A Song of Deliverance - [Psalm 34]

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We're going to continue this Sunday looking at Psalms, at the Psalms. This time we'll look at Psalm 34, another
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Psalm of David. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth.
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My soul shall make her boast in the Lord. The humble shall hear of it and be glad. Oh, magnify the
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Lord with me and let us exalt his name together. I sought the Lord and he heard me and delivered me from all my fears.
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They looked unto him and were radiant and their faces were not ashamed. This poor man cried and the
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Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encampeth round about those who fear him and delivereth them.
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Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who trusteth in him. Oh, fear the
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Lord, ye his saints, for there is no lack to them that fear him. The young lions do lack and suffer hunger, but they who seek the
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Lord shall not lack any good thing. Come, ye children, hearken unto me, I will teach you the fear of the
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Lord. What man is he who desireth life and loveth many days that he may see good?
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Keep thy tongue from evil and thy lips from speaking guile. Depart from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it.
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The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous and his ears are open unto their cry. The face of the
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Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth. The righteous cry and the
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Lord heareth and delivereth them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near unto those who are of a broken heart and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.
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Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivereth him out of them all. He keepeth all his bones, not one of them is broken.
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Evil shall slay the wicked, and they that hate the righteous shall be desolate. The Lord redeemeth the soul of his servants, and none of them who trust in him shall be desolate.
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Now, this psalm has an interesting setting. If your Bible has the little annotations at the top, it says here, a psalm of David when he changed his behavior before Abimelech, who drove him away, and he departed.
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Now, the incident that this is recording is set out for us in 1
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Samuel chapter 21, verses 10 to 15. Basically what happens, David is on the run.
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David goes on the lam because Saul has made an attempt on his life on several occasions, and you know the story,
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David hides and Jonathan comes out of the field, and they go through this little charade that they act out.
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And David has got to leave town, he's got to get out of town. Because the king, King Saul, is really after his life.
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And so, David says goodbye to Jonathan, and he flees.
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Now, it says something of his state of mind when you look at this. Because where does he flee to?
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He goes to Gath. Now, think about this.
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Do you know who came from Gath? Who else came from Gath? Goliath. This is
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Goliath's hometown. You do not expect there to be a chapter of the
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King David fan club in Gath. They're not gonna like him. David has also built up quite a name for himself in the previous few years, primarily by victories over the
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Philistines. You don't expect the Philistines to welcome him with open arms. And yet, this is where he goes.
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He heads down to the land of the Philistines to see King Achish. And so, he is running from what he sees as the greater peril to the lesser peril.
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He somehow, for whatever reason, he feels that he will be safer even in the middle of his enemy's territory than he is at home.
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And so, there he goes. Now, we can criticize this because we can say, well,
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David is not depending upon God. God has promised him the kingdom. And one of the things that goes along with that, if he promised you the kingdom, he has to keep you alive, doesn't he?
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Because you have to be alive to benefit from that promise.
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And so, a lot of commentators really criticize David. This is a failure of faith.
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And it is. But don't we also do that over and over and over again in our lives?
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We so often, in spite of the fact that God has been so faithful to us and has provided for us and all of these things all of our lives, we so quickly are ready to start playing ain't it awful?
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When something happens in our lives and somehow God's taken care of us for the last umpteen up years, but now we somehow assume that he's going to stop doing that, and so I wouldn't be too harsh on David.
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Just look in the mirror, and it'll help you with that. But anyway, he gets there, and the
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Philistines view David as a threat. They do not welcome him with open arms, as you would expect.
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And so, David now realizes that he's sort of gone from the frying pan into the fire.
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And so, to get out of this situation, the Philistines obviously want to arrest
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David and execute him. And so, David suddenly starts acting like a madman.
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He starts acting like a madman. He's letting his spittle drip down in his beard, and he's just scratching on the walls and doing all these kinds of things.
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To the point that King Achish says, we have enough idiots in this village, we don't need another one.
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And get rid of this guy, get him out of here. And so, they do, they let him go, and he flees.
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And he flees to the cave of Adullam, which is where this psalm was very probably written.
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And David cries to God, and God answers his cry. But notice
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David's situation as he saw it. From his perspective, he is utterly alone.
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There's no one in Israel that he can turn to, he thinks. And so, he has left
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Israel, he has fled to the territory of his enemies. He has had to leave the best friend he has in the world,
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Jonathan. And he's run for his life. He has abandoned everything.
