I’ve always loved Psalm 34. It happened to be the next psalm on my regular quiet time reading today and it was so wonderful to read it again and then share it with a friend, and then I thought, “Why not write a blog so others can be blessed by it as well.”
In the footnote under the psalm in my Bible, it says that this psalm was written by David when he pretended to be insane in order to escape from King Achish. We read that account in the Old Testament book of 2 Samuel , chapter 21, verses 10-16.
Saul, the current king of Israel, out of jealousy over David’s victories and resultant popularity, had been pursuing David in order to take his life. He fled to Nob where Ahimilech the priest gave him the sword of Goliath the Philistine (whose slaying it was that had rocketed David to popularity). Armed with Goliath’s sword, David continued to flee, entering the territory of Achish, king of Gath.
Gath was one of 5 major Philistine cities – right in the heart of enemy territory for anyone from Israel – but, to David, a seemingly safe hiding place where Saul would be unlikely to look for him.
In 2 Samuel 21, beginning in verse 11 we read, “But the servants of Achish said to (their king), ‘Isn’t this David, the king of the land? Isn’t he the one they sing about in their dances: ‘Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands?’
David took these words to heart and was very much afraid of Achish king of Gath. So he pretended to be insane in their presence; and while he was in their hands he acted like a madman, making marks on the doors of the gate and letting saliva run down his beard.
Achish said to his servants, ‘Look at the man! He is insane! Why bring him to me? Am I so short of madmen that you have to bring this fellow here to carry on like this in front of me? Must this man come into my house?”
God used David’s pretense to save his life, and so David left Gath and escaped to the cave of Adullam.
I might have expected that when David wrote Psalm 34 he would have written from a spirit of fear, or despair, or discouragement, as he has in some of the other psalms, but this psalm doesn’t reflect those emotions at all. That makes it a wonderful psalm on which to meditate when we are going through difficult circumstances – like when we feel we’re surrounded by enemies at our secular jobs, devoid of a single Christian ally, or support system. Or when we’re going through a messy divorce. Or when we’re lonely and no one seems to care about us. Or when our negative or self critical thoughts about our past sins or disappointments consume our minds.
Although David had good reason for allowing his circumstances to cause him to wallow in fear, or self pity, or depression, in this psalm, he did not land there. This psalm reminds me again that praise is a choice.
In Psalm 34, verses 1-3, David chooses to praise the Lord with these words:
I will EXTOL the LORD at all times; His praise will always be on my lips. My soul will boast in the Lord;
Let the afflicted hear and rejoice. Glorify the Lord with me; let us exalt his name together.
The word “extol”, as Webster’s Dictionary defines it, means: to raise, or lift up, to praise highly.
David not only speaks of praising. He speaks of boasting in and glorifying the Lord as well.
My granddaughter graduated from elementary school this week and I can tell you I was boasting to everyone who would listen about how smart and wonderful she is! I need to do some boasting about the Lord too – not only in my soul, but also with lips that praise Him to anyone who will listen – or praise Him even when NO one else is listening!
David uses words like “at all times, and always” – to speak of how often he praises the Lord. I have to ask myself: Do those descriptions apply to my praise? Do I really praise the Lord at all times and always?
David encourages those who are afflicted as he was, to hear his words and rejoice along with him – because there is always reason to praise the Lord.
Praise isn’t always easy because we don’t always feel like praising – we’re not in the mood, or it’s hard to praise when we’re experiencing affliction - but that is the very time when we need to praise the Lord the most! Remembering who the Lord is and focusing on His glory shifts our minds from the circumstances that afflict us (many of which we can’t change!) to the God who is sovereign over those very circumstances.
And choosing to praise when we don’t feel like it takes us from simply speaking words ABOUT God to walking by faith in the God we KNOW.
2 Samuel 21 tells us that David was very much afraid – not only of Saul, but also of King Achish, enemy of the people of Israel, yet David says in v. 4:
“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.”
David was aware that the prayers he lifted to God for deliverance and help were answered by the Lord. And David discovered that those who committed themselves to the Lord in prayer had no need to fear that the Lord would not come through. Thus they would never be ashamed of putting their trust in Him. On the contrary, those who looked to the Lord in trouble and affliction could be radiant with hope because He would bring deliverance just as He promised.
There is a beautiful painting I would have liked to have had hanging in our girls’ rooms when they were little, but I didn’t discover it till later. It shows a child sleeping in bed at night, with her mom kneeling beside the bed praying for her. Over the entire scene is a huge angel with wings spread wide, keeping watch over the child.
David describes that beautiful mental picture in verse 7. What a comfort for those nights when fear keeps us awake – the angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him, and He delivers them.
v. 8-9 David says:
Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. Fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him lack nothing.
