Psalm 4

Introduction

“Well, welcome back, everyone, to Torah Today Ministries, and we are continuing our series called Tehillim Talks, where we’re going to do a progressive study directly through the Book of Psalms. And today we find ourselves in Psalm number four, Psalm number four. I hope you’ll follow along in your Bibles.

And I failed to mention in the past, but the notes that you will see on the screen and my scribblings, you’ll be able to print those out on your own. There should be a link somewhere below or beside the video. You can click on that and print these out on your computer and you can have them to study along with.

So you can print them out later. You can print them out now and come back. So that way you can make notes as we go.

Okay, so Psalm number four. This is the first Psalm that gives us some instructions as to who it is for. It says, to the choir master with stringed instruments, to the choir master or to the conductor.

That phrase in red is one word in Hebrew. It’s Lam-na-tze-yach (לַמְנַצֵּחַ). And Lam-na-tze-yach (לַמְנַצֵּחַ), the lamed here at the front means two.

And the last three letters are the root of the word and they make the word netzach (נֵצַח). Netzach (נֵצַח)’s a wonderful word in Hebrew. I don’t think it has any negative connotations whatsoever.

And the word netzach (נֵצַח) is a verb that means to win, to conquer, to have victory. It’s also a word that is sometimes translated as eternal, forever, or as hope. It’s got many positive connotations to it.

But the rabbis comment on this and say that Lam-na-tze-yach (לַמְנַצֵּחַ) means this is a psalm that if you want to conquer in this world, this is a psalm that you should recite. And it was the rabbi, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov who said, the one who wishes to win the battle of this world should recite this psalm. Now this is not the only psalm in the book that begins with this, Lam-na-tze-yach (לַמְנַצֵּחַ), to the conductor.

In fact, there are 55 psalms that begin this way. But this being the first one seems to set the tone. And as we go through this psalm, I think you’ll discover that this psalm is a psalm that tells us how we can have victory in this world.

And you can only have victory if you’re in some kind of a conflict. And in this world, we do have conflict. So I often say, we are born into this world and when we are, we’re born into a war zone.

So it’s a matter of choosing which side you’re going to do battle for, which side you’re going to do battle against. And we need to choose wisely. But we need to enter into the warfare.

It’s a spiritual warfare. And psalms like this can help us spiritually to win the battle. So let’s get right in to the meat of the psalm.

“Answer me when I call…” – Psalm 4:1

David says, answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness. When I was in distress, you have given me relief. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer. (Psalm 4:1)

I have found in my life that most of the distress I experienced doesn’t come from things, though sometimes it can be an illness or a financial situation. But in my life, most of the distress I’ve experienced comes from people. And this word for distress, but czar (בַּצַּר), it’s the word czar, we have seen already once before.

You’ll find this word used in Psalm 3. So back up one Psalm in the first verse. And here again, David says, Adonai, how many are czari (צָרַי), my foes, those who place me in distress. (Psalm 3:1)

You see the word czar means a tight spot to squeeze, to confine, to conflict. It’s like being in between a rock and a hard place. And czari are those who cause that stress, cause that squeeze in my life.

And Psalm 3 says, oh, there are so many who are trying to squeeze me and squash me. And that is the word used here. Now you have to understand something.

This entire phrase, when I was in distress, you have given me relief, is only three words in Hebrew, only three. Here are the first two, but czar (בַּצַּר), here chavat, here chavta, and then there’s one more word, li (לִי), to me. But czar (בַּצַּר), here chavta (הִרְחַבְתָּ), li (לִי).

When in distress, you have broadened my place, you have widened or enlarged me, and then li, me. Now, we’ve seen what czar means. It means to be squashed.

We put in a place of stress and of pressure. But here chavta comes from a verb, rachav (רָחַב), which means a wide place. Remember, it’s only three words, but czar and a tight place, here chavta, you’ve enlarged me.

You could almost say when you made my place broad when I was in a tight spot. And this is what God does for us. He wants to put us into a broad place where there’s room, where there’s breathing room, where there’s space, there’s space to be alone.

And what is interesting about this word is that this word, rachav (רָחַב), the root of the word is the same as the name Rahab (רָחָב). This is no coincidence. If you go back and study the story of Rahab in the Book of Joshua, you’ll see a couple of the spies who came over to scope out Jericho.

And then someone caught on to the fact that there were some Jewish spies in the city. And you could say that they were in a tight spot. But they happened to encounter Rahab, rachav.