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He has nothing but the shirt on his back. He has no food, he has to beg food from the priest at Nob.
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And he does this by subterfuge. You know, he says, I'm on the king's business and I need food.
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And so, the priest gives him the bread that had been removed from the table of showbread.
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And he doesn't even have his armor. He's left all of that behind.
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He has no weapons, no way to defend himself. Again, the priest at Nob gives him the sword of Goliath.
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And at least he's got a weapon, except this thing is this huge, long, unwieldy sword, which is good for not much of anything.
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Because you can't maneuver it or any of that kind of stuff. And so, it's, I guess, a more psychological benefit to David than anything else.
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Plus, the fact showing up in Gath with Goliath's sword is probably not the brightest thing anybody ever did.
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So, as far as he's concerned, he's between a rock and a hard place.
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He's between a rock, King Saul, and a hard place, King Achish on this side. And he's got nowhere to turn.
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But consider David's situation in reality. First of all,
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God is watching over him. God is watching over him. And he acknowledges that later in the
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Psalm, that at every step of the way, God is superintending over David.
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And God is for him. And therefore, he needs nothing.
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God will provide all that he needs. He states that in verses 9 and 10. There is no lack to them that fear him, he says.
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And God's angels are encamped around him. He actually has an army with him.
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He thinks he's alone. But he's got a whole divine army that's going with him, that has surrounded him, and that is protecting him.
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And not only does he have this divine army, he's not alone even in Israel.
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Because if you go back to Samuel, 1 Samuel chapter 22, the first two verses of that, as soon as it became known that David was hiding out in the cave of Adullam, all of these men start showing up.
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And very shortly after that, he has 600 guys. Some of whom are referred to later as David's mighty men.
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All these men gathered themselves to him. So he did have resources. Within Israel that he didn't know about.
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But God knew about them. And finally, he sums it up in verse 18, where he says,
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God is not distant. God is near. This is reality. God is near.
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God is protecting me. God has surrounded me. And therefore,
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I don't have to fear, says David. So then he writes this psalm.
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David is engaging to praise God. And notice what he says. First thing, he says, I will bless the
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Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth.
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He is going to praise God constantly. He is going to praise
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God in spite of his circumstances. He is not going to let his circumstances determine his attitude towards God.
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He is going to do this regularly. He is going to do this out of a sense of duty.
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And that's something because sometimes we don't feel very much like praising God, do we?
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We hurt. We're sick. We have a sore throat and can barely talk.
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Whatever it is. We don't much feel like praising at that point in time.
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And yet, what does David say? Said, I am going to praise God as a duty, if nothing else.
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Other times, we're going to really feel like praising God. And that's great. But said, even when I don't,
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I'm going to praise God anyway. Because God is worthy of being praised. God is entitled to praise.
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God is due praise because he's God. If he's done nothing except keep me alive and let me breathe since last night.
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He is due praise. He is due praise because he's the king of the universe.
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He is due praise because he created all things. And so I'm going to praise
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God. I'm going to praise him at every opportunity. I'm going to praise God at all times, he says.
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And I'm going to renew my praise. Every time I see
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God's blessing poured out upon me. And that's every minute of every day. I'm going to renew my praise to God.
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And he is expecting to have occasions to renew his praise to God.
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He is beginning to expect God to watch over him. Now, we need to be careful here.
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We don't want to be presumptuous. There's a line that you don't want to cross. But there's a very definite sense in which his children should expect the shepherd to take care of them.
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Maybe not in the way we expect or in the way we would like.
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But he will care for us. Because he has decreed our ends.
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He has decreed our ends and he will take a step by step by step by step to the end that he has established for us.
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And so the next thing he's going to praise openly. He's going to do this. My soul shall make her boast in the
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Lord, he said, and the humble shall hear of it. So obviously, he's going to be doing this in a crowd of people.
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He's going to be doing this in a crowd of people. He's going to do it out in the open. It's not going to be some private hidden thing.
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And he's going to make others aware of God's mercy. And he's going to do it heartily.
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He's going to do it heartily. He is going to express his relation to God all the time.
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He is going to express his interests in God. And that is not interest in the sense that I am, you know,
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I want to learn something that he does want to learn about God. But that he has an interest as as in the same sense that you have an interest in a company that you have stock with.
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You know what they do, how they're doing all of those, all that affects you and you're interested in that.
