Dennis Tuuri

# Psalm 34: The Fear of the Lord

Amen. Wonderful text today. Psalm 34. This is the fourth and last in my series of talks or sermons on the fear of the Lord for now at least. And I point out, by the way, at the beginning, last time I wore this tie, people couldn’t see it very well. It’s a Noah’s Ark tie is what it is. And I’m wearing it because we’re told we’re here today because one feared God. Because in Hebrews 11:7, it says, “By faith, Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, motivated by fear, put into action by fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, by the which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness, which is by faith.” So, we’re here today because a guy was moved by the fear of God.

And those that don’t fear God are destroyed. So, the earth belongs to those that fear God. So, today we turn to Psalm 34, which has specific instruction to us teaching us the fear of the Lord. So please stand for the reading of God’s word, Psalm 34. I will read the very understanding that these psalms that have a what do you call it—a summation at the top, a description of the psalm. That’s the inspired word of God.

Somebody didn’t make that up. That’s as important to the psalm as verses 1 to 22. And so it’s important to understand the psalm and it’s important when we read these psalms that we include the titles because they’re really, you know, sometimes you got Bibles that have different stuff in there that the editors put in. But these inspired titles of God are part of the very word of God. So I’ll read that as well.

Psalm 34, a psalm of David when he pretended madness before Abimelech who drove him away and he departed. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make its boast in the Lord. The humble shall hear of it and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord with me. Let us exalt his name together. I sought the Lord and he heard me. Delivered me from all of my fears. They looked to him and were radiant and their faces were not ashamed.

This poor man cried out, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The Angel the Lord encamps all around those who fear him and delivers them. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who trusts in him. Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints. There is no want to those who fear him. The young lions lack and suffer hunger, but those who seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing.

Come you children, listen to me. I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Who is the man who desires life and loves many days that he may see good. Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Depart from evil and do good. Seek peace. Pursue it. The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are open to their cry. The face of the Lord is against those who do evil to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.

The righteous cry out and the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart and saves such as have a contrite spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. He guards all his bones. Not one of them is broken. Evil shall slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous shall be condemned. The Lord redeems the soul of his servants, and none of those who trust in him shall be condemned.

Amen. Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for these wonderful words of this psalm. We pray, Lord God, that today and on into the future of this church that this psalm would be one that we’d memorize, meditate upon, and delight in greatly for the rest of our lives. Help us, Father, today to understand it. Help us to understand specifically and more particularly this fear of you, Lord God, that’s supposed to be so important to us that then the latter half of the psalm teaches us what it is and what it’s about.

Help us Lord God by your Holy Spirit. We thank you that the spirit is the spirit of fear, the spirit of a proper fear for you, Lord God. Help us not to grieve the Spirit today through our inattentiveness to his word or to his urgings in our heart to conform our lives to the fear of God. In Jesus’ name we ask this for the sake of his kingdom. Amen.

Please be seated.

Okay. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Not sermon. Sorry. I hope—wonderful, wonderful, yes, it is a sermon. I make the mistake because that’s what it really is, right? The second half. David moves into wisdom literature instead of psalm time. And it’s a little sermon. He’s going to teach us the instruction of God. So, it’s a wonderful psalm here. Very important for us. As I say, this is the last of my four series of sermons on fear, and so this understanding here is David gives us his instruction so we can actually learn to fear God.

So “I’ll teach you,” he says. So let’s talk about this psalm. Before we get to it though, let me mention a few things by way of introduction. You got to serve somebody. Well, that’s what Bob Dylan says. But in the introduction to this text, this sermon, I’ve got Isaiah 8:11-13. You got to fear somebody. So Isaiah 8:11-13 says this: “For the Lord spoke thus to me with a strong hand and instructed me that I should not walk in the way of his people, saying do not say a conspiracy concerning all that this people call a conspiracy.

Now, that’s very important pastoral wisdom for us today. Don’t get wrapped up in all the conspiracy discussions. And then he goes on to say, “Nor be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled. It is skipped right past the next page. Sorry. The Lord of hosts, him you shall hallow. Let him be your fear and let him be your dread. So, you got to fear somebody. And if you fear the wrong people, he says, “You’re fearing the wrong people when you’re sinning. You’re fearing man. You ought to fear me,” he says.

Alvin York was this great hero of World War I. You know, Sergeant York, and there was that great movie with Gary Cooper. If you haven’t watched it, you really ought to. Excellent movie on several levels. This be a good one to show the kids maybe Friday night. Maybe not, but in your homes, because York has moved from being a pacifist to then becoming a hero who killed many of the opponents in World War I.

So, York said this. He said that the fear of God makes a hero, but the fear of man makes a coward. Pretty good, huh? Fear of God makes a hero. The fear of man makes a coward. You got to fear somebody. And what we’re trying to do is get ourselves aligned correctly to fear God. Really, he was sort of paraphrasing John Witherspoon. Witherspoon was one of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence representing New Jersey.

He was the only clergyman who signed. So, he’s one of those early patriot clergy in the American colonial period. Witherspoon says this: “It’s only the fear of God that can deliver us from the fear of man.” So the fear of man makes a coward. The only can deliver us from the fear of man is a proper fear of God. Witherspoon said, by the way, Reese Witherspoon—whenever you see her, you know, she’s a direct descendant of John Witherspoon.

And so, remember that quote when you see her, perhaps the fear of God should drive out an improper fear of man. We’re here today, you know, in terms of the creative order because of fear, but we’re also here as a country probably because of the proper fear of God as well. George Washington, who really, you know, the father of our country and all that—and tomorrow’s President’s Day—and when I was a kid, you had celebrated Washington’s birthday, then later Lincoln’s birthday.

Now we got President’s Day all wrapped up into one. You just sort of blow right by it. But it’s good to think about him a little bit. Here’s what George Washington said, and this has to do with the fear of God. He said, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to the prosperity of a nation, religion is the indispensable support. Volumes could not trace all its connections with private and public happiness.

