The Internal Posture of the Godly Man Text: Psalm 4:4-5
Introduction: The War Within
We live in an age that is allergic to stillness and terrified of silence. Our entire culture is a frantic, noisy attempt to drown out the voice of God in our consciences and the reality of our condition before Him. We distract ourselves into damnation with an endless stream of digital noise, political outrage, and trivial pursuits. Men love vanity and seek after falsehood because a moment of quiet honesty upon their beds at night would be utterly unbearable. The chatter must not stop, because if it does, they might have to think.
David, writing this Psalm likely in a time of great personal distress with enemies slandering and opposing him, does not offer a therapeutic solution for anxiety. He does not suggest a program of self-improvement or positive thinking. Instead, he turns both to God and to his adversaries with a series of sharp, potent commands that cut to the very heart of the matter. He addresses the internal world, the state of the soul, because he understands that all our external chaos is simply a manifestation of the internal rebellion against God.
In these two verses, David lays out the internal posture of a man who has been set apart by God. It is a sequence that moves from holy fear to quiet introspection, and from there to righteous worship and confident trust. This is not a checklist for the self-righteous; it is the gracious pattern of repentance God works into the hearts of His own. It is the only pathway out of the noisy rebellion of the sons of men and into the quiet confidence of a son of God. This is a call to stop the frantic running, to cease the sinful chatter, and to get right with God from the inside out.
The Text
Tremble, and do not sin;
Ponder in your heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah.
Offer the sacrifices of righteousness,
And trust in Yahweh.
(Psalm 4:4-5)
Holy Fear and Heartfelt Stillness (v. 4)
We begin with the foundational command in verse 4:
"Tremble, and do not sin; Ponder in your heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah." (Psalm 4:4)
The first part, "Tremble, and do not sin," is a potent charge. The King James says, "Stand in awe, and sin not." The Apostle Paul quotes this in Ephesians, saying, "Be angry, and do not sin" (Eph. 4:26). The Hebrew word here, ragaz, carries the sense of quaking, trembling, or being agitated. David is telling his adversaries, and by extension, us, that the central problem driving their sinful slander is a lack of reverence. A lack of a true fear of God is what drives the sinful mind. They are agitated about the wrong things. They are stirred up by envy, by vanity, by falsehood. David redirects that agitation. He says, "You want something to tremble before? Tremble before the living God."
This is the beginning of wisdom. Not a cowering, servile terror, but a glad and holy fear. It is the kind of fear that makes you tremble with joy. As it says in Philippians, we are to work out our salvation with "fear and trembling," precisely because it is God at work in us. This is a clean fear, a joyful fear. And this kind of trembling is the antidote to sin. When you are rightly oriented to the majesty and holiness of God, you will cease from your petty rebellions. The fear of God displaces the fear of man and the love of sin. You cannot tremble before the throne of God and simultaneously be plotting mischief against His anointed.
From this foundational posture of awe, David moves to the practical application: "Ponder in your heart upon your bed, and be still." He tells them to stop their sinful chatter and reflect. The bed is the place of quiet, the place where the distractions of the day fall away. In the darkness, you are alone with your thoughts and your conscience. David is commanding a spiritual inventory. He is saying, "Go home, lie down, shut your mouth, and think about what you are doing. Examine your life in the presence of the God before whom you ought to tremble."
And then, "be still." This is not just the absence of noise; it is the cessation of striving. It is the end of the self-justifying arguments, the frantic scheming, the restless rebellion. It is a command to submit. Be still, and know that He is God. This stillness is the fertile ground for repentance. You cannot hear the voice of God while you are shouting your own excuses. You must be still. The Selah marks a pause, a moment to let the weight of this command sink in. Tremble. Ponder. Be still. This is the necessary prelude to true worship.
Right Worship and Radical Trust (v. 5)
After the internal work of repentance comes the external act of worship.
"Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, And trust in Yahweh." (Psalm 4:5)
Once you have trembled, pondered, and been still, then and only then are you ready to approach God. And you must not come with the sacrifices of a guilty conscience or the bribes of a rebellious heart. You are to "offer the sacrifices of righteousness." Now, what are these? In the immediate context, David is speaking of the literal Levitical sacrifices. But he qualifies them. They must be sacrifices offered from a right heart, a heart that has gone through the process described in verse 4.
But for us, who live on this side of the cross, this phrase is packed with gospel meaning. The ultimate sacrifice of righteousness has already been offered, and it was Jesus Christ Himself. He is the ground of all our righteousness. Therefore, our sacrifices of righteousness are not attempts to earn God's favor. That would be the very definition of self-righteousness, which is a filthy rag. Rather, our sacrifices are the fruit of a righteousness we have already received by faith. As Paul says, we are to present our bodies as a "living sacrifice" (Rom. 12:1). Our good works, our praise, our obedience, these are our sacrifices. But they are only righteous, only acceptable, because they are offered "in Christ," washed in His blood, and presented on the basis of His perfect work, not our own.
To offer sacrifices of righteousness is to live a life of grateful obedience, flowing from a heart that has been justified by faith alone. It is to reject your own righteousness, counting it as dung, in order to gain the righteousness which is from God by faith. It is to give and not spare, to work diligently, to speak truthfully, all as an act of worship to the one who made you righteous when you were not.
And this all culminates in the final, simple, profound command: "And trust in Yahweh." This is the foundation and the capstone of the entire Christian life. All our trembling, all our pondering, all our stillness, and all our sacrificing are worthless if they are not undergirded by a simple, childlike trust in the Lord. Trust is not a feeling; it is a settled conviction that God is who He says He is and will do what He has promised to do. It is to rest the entire weight of your existence, your salvation, your future, your family, and your troubles upon the character of God.
Trust is what enables you to be still when the world is in chaos. Trust is what makes your sacrifices acts of worship and not acts of desperation. You are not sacrificing to appease an angry God; you are sacrificing out of love for a Father in whom you trust completely. This trust is not blind; it is fixed upon Yahweh, the covenant-keeping God who has revealed Himself, the God who sets apart the godly for Himself and who always hears their cry.
Conclusion: The Quiet Center
The world offers us a thousand ways to deal with our inner turmoil, and they all involve more noise, more activity, more distraction. The Word of God gives us a completely different path. It begins with a right-sizing of ourselves before the majesty of God. Tremble before Him.
From that place of holy awe, we are called to the discipline of quiet. Ponder. Be still. Let the frantic justifications cease. In that silence, God's grace can do its work, leading us to repentance. This is not a morbid introspection; it is a necessary clearing of the ground so that true worship can be built.
And what is that worship? It is a life lived for Him, offering everything we are and have as sacrifices of righteousness, not to earn our salvation but to celebrate it. And all of this is held together by one thing: trust. We trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ for our righteousness, and we trust in the sovereign goodness of our Father for everything else.
This is the internal posture of the man of God. He is not frantic. He is not driven by the opinions of men. He has a quiet center, an unshakeable foundation. He has learned to tremble, to be still, to sacrifice, and to trust. And because of that, as the psalm concludes, he can lie down in peace and sleep, for the Lord alone makes him dwell in safety.