The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): Where do you turn when you have a problem? Whenever David was in trouble, no matter the circumstance, he took it straight to God. Today on the Bible Study Hour with Dr. James Boice, we'll study Psalm 54, where David has been betrayed in the worst way. Despite his situation, David's hope lies in the eternal God. God has delivered David in the past, and he will deliver David again.

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. Over and over in the book of Psalms, David finds himself in trouble, sometimes even in fear for his own life. The way in which David deals with trials and adversity provides a model for how we should approach struggles and tough circumstances in our lives. If you have your Bible, turn to Psalm 54.

Dr. James Boice: We've been studying the Psalms for a good while now and you're aware, I'm sure from our study, that it's not always possible to link the Psalms together in any meaningful way. In other words, to say this Psalm is here because it follows on this Psalm and the link is this, or this Psalm is here because it precedes this Psalm and the linkage is as follows.

That is possible to do in some cases, however, and it is possible to do that with Psalm 54. Psalm 54 is here at a very significant place in the Psalter and it doesn't require a very careful study to explain why. It follows very nicely on Psalm 53, for example. Psalm 53 is well-known. That's the Psalm that repeats Psalm 14. It's about the fool who says in his heart there's no God.

So this is a Psalm about spiritual and moral fools. According to the Old Testament way of looking at that, that does not mean one necessarily who in an intellectual fashion denies that there actually is a God. In other words, an insistence that this is merely a materialistic universe, because in ancient days hardly anybody thought that. Almost everybody acknowledged that there's a God or gods, but the fool of Psalm 53 is the one who acts as if there's no God.

We saw when we were studying that the sentence "there is no God" in verse 1 in the Hebrew actually is just "no God." The fool says in his heart, "no God." That is, no God for me. He's living as if there isn't one. Now that is exactly what we find in Psalm 54. Here the Psalmist is surrounded by people like that. Look at verse 3. Strangers are attacking me, ruthless men seek my life, men without regard for God. So the fools of Psalm 53 emerge here in Psalm 54.

The earlier Psalm, you'll recall, also ends with what one of the commentators called the faith of the saints. Most of the Psalm is about the fool who says in his heart there's no God, but when you get to the last verse, here you have those who are actually believers, looking forward to the salvation that God is going to provide from Zion. Now Psalm 54 is by precisely one of those saints, and that saint is David, as the title to the Psalm indicates. So that's one way you can link it up.

There's another way you can do it as well. This Psalm is about betrayal. That's why I've titled it that, and in that connection, it links up with Psalm 52, which is two Psalms preceding, and with Psalm 55, which is to follow. Psalm 52 talks about David's betrayal by Doeg the Edomite, a foreigner and an enemy. We saw what happened there when we studied it. We're going to review it again because it's part of the background for this Psalm.

Here David is betrayed now by his countrymen or his tribesmen, those from his own area of the country in the south of Jerusalem, the area of Hebron. And then by the time we get to Psalm 55, we find that he's betrayed by a very close friend. So again, this matter of betrayal links the Psalms and you have an intensification of it as you go along. Now I mentioned the link between Psalm 52 and 54 and that's important to examine because this is the historical background for both of the Psalms.

Not all of the Psalms are given an historical setting. I pointed out last time that only about 12, a dozen or perhaps a few more in the Psalter, have in their titles something that enables us to identify them with a specific historical incident. But of those that are so identified, virtually all are from the life of David and there's a whole collection of them here together.

Psalm 53 does not have that kind of a background, but Psalm 51, 52, 54, 55, and so on do. So this historical background ties them together. Let's just review that a minute. David had fled from Jerusalem to get away from Saul because Saul was intent on killing him. He was jealous because David was young and popular and was apparently having greater success than Saul.

David had a friend in Jonathan who was Saul's son. Jonathan warned David of his father's intention and as a result of that he fled. He had to leave suddenly so he didn't have any soldiers with him. He didn't have food or weapons. But he went to the priestly town of Nob where he had friends. He knew the high priest there whose name was Ahimelech and he asked for help.

When he first came, Ahimelech was a bit frightened because he sensed something was not quite right. David had no soldiers with him, he had come unarmed, he was obviously in a hurry, and Ahimelech wondered if something might be wrong. But David lied on this occasion. He said no, he was on urgent business for the king, his soldiers were going to meet him later, and by the way, could Ahimelech help him out?