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Well, he realizes that his being is in God, that God watches over him and that God is interested in him and that his expectation is from God.
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You know, my expectation is from God, he says. You know, he's beginning, he's learning the lesson that God made you a promise.
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God sent his prophet to you to anoint you king over Israel. And God is going to carry that out.
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God is going to protect you. God is going to watch over you. God is going to lead you.
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And God is going to bring this to pass. God said you were king. And he's going to bring it to pass.
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And in the business world, men, if we want to apply that same principle to our lives in the business world, we do not have to play office politics to get ahead.
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Think about that. We don't have to play the office political games to get ahead. Because if God decides to promote us, we will be promoted.
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Count on it. And I mean that in the word promotion, I mean, just advanced in the company. God, if God decides to advance you, you're invincible.
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He will advance you in the company. And if God does not want to advance you in the company, then neither should you seek advancement within the company.
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Be content where you are. And so all of these things, his expectation is from God.
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He's beginning to learn so that when I am presented, David says, when I am presented with my enemy, with the man who has sworn to kill me,
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I am standing next to King Saul and I've got a spear in my hand. I am not going to touch the
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Lord's anointed. God also, God has promised me the kingdom. God gave him the kingdom.
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It is not my job. David says to take out Saul. God will do that in his time.
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So I'm not going to touch Saul. David has learned a great deal between the time he came across Saul in the cave in this cave that he's in contemplating what he's just done.
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Fleeing, fleeing down to the Philistines. And so, you know, he's going to boast in the
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Lord. He's going to boast in the Lord. In fact, he probably is thinking from the words of that great
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American theologian, Casey Stengel, who once said, if you can do it, you ain't bragging.
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It's not it's not boasting to boast in the Lord. God is the one person that you can really boast in because he can do it.
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Whatever it is, he can do it. And so David goes on and now that David has said that he's going to praise
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God, he calls on others to praise God with him. Oh, magnify the
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Lord with me and let us exalt his name together. He calls on other people and he expects that they will, in fact, do this.
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He expects that they will do this. He's already said the humble are going to hear what
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I have to say, and they're going to be glad, too. And isn't that the case when we hear someone tell of how
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God has blessed them? God has met their needs. God has fulfilled, has has rescued them from a situation.
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You know, we're praising God for our brother John, who is is now, you know, when he was next to death and now he's in recovery and in rehab.
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Because we praise God for that because we see God's hand at work in this man's life.
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And so we see that and we praise God for for for what he has done.
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And it's interesting. The humble are those who will hear and be glad. Those with the least confidence in themselves are the ones that praise
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God. If you have confidence in yourself, you don't praise other people, do you?
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You have confidence in yourself. Who do you praise? Yourself. I did this.
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I'm a self -made man. And as the statement goes, yeah, I can tell. So those who do not have confidence in themselves, the meek.
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As Jesus put it in the Beatitudes, they praise God because they understand where anything in their lives comes from, if they have any success.
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Whatever it is, they realize that this is a gift from the father's hand, whatever it is that's come into my life.
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But God's provisions cause others to rejoice. And so David comes up with some things that that he wants all of us to concur in with him.
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He starts off by saying, I sought the Lord and he heard me and delivered me from my fears.
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Notice how personal this is. I sought the Lord. He heard me and delivered me from my fears.
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This is a very personal thing. He wants everyone who's all of his readers, all of his hearers.
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He wants us to think high and great thoughts of God, high and lofty thoughts of God.
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God is infinitely great. God is infinitely great. And he is ready to hear the prayers of his children.
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As David says, I sought the Lord, he heard me. Now, this was not an exercise in futility, people.
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I prayed to the Lord and he heard me. And he's think about that.
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Not only do we have a heavenly father who will listen to our prayers, he's ready to hear.
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He's ready to hear. He's ready to act. Because he heard me and delivered me.
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A very personal thing. And then he delivered me.
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What, what is, what have you been delivered from David? Well, first of all, he delivered me from death.
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Because King Saul was trying to kill me. And then I ran away from that and I ran to other people and they were trying to kill me.
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The Philistines, he delivered me. So first of all, he delivered me from that. But he also delivered me from the fear of that.
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He delivered me from the fear of it. There were two instances that he can point back to where people were actually trying to kill him.
