Psalm 54 as preached by Timothy O'Day.
How can you joyfully depend on the Lord in adversity?
1. Turn to the Lord more than men, including yourself (1-2)
2. Honestly reflect on dangers (3)
3. Meditate on the Lord's promises as they apply to your situation (4-5)
4. Praise the Lord with confidence (6-7)
Prayer: A Joyful Declaration of Dependence
Psalm 54
December 22, 2024
“Glorify yourself by helping us today; and help us by showing us your glory.”
A few weeks ago, I caught myself in a silly prayer. I felt insufficient to handle some problems that were before me. I was getting ready to go to a meeting and, reflecting on the problem that needed to be discussed, I felt even more insufficient. On top of all that, I was preparing to preach a passage of Scripture that felt very difficult to me.
As I was praying about all of these things, I said something to the effect, “Lord, I just want to be able to know what to say and when I should say it; I just want to know the right answers, have the right timing, and feel confident going into these situations.”
Praying is good, but that prayer wasn’t good. If you break down all that I was asking in that prayer, it could be summarized as this: God, I want to be sufficient in and of myself. I want to be an independent man who has no need of your wisdom and grace but instead be my own source of wisdom and grace. I don’t want to place my confidence in you, I want to have such great abilities that I feel confident in myself.”
Prayer is one of the most difficult activities in the Christian life because it cuts against our sinful nature so deeply. We don’t want to be dependent people. We want to be independent people. We view dependence as weakness and independence as strength. And who wants to be weak? None of us.
But who is actually weak? All of us. None of us are truly independent people. We were made to depend on the Lord and depend on the people he has placed around us. Life malfunctions when we try to live otherwise.
And one of the greatest indicators of whether we see ourselves as dependent or independent is when and how we pray.
Psalm 54 shows us what the prayer of a dependent man looks like. In this Psalm, one of David’s prayers is captured. As you read in the superscription of the psalm just above verse 1, this psalm is a song that puts to music one of David’s prayers that he wrote when the Ziphites went and told Saul that David was hiding among them. If you do not recall, this is a big deal because Saul was anointed as king of Israel, but then he had disobeyed the Lord, which resulted in God taking the kingdom away from Saul. Instead of Saul’s sons taking the throne after him, God chose David to be king after his death. Instead of accepting this, Saul continued to rebel against the Lord by seeking to kill David, so David went on the run. The fact that the Ziphites went to Saul to disclose David’s location was a very serious matter, but notice what David does in response to this threat: he prays. This does not mean that David did nothing at all (such as flee and find a new place to hide), but he know that if anything he did was to have success, the Lord must do it. In other words, when David found himself in a dangerous and hard situation, he remembered what is always true: he is not independent but dependent on God.
What would it look like for us to live and pray like this? That’s what I want us to focus on as we look at Psalm 54 today. I’ve got 4 points from this passage that will help us see how we can pray as dependents on the all-good, wise, and sovereign God.
First, turn to the Lord more than men (even yourself) (1-2)
As this psalm begins, notice what David asks God to do in this prayer in contrast to what David himself does. In verse 1, David calls on the Lord to save and vindicate him. In verse 2, to hear him. In Verse 4, David says that God is his helper and upholder of his life. In verse 5, he says that the Lord will save him and, in verse 6, that the Lord delivers him. In contrast, what does David do? He asks God to do all of these things, trusts him to do these things, and celebrates through worship that God does these things. In short, David has great confidence in what the Lord can do and will do.
You Will Trust, But Who and What?
You are going to trust someone or something. When you face adversity of any kind, you run to what you trust will actually bring you relief and help from trouble. David runs to the Lord, and must do this as well.
But why should we do this?
Look at what David says in verse 1, “O God, save me by your name.” Does that strike you as a strange expression? Do you remember when we read Exodus 34:6-7 earlier? In that passage, Moses asks the Lord that he may see him, but the Lord tells him that no one can see his glory and live. So, instead of seeing him with his eyes, he tells Moses that he will give him another great privilege: God’s glory will pass by him and he will say his name. Here is what he says in case you do not remember:
“The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children to the third and fourth generation.”
