This weekend Lili and I painted a room in our house, and one inevitable circumstance took place again. It seems that each time I paint I find myself looking at the first coat thinking, “Man, this looks like it is going on really well. Maybe this will be the first time we don’t have to come back and put a second coat on.” Soon, however, what appeared so promising at first glance will show itself a bit disappointing as you look closer because inevitably you find places where the paint has soaked in or places you’ve missed, and a second coat is needed.

David’s Prayer and the Setting of This Psalm

Something similar takes place when you look at the superscription for Psalm 7. It appears promising at first glance, but can soon become the source of disappointment. Typically I find myself rejoicing when I come to study a psalm and find that there is a superscription telling us about the setting for the psalm. Rather than saying, “I don’t know exactly what was going on when this psalm was written,” I am able to say, “The superscription tells us what was going on as David wrote this psalm.” The problem with Psalm 7, however, is that it tells us that this is a psalm David “concerning Cush the Benjamite.” Yet the Bible makes no mention of “Cush the Benjamite.” Thus, the excitement produced by this superscription may soon be eclipsed by confusion if you try to search out just who this character is and what was going on in David’s life as he wrote this psalm.

What we can know about this psalm, however, is that David wrote this psalm because someone named, “Cush” had made himself David’s enemy and was somehow threatening or harming David though David had done nothing wrong. So, what was David’s response? As we find throughout the psalms, David turns to the Lord. Maybe more than anything else the psalms show us why David can be spoken of as a man after God’s own heart, for in all situations he turns to the Lord and pours himself out before him. Psalm 7 is no different.

The psalm can be broken down into six sections: 1-2, 3-5, 6-11, 12-16, and 17. In verses 1-2, David cries out to God to save him and protect him. He writes, “O Lord my God, in you do I take refuge; save me from all my pursuers and deliver me, lest like a lion they tear my soul apart, rending it in pieces, with none to deliver.” David does not trust first in any person but seeks his refuge in God alone. In fact, he tells God that unless he delivers him there will be no one to deliver him. Rather, his pursuers will catch him and tear his soul apart as a lion tears his prey apart.

However, David makes clear very quickly that he isn’t asking God to deliver him from a situation that he has brought on himself. This isn’t the equivalent of someone asking God to keep them out of jail when they’ve been pulled over for drinking and driving. David declares that he has done nothing to deserve his enemies coming against him. In fact, he is so sure of it he asks that judgment will come against him if he is guilty in any way. He prays, “O Lord my God, if I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands, if I have repaid my friend with evil or plundered my enemy without cause, let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it, and let him trample my life to the ground and lay my glory in the dust” (vv. 3-5). David’s request isn’t for mercy; it is for justice. He is willing to face the punishment if he has done wrong, but he is certain that he hasn’t.

By the same token, then, because his enemies are in the wrong, he wants them to face justice as well because he knows that for them to face justice means for him to know deliverance. Thus he continues his prayer, “Arise, O Lord, in your anger; lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies; awake for me; you have appointed a judgment. Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you; over it return on high. The Lord judges the peoples; judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me. Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end, and may you establish the righteous—you who test the minds and hearts, O righteous God! My shield is with God, who saves the upright in heart. God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day” (vv. 6-11).

It’s as if David pictures the Lord lying down while David is unjustly pursued, and David cries for God to notice this and rise up in anger, to awake and bring judgment. He asks God to gather the people and return to his position over them as judge. He wants all to be judged so that his righteousness and integrity will be known and so that the evil of the wicked will come to an end. He knows God feels indignation and he knows God is a righteous judge, but because David is so sure of his innocence this means that his enemies will know God’s wrath and David will know God’s salvation. Therefore, he cries again for justice.

David then begins to spell out the reality of God’s judgment. Whereas much of the psalm is filled with language directed toward God, asking him for judgment and deliverance, verses 12-16 are directed toward all those people who will hear (especially David’s enemies). David declares, “If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword; he has bent and readied his bow; he has prepared for him his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery shafts. Behold, the wicked man conceives evil and is pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies. He makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made. His mischief returns upon his own head, and on his own skull his violence descends.”

As David prays this prayer he is no doubt aware that God revealed himself to Moses as the merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. But he is also aware that God proclaimed to Moses that he “will by no means clear the guilty” (Exodus 34:6-7). So he wants his enemies to know, yes, God is one who relents from disaster as people repent, but if they do not repent, his judgment is sure and terrible. He even ordains life so that those who conceive evil, digging a pit for others to fall into have the mischief return on their own heads. He wants his enemies to know that God ensures that those who work evil will know judgment.

If this psalm was written after David’s sin with Bathsheba, perhaps that event weighs heavily as an example of what David is here praying. After all, David had taken a man’s wife, had the man killed, and seemed to get away with his sin and violence done toward another. But he did not escape God’s watchful eye and the judgment that came to him after Nathan’s confrontation. David knows that God does not simply ignore men’s evil actions but that judgment is sure.

And in the midst of singing this to the Lord and to his fellow man, David finds encouragement. He is edified. So he ends the psalm declaring praise and thanks to God. He writes, “I will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High” (v. 17). These truths he had proclaimed brought him to a place of rest, comfort, and peace.

However, as we read this psalm, doesn’t a portion of us kind of cringe at David’s words? Isn’t there part of you that wants to say, “How can David say that?” How can David cry out for judgment and proclaim himself as righteous when if we only pay attention to sins in one brief period of David’s life we could talk about him committing adultery with another man’s wife, getting her pregnant, trying to cover it up, and then conspiring in the man’s murder when David’s cover-up ultimately fails. That is disgusting sin.