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But, and he's delivered from that. But even more so, he said, you know,
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I'm faith in God. I'm not worried about people trying to kill me anymore. And so his providence, he,
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David is beginning to. To put his trust in God's providence, to understand
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God's providence. That God has a plan for him. God is going to work for him.
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His providence works for us, just as his grace works in us. And both of those things are going on.
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David has been providentially delivered. From a very real threat of death.
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But notice how the grace of God is working in David. And his mental attitude is changing.
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His mental state is changing. It's a total, the man who ran away.
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Fleeing to Abimelech is not the same man that wrote this psalm. His mental state has changed by the time he's writing this psalm.
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And so he also, he says in verse five, they looked unto him and were radiant and their faces were not ashamed.
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So this isn't just him that he's talking about. Other people have experienced this,
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David said. Others have experienced God's deliverance. And it has this effect of making their faces shine.
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It has this effect of making their faces shine. There's a confidence.
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There is a genuine and proper confidence that Christians have in their
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God. That he will carry out his purposes, that he will watch over them.
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That he will protect them, that he will put his angels around them. And that gives you a confidence, a proper and correct confidence in life.
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So many people have confidence. They have what we call self -confidence and it's confidence in the wrong thing.
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We don't, we're not supposed to have self -confidence. We're to have confidence in him. We're not supposed to have self -esteem.
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We're supposed to have confidence and esteem in him as it goes. And so, but looking to God produces this inner joy.
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It produces this inner light, if you will. So then, this poor man cried and the
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Lord heard him, verse 6, and saved him out of all his troubles. God is concerned with a single person.
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God is concerned with the wants, fears, needs of a single person.
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Every one of his children is welcome at his throne. And this is the marvelous thing about dealing with an omnipresent and omniscient
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God. Is that God is able to concentrate 100 % of his attention on each one of his children simultaneously.
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We can't do that. If we have multiple children, our attention has to get divided.
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You know, it's divided by two or divided by three or divided by however many kids we have.
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But God is not like that. God is not limited in that way. God can put 100 % of his attention on each one of us simultaneously.
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That's a little staggering thought. But when he says God watches over me, he's not saying that God watches over me some of the time.
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He's saying that God watches over me all the time, 100 % of the time.
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He puts 100 % of his attention on me. He guides me with his eye, he says in another place.
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He guides me as a father guides his beloved child. Even when the child is being allowed to walk free because, you know, he's really feeling like a big, like a big boy.
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Daddy is right there watching him. Ready to grab. When he charges across the street,
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Daddy is ready to reach out and grab his and grabbing by the collar. Dallas and I will never forget we were in a in the town.
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Up in Germany and the boys were hungry and we're walking up the street to that great icon of American culture,
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Shea McDonald's. And Patrick sees the McDonald's and he's gone.
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And so and I'm right there, you know, because there's traffic on the street.
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So, you know, stop, you know, there you go. Well, God is like that.
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God watches us all the time. Watches over us and cares for us. And not only that, he says, the angel of the
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Lord in campus round about those who fear him and deliver him, deliver them.
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Now, what does this evoke in our memory? Remember the story of Elisha and his servant?
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Remember the story of Elisha and his servant? Elisha is, as the story goes,
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Elisha has been, it has been revealed to him. The plans of Israel's enemies.
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He has been telling the king and the armies of Israel has been defeating. The has been winning and defeating the foreign king.
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And so he figures, aha, I know what I'll do. I'll knock off Elisha. So he sends his army to get
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Elisha basically. And Elisha's servant goes out and here's this army, you know, oh, we're in trouble.
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And so what does Elisha do? Elisha prays, Lord, open the man's eyes that he can see the army that is with us.
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And the servant's eyes are opened. And there's this angelic army that is surrounding the town and surrounding
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Elisha. And David is alluding to the same thing. Sometimes when you were growing up, particularly if you were in a
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Christian household, your mother may have told you that you had a guardian angel.
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There's no real biblical basis for that thought that there is one individual angel assigned.
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But the principle is still a good one. He does give his angels charge over us.
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And his angels, the angelic host, do guard us. We are in enemy territory.
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Right now, Satan is the prince of the power of the world, of the air, and we are in his world. And we are protected here.
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And David refers to the angel of the Lord. Now, we're not quite sure what
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David was thinking when he wrote that. But in many places in the Old Testament, when you see a reference to the angel of the
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Lord, it's a reference to Jesus Christ himself, to the pre -incarnate Jesus Christ. And certainly the angel of the
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Lord is the commander of the heavenly army. Go back to Joshua chapter 5, and you will read of Joshua's encounter with the commander of the heavenly hosts who came and said,
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I am leading the Lord's armies, and we're going before you as he goes into Canaan land.
