloved ones, your dear friends, those who trusted in you, who have cried out day and night for your appearance.

Well, this sets the stage for Psalm 8. Psalm 8 also is about the night. It’s treated, however, here a bit differently. and we’ll see how differently next week and how as well in this psalm, the Lord Jesus Christ is so magnificently anticipated for us. Let’s pray.

Father, when we read the Psalms, may we hear the voice of Jesus Christ in the voice of David the psalmist, so that we know that our Lord has numbered himself with the one who experienced troubled sleep, who found in the nighttime the distress of soul and heart, who is compelled to cry out unto you, as surely as any servant of his. We pray, our Father, too, that you would remind us that our Savior, though he delay, is not asleep. Yet, as if he were, he shall arise, and when he does, he shall bring about the resolution of all things. Truly, judgment upon those who have opposed you and your children. but the reward of peace, life, righteousness, and glory for those who have awaited the rising of the Lord. Father, we pray that as we think about the Psalms, as we commune with our hearts upon our beds, that we will be at peace, that we will still ourselves Knowing that you love us. Knowing that you prove faithful.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.