Let it simply be asked, where is the security for property, for reputation, for life itself, if there be no fear of God on the minds of those who give their oath in courts of justice?” So again, he’s picking up the theme that we talked about—the fear of God as an indispensable characteristic of those who are governors, rulers. And Washington said, “You know, where is it? How, if you don’t have people that fear God properly in office, where is the security for property?”

Well, it’s gone. We know that, right? The state claims it all. It’s going to zone every bit of it and take it away for its purposes if it likes, just give it to somebody else. “What are the security for a reputation?” Well, slander and lies have greatly increased, unpunished by the civil magistrate. “For life itself?” The unborn can’t be protected because we don’t have men that fear God. So Washington knew that the fear of God was essential to our country.

And you know he knew that the only way that they could beat the British was if they honored God and had God on their side. You know I heard a thing on the radio this last weekend—lots of presidential stuff on the radio and TV and stuff. I always like to watch C-SPAN this weekend leading up to President’s Day. They always have some great books being spoken of in terms of the presidents.

But you know when the British would conquer, would capture American soldiers, they would frequently just kill them, bash their brains out, etc. Treated them horribly. But Washington, in response to hearing the first incident of this, committed the American troops not to be like that. We’re going to honor prisoners. We’re going to feed them. We’re going to treat them well. And as a result of that, many of the Hessians that came to America to fight against the Americans were captured as prisoners of war.

But they were treated so well and then they were shed off to private farms to work for farmers in terms of their imprisonment, rather than put in prisoner war camps. And a good percentage of those Hessians ended up settling in America, marrying, you know, the farmer’s daughter and that sort of thing. And Washington built the country because he knew that the prosperity of God would only be upon him. He’d only win the war if he honored God and treated the prisoners of war according to what God’s word says they should be kept.

Another thing he did was he prohibited profanity in the army. He knew that if he let they were starting to swear and stuff in the army ranks and Washington knew that this was horrible. So he issued a declaration. I’m going to read it. “The general is sorry to be informed that the foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing, a vice heretofore little known in our American army, is growing into fashion.

He hopes that the officers will, by example, as well as influence, endeavor to check it, and that both they and the men will reflect that we have little hope of the blessing of heaven on our army if we insult it by our impiety and folly. Added to this, it is a vice so mean and low, without any temptation, that every man of sense and character detests and despises it.”

So Washington said there’s no way we’re going to win if we, you know, dishonor God, if we don’t properly fear God and get rid of profanity in the context of our army. Amazing. So the fear of God for our very existence as a planet and for our existence as a nation—the fear of God is critical and behind all of these things. You got to fear somebody, and we’re trying to build in ourselves a proper fear of God.

All right, so let’s turn to Psalm 34. And on your outlines, I hope you have them. They’re important this time. They’re always kind of important, but there’s some stuff in there I want you to see.

First of all, this psalm is one of a category of psalms called psalms of acknowledgement. And I’ve listed there for you the other psalms of acknowledgement. And what this means is there’s a specific acknowledgement of God’s work for the individual. You know, when we used to have sharing, we had communion after the agape. We would have various times where we would have open mic people to get up and praise God for something in their lives.

And I really like doing that. I want to find a venue to do that again. Maybe we could do it this afternoon in our fellowship gatherings. If somebody really has something they want to publicly acknowledge God for, take a few minutes and do that at our meetings. And these are this—these is one of the psalms that we would use as kind of a call to that, these acknowledgement psalms.

In other words, many psalms are about the general blessings on Israel or upon the people of God. But then a few of them and are now called or characterized as acknowledgment psalms are acknowledging specific deliverances for the individual. So this is a very personal psalm that David writes in terms of his deliverance in a specific historical situation. And there’s a basic pattern to these acknowledgement psalms that I’ve got on your outline. First, here we have a proclamation to praise God moving from private to public with an implied acknowledgement of what God has done for the individual.

First, verses—I praise the Lord. He praises God. Then he says, “Magnify the Lord with me.” He calls the congregation to praise God with him. So individual statement of praise to God is meant to engender. It moves toward corporate praise. Secondly, there’s a reflection of that upon the individual’s need and subsequent deliverance. You know, “This poor man cried and the Lord heard me.” So he then talks about his specific deliverance that God gave him.

So it begins with a general call—praise God—and then praise him with me, and you know, “I cried out to him and he delivered me. He did something great for me.” That’s the second part of this thing. And then third, there’s a renewed vow of praise involving a sacrifice or meal. And you know, hopefully we’re a little better off than a lot of churches when we talk about sacrifice in the Bible. Sacrifice—most of the offerings were not meals.

When it uses the word sacrifice in the Old Testament, apart from offering, it very explicitly is talking about the peace offering, the meal with God. It’s a meal. So sacrifice means meal. And so here David’s acknowledgement and thanksgiving to God—there was a thanksgiving vow you could make. It was part of the peace offering, a thanksgiving vow. And David says, “Taste and see.” So, it’s not a metaphorical thing.

It’s not like, “Oh, isn’t this neat that God can be experienced in the abstract?” It’s probably related first of all to that fellowship meal, the peace offering. “Taste and see.” And so, each of these acknowledgment psalms has this element to them—a renewed vow of praise, usually involving a sacrifice or a meal. And then finally they usually move then to instruction or a homily portion. And so the last half of this psalm is instruction or homily.

So teaching then happens. So this is a common pattern for what are called acknowledgement psalms. And it’s good if we could somehow build this into our church life either in our families or in corporate gatherings. Somehow doing this on occasion since the psalms are written this way.

Well, you remember that I said I thought that Psalm 34 ought to be one of those passages of scripture that as a goal for our church we have memorized, you know, like the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer, the Beatitudes, Psalm 1, the introduction of the whole psalm—Psalm 34 is one too because it teaches us about the fear of God and the fear of the Lord is so important, as I’ve made mention of already, and we’ve said in the last three sermons. Well, Psalm 34 is actually intended, I think, to be memorized because it’s an acrostic psalm, an alphabetic acrostic psalm.

