Psalms Lesson 18

Psalms 34:8-22

Tonight we finish Psalm 34 and we have one more Psalm I’ll teach out of this series on descriptive prayer and then we’ll turn you lose on one. Psalm 34; we did the first three verses and we said that the first three verses is where David invites the downtrodden to join him in continual praise to Jehovah so that they will become joyous. Remember the four hundred men that David had in the cave were griping, griping, griping about various situations in life, and David had to build out of four hundred gripers a well-disciplined army. And there was never more unpromising material and David managed to do it. And Psalm 34 shows you how he was able to build character into these four hundred men. And it shows you some of the things he did.

Then verses 4-10, which is the section were dealing with last time, verses 4-5 and 6-10. We said the two parts two that, verse 4 was a description of what had happened, “I sought the LORD, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.” And then verse 5 is the application and exhortation to do something about this, “Look on Him, be enlightened….” Then verse 6 again, what God has done for him in the past, “The poor man cried, and the LORD heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.” Then verse 7, the descriptive praise, that is a general theological truth about God, “The angel of the LORD encamps round about them that fear him, and delivers them.” And then verses 8-10 the exhortation section which we will begin with tonight.

Now you notice so far in this Psalm an emphasis upon the mental attitude of the believers involved. The reason for this is that David, as a leader, is aware of something; if you don’t have mental attitude you don’t have anything. You can have the finest weapons, you can have the finest training, the finest food, the finest everything but if your group does not have a proper mental attitude you can just forget it. And I don’t think we have a better illustration than what we have seen in Vietnam. A while ago the Rand Corporation came out with a report, (quote) “The conversation with NVA and VC soldiers: A study of enemy motivation and moral,” (end quote). And the report goes on to cite the various ways that the VC and the NVA had of training their men, and obviously you know that they must have had a fantastic training system to put together an army that lived on practically nothing, that was able to withstand the most sever bombardments of modern warfare, and stood up to every modern weapon that the United States technology could think of, and still to this day have not been defeated. What kind of training did these people have?

I was intrigued by looking at the summary of this particular report because it underscores what I’ve said from this pulpit again and again and again, and that is that nobody understands how to fight communists until you understand that communism is anti-Christianity. It is a religion; it is not a political belief, you are not just fighting somebody that’s fighting for the country, you’re fighting a group of religious fanatics. And the only people that can fight religious fanatics are religious fanatics. And the west doesn’t have any religious fanatics. Those who control the media in this country have made sure that nobody with convictions ever is painted in a proper light; the media will always ridicule anybody on the United States side that has any form of conviction whatever, and anyone on the other side is held up as a big hero.

Two things were mentioned in this report; first, they believe in what they are fighting for and are not, therefore, afraid to die. That’s the first thing, they’re fighting for a transcendent cause. That could only be understood by you people, because if anybody on the face of the earth that can understand the mentality of the NVA it should be an evangelical born again Bible-believing Christian because if you’ve got any ounce of spiritual guts in you this should be at least somewhere in your soul; the Holy Spirit should be cultivating that same mental attitude in your life. So the VC are fighting for a transcendent cause that goes beyond their personal death. They’re not afraid to die, it doesn’t mean a thing to them; so they lose 40,000, it doesn’t make any difference, the cause doesn’t change, the truth is still the same, its cause will go on.

The second truth that they impressed upon their soldiers is that they have absolute certainty of ultimate victory. What is that but a prostitution of the Christian doctrine of predestination. Don’t you see the parallel, and don’t you see that this mentality is the key to living the Christian life, this is why Romans 8 has this whole thing on predestination. Why is he talking about predestination in the middle of Romans 8 when you’re talking about how to live the Christian life? It’s very simple, you can’t live the Christian life unless you have predestination pretty well established in your mentality so you understand it, can apply it and move on. So you just think of that next time when you’re down. Think of what it must be like to be an NVA or a VC soldier out in the teaming jungles with B-52’s dropping their loads all over the place and these guys go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and never give up. What makes them tick? The mental attitude that actually has been borrowed by the communists out of the book that’s on your lap.