Well, Ahimelech agreed to do that. He gave him food, it was the showbread, that is, the sacred bread that had been laid up before the ark. Jesus referred to that at one point in his ministry as an example of the importance of the person being more than mere ceremonies. So Ahimelech gave him that bread and then when David asked for a weapon, he said the only weapon I have here is the sword of Goliath whom David had killed, the great Philistine hero, and he gave him the sword.

The unfortunate thing is that this man Doeg was present on that occasion. Doeg was in the employ of Saul. He was no friend of David's and, being an evil man, he recognized that he possessed here some information that might prove useful to himself at a later date. As we read those chapters in 1 Samuel, we discover that there was a considerable time lapse there while David gathered the 400 men that became the core of his army later to him in the wilderness and he spent some time in the Philistine city and so forth.

The time came when Saul, in a particularly low period, was complaining that nobody in the kingdom would tell him what was going on, that is, what was going on with David. He suspected they were all traitors and actually he thought they were all on David's side. People in positions of high authority often get thinking that way and sometimes with very good cause. Here he was in this low period.

Doeg recognized that that was his opportunity. So Doeg said, "Well, I'll tell you something. When I was at Nob on your business a while back, David came by and Ahimelech the priest gave him food and helped him and gave him a weapon. He's not your friend." Saul was furious. He called Ahimelech to him. He accused him of treason. Ahimelech defended himself rightly. He said David's your servant, he came to me, I would help him, I've helped him before, I would help him again.

How was I to know that there was anything wrong between you and David? But Saul wouldn't listen to that. We speak of insane jealousy and there really was a certain kind of mental imbalance here as a result of the jealousy Saul had. So he commanded his soldiers to kill the priest. They wouldn't do it. They recognized it was wrong to lift up their hand against the Lord's anointed and so Doeg the Edomite obliged the king and killed Ahimelech.

And not only did he do that, he fell upon all of the priests of the priestly city of Nob. There were 85 of them and he killed them. And he not only killed them, he killed their wives and their children and then all of the citizens of Nob, and the story tells us he even killed the cattle. It was a great slaughter, a massacre, and it was certainly one of the lowest periods in the life of David.

David assumed some blame for it because one of Ahimelech's sons, a man named Abiathar, escaped. He came to David to tell what happened and David said to him, "That day when Doeg the Edomite was there, I knew he would be sure to tell Saul. I am responsible for the death of your father's whole family." Now the immediate background for Psalm 54 picks up at this point.

What I've just said was the background for Psalm 52 and we studied that earlier, but that ties in with what we say now. According to 1 Samuel 23, that is the chapter that immediately follows this, the Philistines were attacking a Jewish border town that was called Keilah. David asked God, prayed, asked if perhaps he could be of some help in the situation. Maybe he, with these 400 men that had now begun to gather around him, could go down there and rescue the town and drive off the Philistines.

After all, this was a Jewish town and God in some way indicated that that's what he should do. So he went down to Keilah, he defeated the Philistines, he drove them back into their own country and then he entered the city. Now it would seem since he was fleeing from Saul that this was a perhaps good place for him to be. It was somewhat off the beaten track and it was not immediately accessible from Jerusalem, and he thought he might do all right there.

But word came to Saul that that's where David was. And when Saul heard about that, Saul thought now this is just an ideal opportunity. Keilah was a walled city. It had gates and bars and Saul thought, "All I have to do is march down there. David has made a prisoner of himself by entering in a city like that." He knew as long as David was in the wilderness, he was no match for him because David's force was like a guerrilla troop and they could move around easily and they always escaped Saul and his more cumbersome army.

But in the city, he placed himself in a trap. So Saul marched against Keilah. Now we're told in the context of the story that the high priest's son, Abiathar, had brought with him the ephod from the city of Nob. What's an ephod? It's interesting we don't really know what that is. It's a word that's used in different ways. Sometimes it's used of the garment of the priest, but it doesn't seem to be that here.

Somehow it was used to discern the will of God. It perhaps was like the sacred stones, the Urim and the Thummim that were thrown, but something like that. We don't really know what it was but in some way that's how it was used. We're told in the story that David inquired through the priest and the ephod whether if he stayed in the city of Keilah the people of the city would defend him. After all he'd rescued them from the Philistines. They sort of owed that to him.

Or he said, "Will they turn me over to Saul if Saul comes?" The answer the Lord gave him was that they would turn him over to Saul. So when David knew that Saul was on his way he slipped out of the city and he went south, further south into the hilly wilderness country of Ziph. Now you'd think he would be safe there. Off in the wilderness again. But even in Ziph he wasn't safe.

