My Glory and the Lifter of My Head

Psalms chapter 3. I was reading this the other night and a part of it just leaped out of the pages at me and I began to examine this psalm and I want to share it with you. A psalm of David when he fled from Absalom his son. It says here in my Bible, Psalms 3, O Lord, I'm reading from the New American Standard, O Lord, how my adversaries have increased.

I think the King James says troubles are those that trouble me. Many are rising up against me. Many are saying of my soul, there is no deliverance for him in God.

But thou, O Lord, art a shield about me, my glory and the one who lifts my head. I was crying to the Lord with my voice and he answered me from his holy mountain. I lay down and sleep.

I awoke, for the Lord sustains me. I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people who have set themselves against me round about. Arise, O Lord, save me, O my God, for thou hast smitten all my enemies on the cheek.

Thou hast shattered the teeth of the wicked. Salvation belongs to the Lord. Thy blessing be upon thy people.

Now the words that leaped out at me in this third verse says, my glory. I like the King James better. It says, my glory and the lifter of my head.

And that struck me and then I realized that there is a there is a course. You know that, my glory and the lifter of my head, but I that was not the reason that that leaped out of the pages at me. The Lord just put that on my heart and that's what I want to speak about tonight.

Let's bow in a word of prayer. Lord, we thank you for the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our midst and in our hearts tonight. Lord, now we pray that you would anoint the word to us and prepare us as we will close this meeting around the table of the Lord, the communion.

But Lord, tonight reveal your word to us. Lift hearts tonight. Lift some heads that are maybe bowed down.

Lord, you are our glory. You are the one who is able to lift the fallen. You're able to lift the saint who is discouraged.

And you're able to give us insight in your word and so anoint us. We pray tonight. We thank you in Jesus' name.

Amen. In Psalms 3, we find David, King David, at a time when he is in deep, deep trouble. And there was a particular reason for this trouble.

It's a kind of trouble that we all face. David's situation was unavoidable because it was a result of him having, he was reaping the harvest of some wild oats that he had sown. And because of that, God had prophesied that he would suffer from it.

Galatians, the sixth chapter, you don't need to turn to it, but let me read to you Galatians 6, 7, and 8. It says, Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatsoever a man sows, this he will also reap.

For the one who sows to the flesh shall from the flesh reap corruption. But the one who sows in the spirit shall of the spirit reap eternal life. And again, Psalms 22 and 6, let me just give you some of these verses.

He who sows wickedness reaps trouble. Job said this, I have observed those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it. And Hosea 8, 7 says, They sow the wind and they reap the whirlwind.

Now this is called the law of the harvest. And what works, what happens in the natural realm also happens and works in the spiritual realm. We reap what we sow.

Now King David accepts this fact and he does not challenge God in this regard. But in spite of the inevitability of reaping a bad harvest from our wild wicked oats, David teaches us that although there may be suffering and affliction and testing that comes with this law of the harvest, yet God does not forsake us if we have repented and we've turned from the wickedness. And in Psalms 3, as well as we'll see in Psalms 41, Psalms 42, Psalms 43, which was written, we believe most of those Psalms were written during this period of near disaster and death for David.

And yet in spite of that, he remains firm in his confidence in God. Listen to just a few of the things that he says during his troubles. He said, How blessed is he who considers the helpless the Lord will deliver him in his trouble.

He said, Hope in the Lord and I shall again praise him for the help of his presence. And then he repeats the same thing almost again in another chapter. He says, Hope in God for I shall again praise him the help of my countenance and my God.

And then in Psalms 41 and 2, he says this, The Lord will protect him and keep him alive and he shall be called blessed upon the earth and do not give him over to the desires of his enemies. The Lord will sustain me. Now all of these declarations of faith are made more real when we look at the circumstances under which David wrote these things and uttered these things.

As I said, he was in deep, deep trouble. Now what was the cause of David's trouble? What or who is he referring to when he says in this first verse of Psalms 3, he says, Oh Lord how my adversaries, how my troubles are increasing. His own son Absalom was leading a rebellion.

