Psalm 54 – Looking Upon Enemies

Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ The Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS, 26 Nov. 2023

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Introduction:

• This is the third of the four Maskil/wisdom-Psalms of David in the second book of the Psalms.

• The superscription¹ gives us a context for this Psalm which points us to the time when King Saul became so paranoid that David, as a young man, might overthrow him, that he decided to kill David, so David had to hide out in the wilderness areas of Judea.

  • So we read in 1 Samuel 23:19 “Now, the Ziphites went up to Saul at Gibeah to say, ‘Isn't David hiding among us in the strongholds in the forest, on the hill of Chakilah which is south of the wasteland?’” (NAW) (And that wasn’t the last time the Ziphites ganged up with Saul to try to get rid of David – they did it again in 1 Samuel 26².)

  • So now, thousands of soldiers were pouring into the area to carry out King Saul’s vendetta, and David realized that, with the local Ziphites turning against him, he was going to run out of hiding places quick. He was in a truly desperate situation.

  • We are, of course, responsible before God to do what we can to make an honest living and to avoid danger, but David had done what he could, first in faithful service to Saul and then in hiding away from Saul, but still his life was in danger. All he had left was to cry out to God to rescue him, so that’s what he does in this Psalm. (Calvin)

• Read my translation:
  {For the concertmaster with string-instruments. A thought-provoking one by David. When the Ziphites went and said to Saul, “Is not David hiding himself among us?”}
  God, by Your Name save me, and by your might adjudicate for me! God, give heed to my prayer; give ear to the communications from my mouth. For foreigners have risen up against me, and ruthless men have tried to take my life. They have not set God before themselves. {Selah} Look, God is allied with me; my master is my soul’s support. The evil will turn back toward my opponents. In Your faithfulness, You will annihilate them. Let me offer a sacrifice with a spontaneous-offering to You; let me respond Your name, Yahweh, for it is good. Because, from every crisis {You} have rescued me, while my eye has seen into my enemies.

• Let us study this Psalm to learn from David how to call upon God in crises, how to make our case before God, how to speak to our heart in crisis, and how to praise God in the outcome.

vs. 1-2 Hear and Save

• Verses 1 and 2 both start with the word “God” in Hebrew. This is the first word out of David’s mouth! Let God be the first person you talk to about everything!

• And what comes next is a string of imperatives, commanding God to “save,” to “bring justice,” and to “listen to” his case.

  • But, who does David think he is, to start ordering God around like this? Does that strike you as disrespectful and presumptuous?

  • Well, it would be if this was the first verbal exchange between David and God, but it isn’t. There is a long history of promises God has already made to His people as well as a litany of commitments David has already made to God in the Psalms. This Psalm starts right in the middle of a longstanding relationship between David and God.

  • Let me try to illustrate that with an analogy:

    • Suppose I, as the pastor of Christ The Redeemer Church, were to walk into the local fire station and say, “Hey you, call my wife and tell her I’ll be late for dinner. And you, make me a cup of coffee. And you, turn the heater up; it’s too cold in here. And the rest of you, paint that fire-engine K-State-purple, make it look like you live in Manhattan Kansas! Now step lively, boys.” They would all look at me like I was crazy, right? I have no right to tell them what to do or what color to paint their fire trucks!

    • But say our church building caught on fire, and the fire engine came roaring up to the parking lot, and, as the firefighters came pouring out of their trucks, I, as the pastor of the church met them at the door and said, “There’s somebody trapped in the bathroom! Quick get them out! And, by the way, the fire is in the kitchen, so you might want to start there!” Would the firemen rock back on their heels and say, “Whoah, what right to you have to tell us what to do??? Ask nicely and then maybe we’ll consider it.” No! They would dash for the bathroom and train their water-hoses on the kitchen, just like I told them to do. Why? Because that is their job to rescue people and property from fires, and I’m just helping them do their job efficiently. Furthermore, they came, in the first place, because our church (presumably) has a civil contract with the fire department that, as long as we are in a proper organizational relationship with the county, they are obligated to share their fire-fighting resources with us if we call them for help.

