Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Psalm 34; Psalm 56 | Date: May 12, 2024 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Background to Psalm 34

Psalm 34—continue our expositions of the Psalms. Today we’ll look primarily at Psalm 34, but we’ll also look at it through the background that David gives us in 1 Samuel chapter 21, and then also in Psalm 56, which refers to the same event. I’ll try to do that for you so you can still get home in time for Mother’s Day dinner. Psalm 34 with Psalm 56 and then also 1 Samuel 21.

Again, just notice the superscript of Psalm 34. This is of David when he changed his behavior before Abimelech so that he drove him out and he went away. You might remember this is when David was fleeing from Saul. He was before Achish. Here it says Abimelech. That’s probably a dynastic name for Achish, the king of Gath that we’ll see in a little bit. The reference is to, as I’ve mentioned, 1 Samuel chapter 21, a bizarre episode in the life of David, not his finest moment, but a very famous episode in David’s life.

You’ll remember well, as we saw this morning in Sunday School, 1 Samuel chapter 15, we had King Saul, the first king of Israel, who proved to be unfaithful. He was rejected by God. 1 Samuel chapter 16, then, God sends Samuel the prophet to the house of Jesse, and there he anoints Jesse’s youngest son, David, and there’s now the promise that he will be Israel’s king.

1 Samuel 17, then, we have David’s famous episode with Goliath, where he slays the giant and the Philistines from Gath. Goliath was from Gath. The Philistines flee from before Israel, then, with their champion put to death. 1 Samuel chapter 18, then, we have David who’s promoted, of course, and he’s put in charge of all of Saul’s army. He’s massively successful. He’s so successful that the women are writing songs about him and singing, and not just in Israel, but in the neighboring countries as well. They’re singing songs about this legendary champion that has arisen in Israel. His name is David, and “Saul who has slain his thousands, but David has slain his tens of thousands.”

And through some remarkable events, David continues his rise to prominence in Israel so much that finally it makes King Saul very jealous. And in fact, for 1 Samuel 19 and following, we have Saul who has become insanely jealous against David. He’s a tyrant. He’s out of his mind, almost, with jealousy of David. He finally is seeking David’s life. David is warned by Saul’s son, Jonathan, who was a good friend, and David has to leave, fleeing for his life. It was a sad parting then from his friend, Jonathan, in particular.

So David is on the run from King Saul, virtually on his own, a few men with him, but no resources. He’s famished. This is 1 Samuel 21 now. He goes to a place called Nob, where he finds Ahimelech the priest, and he gets some food there at the house of the Lord. He also picks up Goliath’s sword that had been housed there as well. And then he goes to Gath. This is 10 miles away; it’s the nearest city to them. It’s a risky move why he would go to Gath. I assume that David was hoping that he could remain anonymous there. Some have conjectured that maybe the people of Gath and the king in particular at Gath would welcome Saul’s famous general to their side or something like that.

I think rather, though, that David is hoping to remain anonymous, and so I assume at that point he has hidden Goliath’s sword somewhere else because that would be a dead giveaway as to who he is. But he’s desperate and he’s on the run from Saul. He’s got nowhere else to go. He has to find food and shelter somewhere, and he’s hoping that no one will recognize him. Evidently, he’s there in Gath for only a very brief time before the men of the city recognize him. In fact, it’s the king’s men who recognize him. And we read in 1 Samuel 21, verse 11, that David overhears the king’s men talking, and they say, “Is this not David the king of the land? Is this the man of whom was sung, ‘Saul has killed his thousands, David has killed his tens of thousands’?”

So 1 Samuel 21 verse 12 tells us that David was much afraid. And when you read that, think: David was scared to death, and his following actions demonstrate that. Desperate times require desperate measures, and so we read in verse 13 of that chapter, “So he changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands and made marks on the doors of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard.”

So you can imagine this champion of legendary status. He’s killed Goliath. He’s led Israel’s army with marvelous success. He goes out on his own with a small band of men later, and he’s doing marvelous feats. And now here he is in Gath. He’s in physical contortions to show that he’s not in his right mind, acting like he’s totally insane, scribbling graffiti on the gates of the city, and letting his slobber drain through his beard. Not his proudest moment. But it does demonstrate the depths of David’s fear at this point.