How does a man like that find any comfort in talking about God’s judgment or asking God to judge him? Is he blind to his sin? Does he think others have committed greater atrocities than he? How does a man who has committed such iniquity think he has any right to address the Lord as “my God” and declare that he is taking refuge in him, expecting God to deliver him?

David is uttering more than he can on his own merits – pointing us to Christ

I think that we are supposed to feel that when we read David’s words in Psalm 7. I think we are supposed to feel that David is saying here more than is justified based on his own merits. But why? What purpose would this serve? Is exaggeration simply a celebrated form of communication in Scripture? No. I think rather Psalm 7 serves as many other texts do in the Old Testament. They say much so that we might ask, “How can that really be?” Even as the law laying out a manner for the Israelites atoning for sin in offering bulls and goats is supposed to lead us to ask, “How can that be? Mustn’t there be more?” It’s so that we might press forward in seeking an answer for why David can pray this way.

And the answer is the same for both questions. The answer is a person, David’s greatest Son, Jesus of Nazareth. For, it is true that David cannot pray this way based on his own merits. If left to his own merits David would confess that he is worthy of being trampled to the ground and of knowing the indignation God feels every day. Ultimately the only reason David can pray this way is because he trusted in the promises of God for his atonement, an atonement that is grounded in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is only one man who could pray this way, trusting in his own merits – Jesus. He alone can proclaim to be righteous, to have no wrong in his hands, and he alone has suffered after committing no sin and who could cry out for true vindication.

Jesus, who lived long after David, did in fact live a perfect life, committing no wrong. And yet he was pursued by his enemies who conspired against him, ultimately working to have him put to death on a cross. He suffered to the point of death, though he had done no wrong. He was one who truly could be vindicated, for though he was only utterly pleasing to God in everything, his enemies considered him a blasphemer, under God’s curse, smitten of God. But God did vindicate him, raising him from the dead after three days and declaring him both Lord and Christ. He vindicated his Son so that all who believe in him might be justified before God, vindicated on that final day even as Christ has been vindicated. Anyone who places his faith in Christ can know that Christ’s perfect righteousness has been credited to his account, even as Christ has paid for our sin.

That is why David can pray this, because ultimately he prays these things not on his own merits but on the merits of one God had promised to come from him, Jesus Christ. Therefore, Psalm 7, I believe, is supposed to leave us asking, “On what grounds can David pray this way?” because it is meant to point our eyes forward to Christ and what he did so that we might indeed be righteous.

How do we apply this psalm?

So, what then does this psalm mean for those of us who know Christ? How does it apply to those of us who have trusted in God’s atoning work through his Son for our salvation? It means that we might pray Psalm 7 ourselves, knowing that our ground for such claims is not our own merit but that of Christ.

Even as David voices Psalm 7 only because he was united with the Christ who was to come, we can voice Psalm 7 because we are united with the Christ who has come.

For those of us who are believers this morning, we may turn to Psalm 7 and pray in like manner to our God. We may rightly call God “My God” and seek our refuge in him, expecting his care not because we deserve it but because we know that having been united with Christ by faith we are sons of God. Because we are united with Christ, God is our God, even as Jesus told his disciples, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (John 20:17). Christ himself has told us that because we are in him God is our Father and our God. Therefore, turn to him at all times, cry out to him, seek your refuge in him, and know that he is committed to you and cares for you.

For those of us who are believers, Psalm 7 reminds us that we can cry out for justice, even looking forward to the final judgment. Psalm 7 reminds us that (amazingly so) we can have confidence as we look to the return of Christ. We can know that when he stands to judge, we are friends of the King, those who have been declared righteous in Christ. It means that we do not have to cry, “Lord, come quickly” in outright fear but longing for our Savior. And indeed we should. It is good to cry out for God’s kingdom to come and this earth itself to be redeemed. There is nothing wrong, even in the midst of our suffering, to say, “Lord, I simply long for your return. Please come quickly and deliver your people.” Indeed, it is what the Lord instructed us to pray.

In fact, even our forgiveness can be voiced to God in a cry for justice, for God has justified us in a manner consistent with perfect justice, allowing his righteous Son to suffer on our behalf. Therefore, let us cry out for justice, even confessing our sins to One who is “faithful and just” to forgive us our trespasses and to cleanse us from our sins.

This psalm reminds us as believers that, even as David tells others of the coming judgment, so should we be faithful to warn and teach every man of the coming judgment and of the gospel. We who have been justified in Christ and are his disciples not only can but must tell others of God’s judgment, even as David does. We must let them know that God is not one who exists to overlook sins but one who “whets his sword” and will judge those not in Christ, casting them into hell. It is a message we must bring, for we have been entrusted with this good news.

Finally, Psalm 7 should aid us as believers when we go to do good and our enemy whispers to us, “On what grounds to you expect God to care for you? By what right do you think he wants to hear you and wants you to think he’s committed to you?” Psalm 7 reminds us to look past it for the answer and realize that our grounds for such requests lie not in ourselves, but in Jesus Christ who died for us.

Therefore, even as we began this service singing, “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty” might we praise him for our redemption as we come to the table. And if you do not know Christ, may you today trust in him, what he has done in his death, burial, and resurrection, and bow your knee to him as Lord so that you might no longer be under his wrath but one whose life abounds to his praise. Indeed, he is worthy of such praise. Amen.

DAVID, CHRIST, AND CORNERSTONE?