Meditation this evening, I'm asking you to turn,
please, to the Book of the Psalms.
I'd like to talk a little bit about
Psalm 3, the third psalm.
I'm going to read the title of this
psalm, and as I've chosen this, I'm not
unmindful of the fact that I have spoken
on this psalm in other places in this
city, but I, in keeping with the subject
which has been assigned to us for today,
the subject of salvation, I would like to
take the last verse of this psalm as
my text.
But let me read the whole psalm, including
the title.
The psalm of David when he fled from
Absalom his son, Lord, how are they increased
that trouble me?
Many are they that rise up against me.
Many there be which save my soul.
There's no help for him in God, but
thou, O Lord, art a shield for me,
my glory and the lifter up of my
head.
I cried unto the Lord with my voice,
and he heard me out of his holy
hill.
I laid me down and slept.
I awaked, for the Lord sustained me.
I will not be afraid of ten thousands
of people that have set themselves against me.
Arise, O Lord, save me, O my God,
for thou hast smitten all mine enemies upon
the cheek bone.
Thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly.
Salvation belongeth unto the Lord.
Thy blessing is upon thy people.
Selah.
Those of you who were present this morning
to hear Dr. Crichton will recall that he
spoke on the three tenses.
There is a sense in which we believers
in the Lord Jesus Christ can say we
are saved, saved by grace.
There is a sense in which we shall
yet be saved according to the eighth chapter
of Romans.
We are saved in hope of that glorious
day when our bodies as well as our
spirit and soul will feel the effect of
the wonderful work of our Father on Calvary's
cross.
But in between these two there's another tense
of salvation and that's the present tense.
It is of this that I want to
speak a little bit tonight because I think
it's a very necessary word.
One of the first things you become aware
of after you declare yourself on the side
of the Lord Jesus, you suddenly discover that
you're living in a very hostile world.
And this has been true of the children
of God from the very beginning, way back
to the days of Cain and Abel, and
all along the line.
You find that God's children have had to
live in a hostile scene.
And yet it is this very thing that
the Lord Jesus said would happen.
He said, In the world ye shall have
tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have
overcome the world.
But we have two enemies.
We have one from within, that's ourselves.
And this is a great struggle.
This is something that gets some people down
so low that they wonder whether they're going
to be saved.
And it's all because they don't finish reading
the chapter and read on into the next
chapter in Romans.
Because at the very close of Romans 7,
the Apostle Paul asks the question, Who shall
deliver me from the body of this death?
I thank God, through Jesus Christ.
There is deliverance.
So I'm not going to speak about that
side today, because that will probably be emphasized
more tomorrow, when we talk about sanctification.
But this evening, to talk about that present
tense of salvation, that deliverance from things that
are hostile to us.
And according to the title of this psalm,
you'll notice that this comes pretty close to
home.
Every time I read this title, I heave
a sigh of relief that I never had
an experience like this.
I have only one son living.
One is in heaven.
But I'm thankful to say that the son
whom God has given me never treated me
like this.
When he drove his father from his home
and from his throne and from his family,
and actually defiled his father, one can't think
of a more despicable, heartbreaking thing than that.
You wonder sometimes how anybody could get anything
out of an experience like that, except by
passing through it.
You say, what good does that do me?
We read stories like this, and we say,
well, this is terrible.
But it is out of an experience just
like that, that the psalmist got this beautiful
third psalm.
And I wonder sometimes if Jonah had this
psalm in mind, because he used the very
same words at the close of his prayer,
down in the whale's belly, that you have
at the close of this one, when he
said, salvation is of the low.
But you'll notice that immediately you get into
the psalm itself, and you find that the
psalmist not only has one enemy, but he
has a lot of them.
He says, Lord, how have they increased that
trouble me?
Many there be which rise up against me.
Many there be.
Notice the emphasis on the numbers here.
This is overwhelming, isn't it?
When you remember that we Christians are really
in the minority.
You study comparative religions and study missions, and
you discover that we Christians are in the
minority.
We're hopelessly outnumbered by non-Christian faiths, as
well as those who have no faith whatever.
Hopelessly outnumbered.
If we're ever going to win because of
numbers, we're lost now.
