Times of Trouble and the Lord | Psalm 3:3–4

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

Despite what others believe about David, he knows God had not abandoned him.  Emphatically shifting his pronouns, David turns His attention to the Lord.  In fact, he invokes the covenant Name, Yahweh.  Now facing unprecedented trouble, but knowing God keeps His Word, David turns to his comfort, that trustworthy protector, the only One deserving of praise.

The covenant-keeping God revealed Himself to Abraham as a shield (Gn 15:1).  When Moses gave his final blessing over Israel, he turned them to “the LORD, the shield of your help” (Dt 33:29).  David will continue to use it of the Lord (Pss 7:10; 18:2; 28:7), knowing that the protection of the Lord encompasses him as well as Israel.

In times of trouble, our trust must be in the Lord, not in what we can accomplish.  David didn’t even take the ark of the covenant with him in his flight!  In 2 Samuel 15:25–26, we read, “If I find favor in the eyes of the Lord, he will bring me back and let me see both it and his dwelling place. 26 But if he says, ‘I have no pleasure in you,’ behold, here I am, let him do to me what seems good to him.”  David sends the ark back to the city where it belongs.  As such, he refuses to use the ark as a talisman to ensure his good fortune—he places complete trust in the Lord. 


We must also see the Lord for Who He is.  David doesn’t see his position as king as his glory, as transitory as it is now proving to be.  The Lord is his glory.  He also sees that God will lift his head from his cries of sadness—maybe even restoring him to the throne.  Regardless of whether God will grant him the throne again, David knows the Lord will neither abandon him nor his people, because God keeps His Word.

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