Praise under Pressure - Psalm 34

Purpose: To encourage praise of God

Reading: Psalm 34 

Praise under pressure

Did you get the start of this Psalm:

“Of David. When he pretended to be insane before Abimelech, who drove him away, and he left.

:1 I 63 will extol the LORD at all times; his praise will always be on my lips.

:2 My soul will boast in the LORD; let the afflicted hear and rejoice.

:3 Glorify the LORD with me; let us exalt his name together.”

Wow!  There is David, under threat of death and he can praise God like this. 

This is David's situation: Saul has taken a dislike to David and is trying to kill him, so David has run away.  We pick up the story in 1 Samuel 21:10-15

That day David fled from Saul and went to Achish king of Gath. 

But the servants of Achish said to him, “Isn’t this David, the king of the land? Isn’t he the one they sing about in their dances: “‘Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands’?”

David took these words to heart and was very much afraid of Achish king of Gath. So he pretended to be insane in their presence; and while he was in their hands he acted like a madman, making marks on the doors of the gate and letting saliva run down his beard.

Achish said to his servants, “Look at the man! He is insane! Why bring him to me? Am I so short of madmen that you have to bring this fellow here to carry on like this in front of me? Must this man come into my house?”

Achish vs Abimelech / Attribution

Samuel says Achish, but the Psalm says Abimelech. That's probably because Abimelech  is a title for Philistine Kings.  You may also have noticed that the attribution at the top does not have a verse number.  That is because it is not part of the psalm, but it IS part of the ancient writings, so we read it when we read the psalm.  The headings that are inserted in a modern translation, such as “David at Gath” are modern additions, and are for our convenience.  Different translations will have different headings in different places.  We don't usually read them.

David's Attitude

While all this is happening David isn't praying for deliverance or safe passage, He's praising God. And thinking about how others might come to praise God as he is doing.

Psalm Structure

He writes the psalm down (or more probably dictates it) as an acrostic poem, where each of the verses starts with the successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet.  In doing so he breaks the model of the normal structure of a Psalm.

Here's the structure he comes up with:

1-7 Thanksgiving for God's goodness and justice

1-3 Individual or communal praise

4-7 Individual or communal experience.

8-22 In praise of Wisdom

8-14 Exhortation to wisdom

15-22 Rewards of Wisdom

Beginning of Wisdom

We're going to take a look at a few of the things that David says about wisdom, to help us understand more of what he is saying.  Then we will return to look at praising God.

v6 Poor

In verse 6 the word poor does not necessarily refer to poverty, but to those who do not have sufficient resources to defend themselves in the world, and therefore understand their need for God.

v7 & 9 Be afraid ...

Fear of the Lord we are often told really refers to respect.  Everything we do should be done thinking about God and how He would respond to it.  “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” it says in Psalm 111:10 and Proverbs 9:10.  In verses 7 & 9 though it has the sense of  'be afraid, be very afraid,' be more afraid of God than any of His enemies.  That is a good attitude to have because only God can keep us from Hell, if He were to let go we would be lost, but He has promised not to.

v8 Taste, not test

At the start of the section “Exhortation to wisdom” in verse 8 David says “Taste and see that the Lord is good”.  Try it and see!  Try before you buy!  What an invitation that would make today!  Come to church and meet God and see if you get along with Him. 

We must remember though that we must not see this as testing God.  People are not coming along to see what God can do for them. It can never be “God I will follow you if you will ...” as it was with the Israelites at Massah where the demanded that God provide for them. (Deuteronomy 6:16)

v10 Lions

In verse 10, 'lions' is probably a metaphor for the go getting rich oppressors of the people.  Those who seek wealth and power rather than God.  They, David said, will have needs, but Gods faithful will not.  Although we may struggle with the idea that Gods people are never in need we should remember that David is writing from his own experiences.

v19-20 A prophecy?

'Bones' in verse 20 can be seen as a metaphor for Gods people, none of whom can ever be broken.  It is also literally true of Jesus who died on the cross before his legs could be broken to speed up the process.

v12-16 in 1 Peter 3:8-12

Peter uses verses 12-16 in his first letter as a way of describing how people should live.

