I invite you to take your Bible and turn with me to Psalm 34. This is one of the psalms that has a short superscription, an introduction that sets the words of this psalm in context. And they’re brief. They say, “Of David, when he changed his behavior before Abimelech, so that he drove him out, and he went away.” Now that little introduction points us back to 1 Samuel chapter 21. You’re probably familiar with the story, but before we read the text let’s just wind the tape back a little bit. David, you remember, had already been anointed to be the successor to King Saul. David had already killed the champion of the armed forces of Philistia, Goliath, the champion who came from the city of Gath. David was the one of whom the women of Israel were singing, “Saul has slain his thousands, but David, David has slain his tens of thousands!” And Saul was worried because whenever that kind of song begins to be sung your right to retain the throne is in jeopardy. So Saul not only became nervous, he became angry and then became committed to wiping out his potential successor and went on the hunt to find and kill David, thus securing his own throne. David recognizes that Saul is after him and then he does the unthinkable. I’m really not sure exactly why he did this, but he scratches his head and says, “Where can I go to flee from this madman who’s determined to kill me?” And so David runs to a city in Philistia. Remember, he’s just killed Goliath and he and the armed forces of Israel have pursued the fleeing Philistine army and they pursued them all the way up to a certain town named Gath, which oh by the way, happens to be where Goliath was from! Goliath the champion who was celebrated in all of Philistia probably had parents, probably had a wife, may have had kids who were all grieving his death and their humiliation. Yet where does David run? To Goliath’s hometown, Gath.
There he is, the gates swing open, he’s led in – my guess is that David assumed that though their champion had been killed the Israelite armies had killed most of those who fled toward Philistia. And David may have guessed, “There’s a pretty good chance nobody knows who I am and so I can flee here. This is the one place Saul is not going to come looking for me.” So David gets in and while he’s in some of the advisors to King Achish, the king of Gath, say to him, “Isn’t this the guy? Isn’t this the guy who killed our champion, Goliath?” And the king says, “You’ve lost your minds! He would never come here, but bring him in anyway.” They seize David, they bring him into the king’s presence, and David realizes, “Man, I’ve gone from the frying pan into the fire. This is really, really bad!” And he thinks quickly and he comes up with a plan. I apologize if I offend your sensibilities but he starts drooling, spittle coming down his beard, and he starts making scratching noises and marks on the walls and acts like a madman. And in the ancient near eastern world it was bad luck to mess with a madman. You don’t mess with them; you just let them be. And the king looks at his advisors and says, “Don’t I have enough crazies in Gath that you bring me another one? Leave this guy alone! Let him be!” In parenthesis, “This is not the guy who killed our champion.” And David flees from Gath into the wilderness. And upon reflecting on that crisis he writes this psalm. And knowing the backdrop to what happened that led him to write this psalm puts these words into context. Let’s read them together.
David writes:
“I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the humble hear and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together!
I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.
Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him! Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack! The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.
Come, O children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord. What man is there who desires life and loves many days, that he may see good? Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.
The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry. The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth. When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.
Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken. Affliction will slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned. The Lord redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.”
Let’s pray together.
Holy Spirit, would You please minister to our hearts as we study Your Word, as we think about its impact on the writer of this psalm 3000 years ago. In so doing, think about the impact upon our hearts today. Have mercy upon us; we wait upon You, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Quality and Quantity of Life
So this is one of nine alphabetical, acrostic psalms meaning that each verse begins with the successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. And the reason this was written this way, scholars believe, is that it was designed to be memorized. It was a tool to teach children to memorize God’s Word at a very young age using the alphabet to call to mind the successive verses. But it wasn’t designed just to be memorized. It was designed to instruct and to shape the life of the reader and the learner. There’s one question in the middle of the psalm and the rest of the psalm seeks to answer that question. It’s in verse 12 where David asks, “What man is there who desires life and loves many days that he may see good?” The core question is this, “Which of us wants to know life, both in quantity and in quality?” Quantity that he may see many days; quality that he may see good. Who of us wants to know that kind of life? Life as it was intended? And a man whose life has been spared, rescued from absolute crisis, addresses that question.
You see, there’s two fundamental categories of thought in this psalm and we’ll go straight to it. If you read it over and over again, two dominant themes will emerge. One is fear and the other is desire. And what you’ll discover as you work your way through this psalm is that you and I will be shaped most profoundly in all of life by what we most fear and what we most desire. That’s why the question is framed that way. “Who of you, what man among you desires life and loves many days that he may see good? What woman among you desires life and loves many days that he may see good?” The point, I believe, of this psalm is to say that the key focus is not on our behavior, certainly not on our knowledge or our profession; the key focus in growth in grace and becoming more like the one who calls us to himself is looking carefully at what we most fear and what we most desire. So let’s look at that with that as our outline.