  • Of course all analogies break down at some point, but perhaps that can help illustrate why David has the audacity to start ordering God around right from verse one. It is God’s job (at least one of His jobs) to save His people, and there is already a covenant in place by which God has obligated His resources for salvation whenever David asks for help. That covenant was articulated earlier by Hanna and David (and later by Solomon) in the following terms:

    • 1 Samuel 2:10 “...Yahweh will judge the ends of the earth and give strength to His king and lift the horn of His Anointed One.” (NAW)

    • Psalm 20:6 “...Yahweh causes to save His anointed one; He will answer him from the heavens of His holiness with the saving mightinesses of His right hand.” (NAW)

    • 2 Chronicles 20:9 “If disaster comes upon us – sword, judgment, pestilence, or famine – we will stand before this temple and in Your presence (for Your name is in this temple), and cry out to You in our affliction, and You will hear and save.” (NKJV)

• The phrases “Save by your name” and “Vindicate/Adjudicate by Your might” are synonymous parallels, so “save” means basically the same as “judge.”

  • This “vindication” involves both punishment of the ungodly and blessing of the godly³.

    • An example of judging as punishment of the ungodly is Psalm 110:6 “He shall judge among the nations, He shall fill the places with dead bodies, He shall execute the heads of many countries.”

    • An example of judging as blessing the godly is Psalm 135:14 “For the LORD will judge His people, And He will have compassion on His servants.” (NKJV⁴)

    • Psalm 9:2-9 mentions both sides of judgment: “I will be happy and exuberant in You. I will play music about Your preeminent Name - While my enemies turn back. They will stumble and perish before Your face, For You effected my justice and my adjudication; You sat on the bench, judging righteously. You repulsed nations; You destroyed the wicked – You obliterated their name forever and ever! As for the enemy, [his] swords were finished off indefinitely; You even uprooted [his] cities. The memory of them perished noisily, But as for Yahweh, He will be in office forever; He has prepared His bench for the judgment. And He Himself will judge the world with righteousness; He will adjudicate for peoples with things that are right. And Yahweh will be a stronghold for the one who is beaten down, a stronghold for times when there is a crisis.” (NAW)

• I find it curious that David would ask to be “saved” and “adjudicated” by God’s “name” and God’s “might,” as though there were some personal distance between the “God” he was calling upon and the agent who would actually do the “judging” and “saving.”

  • Perhaps David is just being poetic by designating the person of God by His “name” and His “might,”

  • but I can’t help but be reminded of the New Testament realities that there is a second person to the Trinity who is “the savior of the world” (John 4:42) and “the man appointed by God to judge the world” (Acts 17:31).

  • His very name Jesus/Yeshua’ means “He saves” (Matthew 1:21), and the apostles preached that “...whoever calls on the name of the LORD Shall be saved… Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 2:21 & 4:12, NKJV)

  • 1 Cor. 1:18 “For the word – the one of the cross – to those who are being destroyed is stupidity, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (NAW, cf. Eph. 1:13-23)

  • Whether or not David understood who Jesus would be, ultimately, what he is asking for is for Jesus! And Jesus is who we should be asking for as well!

• Now, it’s all well and good to follow David’s example and ask Jesus to save and bring justice, but should we follow his example in v.2 of asking God to hear our prayer?

  • Does God not answer prayers if you forget to ask Him to listen?

    • And, if we have to ask Him to listen, then wouldn’t it be better if we asked Him three or four times to listen – instead of just once or twice? Would He listen better if you asked him six or seven times?

    • Also, isn’t God omniscient? Can’t He understand everything everybody says? If so, why would David have to command God to give ear to what he’s about to say?

    • Moreover, God already had a special relationship with David. Wouldn’t God naturally want to heed anything David said? What’s going on here???