We would call it in today's language a political coup. His very own son was plotting to take from David his father, the kingdom, and set himself up. And in fact Absalom does it in a very subtle and cunning manner.

And you can read about it if you want to turn to 2 Samuel the 15th chapter in the first five verses. We get a picture here of the setting in which David and what David is talking about. And the first thing that Absalom does is he gets a magnificent iron chariot and some chariot horses.

And we heard Sunday night what that means, the meaning of that. Always it was a sign of military and human strength. And he gets this magnificent chariot and he rides up to the gate of the palace.

And it says he went out early one morning to the gate of the city. This is 2 Samuel 15. And when anybody came to bring a case to the king for trial, he'd call him over and express interest in his problem.

And he would say, I see that you are right in this manner. It's unfortunate that the king doesn't have anybody to assist him in hearing these cases. And he says, I surely wish I could help you.

I surely wish I, if I was just in a position to judge this case, then anybody with a lawsuit could come to me and I would give him justice. And the scripture goes on it says that it happened that when a man came near to prostrate himself before him, he would put out of his hand and he would take hold of him and he would kiss it. And of course that was really was a kiss of betrayal against David the king, who was Absalom's father.

And the account goes on it says, so Absalom stole away the hearts of the men of Israel. That's what he was doing every morning when he would go there and sit at the gate of the palace. Now Absalom was very much like King Saul, his grandfather.

He was striking an appearance and he had the spirit of Saul upon him. And he got a number of key leaders and he rallied themselves around him, even though they did not at first know his real or suspect, or he didn't let out his real intentions, that he was plotting an overthrow of the government. But then eventually Absalom reveals his true plans and he sent spies throughout the land and he said this, 2nd Samuel 15 10, he says, as soon as you hear the sound of the trumpet then you will say Absalom is king, Absalom is king.

And so the rebellion gained momentum and Absalom gathers an army of 12,000 elite men in addition to a number of other over 20,000 he gathered around him to go out against David and to overthrow David. Now the remarkable thing about all this is that David recognizes that this trouble is something that is permitted by God. He was reaping the law of having sown the very seeds himself which caused Absalom to turn against him and therefore he understands the true nature of his troubles.

And to see this you have to look at 2nd Samuel the 12th chapter at another time of David's sin and failure. And there you will read the account when Nathan the prophet comes to David and exposes his adulterous affair with Bathsheba. And the prophetic word came to David at that time with this warning.

It's 2nd Samuel 12 verses 11 to 13. This is Nathan speaking, he says, thus says the Lord, behold I will raise up against you from your own household. I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion.

And he shall lie with your wives in broad daylight. Indeed you did it secretly, you sinned with Bathsheba secretly. But I will do this thing before all of Israel and under the sun.

And so what we see with Absalom is a fulfillment of Nathan's prophecy and tragically it turns out to be David's own son that he was talking about when he says, I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion. Now David of course as we know confessed when Nathan prophesied or when Nathan came to him and said you've sinned, David immediately confessed his sin and he was forgiven. The Bible says the Lord said to him, I have forgiven your sin.

But nevertheless the law of sowing and reaping still was fulfilled even though he had been forgiven. You see God's grace does not rule out the chastisement of the Lord. Listen to the fulfillment of what Nathan prophesied to David.

It's in 2nd Samuel 16. Go and sleep with your father's wife. Sure, just have them be seated, that's what we're here for.

Here's what happened, here's the fulfillment, listen to the fulfillment of it. 2nd Samuel says go and sleep. This is Absalom's advisors now telling him this.

He says go and sleep with your father's wives for he has left them here to keep house. Then all Israel will know that you have insulted him beyond the possibility of reconciliation and they will close ranks behind you. So a tent was erected on the roof of the palace where everybody could see it and Absalom went into his father's concubine in the sight of all Israel.

Now let me give you the picture again. When Absalom plotted this overthrow, David left the palace and his son comes in and on the very rooftop he sets up a tent to engage in adulterous activity. But the point is that all of it was a fulfillment of what Nathan had said would happen to David because of his sin.

