Psalm 54

Well, this is the first of our uh summer Psalms.

We'll be doing this up until the end of August or thereabouts.

It's something that we do every year, and it's great actually to spend an extended period of time in the Psalms because one of the things that the Psalms help us to do every year is to uh understand and to process the range of human experience and human emotion, help us to kind of think through um how our how our hearts are and uh the various circumstances that we find ourselves in.

The Psalms are uh the the lyrics of our faith.

It's great that God has given us a book like the Salems.

I think God, if you think about it, he could have just uh revealed him himself in a set of kind of fairly staccato propositions.

Uh, this is what I'm like, this is what you're gonna do, uh, I'll I'll see you on the other side.

But that's not what he's done.

He's given us a full, rich tapestry of revelation in the Bible, and right at the heart of it is a book of songs and poetries that express our hearts.

Have you ever found yourself in the situation where you're feeling something and you don't quite know how to give voice to it?

You don't even quite know how to articulate how you're feeling.

Well, the psalms come alongside you and say, Let me help you with that.

Let me give voice to the ways that you're you're feeling.

If you're thinking, well, I'm just so jubilant right now, how do I go about praising God for his goodness?

Well, you can say with the psalmist in Psalm 103, give thanks to the Lord for he is good, stealth love endures forever.

Or if you're relieved that you've been delivered for something that you know the doctor has given you good news, or you have come out of a season of trial, and you don't quite know how to express yourself, you can say when the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed.

Then our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with shouts of joy, and they said among the nations, the Lord has done great things for them.

Or in our sadness, when we can hardly begin to give voice to the darkness that we feel, we can say things like Psalm twenty-two, be not far from me, O Lord, for trouble is near.

Or, as the deer pants for flowing streams, so my thought soul thirsts for you, O God.

My soul thirsts for the living God.

When shall I come and appear before God?

My tears have been my food day and night.

The Psalms help us to express ourselves in Christian ways, as Christians, who are not immune from the whole range of human emotions.

The Psalms that we're going to be uh looking at this week and next week, Peter's going to be preaching next week on Psalm 55.

But these two Psalms, if you think what is the emotional uh uh range that we are in, what is it helping us to process?

Well, in these two Psalms, it's betrayal.

I imagine that we've all had experiences where someone that we thought we knew and trusted has broken that trust, gone behind our backs, said and done things uh about us or to us that we simply would not have expected.

And we have felt that sense of betrayal, that trust has been broken.

Abby very helpfully read the the superscript.

The superscript is the uh the words just above verse one.

Uh they should be read, in fact.

They're they're Bible.

Uh they actually can help us to understand what the Psalms are about, oftentimes.

And this one is no different.

So it says, to the choirmaster with stringed instruments, a mascell.

It's just a liturgical term that we don't quite understand what it means, but it's a Psalm of David, that is the king, when the Ziphites went to Saul and said, Is not David among us?

Well, I'm sure that's cleared it all up uh for you.

You're all quite clear.

Um you think, oh, those Ziphites, um, or not.

So the uh the situation, uh just to refresh your memory, I'm sure, comes from uh from the book of 1 Samuel.

1st and 2 Samuel are really the books that recount David's reign.

That's where you'll find David and Goliath, uh, 1 Samuel 17.

If you're like, oh, I was wondering where that was.

There you go.

And what is basically happening is that after the David and Goliath incident, uh, Saul, who's on the throne, who is the king, he kind of knows that the jig is up, that his days are numbered, that God has placed his favor, that God has uh has chosen another king, and then's David.

And there's uh there's a bunch of chapters, and this is one of them, where there's this kind of uh Game of Thrones-esque uh conflict going on in Israel for the throne.

There is a king who has lost God's favor, that is Saul, who is still on the throne, and so he's still commanding uh the armies, and then there's David as this little insurrection force with his 600 men.

But the effect of it is it's dividing the country, and so you have different tribes, different city-states, different areas siding with different uh with different kings.

I'm with Saul, I'm with David.

And David goes to the Ziphites, they're the folks on the town of Zip.

Uh, and the thing that we need to know about that is that they were David's countrymen.

They were his guys.

David came from the tribe of Judah.

The town of Zif was in the tribe of Judah.

David expected that he would be safe there.

He expected that he'd be able to have sanctuary there, that nobody, that they'd all have his back, and they turned on him.

They were his friends, they were his men, they were his guys, and they let him down.