And so what it means is I’ve got—I on your handouts—what page is it? Yeah, right at the bottom of the first page. You see that Psalm 33 or 34? It’s 33 because 9 and 10 are combined together into one psalm. But anyway, this is the same psalm—Psalm 34 in the Knox translation. And you see how every line begins with first A and then B and then C and then D, right? See that?

So in this is to reflect in the translation that in the Hebrew you got 22 lines, and an acrostic means that the first line begins with aleph, gimel—the very alphabet. There’s 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, so each line begins with the next letter. And one of the reasons they think that some of the psalms are written this way—Psalm 119 has eight lines, of course, for each of the 22 letters, so you get 176 verses. That’s why it’s so long. And each of the eight lines of that section begins with that first Hebrew letter.

So a, a, b, c. And one of the reasons they do this—it’s a memorization help, okay? So you know that the next line has to begin with b and then c and then d, etc. So it is intended, I think, to be memorized because it’s actually spelled out this way. Now I have a little gap there because there is a word—one of the Hebrew letters actually is missing, involved—and we’ll talk about that more in a little bit.

So, it’s not perfect. I mean, it could have been, but God decided to make it leave out one of the letters. And I’m not sure why. I’ll get to some speculation in a couple of minutes, but that’s true. And then at the end, you got 22 lines. There’s 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet. One’s left off. Got an extra line at the end. And that line begins with pe. And I’ll talk about maybe why that is as well. That’s a Hebrew letter.

And so, there’s two pe verses. And I’ll talk about that in a little bit. But apparently, and I don’t understand the Hebrew well enough to understand this, but apparently this pe at the end means that the couple of the last couple of letters spell out the Hebrew word instruction or teach. So it’s acrostic. It says, “I’m going to teach you with the fear of God.” And then it has the letters arranged in such a way as to reinforce to you that this is a teaching.

So it seems like this particular psalm of acknowledgement is quite important for us. And these are all good reasons, as well as just the theological reason, to understand the fear of God—to put it on our memorization list as families, households, and as a church. Okay. By the way, the Knox translation, I put that on there just to show you what acrostic means and then what an alphabetic acrostic means.

It goes through the letters of the alphabet. It’s not a particularly good translation, so, you know, I’m not commending the translation, but it is one. The nice thing about the Knox translation is they do try—wherever the Bible uses alphabetic acrostics, their translation tries to do that. We’re moving into the season of Lent, and Lamentations is one your family might be reading. Well, Lamentations is also alphabetic acrostic.

And so in the Knox translation, you’ll see the same thing reflected. Okay. So anyway, the application of that is that it’s very important. It’s a memorization tool and it reminds us that indeed we should be memorizing this psalm.

Okay. The context for this acknowledgement psalm—the specific incident—is the story of David and Achish in 1 Samuel 21. And you might remember this story, you might not. Saul is trying to kill him. This is early in this problem between David and Saul. David has to flee. He arranges with Jonathan. He has this friendship with Jonathan. And then the sign is, “Get out of here.” So David flees.

He goes to the priests at Nob and goes to Abimelech, different than Abimelech in this text, but a himach the priest and eats, takes from the showbread for his men. He needs to be guarded from Saul and he needs sustenance. And so when he leaves the priest’s quarters at Nob, he goes away with bread, showbread from the temple, or the tabernacle rather, and he leaves also with the sword of Goliath.

He says, “I need weaponry to guard myself.” The guy says, “Well, I got Goliath’s sword.” “Oh, there’s none better,” David said. “I’ll take it.” So, David takes Goliath’s sword and then the very next thing that happens is he goes to Gath. Now, that’s where Goliath was from. There’s something to this story. It would be fun maybe sometime to just preach on the story and the sequence of events because there’s stuff going on there that is quite obviously stuff going on and I’m not quite sure what it all means. We can ask Leithart when he’s at camp this summer, but he goes to Gath with Goliath’s sword, right, where the Philistines are at.

And you’d think it’d be the last thing he’d want to do. Why does he do that? Because they’re going to kill him. Of course, he killed Goliath and he’s got the proof of it in his hand or at least with him. So, what happens is they say, “Well, this is the guy that, you know, they sang that song about how David had killed—David has killed us tens of thousands,” meaning Philistines, “our guys is our enemy.”

Well, David, it says, feigned madness. And in the text, it says he kind of drooled and didn’t speak and pretended that he was mad is the idea that’s given to us in the text. And the king says, “Well, you know, this guy’s a madman. Let him go. He’s no harm to us. Don’t let him in my house. Get him out of here.” So, David then leaves there and he goes to the cave of Adullam and everybody that has problems and debtors—it’s a picture of the church and all the people with difficulty go to this cave.

Eventually, David comes out and we have like resurrection out of the cave. But that’s the overall story and the context for this psalm. And it’s just rife with stuff going on. Big symbols going on in this thing that I don’t quite all understand. But I do understand this much: that David, for whatever reason, is standing there in front of the king of Philistines and specifically the city of Gath that, you know, it wants to kill him badly. He’s killed a ton of them and David is fearing for his life. He’s in fear for his life and God delivers him out of that.

So, in a way, you have to understand Psalm 34 correctly. You have to put it in the context of a very difficult time for David. I mean, imagine yourself, right? I mean, I’m not talking about hard times, debt, people don’t like me. No, I’m talking about people wanting to kill you and they’re right there in your presence and his guards are right there and if he gives the order, you’re dead. That’s the kind of problem David was in.

So, you can imagine—that’s why I tried to read the psalm with some exuberance. David is incredibly exuberant after this deliverance. Okay. Okay. So, that’s that’s the setting for this psalm—is his being delivered out of—by the way, it says Abimelech in the title, right? Says he feigned madness before Abimelech. He pretended madness before Abimelech. Well, Abimelech is like Pharaoh, Caesar, president, prime minister.

