THE LORD IS WATCHING - Psalm 34

We live in a world where the righteous are often persecuted receiving evil from the hands of the unrighteous. How are the righteous to respond? The Bible gives us many examples of how believers work through the pain of persecution and betrayal. When we go through similar trials, we can lay down our testimonies of God’s faithfulness beside those saints of old. Like the psalmist in Psalm 34, we should say, “I will bless the LORD at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul will make its boast in the LORD.” When we boast in what the Lord has done for us, the humble will hear it and rejoice. They will praise Him for who He is. The blessing that follows will be that together we can magnify the Lord and exalt His name! How has the Lord led you through similar trials? Shout it from your rooftop, Beloved!

I want to get to my Psalm—Psalm 35. (Just like the inheritance of all the saints, Psalm 35 may be yours as much as it is mine.) Before then, I want to continue looking at Psalm 34 today. We began looking at the verses from 15-22 in the previous post. The authors of Scripture frequently lay out for us the distinct differences in how the Lord deals with the righteous in contrast with how He deals with the unrighteous. In the Psalms of David, particularly, we can see that he is often found seeking refuge from his enemies. He can clearly see his enemies and their attacks. The fear and pain of danger is very real to him in each situation. What He does not see, but must remember, is that as he seeks refuge from his enemies, the Lord is watching.

The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous and His ears are open to their cry. The face of the LORD is against evildoers, to cut off the memory of them from the earth. (Psalm 34:15-16) Not only are the eyes of the Lord toward His beloved, listening for our cries of help in our pain, His face is against His enemies and ours, even to cut off the very memory of them from the earth. While the situation is intense and real at the time, one day even the memory of our enemies will fade from our minds. There is a day coming when there will no longer be enemies or evil. And the glory to come is so magnificent that all else that concerned us in this life will pale in comparison.

Before we continue, we must clarify who Scripture classifies as the wicked or the evildoers. We know that it is the sin nature in man that hurries over this classification as not possibly referring to its own character, but only that of the most wicked of men throughout history. Further, it is our fallen human nature that wants to believe that we are basically good people. We have been conditioned to believe that the wicked are like those Disney characters we love to hate. In Psalm 17:13-14, we see the psalmist beseeching the Lord to deliver his soul from the wicked described as men of the world, whose portion is in this life. The righteous have continually made the claim throughout Scripture that the Lord alone is their portion. My portion can mean my possession or my inheritance. (See Psalm 119:57; 142:5; Proverbs 30:8; Lamentations 3:24) Psalm 73:26—My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. When Potiphar’s wife attempted to seduce Joseph, he said, “How then could I do this great evil and sin against God?” People who are wicked are sinners—those who have sinned against God in His perfect holiness.

Psalm 51:5—(I was born wicked, so was David, and so were you.) Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. Romans 5:12—Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned. Adam, the head of the human race, sinned. All seed born from Adam carried the sin gene. God’s indictment against all mankind is found in Romans 3:10, 23— “THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE.” The verdict? …for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. The wicked lives his life as if God does not exist. Psalm 14:1—The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds; there is no one who does good. Notice he says in his heart that there is no God. He may even profess to believe in God or to follow God, but he lives as if there is no God who sees his actions and will judge his abominable deeds. He lives as if he gets away with his sin, never repenting or grieving these egregious offenses committed against a holy God. He is comfortable in that sin because he has no fear of God. One might say, “Well that’s not me. I try to live a good life.” That is not the right answer! That belief will condemn you to hell!  God never calls us to live a good enough life. He calls us to be holy as He is holy. If fellowship with God is to be restored, we must have a perfect standing before Him. We must live a perfect life. We must be born again. Ecclesiastes 7:20 says—Indeed, there is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good who never sins.

There was only One who ever lived a perfect life. There was only One who was ever righteous. He walked this earth fully man yet fully God. And He gave His life for those who would believe in Him.  Romans 5:8—But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. We were God’s enemies. We were the wicked before God’s eyes. Jesus said to the unbelieving Pharisees in His day in John 8:24—Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins. 1 John 1:8-10 says, If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us. The wicked rationalize their sin by calling it anything other than sin. They say they have an addiction wherein they are the victim needing rehabilitation instead of repentance. They say, “I will rise up to overcome. I’ll strive to do better. I’m a good person. Everyone else is doing it, so it can’t be that wrong.” I think of something in the news recently where a contestant on a reality television show who professed to be a Christian told her leery Christian admirer basically that she could sin any way she chose to, yet Jesus still loved her! Her heart had deceived her into believing this lie.

