Praising In The Pit Series

Praising in the Pit

Psalm 34

Rev. Brian Bill

June 21-22, 2025

I met an unforgettable man about 20 years ago when I was pastoring in central Illinois. The first time he came into our church sanctuary, he raised his arms over his head, looked up to the ceiling and said he was waiting for the roof to cave in because of how he had been living. He was rough around the edges and was filled with guilt and shame for some things he had done. He told me he had hit rock bottom and was looking for forgiveness, freedom, purpose, and peace.

As a pastor, I’ve often made a beeline to the Book of Psalms when face-to-face with someone’s suffering or shame. When I don’t know what to say, I go with what God has said. A frequent passage I quote is Psalm 34:18: “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” Psalm 51:10 says, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” Psalm 103:12 provides this assurance: “As far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us.”

According to many surveys, the Book of Psalms is the most popular book in the Bible. One commentator writes, “The psalms teach us to neither ignore pain nor let it determine our lives. This book is all about the lament, praise, faith, and hope of God’s people.”

On the Edgewood Facebook page a couple months ago, I asked people to share their favorite psalms. We received a lot of feedback. One person even suggested we do a 150-week series and preach through every one of them. While we won’t spend the next three years in this book, we will take the rest of the summer to go through a number of them. I encourage you to savor the psalms on a regular basis. Our current Bible reading plan is in the Psalms. If you read five a day, you’ll go through the entire book in a month.

Here are some introductory thoughts.

1. A psalm is Hebrew poetry, often set to music.

2. It takes about five hours to read through all 150 psalms.

3. There are at least six different human authors, with David being credited with nearly half of them.

4. The psalms are divided into five books (1-41; 42-72; 73-89; 90-106; 107-150).

5. The various types of psalms include Praise, Thanksgiving, Lament, Royal, Prophetic, Trust, Wisdom, and Imprecatory.

6. About 17% of the psalms include a prophecy about Jesus.

7. The longest is Psalm 119 (176 verses) and the shortest is Psalm 117 (only two verses).

Chuck Swindoll writes: “Throughout its many pages, Psalms encourages its readers to praise God for who He is and what He has done. The Psalms illuminate the greatness of our God, affirm His faithfulness to us in times of trouble, and remind us of the absolute centrality of His Word.”

Please turn in your Bible to Psalm 34. Here are a few things to keep in mind before we dive in.

• Acrostic. With the exception of a couple verses, this psalm is an acrostic, meaning each verse begins with the successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. This shows the care and attention to detail from the author and his desire to make it memorable and easy to memorize.

• Backstory. This psalm comes with an introduction which helps us understand the setting: “Of David, when he changed his behavior before Abimelech, so that he drove him out, and he went away.”

This incident is recorded in 1 Samuel 21:10-15 when David was fleeing from King Saul. David became so desperate that he sought refuge from the king of Gath. Gath was the hometown of Goliath, the Philistine champion whom David had killed years before. Before arriving, he obtained Goliath’s sword and instead of blending in, he created quite a stir. To help us understand the tension, it would be like Benjamin Netanyahu seeking refuge in Tehran today.

Instead of staying strong, David was afraid and fled to the land of his enemies where he used deceit to get out of a jam. David ran from a real problem and looked for something to make it all okay. Right now, some of you have experienced circumstances through no fault of your own and you find yourself in a hard spot. Others of you have run back to your past and are doing things that you used to do. What refuge do you run to when things get hard?

• Scrolling.

• Spending.

• Pornography.

• Food.

• Gambling.

• Substances.

• Sports.

David felt like the roof was caving in on him when the Philistines were getting ready to arrest and kill him. After pretending to have a mental disorder, he was allowed to leave the country. Once he departed, he fled to a cave, where 400 men who were rough around the edges gathered with him. 1 Samuel 22:2 describes them as “everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was bitter in soul…” This makes me think of the “Island of Misfit Toys” from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. This psalm is written for the discontent, distressed, depressed, and the down and out. Maybe that’s why I like it so much.