It’s a royal title. It means Ab, father, Melik, king. “My father is king.” And it’s a royal title, so Achish is the man’s personal name. Abimelech is his title. And so that’s why the names are different here. It’s not some sort of problem. So, so that’s the immediate historical context for this psalm that David gives.

And now I want to give a brief overview of this psalm. And before I—we’re going to look at the outline on page two and look at it a little bit and make some comments. Before I do that, you know, one of the things that is sometimes significant—not all the time, but sometimes significant—are word counts. And in this psalm several words are repeated in multiple ways. So, for instance, the word fear is used—is used four times. Hear is used four times. Deliver is used three times. Fear is actually also used four times. Good is used four times and evil is used five times.

If you throw in wicked, which is used once, evil and wicked is used six—kind of the number of fallen men. So the point is that just a brief look at this thing, focusing on the repeated Hebrew words that are used, and usually the translations are correct about this—you know, the kind of the gist of the thing is that God’s going to hear us and deliver us and us are the ones who are delivered from fear of man into a proper fear of God.

So, if we fear God correctly, he’s going to hear us. He’s going to deliver us. And those who fear God will seek good and not evil. So the fear of God is related to good and evil and it’s related to who will be delivered and who will not be delivered. Okay? Who will be heard and who won’t be heard. That’s the big picture of the psalm and you can get it just out of the repetition of the terms that are used in the writing of the psalm.

So let’s look now at the specific outline I provided, I think on page two, if I’m correct. Yeah, page two. And what I’ve done here is I’ve broken it into two sections. You know, the dotted line there begins the teaching instruction section at the second half and the first half of it is a unit unto itself. Now, you know, I don’t know. I mean, I do these outlines. It’s to me it’s a tremendous assistance in meditation, thinking about the text and how it relates.

I encourage people—you know, one of the lost disciplines of the Christian church is meditation on the word. We read the word, we study the word, we memorize the word, but do we meditate on it, thinking about what it means? Well, structural analysis, looking at the structure of a psalm, helps to meditate on it. And so, you know, you can kind of make some things—it kind of helps you to get at a meaning of the text.

All right. Now, let’s look at it then. Okay. “I’ll bless the Lord at all times.” That, by the way, is repeated. We’re to give thanks to God at all times in the New Testament—repeated over and over. This is the New Testament way of the Christian life: to bless God in every time is the idea. “His praise shall continually be in my mouth. So, it’s very personal. I’ll bless. My mouth. My soul will make its boast in the Lord.

You know, one—some of the commentators talk about this and they say, well, you know, you can really know a lot about somebody by knowing what they’re proud of. What do they boast in? Jeremiah says, “You know, let not the rich man boast in his riches, nor the mighty man boast in his strength, nor the wise man boast in his knowledge, but let him that boast in this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who exercises loving kindness and righteousness.

For I delight in these things.” Jeremiah goes on to say, so who do you boast in? What are you proud of? David takes his boasting in the Lord. Paul did the same thing in 2 Corinthians 11. Paul says, “If I must boast, I will boast in the things which concern my infirmity. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed forever, knows that I am not lying. In Damascus, the governor under Aretus the king was guarding the city of Damascus with a garrison desiring to arrest me, but I was led down in a basket through a window in the wall and escaped from his hands.”

So Paul had his deliverance. Just before this, he talks about all the afflictions he’s had, a little earlier in this chapter, but here I chose these texts because very specifically he also was delivered from pagan attempts to get him and to arrest him—the Damascus people. And as a result of that, he boasts in his infirmities and in doing so he boasts in the Lord God who provided his deliverance.

So this psalm exhorts us to boast in the Lord our God. You know it’s the opposite of being sort of “I’m a Christian, but…” you know. No, no, no. Boastful, proud of our God. So my soul will make it boast in the Lord. “The humble will hear of it and be glad. Magnify the Lord with me. Let us exalt his name together.”

So you see it moves from the beginning to individual and then to the corporate nature here. “Magnify the Lord with me.” And then back to the personal. “I sought the Lord. He heard me. Delivered me from all of my fear.” So how do you get away from the improper fear of man and being a coward? The proper fear of God. So again, you got to fear somebody. He delivers me out of my improper fears of men, all my fears.

So, not just the fear of, you know, a particular man, but the kind of fear or dread just of conditions in our lives as well. If you’re a fearful person, how you, where do you look to get delivered from your fears? Well, you look to God. God delivers us from all the improper fears, those who are fearful of him. “They looked to him and were radiant. Their faces were not ashamed.”

This refers to the people that David is speaking to. So they do join in with his praising God and they actually become radiant in the context of what they’re doing. And this is where the vav is missing. Line six moves to the next Hebrew letter jumping over vav. So in a sense the first five verses are kind of made a unit by that, right? There’s a break. Now, and then the alphabet returns in verse six with the next Hebrew letter after vav.

And in a way this is kind of the summation of the acknowledgement party. He’s individually praising God. He calls them to praise him. He states what happened to him and they then become radiant and unashamed, right? You know when we at the—in our processional or our processional in the salutation and response: “Arise, shine for your light has come. The glory of the Lord has risen upon you. Nation shall come to your light, rulers to the brightness of your rising.” So the people of God are to have a radiance that fills their face.

Moses went into the presence of God, came out with face radiant. And that’s given for us in the Bible, you know, to go from glory to glory. Speaking of Moses’ face, it’s a good thing. It’s a representation of the glory, the weightiness that God gives us his people. We’re to shine forth. So, the result of David’s acknowledgement of this specific deliverance and calling people to praise him—and what he’s doing here is that the people join with the praise and they become radiant, right?

They become a bright light that goes into the world, you know, a light to lighten the Gentiles. When you leave here, your face is supposed to be radiant, shining a little bit, okay, the glory of God upon it. “They looked to him and were radiant. Their faces were not ashamed.”