We've lost the battle.
So that when we think of these hosts
of enemies against us, we say to ourselves,
what's the use?
What's the use?
But we're going to see, dear friends, that
in spite of this fact, that we're facing
a hostile foe, and he's there in numbers
far outnumbering our own.
Nevertheless, we're assured a victory.
I remember as a student, in my student
days, I was witnessing to a fellow student,
who by the way was the son of
a missionary but he didn't share his father's
faith.
In fact, he said to me one day,
he said, don't you know that you've come
up here on this hill?
Don't you know that you've come up here
for a liberal education?
I said, yes.
Well, he said, how much longer are you
going to fool around with this?
He says, come on, climb on the bandwagon.
Get with the crowd.
I said, Bob, you know the story of
the crucifixion?
Oh, of course, he said, every Christian knows
that.
Well, I said, since you know it so
well, you'll be ready to answer the next
question.
Tell me, who was right at Calvary?
The majority or the minority?
Who was it that set away with him
away with him crucifixion?
It was the majority.
And I said, Bob, I traveled with that
crowd long enough, even though I was saved
as a teenager, I traveled long enough with
that crowd.
I may not be with the majority today.
He had no answer for that.
But you know, it's not only the numbers
that the enemy would threaten us with, it's
what he says.
Do you ever notice this discouraging language?
It says here, verse two, many there be
which say of mine, there's no help for
him in God.
Much as they say even God can't help
him.
You know, this kind of discouraging, pessimistic language,
when I read some of these modern day
novels, such as the works of John, perhaps
some of you know his book called No
Exit, or some of Camus' works, and every
last one of them impresses me with the
hopelessness of their situation.
They have no hope to offer.
As a matter of fact, John Paul Sartre's
book No Exit would almost drive one to
suicide if he didn't have any real hope.
And here they give expression to this in
saying it about you and me.
And you know the mischief of it is
sometimes, as one of the great politicians, I
wouldn't call him a great man, I'm referring
to Adolf Hitler, peace be to his ashes,
who said you repeat a lie often enough
and people will believe it, and the enemy
repeats this lie to us, there's no help
for him, there's no help for him in
God.
But you know at this point in the
psalm we have that little word selah again,
which we said the other day, stands for
give your time to think this thing over
that you've just heard.
And then comes a tremendous change.
How I like the contrast in that third
verse, but.
Oh, these conjunctions of contrast, how wonderful they
are.
But thou, you bring God into the picture.
And three things are said here about God
which I want to pass on to you
tonight, and the first of these is, but
thou, O Lord, art a shield for me.
I want you to notice, friends, it's not
only that he gives me a shield.
For many years in reading that verse in
Ephesians 6, where it says above all taking
the shield of faith, I thought that that
shield was made of my faith.
And one day when I needed the shield
very badly I thought I'd use that.
But I discovered to my disappointment that my
faith was more like a sieve than a
shield, full of holes.
So I looked at this verse again.
Maybe I haven't read it correctly.
Yes, I'd read it correctly.
I consulted my Greek testament to see whether
there was any difference there.
And I discovered very easily, quite suddenly, that
this was in the genitive case, as we
say in English, and that I could translate
this, above all taking faith's shield.
Not too easy to say, especially if you
have a little lisp in your tongue, you
know.
But this is the force of it.
It's not a shield made of faith, but
it's the shield that faith takes.
It's faith's shield.
And way back in the fifteenth chapter of
the book of Genesis we have God saying
this to Abram, Fear not, Abram, I am
thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.
Somebody said, but how can you use the
Lord as a shield?
Well, I had a good illustration of that
some years ago up in western Montana.
A dear brother up there, who was faithfully
ministering the Word, was invited to a rather
small town.
He got there on a Saturday afternoon and
went to the hotel where he was told
there were accommodations for him.
And they told him his room number, and
he went up to it and discovered as
he looked around that there were no towels
in the bathroom.
So he lifted the receiver of the telephone
and called the office, called the desk to
say, there are no towels in my bathroom,
I'd like to take a bath, and would
you please attend to this?
And the clerk apologized and said, well, I'm
sorry, sir, we'll have a maid there in
a few minutes with the towels.
