The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): Taste and see that the Lord is good. Today on the Bible Study Hour, David has once again escaped the hands of his enemies. He has nothing and no one, yet David gives his testimony of all that God has done for him. This Psalm is a reminder that we should praise God at all times, through both the good and the bad.

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. Who do you turn to when life gets tough? David turned to God in prayer during the good times, but he also immediately turned to him when things were uncertain. If you have your Bible, turn now to Psalm 34.

Dr. James Boice: We're studying Psalm 34, and I invite you to turn to that. It's a good Psalm, and it speaks to us of a number of very important things. There are 14 Psalms in the Psalter that refer in their title to some incident from the life of David. Those titles are not always very instructive for understanding the Psalm, but sometimes they are, and that's undoubtedly the case here. This title says that the Psalm has something to do with that time in David's life when, and I'm quoting from it, "he feigned insanity before Abimelech, who drove him away, and he left."

That story is found in 1 Samuel 21. It was a low period in David's life. We're going to come back to it. He had to flee from Saul, who was trying to kill him. He had to leave in a hurry. He had no possessions with him, and he thought that he was in such danger of his life that he didn't dare stay in Saul's country anymore, that is, in his own land. So he left Canaan and he went down to the country bordering on the Mediterranean, the land of the Philistines, and sought asylum in the town of Gath.

He must have been very desperate to do so because Gath had been the home of Goliath. Goliath was the giant that he had killed some years before. Moreover, on his way down to Gath from Jerusalem, he stopped by Nob, where the priests of Nob gave him the sword of Goliath because he had no weapons to take with him. So here is David on his own, entering Gath, where Goliath came from, carrying Goliath's own sword. It must have been a great offense to the Philistines.

I would have been offended if the one who had killed my champion appeared carrying the sword, and it probably must have presented some danger to David too. Because what this story in 1 Samuel tells us is that he felt himself to be in such danger from Achish, who was the king there, called Abimelech here in the title, that he pretended to be insane. He made meaningless scribbles on the gate of the city, and we're told—it's sort of indelicate, but we're told—that he allowed the saliva to run down on his beard like a madman might do.

So instead of having him arrested and killing him, which is what we might have expected Abimelech to do under the circumstances, Abimelech drove him out. Abimelech said, "Don't I have enough crazy people around me all the time that you have to bring this madman here too?" And he got rid of him. And so as the title tells us, David was driven out and he left. What we're told in 1 Samuel 21 is that he escaped.

And what he did after that was go back to his own land, and he hid in the cave of Adullam, which is where eventually he gathered the troops around him that were his bodyguard during this bad period. That's an interesting story, and it's one that I think we need to take seriously as a background to the story. The Psalm itself is another one of these acrostic Psalms. It's the third one. We've already seen two: Psalms 9 and 10 go together and form one acrostic; Psalm 25 is another. This is the third.

An acrostic Psalm is one in which successive verses begin with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. So the first verse begins with Aleph, and the second begins with Beth, and so on. Twenty-five and this one leave out one of the letters, the letter Waw, which is also the word for "and". It's a little connective, and maybe it wasn't considered as significant enough a letter to be included. I don't know any other reason why it would be left out, but it is left out in these two.

You'll notice there are 22 verses, and if you know the Hebrew alphabet, you know that there are 22 letters. And if one's left out, how come there are 22 verses? Well, that's because the last verse is introduced with another letter that's not part of the sequence. I don't know the answer to that at all, but that's the way these two are, and they're part of that kind of pattern that is followed in a number of other places. Psalm 119 is the best known. In that Psalm, each stanza—each verse of each stanza—begins with one letter, a single letter.

And that's the way the progression goes. Twenty-two of them. It takes a long time to do it, it's by far the longest Psalm in the Psalter and the longest chapter in the Bible. This Psalm is quoted twice in the New Testament, and it's probably alluded to other places as well. Verses 12 through 16, the first part of verse 16, are quoted in 1 Peter, the third chapter. Peter is trying to show what behavior is required of us if we're to be blessed in our lives, and this is what he says is required.

Then perhaps best known is the quotation of verse 20 in John 19:36. That's where John is giving an account of the crucifixion, and he quotes this verse to say that it was fulfilled when at the time of the death of Christ, no one came to break his bones, even though the legs of the thief on the left and on the right were broken in order to hasten their demise. So it's a Psalm that was known to the New Testament writers and quoted by them.