They have systematically turned their army into a group of religious fanatics by the most fantastic indoctrination program the world has ever seen. It even beats Mao Tse-Tung; Mao Tse-Tung wrote the classic on guerilla warfare, but other men in Hanoi have actually out done him; They put together something fantastic and it is just simply consistency; that’s all, just applying something with rigorous consistency. Now you can’t do that in this country because every time you mention patriotism you have to kind of cough, sputter and shuffle your feet around and apologize. But there’s none of that on the other side; and there shouldn’t be any of that in the Christian life.

In this Psalm David is working with a similar type of situation and he’s trying to bring that kind of a mental attitude out of these four hundred men in the cave. So in verse 8 he begins to exhort them, and he says, “Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who trusts in him. [9] Oh, fear the LORD, ye His saints; for there is no want [lack] to them that fear him. [10] The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger; but they who seek the LORD shall not want[lack] any good thing.”

In this phrase, “Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good,” this is one of those most marvelous illustrations in God’s word using a natural analogy to show you what faith means. “Taste and see” means that he’s thinking back to how anybody develops taste. Those of you who’ve dealt with small children you know what it is, you sit around the table, I’ve eaten four beans tonight; fine, eat five, just do a real big one for dad and eat five tonight. And you know how it is to try and get kids to develop a taste. And you know the usual is “well I don’t like that.” Have you ever had it before? No, but I don’t like it. In other words, they can’t tell whether they like it or they don’t like it because they’ve never tasted it so there’s no possible way they could know. It just looks bad, but whether it is bad they don’t know. Now that’s the same thing that David’s saying here, look you four hundred guys, “taste and see,” and he’s treating them just like little kids and he’s saying you guys are just like kids that won’t eat your spinach. You just get down there and taste it, just a little bit, one bite; develop a taste for it he’s saying.

And this has many startling implications for the Christian life, this particular analogy. Let’s look at some of the implications of speaking about exercising the faith technique with the phrase, “taste and see.” First, it’s a mirror of grace because eating is a non meritorious act. You didn’t earn the right to eat; you were given the capacity to eat. Some of you wish you didn’t have it but nevertheless you were given that capacity to eat. So it’s a picture of grace; eating in Scripture is always a picture of grace, that you’re eating something that has been provided for you with means that God has also provided for you. He’s given you a mouth, and He’s given you a human spirit that can believe.

The second thing about a picture of the faith technique is that it comes a little bit at a time. It doesn’t come all at once; a taste has to be developed. And saying that the faith technique in your life… don’t get discouraged because you can’t claim a promise for some big problem in your life, that’s not the place to start. The place to start is with the little things in your life and learn to trust the Lord in those little things and work up to the big things. You’re not going to get faith overnight and deal with some of these things. So here you are, here’s something that you can use to practice on. Let’s take worry; worry is a sin in God’s Word, 1 Peter 5:7, “Casting all your care upon Him for He cares for you.” So here you are faced with a particular problem, worry. What are you going to do about it? Sit and fume; this is the usual response.

Now watch how brilliant worry is, one of the most brilliant solutions man ever came up for solving problems; let’s look at time: past, present and future. Now when you worry you’re thinking about a problem in the future, you’re not thinking about something right now, you’re thinking about something always in the future. You’re not thinking about something in the past; it may be connected with the past, but inevitably worry is always thinking about something that’s going to happen, or you think it’s going to happen. Now let’s pretend this problem comes right down into the present moment. If the problem were present in front of you, you would have the option of doing something; as you worried about it the adrenalin would flow, your body would mobilize itself to do something, run, sock it, do something, but you’d do something. In other words, your body would be mobilized to act in the present moment. Well watch what happens when you worry; the signal goes out to your body, get ready for action, get ready for action, hormones start flowing, adrenalin starts flowing, your body is set up to do something. There’s only one problem, the problem is in the future and right now your body can’t do anything about it.

So what does worrying do? It’s triggering your whole body to operate on a problem where it can’t operate. So it shows you right there that worry is right against the whole physiology of the human body; your hormone system isn’t built to handle worry and it’ll gradually fade out on you if you keep it up because you’re immobilizing your hormones for something they can’t be used on. You get your whole body worked up to do something and can’t because the problem is in the future.