Many years ago, an Old Testament professor that I knew wrote—commemorated this event with a poem that he wrote, and he titled it, very appropriately, “A Memorial of the Macabre Machinations of a Madcap Madman.”

David picked the madman trick when men from Achish neared,
And let a little spittle dribble down upon his beard.
He babbled and he scrabbled till the vet with net appeared.
He let a little spittle dribble down upon his beard.
Could this wild and woolly weirdo be the warrior women cheered
And now allow a little spittle dribble through his beard?
Though not too old, he showed his boldness when the giant jeered
And slew ten feet of buzzard meat before he had a beard.
Now at the path away from Gath past post and gate he peered;
To now be freed he knew you need a truly drooly beard.
So with such wits his fit he feigned that he who reigned there feared
To take the fake who let some spittle dribble down upon his beard.

Well, that’s the episode. King Achish does not come off in this episode very bright either. Here he had Israel’s champion, who had defeated Goliath. He has him in his hands. He thinks it’s a big joke. Verses 14 and 15 of that chapter tell us something to the effect he said to his men, “The last thing I need around here is another idiot.” And so he says, “Let him go,” and so David’s charade worked, and he’s released.

We laugh. David was in a panic, and he feared for his life, and he confesses that for us here in this psalm, Psalm 34. The superscript, he tells us right out that he changed his behavior before Abimelech. In verse 4, “I sought the Lord and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.” And then in verse 18, he refers to himself as “crushed in spirit.” There we get a glimpse of how desperate David felt at this point.

Now if you’ll turn—keep your hand here, we’ll be right back—but if you look over at Psalm 56, we’ll see another psalm that he wrote during this event. You’ll notice the superscript there. It’s a Miktam of David when the Philistines seized him in Gath. Now, this is a lament. This is written during the time when he’s seized by the men of Achish. Now, when David would have had the time to write this psalm during that episode, I don’t know. Was he in a holding cell of some kind, or is this just immediately after the event? When he has left, they’ve released him, and he’s gone, and he’s still out on his own and desperate, and he writes this lament. At that point, we don’t know, but somewhere very close to this event, David writes this lament psalm.

And as we’ve seen, this psalm has all of the typical components of a lament. At the beginning, he has the direct address to God and the initial petition and the lament. Verse 1, Psalm 56, “Be gracious to me, O God, for man tramples on me; all day long an attacker oppresses me.” And then, typical of a lament, he has an expression of confidence. We see David here struggling with his faith, but he expresses this confidence. Verse 3, “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me?”

Then he begins his lament in verse 5. “All day long they injure my cause; all their thoughts are against me for evil. They stir up strife, they lurk; they watch my steps, as they have waited for my life.” That is, he’s being hunted like an animal. And then the heart of every lament psalm is the petition. We have that in verses 7 and 8. “For their crime will they escape? In wrath cast down the peoples, O God! You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?” So he’s pleading to God for compassion during this time.

And then again, verses 9 and following, he expresses his confidence. “Then my enemies will turn back in the day when I call. This I know, that God is for me. In God whose word I praise, in the Lord whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me?” Then he ends, as typical with the laments, again with a vow to praise. “I must perform my vows to you, O God; I will render thank-offerings to you.” That is, vows that, when delivered, will give grateful praise and a thank-offering that is offered among the people. And then verse 13: “For you have delivered my soul from death.” Again, as often as speaking in the past tense, as though God will do what he has asked, “You have delivered my soul from death, yes, my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of life.”

Well, that’s Psalm 56, the lament written during this episode, and now back to Psalm 34. We have another psalm written, and this is a psalm of grateful praise. We’ve seen this before where the laments lament to God, complaining of the circumstances, but at the heart of the lament is the petition asking God for deliverance. These individual songs of grateful praise look back to those kinds of episodes and offer God thanks for what he has given in response to his petition. So here we have two psalms, twins, that reflect the one before and the one after. And in Psalm 34, now this is after the fact, and he offers his song of grateful praise.