And sure enough, in a few minutes the
maid came in with a towel draped over
her arms, but instead of leaving the towels
in the bathroom, she sat down on a
chair and proceeded to engage the guest in
a conversation.
And it was very evident to him by
the turn the conversation was taking, which was
rather one-sided, that she was there for
no good purpose.
And when he sensed what she was after,
and I'll let you guess for yourselves, he
didn't know just what to do, whether to
call the desk again and say, I ask
you to remove this woman from my room.
But in quick thinking he thought, if I
do that, she'll probably accuse me of making
the advances.
So he reached down in his briefcase and
he pulled out his Bible.
He says, you know, I'd like to tell
you what the Lord Jesus Christ means to
me.
His towels in the bathroom in thirty seconds.
What had he done?
He had used the Lord as his shield.
Just as simple as that.
He didn't even have to begin to talk.
Just to show this book.
And dear friends, that in itself sometimes is
so powerful and so wonderful.
I had this experience not a few weeks
ago over in Switzerland, returning from a visit
to the Middle East.
We all had to be frisked at the
airport in Zurich in Switzerland.
I'd gone through this experience on my way
out.
So I was quite prepared for these men.
I had to hand over my baggage and
I opened my coat before I actually got
in the room where the man was going
to look me over.
And he looked at me for a moment.
He says, I think I can believe you.
You can go.
So I started out.
But outside was a man going through my
baggage.
He didn't know it was my bag until
he looked at me.
He had my Bible in his hand.
He stuck it in there and put the...
I wasn't frisked after that.
The word of God is a wonderful shield.
When I first got my first automobile, it
was an open car, four door.
I conceived the idea of having a gospel
text painted on each one of those four
doors.
Door number one had all of sin that
controlled the glory of God.
Door number two had the blood of Jesus
Christ, God's Son cleansed from all sin.
I had two more on the other side.
Insurance man called me up in town.
He said, say, I hear you've bought a
new car.
I said, yes, I have.
He says, how about getting insured?
I said, well, I'll bring the car down.
If you think I need any insurance, I'll
buy it.
He came out and took one of them.
I could leave the key in that car.
Nobody took it.
But you know, there's more.
He's the lifter up of my head.
I don't have to go down as one
who's ashamed of his faith or to have
the look of defeatism, but with a head
up, not in pride, but looking forward as
one who's unafraid of the world, thou art
the lifter up of my head, and my
glory, the one in whom I boast.
You notice, dear friends, that all of these
things here constitute a real defense?
The Word of God, the Lord himself, he's
our glory, the one in whom we boast,
he's the lifter up of our head.
Yes, somebody says, now that's very wonderful, but
how does it work out in practice?
Well, in the next two verses, verses 4
and 5 and 6, you'll notice that the
psalmist goes on to tell us something about
his experience.
And the very first thing he talks about
is a thing that you and I should
have been able to talk about very soon
after we were saved.
Notice what it says in verse 3, verse
4 rather, I cried unto the Lord with
my voice, and he heard me.
You know, reduced to its simplest terms, it's
just this, I prayed and he answered.
You ever consider what a wonderful apologetic, what
a wonderful defense answered prayer is?
You know, people can argue themselves blue in
the face, but when you point out how
time after time God has answered prayer, and
down the years now you multiply this as
I can for more than sixty-five, sixty
-six years knowing my Lord and Savior, what
a wonderful record of answered prayer.
But very early in my Christian experience, I
had occasion to go to a doctor who
was also an ordained Baptist minister.
I needed his help for my body, and
the day I went to see him, the
office was quite full of people.
In those days, the doctor did his own
reception work, and when he saw me in
there, he knew me well and knew that
I was at the end of the line.
He disappeared into his office again, and presently
he came out with a loose-leaf book.
He said, maybe you'd like to look over
my prayer book while you're waiting.
Prayer book?
My parents were Lutherans, they had a prayer
book.
I still have the prayer book of the
Episcopal Church, which we call the Church of
England, yes, and I read it frequently.
But I never knew of the Baptist having
a prayer book.
This was a new one on me, and
when I saw that it was a loose
-leaf book, I wondered even more.
