Radiant Faces Have Looked To The Mighty God Of Deliverance – Psalm 34:1-6 Series

RADIANT FACES HAVE LOOKED TO THE MIGHTY GOD OF DELIVERANCE – PSALM 34:1-6

We are going to consider the first 6 verses of this most glorious Psalm. They are really uplifting in great comfort. Let us enjoy them.

Psalm 34:3 O magnify the LORD with me and let us exalt His name together.

Psalm 34:4 I sought the LORD and He answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.

Psalm 34:5 They looked to Him and were radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed.

Psalm 34:6 This poor man cried and the LORD heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.

THE SETTING OF THE PSALM

What is the setting of this psalm? Look at the tile. [[“A Psalm of David when he feigned madness before Abimelech, who drove him away and he departed.”]] It was written after he had departed from the Philistine king. So it resulted from deliverance! Being delivered caused his heart to well up in praise and song. A true poet knows that best.

Have you ever needed the Lord’s deliverance? We must never forget that we are in a battle, and the sides are clearly divided – light and dark (always the great contrast of the Bible). Good and evil. Citizens of heaven, and the unsaved of earth. Clearly – you belong to God, or you belong to Satan. Righteousness, and unrighteousness. You can not share the camps. It is one or the other.

This psalm principally concerns itself with the righteous ones and their relationship to God. We will now work through the first 6 verses.

Psalm 34:1 I will bless the LORD at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. Psalm 34:2 My soul shall make its boast in the LORD. The humble shall hear it and rejoice.”

VERSES 1-2:

As in a lot of David’s experiences, he writes with a summary statement at the beginning, something like a chapter synopsis. Then he expands on that to develop the main theme. The Psalms were all songs of course, and so many of them skilfully constructed, but they were based on real experiences. It is not the skill alone that produced them, but the guiding hand of the Holy Spirit.

I like writing poems very much and I know that skill is required in their construction and that comes from my background in education. However, it amazes me how a poem will come together in a way that when I look back, I can say, “How did I possibly do that?” Well I did not do that. The Spirit put His hand on the poem. That is the spiritual aspect, and lifts the poem from a piece of writing in the world to something anointed by God. It will be the same in any man’s true ministry, and that principle applies to whatever the Lord has led His servant to do for Him.

All scripture is inspired by God and in these Psalms, the outcome is man’s God-given ability “taken over” by the touch of the Holy Spirit. That is why there is a huge magnificence in the scripture that elevates it to a place of anointing and inspiration that no other writing has. Holy men spoke through the anointing of God.

Psalm 34 is an Alphabetic psalm, so called because their successive verses, or successive parallel series, begin with the successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Some of these formations are perfectly regular, others are more or less defective. These poems are of an acrostic formation, in which the first letter of the word that begins a line or a couplet or even a strophe, follows the succession of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

As far as possible it is good to know the background of a Psalm, and in this case the background is given to us. [[“A Psalm of David when he feigned madness before Abimelech, who drove him away and he departed.”]]

The account of this is written in 1Samuel 21. David was in mortal fear of his life as he was fleeing from Saul. When in desperate circumstances people often can not think rationally and sometimes engage in “out of character” actions. Those who have been in that dark place of desperation know. It is like being in an abode of no comfort, no way out, and no way to plan anything. The world crushes in. The whole body becomes numbed and fearful. The writer has been there and knows the injustice and desperation that such situations throw at us.

At the time of writing David had two enemies. One was Saul and the other was the Philistines. In fleeing from Saul, from one enemy, he ending up coming before the second enemy. We know David as a man of faith in God, and you know, often in desperate situations, we are reduced to nothing except the cord of faith in a faithful God. It is when faith latches on to faithfulness.