They went to Saul and they said, David's in our town if you want to come and get him.

The Zipites were not enemies of the people of God, they were part of the people of God, and yet they had turned their back on David and betrayed him.

Now it's a sad fact that the church isn't immune to this sort of thing.

This isn't just something that happens outside of the church.

Churches split and fall apart because of mistrust and betrayal.

Because Christians go behind one another's backs.

Maybe you've been a part of or your parents have been a part of.

That kind of very painful split where there's been that sense of betrayal.

Christians sadly are not immune to it.

It can be some of the hardest wounds as a Christian to bear.

It's like there's a sense of which, you know, uh you expect to be, you expect to be kind of tacked attacked and get a hard time from people outside of the family of faith.

Uh, it can be rather unexpected when it comes from inside the family of faith and much harder to deal with.

It can be hard to know where to turn in those situations where we feel like we've been betrayed, when it feels like every next move that we might make is a is a potential trap, when all of our words are being scrutinized and poured over and uh recounted negatively.

It can be a very human emotion to wonder where God is at those points and to think has he forgotten us?

Is he good?

Is he sovereign?

Does he care?

This is why we need the psalms.

This is why we need psalms like Psalm 54 and Psalm 55.

Because one of the things that they do is that they train us in how to process these emotions as Christians.

So let's look at the Psalm together.

The Psalm uh splits rather neatly into three verses one, uh verses one to three, verse four and five, verse six and seven.

So we're gonna take those in in turn.

And the first thing that David would train us in is that he would train us to call on the Lord.

Sounds like it uh very oh right, okay, great.

And I'm gonna explain it.

But he would say, call on the Lord, because that's what he does in verses one to three.

He says, Oh God, save me by your name, vindicate me by your might.

Oh God, hear my prayer, give ear to the words of my mouth, for strangers.

Isn't that interesting, given that they were his countrymen?

For strangers have risen against me.

Ruthless men seek my life, and they do not set God before themselves.

Say law.

The first thing that David does is he turns to God.

When the situation looks dire, he doesn't know what direction to turn, he turns upwards.

He points his attention to heaven and cries out to God.

David knows that if God doesn't act to deliver him, he won't be delivered.

And so he runs to God.

There's a sense of urgency at the start of this psalm.

Lots of psalms are psalms of deliverance.

They start with a little kind of description of uh of who God is.

God, you're enthroned in heaven and uh and God, you are you are my saved.

Here's the situation that I'm in.

So it starts maybe with God, or it starts with the it starts with the situation of uh you know, men have come against me, oh Lord, oh Lord, now will you please deliver me?

Not with this Psalm.

This Psalm, David's immediately in there.

He's like, oh God, save me.

Like I'm not, I'm cutting, I'm cutting through the fluff here.

Oh God, I need you to help me.

I need you to save me.

The explanation of why doesn't come till verse three.

Here's where this maybe cashes out for us.

As you think through those circumstances that perhaps have been called to mind as we've been thinking about betrayal, being let down, trust broken.

As we think and process and navigate through those emotions, it's worth considering that when we're in trial, when we're in suffering, when we're faced betrayal, what's your first port of call?

What's your first port of call?

Is it to try and fix it yourself?

Is it to throw back recriminations?

Is it to run and hide?

Is it to escape into your work or into distractions, video games or television?

The work or video games or television are bad things in and all of themselves, but they can be used as safe havens where we run when things get tough.

Where do you go?

What's your first port of call?

I know so often for me that when I am in those situations, turning to God far too often is a last resort, not a first port of call.

Is turning to God for you when you're feeling that your trust has been broken, and you feel harassed and not quite sure where to turn when you feel betrayed?

Is is crying out to God a last resort or a first port of call?

Because there's something in David's urgency here.

And what does he ask God for?

Well, he asks for two things.

First, he says, Oh God, save me, save me by your name.

The psalm, just to note, is deeply personal.

He uses the first person, me or I, 14 times in seven verses.

David knows that the God who is sovereign over all time, over the whole of creation, is personally concerned for him.

And so he cries, save me.

Do you ever think that God wouldn't be bothered with you?

That he's got other things to be doing.

That's not David's attitude here.

David understands that the Lord who is God of all is still the one that you can come to and say, I need your help.

Save me.

Save me here means to liberate, it's to set free something that is trapped.

And he says, Save me by your name.

This reference to the name is really it's shorthand in the Bible, shorthand in the Psalms, we're talking about God's whole character.