And she’s the one who made a place for them where they were safe. And she also entered into a covenant with them for herself and for her family. And those spies escaped to take their story back to Joshua and the Israelites.

So there’s no coincidence here that there’s a connection. I’ll leave it to you to study out that connection more.

Now, notice here what David does. When he’s in a tight spot, does he rail against those who are oppressing him? Does he rail out against his situation?

No, he says, answer me when I call, O God. Be gracious to me, hear my prayer. When we start complaining and whining against the situations in our lives, we’re treating them as if they are God, and we don’t have any control.

They control us. They’re what run the world. They’re what make our lives miserable, and if they’re removed, then we’ll be blessed.

But David saw through that fallacy because that’s an illusion. God runs the world, and if he allows stress and pressure into our lives, somehow it’s for our good, because he is God. He’s the one we fear.

He is the one with whom we have to do. And so let’s learn a lesson from what David did here. When people are causing problems, when situations are a problem, he goes to the God who’s above all problems, the God who himself is the conductor of the world, the mitzvah.

And he goes to him, answer me when I call. And be gracious to me and hear my prayer. And I hope this puts the lie to the teaching that there’s no grace in the Old Testament.

The Old Testament’s filled with grace. And here we see David calling out to his gracious God to show him grace.

“How long…?” – Psalm 4:2–3

In verses two and three, O men, how long will you put my honor to shame? And then the second question’s asked, how long will you love emptiness? And a third question, and we could almost put the words, how long will you seek after lies, after falsehoods? (Psalm 4:2)

These are three very interesting questions to me, because these are the questions I ask in my own mind concerning those who set the temper of this current world, the ones who seem to be in political office and in charge of the tone of this world right now. And I want to ask how long you put my honor to shame? And what that means is, in the current culture, to live a righteous life, to choose right over wrong, to embrace traditional moral values, biblical principles is looked down on and belittled and is attacked and laws are passed to make what we do illegal and then to legalize immorality.

And it’s like, how long will you put my honor to shame? Because to live a righteous life, to strive to obey God’s word as commandments and to follow Messiah as denigrated in this world, and it is ridiculed, and there’s tremendous peer pressure upon us, especially our young people, to conform to the degradation and the lack of morality that is the standard in this world today. And we know this is a temporary situation.

We know that the day is coming when God’s will will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We know that the day is coming when the knowledge of God will fill the earth as the oceans cover, the waters cover the seas. We know the day is coming when no one will tell his neighbor, know the Lord, because he says they will all know me from the least to the greatest of them.

We long for that day when sin is no longer endorsed and righteousness is ridiculed. We long for the day when evil is not called good and good is no longer called evil. And we have to ask, how long, O Lord?

How long? And we want to ask the people who are like the ones who seem to be in control of the culture today, how long will you put my honor to shame? Then how long will you love emptiness?

Will you love weak? There is the word. And we’ve seen this word once before.

If you go back to Psalm 2 and verse 1, and Psalm 2 verse 1, the psalmist is asking the question, why do the nations rage and the people’s meditate reek emptiness? They meditate on emptiness. They fill their minds with emptiness. (Psalm 2:1)

When you look at reality TV today, which I don’t recommend you do, you’ll see very little there that’s truly real. It’s all emptiness. It’s all a lie.

It’s all deception. And we see people today putting great value in loving things that are empty. We are bombarded with advertisements, commercials to buy this product or that article of clothing or that brand of car because somehow that will enrich us, but these things are all empty.

None of them can give us fulfillment. The only thing that can fulfill us are spiritual things because we’re spiritual beings. And it’s spiritual things that we’re truly hungry for.

But we buy the lie that if we take on something physical, that will fulfill the spiritual reality. This is the ancient deception of the enemy. Adam and Eve wanted to be closer to God.

They wanted to be more like God. But the enemy convinced them to steal from God, to accomplish that. Yeah, just take that fruit that he’ve forbade you to take.

And we’re always looking to the physical to satisfy the spiritual. And it leaves us empty and broken and damaged. So in the world today, we see that they love emptiness.

An interesting thing about this word is that if we take the letter at the end, the letter Kof, and we move it around to the front, we get the word Kree, Kof, Resh, Yud. And that is the word for hostility.

Because people who love emptiness are people who are constantly hostile towards those who live an abundant life, who are content, who are happy, who are joyful. When you think of the riots that we’ve seen across the United States and across the globe in recent years, we see people who love emptiness, people who’ve believed in lies, and people who want to shame honor and righteousness. Being hostile, burning down buildings and cities and killing one another.