So, that’s kind of the conclusion of the thing in a way. We go through the first five verses, we get to this wonderful crescendo that God—our individual deliverances are intended to strengthen, to make radiant the faces of larger groups of people. This is why it’s horrible if we don’t have if we can’t think of ways to make this available in our congregational corporate life. These kind of personal acknowledgements that David did—we lose a little of the radiance that’s the result of what he did here.

And you know, surely this is referring primarily to worship and we hear the declaration from the preaching of the word about what God has done in saving us, etc., and we believe, radiant. But still, this individual acknowledgement psalm—that’s kind of the end. And then he goes back. “The poor men cried and the Lord heard him.”

So, do you see how verse five is not just kind of centralized by being broken with the vav missing? It’s centralized because verse four and six obviously match up. “I sought the Lord and he heard me. This poor man cry and the Lord heard me.” Heard and heard match up there. “He delivers me from all my fears. Save me out of all my troubles.” So, the specific troubles that surround us and the kind of mental depression or fearfulness that can result from those troubles, but aren’t necessarily connected.

God rescues us from the immediate environment of our difficulties. But he also rescues us from the kind of mind problems that we can run into when difficult things happen. And both of these things are around this corporate radiance at the middle of the verse.

“The angel of the Lord encamps all around those who fear him, delivers them. Does that remind you of something? Do you know your Bible?” Well, story of Elisha, right? The enemies of God are there. Elisha asks if his servant can see the reality of the thing. God says, “Okay, I’ll let him see by sight this time, not by faith.” You know, I’m just seeing it by faith. What does he see? He sees this. He sees angelic host all around them to, you know, more stronger is he that’s with us than he that’s with them.

So, he sees, you know, setting his enemy troops surrounding Elisha and his servant and the people of God. And God opens the eyes of his servant to see the reality. And the reality is in addition troops is all these angels of God, the angelic host, has this captain at the front. This is Yahweh himself, Jesus. That’s what this angel of the Lord usually refers to. But he’s the angel of the Lord. He’s the head of the host.

So all these angels are encamped around us. That’s reality. And some commentators think J. Alexander, excellent commentator of the last century, 19th—20th century—he thinks that Elisha probably thought about this psalm, meditated on it. He’s in time of trouble. He remembers that David’s assertion was that the angel of the Lord camps around those who fear him and delivers them. So Elisha says, “Please show my servant this thing that I know is true by faith.”

And this is true of us. It’s true of us. Guardian angels are kind of a big buzz these days, apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, of course, but he’s the angel of the Lord. But it is true that angels encamp around us as well to deliver us. And so this psalm proceeds with praise in terms of that.

And then we get to the tasting part, the sacrificial meal together. “Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who trusts in him.” So, you know, if we if we match these things up, it kind of helps us to see because in verse three, there was an “O” clause. “Oh, magnify the Lord with me.”

And now there are two “O” clauses. “Oh, taste and see. Oh, fear the Lord.” So, there’s a multiplication of the calls by David to those around him. And this matches up with that first reference to “O” and it becomes doubled now. It grows. This radiance grows.

“Taste and see the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who trusts in him. Fear the Lord, you his saints. There is no want to those who fear him.” So if we see these two verses—six or eight and nine—they’re “O” clauses that are parallel to one another, right? So “blessed is man who trusts in him. No one to those who fear him.”

And what the text is doing is connecting up the fear of Yahweh with trusting in him. So the fear of the Lord is to trust in God and that’s what those two verses in parallel fashion like that tell us. And then “the young lions lack and suffer hungry.” He doesn’t say the old lions, the old toothless lions can’t get food. No, he talks about the young lions.

This the word here means young—not baby lions—but powerful young teenage lions, okay? Even they lack and you have lack and suffer hunger at times. But the Lord God, those who seek the Lord shall never lack any good thing. And what he’s saying is those who are fearful of God properly, those who serve him are those who don’t rely on their own self-sufficiency. The young lions can rely on their own self-sufficiency.

Even they’ll go hungry at times. The Lord God, you know, will not let us go hungry if we rely not on ourselves, but rather seeking him.

Then “come you children, listen to me. I’ll teach you the fear of the Lord.” Well, he’s just told us, “Fear the Lord, you his saints. There is no want to those who fear him. You’ll be satisfied if you don’t rely upon yourself.” And then he says, “I’m going to teach you now the fear of the Lord.”

So this is the beginning of the second half of the psalm, but it’s stitched together to the first half through the idea of fearing now. So “fear the Lord, you his saints, no one want to those who fear him. Well, now he’s going to teach you what this fear is. I’ll teach you the fear of the Lord.” And then we have the progression of thoughts in the last half of the verse, and we’ll go over this in a little bit more detail.

But there is this form or structure to what David writes here that helps us when we meditate upon it to get a little fuller truth out of it than we if we just read it in a cursory glance.

Now it seems to me the second half also has a center. The center I’ve outlined—I’ve given you—is verse 16. Verse 15: “The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous. His ears are open to their cry.” Verse 18: “The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart.” Verse 17 rather—I’m sorry. “The righteous cry out, the Lord hears, delivers them.” So this hearing on either side here of this—what I think is the central verse.

“The face of the Lord is against those who do evil to cut off the memorial or remembrance of them from the earth.” So just at looking at this thing and kind of seeing how it lays out, it seems like the center of the instruction of the fear of the Lord is the truth that’s brought to mind: that if you don’t fear God, people that don’t fear God, they’re cut off. They’re destroyed. They’re not heard. They’re not delivered. God’s face is against them.

And in fact, not just them—their children. You know, we think the remembrance of them from the earth—that, you know, their memory. Well, there’s some truth to that. People want to be remembered, but, you know, if we think of this word, this word remembrance can also be translated memorialized. And so a memorial, we were talking about the bow in the sky earlier, John Coner and I, and you know, it’s a memorial before God.

This is a memorial meal. It’s a symbolic representation of something. We ask God to look on the rainbow and not flood us anymore. And he’s going to look at the bow he sets in the sky and he’s going to remember it. And he’s going to remember the work of Jesus as our memorial. So a memorial is sort of a picture of what something is and in a way our children are a memorial.