The story tells us that these people from Ziph came to the king and reported that David was among them in this country of the Ziphites. And they gave a very explicit reference. David had gone to a city called Horesh, one of the little towns of the region, and these Ziphites, whose town it was, came to Saul at Gibeah and this is what they reported. They said to Saul, "Is not David hiding among us in the strongholds at Horesh on the hill of Hakilah south of Jeshimon?"

Now those are pretty specific directions. It's like saying, "I'll tell you exactly where he is. You go up the road, you find a big stone, you turn left, you go over a hillside and that's the valley in which he's hiding. You won't have any trouble finding him." "Is not David hiding among us," is what they said. Then they almost invited the king to invade. "Now O king, come down whenever it pleases you to do so and we will be responsible for handing him over to the king."

Of course it did please Saul to do so. So he marched south and when David knew he was coming he retreated further into the wilderness and it's an interesting account there in 1 Samuel where Saul is making his way down the valley and David is making his way along the ridge of the hill, just barely keeping out of the arm's reach of the king.

The king would have caught David and killed him if God had not raised up the Philistines to invade the country at exactly that moment. And when the word came to King Saul that the Philistines had invaded further north he was the king, he had to withdraw from the pursuit of David and go off and defend the capital against the Philistines and so David was rescued.

Now that happened once again. I'm talking about the 23rd chapter but in the 26th chapter of 1 Samuel David is back in Hakilah, in the same southern region, and the Ziphites come to Saul again and they say, the first verse of that chapter, "Is not David hiding on the hill of Hakilah which faces Jeshimon?" Now the title of our Psalm picks up on that. Look at the title. It's called a maskil of David when the Ziphites had gone to Saul and said, "Is not David hiding among us?"

Now you might say to yourself that's rather a lengthy introduction to the Psalm. We'd rather be studying the Psalm but you see that introduction is important because what it describes is one of the worst periods in David's life. He had been a friend to Saul and Saul had turned on him. He had fled into the wilderness and by the leading of God had gone down to Keilah and delivered that city from the Philistines.

Nevertheless these people, his tribesmen, had turned on him. They weren't willing to stand by him and then he'd gone off into the wilderness and he wasn't even safe there. The Ziphites turned against him. So here you have a picture of David rejected and pursued and betrayed. He's out in the wilderness by himself and it is in the midst of this dark, dangerous and disillusioning situation that Psalm 54 is written because what he does is call out to God for help in this very low period of his life.

I don't have to be overly explicit to say that if you're going through a difficult period of life, this is a good Psalm for you. Many people do. We get into situations that are dark and dangerous and disillusioning. Friends let you down, sometimes they turn their back on you, they betray you. It's a rare person who hasn't known that in some way and Christians especially know that kind of discouraging, dismal, dark and dangerous situation. And it was in a situation like that that David wrote the Psalm.

Now what we see in this Psalm is what it means to turn to God and how he did it. One lesson we learn from it is that whenever David had a problem he brought it to God. That's what he does in this Psalm. The first three verses show you how he does that and what that really means is that David prayed. I'm sure there's a hymn you know by a man named Joseph Scriven although you probably don't know the name of the writer.

It was written in 1855 and it's about prayer. It's often sung especially in evangelical circles. David didn't know it of course, it was written in 1855, but if he had known it he would have identified with every single word of this hymn. And it goes like this: Have we trials and temptations, is there trouble anywhere? We should never be discouraged, take it to the Lord in prayer. Can we find a friend so faithful who will all our sorrows share? Jesus knows our every weakness, take it to the Lord in prayer.

And the next verse says in part, do thy friends despise, forsake thee? Take it to the Lord in prayer. In his arms he'll take and shield thee, thou wilt find a solace there. Now that's exactly what David does. Now let me say that although it's true to recognize that David prayed, it is also important, equally important to recognize that he prayed to God.

And what I mean by that is he prayed to the true God who he had come to know through a study of the scripture and then also by his own personal experience. He reminds us of this in the very first verse where he says, "Save me O God by your name, vindicate me by your might." Let's just think about that a little bit. Save me by your name. What does that mean? Save me by your name.

We don't think much about names today. We kind of think lightly of names. Names don't mean much. But that was not true in the ancient world and certainly not in the Old Testament world. Names were very significant. They had symbolic significance, descriptive significance, and so it was very important whether a person lived up to the good name they had, for example. That's also why in the Old Testament we find God naming people. Sometimes changing their name.

