Psalm 34, I want to read this
together with you. It says in verse 1, I will bless
the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually
be in my mouth. So praising God is something
we do in our heart, but the psalmist is saying here he's going to
express his praise with his mouth as well. My soul shall make her
boast in the Lord. The humble shall hear thereof
and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord with me
and let us exalt his name together. I sought the Lord and he heard
me and delivered me from all my fears. What a comfort that
is, isn't it? All my fears. He delivered me
from all my fears. Verse five. They looked to him
and were lightened and their faces were not ashamed. This
poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of
all his troubles. What a blessing that is. The
angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him and
delivereth them. Oh, taste and see that the Lord
is good. Blessed is the man that trusteth
in him. Oh, fear the Lord, ye his saints,
for there is no want to them that fear him. The young lions
do lack and suffer hunger, but they that seek the Lord shall
not want any good thing. Come, ye children, hearken unto
me, and I will teach you the fear of the Lord. What man is
he that desireth life and loveth many days, that he may see good?
Keep thy tongue from evil and thy lips from speaking guile.
Depart from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it. The
eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous and his ears are open
to their cry. The face of the Lord is against
them that do evil to cut off the remembrance of them from
the earth. The righteous cry and the Lord heareth and deliver
them out of all their troubles. The Lord is nigh unto them that
are of a broken heart, and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit,
many are the afflictions of the righteous. But the Lord delivereth
him out of them all. He keepeth all his bones, not
one of them is broken. Evil shall slay the wicked, and
they that hate the righteous shall be desolate. The Lord redeemeth
the soul of his servants, and none of them that trust in him
shall be desolate. Now that word desolate there,
it's helpful to understand it, actually is the same word as
guilt, and it means a condemnation because of guilt. It says, the
Lord redeems the soul of his servants, none of them that trust
in him shall be guilty or condemned. Isn't that the message of the
gospel? That there is no condemnation
to them which are in Christ Jesus? There's no guilt. And in verse
20, if you look at that, it says, he keepeth all his bones, not
one of them is broken. Now this text of scripture is
used in John, the book of John chapter 19 in verse 36, where
it says that they looked upon him and they didn't break his
bones, they pierced his side that the scripture might be fulfilled
that a bone of him shall not be broken. And this particular
scripture is talking about that. The Lord Jesus Christ on the
cross, none of his bones were broken. And it also says that
in the law, in the Passover, they were not to break the bones
of the lamb. So it was to be a lamb without
broken bones. So in both of those cases, the
bones of the Lord Jesus Christ were preserved unbroken. Now
in Ephesians chapter 5, it says that we are members of his body,
of his flesh, and of his bones. That's Ephesians chapter 5, around
verse 30. So what this is saying here is
that the Lord Jesus Christ is the author. He's the one, he's
the subject, the one spoken of in this psalm. Not only that,
but it's saying here in verse 20 that not only all his bones
were kept, none of them were broken, but it also means that
none of God's people will be broken at last. None of them
will be condemned. None of them will be guilty.
They trust in the Lord. So when we understand that, when
we look at this Psalm, we see something about this Psalm that's
very helpful to our understanding of it, which is that this Psalm
is a Psalm of David, But it's about David's son, the Lord Jesus
Christ. You know that David was a prophet
and prophets spoke the word. They gave the message of God
by word. They also gave the message by
their lives, the events of their lives, what happened to them,
what they did. All those things were part of
the message. So we see that in the book of Hosea, for example,
he married an adulterous woman because God's message was to
his people that they were an adulterous woman. And yet he
loved them and redeemed them and bought them. And so that's
the way that God uses the prophet and the Lord Jesus Christ. Not
only was David a prophet, as it says in Acts chapter two,
but it says in Second Samuel 23, that the spirit of God spoke
by him. So those two things together
convince us that David was a prophet. Who did he speak about as a prophet? He spoke about the Lord Jesus
Christ. First Peter chapter one, verses
10 and 11 says that the spirit of Christ was in the prophets
of old when they spoke of the sufferings of Christ and the
glory that should follow. And all of the prophets, the
Lord Jesus Christ told those two on the way to the road to
Emmaus, he said, all in the law and the Psalms and the prophets
speak of me. And this is also said in Hebrews
chapter 10 where the Lord Jesus says, in the volume of the book,
it is written of me to do thy will, O God. So in all these
cases, we see that scripture is speaking about the Lord Jesus
Christ. And once we see that, then we
understand that this particular psalm and all the psalms and
all of the Bible is ultimately speaking about him. Now, if you
notice in this psalm, in the very first part of it, just under
the title of the psalm, it says Psalm 34. In my Bible, it says,
a psalm of David when he changed his behavior before Abimelech,
who drove him away and he departed. Now the story that precedes this
psalm occurs in 1 Samuel chapter 21. And I will turn to that and
read that text of scripture to you because this helps us to
get the setting of this psalm together. 1 Samuel chapter 21.
