Discipleship in the Psalms: Facing Enemies
Author: Daniel Owens, PhD
January 04, 2024
Third in a series.
Psalm 3 (ESV)
A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son.
1 O Lord, how many are my foes!
Many are rising against me;
2 many are saying of my soul,
“There is no salvation for him in God.” Selah
3 But you, O Lord, are a shield about me,
my glory, and the lifter of my head.
4 I cried aloud to the Lord,
and he answered me from his holy hill. Selah
5 I lay down and slept;
I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.
6 I will not be afraid of many thousands of people
who have set themselves against me all around.
7 Arise, O Lord!
Save me, O my God!
For you strike all my enemies on the cheek;
you break the teeth of the wicked.
8 Salvation belongs to the Lord;
your blessing be on your people! Selah
In the first two posts in this series, we explored two foundations of discipleship, which are (1) delighting in God’s word and (2) trusting in God’s king. These twin principles are going to follow us through our discipleship.
But the way of discipleship is not always a peaceful, pleasant journey. As we move from Psalm 2 to Psalm 3, we realize how discipleship takes place in the presence of our enemies (compare Psalm 23:5). The normal experience of David the king in the early psalms is one of trouble and running from his foes.
To make matters worse, his enemy in Psalm 3, according to the superscription, is his own son Absalom! This presents a profound challenge to a disciple. When faced with opposition and betrayal, will we cease to trust in God? As the number of his enemies grows, David hears the growing chorus of nagging scorn (v. 2):
Many are saying of my soul,
“There is no salvation for him in God.”
What a temptation it is to give up when we face a crowd that rejects our most fundamental beliefs and calls into question our trust in God. The story of the church through time and around the globe includes the testimonies of many who have trusted in the Lord Jesus only to find that those closest to them wished to do them harm, to force them to recant.
I once heard of a young woman who believed the gospel while in Hanoi for university and then returned to her village, only to find herself effectively incarcerated inside her home by her own parents! The persecuted church experiences this kind of mistreatment directly. In our increasingly secular culture, the scoffing of relatives or colleagues who deny the existence of God or doubt his goodness is no less pointed. Such attacks are meant to make us feel ashamed of our God.
The answer? David does not allow the scorn of his enemies to divert his attention. He doubles down on the very thing that his enemies question and turns to God for deliverance in verse 3:
But you, O Lord, are a shield about me,
my glory, and the lifter of my head.
The crucible of suffering is the school of prayer and faith. There is nothing more clarifying than opposition. It forces a decision, and David’s decision in verse 3 is marked by two insights.
First and most obviously, he looks to the Lord to answer him, that is, to protect and rescue him. The image of God as a shield first appears in the Bible in Genesis 15:1. This is when God declares himself to be Abram’s shield, a promise that comes on the heels of a harrowing rescue of Lot, Abram’s nephew. David adopts this image of God as a shield in the psalm that closes out 2 Samuel (also Psalm 18). He applies the image to himself, as the one who finds refuge in the Lord (2 Sam. 22:3, 36), but he also extends this benefit to believers: “he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him” (2 Sam. 22:31). So we are meant to follow David in seeking for safety in the Lord.
Second, David directs his search for encouragement to God, not to those around him. That God is his glory means that when he faces the shame of running from his enemies, God restores his dignity and honor, that is, he lifts his head. For a king to run from a fight is to lose all credibility since a king is meant to lead the people to victory over their enemies (1 Sam. 8:20). But in the final analysis, David’s throne depends not on David’s military prowess but on his trust in the Lord.
This psalm provides a helpful reminder that discipleship takes place in the midst of opposition, which galvanizes our hearts either to fear man or to trust God. This opposition should not surprise us, since our Savior Jesus Christ heard a similar word of scorn from the chief priests, scribes and elders of the Jews while he hung on a Roman cross: “He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him” (Mark 15:43). May we trust as he did, that God will raise our heads in the resurrection and grant us to share in his glory.
Daniel Owens, PhD, is NCC’s pastor of discipleship. Go to the NCC Blog for the previous posts in this series.
BACK