Now follow me please. Like David we too are often faced with troubles and backlashes and sufferings and sorrows which is the harvest of our past sins. And it is often an irreversible fact that even after, even after our reconciliation to Christ, we must still reap what we have sown.

We may or we may not be able to reverse the fruit of past decisions in which we acted contrary to the will of God. My father was a pastor. His father was a pastor.

They come from a family of preachers. But when my father went to the Marines as a young man, he got away from God, he backslid, and he started to drink heavy and he drank hard liquor. And when I came along as a young lad, all of my life growing up, my father was sick.

My father had stomach ulcers. And how many times I heard him say, though he believed God for healing, and though he trusted God, yet he would say many a time, he said, I'm reaping what I have sown. I am reaping those years of having drank hard liquor and now I have ulcers.

I think of converted, I think of some of our young converts today who were, and in the past were intravenous drug users, and now have to reap the tragedy of AIDS. And we've begun to see the breakout of this among some of our fine graduates, fine. I think of one fine young leader down in Virginia.

Seven years the Lord had delivered him. Seven years he was clean from drugs and was a fine director of one of the branches of our ministry. And one day a little spot appears on his forehead.

And in six months, in six months he dies as a result of AIDS. The law of the harvest. How many times I've counseled a husband whose marriage broke up because of his past drug or alcohol addiction, and the sufferings that he put his wife through during those days.

And sometimes that broken relationship is irreversible. Or even when there is reconciliation, it is often not without pain and suffering. And when this happens, you see, the suffering has been the result of reaping.

The law of the harvest is coming back. It's reaping what has been sown. Or I think of, I think of couples or families that get saved in later life.

And their children are teenagers. But when they were younger, they were not living for God. And then they get saved.

And they want their children to serve the Lord, but their children have the seeds of rebellion in them. And they reap the harvest of having lived an ungodly life at an important point in the life of their children. And the children did never went to church.

The children were never raised in a Christian home. And they get saved, but then their children all, it's already, almost too late. They've already gone on their way.

Now in many cases, we've seen marvelous conversions. But in other cases, I've seen hearts, I've seen parents whose hearts have been broken. The law of the harvest.

I think of a businessman who had three investors whose money, three other fine members of the church, who turned to him and put a great amount of life savings in his hands for an investment. An investment that went wrong. An investment that had entangled in it some unethical things as well.

And as a result, they lost their money. Now the man repented before God, but he paid dearly, not only financially, but in terms of the emotional pain and anger of his fellow church members. You see, the law of the harvest.

You reap what you sow. And how often I look at some of our residents and young men and teens, and some of them could stand and testify tonight that they have pain in their body now. They're going through sorrows physically in their body because of what they put their body through in the past.

They are reaping the law of the harvest. But listen to David as he describes the troubles that he reaped through Absalom. Psalms 41 and 9, he says, even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted up his heel against me.

You see what happened when Absalom rebelled. He took with him some of David's closest allies, some of his his best counselors, men who had broke bread with him, men whom he had trusted. But when they saw the political winds blowing a certain way, they turned against David.

And his heart was broken as he saw, he said, even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted up his heel against me. And then David speaks of those who seek my life to destroy it and who delight in my hurt. But the point is David accepts all of this as happening within God's sovereign will.

Listen to what he says in Psalms 40 and 12. He said, mine iniquities have overtaken me so that I am not able to see. David was so broken over this.

His troubles were so great that tears went down his eyes so that he could not even see because of the tears in his eyes. Now please listen to me carefully. I want to make it very clear that not all of David's troubles and not all of your troubles is a result of reaping what we've sown.

There is a suffering and there is our trials and persecution that comes because of our righteousness. The Bible says all they that would live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. And if you're going to live a righteous life, you're going to pay for that.

You're going to suffer troubles because of that. But David realizes that it happens both ways. There is there is suffering that comes because of righteousness as well as from our past unrighteous deeds.

