Forever in His Presence
Abiathar must have looked absolutely terrible. Can you just imagine the man’s eyes — puffy and red from the hot, stinging tears that just would not stop coming. Eyes, glazed over in shock and disbelief. Eyes — that were tired, just tired, from wave after wave of white-hot rage rising up inside of him only to drop him back down in deep dark despair.
His entire family had just been massacred. Eighty-five people, including his own father — all of them priests of the most High God. Massacred, by a man named Doeg, at the command of King Saul. Abiathar had escaped. And it seems, according to 1 Samuel 22, he was the only one to escape. And he ran, he fled — Abiathar must have looked absolutely terrible — arriving at David’s doorstep at the cave of Adullam.
But, David took him in all the same. He said, “Stay with me; do not be afraid, for he who seeks my life seeks your life. With me you shall be in safekeeping.”
I cannot imagine the wave of relief that must have washed over Abiathar in that one moment. Stay – with – me. What would he have done if David said, “No, go away, there is no room for you here?” Who would he have turned to? Where else could he have sought refuge? He would not need to wonder; for the words of David were, “Stay with me.” What a beautiful scene.
But, if you were to skip ahead a few pages in the life of David, you would see yet another scene with Abiathar — one that would strip away all the beauty from the first. It’s 1 Kings 1. David is now old. No longer the spry, strapping shepherd. No longer the strong, solid warrior. But old, weak, and confined to his bed — so frail he could not even keep himself warm.
His decline, it seems, brought great excitement to his son Adonijah, who saw his father’s weakness, as his opportunity, to establish his own kingship. For Adonijah, his dad just could not die soon enough.
He wanted the throne.
He wanted the crown.
He wanted the kingdom.
So he sought to rip it from his father’s weakened grasp. Hurt like that, a betrayal like that, inflicted by your own son, at your expense, in your time of need, must have tasted bitter. But the hurt like that, must have hurt a whole lot worse, when he got the news that Abiathar — the man who, with red, shocked, tired eyes sought refuge at his doorstep so many years before — had linked arms with Adonijah and sought to help him in his rebellion.
Psalm 41 is written by David, a man betrayed. But there is no prescript to this Psalm telling us where in David’s life this betrayal comes from. Is it this betrayal with Abiathar and Adonijah?
Or, is it the betrayal of king Saul, a man David risked his life for in order to protect, only to have that man aim his spear at his head?
Or, is it the betrayal of Absalom, the first of David’s sons to conduct an uprising over his father?
Or, is it the betrayal of Ahithophel, David’s political adviser, who joined Absalom in that first uprising?
Or… See the thing is, we just don’t know which of these situations David was musing over as he wrote this Psalm. Truth be told it may reference an occasion from David’s life that we’re not even aware of. Regardless, one thing is certain, David, the man, knew what it felt like to be betrayed by a friend.
We’ll be looking at three things together this morning, Betrayal is one of them. Blemish and Blessing are the other two. So, Betrayal, Blemish, Blessing - Would you pray with me before we go further?
BETRAYAL
Betrayal, Blemish, Blessing — we’ll look at “Betrayal” first because it’s thee thing that really sets the scene for everything else that takes place in this Psalm. And verse 5 kind of serves as a slow warm-up to it, with David telling us, “My enemies say of me in malice, “When will he die, and his name perish?” Read that again, slowly. “When will he die, and his name perish?”
Do you have an enemy? An enemy that not merely wants your ailments to increase, your relationships to whither, your career to take a nosedive, but one that wants your very life to cease? If so, your enemy is still not as vengeful as David’s enemies. They did not merely want his heart to stop beating, they wanted his name — and everything that is bound up in this concept of a person’s name — their character, their accomplishments, their possessions, their family line,— They wanted it all, his very name, to perish. To be erased from every single record, of every human mind, throughout the history of the world. Poof — like he’d never even existed.