1Pe 3:10 For, “Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech.

1Pe 3:11 He must turn from evil and do good; he must seek peace and pursue it.

1Pe 3:12 For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”

“If you live like this who is going to cause you harm?” he says, and goes on to talk about suffering for righteousness, but reminds his readers not to fear.  He has picked up the message of the Psalm perfectly.

David's response is praise

David's response to any problem is to praise God.  He can only do this because he has experience of God's protection.  He has learned over many years to trust God.  He says as much in verse 17

The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles.

And verse 19

A righteous man may have many troubles,  but the LORD delivers him from them all

We can see David's trust in the Lord by his attitude when the Israelites were threatened by the Philistines and their champion Goliath.

What has God done for us?

God has not rescued me from bears of wolves – not literal ones anyway but he has kept me safe through the years.  David was confident that God would give him victory because many time God had protected him from bears and wolves, so he volunteered to go and fight

Story?

Count your blessings

My mother always used to say to be when I was a grumpy child (quite often!) “Count your blessings”.  To a young boy its a horrible thing to say – I had no idea what my blessings were.    Now I know more about the world I realize that my blessings are considerable.  I live in a nice town, in one of the most peaceful and stable countries in the world. I have a reasonable job that provides for my family, life is mostly very good and very non-threatening.  I am greatly blessed with those things even before I start to talk about my family and by brothers and sisters in Christ.

Lets take a moment to give thanks to God for some of our more obvious blessings.

Testimony of the testimony

When we don't count our blessings and recognize all the good things that God has given us we can easily become grumpy and dissatisfied.

Many years ago I was coming to church as a habit – nothing more.  Things had not been going well for me here and I was fed-up and disillusioned with church and everything associated with it.  I had stopped praying and had stopped reading the Bible.  There was some event happening, I can't remember what or why – I wasn't that interested.  Captain Ron asked me to give my testimony, well not so much asked as demanded.  I reluctantly agreed.  I found when I spent time thinking about my history with Jesus that all I could do was praise Him. 

Its a good exercise to do – give it a try.

You have had the taste, now you can see that God is good.

Jehoshaphat wins by praise

Even so praising God is not the most obvious response to problems. Jehoshaphat found that it worked.  When the Moabites, Ammonites and some of the Meunites from Mount Seir teamed up to attack Judah Jehoshaphat sought God.  Here's how the battle went from 2 Chronicles 20:20

Early in the morning they left for the Desert of Tekoa. As they set out, Jehoshaphat stood and said, “Listen to me, Judah and people of Jerusalem! Have faith in the LORD your God and you will be upheld; have faith in his prophets and you will be successful.” 

After consulting the people, Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the LORD and to praise him for the splendor of his holiness as they went out at the head of the army, saying: “Give thanks to the LORD, for his love endures forever.”

As they began to sing and praise, the LORD set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were defeated.

The men of Ammon and Moab rose up against the men from Mount Seir to destroy and annihilate them. After they finished slaughtering the men from Seir, they helped to destroy one another.

When the men of Judah came to the place that overlooks the desert and looked toward the vast army, they saw only dead bodies lying on the ground; no one had escaped.

The battle was won, but only the enemy had fought.  Judah was victorious because of the praise they had given God.

I bet you didn't realise that “His love Endures forever” was a battle hymn did you?

Praising God defeats our enemy too!

Praise to start and end Prayer

Every time we come to the Lord we should start with praise and end with praise.  That's what Jesus taught us in the Lord's Prayer.

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” - that's praise – we are recognising God for who He is and telling Him that we have set even his name aside as something special.

It ends with “For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours. Now and for ever.” praise again all glory belongs to God.

Conclusion

Psalm 34 was written in difficult circumstances. It starts with three amazing verses of praise.  David gives us the reasons for his praise of God by explaining what he has learnt of God as he has lived for Him and under His protection.

We can follow David's example by praising God for all that He has done at every opportunity and certainly at the beginning and ending of our prayer times.

The praise we give will help us to know God even better and then we too will respond with praise when we find ourselves in difficult circumstances.

Fear puts our problems between us and God.

Praise puts God between us and our problems.