The superscript: “Of David when he changed his behavior before Abimelech so that he drove him out and he went away.” And then, again, typical of these songs of grateful praise, he begins with a proclamation of praise to the Lord. Verses 1 to 3: “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. O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together.”

Verses 4 to 6 then, he gives a reflection on the event and reports the deliverance that God gave. “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.” Verses 7 to 10, then, we have his expression of praise, and he speaks here of the blessing of fearing the Lord. “Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. O 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.”

Now here we have a sort of a combination psalm. This was his song of grateful praise in verses 1 to 10. And now, verses 11 through 22, we have something of a homily, an exhortation that he gives. This is a wisdom psalm now, verses 11 to 22, where he exhorts people, “O come, O children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord.” And here through these verses, he tells us that God watches over and protects those who are his, and we’ll see more of that as we go along. He concludes verse 22 with the return to the theme of deliverance and his note of grateful praise. “The Lord redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.”

All right, so there we have in broad overview what’s going on in that episode in David’s life, and now these two Psalms. You might wonder, reading through 1 Samuel 21, “Okay, that’s a bizarre episode. Why was that recorded for us?” And we have at least part of the answer to that question in these two Psalms where we hear from David himself what he learned through those episodes. Psalm 56, he’s seized by Achish, he’s in Gath, and he writes his lament. And now Psalm 34, after his escape and his release from Achish, he writes a psalm of grateful praise for the deliverance that God has given. And here he acknowledges God’s answer to his lament and the petition that he gave. Verse 6, “This poor man cried and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles.”

Alright, as I’ve indicated then, we have two major divisions in this psalm.

Psalm 34, Verses 1 to 10: His Song of Grateful Praise

David expresses the joy of his renewed faith. He’s just come through this dreadful experience. He’s learned afresh of God’s faithful care, God’s faithfulness, and with renewed zeal, he says in verse 1, “I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth.” So looking back on his experience, David says, here’s what I’ve learned. I will worship God all the time. I will not stop trusting and I will not stop praising just because my life has been threatened. I’ll keep all of my circumstances in perspective. God is always God. I am always his. And his praise will be in my mouth always.

And this is what David, in brief, this is what David learns through the episode. So what we have in 1 Samuel 21, Psalm 56 and Psalm 34, is something of a progression or even a before, during, and after perspective of the whole event. 1 Samuel 21, of course, indicates very clearly that David was just falling apart with fear. He hears the men of Achish talking. He’s so terrified that he acts like a crazy man, drooling in bodily contortions, writing graffiti on the gates, things like that. Psalm 34, he tells us in verse 18, at that point, he was crushed in spirit. Hope was gone. He’s at the bottom.

And it’s in that context that he writes Psalm 56, his lament, where he is struggling to trust the Lord. And you can tell from Psalm 56 that we have read through that he is struggling with an imperfect faith. He’s struggling with what seem to be contradictory circumstances. God has anointed him to be king, and now he’s about to die. Being king seems to be the least likely thing now that will happen to David. And this is that period of time when it’s often referred to as when there was one king too many in Israel. Saul is still king. He’s been rejected, but he’s still king. David has been anointed to be king, but he’s not king yet.

And now David has been captured. His life is in danger. He’s falling apart with fear. In verse 3 of Psalm 56, he tells us, “When I’m afraid, I put my trust in you.” And there we get a glimpse of David’s struggling faith. Panic fear, and yet he’s struggling to trust God and to trust his promise. And so David, in that period, has a genuine but an imperfect faith. Circumstances seem to contradict everything that God has said. “How can I believe it now?” And yet he’s struggling for it. “And when I’m afraid, I’ll trust. I’ll trust.”

You have to sympathize with David at this point. You can imagine the confusion. Got one king too many, and not only is David not king yet, but it seems that he’s about to die and he’ll be anything but a king. Now Psalm 34, on the other hand, then, is written after the fact. And here David emerges with a renewed faith and says in verse 1, “That’s what I’ve learned.”

Verses 4 to 6, he elaborates on that. This is what I have learned in my deepest trial, and I’m so confident of what I’ve learned that I can say the same for all of the people of God: that no one who trusts this God will ever be ashamed. So David is learning. He’s moving from fear to faith. This is what God was teaching David during this whole period in his life. Teaching him to trust. God was not going to have another Saul. David was going to be a different king. And this king must know to trust. God was teaching him to trust through all of this.