But emptiness, a love of emptiness always leads to hostility.

But there’s the next phrase says, but know that Adonai has set apart the godly for himself. Adonai hears when I call to him. (Psalm 4:3)

Now that word set apart is not the one we normally think of because we know that the word kadosh (קָדוֹשׁ) or kodesh(קֹדֶשׁ) means set apart.

It’s usually translated sanctified or holy. That is not the word used here. The word for holy, the word kodesh or kadosh means to be set apart for a special purpose.

But this word means to make a distinction between two different kinds of things. And we see this word, which is the word palah (פָּלָה), to make a distinction, in some interesting ways in Scripture. The first three places we find this word is in the Book of Exodus.

In Exodus 8:22, we find Israel in Egypt, and God is speaking and says, but on that day I will palah, I will set apart the land of Goshen, where my people dwell, so that no swarms of flies shall be there. You may know that I am Adonai in the midst of the earth.

So we see God making a distinction, a palah between this area where his people dwell, and this area where his people don’t dwell.

Then in the next chapter, chapter nine verse four, but Adonai will palah, make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and the livestock of Egypt. So that nothing of all that belongs to the people of Israel shall die.

So he not only makes a distinction between this area where his people live, but their possessions and property as well.

He makes a distinction because these possessions are possessed by his people, God will help protect those. The next place is two chapters further on, Exodus 11 verse seven. And he’s talking about when the people will go out.

But not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, that you may know that Adonai makes a pala, makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel, between one people and another.

So this is a different word from the word holy, set apart for a special purpose. Somebody means I’m making a distinction here between those who are mine, those who aren’t, between their possessions and those that are not their possessions.

Between the area where they live and where they do not live. And God is wonderful in making this pala, making this distinction. So when we think of this word in that way, but know that Adonai has made a distinction.

He’s made the Godly for himself. This is why we’re told not to love the world, neither the things that are in the world. And John tells us in his epistle that those who love the world are enemies of God, because they’re loving some things empty and they become hostile to him and to one another.

But if we give ourselves to God, we let him make a distinction. We find the hostility go away. We find peace.

We find fulfillment. We find a fullness in the place we’re most hungry. That’s in our soul and spirit.

And that’s the kind of people we should desire to be. And again, let me remind you that there’s a warfare going on. And this Psalm that’s written for the minnet-zayach, for the conductor, it’s for us to have victory.

And to have victory, we must join the winning side. And it may look like the world’s winning right now, but it isn’t. Light will always conquer darkness.

And so we need to continue to be lights of the world. And in due time, it will be revealed just what your light and my light has accomplished. And our conquering king will arrive, and every eye will see him.

And when that happens, every knee shall bow. And every tongue confess that he is the master, the Lord, to the glory of God. What a day that’s going to be.

That’s worth holding out for. And so let’s stand strong, even when the winds of popular opinion and of peer pressure, the spirit of the age, are blowing against us. Let’s stand.

And there’s gonna be great reward if we do.

“Tremble and do not sin” – Psalm 4:4

Now this next verse is a very interesting one. And it’s one that we find commented on over in Ephesians. So let’s read it.

In verse four, it says, tremble and do not sin. Ponder in your own hearts on your beds and be silent. Tremble and do not sin. (Psalm 4:4)

Now, some of your translations may say, be angry and do not sin. And that is how it’s rendered in Ephesians 4.26, be angry and do not sin. And notice that the second part of the verse, ponder in your own hearts on your beds and be silent.

Paul comments on this and says, do not let the sun go down on your anger. In other words, when the sun goes down, it’s time to go to bed. When you go to bed, be silent, put the anger aside.

Don’t let it continue to cause turmoil and noise in your soul and in your mind. So Ephesians 4.26 is kind of a commentary on chapter four of Psalms, Psalm 4, verse four. But the question is, why does it say tremble here, which is the word ragaz (רָגַז), and here it says be angry.

Well, almost all the times you find this word ragaz in the Hebrew scriptures. It’s going to be translated tremble. But there are a few places where it implies trembling due to anger, to rage.

Have you ever heard someone say, I was furious, and look what they’re doing. What are they doing? Shaking their hands.

They’re trembling, showing how furious they were. Because when people are truly angry, when they’ve been given over to angry, they tremble and they shake. But this kind of trembling can also be caused by awe, by fear, but also by anger.