Now the outline is easy, at least part of it is. It falls into two easy parts: verses 1 through 10 are the first part, and that is David's testimony. That's why I've called this "A Poor Man's Rich Legacy". The testimony is his legacy, and he refers to himself as a poor man in verse 6. And then verses 11 to the end, a slightly longer section, are an instruction, an instruction in which he shifts from the mode of testimony to the role of a father instructing those who are younger than he is in the faith.

Spurgeon, when he wrote about this, said the first half is a hymn and the second half is a sermon, and probably that's a good way of looking at it. Now let's look at the first part. It falls into three parts itself, and they're divided up by the stanzas that we have in the New International Version. The first is a stanza in which David is praising the Lord and invites other people to do it as well. And then there's the testimony itself, and then verse 8 and following is an invitation to do as he did.

When we look at that first part, the first three verses, if we recall the preceding Psalm, we find that we've got something that's almost the same. The first three verses of Psalm 33 are also like this. Those verses invited other people to praise the Lord. And when we were studying that, I pointed out that they have six imperatives in them. There, people are told to sing, praise, make music, sing again, play, and shout for joy. Six imperatives. Now it's like that as we begin Psalm 34, but not exactly.

Psalm 33 is entirely imperatives. In Psalm 34, the first two verses are actually an example of David doing what he's going to encourage others to do. So you find David actually praising God, extolling him, boasting in him in the first two verses, and then it's only verse 3 that turns to the imperatives and says, "Glorify the Lord with me; let us exalt his name together." Now if you think of the content of the two Psalms, that's appropriate.

The first is not a testimony. Psalm 33 is going to rehearse all the things that God has done, and so the person who has written this says to the people he's addressing, "Look, sing and praise and rejoice in this great God." Here in Psalm 34, David is telling how God delivered him, what he did in his life. And so because he's remembering that, he is praising God himself. And yet, it's usually the way with Christian people that when they're praising God, they don't like to do it alone.

They'll do it alone, but they'd rather have other people doing it with them. And so David can't simply say, "I will extol the Lord at all times," and "My soul will boast in the Lord." He turns to other people and he says, "Come on, do this too. Let's praise God together because he's a great God and he's worthy to be praised." There's another phrase in there, indeed it's in the very first line: those words "at all times". They strike me because one of the things you come across in the commentaries when you're studying these Psalms is skepticism.

One thing they're very skeptical of is the value of these titles, the title I referred to earlier. One commentator says the title contributes nothing to understanding the Psalm. Well, that's always a pretty dangerous thing to say. And as I look at it, I find that that phrase "at all times" is immediately illuminated by what we know from the title. You see, this is not a wonderful time in David's life; this is a hard time in David's life. And yet here he is praising God, praising him at all times.

I would apply that to us by saying it's a great privilege for us to praise God at all times, and it's only those who know the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who can do that. Otherwise, you see, you praise God when things are good, but when things are bad, you complain. And here is David in a bad time, and he's saying, "I'm praising God." Now it's true, what he's praising God for is for delivering him. And as we begin to look at this in greater detail, we're going to see that it wasn't an immediate deliverance.

He did deliver him, and he did escape death there in Gath at the hands of the Philistine king, but it was still a bad period. That's why later on he's going to say, "A righteous man may have many troubles." Indeed he may and does. But he says the Lord delivers him from them all, not always immediately, you see, but he does. And it's our privilege to do that as believing people. So right at the beginning, you see, the Psalm is speaking to us.

Now in verse 4, he begins to describe what really happened. He said, "I sought the Lord and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame. This poor man called, and the Lord heard him; he saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them." That's the very heart of David's testimony. "I sought the Lord and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears."

Now let's think a little bit about that time in which he found himself. He's going to call himself in verse 6 "this poor man". He really was a poor man in these circumstances. I think that as far as his early life is concerned, that is, all that time leading up to the moment in which he became king, this undoubtedly refers to the lowest period. Because you see, think back on what had happened. If you read the previous chapter there back in 1 Samuel, you find that David had had to leave Jerusalem.

