Hated Without a Cause #1

David isn't claiming sinlessness as he goes through Psalm 69.

He's confessing sin and fault before God. What he's saying is, Lord, they have no reason to treat me as they do. I have not wronged them, and yet they are opposed to me. Have you ever been persecuted or treated unfairly for no apparent reason?

Did it leave you feeling angry or sad, anxious or even confused? Hello and welcome to the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. I'm Bill Wright. Today Don continues his series called A Cry for Justice. He'll show us how to turn our oppressors over to God, trusting Him to deliver justice at the right time and in the right measure.

Let's join our teacher now for part one of a message called Hated Without a Cause here on the Truth Pulpit. As we start this Psalm, that's our starting point, is that we are dealing with a God of faithful love toward us. David is able to appeal to this God for deliverance because he knows that God is a God of love and compassion toward him who cares for him in the midst of even his unjust suffering. Beloved, is that your fundamental concept of God? Answer the question carefully.

Answer it well. Answer it according to Scripture because who you think God is, is going to determine the trajectory of the rest of your life. Theology has consequences and for us who are Christians, we look at the cross and we see our theology of the love of God fully informed. He loved us and gave Himself for us. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, sink your roots deep into that groundwater of the character of God.

Seek your roots deep into the ever flowing love of God toward you and I have a suspicion informed by biblical truth that it will change your life. To realize that this God is so good and so loving and so gracious to His own and that that is His fundamental disposition toward us. Now, as we come to Psalm 69, David is pleading with God to save him from his trouble. He was bearing shame and rejection for the Lord's sake and he does three fundamental things here.

We'll just kind of break this down into three points here. He asks God to answer him. He asks God to repay David's oppressors and he looks forward to a time of universal praise and restoration. So there is the cry for help, the cry for judgment, you might say, and then there is a hope and an anticipation of a time of praise yet to come. And we'll see this in David's life. We'll see it mirrored in the life of Christ.

Psalm 69 is frequently applied to Christ, as we'll see, and so this is a psalm of rich biblical significance. How would we find our path forward when we're in these times, hated without a cause? Well, first of all, let's just kind of follow the psalm along here.

We could put it this way. Our first point, we'll state it this way, is that we ask God for deliverance. We ask God for deliverance. And it's easy to forget to ask under the weight of the problems. We forget to ask. David didn't forget to ask. And so you open in verses one and two.

Let's look at it together. David prays, save me, O God, for the waters have threatened my life. I have sunk in deep mire and there is no foothold. I have come into deep waters and a flood overflows me. Drowning here is a metaphor for his problems and the sense of vulnerability that he has.

He realized that what's happening immediately could be an immediate threat to his life. Now when it comes to drowning, I don't often do this, but hey, we're friends, we'll do something a little bit different. When I think of drowning, I can't help but think of the time on our honeymoon, not all of us, but mine and Nancy's honeymoon. I literally nearly drowned in the pool of the hotel that we were staying in.

It's a frightening memory to this day as I remember it. The pool wasn't that deep, but I'm not too good in water and I'm not a swimmer. And I went to stand up in the pool and I realized that I was in water that was over my head. I took in a little bit of water and I started to panic and I had the sense, very vivid today, almost 30 years later, that my life was in immediate danger here. Now, thanks be to God, Nancy reached over and grabbed me and literally saved my life at that point.

If she hadn't been there, I would have gone down. And that sense of vulnerability and panic and the fact that there is an immediate crisis here is the sense that David is using as he describes in a metaphor the problems that he's facing. God, this is sweeping over me.

This is coming over my head and I need help right now before I go under. And waters and mire point to the danger. There was no easy way out for David. Look at verse 3 where he says, I'm weary with my crying. My throat is parched. My eyes fail while I wait for my God.

And so he's describing that in the midst of the danger, he's feeling the physical effects of the trials and the weight that it has had upon him. My throat is parched. Lord, I've been crying out to you so long.

My throat is dry. I've exhausted myself. And yet there he is, still waiting, still calling upon the Lord.

The process had exhausted him. But here in Psalm 69 he's calling out once more for God's deliverance. And he shows us in verse 4 the source of his trouble, the source of his difficulty. And it ties in with what we were saying earlier about the people and the enemies that he was facing. In verse 4 he says, Those who hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of my head. Those who would destroy me are powerful, being wrongfully my enemies.

What I did not steal I then have to restore. He's on the receiving end of injustice. There are multiplied enemies that it seems like they're more than he can count. And these aren't simply little snippy puppies biting at his heels. These are men that have influence, men with power who are rising up against him and who are arrayed against him.

And they're more than he can humanly handle. Been there? Have you? Been there where someone had a measure of position or influence or authority and they're opposed to you, exercising in unjust things against you and you don't have the human ability to respond.