So it seems to me at the center of this is: if you don’t fear God then you’ll be cut off and your descendants will be cut off as well. There’ll be no remembrance of you. Your life will have meant nothing. You will have dis—you been completely irrelevant to the flow of history.

So at the middle of the instruction of the fear of the lord is this statement of absolute and total judgment and around it are these wonderful promises that the eyes of the lord and his ears are open to us. He hears us. So you got two people at the center. “The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, who don’t fear him.” So his face sees them, burns holes right through them, destroys them with his countenance, or maybe moves into total abandonment and isolation.

So his face is stern, is granite, and actually flaming out and destroying those that don’t fear him. And on the other hand, those who fear God, they’re the face of God is looking at them. He’s pondering them. He sees their difficulties. So he cares about us. His eyes are upon us. And in that caring, he moves to save us. He hears our cry and moves to deliver us.

So the face or countenance of God is against those that do evil at the very center, but it’s toward those who properly fear God. He’s kindly disposed. His eyes are upon us. He knows our state. May—like we’re alone. No, his eyes are always on us. His eyes on the sparrow. And I know he seeth me. And but not just seeth me, his ears are open to my cry.

So, he’ll actually move in space and time to provide deliverance to those who fear him. So, it’s a wonderful center, I think, with the center being God’s wrath, but around it a doubling up of God’s mercy and grace to those who love him.

And then moving out from the center then: “Depart from evil do good seek peace and pursue it. So the fear of the Lord is to actually do certain things and the Lord is near to those who have a broken heart such as have a contrite spirit on the other side of it. Many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivers him. He guards all his bones. Not one of them is broken. Evil on the other hand slays the wicked.”

So this going back and forth between the evil and the wicked is what’s going on here.

One other point I wanted to make was that verse 16 is actually the pe verse. Remember I mentioned at the end we have a pe verse at the end that the last line, verse 22, to complete the acrostic starts with the Hebrew letter pe, because vav was skipped. So it repeats this one particular letter while it’s repeating the very center of the instruction: that the face of the lord is against those who do evil to cut up its remembrance.

So again I think that one purpose of the pe at the end may be to draw our attention to the center of this second half of the teaching. And then it concludes with: “The Lord redeems the life of his servants. None of those who trust in him shall be condemned.”

So we got the condemnation of the wicked and on the other hand the deliverance of the righteous and that is you know the summation of the instruction of how to fear God or what the fear of the Lord is all about.

Okay. So that’s kind of a brief look at the overall structure and now I want to talk about the fear of God and the fear of the word. I won’t spend a lot of time on this but one of the commentators I read on this was John Bunyan and when he talked about the fear of God here he related that to the fear of God’s word.

And so, you know, by way of one whole another topic that could be opened up in terms of the fear of the Lord is the fear of the Lord’s word. And just a couple of very quick scriptures:

Proverbs 13:13: “He who despises the word will be destroyed. He who fears the commandment will be rewarded.”

Psalm 19: There’s a progression of descriptions of God’s word. “The law of the Lord is perfect concerning the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure. The statutes of the Lord are right. The commandments of the Lord is pure. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.” And then back to written things: “the judgments of the Lord.”

So it seems there that Psalm 19 is teaching us that the fear of the Lord is integrally related to a fear of—a proper fear of—the word of God. And you know, if you think about it, I’ve got in your outline some reasons why we should fear God. And but in Isaiah 66:2 we read that God says, “On him who is poor on this one will I look, on him who is poor and of a contrite spirit and who trembles at my word.”

Ezra 9:4: “Everyone who trembled at the word of the Lord of Israel assembled to him.”

So, you know, fear of God in the abstract is one thing, but one way to test your fear of God is your fear of the word of God. The word of God is sure. It’s powerful. Psalm 29 is all about how it breaks apart the world, right? Can crush trees and stuff, the word of God.

And so, the question is: You think you fear God, but if you don’t fear his word, if you don’t tremble at his word, then probably you’re not really properly fearing God. It’s the powerful command word. Jesus said that at the end of time that is the word of eternal judgment that will judge us.

In John 12:48, “He who rejects me and does not receive my words has that which judges him. The word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day.”

So if Psalm 34 is pointing us to the eternal destination of the evil and the righteous—that the fear of the Lord has to do with eschatology or end points—Jesus says that it is the word, it’s the Bible, it’s the word that will condemn men to eternal damnation. So, proper fear of God is based upon a fear of the word.

All right. So now looking very specifically at the last half of this psalm then, I’m on the outline now on point five: David’s instruction of the fear of the Lord. I think this is on the third page.

**Be a child and get ready to learn.** So you know kind of obvious but, you know, what does he say? “Come you children listen to me. I’ll teach you the fear of the Lord.” He’s only—you got to teach the fear of the Lord to students. So, so the beginning of learning about the fear of the Lord is to put yourself in a humble position like a child.

Now, some people think this is actually written to children. That’s not true. It’s written to students. This word—same Hebrew word—is used of students. But the reason why you can think of it as children is because a student puts himself in a humble posture. So, I don’t care if you’re, you know, 10 or 60. If you want to learn the fear of the Lord and you are a student, you’re the ones who will receive the instruction of what the fear of the Lord is.

So, first of all, David says that you’re supposed to be a child and get ready to learn. And this goes back to that young lion thing, no self-sufficiency. The fear of the Lord in between these positions—you know, fear God, talks about the young lions, then he says, “I’m going to teach you the fear of the Lord, children.” The idea is that self-sufficiency is the opposite of the fear of the Lord. Fear of the Lord is to be humble, learning, recognize your dependence upon God, your heavenly father.

And David here sort of basically says the same thing the proverbs do: that fear is foundational to wisdom and understanding. He’s getting into the—he’s becoming a wisdom preacher now in the last half of this psalm—and fear is absolutely foundational to the rest of our lives. It’s the beginning of wisdom as the proverbs say.