One thing he'd had to leave was his friend Jonathan. Jonathan was the son of King Saul. Jonathan was his friend, but Saul was his enemy. Saul was behaving so belligerently that David had hid in Jerusalem and he'd arranged with Jonathan that they would meet outside the city and Jonathan would give a signal that would indicate to David whether it was safe for him to return to the palace or whether he had to leave, whether his father was determined to kill him.

The sign Jonathan gave was that his father was indeed trying to kill David, and so they had a last meeting there and David had to leave. It was a sad time for him. Now as I said a moment ago, he had nothing. David was a commander of a certain company of Saul's army, and usually he traveled with the army, but he didn't have the army with him on this occasion. And as a matter of fact, he had nothing. He didn't have any extra clothes with him; he didn't even have food for his journey.

And that's the first reason why he went to Nob. He went down to this town of Nob, and he went to the priests who were there and he said, "Do you have any food?" He was hungry. The priest Ahimelech was a little bit surprised that he had come without any army; that isn't the way he was used to seeing David. And perhaps also a little bit afraid that something was going on that wasn't really safe for him. He began to make inquiries, but David said, "No, it was on a secret mission and I had to flee in a hurry, and that's why I didn't have anything, and do you have any food?"

Ahimelech said, "Well, all I have is the consecrated bread." David said, "That's all right, I'll take that." He explained to him why it was all right for him to have the consecrated bread because he was on God's business, and indeed he was. And then he said, "Do you have any weapons here?" He didn't even have a sword with him. And that's how he got Goliath's sword, because Ahimelech said, "Well, all I have is that sword of Goliath, whom we have had here ever since you killed him eight or ten years ago, whenever that was."

And so David said he would take that. So it's with the bread, the consecrated bread, that he fled to Gath with the sword. And when he had to get out of Gath out of danger of death by the king down there, he fled to the cave at Adullam. Now he is absolutely alone. You see, you have to understand that. Absolutely alone. He has nothing, nobody with him. He's there by himself in the cave.

Because if you read 1 Samuel 21, you'll find that it's after this that his family, his brothers and his father's household hear that he's in this cave and so they go to him. They rally around their son or their brother, and then after that, the others begin to collect that eventually became David's band of 400. They were his core troops; they became the heart of his army, his generals and so forth were trained in that period. But you see, at the point this describes, he's alone and he has nothing.

Now you see why he says, "This poor man called, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his trouble." He gives us a sequence here that describes what he did, and it has four parts to it. First of all, there was trouble. He talks about that, all his troubles or all his fears, verse 4. Secondly, there was prayer. That's what he's talking about in verse 6: "this poor man called". And then there was deliverance. The Lord delivered him.

He delivered him from the king of Gath so he wasn't killed, and then he eventually began to deliver him from his troubles. It took time, but the Lord was active in his life. And then the fourth stage in this sequence is his joy or rejoicing. You see, he's referring to that in verse 5 where he says, "Those who look to him are radiant." He means those who put their hope in the Lord are made radiant and joyful. Their faces are never covered with shame.

I pointed out when we came across that word before that it means they're never let down, never disappointed by God. He always stands by them, and in the end, they find the Lord to be faithful. Now that's a great sequence. You see, we go through difficult times too, and one of our problems is that we just stop with the troubles. We stop with the first half of verse 6; we just say, "this poor man is in trouble", but we don't call upon the Lord, and David did.

Verse 7 is a very interesting one because it makes us think of something that's found in 2 Kings, a great story from the life of Elisha. And the reason I refer to that is that this deliverance that God gives is not always something that we see at the time. You see, David was delivered, but he didn't see it at the time. It was underway, but it was a period where he was alone there in the cave. And often the deliverance God's bringing into our lives is something we don't see.

It's underway, it's coming, but we don't see it at the time. And the story that we have in 2 Kings is interesting. Elisha, the great prophet, had been receiving from God revelations about what the king of Aram, King of the Arameans, was doing. And the King of Israel was fighting the King of Aram, and so if God was telling Elisha what the King of Aram was doing, Elisha then was going to the King of Israel and telling him what the King of Aram was about to do.

And so the King of Israel avoided any kind of trap that the Aramean king would set for him. It happened so often that the Aramean king began to think he had a traitor in the camp. He said, "Look, something's going on here because every time I set a trap, the King of Israel knows it's there and avoids it. One of you is a traitor; tell me who it is." They told him the truth; they said, "It's not that, it's that prophet in Israel. His God tells him what you're going to do, and he tells the king."

