So, when you woke up this morning, did you arise as royalty? Whether you felt like you were or not, Scripture says you are. “You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession” (1 Peter 2:9). You are royalty. You will reign with God in eternity after Christ returns on the Last Day, completing the salvation He earned for you (Revelation 22:5).
Now, if that told the entire story, you would leap out of bed as the royalty you are. But more is part of your life than your royal status. For you came into this world saddled with sin and its corruption. So, you sin, experience sadness and pain, and get sick. Death will one day come to your door and refuse to leave. All these enemies enter your life and can rob you of your joy.
By faith, you understand you are a forgiven, redeemed child of God, even when your gut tells you otherwise. Here’s the truth: our feelings are up and down. So, the Psalm for today fits our real lives as God’s people living with fallen flesh in a fallen world.
David, in the center of the psalm, declared: “I lie down and sleep; I wake again because the Lord protects me” (Psalm 3:5). He wrote this psalm when he was fleeing for his life, enemies close to his tail. Even worse, his son was leading the charge to capture his Dad, and King of Israel. How’s that for showing love to your dad on this, our Father’s Day?
Enemies are also on the prowl against us. Sometimes, those enemies attack at night, as they do during the day. Sometimes, those enemies are even more fierce in the enveloping darkness of night. During those sieges and battles, the Lord protects and keeps you. We arise in the morning light, able to voice a prayer on our lips and sing a song in our heart—renewed and ready to face the day.
Even as those brought into God’s royal priesthood, “our struggle is not against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against the rulers, the authorities, the forces of cosmic darkness, and the spiritual powers of evil in the heavens” (Ephesians 6:12). David reminds us—not only of our many foes—but that they are active in opposing us, even mocking us. “How stupid to look to God for help!” they scorn.
So, when you wake up each day, make the sign of the cross and repeat the words of your baptism: “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 29:19). Remember your baptism. For when you recall your baptism, the Spirit reminds you to put on God’s armor, which is yours in baptism.
Far too often, that is what we don’t do. We don’t put on the armor God has for us. We, instead, arise wearing our self-made protection. We become self-help royalty, thinking we can fight off the enemies on our own (if it even pops into our mind). In our foolishness, we presume we can overcome the devil’s temptations and defend against the arrows of our spiritual enemies. We can overcome, on our own, the accusations of our sins, which cause us guilt, sorrow, and despair.
Trying to defend ourselves against our spiritual enemies is like, as the expression goes, wanting to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. We can’t do that. Why? Such self-help originates from within yourself as the source as what you want to achieve. Now, if you could defeat your spiritual enemies on your own, why do you need Jesus?
Fighting such spiritual battles, based on what you have in yourself, is fruitless, fraught with disaster. Such self-reliance in matters eternal stems from an idolatry of self. You take your focus off Christ and place in on yourself. You look to yourself as the source, the power, to bring about your spiritual reality.
Jesus then becomes less and less necessary. One day, you find yourself trusting in your abilities, making them into your own self-made God. You now sit on the throne, toppling Jesus with a Pharisee-like reliance on self.
Salvation belongs to, comes from, the Lord, not us. Joy beyond all joy! “You, O Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, and the One, who lifts my head. I cry aloud to the Lord, and he answers me from his holy mountain” (Psalm 3:3-4). Salvation comes from the Lord—not you or me! Now we have hope, for if salvation depended on us, we would only mess it up.
The Lord places Himself between our enemies and us. He is our spiritual shield. The Psalms repeat this truth over and again, in many places. “The Lord is… my shield, the glory of my salvation” (Psalm 18:2). “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in Him, and I am helped” (Psalm 28:7). “O Israel, trust in the Lord! He is their help and shield” (Psalm 115:9). Those are only a few.
The Psalms proclaim many times over about God being our protector and shield, who defends us and gives us the victory. Because the Lord is a shield around us, we can sleep and wake in peace, unafraid of the many myriads around us, hell-bent on destroying us. The Apostle Paul reflected such a reality in his letter to Rome.
I am convinced that nothing: not death or life, angels or rulers, the present or the future, or any powers, height, or depth, or anything else in creation can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus, our Lord. [Romans 8:38-39]
You may think this is abstract, but not so. God brought you into His Church through baptism (in the Old Covenant, God used circumcision). Just as baptism wasn’t what you did but what God did for you, so also with God being your shield and salvation. That’s who God is and what He does. Faith trusts this reality. Faith does not create it or bring it into being.
Trusting in God as your eternal shield changes your everyday life. You then receive God’s rest and refreshment for you as a gift from Him. You aren’t forced to do what you are powerless to do: God is your shield and salvation. Faith trusts who God is and what He does.
If you ask someone whether the statement, “God helps those who help themselves” is in the Bible, many will answer, “Of course.” But those words are not in Scripture. They came to us from Ben Franklin and, from there, entered our American, religious thinking. In matters spiritual, that saying teaches us to rely on ourselves instead of God. We learn an idolatry of self, making God the responder to what we first do.
“Salvation belongs to the Lord.” Salvation comes from the Lord. God helps those who cannot help themselves. He is our salvation and shield. We even see Jesus in this psalm, as we remember the King, who wore a crown of thorns, who fulfilled the words of this psalm and became our salvation for us.
Our mighty shield is the crucified and risen One whom we remember as we pray the words of the psalm: “I lie down and sleep; I wake again because the Lord protects me.” Jesus Christ, the King of creation, laid down His life in death. He woke again and rose from the tomb to protect us from every spiritual enemy in the highest heights or the deepest depths. Baptized into His death and resurrection, no earthly or otherworldly enemy can destroy you. You are redeemed and saved by the blood of the Lamb.
So, take up the armor of God, not your armor, but God’s armor for you. Only with God’s armor, only with what He gives you, can you “stand firm.”
So stand with the belt of truth around your waist, with righteousness as armor around your chest, your feet fitted in the gospel of peace. Even more, take up the shield of faith, with which you can quench the flaming arrows of the evil one. Put on the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. [Ephesians 6:13-18]
Psalm 3 teaches us about prayer: it’s for those who need help. Prayer is the voice of people who are powerless on their own and realize it. But prayer is, even more, giving voice and showing in whom someone trusts, whether God will untangle him from something as he would like or not.
We pray when trouble comes our way and, because of sin in our lives, trouble is always present. So, we never outgrow prayer. To pray is to confess: God doesn’t help those who help themselves. No, God helps those who cannot help themselves.
After Jesus returns on the Last Day and calls forth the new heaven and earth, reality will change for the people of God. Revelation 22:5 reads, “There will never be night again. [The saints] will need no light of a lamp or even the sun because the Lord God will shine on them—and they will reign forever and ever.” Such a future awaits you—and is even now yours, awaiting its fulfillment in Christ. Jesus makes you a king or a queen because He is King.
Jesus, the King, the One, who wore the crown of thorns, redeemed you. His blood is your shield. You cry to the Lord, and He answers from His holy mountain. You lay down to sleep, and the Lord protects you against your enemies. You need not be afraid in the face of any enemy, for Your protector is the Lord, who crushes evil. You know how the story ends—and it is a glorious one.
You will live happily ever after! But this is no fairy tale, but an eternal reality. In Christ Jesus, you are royalty. In Christ Jesus, you will reign with Him after He calls your body forth from death, to rise to new life as He did. You are a king in the kingdom of God, a queen in the courts of the Lord. Salvation belongs to the Lord. Thank God that it does! For He gives His salvation to you. Amen.