21, David is running away from King
Saul. He stops first at the place where
the priest was, and he got Goliath's sword, he ate some bread, that
was show bread, and then he ran on and he fled away to a town,
a city called Gath, which was the town of the Philistines,
and the king of that city was Achish, and the title of the
king, the Philistine kings, was Abimelech. So this man, Achish,
was a king of Gath, and Gath was the city of Goliath. Goliath
was the man, the champion of the Philistines that David killed.
When David got to Gath, he heard that the people of Gath, the
servants of the king, recognized him and they told the king, isn't
this David of whom it is said in the songs of Israel that he
slayed his ten thousands? And so they understood that he
was their enemy, and David did something strange. He changed
his behavior. He pretended to be a crazy person. And now let me read this to you
from verse 10 of 1 Samuel 21. And the servants of Achish said
to him, Is not this David, the king of the land? Did they not
sing one to another of him and dances, saying, Saul has slain
his thousands, and David his ten thousands? And David laid
up these words in his heart, and was sore afraid of Achish
the king of Gath. And he changed his behavior before
them, and feigned, or pretended himself mad in their hands, and
scrabbled on the door of the gate, and let his spittle fall
down upon his beard. He acted like he was out of his
mind. Then said Achish to his servants, Lo, you see the man
is mad, wherefore then have you brought him to me? Have I need
of madmen, that you have brought this fellow to play the madman
in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my
house? And so in the next chapter, first verse, it says he departed
from there. Now that's the setting. That's the setting of this psalm.
And it's endearing to see this as the setting of this psalm.
Notice, David has got to be the lowest point of his life, or
at least one of the lowest points of his life, where he had to
run away from his own people, the land of the inheritance. He had to go to the land of the
ungodly, the enemies, the very enemies of his people. And in
that place, there was no inheritance for him. They did not know the
Lord. They were idolaters and they hated him. They were thinking
what they could do to him. So he had to pretend to be a
madman in order to escape harm. And that's the setting of the
psalm. So when we read that and we couple that together with
the other part that we just discovered in verse 20, that this psalm
was speaking in prophecy of the Lord Jesus Christ, that none
of his bones would be broken. And notice in verse six, verse
six of psalm 34, notice what it says, this poor man, this
is one man, this poor man, the one speaking, this poor man cried
and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles.
So picture David now. He's in this city and notice
the way he opens this Psalm in the first verse. I will bless
the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually
be in my mouth. What a blessing this is. David
in prophecy is speaking about God's greatness in his faithfulness. He would praise him at all times,
at all times during the day, at all times during his life.
And every time his praise would be towards him with his mouth,
he says in verse two, my soul shall make her boast in the Lord.
The humble shall hear of it or hear thereof and be glad. David
is saying, I'm going to praise the Lord because the Lord is
he's the one who blesses me at all times. The humble will hear
that I'm boasting in the Lord and they're going to be glad.
Now, if this is David in the city of Gath, in the place of
his enemies, where he has to pretend to be a fool in order
to escape harm, think how much more it's amplified when it's
spoken of in prophecy of the Lord Jesus Christ, who on the
cross before his enemies was mute, he did not speak, all the
charges brought against him, they mocked him, they poked fun
at him, they hit him in the face with their hands, they spit upon
his face, right in the face, they hit him on the back, they
used a whip to beat his back, They nailed him to the cross,
they pierced his hands, his feet, and in the end they pierced his
side. They crowned him with a crown
of thorns. They pretended to bow the knee before him, and
they put a purple robe upon him. All these things they did in
such a humiliating fashion that it so far exceeds what David
experienced in that city of Gath, that we see that it's really
magnified in the comparison between David and the Lord Jesus Christ.
David was the ancestor. It was through him that the Lord
Jesus came into the world as the Son of Man, because he was
a descendant, he was of the seed of David, called the Son of David.