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And so these angels minister, these angels guard us.
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They surround us. Protection on all sides. So the next thing he wants us to do, besides think great and high thoughts of God, he wants us to taste and see that the
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Lord is good. Blessed is the man who trusteth in him. He wants us to contemplate the
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Lord. He wants us to contemplate the Lord's perfections, the attributes of God, to study those, to deal with them, to think on them, to dwell on them, to delight in the beauty, the very beauty of God's being, and the fact that this being who is the creator of all things would stoop to deal with us as individuals.
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Rebellious though we are, rebellious children though we are. And delight in the bounty of his providence.
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Everything we have is a gift from God's hand. Everything that we have been given. As Paul says,
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Paul says to the Corinthians, why are you boasting in the things that you have?
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Whatever it is you have, weren't you given that? Didn't God give you that?
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Whatever it is. So why are you boasting in what you have been given?
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As if it was something that somehow you merited or that you had earned. We are to delight in the providence of God.
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Everything that we have in our lives is God's providence at work in us. We are to delight in him as our benefactor.
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He cares for us constantly. He cares for us constantly.
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The fact that you woke up this morning is the result of God's watch care over you.
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And then take comfort in God's goodness. God is good. God is good.
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So often we gloss over that. But God is good.
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You think about what you deserve. You begin to start thinking about the goodness of God to you.
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Every day that you have. Everything that you have.
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The fact that he chose you, you know, he did not have to do that.
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I'll tell you a secret. None of us deserve to be elect, right?
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Why did God elect us? Because it pleased him to do that. That's the answer that he gives us.
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And I suspect he gives us that answer because we are so finite.
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That we really can't cope with anything more than that. As to why
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God does what he does. And yet the simple fact that he chose us in eternity past and he sent his son to die for us.
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So often we gloss over these things because in our in our existence today. We are very rarely in danger.
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We are very rarely in a place of danger. We are certainly almost never in a place where one individual would give his life for us.
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Would lay down his life for us. And so we talk about these things, but they're really academic exercises, aren't they?
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But not so in David's time. People very specifically put laid their life on the line for other people.
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In David's time. And yet God sent his son to die for us.
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To die for you. All the days of his life. My father's approach to Christianity to his
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Christianity was very simple. If someone died in your place, you served him all your days.
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It was as simple as that. Nothing more complicated than that. You know, that was just it open and shut.
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There was no question about it. And so Jesus died in your place.
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Jesus died in your place. He took the sins and paid the debt for the sins that you rightly owed.
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So think about that. Think about that. Take comfort in God's goodness. And finally, the the inevitable outcome of that is seek
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God and serve him. Seek God and serve him. First of all, we are to fear the
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Lord. We are to have a verse nine. We are to fear the Lord, ye his saints. We are to have reverence and awe for the
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Lord. And we are to serve the Lord. Elsewhere, he says, we are to serve the
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Lord with gladness. We're to serve the Lord with gladness because all that is necessary will be provided from God's hand.
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Again, back to verse nine. Fear the Lord, ye his saints. There is no lack to them that fear him.
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The young lions do lack and suffer hunger, but they who seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing.
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The father will provide all that he sees as good for his children.
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All that is necessary will be provided from God's hand. And consider this what the father denies.
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What the father denies, he will give also with that he will give the grace to be content without whatever it is.
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Children want things that are not good for them, don't they? And they really think they need this, whatever it is.
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Or they want things at an inappropriate time. Like the story goes of the little boy, you know, who the two brothers were talking.
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One of them was considerably younger than the other. And you know, the conversation went like this.
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Well, you know, dad, dad must not love us very much. The older boy says, yeah,
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I know. I said, I asked for a gold watch and he didn't give it to me. And the little one said, yes,
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I, you know, you're right. I asked for a kite just yesterday and he didn't give it to me. He must not love us.
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And yet when March came and it became windy, father comes home one day and he's got a kite for the youngest son because now is the appropriate time.
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It's not appropriate to have a kite when the wind isn't blowing. And as due time goes by, the son eventually, the older son eventually graduates.
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And what does father give the son for his graduation? A gold watch.