That’s a long name because it is more than just a name. Here the Lord is giving a description of himself so that Moses can see him as he really is. He is gracious, patient, merciful, loving, forgiving, and yet just.
This is exactly why David trusts the Lord and why he is happy to depend on him. You can see that this is what he is thinking because in verse 2 he writes, “vindicate me by your might,” which is a call for the Lord to examine David. God is just and David is innocent of wrong doing against Saul and the Ziphites, so he throws himself on the Lord because he knows that the Lord will do what is right.
This is why David turns to the Lord first and foremost in this situation.
Where Do You Go When Adversity Strikes?
Where do you run when adversity comes your way? Who do you think will be gracious, merciful, patient, loving, and just with you? Who do you run to and say, “vindicate me!”
Let me tell you some places that you should not run but you may feel tempted to run to because they look trustworthy and powerful. You will be tempted to run to…
People with influence over your situation, assuming that they really hold the power over what will happen to you.
People with money that can help you out of a bind, assuming that money is real power and the only way to show mercy.
People who will coddle you, listening to you moan and saying that you really have been wronged.
People who will let you gossip about others because you need to “vent” and find relief through tearing others down.
Your own devices thinking that satisfying the cravings of the flesh will be the only way you can experience mercy. You can do this by distracting yourself from problems with porn, social media, movies, food—really anything that will take your mind off the problem at hand.
What do all of these temptations hold in common? They forget God and turn to man as the primary mover of all things. It assumes that man is preeminent and God is either non-existent, impotent, or uncaring.
What you need does not reside in your own man-made wisdom or anything man has to offer. What you ultimately need is not found in any other person, though God is kind to surround us with good brothers and sisters. What we need most of all is to depend on the Lord and the Lord alone.
But how do we do that? That’s what our next two points will cover.
Second, honestly reflect on dangers (3)
Verse 3 gives us a deeper understanding of why David turns to the Lord and depends on the Lord instead of himself or other mean. Not much is known about the Ziphites except that there was a wilderness region around their city, known as Zif. As far as I can tell, this is the only place in the Bible that they are mentioned other than the naming of the town in Joshua 15:55. They did not seem to have deep dealings with David or a relationship with him, but then they rise up against him, betray him to Saul who seeks his life, and in doing this they show that they do not care what God thinks. They simply care about what will profit them. So, if you look at verse 3, the Ziphites are the strangers who have arisen against David, Saul and his men are the ruthless ones who seek his life, and all of them have disregarded what God has said, namely that God wants David to be king. David’s enemies are simply living in light of what they think will profit them the most and are forgetting God.
Seeing Danger Leads Us to Dependence on the Lord
The reason David so readily depends on the Lord is because he sees the world for what it is—full of dangers. God anointed him as king and told him that he would rule over Israel, but this does not make David a fatalist—one who thinks all is determined so it doesn’t matter what he does. David displays in this Psalm what the rest of the Bible teaches: God is in absolute control of everything, but he uses means in this world to accomplish his certain ends.
One of the greatest illustrations of this reality is an event in Acts 27. That chapter speaks of a journey that Paul was taking to Rome while he was a prisoner being watch over by a Roman Centurion. The ship they are aboard hits a storm and goes off course and they are all in danger of death. But an angel appears to Paul and says to him that he and all on board will live, but that they must run aground on an island. Then, as they were nearing land, instead of running aground, some of the sailors, under the pretense of setting anchors, were lowering boats into the water to escape. At this point, Paul said to the Centurion, “Unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved” (Acts 27:31), so the soldier cut the boats loose. Eventually, the ship ran aground on the island and all made it ashore.
In this story, we see that God had the end in mind: Paul would stand before Caesar and not die at sea, but this did not mean that Paul was idle. Trusting God and depending on God call for activity, not passivity.
Prayer is the Primary Activity of Trust
One of the key ways we are to be active as we depend on God is to see the dangers all around us for what they really are: true dangers to our lives, true dangers to our souls, true dangers to our church, and true dangers to our mission. Brothers and sisters, if we are going to really pray, we need to know that…
God is absolutely sovereign
We live in a sea of dangers
And our prayers are a means of God’s sovereign hand bringing about his plans and delivering us from these dangers.