Have one name and it's not particularly edifying or spiritual and God changes the name. Even Jesus did that with Peter, you know, changing his name from Peter, one particular form of the word which meant a little pebble, to Peter the rock, because that's what he was going to do with his character, he was going to turn him into a man of God. It's also why in the Old Testament we find people inquiring after the name of God.

You may recall that when Jacob was wrestling with the angel or perhaps with Jesus Christ in a pre-incarnate form at Jabbok, that was the question he asked him: what is your name? he said. And the heavenly being that he was wrestling with did not give him his name. He said, "Why do you ask my name?" And then he said, "What's your name?" and then he changed his name.

You see that was the prerogative of deity. And so the relationship was established by that matter of the names. It's also why when God appeared to Moses to send him into Egypt to get the people out, Moses said, "Now when I go down there and I say to them the God of your fathers has sent me to you to bring you out of Egypt and they say what is his name? What am I going to say?"

And you have that significant revelation in the Old Testament where God replies, "I AM." This is what you shall say to them: "I AM has sent me to you." Now that latter story, Moses inquiring after the name of God and God replying with the name "I AM", is particularly important for understanding Psalm 54 because this is the name that David is appealing to in the Psalm.

Notice how he does it. He heightens the importance of the name by delaying it to the sixth verse even though he introduces the subject in verse 1. Now you can tell this in the English translation if you understand what the Hebrew words are that are translated in various ways in the English text. You'll notice the word God there in the Psalm in verses 1, 2, 3, and 4, the first four verses, G-O-D, and that's a translation of the word Elohim.

Now remember that's sort of a generic name for God. You could use that word Elohim for the gods of the heathen just as well or sometimes you can speak of the gods in the plural and use it that way. It's a generic name and this is the name that predominates in the Psalms in the second book of the Psalter. Remember the first book of the Psalter up through Psalm 41, the dominant name is Jehovah. In the second book, it's Elohim and that's what you find there.

Now you find it again and again. Save me O God by your name. Hear my prayer O God. There are men without regard for God. In verse 4 surely God is my help. Now when we get to verse 4, there's a slight transition. You notice the second line of that verse has the word Lord in it. Capital L with small letters O-R-D and that's a translation of the word Adonai. That's the way that is done in most of the Bibles.

Adonai means Lord. It's sort of a title. It's like we would say sir in an exalted sense. So here you get a variation, but even at this point you still don't have the name that David is appealing to in verse 1. And it's not till verse 6 that you have it. I will sacrifice a freewill offering to you, I will praise your name O Lord, and that name is Yahweh or Jehovah. That's the word that was given to Moses at the burning bush.

Now you say what's the significance of that name? Scholars are divided in what they have to say about the name Jehovah, but only for this reason: the name is so great and so inclusive that virtually anything we say about the name Jehovah is inadequate. A few things we can say. It's the root of the Hebrew verb to be, which is why it's translated "I AM" back there in Isaiah.

You'll notice also that that's in the present tense. "I AM has sent you." So it's talking about God as the eternal present. Well, that's a very important thing. It means that God is eternal. What we're going to see is that that name Jehovah wraps up in it those characteristics that are for the most part exclusively God's. Now Jehovah's everything else as well, but there are attributes that are incommunicable, meaning God is not able to share those particular attributes with us.

There are other attributes that are communicable that he does share with us and all our better qualities are a result of that. The fact that we think and know things, it's based on the fact that God is a knowledgeable God, he has knowledge. He is omniscient, he knows all things. We don't know all things, but we know as God knows. In the same way we have a measure of wisdom and we love and we relate to persons and all of that is on the communicable level.

But then there are those attributes of God that are incommunicable and those are the ones that are particularly wrapped up with the name Jehovah or Yahweh. Now as I said the first of these is this matter of God being eternally present. God always is. Always has been. Always will be. And there's nothing else in the entire universe that is like that. Now it is true that when God creates us he gives us eternal souls and those are going to continue to exist either in fellowship with him or apart from him throughout all eternity.

But there was a moment when you and I did not exist. We do not come from an eternal soul. We come into existence in time and are given an eternal existence by God, but we are not eternal as God is eternal. And neither is the world, neither any of the things that you see. There are people today who like to think that matter is eternal because if God doesn't exist in their minds and they prefer not to regard God, they want to have something eternal in the universe.