And he was called the son of David, not only because he descended
from David in the sense that he was born to Mary, who was
descendant of David, and Joseph, who under the law was considered
to be Christ's father, though he wasn't. So in the eyes of
the law and by descent, by being born of a woman, he was the son
of David. But more importantly, he was the son of David because
God had promised to David that his son would sit on the throne
of Israel forever. and that God would raise him
up from the dead. So we can see that everything
that is spoken about the Lord Jesus Christ as it relates to
David is always an amplification, an extreme, how could you measure
the comparison between David and the Lord Jesus Christ. So
I say all that in order to bring attention to this in the context
of this psalm and also to understand who it is that's speaking to
us. Now, when we understand this, it actually magnifies, it intensifies
the message of the psalm. If David alone were speaking
these words to us, it would still be true because obviously he
spoke by the spirit of God. But because it's the Lord Jesus
Christ, he's speaking out of his own experience as the one
here in this psalm. And who is he? Who is he? The
one who came as the son of David. Well, he told Nicodemus that
the son of man is the one who is in heaven, who descended from
heaven and then ascended again to heaven. So the son of man
is the one who is the son of David and he was in heaven before
he descended to the earth in order to take the place of his
people and to save them from their sins and his humiliation.
And then he rose again, ascended and was given all glory and authority
and power in heaven and earth as the reigning and glorified
Son of Man. Now, all this is speaking about
him so much so that we can see that in this prayer here, that
the Lord Jesus Christ being spoken of here is speaking to his church.
He's speaking to his people. He's speaking on the ground of
his own authority, his intimate knowledge as one of us, as a
man, and yet as the son of God who depended on God perfectly. And not only did he know God
perfectly, and depended on him perfectly, but he instructs us,
and he brings out his own experience in trusting God, so that this
is a song of praise, a song of instruction, and a song that
uses that instruction in his own example to pull us in and
call us into trust in God, his God and Father, as our God and
Father, that we might taste and see that the Lord is good, as
it says here in verse eight, where it says, oh, taste and
see that the Lord is good. OK, so let me now give you with
that introduction. I want to read this from Isaiah
chapter 50, because this helps us to see the humiliation, the
Lord Jesus Christ, the humility and humiliation of the Lord Jesus
Christ in Isaiah chapter 50 and verse four. Notice the way it
is written here. This is a prophecy of Isaiah. He's speaking of Christ. In fact,
the words of this are Christ's own words. He says, the Lord
God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should
know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary. You see, what is the message
here of Isaiah 50? Well, it's the same message that
we're reading about in Psalm 34. Christ is speaking, God has
given him the tongue of the learned. He's the teacher, he's the master,
and he's going to speak a word in season to him that is weary. Now, doesn't that describe all
of God's people coming to me? All you who labor and are heavy
laden, I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Learn
of me. I'm weak, meek and lowly of heart.
And you shall find rest for your souls. So here this is the Lord
Jesus Christ speaking to the weary, the heavy laden by sin,
those weary and having no hope and broken down. So listen to
what he says. In the same verse, verse 4, he
wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear
as the learned, the one who's been instructed. He was instructed
by God, the Spirit of God was given to him without measure,
and in his life, according to Hebrews chapter 5, he learned
obedience by the things which he suffered. But notice in verse
5, Isaiah 50 verse 5, the Lord God hath opened mine ear, and
I was not rebellious. Neither turned away back. I gave
my back to the smiters and my cheeks to them that plucked off
the hair. I hid not my face from shame
and spitting for the Lord God will help me. Therefore, shall
I not be confounded? He's not going to be put to shame.
He's not going to be confused. In his hope, in his trust, he
trusts God. God is not going to disappoint
him. He's not going to be confounded because the Lord will help him. He's confident. Therefore, he
says, have I set my face like a flint? And I know that I shall
not be ashamed." He had nothing to be ashamed about, but he was
evidently thought to be shameful because he bore our sins. That's
why his face was not hid from shame and spitting. Verse 8.
He is near that justifies me. Who will contend with me? Let
us stand together. Who is my adversary? Let him
come near to me. Behold, the Lord God will help
me. Who is he that shall condemn
me? Lo, they shall wax old as a garment. The moth shall eat
them up. Who is among you that feareth
the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh
in darkness and has no light? Well, that describes every sinner
saved by grace, doesn't it? Let him trust in the name of
the Lord and stay or rest or trust upon his God. Wait for,
look to him, look to his God. That's Isaiah 50 verses 4 through
10. Now, I quote this as the words
of the Lord Jesus Christ that Isaiah spoke in prophecy and
which the Lord Jesus obviously fulfilled in the atoning work,
his redeeming work of the cross, but it overlays with what happened
to David historically, which pointed forward to the Lord Jesus
Christ suffering in humiliation and apparent weakness and shame
in the city of his enemies, which is exactly what happened to the
Lord Jesus Christ when he was on the earth, saving his people
from their sins. Now look at this psalm and read
it in this light and look at verse one through three and understand
that in the first three verses, the Lord Jesus Christ as one
of us, as the head of his congregation, as the firstborn among many brethren,
as the one who is the head of the covenant, the head of the
church, the head of the body. Notice what he says here. He
exalts the Lord and he calls on his people to join him in
doing so. We're going to read those again.
