Lack No Good Thing

[00:00:00] Amen. Let's pray now and ask the Lord to bless the reading and preaching of his word. [00:00:05] Lord, as we come to your word now, we ask that you would continue to encourage us in our hearts in all the situations that we find ourselves in at the moment and may in the future watch over us, guide us even this evening. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. [00:00:25] Let's turn to God's word. In Psalm 34 of David, when he changed his behavior before Abimelech, so that he drove him out and he went away. [00:00:52] I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the Lord. Let the humble hear and be glad. O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together. [00:01:07] I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and delivers them. [00:01:30] O taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. O fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack. The young lions suffer want and hunger, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. [00:01:48] Come, O children, listen to me. I will teach you the fear of the Lord. What man is there who desires life and loves many days that he may see good? Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Turn away from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it. [00:02:10] The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry. The face of the Lord is against those who do evil to cut off the memory of them from the earth. When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of their troubles. The Lord is near to the broken hearted and saves the crushed in spirit. [00:02:33] Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones. Not one of them is broken. Affliction will slay the wicked. And those who hate the rightEous, who hate the righteous, will be condemned. The Lord redeems the life of his servants. None of those who take refuge in him will be condemned. Amen. Praise the Lord. Please be seated. [00:03:21] There are so many wonderful things about this psalm, places where it is quoted in other portions of Scripture. One way, I think, that it's helpful to think about this psalm is as an example of what we might call evangelism, an example of telling people the good news, specifically from a personal standpoint. Look, this is what the Lord has done for me. You should listen, and you should taste and see that the Lord is good. There is a call here to praise that is both personal and corporate, a call to trust the Lord and consider him in his salvation. [00:04:05] Let's think about this together through this evening, as I've been doing in the psalms. Let's walk through it together and observe along the way the various ways in which the psalmist speaks in the way God speaks to our hearts. [00:04:21] First of all, in verses one through three, we have this call to praise. First, a personal one that speaks to himself, I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall be continually in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the Lord. Let the humble hear and be glad. And then verse three speaks outside of himself. O, magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together. [00:04:45] Here we have a reminder that it's really impossible to praise apart from humility. Let the humble hear and be glad. There's no rejoicing in the Lord. There's no being glad in him or praising in him. If we're really about praising ourselves, if we really find all sufficiency in ourselves, what reason is there to trust in him? But the call of the psalm is to trust in him, to humble, to be humble, and to be glad. [00:05:15] When we come to verses four through seven, then we are given various reasons to be glad in the Lord, to bless him at all times, to have his praise continually in our mouths. Let's look at each of these four reasons. [00:05:31] The first reason in verse four is past deliverance. I sought the Lord, David says, and he answered me. He delivered me from all my fears. [00:05:41] This here he has in mind not the fear of the Lord, which is good and holy, something he calls us to, but those kinds of terrors and afflictions that he's facing. So one reason we ought to praise the Lord is because of past deliverance, things he's done in the past. [00:05:59] Verse five points us to future glory. If verse four is past deliverance, verse five is future glory, a promise. Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. The word here used for radiant is also used of Moses when his face shines as he comes down the mountain. It's also used in two Corinthians 318 when it talks about Christians shining in the likeness of Christ. Radiance. Radiance in those who belong to him. There's something in us that changes. Instead of our faces being downcast and ashamed, embarrassed at our trials, embarrassed at our sins, our faces are radiant. [00:06:42] We are glorified, we might say, in the glory of God when we look to him, a future promise in verse five. [00:06:52] In verse six, we have another reason, an extension of these, that these promises go to even those who have little. In verse six, it says, this poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. [00:07:11] There's a lot of times in life when people think that the thing that will save them is being rich according to the things of this world. But the