That’s not a good feeling. Not a good feeling at all. Especially when you’re sitting two feet away from your so-called friends, who have come to visit you in your time of need, and who, with a look of care in their eye, and words of love on their lips, possess the exact same sentiment in their heart as your enemies outside your gate.
Verse 6 is the punch-in-the-gut that we all know betrayal to be. It says, “And when one comes to see me, he utters empty words.” Just imagine that. You are suffering from illness, not mere headache, not mere fever, but painful, relentless, “I might not actually recover from this” type illness. And your friend comes in, pulls up a chair, sits down, and all the while you know the motivation of his visit is his relentless wonder within of, “When will this man die?” And any of the words you hear in that moment are those which roll off the tongue of a snake who’d just as soon bite your hand and inject his venom as grab a cool towel to wipe down your weary brow.
The purpose of this bedside visit is to gather material for gossip. Still verse 6, “He utters empty words, while his heart gathers iniquity; when he goes out, he tells it abroad.” “You should have seen him, the guy’s a gonner…he can’t even get himself out of bed…Like to see him wield his sword now!” And look, David gives no physical details of his ailment here. No burning sides and tumultuous groaning like that of Psalm 38. And it’s because the pain that’s occupying the forefront of his mind right now is not physical.
And he just keeps pouring out the details. Verse 7: “All who hate me whisper together about me; they imagine the worst for me. 8 They say, “A deadly thing is poured out on him;’” It’s them, his betrayers, that’s what, or rather who, is killing him right now!
And the whole thing rises in degrees: My enemies want my destruction (Pain, but no surprise there), my visitors want my destruction (Pain, and certainly surprise), but now, my close friend wants my destruction too?
Verse 9, “Even my close friend — in whom I trusted,— who ate my bread, — has lifted his heel against me.” This, was the hardest thing for David to endure — the betrayal of someone in whom he trusted. This was the wound that, for David, struck the deepest, and it was able to strike so deep because it came not from without, but within.
See with betrayal, you don’t have time to put up your defenses like you would in the presence of your enemy.
You don’t have time to brace yourself as you would in the presence of your foe.
This is a bringer-of-pain who you’ve brought into your home, sat down to dinner, and offered your bread to. And he’s returned the favor with his sword.
Your mind is not prepared to compute the details of such an occasion — everything just wants to scream out: Error, error, somethings wrong here. The details in this picture don’t go together. This person, and this pain, they don’t share the same frame. They do now. And it often takes a long time of sitting in the reality of it all before you can even come to grips with it.
That’s the reality that David breathes as he writes this Psalm.
BLEMISH
This reality can go together with the content of verse 4, which takes us to our second idea of blemish. Betrayal, and now, blemish. “As for me, I said, “O LORD, be gracious to me; heal me, for I have sinned against you!” See verse 4 shows us something interesting here. And that is that the pain that David is experiencing here is distinct from that experienced by Job so many years before. If you’re familiar with the story of Job, you’ll remember that Job was a good man who loved God and had a good life. And in a matter of hours, his life, like his whole life, gets absolutely destroyed. His friends, like David’s friends, come to visit him.
As conversation begins and words are exchanged it becomes clear to Job that these friends of his make far greater enemies than friends. David’s situation resembles Job’s, no doubt, but it is distinct from it in this one regard: Job could not look back upon his life and point to any one thing that resembled sin. He was a sinner, no doubt, as have been all people since the fall of Adam and Eve. But he could not identify a specific sin in his life that might have warranted the discipline he was receiving from the Lord in that season of destruction.
David is different, because David can. David could say, verse 4, “As for me, I said, “O LORD, be gracious to me; heal me, for I have sinned against you!” Perhaps he’s recalling his envy and lust-driven murder of a man in order to steal his wife. A sin he’s confessed, but a sin that still may warrant Divine discipline. Maybe. Maybe not, the point is that David has sin he can point back to, he has a blemish that makes him unworthy of the Lord’s kindness. He knows that, and that’s why he appeals to God’s grace. “O LORD, be gracious to me; heal me, for I have sinned against you!”