  • I suggest that prayer is more for us than it is for God⁵.

    • Jesus said in Matthew 6:8 that God knows what you need “before you ask” for it, and yet He still gave us the Lord’s Prayer, so it is clearly His will that we pray, even though He already knows what we’re going to ask for.

    • And God hears every word you say. You don’t have to earn His attention by chanting formulas over and over again. (That’s what the priests of Baal did, not the prophets of God!)

    • So, how many times do you need to say, “Hear my prayer, O God”? I’d say you need to say it as many times as it takes for you to believe that He is listening. It’s not to get Him to listen to you, it’s to get you to believe that He is listening. And once is enough, but sometimes we’re in such a spiritual struggle that we need a couple more times before we’re ready to pray, and that’s o.k. too.

    • Maybe another analogy can illustrate this: I love my wife, and when she speaks, my mind tunes in to what she says because my relationship with her is so important to me, so in situations where it’s physically possible to hear her, I hear her, and I love her so much that I will respond, to the best of my ability, to whatever she says. But if she squares up to me and looks me in both eyes and says, “Please pay close attention,” well then whatever she says comes through with triple underlining, and I will give special attention, but that is not necessary for everyday communication. I think that communicating with God is something like that.

  • And, not only did David pray for God to hear him⁶ in this Psalm, he also proclaimed in other Psalms that God did indeed hear him, for instance, Psalm 6:8-9 “Turn away from me, all workers of iniquity, for Yahweh has heard [the] sound of my outbreak. Yahweh has heard my prayer. Yahweh has received my prayer!” (NAW)

• Now that David has framed his prayer in the first two verses as a plea to the Divine Judge for deliverance, he next lays out the problem of his adversary that he is seeking to be saved from:

v. 3 Why The Threat Demands Intervention

• In our court system, if someone poses a serious enough threat to you, you can go to a judge and ask for a restraining order which requires them to stop threatening to harm you, on pain of legal consequences. Now, David didn’t have any earthly judge he could go to, because King Saul had authority over all the judges in Israel, and King Saul had already decided to have David killed. So the only judge left to whom David could appeal was God Himself!

• But judges can’t intervene will-they-nill-they in interpersonal conflicts. If you go before a judge to get a restraining order, you have to convince them that you really are in danger. So that’s what David does here, as he appeals to God to save him.

• He starts out with a loaded term: “foreigners/strangers.”

  • Now, if he’s talking about Ziphites here, they were not technically “foreigners;” they were Judeans descended from the famous Caleb who had conquered the Promised Land with Joshua.

  • I think the reason David chose this loaded term has to do with affinity to living in covenant with God⁷. Saul had abandoned his relationship with God, and the Ziphites, by aligning themselves with Saul, were taking a religiously-foreign stance against David and thus against all who were faithfully walking in obedience to God.

  • The way David ends verse 3 confirms this: They are “strangers” Why? “Because they have not set God before them.”

    • “...There is no fear of God before his eyes,” David had written of the “wicked” earlier in Psalm 36:1.

    • Psalm 52:7 “Look at the mighty man! He is not setting God be his stronghold, rather he is trusting in the abundance of his riches; he has been strong in his destructive desires.” (NAW)

    • Conversely, those who are friends of God, what do they do? Psalm 78:6-7 They “...declare [God’s law] to their children. That they may set their hope in God, And not forget the works of God, But keep His commandments.” (NKJV)

• Now, the other word that David uses to describe the threat against him in v.3 is translated “violent/ruthless/fearsome/tyrannical/oppressor⁸”

  • It was certainly tyrannical, ruthless, and violent of King Saul to send thousands of troops again and again into the wilderness of Judea to hunt David down and kill him, when David had done nothing wrong.