I will bless the Lord at all times. We may not, but he did. We are not like he was in that
we were faithfully blessing the Lord at all times. He was. And then he says, his praise
shall continually be in my mouth. Now, this is it would be one
thing for a helpless worm of the dust to rise up and praise
God, because obviously he ought to. I mean, he's God has spared
him and he's delivered him from his low condition and he's he
gave him life and now he praises him. But the Lord Jesus Christ
is the king of glory. He's the Prince of Life, the
Lord of all. He is speaking here as one who
stooped to take our nature, to take our cause, to serve his
people, to offer himself the ransom prize for our redemption.
And he was made in the fashion of a man. It says in Romans chapter
8, he was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, so that to all
appearances he was a sinner. because he obviously suffered
as a sinner, though it wasn't for his own sins. He suffered
in life and in death. He suffered at the hands of wicked
men. He suffered at the hands of foolish men. And he did it
all, and notice, all the time. The king of glory, who so stooped
to save his people, said, I will bless the Lord at all times.
His praise shall continually be in my mouth. And if the king
did this, what should we do? How much should we also rise
up with him? And thank God for him, and thank
God that we, because of him, can lift up our voices in praise
to God for his so great salvation and his goodness to us. And then
the next verse, Psalm 34. My soul, this is Christ speaking
again, shall make her boast in the Lord. The humble shall hear
thereof and be glad. God's people are a humbled people. We're not humble naturally. We're
the very opposite of humble naturally. We're very proud naturally. Naturally, we're as arrogant
as the Pharisee in Luke 18 who said, God, I thank Thee I'm not
like other men, even as this publican here. I fast twice in
a week. I give tithes of all that I have.
and so on. And he goes on just finding the
worst person he could find to compare himself to so that he
might puff himself up in the eyes of men and in the eyes of
God because in his own mind he was something. That's what we
are by nature. But the humble are those the
Lord brings low. Now what is a humble man? Well,
the Lord Jesus was humble. We know he was humble. In fact,
he is the epitome of humility. But what happens when God humbles
us? He brings us to that brokenness
of heart, that contrite spirit. In other words, that position
where we know before God we are sinners. We have nothing that
God could accept or that we could, they have nothing that we can
do in order to make God accept us or to approve of us. And so
we're helpless in our sinful condition and we're happy that
God would do anything to save us and we don't care as long
as He saves us. We've been brought down to the
bottom and we're ready. Lord, whatever you require of
me, I can't do it. Lord, whatever you require, just
save me for your name's sake. Isn't that what happens to us
when the Lord saves us? Now, what's the answer of God?
He directs that person to the Lord Jesus Christ. He teaches
us to find all of our salvation, all of our answer to God for
our sins and for our helplessness, all that God requires of us,
all that we need as guilty and ruined sinners to the Lord Jesus
Christ. And so to the humble the boast
of Christ in the Lord makes them glad. The humble shall hear thereof
and be glad." We're glad when we hear that salvation is in
Christ, that He accomplished all of it, that He by Himself
purged our sins, that when He had purged our sins, He sat down
on the right hand of the Majesty on high. and that He finished
our salvation. He made an end of sins. He brought
in everlasting righteousness, and it was all finished when
He cried that from the cross. We're so glad for that. The humble
hear thereof and be glad. God has to do this for us, doesn't
He? He has to bring us down from our self-righteous arrogance.
He has to destroy all thoughts of hope in ourselves, and all
thoughts of our own strength, or goodness, or skills, or our
understanding. We're made like beggars, we don't
know, we don't have anything. We're made like debtors, we have
nothing to pay. And then we hear that all is
done by the Lord Jesus Christ. The debt has been forgiven, Christ
paid all. He doubled the payment so that
not only our sins are forgiven, but we're given a place in glory
as the heirs and joint heirs with the Lord Jesus Christ. Now,
that's the first part here. That's the first three verses
here of Psalm 34. But then the next few verses,
from verses four through seven, show us the Lord Jesus Christ
setting himself forward as an example of God's goodness to
the poor and the needy man. to the humble and to the righteous,
to the brokenhearted and to those who are contrite in spirit. Let's
read them together. In Psalm 34, verse 4, it says,
I sought the Lord and He heard me. This is the Lord Jesus Christ.