You can't reach for the side of the pool to pull yourself up. That's the position that David was in. Isn't it sweet to be a Christian, to believe in the full authority of the Word of God, and to be able to come to a psalm like this and find expressed the deepest sorrows of our soul in a Spirit-inspired way that can encourage and help us. Ah, I'm not the first person to go through this in spiritual life. I see that David has walked the path that I have trod.

Let me find the way forward that he found. Apparently from the fact that he wrote this psalm, he came out okay on the other side. Maybe, just maybe, the God of loving kindness and compassion that delivered David would have the same kind of mercy on me that he had on David as well. And all of a sudden, your eyes are pivoting, pivoting away from the enemies and toward the God who loves you, the God of compassion, the God who saved you, and that is a great encouragement.

That alone, I should say, would be encouragement enough, but then you realize that there's something even better, something even greater going on in this psalm. David's life was merely a foreshadowing. It was merely a something of a prediction of a greater fulfillment to come in a greater David, in our Lord Jesus Christ. Look over at John 15 with me.

John 15 in verse 24, what David experienced was to be fulfilled in the coming of Christ at this point. Jesus said in John 15 verse 18, if the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own, but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this, the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, a slave is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.

If they kept my word, they will keep yours also. He goes on to say in verse 23, he who hates me hates my father also. And he says, if I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would not have sin.

But now they have both seen and hated me and my father as well. And look at what he says in verse 25 as it pertains to the psalm we're studying. But they have done this to fulfill the word that is written in their law, quote, they hated me without a cause. A quotation from this verse that we just saw in Psalm 69 verse 4. David's life of suffering, the enemies hating David without a cause were merely a foreshadowing of the greater fulfillment to come when Jesus Christ himself, the sinless son of God, was hated by those around him. If ever, beloved, if ever there was someone hated without a cause, you understand that it's not David primarily.

It's not you and me primarily, right? The one who in whom there is no cause for hatred is the Lord Jesus Christ, the sinless, gracious, glorious son of God. There is nothing in him to provoke cause for hatred in those who hate him. The hatred comes from within their own wicked hearts. There is nothing in Christ to prompt such hatred.

He was hated without a cause. We look when we find opposition in our own sinful selves, we look and say, oh, Lord, you have gone down this path more perfectly. You've gone before me in this path. You know what it's like to be rejected and hated without reason. You know what that's like, Lord, and you tell me that it's part of discipleship. It's part of me walking in your footsteps. Well, Lord, I can embrace that.

I'm not thrilled with the enemies that are hating me without reason. That doesn't appeal to me on a human level. But, Lord, what appeals to me is you've been there. You know what this is like, and you invite me into close communion and fellowship with you as a result. That's a precious place to be for the disciple of Christ to realize we have a Lord who understands and sympathizes and has been there in the sense of Hebrews chapter 4 verses 14 through 16. Now, as we think about Psalm 69 applying to Christ, we should realize that the totality of the Psalm does not apply to Christ. Particularly as you look at verse 5, you see that David is not making a claim to being sinless. He realizes that he himself has committed wrongs. Look at verse 5 with me. He says, Oh God, it is you who knows my folly, and my wrongs are not hidden from you. He says, God, you know my sin, but whatever my sin may be, I haven't done anything against these enemies to deserve this kind of treatment. David isn't claiming sinlessness as he goes through Psalm 69. He's confessing sin and fault before God. What he's saying is, Lord, in relationship to these men, they have no reason to treat me as they do.

I have not wronged them, and yet they are opposed to me. Now, in this confession of sin, we see this is a verse that could not possibly apply to Christ. Christ had no sin to confess. He was sinless.

He had never committed wrong. He was free from all sin, and so the hatred against him was even worse than the hatred against David, even worse than the hatred against you and me that we sometimes face. In the midst of that confession, David goes on in verse 6 to appeal to God for mercy so that others who trust God would not be put to shame as a result of his situation. Look at verse 6. He says, May those who wait for you not be ashamed through me, O Lord God of hosts.

May those who seek you not be dishonored through me, O God of Israel. Now, if you were with us last time as we talked about the imprecatory psalms, we said that one of the motives for the imprecatory psalms was a concern for the people of God, that one of the reasons that we pray is to look beyond our own circle and we see that the people of God are about us, and we put our struggles and our difficulties in the context of the people of God who might be influenced by what happens to us or be influenced by the way that we respond to our own trials and difficulties. David has these fellow saints in mind, and he says, God, as they are waiting for you, work and help and protect me so that they won't be ashamed, so that they won't fall into discouragement, thinking that God does not help his own. And, beloved, let me step back and invite you to kind of maybe have a little bit of an alteration, a little bit of a change, a little bit of a different perspective, perhaps, on your own trials as you go through them, to be mindful of the fact that the circle that is affected by your trial is greater than yourself.