  • 1 Sam. 23:14-15 “Thus David resided in the wilderness in the strongholds, then resided on the hill in the wilderness of Ziph. Meanwhile, Saul sought for him all his days, but {Yahweh} did not deliver him into his control. Now, David realized that Saul had come out to take his life away, and David was in the wilderness of Ziph, in the forest.” (NAW)

  • So David is crying out to God: Special forces are combing the Judean hills, trying to find me and “take my life”! This is why you need to intervene and save me!

  • Psalm 38:13 “And those who seek [to end] my life have struck hard; and those who pursue evil [against] me have declared destructive-desires; they meditate on deceptions all day [long].” (NAW)⁹

• In this sense, David is a type of Christ, whose king (King Herod) also commissioned the army to seek His life and kill him (in Bethlehem), but whose life was secreted away and preserved¹⁰.

• You too need to pray for God to save you, because Satan, the enemy of your soul, is ruthless and he’s out to get you. Hopefully he hasn’t incited the Army after you, but, as

  • 1 Peter 5:8-10 says, “Be alert; be awake! Your opponent, an accuser, goes around like a lion, roaring, seeking for someone he might swallow down. You solid ones in the faith must stand against him, knowing the same kind of sufferings to be consummated by your brotherhood in the world. And after y'all have suffered a few things, the God of all grace who called you into His eternal glory in Christ Jesus will Himself renew you, He will confirm, strengthen, [and] establish.” (NAW)

  • “Even so,” said Jesus in Matthew 10:21-22, “brother will deliver brother over to death, and a father [will do the same to his] child, and children will rise up against parents and put them to death, and it will continue to be that you are hated by all on account of my name, but the one who has persevered into the end, this one will be saved.” (NAW)

• So, now that David has cried out to God to save him, and laid out his case before God of why he needs God’s salvation, David now turns his heart to review...

vs. 4-5 Who God Is And What He Will Do

• David first says that God is his “helper.”

  • Now, when we use the word “helper” nowadays, it is often a diminutive term,

    • when you are repairing the car, and your child hands you a tool that you don’t need at the moment, you still coo that he’s being “Daddy’s helper,”

    • or when you are baking, and your kid sticks their hand in the batter and makes a mess, you still call her “Mommy’s little helper.”

    • And, unfortunately, that gets projected onto the institution of marriage, since the Genesis 2 title for Eve includes the word “helper,” conjuring up the image of wifey as “hubby’s little helper.”¹¹

  • But, in the Bible, a “helper” is more like what we would nowadays call an “ally” – someone with power to really help you in areas where you have needs.

    • For instance, in 1 Kings 20:16, the Syrian kings who went to war alongside Ben-Hadad to fight against Israel were called Ben-Hadad’s “helpers.” But God’s help is even greater:

    • Psalm 37:39-40 “...the salvation of righteous men is from Yahweh; He is their strength in a time of crisis. Yahweh will also help them and deliver them. He delivers them from wicked men and saves them because they have taken refuge in Him.” (NAW, cf. Psalm 30, 40:17, etc)

    • Psalm 118:7 “The LORD is for me among those who help me; Therefore I shall see my desire on those who hate me.” (NKJV) Pretty effective help, wouldn’t you say?!

    • Isaiah 41:10 God says, “fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I chose you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” and the prophet responds in Isaiah 50:7 “the Lord Yahweh will help for me, therefore I will not be humiliated, therefore I have set my face like the flint and I know that I will not be shamed.” (NAW)

    • And so we read in the book of Hebrews that Jesus is the Christian’s divine ally, “for He Himself has suffered, having been tested; by such means He is able to come to the rescue with those who are being tempted… So we may boldly say: ‘The LORD is my helper; I will not fear. What can man do to me?’” (NAW, Hebrews 2:18, 13:6)

    • Is the Lord your helper?

    • By the way, the word “Lord” which David uses in v.4 is the Hebrew word for a lordly “master” who has the means to help those under his care.

