Redeemed and Radiant
OF DAVID, WHEN HE CHANGED HIS BEHAVIOR BEFORE ABIMELECH, SO THAT HE DROVE HIM OUT, AND HE WENT AWAY.
1 I will bless the LORD at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth.
2 My soul makes its boast in the LORD; let the humble hear and be glad.
3 Oh, magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together!
4 I sought the LORD, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.
5 Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed.
6 This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him and saved him out of all his troubles.
7 The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.
8 Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!
9 Oh, fear the LORD, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack!
10 The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.
11 Come, O children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD.
12 What man is there who desires life and loves many days, that he may see good?
13 Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit.
14 Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.
15 The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry.
16 The face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth.
17 When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.
18 The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.
19 Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all.
20 He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.
21 Affliction will slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned.
22 The LORD redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.
As we are in a new building and clearly a new season as a church, it caused me to reflect some on the journey we have been on. In 2016 Amanda and I started thinking about replanting a church. One of the influential ideas that the Lord used in my life was this, “What does a dying church tell the community about the glory of God?” We felt the Lord calling us to do this. If we knew how hard it was going to be we would not have come. But the Lord has been faithful through it.
We had a few very hard years in the beginning separating from the past and past ministries. We had some related ministries of the church that had outgrown the church, drained the church’s energy and we needed a peaceful way of settling. We went through a Christian mediation process to get traction and we were able to separate and redefine. We were hopeful of getting things resolved and felt confident we would be separating the church from those ministries and that we would be renaming and relaunching.
New church names were flowing. We wanted to something to make sense of our journey as a church. We had been through rough times, but felt God was leading us through it and wanted something that would tell the community how God worked here. The leading names: New Life, New Branch, New Hope. I had my favorite and even secured the domain name for it, and then we started a series on the psalms.
I taught on this passage. One of my favorite verses is:
6 This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him and saved him out of all his troubles.
What follows it is
Those who look to the Lord will be Radiant their faces will never be covered with shame.
I began to think of it and what we had been through. It just made sense of what we had been through. It gave a powerful story for others to hear. We went through a dark season, ministry and life didn’t go the way it was planned and expected. It seemed to me there might be people in our area for whom their life, the faith journey didn’t go as they expected.
Big Idea
When people in darkness turn to God
He rescues them and makes them radiant.
- God hears and rescues His People
This psalm is a celebration of God delivering David out of a bad situation.
OF DAVID, WHEN HE CHANGED HIS BEHAVIOR BEFORE ABIMELECH, SO THAT HE DROVE HIM OUT, AND HE WENT AWAY.
This psalm has a superscription. It is a description of the setting or who wrote the psalm. Not all psalms have superscriptions but those that do illuminate the setting and purpose of the psalm. They are inspired details. This one tells us the psalm is about when David is delivered from king Abimelech. Lets talk about that.
David had to flee to Abimelech because crazy king Saul is trying to kill him. Saul is all about himself. He disobeyed God and God said he was going to take the throne from him. David is a young man after God’s own heart and God chooses him to be king of Israel. He is then prophet approved and anointed future king of Israel. Saul does not like this. If Saul can kill David, then Saul’s throne is secure. Saul puts the full court pressure on David. David is forced to flee his own country, his own people, his own army. He goes to serve another king– the king of the Philistines, who are his mortal enemy. David’s first victory was over the giant, goliath, a phillistine. Gath, one of the five royal cities of the Philistines. Abimelech means My Father the king, and was a historical title for Philistine kings.
And because David was such a notable soldier and commander of King Saul, he fears King Achish will want him dead, so he has to fake being crazy in order to live. Lets go to our enemy, I will fake being crazy, and if we are really good at it they may keep us alive and let us serve so we can come raid our homeland.
21:12 acted like a mad man, making marks on the doors of the gates and letting saliva run down his beard.”
That is not a great option. Sometimes life deals you situations in which you just don’t have many good options. Sometimes your bad decisions put you there. But sometimes its things outside your control. David did everything right. He did his job. Had a good attitude. Was seen by God as man after his heart. And Saul sees it, hates it, and tries to kill him. Just like Cain and Abel. Cain killed Abel because his own actions were evil and Abel’s were righteous (1 John 3:12). David is in this bad situation because of others.
David refuge. The fears from which the Lord delivered David (34:4 [MT 34:5]) are easy to imagine
David had opportunities to kill Saul. He didnt do it. Saul is the Lords annointed, and David will not harm him. He trusts God. His trust in God makes the suffering go longer. But God eventually hands the kingdom to David. He gets victory over his opponent. God is glorified.
This psalm is a celebration of God deliverance. Remember when David walked through this he didn’t know that God was going to deliver him. He didn’t know the end. And what God did for David is what God has done for his people in the past. There are things in this passage that remind of the exodus.
This is the exodus wandering. Encamp. Angel of the Lord led them. Troubles, deliverance. All themes of Exodus.
