The Lord Delivers Those Who Fear Him – Psalm 34

**The Lord Delivers Those Who Fear Him – Psalm 34**
Appreciate Tyler for leading our singing this morning, and we are so thankful to you for being here today. This morning we’re going to be looking at Psalm 34, so let’s all open our Bibles to Psalm 34 as we think about “The Lord Delivers Those Who Fear Him.”This is a wonderful psalm of praise in which David blesses God and praises God for delivering him from a particular dangerous situation. In fact, if you read at the beginning of the psalm, there is an attribution: “A Psalm of David when he pretended madness before Abimelech, who drove him away, and he departed.” So this has reference to something that David did, as recorded in 1 Samuel 21:13. It says there that he was amongst the Philistines, and while he was there the men of the Philistines started saying, “Is this not David, of whom they sang to one another in dances, saying, ‘Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands’?”

David got a little worried that maybe the king there was going to take him into custody and take his life. So while he was there—he had fled from before the presence of Saul because Saul wanted to kill him—now here he was in a strange country and concerned that maybe the people there were going to kill him too. 1 Samuel 21:13 says he changed his behavior before them, pretended madness in their hands, scratched on the doors of the gate, and let his saliva fall down on his beard.

I got to be interested in that verse and a picture of it, so I just asked an AI to create an image of 1 Samuel 21:13, and this is what it came up with—a pretty interesting image, if you think about it, of how this might have looked as David feigned madness before the king. When David did that, he escaped with his life, and he was so thankful that evidently he composed this song to thank God and talk about how God delivers His people.

Psalm 34:1–3 says: “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, and let us exalt His name together.” So this is sort of an introductory praise statement here at the beginning of the psalm. But this psalm is about David’s deliverance and how the Lord delivers those who fear Him—that’s the central theme of this song.

So let’s talk about this psalm this morning and think about how the Lord delivers those who fear Him.

First of all, the Lord delivers from fears. No doubt David was fearful for his life when he was before the king of the Philistines, and he wanted deliverance. So he writes these words: “I sought the LORD, and He heard me, and delivered me from all 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 of the LORD encamps all around those who fear Him, and delivers them.” So we see here a contrast between our fears and fearing God, and how the Lord delivers us when we fear Him and don’t fear the things around us. There’s a lot of talk about fear in this psalm.

The New Testament has some things to say about fear as well. In 1 John 4:18 we read, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.” And in 2 Timothy 1:7 it says, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”

David recognized he had some fears—everybody has fears. It’s not wrong to have fears, but it’s what we do with those fears. Are we going to fear God more than our own concerns about this life? That’s what David did, and he recognized that when he did that, God delivered him from those fears.

Another thing that David talks about in the psalm is that he is a poor man. He says, “This poor man cried out…” So this was before David became king. He was alone out there in the wilderness, all by himself (though a group of folks gathered to him eventually), but you can think about how it was just David and then a couple of people with him. He was poor—he didn’t have anything at this point.

We think about the poor and their fears, but then we remember what James said about the poor in James 2:5: “Listen, my beloved brethren: Has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him?”

So we may be poor in a physical sense, but we can be rich in a spiritual sense. That’s what David understood as well. When he thinks about being a poor man but turning to God, he recognizes he has everything when he gives God the glory and fears God.

In Philippians 4:19 the apostle Paul gave us assurance that “my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” And you see, that’s what God does—He delivers us. He delivers us from our fears. There are a lot of fears associated with things of this life: fear of not having enough to eat, fear of not having shelter, fear of not having a job or transportation, or a lot of things that we can be afraid of. But if we will fear God, God will deliver us from all of our fears.

Secondly, we see in the psalm that the Lord delivers those who fear Him from their wants. Let’s look at verses 8–10: “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.”

So the Lord delivers us from our wants. That’s what is being discussed here in this segment of the psalm. It starts out with this very familiar phrase: “taste and see that the LORD is good.” This is in essence the Lord inviting us to test Him, to try Him, to see whether or not He is good to us. And you know what? The Lord is good to us, and He gives us so many wonderful things.

In Malachi 3:10 the Lord issues the same challenge to His people in a time when they were not doing God’s work. The Lord says through Malachi, “Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house, and try Me now in this,” says the LORD of hosts, “if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it.”