  • “He points, as it were, with the finger, to that God who stood at his side to defend him; and was not this an amazing illustration of the power with which faith can surmount all obstacles, and glance, in a moment, from the depths of despair to the very throne of God? He was a fugitive amongst the dens of the earth, and even there in hazard of his life — [yet] he speaks of God as being near to him! He was pressed down to the very mouth of the grave; [yet] recognizes the gracious presence of God! He was trembling in the momentary expectation of being destroyed; [yet] he can triumph in the certain hope that Divine help will presently be extended to him!” ~J. Calvin, 1554 AD

  • “[W]hat matters the number or violence of our foes when he uplifts the shield of his omnipotence to guard us, and the sword of his power to aid us? Little care we for the defiance of the foe while we have the defence of God.” ~Ch. Spurgeon, 1885 AD

• David also makes the comment in v.4 that his Lord is besomkey nefshi‎¹².

  • The KJV renders that more accurately than any other English translation with, “He is with them that uphold my soul.”

  • However, the NASB, NIV, and ESV follow the older Greek, Latin, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Syriac manuscripts that drop the “with them” and just read, “The Lord is the One who sustains my soul/is the upholder of my life.” And while David certainly had allies among his mighty men, God was his most significant supporter.

    • Psalm 37:17 “...the arms of wicked men will be broken, but Yahweh upholds those who are righteous…. 24 When he falls, he will not be thrown off, because it is Yahweh who is holding up his hand.”

    • Psalm 3:5-7 “As for me, I laid down and I slept; I woke up because Yahweh upholds me. I will not be afraid of the myriads of a people which are in place against me [all] around. Rise up, Yahweh, Save me, my God…” (NAW)

    • Psalm 145:14 “The LORD upholds all who fall, And raises up all who are bowed down.” (NKJV)

  • Like our salvation, the “salvation” and “help” of which David speaks in Psalm 54 is not only temporal – to preserve physical “life” from “violent” men, but also spiritual – to “uphold” the “soul.” Saul and the Ziphites were interested in political power – in externals that are only temporary, but David found in God blessing both for this life and for eternity for his soul. (Augustine)

  • “...we shall have such help in Him that we need not fear any power engaged against us. Though men and devils aim to be our destroyers, they shall not prevail while God is our helper... God, who will in due time save his people, does, in the mean time, sustain them and bear them up, so that the spirit he has made shall not fail before him.” ~M. Henry, 1714 AD

• In v. 5, David considers what his “powerful” and “loyal” “master” can do to “help” him:

  • There is some dispute over whether “The evil” in v.5 is the subject or the object of the verb “turn back/recoil/recompense/reward/return,” but either way,

    • whether David is stating the moral axiom that evil ultimately harms evildoers

    • or the theological axiom that God will punish evildoers,

    • it is a faith statement that the evil being done to him now will one day be troubling the evildoers rather than him, because God will bring justice to bear on the situation.

  • David has complained before¹³ about the disorientation he has experienced from these “opponents/enemies/foes” in Psalm 5 and Psalm 27, and he will say again of them in Psalm 56:2 “My opponents trample me all day long, indeed there are many fighting against me” (NAW)

  • They are trying to annihilate David, but, by faith, David says in v.5 that God is going to annihilate them instead! He uses the same word to assert this truth¹⁴ again in:

    • Psalm 73:27 “For indeed, those who are far from You shall perish¹⁵; You have destroyed all those who desert You…” (NKJV) and in

    • Psalm 94:21-23 “They gather together against the life of the righteous, And condemn innocent blood. But the LORD has been my defense, And my God the rock of my refuge. He has brought on them their own iniquity, And shall cut them off in their own wickedness; The LORD our God shall cut them off.” (NKJV)

  • In the N.T., the apostles had their share of opposition that they had to deal with too:

    • In Philippians 3:18-19, Paul wrote, “[There are] many... enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame – who set their mind on earthly things.” And later in 2 Timothy 4:14 he wrote, “Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm. May the Lord repay him according to his works.” (NKJV)

    • Peter wrote in 2 Peter 2:9 “...the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment…” (NKJV)

