Word of Salvation – November 2025
SAVE ME, O MY GOD!
Sermon by Rev. John Haverland
Readings: Matthew 26:30-46;
2 Samuel 15:7-18, 23 (explain context: 15:1-6)
Text: Psalm 3
Theme: David expressed his trust and hope in the Lord when fleeing Jerusalem in Absalom’s rebellion.
Purpose: To urge you to put your hope and trust in the Lord in times of great difficulty and distress
Some of us who are parents and/or grandparents often read stories to our young children or grandchildren.
One great book to read before bedtime is by Dr Seuss titled, “Sleep Book”.
It’s a story about all sorts of imaginary creatures who are going to sleep in a range of different places – in nooks and cracks, on their tummies and on their backs, on steps and floors and the keyholes of doors!
By the time you have heard this entire story you are feeling quite sleepy!
Of course, our church services are not the time or place to be sleeping – rather, you need to be wide awake!
The time to sleep is at night after a long day of housework, or work in your office or factory or building site or classroom or out on the road.
Many of us sleep sounding at night.
But some people don’t sleep very well at all. They are known as insomniacs; they suffer from insomnia, which is a lack of sleep, and could be short term or long term. Maybe some of you suffer from this, which is very unpleasant.
You’ll notice from this psalm that King David was not one of these people. He could sleep well, even in very difficult situations.
He could do this because he trusted in the Lord.
In this sermon I want to urge you to put your hope and trust in the Lord in times of great difficulty and distress.
We will consider David’s situation, his security, and his salvation.
- HIS SITUATION, v 1-2
King David was in distress because his son Absalom had rebelled against him. Earlier we read how over a period of four years Absalom had stolen the hearts of the people of Israel. He had then announced himself as the King and he came to the city of Jerusalem with many people and a large army.
David had to quickly flee from the city with his entire household, along with those who loved and supported him, and with the soldiers who were faithful to him.
But many people turned against him. Even Ahithophel, one of his most trusted advisers, sided with Absalom rather than David. He was Bathsheba’s grandfather. Maybe he supported Absalom because of David’s adultery with his grand-daughter and his murder of her husband Uriah.
On the first or second night after fleeing Jerusalem David cried out to God in prayer, “O Lord, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me.”
People he trusted had turned against him;
those he thought were his friends had betrayed him.
And many people were saying this. The word many is repeated 3x in these opening two verses. This was a major rebellion. Absalom had the support of many in Israel.
In verse 2 David prayed, “Many are saying of my soul, there is no salvation for him in God.”
The people of Israel were saying that God had abandoned David; that the Lord had left him, was no longer with him and had stopped supporting him.
Shimei, who was from the tribe of Benjamin, and was from the clan of King Saul, cursed David as he was leaving Jerusalem and threw stones at him and abused him as “a man of blood” (2 Sam 16:5ff).
David felt the pain and betrayal of this in his soul, in the centre and core of his person. He had been the King of Israel for many years and now many, many people had turned against him. They thought God had withdrawn from him.
You might feel like this sometimes in your life: you lose your job; those you thought were friends don’t want anything to do with you; you feel alienated, even betrayed by members of your own family; you have to move to another place where you don’t know anyone.
Jesus felt like this in the Garden of Gethsemane.
He had asked his disciples to keep watch with him while he went ahead and prayed. But they were all tired and they fell asleep. So he was completely alone.
His soul was troubled and “very sorrowful, even to death” (Matt 26:37f).
Soon after this one of his own disciples, Judas Iscariot, betrayed him into the hands of sinners.
Then he was tried and flogged and mistreated and spat on and then was crucified.
And for three hours, while on the cross, his Father in heaven left him to the power of Satan and his evil angels. He literally went through hell. “He descended into hell” as the Apostle’s Creed puts it. He cried out to God, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?!” (27:46).
David felt like this, but David’s greater Son, Jesus went through even more than David. Jesus did this so that you and I, who trust in God and believe in Jesus, may never be left alone, may never be abandoned in hell.
Verse 2 closes with the Hebrew word selah. Biblical scholars aren’t sure what this means, but many think it refers to a musical pause.
It is also a moment for us to pause and reflect on what we have read. There are matters here that you and I need to think about, reflect on, pray over and apply to our own lives.
When reading or hearing these psalms you must not hurry over them, or rush on, or forget about them.
Rather you need to pause and ponder, think and pray, meditate on and memorise these words of the Scriptures.
This was David’s situation.
- HIS SECURITY IN GOD (v 3-6) This is the middle section of this psalm and the major part of it.
David put all his trust in the Lord. v 3: “But you O Lord are a shield about me, my glory & the lifter of my head.”
Describing the Lord as ‘a shield’ is a common picture in the psalms and in the rest of the Bible.
The apostle Paul wrote about “the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one” (Eph 6:16).
A shield, children, was a sheet of metal or wood or very thick leather which would protect a soldier from arrows and spears and swords.
God is our shield; he is our protection against evil and Satan and other people who intend to do us harm.
David was being attacked by his own son who had a large army; but he trusted in God, whom he believed would be his shield and cover him and protect him from harm.
And David regarded God as his ‘glory’. The word glory means radiance or brightness or splendour. He said, “You are my glorious One” (NIV 2011). Even in these very difficult circumstances David trusted in God and relied on him.