I. Examining our Fears
First of all, we’re going to examine our fears. And in this psalm David looks at wrong fears and he looks at right fears. The wrong fears are detailed for us. They are deceptive fears, they are derailing fears. They are paralyzing; they are fears that imprison, defeat, confuse, shame us, and Lord willing they’re going to prompt us to repent of these wrong fears. We can use his own words. He identifies his own fears throughout the psalm. In verse 4 he talks about, “I sought the Lord and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.” Verse 6 he talks about, “this poor man cried” – the fear of poverty. In verse 6 he talks about being troubled, “saved him out of all his troubles.” Even verse 17, “he delivers him out of all his troubles.” In verse 19 he speaks of the one who is “afflicted,” in verse 18 the one who is “brokenhearted,” the one who is “crushed in spirit.” These are all categories of fear. We fear that experience, do everything we can to prevent ourselves from experiencing these fears.
I asked a group of children not long ago, “What do y’all most fear?” and the response was, “Nothing!” They thought that was the right answer. But you know the older I get the more painfully aware I am of the vast array of fears that confront us. Let me list just a few that I wrote down. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of not being good enough, fear of not comparing or measuring up, fear of being unloved or unvalued, fear of guilt, fear of the unknown, fear of pain, fear of losing control, fear of losing one you love, fear of death, fear of being alone, fear of heartbreak, and the list goes on and on and on, right? Debilitating fears, derailing, paralyzing fears. And what we discover throughout the Psalter is that because this is a broken world, until Jesus makes all things new it will continue to be a heartbreaking world. Peter says don’t be surprised at this. That’s the reality within which we live. You see, if our greatest fear is heartbreak then we will continually run and hide and, like David, end up pretending with disastrous consequences. That’s inevitable. And so from the wrong fears that we find all throughout our lives and throughout our experience we shift to the right fears.
The Fear of the Lord Explained
And in this psalm David identifies four times the singular, right fear that needs to mark us out. In verse 9 he says this, “O fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack.” Verse 11, “Come, O children, listen to me. I will teach you the fear of the Lord.” Then back in verse 7, “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, who fear the Lord, and he delivers them.” This is a whole series of sermons on the fear of the Lord and we could spend the rest of our time this evening and the rest of the year talking about the fear of the Lord. Let me touch on just a couple of things that grow out of this psalm that David speaks of with remarkable clarity, that needs to shape what we understand about the fear of the Lord. First of all, the fear of God is explained for us. David uses a wide range of words that speak to his response, his approach to this God whose praise he is singing. Verse 1 he says, “I will bless the Lord at all times.” Verse 2 he says, “I will boast in the Lord.” Verse 3, he will “magnify the Lord.” Verses 4 and 5, he “seeks the Lord.” Verses 13 and 14, he “obeys the Lord.” Verse 22, he “trusts in him and takes refuge in him.” At the core, to fear the Lord is to shift his focus from the preoccupation with these things that terrify him to a preoccupation with the only one who can rescue him.
When our children were little we talked about the fear of the Lord very simply. We said to fear the Lord is to take him seriously, more seriously than you take anything or anyone else. We used two, three-letter words. I think we talked about this some months ago – the word “w-o-e” and the word “w-o-w.” And the tension between those two words defines what the fear of the Lord really is. It’s the “Woe is me!” that Isaiah speaks of in Isaiah 6 when he realizes, “I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell among a people of unclean lips. I make my living with my lips. I’m a preacher, a prophet,” Isaiah says, “and yet I’m undone. Even my lips, the best I have to offer, are unclean. Woe is me!” And then once having been forgiven his next response is, “Wow! You would actually use me? You would actually condescend to use me? Here am I! Will I do? Would you send me?” The tension between the “Woe is me” and the “Wow, He really loves me. He’s really forgiven me and He is actually willing to use me to accomplish His purposes,” gets to the heart of what it is to fear the Lord. And to live in that tension of saying, “Above and beyond anything else I fear You, I long to delight You, I want to take Your Word seriously and root my life in it and upon it.” The fear of God is explained.
The Fear of God is Learned
Secondly, the fear of God is learned. Verse 11, “Come, O children, listen to me and I will teach you the fear of the Lord.” The point is, the fear of God doesn’t come naturally. Frankly, it goes against everything within us but it’s something that’s learned. It’s not just children who need to learn it; it’s we are adults, we as older adults need to continually learn this fear of the Lord.