    • and Jude wrote, “...The Lord cometh with myriads of His holy ones to execute justice against all men and to lay out a case against all the ungodly [among them] concerning all their works of ungodliness which were ungodly and concerning all the harsh things that ungodly sinners uttered against Him." (NAW, Jude 1:14-15)

    • You think those apostles were vindictive? Consider what Jesus said in His parable of the talents in Luke 19:27 where the king, representing Jesus, says, “[Now] bring here those enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, and slay¹⁶ them before me.” (cf. Luke 1:67-75, Heb. 10:12-13)

    • So, whenever you start feeling like evil is getting out of control, fight your fear by reminding yourself, like David did, that God will see to it that evil is annihilated and justice is done, because God is faithful.

  • Notice in Psalm 143:12, God “annihilates my enemies” WHY? Because He is “merciful,” and here in Psalm 54:5, God “annihilates them” WHY? Because He is “faithful/true.” God is faithful to His own promises to bless and protect His people, therefore He intervenes to stop our enemies from destroying us.

    • Maybe there are antagonistic people at work or at school that you feel are out to get you fired - or get you flunked.

    • Maybe there is a family member that just always seems to be against you.

    • For some of our soldiers it may be actual enemies with guns and bombs.

    • I’d say it also applies on the highway when there are reckless drivers on the road!

  • When you come up against opposition that is scary,

    • will you remind yourself, like David did, that God will be “faithful/true” to you?

    • And will you, in faith, ask God to “annihilate” that threat before it annihilates you?

    • And then, will you leave it in His hands and praise Him? That’s what David does in...

vs. 6-7 What I will do

• The spontaneous/freewill offering that he offers to God consisted of a sheep or a goat (Lev. 22), as well as measures of flour, oil, and wine (Num. 15). It was a sacrifice that God did not require, but which someone who wanted to show special thanks to God could offer, voluntarily.

• David also purposes to respond with “thanks/praise” to the LORD, and David’s talent for praise in the Psalms is legendary!

  • Psalm 7:17 “I will respond in thanks/praise to Yahweh according to His righteousness, and I will play music about the name of Yahweh the Most High.” (NAW)

  • Psalm 52:9 “I will thank You forever for what You did, and I will hope in Your name because it is good in the presence of Your godly ones.” (NAW)

  • Psalm 116:17 “I will offer to You the sacrifice of thanksgiving, And will call upon the name of the LORD.” (NKJV)

• And this “name” to which David gives praise in v.6 is the same “name” that he had called upon in v.1 to “save” him.

  • “None can praise the Lord so well as those who have tried and proved the preciousness of his name in seasons of adversity... [and] we are never so holy or so happy as when our adoration of God abounds.” ~Ch. Spurgeon, 1885 AD

• Now, in the New Testament, singing and speaking the praises of God and doing works of service for Jesus are how Christians do what David did in verses 6-7.

  • In the New Testament, the Greek word for “giving praise/thanks” takes on a more-specific meaning of “declaring out loud” a particular truth, for instance Romans 15:9 “I will [praise]confess You among the Gentiles, And sing to Your name.” and Phil. 2:10-11 “...every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (NKJV)

  • Also, the work of elders in leading the church is called “voluntary¹⁷,” using the same Greek word found in the Greek translation of Psalm 54:6.

  • and 2 Corinthians 9:7 uses synonyms to describe our attitude in our financial giving to the church: “So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver.” (NKJV)

• Finally, David gives two reasons why he will offer his spontaneous thanks-offering to God: First (in v.6) “because it is good” – God’s “name/reputation/character” is good¹⁸, and Second (in v.7) “because He has saved me.”