And he described God as “the lifter of my head.”
God was “the one who lifts my head high” (NIV 2011).
David had left Jerusalem “weeping…barefoot with his head covered” but he put his hope in God and believed that God would look after him and restore him to his position as king.
Sometimes we are feeling very low and sad, despondent and distressed; we feel the weight and pressure of our situation.
But you and I can put our hope in God that he will lift our heads high, that he will raise us up, and give us strength and life!
In verse 4 David wrote, “I cried aloud to the Lord and he answered me from his holy hill.” In his sadness, loneliness and grief he cried out to God in prayer.
David had been through many difficulties and had fought many battles. Yet he always cried out to God – he prayed to the Lord asking for help.
This was his pattern, his habit.
You and I need to do the same. Sadly, often we don’t. We muddle along on our own; we depend on our own meagre resources; we rely on our own strength, which is really no strength at all! We need to pray to God.
Notice that he “cried aloud” to God. Literally the Hebrew reads, “with my voice”.
Often we pray quietly, silently, in our heads and hearts, and it is fine to do this.
But sometimes it is good to pray aloud, with your voice. This can help keep your mind on what you are saying and asking of the Lord.
Verse 4 closes with the word selah again. So it is good to pause here again and reflect on these two verses.
We need to pray that the Lord will guard and guide us in our families, our work, and in our life and worship as a church.
We too need to trust in the Lord our shield and our glory.
In verse 5 David continues to express his trust in the Lord; “I lay down and slept, I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.” David had slept and he woke again and he knew that God was with him and would continue to sustain him in the future.
He expresses this also in Psalm 4:8…
“In peace I will both lie down and sleep;
for you alone O Lord, make me dwell in safety.”
Psalm 4 is an evening psalm and Psalm 5 is a morning psalm.
Psalm 3 verse 5 covers both the evening and the morning.
In the evening David lay down and slept, confident that God would look after him; and in the morning he woke again because the Lord had sustained him through the night. We need this same trust and confidence in God.
Psalms 3, 4 and 5 are placed at the beginning of the Psalter as an introduction the rest of the psalms. They reinforce the importance of prayer and they assure us that we can put all our trust in the Lord.
No matter what your situation or your circumstances you can lie down at night confident that your Father in heaven will watch over you, and you can wake in the morning because God the Father, through his Son and Holy Spirit, will sustain you.
Have you experienced this? Do you believe this?
Are you trusting in your Father in heaven?
Are you relying on him today, and will you trust in him through this year and for the rest of your life?
David continues on in verse 6. He was not afraid of the many thousands of people who had set themselves against him.
Some people will be against you too. In our post Christian and anti-Christian society you will experience this at school and work. But you need not be afraid because God is with you and watching over you.
Throughout the world many Christians are being persecuted for their faith and have lost their jobs, their homes and their freedom. Many have lost their lives. But they were, and are, trusting in God their heavenly Father.
Again our Lord Jesus is our greatest example of this.
He was opposed and persecuted by the scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees.
He was flogged and mistreated and crucified by the Roman soldiers.
But he voluntarily laid down his life for his people.
After he had been through the torture and torment of hell he willingly gave up his life and died, saying; “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”
He committed his Spirit to his Father in heaven.
For three days his body was in that tomb outside Jerusalem but his spirit was with his Father.
And then on the third day his spirit was reunited with his new resurrection body and he was raised from the dead to live forever!
One day these earthly bodies of ours will also be raised from our graves, or from our ashes, to live forever with our triune God in heaven!
We have considered David’s situation, and his security of the Lord.
Thirdly and finally we will consider
- HIS SALVATION IN GOD, v 7-8
a David closes this psalm with a prayer against his enemies.
Verse 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.”
“Arise, O Lord”. When the people of Israel were travelling through the wilderness they would camp in various places, sometimes for a long time.
When the pillar of cloud rose from above the Tabernacle they would all pack up and move on.
Whenever the ark set out Moses would say, “Arise O Lord, and let your enemies be scattered…” (Num 10:35).
David may well have thought of these words:
“Arise O Lord! Save me, O my God!
He prayed that God would defeat all his enemies.
He compared them to animals and asked that God would remove their teeth so they could not harm him.
They were rebelling against the king whom God himself had appointed over Israel and Judah.
b David was confident that “Salvation belongs to the Lord” (v 8). The Lord would deliver him and give him victory.
He believed that God would answer his prayers.
He trusted in God’s might and power.
And we need to do the same in our situation.
God will deliver us by his might and power.
He will protect us as his people.
So he closes by saying, “your blessing be on your people” (v 8b). He doesn’t just ask for survival, or even victory, but also for God’s blessing.
His prayer moves from ‘I’ and ‘me’ to, ‘your people‘.
As the king of Israel he was the people’s representative before God, so he asks that God would bless them. Bless these people whom you have chosen by your grace and out of your love.
The people were upset and confused by the rebellion of Absalom; only God’s favour and blessing could cancel the harm that was being done through all this.
As the people of God in this church you too may ask God for his blessing.
May God enable you to lie down and sleep and wake again as he sustains you.
May the Lord turn back the enemies of the truth and of the gospel of Christ.
May he bless us in our lives, in our families, in our work and study, and in this church.
May God look on us with favour.
May his blessing be on us his people.
Amen