And David's troubles were the result of both. He knew that God had forgiven him. There was no question about that whatsoever in his mind, but he also knew that when you break certain laws, you pay the price of disobedience.

Another result of the law of the law of reaping and sowing is the attitude that we face of others who witness our troubles. Look at Psalms 3, what David said. In the second verse he said, many are saying of my soul there is no deliverance for him in God.

Now as David flees to safety having vacated the palace, from all outward appearances he is a defeated, he's a beaten, he's a humiliated man. Let me give you the full picture of David's plight and his flight. First Samuel the 15th chapter.

It says, there came a messenger to David saying, the hearts of the men of Israel are with Absalom. In other words, he was saying to David, it's all over David. It's all over.

There's more of them than there are of us. Absalom has won the hearts of the people. It's all over.

And David said to his servants who were with him at Jerusalem, he said, arise and let us flee for otherwise none of us shall escape from Absalom. Go in haste lest he overtake us quickly and bring calamity down on us and strike the city with the edge of the sword. And the next scene that you hear and to read about is David and about 600 men leaving the palace and going up outside of Jerusalem into the hills to hide.

600 men, while Absalom has over 20,000. And this is what it says, and David went up to the ascent of the Mount of Olives and he wept as he went and his head was covered and he walked barefooted. Now think of it, the king, the king is walking barefooted.

He's got his head down. He's got his head covered. And David appears to be stripped of all the trappings of a king.

And he accepts the fact that God is doing the stripping. And this is the reason that he wept and the reason that he covered his head and he walked barefoot. And to make matters worse, his enemies mock not only David but the God in whom he loved and trusted.

And they said, where is your God now? Why has God forsaken you? If you were walking in faith, I can just hear some of them now, they were saying to David, if you had had a positive confession, you'd never be going through the thing that you're going through right now. They'd say that never would happen, that could never happen to a king or king's kid. You see, when the saints go through troubles and chastisement and strippings and suffering, it's hard for the unbeliever and the undiscerning to understand that this can be the deeding of God.

I remember hearing a story when I was a little boy about somebody walking down the street and supposedly the devil was sitting at the side of the road with his head down and he was crying. He said, devil, why are you crying? Because, he said, I'd just been down there to that Pentecostal church and they were blaming me for a lot of things that I never did. And too often we automatically blame the devil when it's a fact that sometimes it's simply a man reaping what he's sown, the results of his own disobedience.

And listen, if you're in a situation like that, don't worry about the honor of God if you're going through troubles. And don't pay attention to the questions or the mockings of the ungodly. The world does not understand this principle of reaping and sowing and neither do many Christians.

When the PTL thing broke, many Christians did not discern that the downfall of Jim Baker was not because of the news media or Jerry Falwell. It was a principle that whatsoever a man sow, God will not be mocked. Whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap.

And so David says, many are saying of my soul there is no deliverance for him in God. But you know the beautiful thing about it is David didn't say that. He's not troubled or questioning God.

He has no theological problem with suffering. He understands the relationship between God's grace and the law of reaping and sowing. And that's what I want you to understand tonight.

David experiences God's grace even while accepting the chastisement of the Lord. And David's heart never had a deeper, oh when I read these Psalms, David's heart never had a deeper sense of divine grace than at this time when he experiences the righteous actions of God's judgment because of his past sins. Listen to what he says.

I want you to turn with me. I want you to see it for yourself. Please turn to Psalms 39 9 to 11.

David learned not to complain too quickly. He learned not to blame God too quickly. He said I, Psalms 39 verse 9, he said, I have become dumb.

I do not open my mouth because it is thou who has done it. Remove thy plague from me because of the opposition of thy hand I am perishing. With reproof thou dost chasten a man for iniquity.

Now listen to me. David is a beautiful testimony of a man who is enjoying the fullness of God's grace. He's been abundantly pardoned for his sin.

He has communion and fellowship with God and yet at the same time he's been kicked out of the palace. He's suffering innumerable troubles. He doesn't know if he's gonna live or die.