So God is saying: test Me to see whether I’m good or not; try Me to see whether I will bless you or not. That’s something we need to think about when we look at this psalm. He says, “taste and see that the LORD is good”—try the Lord out and see that He will indeed give you good things in your life.

Psalm 37:25 says, “I have been young, and now am old; yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his descendants begging bread.” So the Lord delivers us from all of our wants. This is something we need to consider as we are fearing God in our life—that He does deliver us from our wants.

Psalm 84:11 says, “For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD will give grace and glory; no good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly.” And it’s important for us to understand that it’s for those who walk uprightly, for those who fear the Lord, that God gives good things.

What is the fear of the Lord? We saw in these verses, “Oh, fear the LORD, you His saints” (verse 9). We’re going to talk about it in the next section.

We think about the Lord being our shepherd and not wanting, because the Lord delivers us from all of our wants.

Number three: the Lord delivers life. He delivers us from fears, He delivers us from wants, and He delivers us from our troubles and from afflictions also. But here in the center of this psalm, in verses 11–14, we see kind of the central piece of this psalm, and that is what it means to fear God. Because it’s not just everyone that the Lord delivers—He delivers those who fear Him. That’s the point of this psalm.

So what does it mean to fear God? These verses say: “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 and pursue it.”

These are areas of life that show how we fear the Lord. Now there are probably more things we could say about fearing the Lord, but this is kind of a summary and the essential elements, if you will, of fearing the Lord. It’s interesting that Peter quotes this in 1 Peter 3:10–12 in order to help those who are reading his epistle to understand what it means to live a good life.

So God delivers life—He delivers life to us when we fear Him. And what does it mean to fear Him? It means to keep your tongue from evil; it means to keep your lips from speaking deceit; don’t tell any lies; it means departing from evil and doing good; it means seeking peace with others and pursuing it.

Now if we can just do these elements, man, we will be doing well, and there will be a lot of good things happen to us. But remember, when we look at this psalm, it is a song for praising God for deliverance. When we look at the story of David before the doors of the gates of the Philistines, David did something—he feared God—and that changed into certain behaviors that he exhibited. When he exhibited those behaviors, he was able to escape from the Philistines.

You see, that’s what God is telling us today as well. When we fear Him, a large part of His deliverance has to do with how we live our lives and the choices that we make. By making those choices we can then be delivered from horrible circumstances. If we will fear Him, then we will be delivered from all these other things.

So the Lord delivers life; He delivers us from fears; He delivers us from wants; He delivers us from troubles; He delivers us from afflictions; He delivers us from our wants—but He delivers life first of all. If we will fear Him, then we will have life and we will experience all the other deliverances that He has to offer.

This particular part of the psalm, as we mentioned, is right in the middle of the song, and there’s an emphasis here on the fear of God and remembering what it means as we walk through life every day.

Then we see that the Lord delivers us from evil—or we can say the Lord delivers us from our cries that are occasioned by evil in this life. Let’s look at the next section, Psalm 34:15–16: “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.”

So there’s the righteous and there’s the evil. The righteous cry out to God to be delivered from evil, and that’s something that we need to think about on a daily basis. One of the sections within the Lord’s model prayer is that prayer that He deliver us from evil—or from the evil one. That’s something we can think about as well in relationship to this psalm.

The Lord delivers us from our cries; He delivers us from evil and wicked people. Think about Proverbs 15:29: “The LORD is far from the wicked, but He hears the prayer of the righteous.” The Lord hears our cries; He hears the cries of the righteous, and those are the ones that He’s listening to.

In James 5:16 it says, “Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” I think about that—the prayer of a righteous man avails much. Why? Because the Lord hears the prayer of the righteous.

We think about God delivering from our cries from evil—it’s because we’re praying and because we’re asking the Lord to deliver us from these things that are in the world, the evil that’s in the world today.

But by contrast, the Lord doesn’t hear the prayer of the wicked. Notice Proverbs 28:9: “One who turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination.” So many people in the world today pray, but they don’t consider that the Lord doesn’t hear a single word that they speak. Why is that? Because they have turned their ear away from hearing God’s law; they work wickedness within their life.

Psalm 66:18 says, “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the LORD will not hear.” That is, if I hold onto iniquity, if I pursue it, if I continue to dally with it and continue to employ it, the Lord is not going to hear my prayer. There’s another passage—Matthew 7:21—where Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.” There’s going to be so many people who are disappointed on the day of judgment because they thought all they needed to do was cry out to God to be forgiven, and they never considered that their prayer would not be heard because they were living in iniquity, they were living in lawlessness, they were living in sin.