So what are the patterns that you can use to cut out this; this is obviously –R learned behavior pattern, so how do you break the pattern? By replacing it with Biblical patterns. What are some Biblical patterns? The first Biblical pattern is take the problem, see what it is first; then take a piece of the problem that exists in the present moment, that you can do something about right now, this minute, and do it. In other words, start activity in the present and don’t worry about what’s going to happen in the future. There are a lot of other principles, the planning principle of James 4:13 and following where James tells you how to plan without worry, and to keep it in balance. All these things but that is just one illustration. Now that takes time and you may say oh, that doesn’t look too good to me. What does David say, “taste and see,” just try it. Don’t be like the little brat with the four beans, try the fifth been tonight for a blessing. And begin to use these things and then you start developing, “taste and see that the Lord is good.”

Another point about this thing, not only does it demonstrate grace, not only is it to be done a little bit at a time, but there’s another strange principle involved. Nobody can do it for you; ever have someone try to eat for you? All right, and “taste and see” means that nobody else can do this except you, with all your worrying and all your problems, just you, you’re the only one that can do this; nobody else can do this for you. Nobody else can apply this; many, many times as a pastor I wish I could have applied Bible doctrine for you. I wish, it would be a lot easier, but the Lord didn’t design that things that way so you have to do it. There are a lot of other analogies but we want to go on, you might think of some; camp on that phrase for a few days.

“Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who trusts in Him.” The word for “man” in the Hebrew means warrior and this obviously has in mind the four hundred men in the cave in the original historical context. These are four hundred men who David is trying to turn into disciplined fighting unit. “Blessed is the warrior that trusts in Him.” And the word “trust” means to seek refuge. And this is the mental attitude that David is now going to expand. He is going to expand this and we’ll see how in a moment.

Verse 9, “Oh, fear the LORD, ye His saints; for there is no want to them that fear Him.” Now the word “fear” is the same word that is used in Proverbs, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” and I think I’ve [can’t understand word] a word that communicates what this fear business is. It simply means authority, respect God’s authority. This explains why this “fear” is a term to “fear” your parents in Scripture, it’s to respect their authority. And so the primary picture behind “fear of the Lord” means to respect His authority and obviously if you’ve grown up under some sort of a very permissive situation or you’ve grown up under a very dictatorial situation which there was unfair authority, you are going to have a very hard time respecting the Lord’s authority. But this says you respect the Lord’s authority.

And then he adds this queer phrase in verse 9, “there is no want to them that fear Him.” Or, “things that are needed.” Now how can you connect the first part of verse 9 with the last part? How does the logic flow between respecting God’s authority and realizing that “there is no want to them that fear Him.” Anybody have any suggestions? You have two ideas, how do you link these two ideas together. One hint, the same link occurs in the Ten Commandments. Think of the first and the tenth; the same concept is there in the first and the tenth commandment. [someone says something] Obedience and the results of obedience; all right, let’s turn it around, when the person disrespects the authority of the Lord, the violation of the first commandment, thou will have other gods, I’m going to have another god, I disrespect God’s authority, I will have another god besides God, that is doing the same thing as breaking the tenth commandment because what do you do when you break the tenth one? You’re coveting something. Now when you covet something as a believer and you begin to set that thing up over God, here’s God and you begin to have something here, some want, and you become obsessed with this and you begin to set this over here, I covet that, the first step in coveting is minus thanksgiving, you’re no longer thankful for anything. You’re just griping about everything; you’re not thankful because you’re coveting something you don’t have, and because you’re coveting something you don’t have this means that you’re no longer thankful to God. “In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God.” Now how can you ever apply 1 Thess. 5:18, “In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you,” how can you apply that and covet at the same time? There’s no way I know of that those two commands can be put together. Either you are thankful, not necessarily because you’re happy, happy, happy with every element in your environment, it’s rather you are happy with the Lord who is in control of the environment. That’s the difference. This is not Norman Vincent Peale-ism, where we just sit around and are thankful for everything, ice, snow, wind, rain, etc. It’s rather that we’re thankful for the Lord who’s in charge.

Now after you get rid of thanksgiving and the reason you’ve gotten rid of thanksgiving is because in Romans 8:28 you’ve shot that one down, all things are not working together for you, for all the other believers yeah, but not for me, things just don’t work together for good to me. So you develop a little case of self-pity, that all the other believers are doing fine except you; so here’s a violation of Romans 8:28, it leads to lack of thanksgiving, and finally it creates an idol in your life where the more discontent you are by not having it the more determined you’re going to do to get it. And that’s idols are formed.