And all the while that he's suffering humiliation and the loss of his home and his position, he admits all of this is because of the opposition of thy hand. It is thou who has done it. Now listen to me.

You do not understand God's grace until you've acknowledged that God is with you even in the face of an Absalom who has risen up with a sword in his hand because and causes you untold troubles and suffering. You that once abused your body with drugs or alcohol or a wicked lifestyle. If you sown to the wind, you will reap the whirlwind in your physical suffering in your body.

And the fact that you do so is a law of reaping and a sowing that come to pass. But let me tell you at the same time, it does not mean that God has forsaken you. Many times people come to the Lord and think he's just gonna wipe everything aside.

Yes, he wipes your sins away. Yes, he does. But he doesn't always wipe away the fact that you've violated certain biblical principles in your body or otherwise.

You've violated principles and relationships with other people and they're not gonna love you overnight. Your family may not accept you. Your wife may not accept you.

There may be irreversible damage that's done, but that doesn't mean that God hasn't forsaken you. If you're facing an Absalom with a sword drawn, maybe you caused that Absalom to rise up. And as you reap the whirlwind, remember this, that if you've repented over those wild oats, your current troubles is not a sign that God has forsaken you.

God still has everything under control, and that's what David has to teach us. Listen to what David says. Listen, David uses his troubles as an occasion to grow closer to God and to deepen his prayer life.

Look at Psalms 3 and 4. He said, I was crying to the Lord with my voice, and he answered me from his holy mouth. He's crying, not in the palace. He's crying in his troubles.

Psalms 43, 3 and 4, it says, O send out thy light and thy truth. Let them lead me. Let them bring me to thy holy hill.

Who was the them? The them was Absalom. It was his enemies. He says, I look at my enemies.

I see all this trouble. Let it be a motivation for me to get down on my knees before God. He says, let me go to thy dwelling places.

He said, then I will go to the altar of God. My God, to God my exceeding joy, and upon the lyre I shall praise thee. O God, my God.

You see, I don't believe that David was any ever—there was never a time when he was closer to God. There wasn't a time that he didn't pray more than when he was separated from the palace and when he was in that situation with Absalom. I believe that God was more real to him in his trouble than when he was sitting around the palace with all the trappings of his kingdom.

He used the occasion to grow closer to the Lord. He also used the occasion to encourage himself in the Lord. Listen to David talking.

Do you ever talk to yourself? All the time, yes. David started talking. Listen to how David talks to himself.

He said, why are you in despair, O my soul? He's talking to his soul. He said, why are you in despair, O my soul, and why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him. He goes on, he says, while they say to me all day long, where is your God? These things I remember, and I pour out my soul within me.

He said, I used to go along with a throng and lead them in procession to the house of God, and with a voice of joy and thanksgiving and multitudes keeping festival. You see, David remembers the good times, and he remembers that you can have good times in bad times. Look at verse 5. He said, I lay down and sleep.

I awoke, for the Lord sustains me. You don't have to take a sleeping pill, you see, when you know that God has everything under control. When you know that God's in charge of your life, in spite of the troubles that you're... I don't think I've ever said this to you guys at Teen Challenge.

Did you ever hear my definition of a Christian's hangover? You know what a non-Christian hangover is. Well, let me tell you what a Christian hangover... You know, we're here tonight, and we're enjoying the presence of the Lord, and the Lord's ministering to you, and the joy of the Lord is your strength, and we're experiencing all this, and tonight, when you go home, like David, you can lay down and wake up in the morning, and what you're experiencing tonight can hang over tomorrow. That's called a Christian hangover.

And David, in the midst of his troubles, said, I can sleep, for the Lord sustains me. I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people who have set themselves against me round about. Hallelujah.

And David's affliction gave him also a deeper revelation of God's mercy in relationship to judgment. David realizes that yes, he's under God's judgment. Yes, his unrighteous actions sowed the seeds of Absalom's rebellion.

