WEDNESDAY 13th
Psalm 4
NIV (v3) ‘Know that the LORD has set apart his faithful servant for himself; the LORD hears when I call to him.’
ESV (v3) ‘But know that the LORD has set apart the godly for himself; the LORD hears when I call to him.’
In the first Psalm, we saw that there are two different ways, and two different groups, those who walk on the wide road to destruction and those who walk on the narrow road that leads to everlasting life. This Psalm also like the first suggests that there are two groups of people, for, in verse 3 we read, ‘But know that the LORD has set apart the godly for himself; the LORD hears when I call to him.’ ‘The godly’* infers there must be another group who are ‘the ungodly’, the godly are those who have put their trust in the LORD God, the ungodly are those who choose to reject him and to do their own thing. Comparing this to the good news of the gospel, the godly are those who have listened to and accepted the good news of the gospel, they have put their trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and the ungodly are those who have chosen not to heed and not to accept the message of the good news of the gospel. The sad thing is that it also means there are many people who seem to be godly in the eyes of the world but are not so in the eyes of the Lord, because they have chosen not to accept Jesus, many relying on good works rather than his grace.
Verse 3 says ‘that the LORD has set apart the godly for himself’, so it is when we come to the Church, we are a set apart community, a called out people who have been brought out of darkness into the light, we have been separated by his grace to form a new community, the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ which is his body. Peter puts it this way, ‘But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.’ (1 Peter 2:9) Notice we have been called out of darkness, that is from out of the domain of Satan, from out of the domain of the ungodly to become a godly community. And in this Psalm, David says, ‘. . . the LORD has set apart the godly for himself: the LORD hears when I call to him.’ Being set apart brings privileges and one of them is that the LORD hears the prayers and petitions of those who are his. We are able to come to the LORD God not as some distant far off God, but as a child to his or her father, we can call him our Father because we being the set apart ones are also adopted into his family.
What a place to be, set apart, firstly set apart from the ungodly, secondly set apart to God, thirdly set apart to form a new community, the Church, and fourthly set apart to be included in the family of God.
In this Psalm David is in a place of distress again, as he was in the previous Psalm, but he rests assured in the knowledge that God is in control, and he says something in verse 8 that is very similar to his response in v5 of the previous Psalm. V8 here reads ‘In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety.’ In Psalm 3 he had said ‘I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the LORD sustained me.’ He had a confident assurance in the place of security he had in God.
No wonder David could rest or sleep, for he knew that his being set apart from the ungodly had also set him apart into a place of safety, and we too the Church as the set apart ones today are in a place of safety, a position of being safe in Christ, and safe for eternity.
(* later editions of the NIV replace ‘godly’ with ‘faithful servant’, earlier editions had godly as is found in the ESV, KJV, NKJV, NASB)