Like looking at and smelling chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven and assuming that they would be really GOOD to eat, but not knowing the reality of their deliciousness until we taste them, David says: TASTE and SEE that the Lord is good. The original Hebrew meaning of the word taste is: “to perceive”, David says, don’t just believe in God’s goodness with your mind, but experience it with your senses – taste it, see it, experience His goodness.
Saul frightened David, King Achish frightened David – but in the end, David didn’t need to fear men because he feared the Lord, and when we fear the Lord, we lack no good thing.
In v. 15 David says:
The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and His ears are attentive to their cry.
Have you ever been in a crowd of people and felt that no one even noticed you were there? You could stay or leave, and no one would care. You could wear your sorrows on your sleeve, bear them on your face – but no one would notice.
Or did you ever shared a struggle over coffee with a friend and known that they hadn’t heard a word you said? Their mind was elsewhere, or they were intent on watching the TV over your shoulder?
David says that we who belong to the Lord always have His undivided attention. That means that the Lord’s eyes are intently gazing into yours and His ears are attentive to your words – as if you were the only one in the world.
I was at a retreat last month and during the last day when we were sharing about the specialness of a weekend away with the Lord, one of the women said: “I hate to tell all you girls this, but I am the Lord’s favorite!”
Well, the reality is that YOU are the Lord’s favorite. And so am I. His eyes are on us and His ears are attentive to our cries, as we walk in obedience to Him.
In v. 18 David says:
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
Is that you? What or who, is it that has broken your heart? Is it some hurt inflicted on you by someone you love? Is it isolation and loneliness? Is it a disappointing relationship, or the loss of your marriage, or of a loved one to death? You may feel alone – but David says the Lord is especially close to YOU because your heart has been broken. He wants to save you – to rescue you – from being weighed down by a crushed spirit. It’s not the way you were meant to live as a child of the King.
In v. 19 David shares an unpleasant reality, and a wonderful promise:
A righteous man may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all.
Reality – those who have been declared righteous by grace through faith in Jesus – will not be spared the troubles that afflict the rest of mankind BUT, we do have the promise that the Lord will deliver us from them all.
The original Hebrew word translated “delivers” has a more complex meaning than we might think. It can mean: defend, escape, pluck, preserve, recover, rescue, rid, and save.
So, while the Lord might not change our circumstances, although He is certainly powerful enough to do that, He may instead choose to defend us against opposition by intervening on our behalf or granting us favor with those in positions of influence in the midst of opposition. God demonstrated that in David's life.
God had anointed David to be the next king of Israel after Saul, but David waited years for God to fulfill that promise. In the meantime, he ran from Saul who wanted to take his life. The Lord did not change David’s circumstances – but he did, many times, intervene on David’s behalf and protect and deliver him from his enemy. At another time later in David’s life, he even turned the advice of an enemy advisor in David’s favor. God knows how to care for His own.
Or He might provide a means of escape, or rescue – as He did for David when King Achish wrote him off as insane.
It might mean that the Lord will pluck us out of troubling circumstances, or rid us of them, or preserve us IN them.
His deliverance might take the form of helping us to recover from our troubles once they are past.
For a variety of reasons the Lord has made 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 verses that have become very meaningful and practical to me, and they apply well in this instance.
“Though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
The most active battlefield we have in our lives is the battle that goes on in our minds. In difficult circumstances, and even just in the everyday out workings of our lives, there is constant tension over whether we’re going to give in to discouragement and fear, or walk by faith; to take the easy route of living as the world does, or walk by faith in God’s truth.
Paul says we don’t wage that war the way the world does. God has given us weapons of divine power – the Word of God, the Spirit of God, and prayer, and those are the weapons with which we are to fight those battles.
God’s weapons have the power to demolish the strongholds in our minds – the things that keep us from walking by faith, like worldly thinking, fear, the pain that keeps us enslaved to sin, or to past hurts. The use of God’s Word (the way Jesus used it against Satan in His 40 days in the wilderness), and the prayer of faith, have the power to demolish those arguments in our minds that set themselves up against what we know to be true of the God who loves us.
The key is to choose to wield the divine weapons we’ve been given: to refuse to allow our minds to replay the hurts or sins of the past, or to give in to despair, or fear, or loneliness, or self loathing, or in worldly thinking that is contrary to godly thinking.
In Romans 12:2 the Apostle Paul tells us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.
I don’t know what your day, or your life, holds at this moment. But if you are in circumstances that feel a lot like David’s were at the time he wrote this Psalm, then the best place to begin renewing your mind is with the truths David proclaims there.
Instead of allowing your mind to spin on the gerbil wheel of futile thinking – choose to meditate on the words of David’s psalm - praise God for who He reveals Himself to be, thank and praise Him for the things David does, apply David’s words to your own life and circumstances, and take hold of them by faith.
Don’t just think about God’s goodness to someone else - TASTE God’s goodness to YOU. He has His eyes on YOU and His ear is attentive to YOUR cries. Count on it.
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