Because God's name reveals what he's like.

Uh so when you think back to Moses, Moses, when he asks, uh, you know, what are you like?

God, God discloses himself and says, the Lord, the Lord, that's his name, Yahweh, Yahweh, the gracious and compassionate God, abounding in steadfast love, slow to anger.

His name encompasses his character, that he is gracious and compassionate, that he is concerned for justice.

David is saying, not that he simply knows his name, but he says, I know the kind of God you are.

I know that you are a God who doesn't just wink at injustice and at wickedness.

I know that you're a God who's concerned for righteousness.

I know that you're a God who always does right, and so I need you now.

Save me by your name.

Perhaps this causes us to ask the question of ourselves, that when we face similar circumstances and we cry out to God, do we have confidence in the character of God?

Do you believe that as you cry out to him, that God will do right?

Do you believe that he is good as he has disclosed himself to be?

That in the midst of whatever pain you are processing currently, that he remains steadfast and good.

And will work in these circumstances for your ultimate good.

He not only says save me, but he says, vindicate me, vindicate me by your might.

These two ideas are are paralleled.

If save means to liberate, vindicate means to to show David's innocence.

And the two go hand in hand.

David's salvation by God will ultimately vindicate him as God's appointed king.

God will prove that David acted justly.

This is the character of our God.

Our God is concerned for justice.

He hates injustice.

And in the final analysis, when all is said and done, in the suite of history, all injustices will be answered.

Do you believe that?

He will not let injustice go unanswered.

Even those ones perpetrated in darkness behind closed doors, he is concerned for those.

And why does he call upon the Lord?

Well, he tells us finally in verse 3.

We've already noted in the introduction that it's his countrymen, but here he calls them strangers.

It's as though, it's particularly shocking because it's as though, and maybe you've had this situation where somebody has said something to you or acted in a way that you kind of look at them and you kind of say, I don't even know who you are anymore.

It's that sort of idea.

It's like these guys are strangers to me.

I don't even know who you are.

More than that, these actions have revealed that they are alien to the family of God.

And so David's concern is not just for himself, for his personal insult.

No, in rejecting him, they have rejected God who has raised him up.

God's righteousness.

His good rule is on the line, it is being repudiated by these men.

And so he says, For your own sake, for your own righteousness, vindicate me.

Because they have forgotten me.

So not only does this psalm help us to think through betrayal, it also helps us to think through when we should feel betrayed.

Sometimes we can feel betrayed simply when somebody doesn't do what we want them to do, to work to further our own interests, a personal slight, or our pride has been hurt, our ego wounded, a personal hurt, and that's not to minimize any of those things.

But for the Christian, the deeper concern should be not that our name has been dragged through the mud, but that God's name and his reputation has been dragged through the mud.

We can entrust ourselves to God when we have been slighted.

It is much much worse when God's character has been repudiated.

And David sees that the two go hand in hand.

So not only does this psalm help us to process betrayal, but it helps us to think maturely as Christians about what we should feel betrayed about, when we should feel betrayed.

The second thing that uh David does, so he's he's calling on the Lord.

First port of call, not last resort.

And the second thing, once he is called on the Lord, he trusts in the Lord.

Call on the Lord, second point, trust in the Lord.

Verse 4 and 5.

Behold, God is my helper, the Lord is the upholder of my life.

He will return the evil, he will return the evil to my enemies.

In your faithfulness, put an end to them.

These two verses uh they make up the the heart of the psalm, the crux of the uh the meaning of the psalm, as it were, where David expresses his confidence in God.

God is my helper, he will return the evil.

Let's focus a little bit more on that second phrase in verse 4, where he says that God is the upholder of my life.

The reason why we can trust God with all of the seasons of life is because he is the one who keeps us alive.

Our life cannot be taken away except by his sovereign decree.

To put it another way, you're a mortal until God says you're done.

You are immortal until God says you're done.

Nobody else will take your life from you except by his sovereign good decree.

An interesting thing, and this is just to note as an aside.

An interesting thing from this phrase, upholder of my life, as I was looking at it this week, is that it can also be rendered that the Lord is with those who uphold my life.

It has a slightly different sense to it, doesn't it?

The Lord is with those who uphold my life.

The reason why I just draw that to your attention is because you go back to 1 Samuel 23, and while there is loads of people pressuring and pressing in against David, and David is harassed and harangued in many and various ways, there are some people.

In the text, who come along and they refresh David and they encourage him.