It’s worth noting, I think, at that point as we go along that it was through the trial of his life that David learned this level of trust. People of God have to learn trust for some reason. The way we are in our fallen condition, we just don’t learn this level of trust when everything’s easy. In God’s providence, David is brought through all of these trials; he’s been through the ringer. And through it all, he learns, “I will bless the Lord at all times.”

I’ve seen this; I’ve seen this scores of times through pastoral ministry, dealing with people. You get to be with them at their happiest times and at their worst times. And it’s often at the worst of times that you see this coming through. You see people in some kind of collapse, some tragedy, bereavement. I remember one in particular. I went to the cemetery to meet some folks. They just lost a child. I meet them at their cars. They’re getting out of the car, the first words out of their mouth: “Oh, Pastor Fred, the Lord is so good.” And you think, yeah, he’s doing it again. He’s teaching us to trust. And it’s through the trials of this sort that we learn this level of trust, and we learn that God is completely trustworthy, and we learn that he is to be praised at all times.

We get to verses 7 to 10. We find David’s praise. Verse 7, God is our protector. “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and delivers them.” Now that’s Exodus language. It refers back to Exodus chapter 14, when Israel is leaving Egypt just after the Passover. The angel is at the Red Sea, and he stood between Israel and the Egyptian army, and he’s holding back the Egyptian army and protecting the people of Israel. And David reaches back to that imagery and says, “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him.” That what God did there, that is what God has done for me. And that is what God does for his people. He gives protection to those who take refuge in him.

Verse 8, we have an exhortation then with a language of experience. And I love this. “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.” I’ve tasted, I’ve seen that the Lord is good. And here he calls the people of God, “taste and see.” You’ll find the Lord is good. These words might ring a bell from the New Testament. The Apostle Peter, you might remember, picks up these very words in 1 Peter chapter 2 and verse 3. And he speaks of it in terms of the experience of every man or woman who has come to Christ. And he says, “You have tasted that the Lord is good.” That’s a testimony of every one of us, isn’t it? We’ve tasted that the Lord is good. It’s our testimony. It’s the joy of what we saw a couple of weeks ago, of appeased guilt. Coming to recognize our guilt and seeing what is all satisfied, not brushed aside, but is all answered in the work of Christ. And we have that joy of appeased guilt. We’ve tasted, we’ve seen the Lord is good. David here then, in verse 8, is calling Israel to trust. He tells them, in effect, trust the Lord and you will find, like I have found, that the Lord is good.

Verse 9 and 10, he tells us God is our provider. Verse 9, “O fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack. Young lions suffer want and hunger, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.” So God protects and provides for his people and he’s worthy of trust.

Psalm 34, Verses 11 to 22: A Wisdom Psalm

Now we get to verse 11 and we begin the second section of the psalm and here’s his homily. He exhorts the people in practical terms about trusting the Lord. He describes the fear of the Lord as we heard in Sunday school this morning. He describes fearing the Lord in practical terms of submission to him. Verse 11, “Come, O children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord.” Then he asks the question, “What man is there who desires life and loves many days, that he may see good?” And then the answer: “Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.”

So, here he’s exhorting the people to faithfulness, to fearing God. And the fear of God is not something just that’s professed on Sunday mornings. But when he says here, like in verse 14, “seek diligently to pursue peace,” that is, pursue the peace and the well-being of others. Speaking of the ethics—so practical godliness and integrity, this is the responsibility of those who fear God.

And then verses 15 and following, there’s reward for 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.”

Then verse 20 is just a remarkable claim. “He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.” Here he’s speaking of God’s protection of his own—doesn’t even allow their bones to be broken. At that point you wonder, David, have you said too much? Are we to think from this that God will never allow a broken bone to one of his people who trust him? What’s going on here?

I’m not convinced it’s singular. I mean, it’s significant, but it seems to be significant that in verses 19 and 20, suddenly he changes to the singular from the plural. In the previous verses, “the righteous,” that’s the plural—”righteous cry for help, delivers them.” Verse 18, “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted people,” that’s plural again—”saves the crushed in spirit,” that is plural again. We get to verse 19, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous,” or the righteous one. “The Lord delivers him out of them all.” Verse 20, “He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.”