It's more than just you that's at stake. To remember this, if you look over at Psalm 73, which we will soon get to, such a wonderful psalm. In Psalm 73, the psalmist is troubled by the prosperity of the wicked, and it discourages him. He sees them prospering when they have no eye toward God at all, while he, seeking to be righteous, seeking to live a godly life, is suffering and in much difficulty. And he begins to think in verse 13, surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and washed my hands in innocence, for I have been stricken all day long and chastened every morning. He says, I think, he's thinking ruminating in his mind, and he says, with what I'm seeing, I must be a fool. I must be wasting my time. Why am I going through all of the hardship of trying to follow God in righteousness when it brings me sorrow and suffering, when people who have no regard for Yahweh are living the high life?

They have prosperity and there are no pains in their lives. Why am I doing this? He says, look at what changes him. Look at what restrains his thinking. He says in verse 15, if I had said, I will speak thus, in other words, I realize that if I gave voice to what I've been thinking here, something very bad would happen.

Verse 15, Psalm 73, he says, behold, I would have betrayed the generation of your children. He says, and here's what I want you to see, beloved. He says, this is not just about me.

There are a circle of relationships that I have. I have responsibilities and commitments and I have love to your people who are around and who see me in my suffering, who see me in my difficulty. Father, for their sake, I can't speak what I have been thinking in my heart because I would betray them. If I gave voice to these kinds of accusations against God, I would deflate the spiritual encouragement of those around me.

I'm not an island here. I've got to think about someone beyond myself as I go through this trial. Now, beloved, I realize that for some of you the trials are very deep and that you get discouraged. Some people take the occasion of those things to withdraw from the people of God, to step back from them, to push the people of God away, to start to voice things that should never be said, like on social media and things like that.

Not so for us, brothers and sisters, not so for us. We realize that we cannot let ourselves get carried away with our discouragements and questions. We can't voice these kinds of doubts because to do that would be a betrayal to those who would otherwise be encouraged as they see us persevere. Part of your responsibility in your trials, Christian friend, is to persevere. To the glory of God, yes, absolutely, but also to persevere for the sake of those who are around you, who will look to you, see your faithful life and say, oh, that's how it's done. To say, oh, they have it worse than I do and they are continuing in Christ.

Well, then that's what I should do also. And it takes us out of our naturally self-centered perspective and say, ah, I have obligations here that inform the way that I respond. Go back to Psalm 69, verse 6. You can see this in David's thinking there in verse 6. He's thinking about others beside himself. He says, let those who wait for you not be ashamed through me.

God, be gracious and help me so that they would be helped in turn. But it's not just a horizontal aspect that is informing his cry for deliverance. In verse 7, he's consumed with the glory of God as well.

We saw this last time. He says in verse 7, because for your sake, I have borne reproach. Dishonor has covered my face. God, I am in this position because I have sought to be loyal to you. I have sought to be faithful to you and that has brought me this opposition.

And how severe was the opposition? Look at verse 8. He says, I have become estranged from my brothers and an alien to my mother's sons.

He says, God, this is so bad that the closest members of my own family are opposed to me. And even in that, Christ had a greater fulfillment during his earthly life, didn't he? Gospels tell us that even his brothers weren't believing in him. Even his brothers were mocking him before the crucifixion.

Why are you hiding? If you're the Messiah, let it be known. And so even his own family was not believing in him. Christ experienced this as well, the opposition of those closest to him. And beloved, if we think further and sympathize and enter into our Christ, wasn't it true that even all of the disciples fled from him? On the night that he was betrayed, they all went up and fled, and he was left alone.

Let's let that sink in for a moment. Why was he suffering alone? Why was he in that position in the first place? There to fulfill Scripture, there to carry out, to go to Jerusalem, as it were, with his face set like flint to Jerusalem, so that he would fully drink the cup that the Father had given to him to drink.

Why? Because in love, he would bring you into his kingdom. And all of the alienation, all of the hostility, was part of the price that he paid, part of the suffering that he experienced on earth in order to bring about a fulfillment of the saving mission for which he came, to save you and to save me. I love him, don't you?

I love him for that. Our redemption was accomplished at the cost of great suffering to the sinless Son of God, and he felt the full weight of the hostility of men and went ahead and went through it. Now we, walking through lesser trials with lesser virtue, find that our elder brother, that our champion, that our Savior has gone before us in the way. He knows how to, having gone through it in his humanity, he knows how to lead us through it in our humanity. And that brings us comfort and confidence. And we cry out to him in a sense that he will receive us well because he has been there himself.

Oh, this is all about understanding who Christ is and how we respond to him. That's Don Green with part one of a message called Hated Without a Cause here on The Truth Pulpit. Well, friend, we hope you can join us next time for the conclusion of our series titled A Cry for Justice. And if you'd like to hear this message again, or maybe like to share it with a friend or loved one, just go to thetruthpulpit.com. While you're there, be sure to explore all of Don's teaching resources. Again, that's thetruthpulpit.com. I'm Bill Wright. Thanks for listening. And join us next time on The Truth Pulpit, teaching God's people God's Word.