There's a priest called Abiather who comes along, but the one who we may know is David's best friend in all of the world.

Jonathan.

Jonathan comes along, and the irony is that Jonathan was Saul's son.

And Jonathan comes, and Jonathan loves David, and David loves him.

Have you ever experienced those what I want to call those intimate friendships?

I say intimate quite deliberately because we have lost the uh intimate now means sex, but that's not what it has always meant.

This is why some people find it hard to read about David and Jonathan.

Oh, well, there must have been you know you know Brokeback Mountain going on in the in the in the waddies above Ziff.

No, but that that that's us, that's our 21st century mind reading into the text.

No, have you ever had a friend where you knew loved you, had you, had your back through thick and thin, and you had theirs.

And when you were struggling, they upheld your life.

There's a sense, perhaps, in which in which David is reflecting on this, thanking God that, yes, God is the one who gives us every breath, who makes who makes our heart pump, but he's also the one who gives us those people, those God-sent right people, for that season that we find ourselves in, that refresh us and sustain us and prop us up and point us to God when we are in suffering and distress.

David is also confident not just that God will uphold his life, that he is immortal in that sense, but that God will avenge him.

That God will return the evil on his enemies.

Notice that definite article.

Like the recoil of a gun.

God has so ordered his world, this is this is how the world is.

God has so ordered his world that moral actions have moral consequences.

And so immoral acts often redound on the perpetrator.

Perhaps a, this is not the only example, but perhaps an obvious example is you think of somebody who, somebody, if somebody is promiscuous, it increases their likelihood of getting a venereal disease, a sexually transmitted disease.

Our world, our material society, thinks that thinks of that simply in terms of biology.

But these things are signs, not just that we live in a material universe, but that we live in a moral one.

A moral universe that sees fidelity as more life-giving, as healthier than infidelity.

Do you see?

God has ordered his moral universe that there is actions and consequences.

And that includes moral actions and consequences.

Now it is true that the moral action reaction doesn't always work the way it should in our world that has been broken by sin.

Wicked people get away with wicked things all the time.

So David's trust is not just in the mechanistic establishment of the world, in the cause and effect of it all, but also in the God who has developed the system and who is still intimately involved with it, and who sees and who acts and will act justly.

David recognizes that the act of vengeance and of bringing justice and of vindication is ultimately God's work and not his.

Oh, that's a lesson that we can learn.

That's one of the hardest lessons to learn, that we don't need to vindicate ourselves.

Sometimes we are slandered and betrayed and thought badly of.

And we may want those people to see how wrong they were and to receive justice.

And in this life it won't come.

In this life we do what Jesus did, that Peter tells us that he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.

God will answer the injustices that have befallen you.

He may not do them according to your schedule or mine.

This idea of the evil returning to enemies.

The truth of the gospel is that the eternal consequences of our evil do not, by faith, reflect back onto us because they have redounded onto Jesus.

You see, we can only learn the lessons here that David wants to teach us by grace.

We're not primarily the heroes of this Psalm.

The Psalm primarily isn't about us.

It is primarily about the one who knows about the betrayal of his countrymen.

You see, you and I, we're we're by nature, we're like the Ziphites, we're not like David.

The Ziphites were looking out for themselves.

I'm sure that they saw that David was hanging out hiding among them and didn't want the wrath of Saul, the king, to come falling down on their head.

And so it was it was self-preservation.

It was every man for himself.

So they handed him over and they said, look, David, it's a dog eat dog world.

This is just the way it goes.

No hard feelings, man.

It's just, I've got a wife and kids at home, and I don't, I don't want, uh, I don't want Saul to come and to uh to murder us all.

When we are betrayed, we can get along with the idea of the wickedness redounding on uh the perpetrator, but what if we're the perpetrator?

What if we're on the hook?

What if we're the treacherous people?

You see, before this psalm is about us, it's about Jesus, great David's greater son, handed over and betrayed by his countrymen, abandoned by his followers with nowhere to turn.

And yet he dies for those who would turn his back on him.

That's what we've all done by nature and by choice.

And so Jesus dies for half-hearted, self-preserving road of least resistance, every man for himself, every woman for himself, people like you and I.

His resurrection vindicates him as God's king and shows that every human being living, every human being in this room owns, owes him faith, fealty, and loyalty.

We owe him our allegiance, but he also forgives us.

He forgives us by his grace and enables us by his love to follow him through the betrayals that we face.