7 The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.
God delivered his people in the past. David is now saying God delivered him.
God delivers those who cant deliver themselves. They are poor and have nothing. afflicted, oppressed, poor, i.e., pertaining to being a lowly, needy state, as a class of persons of low status in a society, usually of persons in fiscal poverty, implying a lack of resource. David has no means or ability. Money brings power, opportunity, options. He has none of it.
Bible says we were dead in our sins. Dead is dead. Doesn’t get much deader than dead. We had nothing to offer and he breathed life into us. OUr hearts were cold, dark, and dead. But God made us alive. This is the gift of God.
If God can bring your dead heart back to life, then certainly he is able to improve your circumstances.
Delivers people from circumstances.
Delivers people from shame. The basic idea concerns the loss of self-possession through humiliation, embarrassment, or confusion. have dismay, be in confusion, be abashed, i.e., have feelings of anxiety and distress,disgraced, be ashamed, i.e., be in a state of low status and dishonor
The great warrior David, who killed Goliath, now driven from his own people whom he rescued. Has to leave all his possessions and go serve his enemy. No home, no hope, simply trying to survive. An embarrassing situation. He has no power to change his circumstances. Completely dependent on someone else. David is the victim. Embarrassed, helpless, depressed, a man in darkness.
But God delivers David from this, and when he does he delivers him from shame. The feeling of shame can push us toward guilt and isolation in which we separate ourselves and hide. But shame is good. It can be the feeling of our own inadequacy so we reach for help beyond ourselves and our own ability. We feel the poverty of ourselves and are brought into the wealth of what God has and can provide us with. Shame is removed.
It’s in that situation that David is crying out for help. He now says the Lord heard him. The Lord is close to the broken hearted. If you have had your heart broken then you know the Lord closer for it. You have realized there are things that you put too much trust in.
If you are in a bad place dont feel that God has abandoned you. Dont think something has gone wrong. King David, God’s annointed one, the man after God’s own heart, experienced such things too. In fact David’s obedience created the suffering. Just kill saul no problem. David chose to suffer rather than disobey God and vindicate himself.
When people turn to God he is able to deliver them. Note in this psalm David turned to God. He didnt rely on himself. He didnt abandon God’s word and say Im doing it my way. He trusted. Sought God and his word. And was faithful to do what God spoke to him. So many people today get in trouble, they quit praying, quit reading the word, quit going to church and then wonder why God is silent. You quit doing the things he calls you to. You are ignoring him. Turn to God. God can deliver you.
- Makes them Radiant
God takes them out of that bad situation and changes them completely. He makes them radiant. Being radiant involves more than David going back to his people and claiming the throne.
There is a great redemptive reversal. The one in shame is made radiant. The humble is exalted. The proud are brought low.
Radiant. Nahar. River, stream. Used 120 times in the OT. The noun. for torrents of water in various similes. The rivers of Eden are named and the two larger ones easily identified.
-This verb signifies “to be light,” “to shine” as a lamp. shine, beam (Aramaic) (NH id., especially in deriv.; Assyrian nûru, light, Dl 440; Arabic daytime; (nhar) shine—beam, be radiant, figurativel of joy
What. David is exiled from his people. Lost everything. How is that going to happen? God is able to do it. David is blessed wherever he goes and in the struggle to serve God he will keep growing in power. No matter what Saul does to preserve himself and kingdom he keeps loosing and is eventually killed in battle.
God redemptively reverses David’s situation and make his shine.
- They looked unto him, and were lightened: and their faces were not ashamed. (Psa 34:5 KJV)
- Altar “They looked to him and they beamed and their faces were no longer dark.
Jesus is the light of the world. He can light his people. Radiant, nahar, with water, Water is often a symbol of the spirit in the Bible, particularly the OT. Jesus said rivers of water coming out of them. John 7:37-39.
David goes from a dried up fallen branch to a flourishing nourishing river of life. **You might even be led to think that God did something in the suffering that made him into someone he could not have been without the trial.** The trial had a part to play in him becoming Radiant. God was shaping him thorugh it all.
2 Cor 4:16 For our light and momentary trials are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
David experiences this and he wants others to know what God has done. A unique feature of this psalm is that it is not theoretical. It is not hypothetical. It is experiential. It is what David experienced. And he is now telling others because he believes that what God did for him, God can do for you.
He offers hope to others. Are you in a bad situation. Turn to the Lord. He can help you. It’s a process.
I wish our church changed right away. It has taken time to get ourselves out of a bad situation. Do you know people who are in a bad situation? It may take time. Jesus can change their heart right away. But their circumstances may take time to change.
The one in darkness is now telling others goodnews!
Invitation. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Taste is a sample. And yet he is offering this. Come and see that the Lord is good. One who was shrouded in darkness is now inviting others to come and see. Come and taste. This is something that you have to have.
Taste is an experiment. Buffet.
