Psalm 34 Written by David, an acrostic psalm, probably written around the time David pretended to be mad before Abimelech who drove him away.
1 I will extol the Lord at all times; his praise will always be on my lips.
2 I will glory in the Lord; let the afflicted hear and rejoice.
3 Glorify the Lord with me; let us exalt his name together.
4 I sought the Lord, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears.
5 Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.
6 This poor man called, and the Lord heard him; he saved him out of all his troubles.
7 The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them.
8 Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.
9 Fear the Lord, you his holy people, for those who fear him lack nothing.
10 The lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.
11 Come, my children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord.
12 Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days,
13 keep your tongue from evil and your lips from telling lies.
14 Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.
15 The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are attentive to their cry;
16 but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to blot out their name from the earth.
17 The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles.
18 The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
19 The righteous person may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all;
20 he protects all his bones, not one of them will be broken.
21 Evil will slay the wicked; the foes of the righteous will be condemned.
22 The Lord will rescue his servants; no one who takes refuge in him will be condemned.
SECTIONS:
I Personal testimony
II Personal teaching
THEME: teaching fear of the Lord
QUESTIONS:
Look through the whole psalm. What does happens anytime someone seeks the Lord, looks to him or calls on him? What is his response?
Verses 9 and 11 say to fear the Lord. What does that mean to you?
How does the David “teach” the fear of the Lord in the psalm?
In light of verse 19, what do you say to those who think that as a Christian they shouldn’t have to experience suffering?
What happens to those who take refuge in the Lord?
How do verses 5 and 22 correlate?
Other Translations: verse 18
The Amplified Bible: The Lord is close to those who are of a broken heart and saves such as are crushed with sorrow for sin and are humbly and thoroughly penitent.
New King James: The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart, And saves such as have a contrite spirit
ADDITIONAL VERSES
Isaiah 61:1 The Spirit of the Lord GOD is on Me, because the LORD has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release from darkness to the prisoners,
For the unbeliever, the fear of God is the fear of the judgment of God and eternal death, which is eternal separation from God (Luke 12:5; Hebrews 10:31). For the believer, the fear of God is something much different. The believer’s fear is reverence of God. Hebrews 12:28-29 “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our ’God is a consuming fire.’” This is the motivating factor for us to surrender to the Creator of the Universe.
True wisdom comes only from understanding who God is and that He is holy, just, and righteous. Deuteronomy 10:12, 20-21 “And now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. …The fear of God is the basis for our walking in His ways, serving Him, and loving Him.
Some redefine the fear of God to “respecting” Him. While respect is part of the concept , there is more to it. It includes understanding how much God hates sin and fearing His judgment on sin—even in the life of a believer. Hebrews 12:5-11 describes God’s discipline of the believer. While it is done in love (Hebrews 12:6), it is still a fearful thing. As children, the fear of discipline from our parents no doubt prevented some evil actions. The same should be true in our relationship with God. We should fear His discipline, and seek to live our lives in a way that pleases Him.
Believers are not to be scared of God. We have no reason to be scared. We have His promise that nothing can separate us from His love (Romans 8:38-39) and His promise that He will never leave us or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5). Fearing God means having such a reverence for Him that it has a great impact on the way we live. The fear of God is respecting Him, obeying Him, submitting to His discipline, and worshiping Him in awe.
https://bible.org/seriespage/5-psalm-34-fear-lord
David was fearful of Achish because he had forgotten that his protector was ever-present. Those who look to God for their protection and deliverance must understand that deliverance may take place in unexpected and unforeseen ways. In the Old Testament the Son of God was near at hand to save His people, but few were aware of it. Jesus came in human flesh to dwell among His people and to save them, yet few recognized Him.
We can infer from verses 8-10 that the majority of David’s contemporaries did not experience the fullest blessings of God. David wanted others to worship God-to taste and see the Lord is good, to trust, and to fear him. Many church-going people today, don’t have the kind of relationship with God which enables them to personally experience the provision and protection that David knew.
The righteous trust in the Lord as evidenced by their cries to Him for deliverance. In contrast to the pride and arrogance of the wicked, the righteous are humble and brokenhearted. They depend upon God, looking to Him for deliverance rather than trusting in their own strength. This is a lesson David learned in Gath. Human ingenuity didn’t him (i.e. acting insane); he was delivered by God’s grace in response to his humble petition for deliverance. David was saved in spite of his cleverness and because of God’s mercy.
