By Jared Warner
Willow Creek Friends Church
April 14, 2024
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Psalm 4:1–8 (ESV)
1 Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness! You have given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer! 2 O men, how long shall my honor be turned into shame? How long will you love vain words and seek after lies? Selah
3 But know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself; the Lord hears when I call to him. 4 Be angry, and do not sin; ponder in your own hearts on your beds, and be silent. Selah
5 Offer right sacrifices, and put your trust in the Lord. 6 There are many who say, “Who will show us some good? Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord!” 7 You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound. 8 In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.
There are some days when I really do not want to bring a message. This happens to be one of those days. It is not that I do not have anything to say, it is because the passage stirs within me so much that I do not trust myself.
The Psalms have a tendency to do this to me. The Psalms are filled with raw emotion. They will cry out to God in their distress. There are Psalms that yell at God for not doing what they expect. Psalms that speak of seeming isolation from God, and Psalms that demand that God rid the world of perceived enemies. Then there are Psalms of great joy and praise. Songs of love and devotion. Like I said raw human emotion.
We are emotional beings. We were created with emotions for a reason. Our emotions are signs within our being that give us information to process. And we have trouble at times processing the information that our emotions give us. Why do we get a sense of discomfort in certain situations? Everything appears to be ordinary and yet something within us provides a feeling and we cannot figure out exactly what it is. Or maybe for some weird reason you simply feel like singing a song but there is not a reason for it, except you feel like it is what you should do. Emotions are strange.
We tend to want to push them down or in some cases we just let them reign supreme with little reflection. We do not understand them, and we are afraid of the things we do not understand.
I do not want to speak on this Psalm because it stirs emotions within me.
“Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness!”
I have been in a place like this. The conversations we are having seem to fall on deaf ears. We have asked our children to do a seemingly simple task and we have to repeat it over and over again until we are about ready to explode. Or we are facing some sort of deadline for a project at work or school, we need someone to provide some additional information. The deadline quickly approaches, and you are unable to move forward because this vital piece of information is yet to arrive. Or you pray.
You have listened to people all around you and they each advise you in your decision-making process to pray about it. So, you have listened to their advice, and you have prayed. You have prayed again and again. You have read through scripture about prayer, and you claim the power of the percipient widow who seeks justice. You pray with so much effort that you have even missed a meal because you are so focused. And the silence is deafening.
“Answer me!”
O God just Answer me!
“You have given me relief when I was in distress.” Where are you now?
“Are you even listening to me? Are you even there?”
Can you feel the raw emotion of this Psalm?
I know this, Psalm. I have felt it many times. I have stood on the edge of a cliff on the shore of the Black Sea looking off into the distance screaming at God while trying to make sense of what I was experiencing. And I have been in that same emotional state over and over again. Wondering, pleading with God, making some vain attempt to figure out what it is I am supposed to do.
Only to fall down on my knees in sheer exhaustion.
“O men, how long shall my honor be turned into shame? How long will you love vain words and seek after lies?”
Do you feel the rejection? Do you sense disillusionment, the disenfranchised?
Selah
This one little word occurs several times within the Psalms, and after centuries of study we really do not know what it fully means. I can mean lift up or exalt because of the common structure of words similar to it. But it might also be a word to prompt a rest in music, like saying think about it for a moment.
“Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness! You have given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer!
“O men, how long shall my honor be turned into shame? How long will you love vain words and seek after lies?” Think about it!
David in this Psalm is tired. He is angry and frustrated. He is at the very end of himself. He feels as if no one cares about what he thinks, no one is listening to what he says. He feels as if everything that he has spoken, urged, encouraged only get turned around in the minds of everyone around him and they do the exact opposite of what he has tried to explain.
He was given a position. We are not told when or what position he had when he composed this song. Maybe he is talking about when he was trying to encourage his brothers when they went off to war with the Philistines and they wrote him off as a dumb kid. Maybe he is leading his men into battle, and they cannot seem to initiate the formation and breakthrough he explained in the tents the night before. Maybe it is from when the men were trying to convince him to take his place as king over Israel and challenge Saul or when his own men turned from him in favor of his arrogant son?
We do not know when David wrote this all we know is that he has urged one direction, and the people go the other and it seems as if God himself is not even listening.
And he sits in that awkward place of stagnation, rejection, and confusion.
He watches as people he once regarded as friends have turned. He observes as the people he respected seem to turn away from the truth. He watches the influence he once held in his hand slip away like sand. And in his tears, he pleads, “Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness.”
It is in this Selah, this breath, this reflective rest that David once again gains composure. It is in that silence that he once again is reminded of who he is in God, and who God is to him.
“But know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself; the Lord hears when I call him.”
“Be Angry.” Be Angry.
Yes, this is a command, it is an imperative verb. These are the verbs within scripture we should consider deeply, because they are a call to action.
In His pleas to God: Answer, Gracious and Hear are all imperative verbs, they are crying out to God to listen to him. Then after the silence of Selah David gains a different perspective.
The first imperative is to know. Know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself. This is a command to remember who we are in God and who God is to us. Know, Remember.
Who are we? We are the bearers of God’s Image. We are the ambassadors God place into his creation to connect that which was created to God. And to reflect God to creation. We need to remember and know who we are.
