By “stranger” David is saying an interesting thing to us.  It is obviously a metaphor and refers to his status as a believer among unbelievers.  This is interesting for a couple of reasons.  First, because he was King over Israel, the only nation on earth called by God to be His own special possession.  It ought to have been the case that the Psalmist was surrounded by believers.  It ought to have been that all around him were people seeking God and walking with the Lord.  But that apparently was not the case.

David was a stranger in the earth.  The word implies an aloneness or a uniqueness.  It says that he was different than those around him.  It behooves us to ask why; and different in what way?  As we have observed before, David was a human being, the King of Israel.  He was well known to all of Israel and Israel was well known to him.  We cannot conclude that his “stranger-ness” was any kind of normal “stranger-ness”.

Normally, we would think of a stranger as a newcomer and recent addition to an area.  Yet David certainly does not fill that idea of a stranger.  The strangers in view must then be a metaphorical kind of strangeness.

He was a stranger “in the earth”.  This gives us a clue.  As we noted, this cannot refer to anything human.  David was not, in any normal sense, a stranger in the earth.  He was a man of the world, well-known to all and well-known by all.  The only way that David could have been a stranger was spiritually.

The New Testament tells us that believers are strangers, only temporarily living in this world.  We are strangers in that we are different in many ways from the unredeemed.  It is these differences that David refers to.  He has different morals, different values, different motivations, etc.  He viewed and interacted with life differently.  There was a fundamental difference between David and most of those around him.

The Word of God defines and equips David to overcome those differences.  We’ll get to that in a moment.  The differences were all rooted in spiritual life.  David was different because he was spiritually alive and those around him were not.

This is terribly troubling, as is the almost casual way that David addresses it.  Israel ought to have been a nation of the redeemed.  They ought to have all been of the same type and practice.  Yet, David was a stranger among them.  This seems like a matter of course to David – something he takes as a given and as a normal matter.  Yes, Israel was a “redeemed” nation, but it was such while at the same time being a nation of unredeemed individuals.  This is not as surprising as it sounds at first.  That is surely the case in the church.  It is God instrument – yet it can be filled with unsaved people.

How sad!  David was a stranger among people who ought to have been his closest kin.  He was a stranger in the world – with nothing in common with those who ought to have been the same as he was.

It is important to note that they were the ones that were different.  He could not help but be what he was.  He was the child of God.  He was the one whom God had done a work in to make different.  He was what God intended, they were not.

This was no minor difference either!  It is a fundamental matter.  “Stranger” implies more than just surface issues – it speaks to real and profound differences.  The changes that God makes in a life are changes that affect fundamental areas of life.  They point to major character and personality changes.  This is what God does in the life.  He changes us and He changes us in more than just surface ways.

In practical terms, it is impossible to easily become a stranger once we are familiar with an area.  Once we know our neighborhood, for instance, we always know it.  I can still picture the layout of the house I grew up in and can see the details of the neighborhood I spent my childhood in.  I can never really be a stranger to that neighborhood again.

The profound change that God makes in a life is the equivalent of making us a stranger to a familiar place once again.  The changes are that significant and that dramatic.