So is this hyperbole or is he saying something else here? Well, I’m setting you up, and those of you who are savvy enough to remember that these words are picked up again in the Gospel of John. John the apostle picks this up in John chapter 19 at the scene of the crucifixion. And there we have Jesus on the cross, and you remember the soldiers come and break the legs of each of the criminals on either side to hasten their death. They get to the center, they find Jesus, and he’s already dead, so they do not break his legs. And John then writes in John chapter 19 verse 36, “These things took place that the scripture might be fulfilled,” and then he quotes Psalm 34 verse 20: “Not one of his bones will be broken.”

One commentator writes here, “The promise to the righteous man, verse 20, found an unexpectedly literal realization in the passion of the perfectly righteous one.” Now this is really an interesting thing because it brings up that whole question of how does the Old Testament prefigure Jesus? Or in particular, how do the Psalms speak of Jesus? Where do we see Jesus in the Psalter? And just how are the prophecies made? And in fact, we might even ask, is verse 20 really a prophecy? John picks up the verse and says it was fulfilled. That’s prophecy language. The fulfillment of what was anticipated in verse 20 came in the experience of Jesus.

Well, how did John get there? How did John know that verse 20 is speaking about Jesus? The short answer is David told him. Notice in Psalm 34, we have this language already in verse 20. The language is connected very explicitly to the Exodus and to the Passover. In Exodus 12, we read, remember, the Passover lamb was to be slain and prepared, and it was eaten. The Passover meal was eaten. This is the night prior to the Exodus, the original Passover meal. And it says, “It shall be eaten in one house; you shall not take of any of the flesh outside the house, and you shall not break any of its bones.”

That’s the reference in Psalm 34 verse 20, back to Exodus chapter 12 verse 46. So David is making some kind of link already back to the Passover event. There are more allusions to the Exodus and the Passover in the psalm as well. We already saw verse 7, “the angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and delivers them.” That’s a reference to Exodus chapter 14 verses 19 and 20. Verse 5, “Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed.” Is that a reference to Exodus chapter 34, the shining face of Moses after meeting with God after the exodus? And this whole theme of the psalm—of deliverance and redemption—is all an echo of the Exodus theme itself.

And it seems what’s going on here is that David is recalling all of these Exodus allusions to point to and to describe his own deliverance that God has given him. He is, in a sense, reliving the Exodus. What God did for the people of Israel back in Egypt, taking them out through the Passover lamb, now God has done for me. In verse 20, though, he identifies the king, David himself, with the Passover lamb. “He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.” That’s a reference to the Passover lamb. Here, David applies it to himself.

Verse 22 concludes with the affirmation of God’s salvation. “None of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.” That, in turn, is an allusion back to the second psalm, where those who take refuge in God’s Son will not perish. What we have here, I think, is David seemingly, intentionally moving in two different directions. On the one hand, he reaches back to connect his experience with the experience of Israel in the Exodus. And on the other hand, he’s looking ahead beyond himself to his greater son. And he identifies the king in verse 20 with the Passover lamb. “He keeps all his bones; none of them will be broken.” And he’s saying, in effect, that just as God has kept me safe and all my bones intact, so there’s coming a greater king who will fulfill all that the Passover anticipates. John, in turn, seems to be reading all of this very carefully, picks it up and says, this was fulfilled exactly in the experience of Jesus on the cross. So John didn’t come up with this on his own, but he’s reading David very carefully.

Well, as we read these Psalms, and I think this is a question that comes often in these kinds of Psalms that we have to anticipate, we read these Psalms that lend such a certain hope of deliverance that many people have wondered, what does it really mean? It seems, it can seem at times, that David says too much. “He delivers all of those from their calamities,” and it can be taken in a way that says every calamity you experience, God will deliver you from it. So how are we to understand this?

I think there are a few levels of it that we have to see. Number one, in David’s case, there was a specific promise in view. God had made a promise to David that he would be king. That promise will be fulfilled. And so David, even though the circumstances seemed contradictory, David struggles with his faith to say, God will deliver from this, because he had a specific promise of it.