The Lord is described as providing the righteous with protection and deliverance from the wrath of man. We dare not suggest in the light of verse 19 that God’s care promises us that the righteous will not suffer, but He will ultimately deliver us from all adversity. Those who fear God are not only assured of his protection, but are kept from divine retribution and wrath. In contrast, the wicked will be slain by evil, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned. The wicked are destroyed by their own wickedness. They suffer divine retribution, as we see from the Book of Proverbs: “So they shall eat of the fruit of their own way..”
The same word “condemned” is used in both verse 21 and 22. The wicked will be condemned. Those who take refuge in Him will not be condemned. The word “condemned” assumes guilt in both instances. David understands that both the wicked and the righteous are guilty. In the one instance the guilty are held guilty and are punished for their sins. In the other instance the guilty are redeemed and are not punished. Those who are forgiven “take refuge in Him” (those brokenhearted and crushed in spirit) while others stubbornly resist God and hate the righteous.
When David sinned through his deception and violence, he had allowed his fear of the God to wane, replacing it with the fear of man. God graciously delivered David, not due to David’s righteousness, but because of their relationship. In response to God’s merciful deliverance, David’s fear of God was renewed. David praised God, and shared what he had learned, urging others to experience the blessing of God in a fuller way.
David’s actions in fleeing to Achish from Saul were not commendable. We won’t make any effort to excuse or explain them. From our own experience we can understand why David would act in the way he did. He was under pressure from Saul, and had begun to weaken in his fear of the Lord. Instead he had come to fear men (in particular, Achish). This led to deception. But now David could now teach others about the fear of the Lord because he had come to understand it more fully from his own failures.
God is gracious. He has chosen to use fallible men to serve and to worship Him. God never takes our sin lightly, and we are warned of the dire consequences of sin, yet it is often through our failures that the greatest lessons of life are learned.
A friend and I were talking recently about some men in the ministry who somehow are able to live a double life—preaching the gospel on the one hand and yet living in immorality. I think that this Psalm helps to explain why some can live such a lie. They are hypocritical in their immorality because they have developed a pattern of hypocrisy. Because they are preachers and people hold them up as models, they feel that they cannot fail or rather they dare not admit that they fail. Those of us who are unwilling to admit that David sinned in his relationship with Saul and with Achish are certainly not willing to learn that Christian leaders fail, too. Consequently, our leaders, teachers, and ministers learn to live a lie. They give the appearance of having control over sin in their life, but they know they are weak. Having become conditioned to hypocrisy, when they fall into immorality they are inclined to continue to do what they have always done—play the role which people expect of them.
All of the leaders of the Old and New Testaments were men with “feet of clay.” We dare not demand more of men today. We need to be reminded that God does deliver us from our sins, if we but confess them and forsake them. The way to live righteously is not to ignore sin or to rationalize it, but to repent of it and to be restored. I pray that we may find the forgiveness and the restoration to fellowship and worship that David experienced and that he urges us to experience as well.
This was a situation in David’s life where he discovered Saul planned to murder him. So, he decided to flee to Gath and came before the king of Gath named Achish – Abimelech might be a title for Philistine kings – like Pharaoh was for the king of Egypt. But when David discovered that the servants of Achish were leery of him he pretended to be insane. The trick worked and he was allowed to leave.
This episode as not the most noble time in David’s life. He attempted to flee his own country to go to the enemy of God’s people – the Philistines. That decision was not very well-thought out because he ends up having to deceive Achish into thinking he was crazy. It’s not a highlight of David’s life. Yet, David now writes a psalm praising the Lord for this ugly situation in his life. And we too can praise the Lord –when we remember something good he did in the midst of a really bad decision we’ve made. When we do that, we demonstrate an appropriate amount of humility. That even when a situation makes us look really bad – we can use it – not to glory in our shame – but to make God look as good as he truly is.
Now, who is the Angel of the Lord? He’s the one who spoke with Hagar. He prevented Abraham from actually sacrificing his son. He appeared to Moses in the burning bush. He confronted Balaam on the way to his attempt to curse Israel. He appeared to Gideon and to Samson’s parents. He carried out God’s judgement on David’s proud sin of numbering the people. He appeared to Elijah and strengthened him. He killed 185,000 Assyrians in one night. And there are several more references to the Angel of the Lord. He’s somewhat of a mysterious figure.