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Because he is now old enough to care for this and to appreciate it and to make use of it as it is intended to be used.
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And so father gives the appropriate gifts at the appropriate time. And in the meantime, what the father has denied, he makes us content.
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He gives us the grace to be content. Paul talks about this in Philippians that Paul, he said,
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I'm content and I abound. And he explores this idea, said,
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I know how to abound. I know how to abound when I have all material blessings. I know how to abound when
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I'm sitting in the Mamertine prison. He said, God has made me content with whatever he provides for me at that time.
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And I'm sure that that was a lesson that was not particularly easy for Paul to learn because Paul is a human being too and we're not like that.
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We're not like that in our normal state. God has to teach us that, how to be content with what we have.
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And so by contrast, those who try to live by their own efforts and by what we might call common providence, in other words, the common grace that God pours out upon everyone, they lack, the young lions lack.
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And he's using here, I think he's using the lion as a metaphor.
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Don't we call someone who's a real go -getter, you know, in business and what have you, he's a young lion.
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And that's what I think David has in mind here. He has in mind people, men who try to live by their own devices.
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You know, they're like animals in the sense that they only live within the natural world.
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They do not acknowledge God. They don't live their lives in relationship to God and they lack, he says.
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But those that depend upon God inherit the earth. So then for the rest of this, for the rest of this, any comments or questions so far?
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Okay, for the rest of this Psalm, he's shifting modes here.
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He's now going into his mode as an instructor, as a teacher. In fact,
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Spurgeon called the first part of this Psalm, he called a hymn. And the last part of it, he calls a sermon.
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And so starting in verse 11, David is now going into the preacher mode. He's going to preach a sermon to us.
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He's going to give instruction specifically to children. Come ye children, hearken unto me and I will teach you the fear of the
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Lord. Now, first of all, notice what David expects. First of all, he expects you to listen.
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He expects you to pay attention. He expects you to hearken. Now pay attention to what
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I'm going to say, children. And observe what I'm going to talk about, the things
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I'm going to talk about. And he's going to teach us. He expects you also to obey because the hearken part carries that.
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It's not just listen to what I'm saying. It's listen and obey. What do you say when you're dealing with your children?
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You ever reach down, you grab a child, you turn him, turn his face to yours and said, are you listening to me?
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You don't mean just do you hear my words? But do you hear my words and are you going to obey?
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It's what goes. And so David expects that and David is going to teach the fear of the
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Lord. Now, what is the fear of the Lord? First of all, it's the beginning of wisdom. All through Proverbs, it says that repeatedly.
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It says it in the Psalms as well. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. He is going to teach wisdom.
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Now, this is better. This is better than the arts. This is better than animal husbandry.
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This is better than political science. This is better than military science, all of which were
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David's areas of expertise. David was a poet. Don't forget.
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We see a result of that here. He was a poet. He was a musician. He knew all about raising sheep.
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You know, he was quite a man of of politics and political science, and he would get more adept at that as time went by.
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He would be king. And he was certainly a man of military science. He was accomplished in all of those things. But he doesn't talk about those.
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He talks about, I'm going to teach you the fear of the Lord. And so he asked his question.
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It's a rhetorical question. What man is he who desires life and loveth many days that he may see good?
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Who doesn't desire a full and happy life? Unless you're seriously mentally unbalanced.
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Every one of us desires a full and happy life. I mean, that's just part of being human.
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And so David is implying here that the answer to that lies beyond the immediate.
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The answer to that question doesn't lie in stuff and things.
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It doesn't lie in what we can acquire, in the wealth that we can get, in the power that we can accumulate.
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The answer is not fundamentally there. And yet most of society today, that is exactly what they are seeking and where they're seeking it.
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First of all, they're seeking happiness as an end in itself. And if the book of Ecclesiastes teaches us anything, it teaches us that happiness is not an end in itself.
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It is a result of right living before God. And so the real question here is the question that the rich young ruler asked.
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What must I do to inherit eternal life? That's the real question. And so David lays out in verses 13 and 14 the path to true happiness, not only in this world, but in the next world.
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Keep thy tongue from evil and thy lips from speaking guile. Depart from evil, do good, seek peace and pursue it.
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First thing, control the tongue. First thing, control the tongue.
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Proverbs 29 20. If you teach your children nothing else in life, teach them to control their tongue.
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Because if they don't learn that, their lives will be hard. Count on it.