It was the kind of a book that
you could buy in those days for two
bits, I mean fifty cents.
It was just a small, cheap book.
But as I looked through this book, it
was the most wonderful book.
It was absolutely unique.
At the top of the page, the doctor
had written a prayer that he had prayed,
and the date when he prayed it.
And then he put down the dates when
he repeated this prayer.
And page after page, page after page, at
the bottom of the page he wrote, answered
such and such a day.
Dozens of pages.
I said, when I got my chance to
go in to see the doctor, I said,
well, Dr. Brown, this is a very interesting
book.
I said, where'd you get the idea for
this?
You know, I was brought up in a
school where you had to have scripture for
everything like that, you know.
Where'd you get this?
Well, he said, the Bible tells me to
continue in prayer, and this is evidence I'm
doing it.
And watch in the same with Thanksgiving, and
that's evidence I'm doing that.
So he had two good scriptures for his
prayer book.
Well, I said, I don't suppose you have
much use for this except for your own
personal enjoyment?
Oh, he said, every once in a while.
He said, I get a skeptic and an
agnostic or even an atheist come in the
office here.
And he said, I like to keep them
waiting and say to them, would you like
to look over this prayer book while you
wait?
This is a tremendous apologetic.
And you know, dear friends, they can talk
to you about all the mistakes in the
Bible and all that sort of thing.
Don't argue with them.
Just tell them what God did for you.
But you say, brother, God doesn't always answer
my prayers in the affirmative.
That's true.
I know something about that.
You know, you don't live more than four
score years without discovering that God has more
than one answer to prayer.
Sometimes he says yes, sometimes he says no.
Then again, he says, wait, you've heard that
before.
I've had so many answers to prayer, but
I've also had times when the Lord said
no.
What then?
Ah, the next verse answers that question.
Look at this, verse five.
I laid me down and slept, and I
waked for what?
The Lord.
And you know, dear friends, sometimes this is
even a better testimony than to say the
Lord heard my prayers.
If he didn't answer your prayer, but he
gave you sustaining grace.
Wasn't that wonderful?
That's exactly what he did for the Apostle
Paul.
He gave Paul a thorn in the flesh.
And Paul sought him thrice, three times over.
He asked him to take it away, but
he didn't.
But he said, my grace is sufficient for
thee in the providence of God.
I had a most wonderful lady as my
life companion for forty-seven and a half
years.
For twenty-three of those years, she was
an invalid.
We often prayed about that, but the Lord
didn't, wasn't pleased to remove the sickness.
The doctors said after they diagnosed that she
would be dead in two years, but she
lived twenty-three.
And when I said to the doctor, how
come?
Did you miss your guess?
No, he said she just had the will
to live.
And I remembered how one time when they
had given her up, and she opened her
eyes again and was coming back to life.
And she said in her scotch, I'm no
dead yet.
But God had given sustaining grace.
And all through those twenty-three years, wonderful.
You know, I wouldn't change him for anything
in the world.
Beloved, don't ask the Lord to take away
something that he's using for your blessing.
It may be the very best thing that
ever could happen.
The Lord sustained me.
And then you notice in verse six, he
has courage.
He says, I'll not be afraid of ten
thousands of people that have set themselves against
me round about.
You see, this is the fruit of that
experience.
A man gets to the point where he's
unafraid.
You know, sometimes people wonder at you when
you're unafraid.
I remember as a young man down in
Honduras as a missionary, my companion and I
were stoned by a whole mob up in
Colinas de Santa Barbara.
Thirty years later, it was my privilege to
visit the field again.
I visited my hometown in Santa Rosula.
And in my audience that night was a
man whose eyes fairly bored through me.
I like eye contact when I'm preaching.
But I could hardly take it from this
man.
I tried to hide behind a bouquet that
was on the table before me, but I
couldn't get away from him.
And after the meeting, he came up, he
said, did you at one time visit a
place called Colinas de Santa Barbara?
About 30 years ago, I said, yes, sir.
All in Spanish, of course, this conversation.
He said, you remember being stoned in Colinas
de Santa Barbara?
I said, oh, I could never forget it.
