Psalm 3 - Enemies Surround Us, Whether You See It or Not

The Broader Psalm

One of the first things one notices when a church begins to reclaim the Psalms in Christian worship is how much language of warfare and judgment are in them. They assume a world that feels far different from the one we've been taught to believe we live in, where everybody should get along. When our church began singing through various Psalms, we started hearing from people almost immediately that our singing had become far too martial - too much talk of fighting and warfare and enemies. This wasn't because we started looking for music that emphasized this in particular; instead, this theme comes up almost everywhere when one begins to sing across the whole of the Psalms. It is one of the primary reasons churches avoid singing the Psalms or only do so with a great deal of selectivity. The Psalms position the people of God in a very different place in the world than the one we most want to be in. We don't like the *place* the Bible puts us with those around us. We've come to believe what I heard an evangelical pastor say recently, "We don't have any enemies!"

It is important to remember that the Psalms don't just give us prayers for specific circumstances in which we may find ourselves. They also describe our circumstances, which is helpful, especially when we're too blind to recognize our situation. We don't come to Psalm 3 and file it in the folder labeled: "If you ever happen to find yourself surrounded by enemies..." We come to Psalm 3 and find a world in which those who love God absolutely *do* have actual flesh-and-blood enemies, whether we acknowledge it or not. This is the world that the Bible describes; therefore, it is the world we live in. This is hard to accept for Christians taught to be blind to the pervasiveness of friend and enemy language running the whole length of the Bible.

But Christians are commanded to hate evil. We are told to oppose the wicked. And God does not define 'evil' and 'wicked' the ways that our society does. The enemies of God are not only Hamas or some distant element. While the difficult command of Jesus is to "love your enemies," we do not know the difficulty of this command because we've never identified our enemies the way God does. All who love and celebrate sin, defined by opposition to the Word of God, are evil. These are the wicked. These are your enemies. Secularism has taught us to think of the world as filled with the possibility of neutrality: Some love the Word of God, some hate the Word of God, and some are neutral. The Bible says there are only two kinds of people in the world: Those who love the Word of God and those who hate the Word of God. You must be friends of one and enemies of the other. The only distinction is faith and where that faith lies.

Observations from the Psalm

- The notes for this Psalm tell us that David wrote Psalm 3 when he was fleeing from his son Absalom, who had cunningly turned many Israelites against David and was coming after his throne. David was being pursued *again*, but this time, his central enemy was from within his own household. The enemies in view include Absalom, David's own son. And with that, we see that our problems with reading, let alone learning to pray and sing Psalms like this, only get worse, not easier. Here is a friend-enemy distinction that lies between a father and a son. The words of Jesus from the gospels, "...a man's enemies will be in his own household..." (Matthew 10:36). Loyalty to Christ supersedes all other loyalties.

- Verse 2 shows us the fundamental claim of the enemies of God's people: God's salvation is not coming. God's salvation is not true. There is no real salvation there. Salvation not as a sort of other-worldly disembodied hope but salvation as the total weight of God's blessing and grace towards his people.

- Faith sees God's promises as a shield. Faith makes it possible for God's people to sleep when their situation seems dire. Faith can keep fear at bay. Faith calls upon God to fight against the wicked.

- We are instructed to call upon God to break the teeth of the wicked - this is asking God to shatter their strength to harm and devour. It acknowledges their ability and desire to hurt and consume and asks for God's mercy to break their ability to do so. The enemies of God and God's people are not simply making independent life choices different from yours. Their opposition is to the ways of God and, therefore, to all those who live under the ways of God.

Applying the Psalm

The enemies of God's people are not far off. In many seasons and times, including our own, they surround God's people. They do not sit passively by, simply wanting to be left alone. They have teeth. They want the end of any semblance of God's law at work in a community and at work in society. Millions of dollars are being spent by the pornography industry. Thousands of children are murdered in the womb each year, and laws are weaponized in our state to blind us to this and protect this as a "right." Narratives seeking to redefine justice, reframe history, and enslave God's people to a law that is not God's are put forward on billboards, in movies, in DEI offices, and on your Facebook feed. If we had eyes to see, we'd know that we are surrounded. The temptation is to either capitulate or to lash out in fear. The allure of Christians in an age like ours is to either get along with the evil that surrounds us or merely become the opposite of the evil that threatens us. But the Psalms teach us to pray. Jesus instructs us to love these enemies. We pray that God might break their teeth. We love the ones we can rightly name as wicked and enemies of God. If you love the Lord, you have enemies. So sing.