He did, didn't He? He heard me. He delivered me
from all my fears. They looked to him, now he's
talking about his people, and he's using this in order to give
comfort to his people. Those who were in need looked
to God to save them. Didn't Abraham do that? God made
a promise to Abraham. Abraham had no strength to bring
the promise to fulfillment. He and his wife, Sarah, couldn't
have children. They were absolutely helpless,
in their bodies, dead to performing anything that God promised. So
they looked to God who promised and they trusted, they were fully
persuaded that He was able to do what He had promised and therefore
they looked to Him, they waited on Him, they expected their salvation
to come from Him. And in that promise of Isaac
through Abraham and Sarah, God was teaching Christ being delivered
for our offenses and raised again for our justification. So this
is what Romans 4 is teaching us. And so those who look to
Him are looking to Christ and they're looking to find in the
Lord Jesus Christ everything God requires of them. and everything
they need as sinners to be accepted by God, to come to God, to be
approved by Him, to receive life and all things from Him. And
in looking to Christ alone for everything, what do they find?
They find everything in Him. We look to ourselves, we find
nothing. We find emptiness and barrenness
and shamefulness and everything except what we need. But when
we look to Christ, we find everything. All right? So then verse six,
continuing on, Christ holding himself up as an example to his
people. This poor man cried, and the
Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. And
aren't God's people saved in the Lord Jesus Christ? Isn't
the same God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ our God and
Father? And doesn't He save us when He
delivered Christ from the grave? He saved His people in Him. His
victory is our victory. Our victory over sin is Christ's
victory over sin. It wasn't what we did that delivered
us from our sins. It's what He did. It's never
what we do. God has to save us for Christ's
sake alone. Only he is going to get the glory
because only he could do it. And so everything God requires
from the removal of our sin to the fulfillment of all righteousness
is found in the Lord Jesus Christ. OK, so we see this in these the
next verse. Also, he says, the angel of the
Lord encampeth around about them that fear him and he delivers
them. The angel of the Lord here could
be the Lord Jesus Christ, the uncreated messenger of God, the
messenger of the covenant. Or it could be angels who are
the ministers of God, the servants of Christ to the heirs of salvation. In any case, it shows that God's
protection His salvation of his people, whether it's in this
life, or in the world to come, or at the cross, or before the
judgment seat, is always because of their relationship to the
Lord Jesus Christ. Okay, then in verses eight through
10, look at this. He's talking about his own experience. Christ is talking about his own
experience of the goodness of the Lord, and he's drawing us
into this. He says, oh, taste and see that
the Lord is good. Blessed is the man that trusteth
in him. Now, what does this mean, taste
and see that the Lord is good? Well, he's calling us into an
experiential application of the objective truth, isn't he? The
Lord is good. Our experience doesn't change
that. Christ died for sinners. Our experience doesn't change
that. It was done outside of our history, wasn't it? Christ
died in his own lifetime. We weren't born yet, and those
who came before had died. So it wasn't anything that anyone
did that made what Christ did work. It was objective. It was outside of us, salvation. But the gospel isn't just an
academic knowledge, and it's not just a salvation that comes
to us without our being involved in it. But it's the experience
of it when the gospel comes to us in power so that by God-given
faith, we taste and we see that the Lord is good. And that's
what he's saying here. He says, Oh, taste and see that
the Lord is good. Blessed is that man that trusteth
in him. He directs us. Christ does to
his own experience of the goodness of the Lord. He trusted, he suffered,
he felt shame, he was persecuted, he was rejected, he was sore
amazed, and though it all appeared to every onlooker that the Lord
had forsaken him, yet he trusted. He trusted. Now he's telling
us, you also taste and see that the Lord is good. You have nothing,
everything. If you're honest, and this is
what God makes us when he saves us, if you're honest, you have
to confess with the publican, I am the sinner. God have mercy
upon me. Look upon Christ and receive
me for his sake alone. Receive me as him. Otherwise,
I cannot be saved. This is the salvation that you've
told us about in your word. Lord, save me as you do your
people. And so this is what God is saying.