  • First, God is good. That is reason enough to praise Him.
    “Let it be gratuitously that He is loved and that He is praised. What is “gratuitous”? Himself for the sake of Himself, not for the sake of something else. For if thou praisest God in order that He may give thee something else, no longer freely dost thou love God. Thou wouldest blush, if thy wife for the sake of riches were to love thee, and perchance if poverty should befall thee, should begin to think of adultery. Seeing that therefore thou wouldest be loved by thy partner freely, wilt thou for anything else love God? … ‘Voluntarily I will sacrifice to Thee.’ ...Doth he say, ‘...because Thou givest me fruitful manors, because Thou givest me gold and silver, because Thou givest me… exalted dignity? Nay. But what? ‘For it is a good thing.’ Nothing I find better than Thy name.” ~Augustine, c.400 AD

  • The second reason why David will worship and praise God is in v.7, “Because from every crisis/trouble He has delivered me.”

    • We’ve heard this phrase “rescue me from every crisis” before, in 1 Samuel ch. 26, when King Saul came out a second time, at the invitation of the Ziphites, to hunt David down, and David discovered them and yelled (from a safe distance), “Indeed, Yahweh Himself will return to each man his righteousness and his faithfulness... and He will deliver me out of every crisis.” (NAW, 1 Sam. 26:23-24, cf. Psalm 34:6)

  • Psalm 54 ends with David saying literally, “and my eye looked at my enemies¹⁹.”

    • It is not a figure of speech found anywhere else in the Bible, but most English translators have added words like “his desire” or “with satisfaction” or “in triumph”

    • (If you’re reading a KJV or NASB, you’ll see that those words are in italics to indicate that they are added, but unfortunately, the NIV and ESV don’t tell you when they have added words.)

    • However, I think it makes fine sense without adding words; its prima facie meaning is that David “saw” his enemies and yet remained safe²⁰.

    • I think David is recalling the first time that Saul came out to hunt him down – when Saul had crept in to take a nap in the very cave where David and his men were hiding, and, “David's men said to him, ‘Look! Today is when Yahweh has said to you, “Look I am giving your enemy into your control, and you shall do to him according to what is good in your eyes!”’ And David got up quietly and cut off a flap of the tunic which belonged to Saul.” (1 Sam. 24:4, NAW)

    • 1 Samuel 24:4 is one of the few verses in the Bible that has the same key words that are in Psalm 54:7.

    • I think Psalm 54:7 is describing David the second time that King Saul came down to the wilderness to hunt him down. David recalls the first time Saul came down with the army, and he is remembering how God had enabled him to “see” his enemy and remain safe then, so now when the threat recurs, David is assuring himself that He’s going to see Saul again, and that God is going to save him again, and he’s going to praise God again.

    • And that’s exactly what happened: David walked up to Saul while Saul was asleep and took his spear, and then parleyed with Saul and his soldiers after they woke up. Then Saul apologized and promised not to harm David, and went back home!

  • We see a similar pattern in the New Testament where the Apostle Paul remembers God’s past deliverences to strengthen his faith for future deliverances:

    • 2 Corinthians 1:9-10 “...we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead, who delivered us from so great a death, and does deliver us; in whom we trust that He will still deliver us.” (NKJV)

    • 2 Timothy 4:17-18 “But the Lord stood with me and strengthened me, so that the message might be preached fully through me, and that all the Gentiles might hear. And I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion. And the Lord will deliver me from every evil work and preserve me for His heavenly kingdom. To Him be glory forever and ever. Amen!” (NKJV)

  • So when you come up against a crisis – maybe it’s a bill you can’t afford to pay, or maybe it’s threatening words someone has said to you, or maybe it’s some other strong emotion that threatens to overwhelm you – will you remind yourself of how God has delivered you from previous crises like that and trust Him to pull you through this one too?

• Jesus taught us to pray, “...deliver us from the evil.” (Matt. 6:13, NAW, cf. 2 Thess. 3:1-3) and then commanded us through the Apostle: “Do not be anxious about anything, but rather in everything by prayer and by petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known before God. And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 4:6-7, NAW)

Psalm 54 – Side-by side comparison of versions^A