poor person who has the Lord has much more, infinitely more, than the wealthy person who does not. [00:07:29] Then in verse seven, we have this other fourth reason, a fourth reason to trust the Lord to make our boast. In God, we have the past deliverance and future promises, future glory. We have this promise to the weakest among us. And then finally, a promise of protection. In verse seven, the angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and delivers him. [00:07:55] This is important to remember. We never want to forget the angels. Sometimes, I say, which I picked up from someone else, never want to forget the angels. [00:08:08] They're not the focus of every passage of scripture, of course, but they're spoken about frequently in God's good order, he calls us to remember them. [00:08:20] We just had some celebrations around the Reformation, right? And in that hymn, mighty fortress is our God, one of the lines that's in there is Lord, Sabbath oath, his name. What does that mean? Well, it's not saying Lord of the Sabbath. That's a different word. It's saying Sabbath oath or Sabbath. And it's referring to the Lord of hosts. The Lord of hosts is his name. Hosts of what? [00:08:48] Not a party, but hosts like an army. The ideas, these millions of angels, thousands upon thousands of angels that the Lord has at his beck and call. But not only do they belong to the Lord, the angels and the angel of the Lord in particular, but they are also for us. [00:09:10] This is an amazing thing. These mighty, powerful creatures that do the Lord's will, we read in Hebrews 114, are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation? [00:09:26] The angels of the Lord are for us. In Psalm 90 111, we read that he will command his angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways. [00:09:38] That's a pretty comprehensive way. In what ways, we might ask, do the angels guard us? The Scriptures don't give lots of detail, but they do say in all our ways. So I think it's safe to assume that they are active in many ways. We see examples of them at various times. But perhaps we can just remember. [00:10:01] We can remember them ministering to Jesus in his temptation. We can remember them speaking to the women in the garden after his resurrection. [00:10:13] We can remember the ways in which God uses his angels to bless and to serve you, his people. [00:10:22] All that to say is that we don't put our hope in angels, but in the Lord of the angels, the one who uses these mighty creatures for our benefit. [00:10:34] Well, these are all good reasons to trust in the Lord, are they not? If you have thousands of angels encamping around you, if you have the angel of the Lord near you to deliver you and all those who fear him, you do not need to worry. [00:10:50] The LoRD delivers us from things, has delivered us from things in the past, and he will do so in the future. [00:10:57] So these reasons are given to us in verses four through seven. In verses eight, nine and ten, then we have in eight and nine and yeah, eight, nine and ten. We have then application of these principles. These teachings begins in verse eight with this. O taste and see that the Lord is good. [00:11:22] Taste and see that the Lord is good. Try him, see what happens. The Lord There were many people in the gospels who didn't fully understand what Jesus was about, what Jesus'ministry, but they knew enough to say, Lord, save me, heal my sight, heal my disease, heal my servant, my daughter. And he did. [00:11:46] We don't have to have full confidence and full faith before we reach out to the Lord. If the Lord gives you faith of any portion, it is from him, and we ought to trust him and believe in him. And the promise here is that when we taste of the Lord and his goodness, that will be evident to us. Why? Because blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. This is the promise of the Scriptures. [00:12:19] That promise is continued, and that call is continued in verse nine. O fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack. And it's compared by contrast to young lions, even young lions, these powerful creatures that are active and able, they suffer want and hunger. But those who seek the Lord will lack no good thing. [00:12:44] And so we see between the angels, the verse about the angels in verse seven and the verse about the lions in verse ten. The Lord offers us both provision and protection. We will lack no good thing and we will be protected, as the catechism says, from all of his and our enemies. [00:13:05] Then we come to this next section in the psalm, a section of teaching, a section that sounds very much like the proverbs. It begins this way in verse eleven. Come, O children, listen to me and I will teach you the fear of the Lord. [00:13:22] David then poses this rhetorical question, what man is there who desires life and loves many days that he may say gooD? The answer is, of course, all of them right. All of us desire to have long days and to taste and experience good things. And David says, well, then, how will you have this is what he's proposing. How do you come to have a good life? [00:13:48] The answer is, of course, as the proverbs tell us, the fear of the Lord is wisdom. [00:13:54] He gives us two directions to consider. [00:13:58] What is the fear of the Lord? One direction, and these are not opposing, is obedience that we see in verses 13 and 14. Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Turn away from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it. Peter quotes these verses in chapter three. One Peter, three, verses ten through twelve, when he's talking to Christians that they should not suffer for doing evil things. You will suffer for the name of Christ, but don't suffer for sinning against people. Don't suffer for getting a bad name and a reputation for yourself. If you must suffer, suffer for doing well. And then he quotes this passage and he says, what we should do is this, keep our tongue from evil and our lips from speaking deceit. Turn away from evil, do good seek peace and pursue it. [00:14:55] To fear the Lord means, of course, obedience to the Lord, not obedience to ourselves and our own whims, our own ways, the particular pressures and desires of the moment. Instead, fear of the Lord means is submission to the Lord and obedience to him and to his law. [00:15:16] The psalmist adds a second thing to obedience, and that is, of course, faith. In verses 815 through 18, the eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous, his ears toward their cry, the face of the Lord against those who do evil, to cut off their memory of them from the earth. When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to the broken hearted and saves the crushed in spirit. [00:15:47] In this life, though good is promised to those who fear the Lord, afflictions happen, too. [00:15:56] The Lord promises, though, that these afflictions will turn for our good and will ultimately result in something very great. [00:16:03] He calls us to put our faith in him that the fear of the Lord is not just obedience, but it's trusting in him, trusting that his eyes are toward us, trusting that his ears are open toward us. The promise here is that God hears and he answers our prayers. [00:16:22] You know that when we're afflicted, a lot of times our response is to sin, to sin by distracting ourselves and numbing ourselves in some way or another. To sin by lashing out and trying to control other people in anger, to sin in all kinds of ways. [00:16:41] This is not the response, proper response to afflictions and troubles, to get our own way and make it how we think it ought to be. The proper response is faith to cry out to the Lord and to believe that he will hear us, for he does. The promise here in verse 18 is so sweet. The Lord is near to the broken hearted. He saves the crushed in spirit. Jesus gives an example of this in the parable of the prodigal son. Right, the prodigal son. What happens here is a man, the Son, the Son who was broken hearted, crushed in spirit, coming back, crawling back, we might say to his father, hoping to be received as a servant, hoping to, received as a servant for all his sins. And what does the Father do? He runs to his son. He gathers him, he embraces him. He puts a ring on his finger. [00:17:39] He is near to the broken hearted. He is near to the broken hearted, and he saves the crushed in spirit. He lifts up his son and he gives him so much grace. [00:17:50] This is the promise of the Lord to us and in our afflictions, both our internal ones, our fight against sin, and external ones as well. The Lord promises to deliver us, to save us. [00:18:04] And that's what we have in the last few verses, an extension of this promise and reflection on it. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, true, but the Lord delivers him out of them. All this sense of control and God's sovereignty in our afflictions is expressed in verse 20. He keeps all his bones, not one of them is broken. He keeps all his bones, not one of them is broken. [00:18:35] Amazingly, this passage is used to show that our Lord is the true Messiah, that our Savior. We see this in John, Chapter 19. [00:18:50] Let me read about, let me read this passage to you. [00:18:54] John 19, verse 31. Since it was the day of preparation and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath. For that Sabbath was a high day, the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, that they might be taken away. [00:19:10] Let me pause here just to explain the, so the practice was that they would break their legs. And the reason is that as you're being crucified, you would die more quickly, because essentially in Crucifixion, a lot of times you die from asphyxiation you can't breathe, so you pull yourself up to get a breath, and then you go back down. And it's why it takes so long to die this way. It's a really horrible, horrible way to die. And so if you want to speed up the death of those who are on the cross, you break their legs. That way, they can't push up from the bottom to get a breath. So this is what is happening. They're essentially ending their lives. The Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, that they might be taken away. So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once, there came out blood and water. He who saw it has borne witness. His testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth, that you also may believe for these things took place, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. Quote, not one of his bones will be broken. [00:20:31] So this verse