Taste and see these things by God given faith. We are to experientially
rest on the objective outside of us, eternal will, and work
of God in our salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore,
we enjoy it, we enter into the fulfillment, I mean the enjoyment
of it, in believing Christ. That's what it means to taste
and see. You taste a piece of savory food, And you know you
like it? This is good. This is good. Man,
this is the best I've ever tasted. Isn't that the way the gospel
is? This is the best. This is the sweetest honey I've
ever tasted. It's so smooth. It's so sweet. It's so satisfying. Look what
it does. to my eyes, my eyes are lightened. It says in verse 5, they looked
to him and were lightened. And that word lightened there
means sparkling. Like a stream, the sun reflects
off of it and it sparkles as it flows along. All of God's
people in looking to Christ are given this sparkling, bright,
flowing stream because of the goodness of the Lord given to
them becomes their experience in trusting Christ. It's not
what he finds in me. It's what he did and what God
found in him for me. And having looked upon him for
me, he sees me in him. And this is our salvation. Isn't
this all of our hope? Doesn't this make us sparkle?
Doesn't this make our eyes enlightened and give us great joy in our
heart? It does, doesn't it? And that's
tasting and seeing. Truth is objective. Because it's
objective, we can't influence it. You can't change history,
can you? You can't change the clock on the wall by looking
at it. It's objectively the time it just goes by whether you like
it. You don't influence it. You can't change time You can't
make the Sun rise or set and you can't change God's Word.
It's always it's always true But when we believe it then we
receive it to ourselves and that peace and joy comes in believing
and that's what he's saying here in 2nd Peter chapter 1 I want
to read this verse to you in 2nd Peter chapter Chapter 1,
if you want to turn to that with me. The very first verse of the
book of 2 Peter. I'm getting there. He says this. Notice these words. 2 Peter 1, verse 1. Simon Peter, a servant and an
apostle of Jesus Christ, to them, notice who he's writing to, to
them that have obtained. Now, the word obtained here,
it means by lot. An allotment was given just like
the children of Israel were given the land of Canaan by lot, by
the casting of a lot. God gave an allotment to us. They have obtained like precious
faith with us through the righteousness of God. and our Savior, Jesus
Christ. Now, this is describing the objective
truth, the righteousness of God and our Savior, Jesus Christ,
and it's describing also that by which we taste and see that
the Lord is good. This allotment of faith given
to us by God. We see that we're sinners, we
see that God has done all for us in Christ, and that what Christ
has done is considered ours in Him, And therefore we have this
great joy, this peace and gladness that comes to us through this
like precious faith that's been allotted to us by God. All right,
back to Psalm 34. It says in verse eight, the last
part of verse eight, blessed is the man that trusteth in him.
Isn't this a blessing? If God has given you faith, you
are a blessed person, aren't you? If you think, well, God
hasn't given me faith, what are you going to do? Well, if you
are trusting him, you're going to cry. You're going to say,
Lord, increase my faith or Lord, help my unbelief or Lord, give
me this faith. Open my eyes. Isn't that what
the blind men would say in the New Testament? Lord, open my
eyes. What do you want me to do for
you? Lord, that I might see, that I might believe on you.
Isn't that the cry of the one trusting him? Blessed are they
who trust in him. Then it goes on in verse 9. Let's
go on. The next part of this psalm, verses... Well, I'm including verse 9 in
this experience that the Lord is giving us of His own experience.
Look at verse 9. O fear the Lord, ye His saints,
for there is no want to them that fear Him. Now, notice what
he says here in verse 10. The lions, the young lions, do
lack and suffer hunger, but they that seek the Lord shall not
want any good thing. When I read that, I was thinking
about the last Psalm that we had, where it says in the end
of this, in verse 16 of Psalm 33, going back one chapter to
Psalm 33 in verse 16, it says, there's no king saved by the
multitude of a host. No, no, no king saved by the
size of his army. A mighty man is not delivered
by much strength. A horse is a vain thing for safety. And now what is he saying here
in verse 10 of Psalm 34? Young lions lack and suffer hunger. Well, wait a minute. I thought
young lions were super strong. I thought they were called the
king of the jungle because they did whatever they wanted to do
with whatever was in the jungle. Whenever they're hungry, they
just snatch it up and eat it. But no, God is saying even the
young lions lack and suffer hunger. Now, he's drawing a contrast
here, isn't he? In other words, if you trust
in anything in this world, that you can think, do or say. Your
trust is misplaced because help comes from the Lord. Look to
the Lord, not to your ability, not to your ability to navigate
the course of your life or your ability to put plans in place
and execute those plans. All those things are the way
the world lives. He says the lions, these beasts
that have whatever they want, their suffering, lack. Because
God is trying to teach us, it's not by our wisdom, it's not by
our strength, it's not by what we have or what we think we are,
it's who Christ is, what God thinks of him and who we are
in him alone. They that trust in the Lord,
he says, shall not want any good thing. That reminds me of a verse
in the New Testament where the Lord Jesus said in Matthew chapter
6, he says, It doesn't matter if the lilies of the field are