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We are supposed to be upright in what we say. We are supposed to be sincere in what we say.
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We are not to be double -tongued. We are to mean what we say. We are to, in other words, have the right words spoken at the right time.
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How often? Proverbs 27 14. Now, he who gives a blessing early, rising up early in the morning, it will be counted to him as an enemy.
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And I'm paraphrasing that. But what does Solomon mean when he says that?
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He means not only is it necessary to say the right thing, it is to say it at the right time.
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So often we are ungracious in what we say. Not that what we say is inaccurate, but it's the wrong time to say it.
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When it is time to, at a time of great personal loss to someone, that is the time to mourn with them.
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Not to give them a sermon on how God works all things for good. You know, they don't need that right then.
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It's true, but it's not what they need to hear right then. We need to be gracious. We need to say the right thing at the right time.
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We learn to control the tongue. And we are to depart from evil. We are to give up sinning, abandon those sins to which we are prone.
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And that means specific things. Every one of us has sins to which we are prone. Paul calls it the besetting sins.
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There are certain areas of sin that we're just prone to that. And we need to know what those are, and we do actively avoid them.
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We're to depart from evil. And on the other side, we're to do good and to seek peace. You know, first of all, we're to do good because it benefits our own soul.
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And we're also to do good because it benefits others. And we are to show a peaceful disposition.
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Don't be combative. You know, I'm sure every one of you knows somebody who views life as a battle between them and everybody else.
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And you don't like to be around people like that, do you? You know, everything is pound all the time.
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David is saying, don't be like that. Don't be like that. Have a peaceful disposition and seek out those things that make for peace.
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Another word to put it is don't start arguments. With people. Don't seek out reasons to argue with somebody.
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Work hard at peace. And so what's the result?
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And we'll go fast here. First of all, there's happiness for the godly. The Lord watches over the righteous.
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The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous and his ears are open to their cry. The Lord hears and responds to the prayers of the righteous.
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God hears his children the way a father or mother hears their child. There is never that science to this day has never been able to build a filter that is effective as a mother.
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A mother can hear her child cry in a room full of 20 crying babies.
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Mother can hear her child right away. You cannot duplicate that.
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There's never been any piece of electronics built that will duplicate that effect. And the
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Lord hears the same way. We're his children. He hears us. He hears us.
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And there's deliverance for the godly. The righteous are under a special divine protection.
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Verse 20. Even though we have there's going to be many crosses to bear in our lives.
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We have been promised that there will be trouble. It's repeated in verse 19.
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Many are the afflictions of the righteous. But we are also promised that there will be deliverance.
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That trouble will not mean ruin to ourselves. That God will undertake for our salvation and for our deliverance.
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And he points out regardless of what happens to the physical body. The soul of the righteous is preserved.
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Jesus echoed that same thought when he gave the he gave the warning. Don't fear the one who can take your life.
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That's the worst they can do. What you fear is the one who can not only take your life.
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But who can throw you into eternal destruction. Fear him. In other words, fear
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God. And so nothing restricts the eternal blessing of the righteous.
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Verse 22 says they are not desolate. And their communion with the father will not be interrupted by externals.
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And by contrast, we end on this. There is judgment for the wicked. Verse 16.
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The face of the Lord is against the wicked. The face of the Lord is against the wicked.
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It is told of the old Puritan Cotton Mather. That when his children had displeased him, he would not look at them.
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That was his way of disciplining them. And to lose your father's countenance.
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Was the worst thing that could happen to one of his kids. Well, the same thing.
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God, the wicked, lose the face of God. He does not look at them.
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That's what David's trying to get across here. The wicked will be cut off. That's verse 16. And the wicked will be slain.
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Verse 21. And the wicked will be desolate. Remember, he said that the children of God will not be desolate.
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The wicked will be desolate. By contrast, and so this is great assurance for God's children.
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This is great assurance for the righteous. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you that we can depend upon your care.
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That you care for us, that you watch out for us, that you put your hands around us.
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That you send your angels to guard us. And you do all of this, even in those times when we are being faithless.
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And so, Father, we would praise you for that. We would thank you for that. We would bow down before you in wonder and awe before you that you would do that for us.
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We thank you, Lord, for this service that we are having this morning. We pray your blessing and put your hand upon Pastor Steve as he preaches to us this morning.
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And we would pray that the Holy Spirit will minister to us. You would open the hearts of each one here to receive your message.