That is how you can get idols in your life. You get discontent over something first; then you get angry because you do not have it. Then your anger turns into determination to get that, whatever it is, at all costs, and you will, you say get it. At that point you’re dictating something to God, you’re making an idol over God. Be watchful because that is the sin of idolatry, it’s one that God does not stand five minutes. He clobbers it, any time. This is worse than immorality. The average believer thinks in terms of immorality or something else, some of the social sins, and yet the worst sin in Scripture is this sin, putting something over… and it may be very wonderful, you may be very moral self-righteous all the time you’re doing this and very respectable on the outside and yet this is the worst sin and invites the most severe forms of chastening any believer can ask for.

This is why, then, in verse 9 David is saying “respect the authority of the LORD, ye His saints.” Now this is not addressed to all men; it’s addressed to believers, the word “saints” refers to believers, those who are set apart. These were believers in the cave with him, in case you wanted to get an out, oh, those four hundred men that were griping in the cave, they weren’t believers, believers don’t do that. Oh, do you have a tape recorder that you could turn on in your home for a day? Play it back. So the “saints” are believers, the believers have a problem, their solution, David says, is to get under the authority principle of God. “Fear the LORD, you His saints; for there is no want in them that fear Him,” that is, those who respect His authority, those who are in the chain of command are going to get logistics; that’s the principle. If you’re underneath His command that puts God in the position where He has to supply you. Now you think of it that way for a moment. If you are going to say all right God, I respect your authority, I take my position underneath Your office, underneath all Your promises, now what does that do to God. That makes God in a situation where He has to supply or He is a violator of His Word. So this is how these two ideas coalesce.

Verse 10, “The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger; but they that seek the LORD shall not want any good thing.” This emphasis, the lion at that time was the strongest fiercest creature in Palestine, and became a Satan image. And actually, this is an attack as we have often seen in the Psalms, you look at these literal images, and they are literal and intended to refer to literal lions but in back of the literal image is the spiritual truth and what this is really saying is that Satan himself lacks. Just stop and think of that for a moment because Satan’s arch attack on believers always is follow me because God isn’t going to provide everything he says. The answer to that is the young lions lack, Satan lacks. Do you know what he lacks? He lacks an office. What happened to the office that He had from the point of creation. He lost it. Satan doesn’t have his office; Satan had a command over all the angels, he lost that; he’s only in command over a third of them now. So he lost two-thirds of his whole kingdom, blew it. So he isn’t in any position to offer you anything because he just lost most of what he was given at the point of creation.

So “The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger, but they who seek,” those are the seekers, again this emphasizes, notice the words that he uses here for believers, first the word in verse 8 the warrior, this stresses the believer’s spiritual battle; in verse 9 the word “saints,” that stresses the believer’s separation from the world, the way it thinks. “The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger, but they that seek,” that’s a participle, and that emphasizes the fact that the believer must habitually seek the Lord through systematic intake of the Word of God, regular prayer, considered attempts to solve problems biblically. And that means seeking, the Christian life is not automatic. You have to actively seek. “…but they who seek the LORD shall not want any good thing.”

Now verses 11-22, here is where we have a declarative praise Psalm that fades off into instruction literature. Now this, again should review for you the principle of how the Israelite talked about his God. Instruction comes after historic revelation. Notice this, always the case, this is what is so different from your Bible and reading, say philosophy or reading something else. The truth that is given to you by the men who write the Word of God is truth that they have experienced in history and after they have experienced the truth in history, then they share it with you. But the truth that you’re going to learn from any section of the Word of God, and this should be an encouragement to you, there will never be a truth that you can learn out of the Word of God that hasn’t been tested in the experience of at least one believer. The truth that you learn there is always truth that has been digested and applied at least once in history. It’s never untested truth.

