with clarity under the unction and power of the Holy Spirit. Lord, may you minister your mercy and grace to your people. May your people hear the voice of the Good Shepherd. May they recognize his voice. May they be comforted. May you lead us into green pastures beside quiet waters. May your mercy follow us all the days of our life, even through the trials of the wilderness, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. I invite you this morning to turn with me in your Bibles to Psalm 34. Psalm 34. I have finished preaching through the material through 1 Samuel and the first part of 1 Kings regarding the life of David. And what I would like to do this morning is a capstone sermon on the life of David before we leave him. And Psalm 34 seemed like the best way to do that since in Psalm 34, David is reflecting upon his experience in the wilderness. And therefore, I'm gonna use Psalm 34 this morning as a lens. for looking back upon David's wilderness sojourn. And pray that this works. Psalm 34, please give attention to reading of God's word. 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. 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 around all those who fear him and delivers them. 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. Come, you children, listen to me, and 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. 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. 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. 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. And thus concludes the reading of God's Word. If we are really honest with ourselves, we would have to admit that at least our flesh longs for the good life, and I'm not necessarily talking about eternal glory. I'm talking about the good life in the here and the now. Now, we might disagree on what the good life looks like, but we have some kind of earthly vision, earthly dream of what we would like our lives to be like. here and now. For some of us, the good life is equated with living on a large acreage and being able to enjoy outdoor activities with loved ones and family and friends without disturbing your neighbors or your neighbors disturbing you. That's quite attractive. I used to dream of living on a property where I could walk out my back door and fish on a secluded trout stream, or maybe ride a horse or a motorcycle on my own property with friends, family members, children and Lord-willing grandchildren. For some people, living the good life is all about climbing the corporate ladder, being successful in your career, establishing a thriving business. For many of us, the good life includes finding fulfillment in your work, your marriage and family, spending time with the people you love. Many of these things are good things. In Psalm 34, David invites us to reflect upon the good life. David says, 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. That sounds a lot like the good life, In this passage, we find an invitation with the promise of blessing, and the blessing that David speaks of is found in the context of the wilderness. He's not speaking here of eternity. He's speaking here of tasting and seeing, being blessed in the midst of this wilderness sojourn, in the midst of our troubles, fears, and suffering. David invites us to taste and see that the Lord is good. When David speaks of tasting and seeing, I can't help but think of the children of Israel. They all passed through the Red Sea. They all ate the manna. They all drank from the river that flowed from the rock. and many of them grumbled against the Lord. In the midst of the hardships associated with living in the wilderness, many of the Israelites lack the faith required to taste and see that the Lord is good. That's the great challenge. I want you to think about this from the perspective of 1 Corinthians chapter 10, where Paul identifies this rock that the stream flowed from that gave them life. Paul identifies this rock as Christ. Think about this. Many, if not most, of the Israelites were not satisfied with the bread of life, the manna, and the water that flowed from the rock. of Christ. This is the great challenge of living by faith in the wilderness. It's only as we trust in the Lord, it's only as we learn to fear the Lord that we taste and see that the Lord is good. Apart from trusting the Lord, you will never comprehend God's blessing in the midst of your wilderness sojourn. You will never experience what it is to taste and to see and to feast upon God's faithfulness and his goodness and to be overwhelmed with his kindness in the midst of your troubles, apart from faith and learning to fear the Lord. Therefore, apart from trusting the Lord, you will never experience the good life that David speaks of. Do you understand why David uses the young lions as a foil for understanding the promised blessing? What's significant about the young lions? The young lions are at the top of the food chain in the Middle East. The young lions do not live in fear of becoming a tasty meal for a predator. They have no natural predators, unless you include man, the king of the jungle. The lions are going hungry. Things are not going well. The lion was the apex predator of the Middle East. He ruled the roost, and yet those who fear the Lord are promised that they will enjoy greater provision than the young lions. There are times when the young lions lack and suffer hunger. But those who trust in the Lord are provided with greater protection, security, and nourishment than the king of the jungle. For the Christian, the struggle to live the good life is a spiritual struggle. It's not a physical struggle. It's not a struggle based upon human achievement or IQ or ambition. It's a spiritual struggle. It's a struggle to believe, to taste and see that the Lord is good when life is difficult. Look at verse 19. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. You either believe that or you don't. You have to qualify that? As long as we live in the present evil world as pilgrims, as sojourners traveling to the better land. We are gonna suffer afflictions. This was certainly true of David's experience, and it needs to be stated that not all of David's afflictions were the result of David's sin against Bathsheba and her husband Uriah, because that's where people always wanna go. David's life would have been so much better if he hadn't sinned against Bathsheba and murdered her husband, which is true. He brought a lot of heartache upon himself. But it also needs to be stated that apart from that, David still suffered great afflictions that were not the result of his sin. And therefore, every affliction that you suffer in this life is not the result of your sin. In Psalm 34, David is reflecting upon the time in his life when he was quite literally forced to dwell in the wilderness because the king of Israel was seeking his life by means of the sword. And therefore, Psalm 34 predates David's sin with Bathsheba and Uriah. And therefore, you need to remove that from your mind. as we consider David's experience. This is prior to David's great fall with Bathsheba and Uriah. David refers to the time when he crossed over from the land of Judah and into the land of the Philistines for the sake of finding refuge among the Philistines. Now that might seem as a crazy idea, and in some sense it certainly is, but there was a logic David was convinced that Saul would never pursue him into the stronghold of the Philistines. And he was right about that. But in finding refuge among the Philistines, David was in much greater danger than if he had remained in the land of Israel. And the danger was both potentially physical as well as spiritual. I'm gonna give you A concrete example of this. There's gonna be times in your life when it's tough to come to church and to dwell among God's people. I'm at a point in my own life right now, I don't like being around groups of people. I don't wanna be around a crowd. I'm mourning, I don't want to deal with people. And yet here I am preaching this morning. I'd rather be home, I'd rather watch a service on my TV, I'd rather not have to say hi or interact with people. And I'll be really honest with you, there's been some times in my life when I've had better fellowship in a bar than I have in church. Because in a bar you can walk in and people don't care how you're dressed, they also care what you look like, and you can just talk. But sometimes when you come to church, you have to look a certain way. You have to act a certain way. And somebody says, how are you doing? You have to say politely, nice, fine, when you're really not doing nice or fine. David was attracted to live among the Philistines. It was a real attraction. And there's going to be times in your life when you face the same temptation. There's many times in your life when it would be easier to go to the bar than it would be to go to church. And that's not necessarily an indictment on the church. I'm just being really honest this morning. The attraction to live among the Philistines was a very real attraction to David. Because David knew that if he lived in the stronghold of the Philistines, there was no way Saul was gonna seek him. And therefore, in terms of his physical safety, that was taken away as far as David was concerned. Now, the Philistines might kill him. I'm not sure he always gave due consideration to that. But Saul was certainly not gonna seek him and pursue him. How do we know what was in David's heart? I mean David went and lived among the Philistines two different times in his life. Once in 1 Samuel chapter 21 after the whole incident with the priest and he's panicked and he flees to the land of the Philistines to Gog, King Achish and I mean he's just not thinking Straight. I mean, he's right. Saul's not gonna pursue him. But he's carrying Goliath's sword as he walks into Gath. And at some point it occurs to him, this is a really bad idea because Goliath was from the city of Gath. And there's a whole lot of widows in Gath mourning the death of their husbands and sons that would love nothing more than to see David executed in vengeance. Administered to. the man that the Hebrew women would sing about. Saul has killed his thousands, but David has killed his tens of thousands. I want that bugger. Nothing more than I'd love to see him strung up and hung, mutilated, his body quartered, whatever. Nothing I can imagine would be, he deserves all of it. The second time David, leaves the land of promise and he goes into the land of the Philistines, we know what he's thinking because it's recorded for us in 1 Samuel chapter 27 where, and David said in his heart, listen to what he says in his heart. Now I shall perish someday by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than that I should speedily escape to the land of the Philistines. And Saul will despair of me to seek me anymore in any part of Israel. David is saying, I know for a fact, if I go to the land of the Philistines, the whole pursuit of Saul is done. I don't have to worry about that anymore, because he's never gonna seek me among the Philistines. Do you know what it is to say in your heart this, Do you know what it is? That's the meditation of