And so Paul in Ephesians 4.26 is deciding to emphasize the angry application of this word. An interesting passage is Psalm 18.7. Psalm 18.7 says this, Then the earth reeled and rocked the foundations also of the mountains, ragdads, they trembled. (Psalm 18:7)

Now the mountains weren’t angry. They were trembling, but why were they trembling? They trembled and quaked because he, God, was angry.

And the word for anger there is the word hara (חָרָה). He was angry. So we see that when God gets angry, the earth shakes.

And I believe we are truly going through a shaking right now in our world. As I sit here today, it’s May of 2022. And we’ve been through a shaking with COVID and with the riots and all these things have taken place over the last year and a half.

And now we find ourselves basically in a war with Russia that’s taking place over in Ukraine at the moment. And we see that there will soon be food shortages, possibly power shortages. And another thing’s coming down the line.

And the shakings will continue to get more severe. And I truly believe in my heart, these are the birth pangs of Messiah. All pain is birth pain.

And the whole world’s going through a shaking. There are a couple of things happening. On the one hand, I think God’s anger against this earth and against this culture that is embracing immorality, not just immorality, but abominations.

And in calling these things good, in calling good evil, I think God has a right to be angry and he’s shaking the world. But also the shakings are a form of birth pains because this world’s about to give birth. It’s gonna give birth to a new world, a new age, a new millennium, a millennial kingdom.

And that’s worth going through any amount of shaking for. But if we’re standing on the rock, we won’t be shaken. It’s all this shaking that’s going on is going to reveal your heart.

It’s gonna reveal your heart. Are you focused and valuing external things or internal things? Physical things or spiritual things?

Temporal things or eternal things? You tell me where your treasure is, and I’ll show you where your heart is. And if your treasure is in the heavens, if you’ve laid up yourselves treasures in heaven, in the spiritual realm, the unshakable, eternal, spiritual realm, the realm of true reality, you’re not gonna be shaken.

You’re not gonna experience loss. Won’t be any thieves that break through in steel, and rust and moth won’t corrupt if you put your value in the things that are eternal. But if you put your value in the physical, all bets are off.

So, let’s be unshakable people in the shaking world.

“Offer sacrifices of righteousness” – Psalm 4:5

And then the psalmist goes on, verse five, offer sacrifices of righteousness. You could also say, offer righteous sacrifices, and some translations do render it this way. But offer sacrifices of righteousness and put your trust in Adonai. (Psalm 4:5)

And this is a good place to point out that we are not to put our junk on the altar, we’re not to put our sin on the altar. And I often hear people say, you used to take all your sin and lay it down on the altar and give it to God. No, that’s not where your sin goes.

Your sin goes at the bottom of the sea. It goes as far as from the east as from the west. God doesn’t want your trash on his altar.

The only things that go on altars are holy things. This is why we are called to be living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God. You didn’t put trash, you didn’t put blemished animals, you put your best on the altar to give it to God.

And we are to make a sacrifice of righteousness to him. In other words, we take the best that’s in our lives, the very best, we give that to God. Don’t give him the things you don’t want.

Give him the things that he does want. Give him the things that he places value on. And you know, here’s a way to think of the altar.

What goes on the altar goes up in smoke. When you think of the altar as an elevator system, it’s a spiritual escalator that takes our best and brings it before God. Now the world looks at that and mocks it.

Why are you giving your best to this so-called God who doesn’t even exist? The reason is because he does exist. He’s my Creator, he’s my Redeemer, and I love him.

And I’ve given my life to him. I’m going to follow him to the end. And I tell you what, I would rather follow this God to only discover he doesn’t exist than to follow anything else only to discover that God does exist.

So I tell you what, living my life for God, to the degree I do that, I have joy, I have peace, I am fulfilled. The thing is I know he does exist. He’s proved that to me over and over and over again.

He’s proven his love for me and for those who have given their lives to him over and over again. He’s a God who can’t lie. His promises are true.

And so we can trust him fully. And I challenge you and encourage you to do that. Don’t be afraid.

Give your lives away to him fully and completely, just as Messiah gave his life for us fully and completely.

“Lift up the light of your face upon us” – Psalm 4:6–8

And then we come to the end of the Psalm, verses six through eight. There are many who say, who will show us some good?

Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Adonai. (Psalm 4:6)

And then the question is, who is David talking to in this next section? The next section says, you have put more joy in my heart than they.

Who is the they? Who is the they he’s referring to? 

You, God, have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound. (Psalm 4:7)

And the commentators generally agree that the they that he’s referring to are the ones he was asking the questions of earlier. How long will you put my glory, my honor to shame? How long will you love emptiness?