Often, in the Psalms, we have what we see here also, and that is what’s in view is not just David, but David’s greater son, the greater king, who will come. None of his bones will be broken. And this is why I’ve emphasized all along through the series in the Psalms that we have to recognize that the person in view is not always just Joe, average Israelite, but it is the king himself who in turn prefigures the great king to come.

But with all of that said, still we’re left with the fact that David intends for this psalm to encourage us, the people of God. Verses 4 and 5: “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.” So David explicitly extends this, not just to himself or to his greater son, but to the people of God. But what does that mean? How do we understand that?

I think on one level we should recognize that God has in fact rescued us from countless dangers and countless difficulties that we’ve been in. We’ve called, he’s answered, and we ought to, like David, offer songs of grateful praise for it. We too seldom take the time to recall that God has answered this prayer and delivered us from sickness or whatever. So there’s that level. I think that helps.

I think there’s more though. And the second step, I think, is that we should be careful not to overread the Psalms and these promises. David does not say here that there will never be calamity, that the people of God will never face opposition, and that they’ll never be in danger. David does not say that. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Psalm 34 here, verses 17 and following, he speaks of the righteous as troubled, brokenhearted, crushed in spirit, afflicted, and all through David’s Psalms, almost half of the Psalter are lament psalms. And it’s David in some calamity, some danger, or another. David is not saying that the people of God will not face calamities. There are plenty of psalms that tell us that. Psalm 44, that Paul quotes in Romans chapter 8, “We’re counted as sheep for the slaughter.” This is the experience of the people of God. Paul echoes that sentiment in Acts chapter 14 and says it is through much tribulation that we will enter the kingdom of God.

So don’t overread the psalm. A mistaken understanding, thinking that God is promising here that we’ll never experience calamity, is just an overreading of the Psalter and it’ll just add to your frustration by bringing on false expectations. We live in a fallen world under opposition. The people of God will endure all kinds of calamities, and the calamities not just of specific opposition from the unrighteous, but the calamities that are common to all of us in a fallen world. And we should also keep in mind the sanctifying effects of suffering. All of that has to come into play.

And yet, all that aside, God has assured us of His goodness. He has assured us of His love. He has assured us of His all-embracing power, His rule over every circumstance of our life. He has assured us that Christ is King, that He has ascended to the throne of the universe, that He has all authority over all things and runs all of this world according to His own purpose. He’s given Him all authority to do it and He directs all things according to His plan. And we should see that God has promised in those calamities to be for us all that he has promised to be. And we should see that he has promised our safekeeping.

Verse 22 is for us: “The Lord redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.” Paul echoes that in Romans chapter 8. There’s no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. Verse 34, “Who is he that condemns? It is Christ who has died.” What ever can separate us from the love of God? Persecution? Famine? Stress? Deprivation? Any of that? In all of these things we are more than conquerors through Christ who loved us. I’m persuaded that neither life nor death nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things to come nor things present nor height nor depth nor anything else will separate us from the love of God in Christ.

This song of grateful praise is very much for us. It points us to God’s promised safekeeping. It points us to the gospel assurance we have in the New Testament, which is summed up so well here in verse 22: “none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.” Through every trial, through every terror, even societal collapse, God will keep his own and he will never let us slip away. He’ll keep us faithful, he’ll keep us trusting, and he will keep us for himself for eternity. And in the meantime, it is through each trying event that we learn to say with David, verse one, “I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise deserves to be in my mouth continually,” despite the circumstances. Amen.

Let’s pray. Father, this psalm is for us. We thank you that we have such a record of your promise keeping. We thank you that we have a Savior who was promised, who came, who accomplished all for us that you’ve set out for him to do, that he’s accomplished our perfect salvation, that he has ascended, that he reigns today over all, and that he directs all things, that in that safekeeping he will keep us forever for him. Lord, it is too easy for us to be like David in a trying circumstance, to be like David in 1 Samuel 21 and to panic with fear. May we learn like he learned to give you praise at all times. May we remember that Jesus Christ is our Savior, that he keeps us safe forever, and may we rejoice accordingly. We pray in his name, amen.