Come and see what is going on. Come and see our church. He is offering them a taste. Part of our mission as a church.
Corporate. Individual.
In AD 165, while Marcus Aurelius was emperor, a plague struck the Roman Empire, and over a 15-year period, it killed nearly 33% of the population. At this time there were 45,000 Christians in existence, just 0.08 percent of the empire. Despite their numbers, their response to this pandemic won admiration and a greater following.
Dionysius, bishop of Corinth, reported: Most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy... Many, in nursing and curing others, transferred their death to themselves and died in their stead.
This stood in stark contrast to those outside the church. Dionysius continues: “But with non-Christians everything was quite otherwise. They deserted those who began to be sick, and fled from their dearest friends. They shunned any participation or fellowship with death; which yet, with all their precautions, it was not easy for them to escape.”2
Church and mission.
How has God changed your hard heart? If you cant explain that then you might not be a Christian.
Type
In this passage David is sharing his experience of rejection, abandonment by men and deliverance by God. What helped him understand his experience was knowing that God’s people had experienced similar, and more specifically God’s chosen deliverers had also gone through that. He remembers Moses, wandering through the desert, struggling with God’s people, constant hardship, and yet meeting with God in the tabernacle and his face shining so bright the people couldn't look at him. What you see here is a type emerges.
14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.
Type. “mark with an imprint, stamp a form,” the substantive typos properly refers to a mold for producing a shape, or a wooden stamp for making an imprint in clay,2 the stroke of a numismatic die, the engraving of seals, a figure that juts out;
Ceslas Spicq and James D. Ernest, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), 384.
This term is used for the model (Hebrew taẖnîṯ) of the heavenly temple that Moses is told to make (Exod 25:39, quoted at Acts 7:44; Heb 8:5). A typos, then, is an architectural or representational plan, as appears from a contract made with Theophilus, a painter from Alexandria, whereby the artist undertakes to decorate the vault of the house of Diotimus at Philadelphia “according to the model that the owner has seen.”
As you seek to understand the Old Testament, there are promises and covenants that God makes to further his plan of redemption. There are also types or pattern that lay a ground work and then find greater fulfillment in the new testament. Prophets, priest and kings are some of those main types. Moses was a prophet, who ruled and interceded. DAvid was a king who prophesied and interceded.
They follow a pattern in who they are and what they do. Moses and David both lay down their lives for others. There is a greater one, a greater deliverer, a greater anointed one, who will experience the rejection and abandonment of his people, and be faithful through it all. He would be the light of life so that when his people reject him their darkness can no more contain him than darkness can contain the sun. Jesus will be raised to new life, send his spirit to his people, and lead them in the path everlasting.
Theme and calling.
Part of following him will entail being like him, whereby his people willingly enter into the darkness of others in order to redeem them. They will lay down their lives for others. They do so because they know the darkness cannot hurt them. It will not hinder them.
We come to church for strengthening and encouragement. We also want to spur others on in the mission God has given us. Want to be like Jesus. Follow him in his example, his mission. Make a difference in the lives of others.
This is a pattern in scripture. It is how we sacrificially follow Jesus. Too many people today just want church to meet their needs. Its needs to be a place that provides your spiritual, relational, social, habbitual needs and or wants, and when church doesnt meet that we simply disengage. There is little sense of sacrifice. We dont want to be uncomfortable on inconvenienced. Following Jesus is inconvenient and uncomfortable, and unexpected.
14 Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.
There is an invitation too. God leads us through. Its way harder than you will ever imagine. But it is also better than you could ever imagine.
When God brings you through things you gain a greater confidence in him and in his ability to bring you through the next one. You also gain a greater confidence in his ability to bring others through hard times. That he can take away their fears and shame. We are watching the world run away from God. Its disturbing and grieving to see what people are doing. I ve grown weary and standing up and telling people not to go that direction. Culture has minimized the voice of the church. They dont want to hear it. We have to continue to be faithful to speak truth. But we also just might need to enter into the darkness and help people find their way out of it.
Men In Black. Eat me. The alien eats him, and as he is inside him he is able to blast his way out. He destroys the alien, saves the world. And taht is what Jesus did with death. If he is our Lord we just might follow him into the darkness of others, and watch his light shine in and through us.
We need to go to people. We need to invite them into our lives. Walk with them. Help them. This might be the biggest shift in the way we do ministry and groups. Some people are standing around waiting for a bunch of strong mature Christians to come in the door and instead its a bunch of broken poor people who are in a bad spot. We want to help them in. Take down hurdles that might keep them away and keep showing them the love of Christ. Help them taste. Help them see. Encourage them with these words.
Do you believe other people can experience what you have experienced?
Do you believe that other people can experience what our church has experienced?
Are you willing to be obedient to God even when it is hard, inconvenient, disappointing, even devastating. that is what it means to follow Jesus.
But it is also fruitful because God hears and delivers his people. Can make them radiant.
Let us exalt his name.