We heard them crying for our blood.
He says, I was one of those that
stoned you.
And his face didn't register anything else.
I thought maybe he'd come to finish the
job.
Instead of that, he said to me, you
know, after that, I went to a little
place called Santa Cruz de Yohua.
And I heard you preach again.
And he says, I can tell you the
text that you preached on.
And I was beginning to search my memory
to see what that text might be.
But he said it was the fourth chapter
of Romans.
And I immediately remembered it was.
He said that night the Lord spoke to
me.
I've been waiting 30 years to tell you.
Friends, how well repaid one was for such
an experience as that.
May I just address myself particularly to my
younger friends here this evening.
Are you wondering what's in it for you
on the mission field in the service of
our Lord and Savior?
This little incident I've told you can be
multiplied by hundreds.
If you're willing to give your life to
him, he'll do it.
And you'll have the courage of faith.
And I said to this man after he
told me all this, I said, Don Federico,
what was it that impressed you, if anything
did, when you were stoning us?
He said the thing that impressed me was
that you were absolutely without fear, unafraid.
And thank God for every evidence of courage
as one faces his foes.
But you might think that the close of
this psalm contradicts all we've said so far,
because you notice in verse 7, verse 7
he gives us, Arrive, O Lord, and save
me.
What kind of salvation is he talking about
now?
He's not talking about salvation of his soul.
That's salvation in the past tense, you see.
He's talking about salvation now, from these very
things that are threatening him.
O Lord, save me.
O my God, for thou hast, notice the
tense of the verb here.
We'll not go into the question about tense
in the Hebrew language.
It's somewhat different from our way of making
the tense.
But we're going to leave it just the
way it is here in this Authorized Version.
Just as you've often heard, it was good
enough for David and good enough for the
Apostle Paul and good enough for me.
And it is, too.
Thou hast smitten.
I like that.
I know some versions translate this, Thou wilt
smite.
But I like to leave it just the
way it is here.
Thou hast smitten all mine enemies upon the
cheekbone.
Thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly.
What's the psalmist doing here?
He's anticipating the victory.
Because you can see he had these enemies
all around him.
As St. Peter puts it in his epistles,
Your adversary the devil walketh about as a
roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
And how the enemy likes to frighten us
with his speech and roaring, doesn't he?
And here's one who can say, Lord, thou
hast broken the teeth of the ungodly.
Thou hast already robbed him of the power
to do anything to me.
This recalls an incident out in California some
years ago.
I was visiting a zoo, which they had
at that time outside the city of Los
Angeles.
It's since been discontinued.
But I like to go to a zoo
and feel the safety of it, you know.
You see the animals behind the iron bars
or otherwise with a moat between you and
them so they can't get at you.
You feel quite safe.
It's wonderful, not only to look at these
big elephants, but lions and tigers.
I feel perfectly safe.
But I stood before the cage of a
wildcat, and I was pondering this wildcat, wondering
what in the world the Lord ever made
wildcats for.
He must have had a good reason, but
he hasn't told me yet what it is.
But anyhow, while I was standing there wondering
what good a wildcat could be, a man
stepped into the cage from the back.
He opened the door, and he had nothing
in his hand but a broom.
He closed the door behind him and started
sweeping the cage out.
The wildcat was asleep in a corner of
the cage.
And I was watching this thing.
The shivers were going down my back.
I guess where that cat is.
When he got over where the cat was,
he went down and laid somewhere else.
Well, I said, then that cat must be
tame.
Well, I said, if you're not brave and
he's not tame.
He said, he's old.
He ain't got no teeth.
Now is the judgment of this world.
Now is the Christ.
Now is the Prince of Beloved.
Our enemy may be strong, but he is
defeated.
And I want you to go out of
here tonight, God helping you with a note
of victory in your heart, and be able
to say in the language of the last
verse, which is my text for this evening,
Salvation is of the Lord.
Yes, do I need help in my Christian
life?
Do I need help against the foes that
rise up against me?
Thank God I have it all in Him.
I have it all in Him.
And there is no need for any one
of us to live a defeated life.
Every one of us can live victoriously because
we're on the winning side.
Will you please turn to hymn number 407?