beautiful, they didn't work to do that, God did that. It doesn't matter if Solomon
and all his glory was less than them. It doesn't matter. All
these things that you could think of, none of those things could
produce that. God had to do it, and the Lord's
teaching us here. You seek the Lord Jesus Christ,
you look to Him, and if you have Him, then you have all things. But if you don't have Him, it
doesn't matter what you have, you have nothing. Okay? If I possess the world, but don't
have Christ, I have nothing. And if I have my own personal
obedience for my acceptance and blessing from God, I am nothing. But if I have Christ, though
I am a poor sinner and nothing at all, though I'm ignorant of
everything else, if I know Him, though I have no personal righteousness
of my own, yet looking to Christ by faith, I have His righteousness
as my all-sufficient righteousness, even my everlasting righteousness
in the presence of God. Not because of my looking, But
my looking is the result of God's blessing to me, to cause me to
see all credit, all glory and praise is in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why so often he uses this,
like he did in Psalm 33, verse 1, rejoice in the Lord. And here,
I will bless the Lord, my soul shall make her boast in the Lord. The Apostle Paul said, I will
not boast in anything, I will not boast in anything except
Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The cross is that by which the
world is crucified to me and I to the world, and I'm gonna
boast in the cross. That which is most shameful to
this world is what I boast in. That's what the believer says.
And it says this very well in Colossians chapter 3 verse 1,
If you be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above,
where Christ sits at the right hand of God. Set your affections
on things above, not on things on the earth, for you are dead.
and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our
life, shall appear, then shall you also appear with Him in glory."
What could be more glorious than that? To be with Christ, to know
Him, to be found in Him, and to have all that God has given
Him as one of His own people. The next verse in Psalm 34 is
verse 11. And in this verse it says, come
ye children, Harken unto me, I will teach you the fear of
the Lord. Now David, when he was in Gath,
in King Anchish, over that city, I imagine that when he was scrabbling
on the door and letting his spittle drip on his beard, and everyone
was looking at him with one eye kind of cocked, thinking, what
kind of a guy is this? He's one of those Jews, he's
a crazy man. The children probably were laughing
and mocking. Think of what these words meant
then. Come, ye children, hearken unto
me. I will teach you the fear of
the Lord. You know, if one of those children
would have heard those words and understood what they meant,
you know, a whole wave of tingling would have gone over that child
as he stood in solemnity thinking about the fear of the Lord. Here
I was fearing Goliath or King David who killed him or the armies
of Saul. And now I have to think about
the Lord. How will I stand before the Lord?
And King David says, I will teach you children the fear of the
Lord. But this was not King David speaking to those children, even
though it may have happened historically. This is the Lord Jesus Christ
calling to His children, all of His people are called His
children, come ye children, the children of God, Listen to me. Give your ear to my word, the
gospel. I will teach you the fear of
the Lord. So the Lord Jesus calls his people
as children. He instructs them to listen to
him. He promises that he will teach them the fear of the Lord.
But who can actually teach sinners the fear of the Lord? Who can
do that? God has promised to do it in the New Covenant. In
Jeremiah 32, verse 37, in the New Covenant promise, God says,
Behold, I will gather them out of all countries, whither I have
driven them in my anger, and in my fury, and in my great wrath.
And I will bring them again unto this place, and I will cause
them to dwell safely, and they shall be my people, and I will
be their God. And I will give them one heart
and one way that they may fear me forever for the good of them
and of their children after them. And I will make an everlasting
covenant with them that I will not turn away from them to do
them good. But I will put my fear in their
hearts, that they shall not depart from me. Yea, I will rejoice
over them to do them good, and I will plant them in this land
assuredly with my whole heart and with my whole soul. He's
talking about the land of promise, the land of salvation. He's talking
about the land of the Lord Jesus Christ and his people put in
him. God is going to give his people
this in their heart to fear him. Now, note well, this covenant
was made not by the conditions that we meet. It's not hanging
on conditions that we have to fulfill. This covenant was made
in Christ's precious blood alone. In Hebrews chapter 13, it says,
the blood of the everlasting covenant. That's this covenant,
the everlasting covenant. And he also said in Matthew 26,
28, this cup, is the New Testament, the new covenant in my blood,
which is shed for many for the remission of sins. So here we
see that the everlasting covenant that God promised was fulfilled
when the conditions were met when Christ hung on the cross
as the substitute for his people and offered himself to God. This
makes it our confidence, doesn't it? This is our assurance. This
is our eternal hope of salvation that God in Christ has done all
that He promised to do because Christ shed His blood, laid His
life down for us. And that He did all out of His
free grace. He did not look for anything
in us because there was nothing in us to be found. But He did
all by His power and His faithfulness and He did all by Christ alone.