Grace is, by definition, a gift you do not deserve. A thing when requested, carries no obligation toward the one of whom it is requested. Instead, grace comes in one way and one way only — as a gift to a person who has done nothing to deserve it. David says, “be gracious to me; heal me, for I have sinned against you!” I am not like Job, I cannot look back on my life and say this discipline is out of place. But, all the same Lord, would you lift it? Would you remove it? Would you give me mercy, though I am so far from deserving it?
What if David worshipped a God who said “NO” to such a request? What if David said, “O LORD, be gracious to me!” And the God who David worshipped said, “NO.” Then, we’d expect his sick bed to become his death bed to become his bed of everlasting shame. There would be no victory for David. No redemption. No release from the rejoicing of his enemies. He would lay his body down in the dust with his enemies dancing upon his head — If the God who David worshipped were to say “No.”
I imagine that’s precisely what his enemies assumed that God had done. Seeing him in his pain, laid-up in his sickbed, heading downhill fast. “His God has left him! His God has turned his face away!” It’s probably what they were whispering about, behind his back, verse 7. What they were imagining. Saying, “A deadly thing is poured out on him, and he will not rise again from where he lies.”
It makes you wonder, surrounded by such a chorus of despairing voices, how David managed to hold out any hope at all. But see, David knows he’s a sinner, he’s blemished, but he also knows who his God is. And he knows how his God deals with those who love him and show compassion toward the people whom he’s created. And that brings us to our third section here, Blessing. Betrayal, Blemish, and now, Blessing.
BLESSING
“Blessed is the one who considers the poor! In the day of trouble the Lord delivers him. The Lord protects him and keeps him alive, he is called blessed in the land, you do not give him up to the will of his enemies. The Lord sustains him on his sickbed, in his illness you restore him to full health.”
Picture such truths rolled out like a banner — bold and bright — across the walls of David’s room. “Blessed is the one who considers the poor!”
David is such a man, from Abiathar, to Mephibosheth, to 400 others who David took in while held up in his cave at Adullam — “Everyone who was in distress…in debt…or bitter in soul” (1 Sam. 22:2). David took care of them in their weakness, their poverty, their need — he showed consideration for them — and now, he’s asking the Lord to do the same for Him.
Not because David deserves it! Again, verse 4, verse 11 cannot be ignored here. David is begging for grace, not demanding his wage. There is no transaction here, for our God does not provoke his people to good works, like consideration the poor, by holding out salvation in front of them like a carrot on a string. To quote Pastor David Mathis, “God does not lay out A crass system of rewards in which one action earns an enticement that is unrelated to the action. (He) is not trying to appeal to our desire for long life to just get us to do something we don’t want to do, (which is, in this case, consider the poor).
Rather, our God calls his people to consider the weak and the poor because he considers the weak and the poor. It is not an arbitrary action, but a reflection of his very nature. It is called good by him. We know it has value because He does it.
And you and me, we’ve been created by Him, in his image, that we might display his image in this world.
And we do that by doing the things that he does.
Loving the things that he loves.
Valuing the things that he values.
What else could make the heart so happy, so blessed, as allowing it to actually act in the way that God made it to? And that’s what David has done — not perfectly, no, of course not. But what David is saying here, to anyone out there who’d be listing, is look, “My life looks the way it does because I am His!” I’ve sought to live by the precepts of the Lord — one of which is consideration for the poor. When I’ve failed, I’ve sought to live by the provisions of the Lord — Divine mercy through the confession of sin.
That’s why the words of his enemies stung so badly! Their desires for him to lose his life were an offense to the one who promised to keep it. Their laughter at the thought him rising up again was an insult to the one who promised to do the raising! God calls his people, even in their hurt, even in their doubt, even in their fear— blessed, but David’s enemies were looking at David, seeing his situation and calling him broken. And in so doing, they were telling a lie about God and his care for his people.