How long will you seek lies? And now these people do have joy. When physical things come through and their grain and their wine abound, they’re happy until the grain and the wine is gone.

But David says that you have put more joy in my heart than they have.

In other words, our joy does not depend upon the physical bounty we have. And I’ve said before in our teachings, pleasure is a function of the flesh. It’s very fleeting.

Happiness is a function of the soul, and it’s something we can choose. But joy is a function of the spirit, is a gift of the spirit. And it’s something that’s internal.

It’s something that’s solid as a rock. It’s something that is there all the time, even if we’re not happy, and even if we’re not experiencing pleasure. In our spirits, we can have joy, deep joy, and we must learn to tap into that deep joy, especially in times of shaking.

It tells us that Messiah in Hebrews, that because of the joy set before him, he endured the cross. He despised the shame. I can go through this.

This is temporary. But the joy that’s set before me is eternal. He had his focus on the right things, and he challenges us to focus on the same things for ourselves.

And then he says, 

In peace and shalom, I will both lie down and sleep, for you alone, Adonai, make me dwell in safety. (Psalm 4:8)

Here is a man whose confidence is completely and totally in God. And the reality of God was such a tangible reality to him that even when he’s under attack, even when people are trying to denigrate his honor, when they’re trying to, when they love emptiness, when they are trying to collect lies and gather lies and invest in lies.

You know how it is when you don’t like somebody, you just can’t hear enough lies about them. Any negative piece of information you can gather, you put it in your bag of lies and you hold on to it. It doesn’t even cross your mind to check out to see if it’s really true or not.

Because you decide you don’t like someone, then any negative rumor you hear about them, you just save it up. It’s delicious. But we’re not to love emptiness, we’re not to seek out and pursue lies.

We’re to always pursue truth. So we need to learn to let go of lies, quit being so angry with people, angry with ourselves even, angry with our situations, and learn to lie down in peace. To lie down in peace.

To go to bed at the end of the day. And though things may be unresolved out here, to lay down, put our heads on the pillows, and think, God, you’re my God. You run the world, and I choose not to worry about this.

There will be time to think about it and deal with it tomorrow. But right now, I’m lying down. I’m going to rest in you.

And He will make me dwell in safety. We’re going to be okay. He’s a trustworthy God.

If you choose to trust Him, He will prove trustworthy. But if you choose not to trust Him, it’s going to become harder and harder to ever reverse course. So let’s learn to trust Him.

Closing Comment and Notes

We’re going to close with a comment from the Midrash Tehillim. It talks about how the people, they’re happy when they have with a grain and wine abound, because God still blesses people and provides for them, even if they’re enemies of His. I mean, look at Sodom and Gomorrah.

They were abominable people. They were horrible people, so horrible that God eventually just had to wipe them out. But until He did, it says that the area where they lived was like Eden.

It was beautiful, and they had plenty of food and leisure. They had all these physical blessings, right to the point they didn’t. And so the Midrash Tehillim says, if this is the reward of those who provoke God, how much greater is the reward that lies in store for those who fulfill His will?

You know, our salvation is based entirely and completely, totally, utterly on God’s grace. But our reward is based completely and totally upon our works. God wants to reward us just as you as a parent.

You want to catch your kids being good. You want to reward them. You want to bless them and embrace them and just to glory over them and praise them.

You want that. But you can’t exactly do that until they respond correctly, until they obey, until they do what you’ve told them to do. But when they have, there’s nothing in this world you wouldn’t do for them.

That’s all God has with us. He wants to reward us. Now I hear people sometimes say, well, I don’t want any reward.

I just want to be saved. Well, that’s very selfish because God wants to reward you. Why deny him the privilege of rewarding you by refusing to obey him?

He wants our obedience. We should desire his reward because what else is there worth living for? So anyways, I hope you are as blessed by this amazing short psalm as I have been studying it.

And there are a number of things that I was tempted to get into, but didn’t quite get into it. One of the things is that word for lies that we came across earlier. It’s the word kazzav (כָּזָב).

It’s the root of the name Kazbi (Kazbi / Cozbi — כָּזְבִּי). Do you remember who Kazbi was? She was a bad girl.

You can read about her in Numbers 25. But there’s some hints to these other things in the notes, because at the end of the notes, I always put the scriptures, the passages, the quotes that I use in the teaching. And so you can see more and read more references concerning the Hebrew words that I’ve alluded to.

And I hope you can take this and just carry this study on and make it your own. In the meantime, I look forward to seeing you back here in the series of Psalm 5, and I wish you shalom, shalom.”

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