Well, he said, "I better get rid of the prophet in that case. Where is he?" And they said, "Well, he's in Dothan." So the King of Aram sent his army by night to surround the city of Dothan, and in the morning, there they were, all these great troops of the Aramean king. Now it's an interesting story. I wish we had it on video; it would be worth watching. Elisha's in the city, and he has a servant, probably a young man, with him.

The servant goes out of the city in the morning to draw water for his master, early, as soon as the sun is up. I suppose he's sleepy; he goes to the well, he throws the bucket over the edge, and then as he waits for it to fill up, he raises his head up slowly, and there on the hillside are all these troops of the Arameans. He rubs his eyes, he can't believe it—where'd they come from? They weren't here last night. There they are!

He runs back into the city, forgets his bucket, he says to Elisha, "Oh, my master, whatever shall we do?" And Elisha says, "Don't be afraid. Those who are with us are more than those who are with them." It's one of the great sentences of the Bible: "Those who are with us are more than those who are with them." And then he prays, and he prays, "Open the young man's eyes that he may see." And God opened the eyes of the servant, and the text tells us that he saw the hills filled with horses and chariots of fire roundabout Elisha.

Now you see, that's a great illustration of verse 7: "The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them." Who is that angel of the Lord? Well, it's a figure that appears quite a few times in the Old Testament. He appeared to Joshua before the conquest of Palestine as the commander of the Lord's host, and probably that's what's in view here. This may be the Lord Jesus Christ in a pre-incarnate form; we don't know that.

But you see he's there to defend his people, and that's what David says. Now David didn't see that in the cave. David is there in the mountains, in the cave, all alone. He doesn't see that. I suppose this is where he wrote the Psalm or he wrote it afterwards as he looked back on it. David didn't see the angel of the Lord encamp roundabout him so far as I know. And yet the angel of the Lord was there protecting him. And the angel of the Lord is there protecting you as well.

You say, "But nobody knows what I'm going through." Oh yes, God knows. And you say, "Nobody's there to help me." Oh yes, God is there to help you. You say, "Who's going to protect me?" God is there to do it. And God will do it and intervene; he's doing it already. He's delivering those who call upon him. Now the third part of this testimony section calls upon us to experience what David experienced. And he does it in an interesting way: "Taste and see that the Lord is good" is what he says.

And while our enjoyment of God is certainly more than our enjoyment of food, it's not less. You see David is calling upon us, actually experience God in a tangible way. You might say, "Well, that's kind of indelicate to think about it as food." Maybe it is, but you see the problem is that we talk a lot and we experience little. You see if we would express our problems to David, what David would say to us is, "God delivered me, and if God delivered me, he'll deliver you. Try it!"

Why don't you read it this way? Look at verse 4 and following: "I sought the Lord and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame. This poor man called, and the Lord heard him; he saved him out of all his trouble. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them. Taste and see that the Lord is good." See how that operates?

David's giving a testimony and he's not testifying to something he hasn't experienced. He's saying, "Look, I have lived through it." And indeed he had. You think of the problems you go through; I would imagine there are not many who are going through problems greater than David experienced in these early days. And yet you see the Lord delivered him and blessed him and he's saying, "Look, find it out for yourself." Now that's where he comes to in verse 11.

He's given his testimony; he's appealed to us to experience it as well. Now he begins to instruct us, and he does it in a very personal and warm way. These verses are like what you find at the beginning of Proverbs, the first nine chapters of Proverbs. The author of that book takes the same stance, like a father instructing his children. And the theme here is the same as the theme of those early chapters of Proverbs. What is that theme in Proverbs?

It has to do with the fear of the Lord. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding." That's the theme of those early chapters of Proverbs, and that's what David's talking about: "Come my children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord." Now let me ask this, I think this is very important. When you hear that phrase "the fear of the Lord", what do you think about?

If you've studied this kind of thing at all, you know that a distinction is usually made. I've heard it made by preachers and it's certainly there in the textbooks, between "fear" in the sense of being afraid, the way we usually use the word, and the actual biblical meaning, which is reverence. The dictionary will describe it that way: fear, one of the meanings awe, reverential fear, especially of the supreme being. That's what Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary says.