here in Psalm 34 is fulfilled, and we see the Lord's sovereignty and control over the most broken one, the most afflicted one, his own son. [00:20:47] Jesus came into this world to be this Redeemer for us to be this Savior, to be the one who would save us from our afflictions and our trials. And there was no one who has been more afflicted than him. [00:21:03] But Jesus's crucifixion and his death and all that happened there. It was not an accident. It was not the force of man overcoming God. No, we read that this was planned from the beginning, that God was in control of over it all. That Jesus went willingly to the cross to save us from our sins. In that we see his power, we see his love, we see his salvation and his promise to us, that likewise he will protect us and keep us, that he is sovereign even over our afflictions and knows how to deliver us. For he delivered. For Jesus himself was raised from the dead for the purpose of fulfilling not just this one verse, but all these verses and all those who trust in him. [00:21:58] The flip side of this, of course, is in verse 21, affliction will slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned. [00:22:09] However, verse 22 says, the Lord redeems the life of his servants. None of those who take refuge in him will be condemned. [00:22:20] We will face afflictions in this life, but we will not ultimately be condemned if we trust in the Lord. If we fear the Lord and put our faith in him, if we trust him for our deliverance, for our protection, for our provision, David says here we will find salvation. [00:22:42] David is a fellow worshiper. Right. Verse three. Magnify the Lord with me. Let us exalt his name together. And he's also our teacher. As I said, he's a kind of an evangelist. Here he's experienced the deliverance of the Lord. And he says, listen, taste and see that the Lord is good. Experience this along with me. I will teach you the fear of the Lord. [00:23:10] And so there's a good question for application here, which is, what kind of students will you be? [00:23:17] How studious will you be to learn these lessons? Will you practice them? Will you apply them? Will you seek obedience? Will you seek faith? Will you trust in the promises of God? Will you learn these lessons and experience their reward? [00:23:33] The reward is very great. Provision, protection, life, deliverance from afflictions. [00:23:41] The opposite is really awful. It's terrible strength and pride and self sufficiency. TurnIng away from the Lord, rejecting to the Lord ends not in freedom and refuge and justification, but ends in even further death. [00:24:01] There's a second application which I'll end with, and it's this. I think as good students, we will be like David and that we will also teach others if we come to know the Gospel and we come to believe. And if we have really tasted and seen how the Lord is good, will we not also, like David, teach others as well? [00:24:22] There's a way. [00:24:25] It's getting late. I'll end soon. But you know how yawns are infectious. I won't do it right now, but yawns are infectious. The same is true. I think, of a radiant face, that radiance that we experience when the Lord is good to us. The same passage that Peter quotes is in that same as he uses in that famous verse where he talks about when people ask you about the hope that is within you and because of your suffering, be ready and have an answer. [00:24:57] When we experience the trials of this life and receive the Lord's blessing and his salvation through it, as we experience his glory and his goodness in our lives, let us tell people about the Lord. Let us, with David, say to others, magnify the Lord with me. [00:25:18] Let us exalt his name together, for those who look to him are radiant and their faces shall never be ashamed. Praise God. [00:25:29] Let's pray. [00:25:32] Our Lord, we do give you praise, and we bless your name this evening. Our mouths, our hearts filled with your praise for our boast is not in ourselves, but in you. Our souls boast in you, for we are humble and glad for the work that you have done. We lack no good thing. Indeed, even our afflictions are turned for our good. [00:25:57] This cannot be said of those who turn against you, of the unrighteous and the wicked who pursue their own ways. Lord, their troubles are just the beginning of their pains. But ours are turned to salvation. Ours are turned to purification and sanctification. [00:26:17] We praise you for this, and we thank you for this. Work is not ours to be proud of, but yours to be grateful for. [00:26:28] Lord, you have promised not just to us, but you have promised to the world that your eyes are toward the righteous and your ears toward their cry that you are near to the broken hearted and save the crushed in spirit. That your yoke is easy and your burden is light. Let us all come to you then and trust you. Give each soul here this evening a heart of faith that we might cling to you and to you alone for our salvation. [00:27:02] Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but you, our Lord, delivers us out of them all. [00:27:08] We experience this now in this life and perfectly in the life to come, when every tear will be wiped from our eye is. We look forward to that day. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.