So the principle here is that instruction follows an encounter with God in his life. Now he turns around and he begins to instruct. And as with all instruction literature it has a certain form. Verses 11-12 is the invitation to be taught, to prepare the person to hear; verses 13-14 is the command to respect Jehovah’s authority, and verses 15-22 is the motivation to respect Yahweh’s authority, why you should respect Yahweh’s authority. When you teach children a principle follow the same outline. It doesn’t mean that every time you tell a kid to do something you have to explain in detail but the Word of God, when it trains us and it gives us a command always tells us why; there are always reasons given. You’ll find if you base your commands on some reasons to the child it won’t just be arbitrary authority.

Let’s look at verses 11-12, “Come, ye children, hearken unto me; I will teach you the fear” or the authority “of the LORD,” respecting the authority. [12] “What man is he who desires life, and loves many days, that he may see good?” That’s an open invitation to all. Notice that the family illustration, the third divine institution is again used, as in instruction literature, “Come, oh ye children,” just like the book of Proverbs, this is proverbial type literature, uses the authority of the home. “…hearken unto me, I will teach you,” and this means that respect for authority can be taught, please notice. Respect for authority can be taught! And verse 12 is the universal invitation, in other words, he describes, if any man wants to live, it’s just the idea of… it’s kind of a facetious invitation, if you want to live listen to this.

Now verses 13-14, the command to respect Yahweh’s authority. “Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile. [14] Depart from evil, do good; seek peace, and pursue it.” Can anyone suggest how the order of these verbs might be related to the historic problem of the cave. Why do you suppose that these verbs in this order, how do you think they might possibly relate to the situation David is facing at this moment, with these four hundred gripers in the cave? And he’s starting to instruct them on what it means to respect the authority of God. He’s got to get this across to these four hundred men, and so here’s what he’s doing; this is a command he gives his four hundred men. [someone says something] Okay, the first thing is to shut up and it’s more powerful than that, the word “speaking guile” is treachery, it’s another word for treason. David is saying be quiet, but he’s saying something even more than just be quiet, “Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from treason.” Now in the context what is it that the four hundred men are doing that David would say “treason.”

[someone says something] cursing at who? Cursing at Saul. All right, that may be involved, I was thinking of something more obvious as far as just what were they doing, they were generally griping and you notice verse 9, remember we stressed verse 9, “respect the authority” and notice the connection, “there is no lack,” and the implication is that these believers are being traitors by griping. They’re being traitors against God because they’re defiling His character and they’re rebelling against His authority. God’s authority says believer, you trust Me to provide, I order you to do that, so that’s the authority of God, and when we do not trust the Lord we are in violation of His authority and we are engaged in treason.

[someone says something about this is the time Saul is King over Israel, why…] God is the King, in other words, it’s true that a human king has been installed upon Israel from the time of the anointing of Saul forward, but never does the godly Old Testament remnant ever allow the human office of a king to overshadow the divine office. He is the anointed but the King, the God as King is one of the unresolved problems of the Old Testament. Soon I’ll take you to the enthronement Psalms where you’ll see this is the only place in the Old Testament this is ever resolved. Here’s the Old Testament problem; if God is the King of the nation and God puts a human being in the office of the king, but God is the King, then how do you ever resolve the tension between a finite human person sitting on the throne and the Great God Himself who is the ultimate King. Now the Old Testament has a series of parallel lines through it; there’s one line that has to do with the humanity of the King, Psalm 2 and other Psalms speak of this, the royal Psalms. And so there’s this parallel line concerned with the son of David. There’s your concern over the human man who sits in the office of king.

But then there’s another parallel line and I say parallel line because it does not meet in the Old Testament, there’s no solution to it in the Old Testament, the other parallel line is that the nation will never be saved until God is their King; they’ll never see total culmination of history until God Himself reigns, that He must be King. The question then is, in a monotheism how do you ever get a human being sitting in the office of King to be God. And the answer is nowhere found in the Old Testament, it is found in the New Testament with the person of Jesus Christ. It’s a set up for the person of Christ is what it is. But the godly remnant knew the Lord was still King. There’s no question, they looked upon this other man as this man in the office as one underneath the Great King. Now undoubtedly the populous probably did.