And that is of course right; a fear is to have reverential awe of God. But what I've noticed as I begin to study that is that that is not the way David is talking about it here. He says, "I'll teach you the fear of the Lord," and then notice what he goes on to say. What he goes on to say are those verses that Peter quotes concerning practical living. You want to learn about the fear of the Lord? Here it is: "Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days, keep your tongue from speaking evil and your lips from speaking lies."

"Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it. The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their cry." You see he's not talking about an attitude or a feeling, though that's the way we think of the fear of the Lord, but he's referring to actions, and the actions have to do with obeying God. Now you see if what he's saying a stanza earlier is that we are to taste and see that the Lord is good, that we're to enjoy God, the pathway to that is by obedience.

That's what he says. You see the world is always going to say the opposite. The world is going to say, "If you want to have a good time, you have to do it in the world's way. Above all, don't be restricted by all those moral codes that religious people are always dumping on you." Well, a lot of people have bought that lie and have tried it and have found that it's simply not true; it's not the way to happiness.

And maybe you've tried that yourself; maybe you know it; maybe you're in the midst of that and there's something in your heart that says, "Yes, it's not working." Now the world will say you haven't tried hard enough or there's something else, try this. Be immoral in this way or be immoral in that way; that's where you're going to find happiness, though they don't use the word "immoral". But you see it's a dead end street. And what David is telling us here is the truth.

This is the message of God. This is what God says. He says if you want enjoyment, if you want to know me, the source of all true enjoyment, the way is by obedience. And to know me to enjoy me is your chief end. What is the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. And you do that not by running away or disobeying him, but by reading what he says, studying it, seeking his face, and obeying him in every way you can.

Now having said that, having given that instruction, in the last little bit here David begins to summarize. He says, "Look, there are two ways; we've seen it before. There's the way of the righteous—that's the way of blessing—and then there's the way of the ungodly, and that is certain to bring misery and judgment in the end." There are a couple of things that are worth noticing about it and then we'll close. First of all, something I said earlier: what he speaks of here is really a balanced view of the Christian life.

I've said that the way to happiness and blessing is through obedience, but that does not mean—we have to be clear about that—that does not mean that the righteous escape troubles entirely. There are troubles. Jesus said you're going to be persecuted for righteousness' sake if nothing else. And what David says here is that a righteous man may indeed have many troubles; David himself did. But he says God delivers him out of them all, and in the meantime, he has the enjoyment of knowing and obeying God.

You see how it operates? Isn't that a mature view? That must be true because that's not what you'd be told. You'd be told one or the other: either you'd be told if you go God's way you're going to be miserable, or you'd be told if you go God's way you're not going to have any troubles at all. And actually that's not true on either end. A righteous man will have many troubles, but there are blessings that are going to outweigh them all.

And then the second thing I want you to notice about this closing or summary is that in the very last verses, the psalmist David seems to look beyond the mere events of this life, which the Psalms tend to focus on, and he looks to death and by implication beyond that to the life to come. Isn't that what he's talking about in verses 21 and 22? "Evil will slay the wicked"—that is if they pursue that, they'll die. "The foes of the righteous will be condemned."

"And the Lord redeems his servants; no one who takes refuge in him will be condemned." That condemnation must be a final condemnation, the condemnation of the last judgment. In other words, you see, he's looking forward to an ultimate deliverance, which is where the Psalm ends. I don't know how much David understood of that as he looked to the future. God's revelation is progressive; those in the Old Testament understood less than we do now.

I do think they understood a lot more than we give them credit for. But whether David understood it or not, we do. We know where that redemption comes from. That redemption was purchased for us by Jesus Christ, and it's because of him that we will not be condemned. What it says is you have to take refuge in him. And when you do, the storm of judgment passes by. Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee. That's what the Psalm says in closing.

A poor man, yes, at this period in his life, but a rich legacy, one that he's left for everyone who by the grace of God will believe it and act upon it as David did. Let's pray. Father, bless this study to our hearts. Practical, and yet it's the practical things that we have the most trouble with. It's easy for us to understand the theory, but to actually get down to it and obey you in the nitty-gritty of life, that is where our difficulty lies.

So bless us as we try to do that and lead us in that way, and so lead us increasingly into the joy of fellowship with you that our testimony might be that of David and we can say to others, "Taste and see that the Lord is good. I have done it and he really is." In the name of Christ our savior, amen and amen.

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