The Fear of God is our Security
Third, the fear of God is our security. Over and over again the psalmist speaks of God delivering, hearing, and rescuing him. Verses 15, 17, 19, and 22 – the Lord hears and rescues and delivers.
The Fear of God is our Patience
And fourth, the fear of God is our patience. Let me slow down on this one because here’s what the psalmist says. “He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.” You know of course what this is referring to. The apostle John quotes this psalm in John 19:36 where on the cross the two thieves crucified alongside of Jesus with a desire to hasten their death, the Roman soldiers break the legs of both of them and they come to Jesus and realizing that Jesus has already died they do what executioners know to do with precision – they drive a spear into His chest cavity to assure that He is in fact dead. John says, “These things took place that the Scripture might be fulfilled, ‘Not one of his bones will be broken.’” Yes, Scripture was fulfilled but He died. He was crucified, brutally executed. And the true fulfillment of God’s Word was looking forward to resurrection Sunday, the reality that all the brokenness would be overcome by the power of God unleashed to raise His Son from the dead. You see, the fear of God is our patience. There are some promises, some things that are broken in this life that will not be made right until Jesus returns. The book of Hebrews chapter 11 speaks of some who were looking forward to what they did not experience. Hebrews 11:35, “Some were tortured, others suffered mocking and flogging, even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword, they were destitute, afflicted and mistreated.” The point is this – some deliverances won’t come until Jesus makes all things new and yet the fear of God is our patience. It’s what undergirds us as we wait for the renewal of all things.
II. Examining our Desires
We started by saying that you and I will be shaped by what we fear, what we most fear, and what we most desire. And this is where the psalmist shifts his attention as well – from our fears he shifts to our desires. And again, two subsets here – wrong desires and right desires, Biblical desires. The wrong desires are not just desiring what is evil. Few of us would say, “I desire destructive things to be present in my life.” But the wrong desires are taking what is good and desiring them to such a degree that they become over-desires, they become ultimate desires, controlling desires, things about which we say, “Unless I have this I cannot be happy. And I will become angry, I will become controlling, I will do whatever is necessary to get this thing that I want because look, it’s a good thing!” But our anger shows, our anger when we don’t have it shows that it’s become an over-desire, a controlling desire that derails us. A good thing becoming an ultimate thing. We’ve talked about that under the heading of idolatry.
Desires We Were Made For
Ellen Davis, a professor at Duke University put it this way, “Desire is a deep part of our humanness” – obvious, right? “And yet desire is so easily derailed, it’s so easily squandered, poisoned, so that it becomes destructive of what is good in one’s self and others. Because we are human we must desire, and yet because we’re merely human we often desire the wrong thing or a desire for the best is just lukewarm or we desire one good thing and then another and then another but we never hold steady and so nothing good comes of our aimless desiring.” We could spend a lot of time talking about derailing desires – desires that lead us away from what ultimately is good for us. But let’s look to what the psalmist points to as far as right desires, desires that we were made for. And it comes back to this question, verse 12, “What man is there who desires life and loves many days that he may see good?” See, we were made for desire. You go all the way back to the beginning – Adam and Eve had deep desires and they were perfectly fulfilled. Before the Fall, it was beautifully fulfilled, perfect desires. The question is, “What happened when they sought to satisfy them in the wrong way?”
And the invitation that stands in the psalm is in verse 8. “O, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” Taste and see that the Lord is good. I want us to think for just a moment about what the psalmist is saying here. Let me start with what he’s not saying. When Emily and I lived in the Sonoma Valley for part of 2012, we learned a little bit about wine tasting. We learned that there are seven “S”s to appropriate wine tasting. There is the swirl, the see, the sniff, the sip, the swish, and then unthinkably, the spit, and then you speak – critically and enthusiastically and comparatively about what you’ve just tasted. But you really don’t take it in; you’re just tasting. That’s not what the psalmist is referring to here, but sadly for many of us that’s how we experience the tasting and seeing that the Lord is good. What the psalmist is really referring to is what you find throughout the rest of the Old and New Testaments. It is coming with our hunger, our deep appetites, our longing to the only one who can ultimately satisfy. It’s coming to the Lord Jesus who says, “If anyone thirsts let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” It’s the invitation to come with our deepest hunger, our greatest longings, our most passionate desires and to come to the only one who can ultimately satisfy those desires. It’s a willingness to unclench our white-knuckled grip from those things that we say, “I have to have this. I have to be married. I have to have kids. I have to have the respect of my wife or my husband. I have to have kids who are doing well in school. I have to have this position in my workplace. I have to have this kind of relationship. I have to have this or I won’t be happy.” It’s a repenting of all those white-knuckled grips and saying, “Lord Jesus I come to you with a desire that you created within me that you would satisfy what you alone can.” That’s the invitation in this psalm.