Verse 13, “Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking treason. [14] Depart from evil, and do good,” notice the emphasis on specific behaviors, “Depart from evil and do good,” this is not some little vague generalization, it’s talking about change the way you live. In other words, what is faith? It goes back to the nature of faith. Faith is doing and resting. When you operate by faith you don’t destroy your creature responsibility; you still do things. The faith has to be shown in historical activity, even if it’s just standing there are the Red Sea you’re doing something, you’re standing there, right. You’re not running, your behavior can be described, can it not. So behavior patterns that are activated by faith are just as much behavior patterns as behavior patterns that are activated by unfaith or lack of faith. So the emphasis in Scripture is always on let the faith play out in the form of behavior.

“Do good, seek peace, and pursue it.” Now the word for “peace” is shalom, and it means completeness, and it has a little irony to this word because shalom, sometimes you’ll see this in pictures of Israel, this is what shalom looks like: “sh,” this is an “l,” and this is an “m,” and you just put a few vowels in and you come out with shalom, very simple. Shalom is a word that means completeness; it came to mean peace, but here’s something very interesting about the Old Testament view of peace. In the Old Testament you didn’t have peace until you had all the pieces put together and that means all unjustice removed. So that peace in the Old Testament apart from dealing decisively with evil, was an impossibility. You could never have peace in the Old Testament mentality unless you first eliminated evil.

Now this has to be made clear because in our generation the emphasis is get peace now whether we eliminate evil or not. Now that’s we face a cultural attack on divine viewpoint as Americans; it’s just all over the place. Anytime you pick up a magazine, TV or anything you are basically breathing in this spirit which says peace now; and the Old Testament would say no, you’ve got to deal decisively with evil first then we have peace. It must be shalom, it must be complete. This is also the word that is used for health; you cannot have health unless you first deal with the disease; there’s no compromise here, and this one word alone will do a lot to purge your mind of some of the human viewpoint that you pick up just by being an American.

This also goes in the Christian life. The same thing, if you have a minus R learned behavior pattern, you can have degrees of peace as you obtain more and more victory over that pattern, but you’re never going to expect peace, perfect peace in your Christian life until that pattern is decisively eradicated from your life. And this should always be kind of a kick in the pants to you to keep on praying that the Holy Spirit would decisively root out every last [can’t understand word] of that minus R learned behavior pattern, if you really want peace. This is what’s wrong with the charismatic movement, everybody wants peace, peace, peace for doing what? Compromise of evil, that’s what. Give me my emotions, I need the emotion of peace and happiness today whether I have dealt with all the sins in my life or not we’ll save that for tomorrow. But unfortunately from the Scriptural point of view peace is not bought on the installment plan; it is not buy now and pay later. It is we pay as you go and that’s exactly how it operates in the Christian life.

Now the last part of verse 14, notice “peace, and pursue it,” do you see the activity expected of the believer. There’s no passivity here, there’s an activity.

Then verse 15 and following, the motivation, “The eyes of the LORD are upon the righteous, and His ears are open unto their cry. [16] The face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.” All right, verse 15-16 shows… what is the technical word describing this kind of statement that’s made in verses 15-16. Anybody know the technical word for this literary approach, this literary style? Anybody know the Greek word for “man.” Okay, it can be either an anthropomorphism or an anthropopathism; technically anthropopathism meaning a man’s emotions, but here’s one of those situations where the critic comes and says see, the Lord doesn’t have eyes, these silly Christians think He has eyes and ears, how big are the Lord’s ears. So they’ll say something like that. Well, the answer is that God has the equivalent of all of these in His very character but at the infinite level, and when God appears on a finite plain He does have ears, because He appears as Jesus Christ. He very definitely does have ears. What should be so unusual to expect that the Lord is going to be like a man if we’re made in His image?

Now this is again one of those places, “The eyes of the LORD are upon the righteous, and His ears are open unto their cry,” and the Jewish person reading this would think of the Lord with His eyes and His ears. Now we have extracted it and said what? What are the attributes here? What’s the attribute described in verse 15? [someone answers] Omniscience, this is an attribute of God. But I want you to notice the personal way the Jew looked at it. This would have been very impersonal for him; when he thought about God’s omniscience, He was thinking in terms of is the Lord looking at me right now, never mind someone else, is the Lord looking at me right now. And what would be the attribute in verse 16? [someone answers] Sovereignty would be involved but another attribute? Justice, “The face of the LORD is against them who do evil,” there’s a very picturesque thing of the personal-ness again, “The face of the LORD is against them. Now that is an idiom that is used in the Old Testament meaning the look of determination on somebody’s face, a look of hostility on the very face and so this is how personal God’s justice is. If you can conceive of Christ sitting on the throne angry, this fulfills this image; He is angry, His face is against those who do evil. And therefore notice the solid theological reasoning of David, why should you do verses 13-14, because theologically verse 15-16.