And so they think of matter being eternal, but the Bible teaches us that that is not the case. You go back to the beginning of Genesis and it says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, so matter had a beginning. And then you read also in the Bible that in the end heaven and earth will pass away and so matter will have an end. Only God is eternal. Now that sets him infinitely above us and above us in a way that it's impossible for us fully to understand.

There are several other attributes that are wrapped up in that and one is self-existence. What that means is that God exists in himself, he doesn't depend on anything else. You say we're not like that. No, we are not self-existent. We don't exist by our own selves. We depend on all kinds of things. We depend on food in order to keep alive and an environment in which we can function, we depend on air to breathe.

God doesn't depend on anything. If everything you could possibly conceive of were obliterated, God would still be there. So God doesn't depend on anything and because he doesn't depend on anything, he doesn't owe an explanation for who he is or what he does to anybody. One thing we don't like about God you see, we feel God owes us something. We always want to bring God down and put him in our debt.

If we could bring him down and put him in our debt and say, "God you've got to do this," well then to that extent we'd have some control over God. But God isn't like that. We don't have any control over him at all. We can't demand that he do a thing. And so people don't like that, but that's wrapped up in the name of God. You see when God says "I AM who I AM," it means I will do what I will do.

And you can't require me to do anything. I do what I do and you just have to come to terms with that. Another thing the word means is that God is self-sufficient and that means that he has no needs. What could God possibly need? You say, "Well, he needs worshippers." Does he? Would God be diminished in the slightest if you and I weren't around to worship him?

I know A.W. Tozer has a nice image of that. He says in one of his books imagine a situation where all human beings on the face of the earth should suddenly become blind. They can't see any light at all. They are living in perpetual darkness. Would that diminish the grandeur and the glory of the sun in the slightest? The sun would go on shining even if we're not there to see it.

In the same way, he said if every individual on the face of the earth tomorrow morning should instantaneously become an atheist and say not just in a practical sense but in a theoretical sense there is no God, it wouldn't make the slightest difference to God. God would still be God and he would be as glorious while we deny him as he is when we worship him. God does not need worshippers, God does not need helpers.

But you see when we begin to realize those things, then we begin for the first time perhaps to see something of the glory and the wonder and the greatness and the magnificence of our God. And you begin to understand what David means when he says in verse 1, "Save me O God by your name." He means save me because of who you are. God needs no helpers. We are the ones that need help.

But God is my help. You see that's what verse 4 said. Surely God is my help, the Lord is the one who sustains me. Now that's the way David begins. Now at this point I'd like you just to look at the Psalm as we go through it and see the different parts it has. It's a model little Psalm at this point. Each verse has a separate kind of idea connected with it and if you think it through it becomes a pattern for how you can pray in just such a situation.

Notice the first thing, David asks God to hear his lament. Now we looked at verse 1. This is verse 2. He says, "Hear my prayer O God, listen to the words of my mouth." Now when Jesus prayed on one occasion he said to God, "Father I know that you hear me always." Now that is also true of our prayers. God hears us always because God is omniscient, God knows all things, he hears all things.

Jesus also said on one occasion even when you try to do something in secret God hears it and someday that's all going to be dragged out of the closet and it's going to be made known. It's going to be shouted on the hilltops, there're going to be no secrets in God's universe. Very frightening thought you see. But there's a sense in which God hears all things.

Why then does David pray this way? Why does he say O God hear my prayer, listen to the words of my mouth? Well, for this reason: when we come to God and we pray that way, we remind ourselves first of all of who God is: God is the God who hears. And secondly we remind ourselves that there are things that if they don't stop him from actually hearing what we say, they at least hinder the prayer in this sense that he doesn't hear in order to answer.

The Bible talks along those lines in many places. Sin is a hindrance like that. That's why it says in Isaiah 59 surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save nor his ear too dull to hear. Of course he can hear and his arm can save if he chooses to reach out and save, but notice your iniquities have separated you from your God, your sins have hidden his face from you so that he will not hear.

And you see what that means. God hears, but he's not going to hear to answer when we come with sin cherished in our hearts. And so when we begin as David begins here praying, "Hear my prayer O God, listen to the words of my mouth," what that causes us to do is say to ourselves, "Is there anything in me that keeps him from hearing the prayer I want to make?"