David speaks about it this way in verse 10. He says, “The young lion suffer want and hunger but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.” The imagery is simple. The lions are the capable, competent ones who, if they desire something, they just take it. Who says “No” to a lion, right? But David says, “Even they, those who you would expect to be most competent and most capable, even they suffer want and hunger, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.” Tim Keller put it this way once. He said, “Three times the psalmist says, ‘Those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.’ No good thing does He withhold from those who fear Him. No good thing does He withhold whose walk is blameless.” And there’s a duel application. Number one, if it’s a good thing for you to have right now He will by no means withhold it from you. But it also means this, if that thing that you’re after is withheld from you, it means that it cannot right now be a good thing for you to have. Both are true. “Even the young lions suffer want and hunger but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.” That’s a beautiful reality, a sustaining reality.
“Taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” You understand, don’t you, that this is not the first time that the invitation to “taste and see” has been offered to people who had relationship with God who created them in His image. The first time this invitation came was in the Garden of Eden, Genesis chapter 3, where the serpent was speaking with the woman and said after she refuses to eat of this fruit that he was saying, “You ought to take that,” the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die for God knows that when you taste of that fruit you will see. Your eyes will be opened. You will be like God, knowing good and evil. You will taste and you will see. You will be able to decide for yourself what is good and what is evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and she tasted it, she ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her and he tasted it and ate it. And then they saw. The eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked. They sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” They tasted and they saw, they were shamed, they blamed, they covered up, and they hid. And that’s been the pattern ever since.
The Good You Are Ultimately After
You see, the invitation still stands before you. The question is, “What will you be tasting and seeing to find the good that you’re ultimately after?” David Strain opened up Ephesians chapter 3 beautifully this morning echoing what’s in this passage. The prayer of the apostle Paul was that God, by His Spirit, would strengthen us in the inner being so that we could taste and see that the Lord is good, so that we could experience how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses knowing, to be filled with all the fullness and all the goodness and all the beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ. That we would taste and see really, really He is good.
Last question. Who will come and taste, drink deeply, and find that the Lord is good? Well the psalm answers that too. In verse 2 it says, “Let the humble hear and be glad.” Verse 11, “Come O children and listen to me.” You see, it’s only those who come in humility and who come as children that can taste and see that He is good. It’s only those who become what Jesus alone can make us. Verse 9 speaks of those who are the saints. “Fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack.” Again verse 15 and verse 17 speaks of the righteous. It’s only those who are made saints and righteous by the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ becoming their own. Who will come? Those declared righteous by faith in Christ who humble themselves and come as children, who hear the Lord Jesus saying, John 10 – “I have come that you may have life, that you may enjoy life, that you may have it in abundance to the full until it overflows.” Those who hear Him saying in Matthew 11, “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.” The invitation still stands. “Come. Come with your hunger, come with your appetite, come with your thirst, but come to Me,” the Lord Jesus says. That’s the only place you’re going to be filled and satisfied.
We end where we began. Psalm 34 was written by the anointed king who pretended to be insane to save himself from death. A thousand years after this psalm was written the true anointed King came not to pretend to be something He wasn’t but to actually become what He was not – our sin. Not to save Himself from certain death but to become our shame and our death, to enter in fully. Not to pretend but to actually become all our sin, all our shame, and all our death. Not to save Himself, but to eternally save us so that today He could invite us to stop pretending and come back and allow Him to fill us as He alone can. Would you join me in prayer?
Our Father, it is we who desire life, it is we who love many days, it is we who long to see good. You created us for this and even today You invite us back to taste and to see that You are good. So we repent of all of our wrong fears. We repent for fearing the loss of those things that we think are precious – fearing the unknown, the results of our inadequacy, for fearing what will happen if we move forward in confidence dependence upon You. Forgive us for all of our destructive and derailing fears. Would You please shape within us a fear of the Lord, that we would fear Him above all else in a way that actually frees us? And we repent of all of our wrong desires – for taking the good things that You have given us and making them ultimate things, for insisting upon them, for demanding that You give us what we feel we must have, for becoming bitter, resentful, even angry when You don’t provide what we insist upon? Forgive us. Would You please shape within us a singular desire for Your presence, for Your goodness, about which David speaks when he says, “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek – that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, to seek him in his temple.” Work that deep into our hearts and lives that we may enjoy life with You now and forevermore. We pray in Jesus’ precious and holy name, amen.