Okay. **Secondly, recognize the temporal and eternal stakes.** Verse 12: “Who is the man who desires life loves many days that they may see good.” And the answer, of course, is supposed to be, “Yeah, yeah, that’s us. We want to live long. We want to have a good time. We want to have some wine. We want to go to the Valentine’s Day banquet. We want those children to be raising up in the providence of God to be great kids and honoring their parents. And we want a happy time together. We go to our fellowship meetings. We want to have some good food this afternoon, good talk, good companionship. And we want to see this go on a long time.

We don’t want to be cut off early. And in fact, we want to see it go on eternally, right?” So, we’re in a—we have a desire for eternal long life. And we’re to consider that at the beginning of this. Put yourself in a position of a student. He says, “And now listen, if this is what you want, if you want to have a good life, and if you want eternal life, length of days forever, you better fear God.” So, he says, “Put yourself in mind of what it is you’re after.”

And there’s only one way, he says, to get this kind of satisfaction, this kind of life, both here on earth and also in eternity and that’s the fear of God. So put yourselves in. Recognize the temporal and eternal stake. Seek joy. It’s a good thing to want to be joyful. And he connects the seeking of joy to a proper fear of God. So he says only way you’re going to get that joy fulfilled is through fear of God.

**Third: Speech.** Okay. So got to be a student. Put yourself in terms of eternal truths. And then immediately he says: “Keep your tongue from evil.”

You know this was one of the first verses my girls memorized. They probably—Joanna, I think you remember—we were talking about the campfire last night. We had an old record where they’d play little bits of psalms and this one—the gal sang “keep thy tongue from evil,” Psalm 34:13. “Keep thy tongue from evil.” And it was kind of cool, you know, and easy to remember. I remembered it for 20 years. Came back to me as I was studying this psalm. I haven’t sung it for a long time. Even remember the citation: Psalm 34:13. Great!

But it’s interesting—see, because he said, “I’m going to teach you the fear of the Lord,” and he then says, “Put a guard on your mouth. Don’t lie. What you say has a direct impact on evaluation and actually I think promulgating or not a proper fear of God. Keep your tongue from evil. Keep your lips from speaking deceit.”

It’s interesting to me. Remember we said that the spirit of God is the fear of God, right? So that you don’t want to grieve the Holy Spirit because that’s going to lessen your fear of God. The spirit that comes upon Jesus is the fear of the Lord. The spirit of fear, it says. And in Ephesians 4, here’s what we read:

“Put away all lying. Let each of you speak truth of his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Be angry and don’t sin. Don’t let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil. Let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give to him who has need.”

Same vocation, right? Theology of vocation from Ecclesiastes 4—purpose of work to give to other people. Interesting. Anyway, then he says, “Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth for what is good for necessary edification that may minister grace to the hearers.”

So, he’s saying, you know, in terms of what the life of God is about, don’t lie. And then do things that are proper to help other people. And then goes back to speech and that’s when the verse comes: “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”

So you see he’s repeating what David says here. David says that the way to engender, to build up the fear of the Lord in you is to not speak evil. If you speak evil, if you allow yourselves to speak either evil or deceptively—your lips from speaking deceit—then you’re grieving the Holy Spirit. You’re diminishing your fear of the Lord. And you’re losing those great promises of eternal life and life here and now that’s joyous. You’re moving toward the center of the teaching, which is to have God’s face against you, not for you. Frowning at you, not smiling at you. Got to be one way or the other. He’s either frowning or smiling at you.

Okay? And this verse says that to keep him—keep from moving down that slippery slope toward damnation. And that’s what he’s talking about here. In order to keep away from that, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Your language, your speech—it begins with your speech. And then secondarily it moves to your actions.

**D. Put off the old man and put on the new man in earnest.** Okay. So speech is the beginning and then he says: “Depart from evil and do good. Seek peace, pursue it.”

There’s a progression there. Don’t do evil. Stop doing that. Do something good and don’t anticipate peace happening. Actively pursue peace. Seek peace and pursue it. There running after it. So you change what you’re doing, right? You’re stealing. You do something good for other people. Like Ephesians says, by this, you’re seeking peace or well-being in community. And you actually pursue it. You work hard after it.

So the fear of the Lord is built up and related to our speech and our actions. Putting away deceit and lying and putting on actions. We’re put off the old man. Stop doing things that are bad, do things that are good. Benefactus—this great book, you know, on doing good is what it was all about. And it always—I’ve talked about this many times—but it’s a book that by Cotton Mather, and you know, he goes right through there.

Employers, congressmen, heads of families, pastors, how do people do good? And this book, that’s about how you do good to other people. And that’s what it says here. To fear the Lord is to do good to those around you. To seek peace and actually pursue, work hard at after it, run after it, set it as a goal—not just sort of live your lives and try to do as best you can tomorrow and you get up tomorrow morning, you know, not just, you know, go through the day and go through your routine. No, it says to do good and actually pursue after peace—the right ordering of the world in terms of God’s kingdom.

We’re supposed to be pursuing it. We’re supposed to be active in it. So, actions here are important.

Isaiah 1:16 and 17 reinforces this truth. “Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes, cease to do evil. Learn to do good, seek justice, rebuke the oppressor, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.”

Same thing. Not enough to put off, you know, the old man. You got to put on the new man. Not enough to put on the new man in a sloppy way. You want to put on the new man, doing good, seeking peace, pursuing it, working hard after it, and very heightened strong way.

Not enough to do good, not enough not to do hurt. We must study to be useful. We must live to some particular purpose. And that purpose involves doing good. Living for others just like Ecclesiastes 4 talked to us about.

So that’s that’s the fourth thing that David instructs us in.

**The fifth thing is crying out to God.** Okay? So you’re doing these things, but still you’re going to have difficulty. It says “the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous. His ears are open to their cry.” Now, it’s implied that those who fear God cry out to him. God’s people are to be a fearing community, fear of the Lord, which takes its expression in being a praying community, to cry out to God.