You see, we need his forgiveness first.

We need to come to the king, to King David, in a sense, like the Ziphites, and say, I have turned aside from you, I have not been faithful to you.

Forgive me.

And the wonderful thing that we know is that he will forgive.

Thirdly, and finally, David says, Call on the Lord.

He encourages us to trust in the Lord, and then finally, he says, Look, worship the Lord.

Worship the Lord.

Verses 6 and 7.

With a free will offering, I will sacrifice to you, I will give thanks to your name, O Lord, for it is good, for he has delivered me from my trouble, and my eye has looked in triumph on my enemies.

David calls on the Lord, he trusts in the Lord, and now he commits himself again to worshiping the Lord.

David doesn't give himself over to bitterness, resentment, and self-pity.

He has an issue, it's not a small one, his life is in danger.

People have acted wickedly towards him.

It'd be so easy, wouldn't it, to become reproachful and bitter towards those people?

To probably become resentful towards God that he would put you in this season of suffering.

And yet he resolves not to do that.

He resolves rather to press in, to seek God more.

And he does so voluntarily.

That's what he means with a free will offering I will sacrifice to you.

David's under no obligation to sacrifice in order to get deliverance.

His worship is voluntary, regardless of whether or not the deliverance comes.

This cashes out with us in a particular way.

How often, as we're coming to God with our last resort type please, do we make bargains?

Do we do quid pro quos with God?

God, if then I'll.

If you do this, save me, help me, then I'll I'll be better.

I'll read my Bible more.

I'll go to church more often.

I'll try and get along the community group more.

That's treating God like a butler or a vending machine.

That we put in our little faith coin in order to get out the product that we want, the deliverance that we want.

That's not the way our relationship with God works.

And David sees it here.

It's not quid pro quo.

It's not you scratch my back, I'll scratch your back.

He says, No, I'm gonna freely, voluntarily worship you.

You know my need.

I trust you for my deliverance.

I'm gonna live for you and worship you and believe that you are good and continue to put one foot in front of the other.

This, brothers and sisters, this is this is Christian maturity.

Not just relating to God well when you're happy and when things are going your way.

And then forgetting him when they're not.

It is resolving to worship in all seasons of life in order that you might see his goodness and know his deliverance.

More than that, David goes on to say that he will give voice to his worship.

I will give thanks to your name, O Lord, for it is good.

He will praise him.

He will give thanks to that name that has saved him.

The might, the graciousness, the everlasting faithfulness and compassion of God, the God who loves him, who sees and who knows and who saves, he will articulate what God has done for him.

David's confidence.

David's confidence is so strong in that name and in that deliverance that he can write verse 7.

That he can write verse 7 in the past tense, DC.

For he has delivered me from every trouble.

David is so confident in God's character, in God's goodness, that he can speak as though it has already been dealt with.

He can speak as though God has already delivered him.

And in a sense, that is true.

For us now, we know better than David.

Because we have been delivered in the past from those things that will ultimately harm us.

Yes, trials and sufferings will and hardships will come upon us in this life.

But our life is secure in God if our faith is in the Lord Jesus.

He has already delivered us from those things that would ultimately seek to destroy our lives.

He has delivered us from sin.

He has delivered us from death.

And so we can say with fuller confidence that he has delivered us from every trouble.

It is a common thing to long for Jesus to sort out all of the evil, to correct all of the injustices.

And you think, why, why, O Lord, haven't you acted?

Why, O Lord, haven't you come back to vindicate all of the innocent?

We can grow impatient.

To long for such things is to long not just for the vindication of the innocent, but for the destruction of the wicked.

And you need to make sure that your heart has been vindicated and forgiven by the Lord Jesus before you long for such a thing.

God is patient with us.

He is patient with our world, wooing, compelling, longing that more would know the forgiveness.

The forgiveness that comes from the betrayed King Jesus.

So that the consequences of their sin would not fall on themselves, but on him.

And so when we face betrayal in this life, we are able then to call on the Lord, to trust in the Lord, and to continue to worship the Lord.

Let's pray.

Father, when the circumstances of this world weigh down our heads, it is so hard sometimes to lift them up and to see you.

Help us by the strength of your spirit to look upward and to call upon you to trust you afresh.

Thank you for those friends that sustain our lives through seasons of difficulty.

Thank you that we can entrust our whole being to you and that you have delivered us because of the Lord Jesus and will finally deliver us on that last day.

In Jesus' precious name.

Amen.