And if we discover that then of course we have to confess it and change what we're doing. Here's the second point. After he's done that, David describes the situation he faces and that's what you have in verse 3. Strangers are attacking me, ruthless men seek my life, men without regard for God. Some people are reluctant to talk about themselves at all or to say what's bothering them and a lot of Christians are the same way.

And sometimes with good reasons, we're not always in situations where we can do that. But one of the refreshing things about David, especially in the Psalms, is that he tells exactly how he feels. Now it's sometimes hard to be around somebody like that but it is refreshing because you do know where they stand and here is David being exactly that way with God.

He says these men out there, these ruthless men want to kill me and he was not exaggerating in the slightest. Saul wanted to kill him. Saul would certainly have killed him if he could have. And the soldiers that were there with Saul were doing Saul's bidding and if they had caught David or surrounded his army in Keilah or anywhere else they would certainly have wiped David out. So he's not exaggerating in the slightest.

He had something to tell God about and he did and God heard him. Now if you're facing some hard problem I encourage you to do that, to tell God about it and do it in detail. You know you say to yourself well God knows already. Yes, that's true, he does. But he wants to hear from you and if there's a problem you're facing you spell it all out.

You spell it out in detail. I guess you can wallow in that. In a moment I'm going to show that David goes on to do something else but if you spell it all out and you mention all the details, one thing you'll be doing is reminding yourself that God does indeed know the details because as you mention them to him you'll be telling yourself, "Yes, and I know God is aware of that already."

And if you know he's aware of it you'll know that he cares about the details, even those little things in your life that are bothering you but nobody else cares about and if he cares about the details you know he also cares about you. That's a very important thing you see to pray and to have that kind of reassurance and encouragement as you pray. Here's the third thing. David next encourages himself by remembering who God is.

Verse 4, we've already mentioned it: surely God is my help, the Lord is the one who sustains me. Now that's what I mean when I said a moment ago that David doesn't merely wallow in his problems as we might say. There is a danger in doing that. We get so bogged down in our problems that in our prayers that's all we do.

We're just pouring it all out sort of the way some people will do to anybody who will listen to them at all. And some people don't have anybody to listen to them at all and so they pay for a counselor to listen to them and they do the same thing with a counselor and some counselors, not good ones, but some of them just make their money by listening.

They don't actually provide much help. I've noticed one of the sad things of our decaying culture is that there are people in our society who not only have no one to listen to them but have no money to pay anybody to listen to them and the frustration builds to the point of imbalance and you find them walking down the street talking out loud and shouting at everything where nobody's there to listen to them at all.

A very sad thing you see. There is a danger of simply wallowing in our problems. But David doesn't fall into that trap because you see as soon as he reminds himself of the problem and lays it before God, he pauses also to remind himself of the nature of the God before whom he's laying the problem. And what he tells himself is that God is his help and the one who sustains him.

You know in 1 Peter 5:7, Peter, who has learned the hard way to trust the Lord in all situations, gives us some advice. He says, "Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you." Incidentally the very next Psalm, Psalm 55, has that verse. It's where Peter got it, Psalm 55 verse 22. But in this Psalm, Psalm 54, that is what David does.

David has cast his anxiety on God, that's what verses 1 to 3 are describing, and now having done it he's ready to encourage himself by remembering that God really is his help. You know Isaac Watts once captured that in his rendering of Psalm 90, one of the great hymns that we sing: Our God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, be thou our guard while troubles last and our eternal home.

Here's the fourth thing David does after having done all of this, that is after asking God to hear him and having described the problem in detail and having reminded himself of who God is, he now makes his request. And that is he's specific and what he says is this: people are attacking me, I would like you to let their evil recoil upon their heads and I would like you to destroy them and save me.

Now in the case of Doeg the Edomite whose situation he described in Psalm 52 he described exactly what he wanted God to do and it was really very vivid. Doeg was to be pulled up, snatched down, twisted out, torn from his real. Now the language here isn't quite so graphic, but it nevertheless is asking for God to intervene. Now if you read the commentators you'll find that they begin to get very troubled at this point because that doesn't seem to be a Christian way of functioning.

And wherever they come across something like this in the Psalms, and you find it quite a few times in the Psalms by David, they say now that really is a vindictive spirit, it's not worthy of a man of God, and we have been taught in the New Testament to forgive our enemies and pray for them even those who despitefully use us and of course that's true.