The second imperative is to be angry. Yes, be angry. But I want us to take a step back for a moment to understand what this means. The concept surrounding this verb is tremble or quake, it is to be spurred into action. The idea is that when we see an injustice it should move us, agitate us, prompt us to do something to remove the impediment from the path of those around us.
I find this interesting. Out of the silent rest of Selah, David is moved to remember, and he quakes with anger. Yet this command of agitation comes with a caveat, “Be angry, and do not sin.”
Remember who you are and who God is. Be angry, quake and be moved, these are the first commands that David receives in this time of reflective contemplation within his hour of distress. Two more commands follow, and these commands tell us how to be angry and not sin. The first is to ponder in your own hearts on your beds, and to be silent.
What does it mean to ponder? It is to think about the actions we take. But we are not only to come up with a solution on the spot, but we are also to consider them in our own hearts on our beds. It is odd how this is worded.
We live in a culture of action. When I worked at Walmart nearly every day I would be told to act with a sense of urgency. This was such a common theme within the culture of Walmart that it annoyed me. And I do not think they really knew what they were saying. They just simply wanted things to be done immediately and without a second thought. So often that is what our culture wants us to do. Act now! Right NOW! Do not think, just respond. This is why we get so troubled by our emotions because we are not given the time to consider what is causing our emotions to be triggered.
But David says Ponder. The root of this word is to say or communicate, yet we should first do it in our own hearts and in our beds. This means we should consider our words and our actions. We should be slow to speak, and maybe even sleep on it before we move. This is the exact opposite of our action-oriented culture. Slow down. Say it to yourself and consider how it could be taken before you say it to another.
We should ponder and then the next command is to be silent.
What is silence? This message is beginning to sound like a defense for being a Quaker, but it is not my intention. The word here is to wail, like the wailing wall. It is to pray. We are to ponder, talk things through in our mind and then to take that to God, and then there is yet another Selah. A contemplative pause.
We do not just wail, we listen and wait. We allow God to respond and direct our actions.
We cry out to God, we plead for his grace and his listening ear. We lament our frustrations with the world around us and we pause. We remember who we are in God and who God is to us. And we are agitated against the injustice we observe. But we must be careful before we act, we are commanded to think, speak in our minds and in our hearts, to sleep and think some more, and to pray again and pause.
Now in verse five we have the first command for movement. “Offer right sacrifices, and put your trust in the Lord.”
The first of these commands is to offer right sacrifices. The idea here is that we are to do what is right, honest, with equity and mutual profit. If we were to act on a whim, we can often cause more harm than good. We might in our attempts to provide ease to one injustice we might create greater injustice. But if we take the time to think, to ponder, to reflect before we act, we can consider the outcomes that may arise out of our actions. It may not be perfect but at least we are honest in our attempts, and we are considering the potential outcomes before we just act.
The second command it to trust. This is a call to belief, or to entrust. This is a call to have faith. We know that we will never have perfect knowledge even if we have taken into account every possible outcome we can think of. We must still acknowledge that we are imperfect creatures that do not have the omniscient power of God. So, we must trust that as we move forward into that area, we do not have full sight that God will be with us and will continue to teach and guide us as we navigate through this world.
I said that this is one of those days I did not want to speak. When I say this, I say this because it is true. I say this because this is exactly how I feel today.
I sat in my big blue chair reading through the various materials I have had on this passage, and my mind has constantly returned to David’s cry, “Answer me when I call, O God.” And my mind echoes the lament “How long will you love vain words and seek after lies?”
I want to stand here and scream at the top of my lungs; I want to plead with everyone I see to open their eyes and see the truth. And I have sat in my chair in tears as I read and listen to reports on the news about various troubles inside and outside of our nation.
I feel this, Psalm. I feel it in the marrow of my bones. I feel it because I want to be a leader. I want to encourage righteousness. I want to shine a light into the darkness that surrounds us all. But we all have other voices that are constantly speaking, directing and encouraging. We all listen to these voices, voices that divide and promote fear. Voices that cast blame and manipulate the truth. Voices that make me angry. They make me angry because I see people I love and care about spreading and sharing things that had they given it a second thought they would have seen things differently. But that is our culture. It is what the kingdoms of mankind want us to be. They want us to react and respond. They want us to be driven by fear and anger. They want us to see it as righteousness, and then leave us holding the bag of guilt as they walk away.
I feel this Psalm because it is real. We are angry, divided, manipulated and played. We are crying out, where are you God? Why aren’t you answering like we thought you would? The answer is right before us. In whom are we putting our trust? Who is guiding and encouraging our actions? In whom are we clinging to give us our peace? Is it a man or is it God?
Be Angry yes. Be very angry. Be so agitated that we quake with rage against the injustice we see, and do not sin. Ponder in your hearts, on your beds, wail to God and then take a contemplative pause. Who are we entrusting our lives to, and are we walking in the righteousness of Jesus? Are we loving God, Embracing the Holy Spirit and living the Love of Jesus with others?
Previous Messages:
What Prevents Me?
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church April 28, 2024 Click here to join our meeting for worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili Acts 8:26–40 (ESV) 26 Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to…
By This We Know Love
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church April 21,2024 Click here to join our Meeting for Worship: Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili 1 John 3:16–24 (ESV) 16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.…
Dwelling in Unity
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friend Church April 07, 2024 Click here to join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili Psalm 133:1–3 (ESV) 1 Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity! 2 It is like the precious oil on the head, running down…
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