your heart. That's that speech, that talk you have, those conversations you have that nobody else gets to hear because they're private. They take place within the inner recesses of your heart and your mind where you converse with yourself and you have a discussion and you actually debate with yourself. Am I gonna do this or am I gonna do this? And you meditate on this and you meditate on this and you go back and forth. And that's where the real spiritual battle takes place in the Christian life. It's what do you say to yourself in your heart? What occupies your heart in terms of your thinking? That's where the battle, the most intense battle. Long before a man commits adultery with a woman, long before you act out in sin, there's something that's been going on in your heart, a battle, a struggle. And this is what we see here in David's life. Do you know what it is to say in your heart, It's just a matter of time. It's just a matter of time before Saul prevails. He only has to prevail one time, and I'm done. Only one time. He has the entire CIA working on his behalf. He has the entire military. He has the tax structure. He has unlimited resources, humanly speaking, and I have 400 men that complain that ran away because they owed money to the government. Grumblers! And now there's 600. And they got wives and families. When our hearts are not protected with the armor of truth, our thinking will be overcome with fear and doubt. David had become weary. He had come to the point where he questioned God's ability to save him from Saul's seemingly endless pursuit. Have you ever become so weary that it affected your faith, which affected your judgment. Have you ever come to the point where you didn't see a way forward and as a result you made a decision out of fear and doubt instead of faith? If you look at David's situation from a purely human perspective, from a logical, rational perspective, David is as good as dead. Saul has every advantage, humanly speaking, but herein lies the difference. David has received truth, a promise from the Lord. You're gonna be the next king of Israel. And from you, a greater king will come. And through that king, I'll bring salvation to my people. David has received that promise of salvation, that promise of deliverance. You will be the next king. But that's not what's occupying David's thought processes as he says to himself in his heart. Instead, he's thinking circumstantially. He's thinking about Saul. He's thinking about the intensity of the battle, and he's just thinking, there's no end to this, there's no end to this. Eventually, this is gonna end with Saul taking my life. You been there? Relate to that? That's what was going through David's mind when he left the land of Israel. David's heart was no longer armed, protected, guarded with the truth. This is what Paul speaks of in Ephesians chapter six when he talks about the armor of God, and the armor of God begins with being girded up in the truth, and at last, the sword of the Spirit, the word of truth. I have learned over the years the greatest protection I have in the ministry from my own thinking and my own discouragement is the Word of God. If I'm depressed on a Monday because I feel like Sunday was a total flop, the best thing I can do is open my Bible and read. Yes, it's good to exercise and all those other things, but the greatest protection I find is in the Word of God. And sometimes I do pretty good with that and sometimes I don't. But when you are no longer protected with the truth, you're vulnerable to your own logical thought, humanly speaking. Now in David's defense, logically he was correct. At some point, as David is going to Gath, it occurs to him that the Philistines are rather excited about this. He's carrying the Goliath sword, and he realizes, oh, this was a bad idea, and he pretends that he's insane, children. He's crazy, nuts. He lets drool run out of his mouth and go down his beard. He's scratching on the walls, right in the walls. Hebrews a bit ambiguous. But he's acting like a crazy man, and the servants of the king bring him before the king's court, and King Achish looks upon him and says, what on earth have you done? Why did you bring this crazy man before me? Is it not like there's not enough crazy men in the land of the Philistines that we need more? Get him out of here. Now, politically, All the servants of the king are in awe because they're thinking, we just handed you a gift politically. You have the opportunity here. You can do a public execution. We can have a huge celebration. From now on, we can have Dagon days when Dagon killed our greatest nemesis, King David, the one whom the Hebrew women sing about. I mean, what are you doing, king? They can't understand this, but this goes to show salvation belongs to the Lord, and regardless of how crazy the circumstances might be, the Lord is the one who saves. And his salvation is not always consistent with our thinking. That's tough for us, isn't it? It's remarkable, the political opportunity that this king passed up. We need to consider the following question. Why was this situation so different for David than when David faced Goliath? When David faced Goliath, he was a boy. He had childlike faith. David knew that the Lord had delivered him from the bear and the lion, so why wouldn't the Lord deliver the army of the living God from an uncircumcised Philistine. What had changed? The answer is relatively simple. David has been living in the wilderness for some time His family life, his life has been disrupted. He's not only responsible for his family, he's responsible for