But we need to say two things. First of all, even though we've been taught to do that, that doesn't mean that we are to be indifferent to justice or righteousness. Just because I am willing to forgive my enemy and ought to forgive my enemy doesn't mean that therefore I should say well I'm glad to have all kinds of injustices prevail. If we have any sense of right from God, we should want God to establish justice and we should be grieved at evil.

The second thing we have to notice is that although David asks God to vindicate him and exercise judgment, David did not take that judgment into his own hands. Now remember here he's being pursued by Saul. If you go back to those very chapters, the stories of which I've been telling, 1 Samuel 23, 24, 25, and 26, you'll find that several times over in those chapters in the very midst of the situation that is being reflected here in the Psalm, that is between chapter 23 where the Ziphites report to Saul where David is and chapter 26 where they do the same thing, in between there bracketed by those two reports of the Ziphites, David had two opportunities to kill his enemy.

God delivered him into his hands, he could have killed him with the sword and he would have been king. The old king was dead, long live the king. But he didn't do it. You see he wouldn't lift up his hand against the Lord's anointed. So although he prays for justice, he desires justice, he doesn't take it into his own hands, he leaves it with God. Well that's very significant to us. We ought to desire these things but we ought always work in grace to help people as much as we can.

Here's the last thing, the fifth point. David promises God a freewill offering. You find it in verses 6 and 7. Now this is not a case of offering a bribe to God. That is if you'll destroy my enemies I'll bring you an offering. Not that at all. David has prayed to God and because he knows that God is his help and the one who sustains him, he knows God's going to deliver him.

And so what he's saying to God is I know you're going to do that and when you do I'm going to bring an offering. My offering's going to be a thank offering for what you've done. How does he know God is going to do that? How does he know God will deliver him? Well because of who God is, verse 4, surely God is my help, and because of his experience. God had delivered him in the past, God would deliver him again.

Now let me give you a quote from Charles Haddon Spurgeon, he writes wonderfully on these Psalms and here's what he says: "Let us trust that if we are as friendless as this man of God we may resort to prayer as he did, exercise the like faith and find ourselves before long singing the same joyous hymn of praise." Well, that's a Psalm. Let me share one last thing with you.

I've said several times in the course of these studies that we must be careful not to turn all the Psalms into messianic prophecies, that is prophecies about Jesus Christ. There are commentators who have done that and one who did it to unbelievable excess is the great Saint Augustine. You read his commentary on the Psalms you'll find every one of them seems to be a prophecy of Jesus Christ. Others have seen the Psalms as prophecies of the condition of the Jewish people just before the second return of Christ. Arno Gaebelein has done that.

In my judgment that fixation on one method of interpretation has greatly limited the value of those two commentaries. I look at Augustine from time to time but I have a hard time finding things that are actually helpful. Augustine in other places is extremely helpful, very keen mind, but not for interpreting the Psalms. They are not all messianic. They describe situations like this, that from the life of David, they are clear about what they're describing.

But nevertheless some of them are messianic, that is clear prophecies of the Christ who is to come. And there are others which even though they are not messianic nevertheless describe things in such vivid language that we can find parallels in the life of Jesus Christ and say this is the sort of thing that Jesus himself must have gone through even though the Psalm itself is not a prophecy of what he went through. Now I think this Psalm is like that.

Think of some of the phrases. Save me O God by your name. Strangers are attacking me. Surely God is my help. He has delivered me from all my troubles. Isn't that the sort of thing that Jesus was thinking on the cross? And you see the point of that is this: when you and I go through these difficult times and all of us do, we must not think that that's something unique to us or even unique to humanity.

It is something into which our Lord Jesus Christ himself has entered by becoming a man like us and suffering like us. And in the midst of his suffering the Father did hear when Jesus called out to him, he did help him and he did save him, just as he heard helped and saved David, and you can be certain that he will hear help and save you. And so the message of the Psalm is to believe it. To believe it and lay all your requests and all your anxieties before God.

Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you that we have in you a God who has stooped to the point not only of hearing us as wonderful as that is but actually entering into our condition and experiencing firsthand what it means to be betrayed and rejected and eventually even killed.

Our Father none of us have resisted yet to the point of shedding blood but many are discouraged, many have been rejected, many have been betrayed in different ways. Our Father we thank you that we come to a God who knows all about that and who is able to help. Teach us to pray as David did, laying all this before you, recognizing that you are our help and then in anticipation of the deliverance that you promise, say in that day I'm going to lay a thank offering at your feet and let it be our very selves for we pray in Jesus' name. Amen and amen.

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