When we read Scripture with discerning minds to know and understand truth, no matter whether that truth convicts or confirms, we will clearly see the distinctions made between the righteous (those who have humbly put their trust in Christ alone to save them, who have been born again of righteous seed) and the unrighteousness who attempt to stand in their own righteousness which falls short of the glory of God and cannot stand before the bar of His judgment. All people are either in Adam or in Christ Jesus.

God’s people, believers, are those whose portion in this life and the life to come is God alone. God’s enemies are unbelievers, a.k.a. the wicked, whose portion is found only in this world. In verses 15-16 of Psalm 34 we see God watching both the righteous and the wicked. God’s eyes are toward the righteous and His ears are open to their cry. (God is spirit, so we know that mentioning these parts of the body are to help us understand something better about God’s character.) At the same time, God’s face is against evildoers. God stands ready to protect and defend His children. Those trials they go through in this world—as they make God their refuge—will result in eternal rewards. (We may be tempted in a trial to question the value of eternal rewards. When we step into eternity, however, they are going to be of utmost importance to us!) At the same time God is watching over His children, He is watching the evildoers as they accrue for themselves judgment and punishment for all eternity. The believer’s eternal life begins at the new birth, and he or she will live forever to the glory of God. The wicked lives to make a name for himself—living for his own glory on earth—but God will cut off the very memory of him from the earth.

In verses 15-18, we can see the promises to the godly: The Lord’s presence and care. Even in the deepest, darkest pit where everyone else has forgotten you, (like that experience of Joseph) we can know that God sees us. He hears our cries as a mother hears the distinct cries for help from her own child in distress. He is near and is able to deliver at any time, and He saves those who are crushed in spirit. He will not allow any trial He sends to crush our spirit. At the same time, He also knows that He must break us in our pride if we are to turn to Him as our refuge. Isaiah 57:15—For thus says the high and exalted One who lives forever, whose name is Holy, “I dwell on a high and holy place, and also with the contrite and lowly of spirit in order to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. The Lord is near us. This is radical grace, Beloved! It is shocking and should be hard for us to wrap our heads around. Holy, Holy, Holy God Almighty has established an intimate love relationship with sinful me. Why? Only because of His grace and mercy. How can I believe this? Because it was He who sought me out in this world, pursuing me when I wanted nothing to do with Him, opening my eyes to my own sinfulness and my need for a Deliverer who would rescue me. It was He who caused my heart to then know that I was created for that purpose. How could I ever doubt that He watches over me to protect and defend? This is an anchor that holds my soul from drifting into doubt in times of suffering. Bad things happen to God’s children. We are broken and crushed, but the Lord is near!

God employs a patient method in ruling over mankind giving man much liberty to do evil. When sin does not come crashing down on his evil deeds, his human nature rationalizes the false belief that he has gotten away with his sin. But God is watching and recording every thought, word, and deed. He is also watching over His own elect to deliver them. Listen…He is able to deliver His elect, even if they are the very ones persecuting His children. Saul/Paul is a prime example. When they were about to be thrown into Nebuchadnezzar’s fire pit, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego told the king that the God who they served was able to deliver them from the furnace of blazing fire. They were confident that He would deliver them out of old Nebby’s hand. But here are the strongest words of faith, “But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” We know that eventually the narcissistic king was able to see God’s glory for himself.

Our greatest privilege we often take for granted until times of trouble is that we can cry out to the Lord and know He hears us. He is right there with us and sees everything that is going on. We can know that God is able to deliver and that we will be delivered. We will not be kept from suffering in this life because all suffering ultimately is the consequences of sin in a fallen world, but the Lord promises to sustain us and to deliver us.

Why should I feel discouraged, why should the shadows come, why should my heart be lonely, and long for heaven and home when Jesus is my portion? My constant friend is He: His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.