I have made this point at least two thousand times since I came as pastor of this church, that when you start teaching somebody something about behavior patterns, particularly when you deal with children and their behavior patterns, tie it to the essence of God, and yet only today we ran across a situation where a parent was telling their children about sex and never even opened the Bible to show them the setting of sex, to show them that sex pre-existed the fall, a whole big discussion that was going on as though it were totally autonomous. The way this person told their children the atheist might have told their child the same way; what difference does it make for that particular Christian young person to be in that particular home under that particular Christian parent, when the parent went to sit down and explain something about sex they never related it to the Word. Does the Word have something to say about sex? Seeing that God designed sex He might have a few operating instructions, it that thought might possibly cross your mind. I’ll tell you where a lot of that gets started. Do you know where a lot of that gets started? Legalism, these people are so worried about my using a four-lettered word or something up here or talking about something else in 1 Samuel [congregation laughs] that they have got their guard up. And they have drawn a boundary ten thousand feet thick between any of what we would call the touchy areas of life and the Word of God. And this is why they can’t stand it when in 1 Samuel we just go plowing into it. It is a privilege for a parent to be able to be open and communicate fully with their own children the Word of God. I would rather err on the standpoint of using a few words that the Word of God does us and going right through it all and risk turning some people off than having that kind of stuff where we can’t even discuss a simple problem that is a critical problem, that young people have more trouble with than any other problem. And that’s the problem we don’t bring the Word of God to; that’s what legalism will do for you.

All right, verse 17, “The righteous cry, and the LORD hears, and delivers them out of all their troubles.” This is a statement, a gnomic truth, this is another one of the Lord’s faithfulness. Verse 18, “The LORD is nigh [near] unto them who are of a broken heart, and saves such as be of a contrite spirit.” A “contrite spirit” and “broken heart” are positive volition, and this is another little word picture that the Old Testament saints had about looking at their own spirit. Now it’s hard to visualize what they visualized when they thought of the human spirit, but they had an idea that the human spirit could harden. Just think of butter. The Jews think of butter, and when you take it out of the refrigerator it’s cold, they would think of that as a proud spirit, whereas a spirit that was flexible, butter when it’s warmed up and it gives, it’s more pliable, they would think of that as the human spirit when it is open and submissive to God’s will. I think how they got it was from the fact that they visualized life, sort of on a path, and if the human spirit was stiff, it couldn’t make the turns; the human spirit would kind of have to melt along the path, be pliable to where the Lord was leading. And it came down in our Old Testament to these words, “”a broken heart, and a contrite spirit.” It means the pride is squeezed out of the spirit, so what God wants to do the spirit is willing to do it.

Now this is not the wrong mystical kind of passivity, but it means that there’s a weakness that is good in the spirit, and when the spirit gets hardened, pride is a hardening process of the spirit. Now perhaps the best way for us to observe this, rather than try to imagine butter or something, probably the best way to observe this would be think of your daily plans; a proud spirit would erect a plan for the day and then come all opposition or anything else we are going to do this today, period. God Himself might come down and veto the plan; I don’t care, I planned it, it’s going to happen today. And there is the idea of the stiffness, there’s nothing wrong with planning, James 4:13 says you should plan, but the way you should plan according to James 4:13 is plan always with the idea of Lord, to the best of my knowledge, with the best of the resources that You have given me, this is the best plan I can come up with; now Lord, this is what I have planned, now I give the plan to You and You have the right to change it if You want. That’s the attitude of the divine viewpoint planning; you plan it yes, the Christian is always told go ahead and plan, there’s nothing wrong with planning, but you always have to give God the right to finally pass on your plans. God expects you to do the planning, He doesn’t expect to do the planning Himself.