between 400 and 600 men and their families. By this point in time, David has had a lot more responsibility. Life has become a lot more complex, and the battle, the struggle is every day. The struggle is not an isolated conflict with a bear, a lion, a Philistine. David sees no end in sight. David has become preoccupied with the circumstances of his life, and he sees no light at the end of the tunnel. He is weary, he's exhausted. Instead of being preoccupied with the truth and the promise of salvation, the meditation of David's heart is upon his troubles and his responsibilities, and he's overwhelmed. In this psalm, there are very few things that the earthly-minded man, the unbelieving man, would associate with the good life. In this psalm, there are enemies, there are troubles, there are fears, there are many difficulties, but there is also the promise of blessing and deliverance. In the process of writing Psalm 34, David is reflecting upon his life in the wilderness. He's reminded of his afflictions, but more importantly, David is reminded of the many times that the Lord has delivered him. In fact, every time the Lord has delivered him from his afflictions. And this is why David writes Psalm 34. David wants to encourage and strengthen our faith by highlighting the truth, the promise of salvation and God's faithfulness. When our hearts are no longer preoccupied with this truth, and we're no longer protected and armed with this truth, yes, we are vulnerable, and yet God is still faithful. And I think one of the greatest examples of this is the second time David went into the land of the Philistines. He came with a mighty, a trained army, and he offered his services to the king, and he entered into a covenant, a treaty, with the Antichrist, a pagan king, and that king gave him a city, Ziklag, And from the base of that city, David carried out raids, and he led the king to believe that he was raiding in the south of Judea. And therefore, the king assumed he had become such a stench to the Israelites that he could never be their king. David so compromised himself through this legal covenant and his activities. How on earth could he ever become Israel's king? And this was not the enemy's doing. This was David's doing. This was David's doing. David so compromised himself. In fact, if the Lord had not prevented him from carrying through with his promise, he would have went to war with the Philistines against his own people in the very battle that Saul and Jonathan were killed on Mount Geboa. And David's hands would have been covered with blood, lifting his hand against God's anointing to King Saul and his son, his son that he had entered into a covenant with. And therefore there are times in our own lives that we have fought, we have sought out fellowship, we've sought out some type of business arrangement or some other kind of arrangement where we have so compromised ourselves. And at some point David realized he was compromised. But you know where his deliverance came from? It didn't come from David. And to me, the most encouraging part of the life of David is that even when David's heart was not armed with the truth, the promise of salvation, you'll be the next king of Israel. Even when David compromised himself, seriously compromised himself, the Lord was faithful. The Lord is faithful. And that's why I had to preach this this morning. Because if you're like me, in the midst of the wilderness, at some point you realize, you become aware of your own weakness. You become aware of your own sin. You become aware of the fact that you are not faithful. And where do you find comfort? Where do you find strength? Where do you find hope? Oh, may you feast upon the faithfulness of the Lord, the only one who is faithful. May you rest in his faithfulness. May you rest in his righteousness. Do you see why David begins this psalm by saying, 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. This is a very foreign concept in the contemporary American church. Have you noticed that in the American church, praising the Lord is so often associated with joy as if you cannot praise the Lord unless you are giddy with joy? But what about those times when you are suffering from physical infirmity or you're mourning the loss of a loved one? What about those times when you're in the pit? Do you realize how many of David's Psalms are inspired by affliction, discouragement, and life in the pit? You'd miss a major part of the Psalter if we didn't have the Psalms inspired by David's difficulties. The struggles of wilderness living. That's the context for so many of the Psalms. And therefore David is saying, even in the midst of our afflictions, even in the midst of our trials and our troubles, I will bless the Lord at all times. Did David always do that? I think I have a short right here, because if I touch this, it makes a funny noise. So I'll try not to do that. I'll keep this hand out here. The problem is you get too animated with this stuff. If you bump these cords and stuff, they... It's hard to not move when you preach. I'm not even Italian. Imagine Charlie Rossi. When we're truly convinced that something is good, we become preoccupied with it. Stick with me here. I don't have much longer to go. I remember being in college, and... I was about the furthest thing from being girl crazy that you ever met. I always figured girls were expensive, inconvenient, and trouble. So I tended to avoid them, and I would much rather spend time with a gun or a fishing pole. But I do remember going to a school play, and there was this girl who played Maria in the play, and