And the word here means to articulate speech—not to think in your mind, “Oh, please help me. No, Lord God, give us blessing today, please.” This, you know, this king is going to kill me. Lord God, help me. Crying out to him. So the Bible says that we’re to be crying out to God. The fear of the Lord is related to those who cry out to him.

And actually it says that both in 15 and in 17: “delivers them out all the troubles.” The ones that he hears—the righteous cry out. So around the center, the very center, the destruction of the ungodly—the ones that God delivers are the ones who cry out to him.

Now the basis for that cry is that they’ve tried to do well at their speech and their actions. They’re in a humble position of learning before God. They’re seeking long life by fearing him, not by being like the young lions. And then in times of difficulty, they cry out to God.

**Crying out to God. Next, meditate on the fork in the road.** This is as I said kind of at the beginning and also in verse 21—or at the center rather, didn’t mean the beginning. Verse 16. Meditate on the fork in the road. You know, you’re going to go one way or the other. The fear of the Lord says, “I don’t want to go to damnation. I want to go to eternal life.

I don’t want to go to destruction—no memorial of me, difficult, you know, times never resolved. I want to head toward joy and peace.” And so I meditate on the fork of the road. Verse 21: “Evil shall slay the wicked. Those who hate the righteous shall be condemned.”

So the fear of the Lord acknowledges, meditates upon hell and heaven, goodness and badness, judgment, blessings and curses, right? Read Deuteronomy 8, Deuteronomy 28 on occasion. You meditate on that improves the sense of the fear of the Lord. You meditate on the fork of the road.

Remember what I said earlier about the word usage, right? What are the words that are tripled up or quadrupled up? Hear, deliver, fear, good, evil, and righteous. Well, it’s all right there. That meditation—what David says: “I’m going to teach you the fear of the Lord by driving home two destinations, two paths—evil and wicked on the one hand, righteous and doing of good on the other. And two destinations of that and you’ll—I’ll hear and deliver those who are truly fearful of me and walk in the context of that fear.”

**And then finally in G: having a contrite spirit** as the psalm moves on: “The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart save such as have a contrite spirit.”

So we’re not talking about you know gospel of personal peace and affluence here and the name it and claim it. No, the reality is that the righteous man who fears God will have at times a broken heart and a crushed spirit. The word crushed spirit means like crushed to dust. It’s to take a rock and just pulverize the darn thing, to decreate it, okay? And so, and so, you know, the it’s not saying that if that happens you’ve somehow failed in terms of the fear of the Lord.

In indeed it says the Lord is near to us when that happens. Now some people like to defend themselves about being crushed in spirit. You try to kind of not acknowledge it. You try to live a delusion. Well, there are times at which the Lord God sees fit to crush our spirits, to break our hearts.

Brokenhearted or spiritually crushed—another translation of this same word. And in that brokenheartedness, we have to acknowledge this is sometimes the path of life. The fear of the Lord acknowledges the need at times to be brokenhearted. As C.S. Lewis wrote in “The Weight of Glory”:

“We can be left alone. It may happen to any one of us to appear as at last before the face of God and hear only the appalling words, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me.’ In some sense, as dark to the intellect as it is unendurable to the feelings, we can be both banished from the presence of him who is present everywhere and erased from the knowledge of him who knows all. We can be left utterly and absolutely outside, repelled, exiled, estranged, finally and unspeakably ignored.”

That’s the reality. We can be that. And the Lord God takes us through times like that to remind us of that eternal thing that we all face. If we lose our fear of the Lord, if we don’t work in terms of that, he puts us in an awareness of that by making us spiritually crushed and brokenhearted and with great trials and difficulties. He did with David, he’ll do it with us.

But in the midst of that brokenheartedness, that spiritual crushing that goes on, we can always be assured, just as the psalm says, that his eye is upon us and his ear is open to our plea. What did Jesus say? He says, “I shall never leave you nor forsake you.” He says, “I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.”

And that—as I said in Hebrews 13:5: “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

So, God says that the fear of the Lord recognizes that in the midst of our brokenheartedness and contriteness, we cry out to God knowing that his eye is on us at all times. He cares for us and he is moved to deliver us as we cry out to him. So, you know, though the difficulties and trials of life may come upon us, yet we can look for his deliverance.

**And then finally the last point: The Lord redeems the soul of his servants.** None of those who trust in him shall be condemned. So by parallelism, the true trust of God, the true fear of the Lord is evidenced by us being his servants. If you’re not a servant of God, if you don’t get up tomorrow and try to live your lives in service to the King of Kings, doing good, seeking peace, putting away evil, speaking rightly, and you really can’t claim these tremendous promises.

So David says he’s instructing us in the fear of the Lord. And the fear of the Lord ultimately here at the great conclusion—the fear of the Lord, those who fear the Lord are those who are the servants of the Lord and who look to him in the darkest of times.

May the Lord grant that this psalm will be one we meditate on in our families and come back to as a church occasionally. It’s tremendous, wonderful exclamations of joy and praise from a man’s lips who was saved out of great difficulties, and then tremendous knowledge and a little homily as it were on the fear of the Lord, which is essential to who we are as Christians.

Let’s thank God for this psalm.

Father, we do thank you for Psalm 34. We ask for your blessing upon it as we meditate upon it. We ask, Lord God, that you would help us to be humble and contrite. We thank you that it is the trials and afflictions that make us better. We know that. We thank you, Lord God, that at times we’re spiritually crushed and yet when we cry out to you, we recognize that your eye is already on us and your ears then become attentive to us to deliver us.

Help us, Lord God, to ponder these eternal destinations of heaven and hell and the worldly destinations as well of those whose lives are generally characterized as blessing from you and those whose lives are not characterized in that way at all. And the great fork in the road is the fear of you. Help us, Lord God, have a proper fear of you and thus be heroes in this life and not cowards.

In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.