You know this old thing that new believers often get into, they walk in front of a mirror and they say oh God, what color tie would you like me to wear today. And they sit down and contemplate infinity for five minutes and then some horrible yellow thing that someone got sick on two weeks ago comes to mind and that’s the one they trot out for the day and this is supposed to be God leading them on how to select ties for the day. God isn’t interested in your selection of ties, God is interested in treating you as a mature person who can pick their own ties. God is interested in the major decisions of your life and don’t expect Him to come in and step in and make all the little dinky little details; He’s given that to you. Think of Adam. After… AFTER God got through telling Adam how He made the universe, He said Adam, here are all the animals, and then it says God stood back to see what Adam would call them. Now as the animals trotted by Adam didn’t say hey God, what do you want me to name this one. There’s no record of Adam ever consulting God on the names of the animals. Why? Because that’s the nobility of man. Man is noble enough to make his own names and wear his own ties. But when it comes to the major choices of your life, your job, your marriage, home, things like this that involve the great directions of your life, that’s where God would like the opportunity to pass of your plans, for you to submit the plans and keep morally neutral about them; spiritual neutral to Him, in other words, you’ve taken the Word of God and you’ve planned the best you can and then you say all right Lord, I am open to Your changes.

That’s what we mean by Biblical planning and a hard spirit isn’t going to do that; a hard spirit will plan and leave God out. A “broken” and “contrite spirit” will be one that does plan, but then is always open to corrections. [verse 19, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous; but the LORD delivers him out of them all.”]

And then the rest of it goes on very simple, verse 20 becomes a very interesting verse. Verse 20 is an illustration of how prophecy originates in the Old Testament. “He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.” Now obviously that refers in John 19 to the death of Jesus Christ. Now how does this illuminate us as to the person of Christ? Well one way this does is by saying what was the Psalm about? The Psalm was about the righteous one, Psalm 34, the saint. There’s another passage in the Bible, Exodus 12 that deals with the sacrifices and says that a sacrifice cannot have the bones broken. There are two passages then; taken together Exodus 12:46 and Psalm 34:20 put together tell you something about the person of Christ. It tells you first of all that He was going to be a sacrifice for sin, that He was going to become sin for us. But on the other hand, verse 20 is not referring to somebody who is a sinner. Verse 20 is referring to somebody who is godly. And it therefore shows that though Christ bore the sins of the world upon Him during the cross judgment, that was the only time in His life when He ever was looked upon as sinful. But the normative picture of Christ was that He was morally perfect and he becomes the ideal of this Psalm.

Verse 21, “Evil shall slay the wicked, and they that hate the righteous shall be desolate. [22] The LORD redeems the soul of His servants; and none of them who trust in Him shall be desolate.” One closing remark in verse 22, “The LORD redeems” is a Hebrew participle. Do you know what that means? The Lord is continually in the process of redeeming you. And this refers to the fact that at one time you accepted Jesus Christ, you have come to that point in your life where you have personally accepted Christ. You became a Christian and as a result now, after studying the Word, you probably should know what it means to become a Christian and why; there is no other way for salvation. That’s the first point of redemption. But this is a participle; this means God goes on redeeming, redeeming, redeeming, redeeming, redeeming, so that from the time that you accept Christ all the way down to the time you die God is in the process of redeeming you. This is why it smarts, this explains why a lot of time you feel hurt and pain in the Christian life. Do you realize that it’s because God is in the process of redeeming you; He’s knocking off some of the rough edges and it hurts and stings. So the very fact that you hurt sometimes shows the redeeming hand of Jehovah. The very fact that you cannot seem to get away with what you used to, it used to be the good old days before you got with the Word and you could go out and raise all kinds of hell and get away with it, no problem, you thought. And then it seems like you get under the teaching of the Word and every time you look sideways something happens. What’s the matter? The redeeming hand of God operating on you in proportion to how much you know of the Word, and the more some of you know of the Word and the more you disobey the Word the harder it’s going to get because God holds you responsible to what you know. You know it’s dangerous walking in here or any other church and listening to the Word. It’s dangerous, think of what a nice time you’d have if you’d never heard this stuff before. And then you wouldn’t be held accountable for it, but after you’ve heard the Word you’re held accountable and it means that God is going to work and redeem.

Next week if you will look ahead and try to analyze Psalm 116; that will be our last declarative praise Psalm. And if you’ll try to read it over and find the sections in it, find those three parts, the main section, the introductory summary and the proclamation.