she sang like a bird, and she was incredibly polite. and she was very attractive to me. And I remember coming to the point when this girl occupied my thoughts, and I became convinced that she was really good. When you become convinced that someone, something is really, really good, The meditation of your heart is occupied with what you think is really good. And eventually I married that girl. This is true of many of you who sit here. There was a woman, a man that you noticed and you became preoccupied with them. And you found yourself dwelling upon their manner of speech, their appearance, their goodness, their humor, their way of interacting with people. And you became fascinated with them. And the very thing you became fascinated with occupied your thoughts. and eventually your life is transformed, impacted by the very thing that you think is good. And so it is as our hearts are caught up and we taste and see that the Lord is good. Can you worship the Lord and not be convinced that he's good or faithful? I don't know how you can worship the Lord unless you have some conviction that the Lord is good and he's faithful. And therefore, the basis for worship and rejoicing is being convinced in your heart that God is faithful, that God is good. And you don't have to understand all the ways of the Lord in your life. In fact, you never will. Not in this life. All you have to know is that God is faithful and that he's good. And as you dwell upon his faithfulness, you dwell upon his goodness, and you taste and see that he's good, you worship him and you're transformed. Because you will be transformed by the very thing that you worship. If money is the object of your affection, money will find its way into every decision in your life and the meditation of your heart. If some other idol is the object of your affection, it will change you. Eventually. 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. Now how can this be? David was this great military man. He's on the battlefield. He saw many broken bones. You're gonna tell me that none of the soldiers that he fought with ever broke a bone, a finger, an arm, a leg? No way. And yet David says he guards all his bones, not one of them is broken. This is the passage that John applies to Jesus when the Roman soldiers have prepared to break the legs of the three men who've been crucified. When a man was crucified, he would use his legs to lift him up so that he could breathe. Without the use of his legs, the crucified man would suffocate and he would die. And when they came to break the legs of Jesus Christ, he was already dead in fulfillment of this prophecy. This is a reference to the salvation that God has promised through his Savior. whose legs would never be broken. Look at verse 22. The Lord redeems the soul of his servants, and none of them who trust in him shall be condemned, depending on what translation you are reading from. Your Bible may say, you shall never be put to shame, or you shall never be condemned. In the context of the Bible, being put to shame has to do with appearing before the Lord Almighty who is holy, holy, holy, and in his presence, you will never be put to shame for your sin. You will never appear before him naked, clothed in your sin, but rather your sin is as far as the east is from the west, and you'll appear before him clothed in the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ, forgiven. Never put to shame because you'll never be condemned. Because there is one who is good. There's one who is faithful. There is a king much greater than David. who is perfectly righteous, perfectly faithful, prophet, priest, and king. And he provides you with all that God has promised. Consider David's testimony. 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. When Moses looked upon the Lord, he was transformed. His face reflected the glory of the Lord. This is why he wore a veil. When you look to the Lord in faith, and you taste and see that he's good, your countenance is transformed by your knowledge of his goodness, his faithfulness. Listen as I read from verse five, and this is how I conclude. They looked to him and were radiant, and their faces were not ashamed. This is spoken by a man who committed adultery, murder, found refuge among the Philistines, entered into a legal treaty with a pagan Antichrist king. If this man can rest in God's faithfulness and his goodness, how about you? If this man, in the midst of all his afflictions, can taste and see that the Lord is good, how about you? May God be gracious to us, that we might hear the voice of the good shepherd, that he might conquer our hearts by his word and spirit, that we might rest that we might feast upon his faithfulness. Rest in Christ. Let us pray. Father in heaven, as we come before you on this Lord's Day morning, we understand that learning the fear of the Lord and tasting and seeing that you are good is something that is not accomplished by our striving. It's something that we cannot produce through human enterprise and ambition. Oh Lord, we are dependent upon your saving grace. We are dependent upon your sustaining grace. And we are dependent upon your preserving grace. Lord, may you be abundantly gracious to us, even when we are not faithful, even when we fail to protect ourselves and arm ourselves with the truth, with the promise, and the promises that Christ has secured for us and continues to extend to us. Oh, Lord, help us by the grace of God, to comprehend your kindness, your faithfulness, to taste and see your goodness. This we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Amen.