It’s a lie we all here, right? Doesn’t it seem like the times in your life when you are most trying to live according to God’s precepts — his instruction for our life here, that is when things seem to get the toughest. The times we try to cling to God’s provision of grace the times when we have the hardest times really trusting it is there? What’s going on for David here is similar to what’s going on for you there because you do, like David, have an enemy, one who wants your life to end and your name to be blotted out from the books.
And in the time when you feel most worn down, most discouraged, most like giving up seeking to live as a bright light in this dark world because you feel more like a little flicker lost in the depths of a cave.
In that moment your enemy would love you to hear his laugh of triumph, see his dance of victory. He would love for you to think your father has left you.
LAND IT
David says, “By this I know that you delight in me; my enemy will not shout in triumph over me.” But what about those words as his enemies danced upon his grave? (Pause) Because David did eventually die. He recovered here in this situation of Psalm 41, but regardless, he did eventually die. And it’s safe to assume that at the point of his death, he still had enemies. Enemies that, upon hearing the news of his death, danced and shouted in triumph. The one who prayed, “O Lord, be gracious to me, and raise me up” would come to a time in his life when his body would be laid down. His eyes would close, his strength would fail, he’d die. And when he did, what about those words? — “By this I know that you delight in me; my enemy will not shout in triumph over me.” Like David, you will encounter a time in your life when you will die. God will likely deliver you from many circumstances in this life but eventually your days here will end. what about those words? — “By this I know that you delight in me; my enemy will not shout in triumph over me.”
You want to know about those words, I’ll tell you about those words. They are, at this very moment, on the very lips of David, and not as a request, but as a boast, “You God had mercy on me. You God gave grace to me!” You, my Father, right now, delight in me and I know you do because I can see it in the smile upon your face. Verse 12 says, “You have set me in your presence forever.” Brothers and sisters, David is the one dancing right now in the glory of that forever! For when God sets a person in his presence he does not do so with an aim to reverse his decision. Yes we may feel in our pain and in our difficulty that our God has turned his face away but rest assured my friends he is smiling just as big and just as bright upon you today, in this moment, as he has for all of eternity. You have ever been in his mind as an object of his grace. Ever in his mind as a child to be redeemed. Ever in his mind as the one whom he would rejoice over in glory. You brothers and sisters will dance with David!
And a hundred million years from now, when our enemy greatest enemy, Satan himself, has long since bit the dust and just barely began to taste the wrath of God almighty, you, and I, and king David himself will still be singing FOR OUR GOD HAS TRIUMPHED OVER THE GRAVE. How great it will be to sit in the presence of our holy, and happy, God.
David was a sinner, and did not deserve the Lord’s kindness — and neither do we.
David confessed his sin to the Lord, and appealed to mercy, and so do we.
This mercy was bought by Jesus, a man who was betrayed, rejected, and murdered.
A man who tasted the bitter cup of disloyalty that we might drink from the sweet cup of salvation.
A man who, today, right now, says to you and to me, “Stay with me; do not be afraid, for the one who sought my life, Satan himself, now seeks your life. Take heart, he sought my life, but I would not give it to him, neither will I give him yours. With me you shall ever be in safekeeping.”
Brothers and sisters in Christ, Today you have sorrow, today you have pain, today you have worry, today you have doubt, today you have enemies, and one day your body will be laid in the dust but you, my friends, will not go down with it, for your God will raise you up to dwell in the city that has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. AND YOU WILL KNOW THAT because you will see his face, and his name will be on your forehead. And night will be no more. You will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be your light, and you and I and all who call on Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins will reign forever and ever with him.”
BECAUSE THE MERCY YOU APPEAL for WAS BOUGHT BY A MAN WHO WAS BETRAYED. THE MERCY David appealed for WAS BOUGHT BY A MAN WHO WAS BETRAYED. A man who tasted the bitter cup of disloyalty, served him by a man who ate his bread, rejected his words, sold him for silver, and sealed his betrayal with a kiss.
This, of course, reminds us of the table. Will you pray with me?