Yes, God hears the prayers of the righteous, but He does not hear the prayer of the sinner. This is one reason why those in the religious world today who will turn out and play up the “sinner’s prayer” are wrong—because God doesn’t hear the prayers of sinners. It’s the one who has a covenant relationship with Him whose prayer God hears. That relationship comes as a result of our listening to the word of God and obeying it—not simply because we cry out to God in our wickedness. No, the Bible is clear: the Lord doesn’t hear the prayer of the wicked.

The psalm continues in verses 17–18 and talks about the Lord delivering from troubles: “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.” So here now is the one the Lord listens to the one who has the right attitude, the one who has a contrite heart and a broken spirit.

Maybe you remember in Acts 7:9–10, Stephen was talking about Joseph and he says that God was with him and delivered him out of all his troubles. You know, sometimes I think we think, “Well, God is just kind of a genie or something, you know—if we ask Him to deliver us, then we get our wish granted instantly.” That’s not how it works.

Think about Joseph, for example. It says that God delivered him out of all his troubles, but what did he have to go through first? He had to go through being sold into slavery; he had to go through being sold to Potiphar’s house; he had to go through being accosted and molested by Potiphar’s wife; he had to go through having to go to prison because of Potiphar’s wife and being in prison for a long time; he had to go through being ignored by those to whom he gave tremendous great advice and help. It wasn’t until he suffered all those things that finally—just by happenstance—Pharaoh had a dream, and then what happened? They called Joseph up out of prison to interpret that dream, and that’s how God delivered him from all his troubles.

God didn’t take away the troubles, but rather He was with Joseph through the troubles. That’s something we need to understand and learn about God delivering us out of all of our troubles. Yes, He will deliver us out of all the troubles, but we’ve got to go through some of those things and be patient and continually show faith in Him. It’s when we humble ourselves before God—like Joseph did—that God delivers us out of our troubles.

Psalm 51:17 says, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart—these, O God, You will not despise.” In Isaiah 66:2 we read, “But on this one I will look: on him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at My word.”

We want God to deliver us out of troubles? Then we’ve got to have that poor and contrite spirit.

And finally, the Lord delivers from afflictions. Verses 19–22 say: “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.”
Yes, the righteous have many afflictions. A lot of times those afflictions are because the righteous are trying to be righteous, and that results in evil persecuting the righteous. Jesus told us in Matthew 7:14 that “narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.” If we’re living righteous lives, we should expect afflictions; we should expect difficulties; we should expect trials. And yet the Lord will deliver us from all these afflictions.

Jesus said in Matthew 16:24–25, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”
Are we laying down our lives for God? When we do, He will deliver us from all of our afflictions.

Now the psalm talks about Jesus ultimately in “guarding his bones,” and that’s a reference to the cross—that they didn’t break His bones (John 19:36). When we think about the redemption that happened on the cross as a result of the work that Jesus did, we understand what it means to be delivered from all of our afflictions.

Look at the life of Jesus: He was born into this world as a little baby just like you and I are. When the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. He was born to redeem, and then He died to redeem us. Titus 2:14 says that He “gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works.”

How did God deliver Jesus out of all of His afflictions? By raising Him from the dead.

You know, today there are things that we have to go through—afflictions that we have to suffer—but ultimately God will deliver us from all of these things. If we put our faith and trust in Him and continue to believe in the righteous work of Jesus Christ, then we will be saved, and God will deliver us from all the troubles, all the afflictions, all of our cries, all of our wants, and all of our fears.

Are we putting our trust in Jesus Christ? That’s the question that we need to ask this morning.

God can deliver you today from all the sins that have plagued you throughout your life by hearing His word and believing it, repenting of those sins, confessing Jesus as Lord, and being baptized for the forgiveness of sins. That’s how you can experience deliverance today.

If you would experience that deliverance this morning, we will be more than happy to help you in that regard. Or maybe you need the prayers of the church today to help you with some trouble that you’re going through. The Lord delivers those who fear Him. Would you then fear the Lord this morning as a child of God, get down on your knees and pray, and ask for God to help? We can do that as well.

So if you have a need this morning, let’s remember: the Lord delivers those who fear Him. While together we stand and while we sing.

End of transcript. Thank you for reading along!