And now, because God did this, we're completing Him and all
the blessings of the new covenant are given to us for Christ's
sake. The fear of the Lord is a phrase
that describes the whole walk of the believer's life in faith.
We fear to offend God, don't we? Remember Ananias and Sapphira
in Acts chapter 5, they lied to the Holy Ghost about how much
the land they sold was cost and what they did with the money,
and they both died. Now, fear fell on the whole church
that time because they feared to offend God, didn't they? They feared to offend God. They
did not want to lie to the Holy Spirit. And don't you find that
in your own self? You fear to offend the Spirit
of God? You fear to offend the Lord Jesus
Christ? Believers, what do believers
do upon hearing that about Ananias and Sapphira? What do you do?
Do you cry? Do you cry to the Lord and say,
Lord, deliver me. Don't let me be Esau. Don't let
me be Judas. Don't let me be Ananias and Sapphira. Don't let me be Pharaoh. So it
is every account in scripture of the ungodly and the wicked
who perish in their sin because of their sin. What does it make
the child of God do? Because we we know that salvation
is is in the Lord. We cry to him, don't we? We cry
to him. Deliver me from this wretched
man that I am. Save me from my sins. In Proverbs
chapter 30. It says in verse 12, there is
a generation that are pure in their own eyes and yet they are
not washed from their filthiness. Now, what does that cause you
to do? And this is what it causes me to do. Lord, do not let me
remain in the darkness of my self-deception to think I'm pure
in my own eyes when in truth I don't have, I haven't been
washed from my filthiness at all. I ask the Lord, Lord, deliver
me from my sin, my foolishness, my own deception. In Revelation
chapter three, he said, I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried
in the fire that thou mayest be rich, and white raiment that
thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do
not appear, and anoint thine eyes with eye salve that thou
mayest see. What's he saying here? God's
people go back to him to deliver them, and they look to him, they
call on him, they cry to him to deliver them from their own
sinfulness. That's the fear of the Lord.
That's walking by faith, isn't it? It also says in Proverbs
30, verse 13, there's a generation. Oh, how lofty are their eyes
and their eyelids are lifted up. And so the child of God cries
out, Lord, do not let me die in my pride. Turn thou me, as
Jeremiah said, and I shall be turned for thou art the Lord
my God. Now, see, these are the these
are the operations of the fear of God in the heart of God's
people. We know that we're sinners from
God's word. That's the context. And yet we
know there's salvation in Christ. That's the gospel. So we flee
to Christ for everything to save us from our sins. And we could
go on and on with examples from that and I put some more in the
handout that I sent out to you. You can look at that more. All
right. Time is up, and we're not done,
so I'm gonna have to break here, and we will finish this next
time. We'll pick this up, we'll probably drag a few of these
verses back in to summarize where we left off, and then we'll pick
it up at verse 12, and following to the end of the chapter, verse
22, okay? So I encourage you, if you have
time, you can look at the handout, and I've written down everything.
that covers the whole chapter there, and then you can think
about that, and next time, may the Lord give us grace as we
look at this together. Let's pray. Father, thank you
for your faithfulness, for your goodness, for the freeness of
your grace. for your everlasting love, that you would find a way
to magnify all the perfections of your person and character
in our salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior. We pray, Lord, that he would
be all to us. We know from your word and even
by the experiential operations of your grace in our heart that
we are sinners and nothing at all And though we confess it
with our mouth, we know there's much of this that we still don't
know. And we are concerned that we would discover it one day
and be overcome with despair. And yet we also know this from
your word, that the Lord Jesus Christ is all for his people. All that God requires, all that
ruined sinners need to answer God in everything, to be approved
by God, even to be approved in the presence of His glory. And
we're so delighted that He would make us in God's own sight holy
and without blame before Him in love. Help us, Lord, to see
the words of our Savior in these Psalms. Help us to see His great
salvation. He Himself stooped to the lowest
place and he was delivered, he was saved out of death, out of
sufferings, and he was exalted because he did the will of God
in saving his people from their sins by the sacrifice of himself
for them. What a savior, what a great salvation. We pray, Lord, that we would
find our all in him, as you have said in your word, in Jesus'
name we pray, amen.