But God never suffers us to be tempted or to be tried beyond what we're able to bear. He permits Absalom to go only so far and no further. And because of these troubles, David is made to realize that when the enemy comes in like a flood, God stops it before you drown.

Hallelujah. And what is he saying in verse 3? He said, but thou, O Lord, art a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head. David goes from rejection to exultation in God.

He goes from weeping, he goes from weeping to worshiping, and God lifts his head up. And tonight, if you're here and you're living in a down, your head's bowed down, I want you to know that he wants to be your glory and the lifter of your head. Hallelujah.

Why art thou cast down, O my soul? He can lift it up. I think of a fellow, a Teen Challenge fellow gave me this, told me the testimony. He said, I got saved, graduated, and went home to my neighborhood.

He said, no, and he said, nobody would talk to me. He said, when I'd come down the street, he'd said, they'd shut the door and they'd put the windows down. Nobody would believe I was changed.

He said, all I did was just live it. I just lived it. He said, finally, they began to see what God has done in my life.

And he says, now, he said, I can walk down the street and they open the windows and they open their doors and they say, hello, mister. He said, I walk proudly. I walk with my head raised up.

Hallelujah. And that's what God can do for you. He can take you that have been bowed down and he can lift your head.

Hallelujah. I was in a hospital room in Richmond, Virginia a few months ago. The young man that I spoke to you about before, seven years converted, one of our fine leaders, and in six months he was gone.

In six months, in a few months later, his wife, who contracted AIDS as well, was lying at her desk door in the hospital. And I was there speaking and so they asked me, would you go and visit Lydia in the hospital? And I went there and because of her physical condition, and this was really, I must admit, this is the first time that I had seen somebody in that state or that stage of near death from AIDS. And the devil was doing a job on her because of her physical condition.

She was just skin and bones and most of her hair was gone. And she was so down and so discouraged. And I began to talk to her.

And she started to revive and she says, she finally, she recognized. She said, oh, Brother Don, she said, thank you for coming. And she started to speak words of discouragement and doubt and began to minister to that.

And we began to pray. And I watched the presence of the Lord come into that room. And I saw a woman whose soul was cast down.

I saw the glory of God. I saw what David experienced, my glory and the lifter of my head. Hallelujah.

And I want to tell you, she went out, lifted, hallelujah, in her spirit unto the Lord. Psalms 27 and 6 says, and now my head will be lifted up above my enemies round about me. And I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy.

I will sing. Yes, I will sing praises to the Lord. Whether your troubles have come from the law of the harvest or not, if it's come from having sown what you yourself have reaped, or if it comes for other reasons, it doesn't matter.

But think of David in the midst of his trouble. He didn't know what the outcome was going to be. He didn't know if Absalom and Absalom did not succeed, but he didn't know it at the time.

And in the midst of his trouble, he says, I declare my unswerving, my undeniable faith in God that in spite of that difficulty, he's my glory. He's the lifter of my head. Hallelujah.

And if you have been living in a state where your heart and your spirit and your head has been bowed down, for whatever reason it is, tonight I believe God wants to lift you and he wants you to go out of this place tonight with your head held high in confidence to God. Hallelujah. Oh Lord, we thank you tonight.

We thank you that you are our glory. You're a shield about us. You're our glory.

You're our presence. You're our joy. You're our victory.

You're the one that can lift our head. Hallelujah. Lord, I pray for that one tonight who's suffering in his body because of the past sins.

I pray for that one who is in a broken relationship in marriage or in a family relationship, and it's a burden upon their back tonight. God, may they realize that in the midst of that troubles, you are there to lift them. Hallelujah.

Release them, Lord, from that burden right here, right now. Release them from it in the name of Jesus at this very moment. We want to be able to walk with our heads held high, looking unto you.

Hallelujah. Because you lift our heads and our spirits. Glory to God.

Glory to God. Bless us, Lord, as we come around the communion table in Jesus' name. Amen.

Also, to be separated and gathered unto Christ, and then also to go and to do the same again. You see, the danger within the church, the danger within the church is always to neglect evangelism while dealing with David and Saul issues.