But there are two facts about him that we should know. One is that he is separate from the Lord. The Lord sends him, for example. But the other fact is that oftentimes he speaks as if he were the Lord. And for these reasons, some think that he’s a pre-incarnate manifestation of Jesus Christ. In Psalm 34 – do people fear this Angel of the Lord – Jesus Christ, possibly – or do they just fear the Lord? I think the answer is both. To fear the Angel of the Lord is to fear the Lord. They’re that connected and inseparable.
Looking at David’s life , we see that even though David erred, making irrational decisions at times, he was nevertheless one of Israel’s greatest kings. His struggles and difficulties shaped his heart and character.
“their faces will never be ashamed” – David assures us that just as he found joy, peace, and salvation from God’s deliverance, we too can have the same experience. David’s words and his example are a testament to God’s faithfulness. He says to us, “Don’t take my word for it, experience it yourself. Not only will God change your circumstances, but you will not be the same after.”
David insinuates that troubles and afflictions often leave us in circumstances that force us to cry out in dependence on God for deliverance, and if we do not seek Him out and focus our eyes toward Him, we will allow these circumstances to extinguish all hope; resulting in a hardened, calloused heart to God and others.
It shouldn’t be surprising that in situations about the unknown we’ll have anxiety, as well as anxiety in troubling and dangerous circumstances. Fear is inevitably present in the one experiencing these type of situations. Although we would like to believe that we should always be confident in God, it’s not irrational to understand that fear is natural in our current spiritual state. We’re told in 1 Samuel 21:12 that David “greatly feared Achish king of Gath.” Yet, David also received deliverance. But David didn’t just fear Achish, for his psalm proves to us that in this moment of distress, he cried out to God.
We should view the fear of the LORD as more than just an emotion, but also as a righteous decision and response that produces faithful action. This is what David is communicating to us in both his words and actions. Without proper fear of God we cannot (in humility) allow God to work in us to rectify our broken relationship with Him.
As David’s experience shows, deliverance may take a form we are not at all expecting. There is no way that David could have known that he would be forced to feign madness, however, he did know that God was able in all his troubling circumstances to deliver him from seemingly inevitable defeat. God’s timing is impeccable and often we don’t realize just how much we can handle, nor the reasons we have found ourselves in such trying circumstances. Often it seems that God allow these circumstances to specifically get us to depend upon Him. On one side, God will use our current rebellion to move us toward repentance through the loving, yet harsh reproof of a father “Behold, how happy is the man whom God reproves, So do not despise the discipline of the Almighty” (Job 5:17). Yet we also know that our faith will put us in circumstances that bring about persecution and affliction. It was not in punishment, for instance, that Christ told Peter how he would be martyred (John 21:18-19). We should therefore continually seek dependence on God.
Fear of the LORD is absolutely essential to the security of our relationship with God. David’s experience should encourage us, especially since it isn’t likely that our lives will be as dangerous as his was. As modern men and women of the 21st century, our daily troubles are more related to the provision of material goods than deliverance from events that directly threaten our very lives. This, however, should be all the more reason for us to be thankful to God.
My reflection:
I used to have nightmares frequently because of issues in my childhood. And before I received healing and these nightmares were relieved, I would wake up crying and terrified. Somebody was always coming after me to harm me in my nightmares. I would study the bible holding tightly to any words in scripture that talked of God’s protection. Yet at that time I wondered if I could trust God to keep me safe. I was scared of him but not in a good way. Remember I shared how I saw God as lightning bolts from the sky, ready to strike me at any time.
But one night God gave me a vision. And I know it was God speaking to me in a dream because after that I began to trust God more. And I had proper fear of God after this, but not in the same way I had before.
My dream began with a giant black vulture who was flying over me. His expansive wings were spread out over me like they would envelop me. And his wide beak was open as if to devour me. Then to top it off, I saw a gigantic scary Rottweiller running towards me with his teeth barred. I thought for sure I would die. But instead of attacking me, the Rottweiller walked right over me until I was underneath his body. He was so enormous that I could easily stand up straight under his belly. Then he turned around to face the vulture. He growled and snarled and the vulture became frightened and flew away. I knew in that instant that God was telling me he was my protector and would defend me and that I need only trust him. Yes, he was scary and he was fierce but that’s why the enemy would quickly flee in his presence. And he let me know he was for me and not against me and that I had nothing to fear from him because he would always be with me and keep me safe.
God has worked in many ways to prove to me he is my protector. I did not feel protected as a child. I was vulnerable and belittled and beaten down. But little by little God changed my view of him and made me see things in a different light. He made me trust in him, but it didn’t happen overnight. I’ll always cherish that vision that God gave me as my protector.