A Faith Worth Fighting For - Part Five

Summer in the Psalms ‘22

Allen Snapp

Grace Community Church

Sept. 4, 2022

A Faith Worth Fighting For Part Five

A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son.

O Lord, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me;
² many are saying of my soul, “There is no salvation for him in God.” Selah

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

⁵ I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me. ⁶ I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around.

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.

⁸ Salvation belongs to the Lord; your blessing be on your people! Selah Ps. 3:1-8

As we bring this series of messages called A Faith Worth Fighting For to a close, we come to what I think is the most faith-building, encouraging verse in the entire psalm. But before we get there I want to point something out about David and his fight that we really haven’t emphasized up to now: this is a fight David didn’t want to have. This is a battlefield David didn’t ever want to set foot on.

When David stepped onto the battlefield with Goliath, it was a battlefield and a fight David welcomed. The size and strength of the enemy didn’t scare David, he ran right at him saying, “you come against me with sword and spear and javelin.” A javelin was a short, light spear that was thrown at the enemy. Goliath is well armed with a sword and a spear for up close fighting and a javelin for killing his opponent from a distance.

David ran onto that battlefield saying, “you come against me with these weapons but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts.”

But his enemy here is his son Absalom, whom he loves. David knows in this fight, if he loses he loses and if he wins he loses. This is a fight David never wanted and a battlefield David would rather never have set foot on.

We don’t always get to choose where the battles rage in our lives.

The enemy of our souls is a master strategist who studies his opponents to learn where their weaknesses are. He knows your weaknesses, and he knows my weaknesses and he picks the battlefields that play to his strengths and our weaknesses. Your battlefield might not be the same as the person sitting next to you and their battlefield might not be the same as my battlefield. We have the same enemy, but we fight on different battlefields.

Life can be going along good and all of a sudden, like Absalom riding into Jerusalem, something rides into our lives and we find ourselves on a battlefield we don’t want to be on in a fight we don’t want to be in.

The sudden loss of a job. Conflict with our spouse. A son or daughter making some bad life choices. A health crisis. I have a friend who was told recently by doctors that, apart from a miracle, he has less than three years to live. His FB posts of late are a beautiful and touching journal of his battle for faith.

A lot of battlefields go on in the heart where maybe no one else even knows it’s going on. Worry that keeps you up at night. Depression that makes it hard to get out of bed in the morning. The death of a dream - we always dreamed life would go in a certain direction and now we’re watching that dream die.

The battles look different from person to person but the voices say the same thing: you can’t win this time. It’s over, you’re going down, God can’t (or won’t) help you this time.

The many voices in verse 2 are really the voice of the enemy of our soul who wants to make us doubt the goodness and power of our God. The accuser who night and day accuses us to ourselves and to God.

We’ve learned three ways from David how to fight our enemy on these battlefields:

1. Speak truth to lies
2. Pray fervently for God’s help
3. Do good by the power of God

Last point:

4. Believe God for salvation and for blessing on our lives

⁸ Salvation belongs to the Lord; your blessing be on your people! Selah

In verse 2 they are saying there is no salvation for you in God. David says to these voices, uh-uh, you don’t get to say who is saved and who isn’t. Salvation belongs to the LORD. God alone says who is saved and who isn’t because God alone is the One who saves.

What does it mean when it says salvation?

The Hebrew word means rescue or help. In Psalm 3 it means being rescued from Absalom and his army but it means more than physical rescue from an enemy. It means being rescued from everything and everyone that is out to destroy our lives. Including ourselves.

Satan’s objective is to destroy you. Jesus said the enemy comes to rob, kill, and destroy. Three adjectives that combined speak of utter and total destruction. But Satan didn’t have the ability or the authority to destroy our lives until he found an unlikely ally in the war against our souls: ourselves. Sin is the trojan horse that plants the enemy inside us, bending us to self-destruction.

I was troubled to read that among young people the hashtag #selfharm has increased 500% since October. That’s Satan’s greatest desire for young people: to destroy them by motivating them to destroy themselves. He comes to rob, kill, and destroy.

God’s heart is to save and to bless. To do good to His people.

Jesus didn’t come to destroy us or to judge us. He came to save us with a salvation encompasses all of our lives. Of course the most important way Jesus saves is by saving us from sin, death, and hell and for eternity in the kingdom of Jesus with God our Father.

If Jesus didn’t save us in any other way, it would be far more than enough. For those who are saved, we have eternity with Christ to look forward to.

But Jesus didn’t come only to save us after death. He came to save us in life too. Salvation is Jesus making us whole right now, right here, in the battlefields of life. When Jesus healed the woman who had been battling with a bleeding disorder he told her “your faith has saved you.” Your faith has made you whole. Salvation belongs to the Lord! When the blind man called out to Jesus to heal him, Jesus said, “go in peace, your faith has saved you.” He came to save us from the battles we encounter every day. The battles that I mentioned before: worry and fear and depression and loneliness and insecurity. He came to save relationships through the transforming power of love, forgiveness, and healing so that marriages can be restored, the hearts of the children can be turned back to their parents, and enemies can become friends.

The enemy wants to destroy your life. Jesus wants to save it. And he alone can save it!

Peter said there is no other name given under heaven and earth by which man can be saved. Salvation belongs to the Lord! No one can be saved by their own efforts. Salvation belongs to the Lord. No one can be saved by someone else other than Jesus or some other religion other than faith in Jesus or some humanitarian good work. Salvation belongs to the Lord.

And the Lord gives salvation to all those who belong to Him. The important word is the word “belong”. David writes salvation belongs to the Lord; your blessing be on your people. “Your people” means the people who belong to the Lord.

In David’s mind that meant the Jews. But through the gospel, the invitation to be the people of God extends to all people, every nation, every culture, all levels of education and wealth and ability, all people, no exclusions!

To belong to the Lord is as simple as believing in Christ as your Lord and Savior. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved – you and your household. (Acts 16:31). All those who trust in Christ are saved. All those who don’t aren’t. Salvation belongs to the Lord.

If you are a Christian, believe God in the battle you are facing today. Believe God for that relationship to be healed. Believe God to help you fight and overcome that worry, that depression, that loneliness, that sense of broken dreams, whatever battlefield you find yourself on. Will the battle be over instantly? Maybe, but probably not. Some battles we’ll fight all our lives. But we don’t fight alone. The battle belongs to the Lord (1 Sam 17:47) and salvation belongs to the Lord and we belong to the Lord.

If you’re not a Christian, I invite you to put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ today. There is no other name by which we can be saved. Satan wants to destroy every part of your life – your hopes and dreams, your relationships, your soul. And you have a hashtag #Selfharm built into you through sin. That’s why the more you get what you want the more empty you feel. Your soul longs to belong to God, and He longs for you to belong to Him too. He loves you so much He gave His Son to die on the cross so that you could be saved.

All you need to do is believe. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. If you are ready to believe, pray this prayer with me.

Dear Jesus, I know I am a sinner and that I can’t save myself. I believe that salvation belongs to you alone. Please come into my life and save me. Save me from myself, save me from the battles I face every day, and save me from hell and for your kingdom. I believe in you, Jesus. Save me please!