If we are going to persevere in the faith, it will require us exhorting, teaching, and helping each other—and it will especially require us praying for each other.
If these children that God has entrusted to us are going to come to know him, it will come through many means—including our prayers for them. If we merely say, “We will catechize them, teach them, plead with them, talk with them” but then we never pray for them, who are we really depending on? Ourselves.
Satan loves it when saints are discouraged and isolated from each other so that he may devour them. Let this real danger lead you to pray and call on God to hold fast to others.
God is sovereign, but in his sovereignty he wants us to be active.
But how can this danger not totally overcome us and leave us paralyzed in fear? If the danger is real, how can we not be overcome with fear? Let’s answer that with our third point in verses 4-5.
Third, meditate on God’s promises as they apply to your circumstances (4-5)
Verses 4-5 show a shift in this psalm. These verses are why David depends on God so readily when he is faced with real dangers. In short, God has made promises to David and he has experienced them to be true. As he says in verse 4,
“Behold, God is my helper; the Lord is the upholder of my life.”
When danger arises, our hearts begin to race and we can become frantic because the danger is real. But instead of panicking, David is slowing down. He is calling on himself, and others with him, to meditate on what he knows to be true and this changes the way he views the situation.
Look down at verse 4. The word “behold,” that begins verse 4 is David’s way of saying, “Everyone look here, this is the truth you must remember in this situation.” Don’t just look at the danger, look at who God is and what he has already done.
Not only is David dwelling on the fact that God will keep his promise to him and he will be the king of Israel, he is also dwelling on God’s promise to vindicate him by judging his enemies. Look at verse 5,
“He will return the evil to my enemies; in your faithfulness put an end to them.”
David is able to stay calm in the face of real danger and not seek vengeance on his own because he believes that God will be just and do what is right. His enemies aim to kill him, so God will take the evil they intend and place it on their own heads. And this is exactly what happens. Saul wants to run David through and kill him, but later on, Saul will be injured in a battle with the Philistines. Instead of falling into their hands, he will hold out his own sword and run himself through. The evil he intends to do David returns right to him.
Follow the Pattern of Psalm 54
This is the pattern we need to see and follow as we face adversity:
Fixate on God’s promises (verse 4)
pray in light of what you know to be true (end of verse 5)
and wait (what he does after he prays this psalm)
Fixate. Pray. Wait.
This is exactly what is happening in these verses. David calls himself to behold what is true about God, he prays for God to take care of this problem in light of what he has promised to David, and then he waits for it to happen. It takes years, but David is installed as king of Israel after Saul’s evil returns on him.
Depending on God is an Activity You Must Pursue
Fixating on God’s promises is an activity that you must pursue. Every day, you need to say to yourself “behold!” And call your attention to what God promises. But God has not promised that you will be anointed king of Israel. What has God promised you? You should search your Bibles to find these promises and to pray them, but let me share some that I pray and you should pray, too.
When I feel alone, I behold the promise of God’s presence with me in Hebrews 13:5, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
When I feel like I have no peace, I call myself to behold the promise that Jesus gives me rest and peace when I come to him in Matthew 11:28-30, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
When I feel powerless, weak, and unable to do what is right, I behold the promise of God giving his Holy Spirit to me in John 14:16-17 where Jesus says, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.”
When life is complicated and I do not know what to do, I behold the promise that God will give me wisdom, guidance, and direction in Proverbs 3:5-6, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”
When life is hard and discontentment creeps into my heart, I behold the promise that I can live a life of joy that is pleasing to God. Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”
When I am just unskilled and continually poorly execute on things that I really want to be good at, I behold the promise of God’s grace and the gift of humility by being weak in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”
When I feel anxious about money, I behold God’s promise that I will have what I need in Matthew 6:31-33, “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ Or ‘What shall we drink?’ Or ‘what shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
When I sin and I feel as though I am condemned and hated by God, I behold the promise of complete forgiveness through the life and death of Jesus Christ as we see it in 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
When I fear that sin will dominate me and I will just give in again and again, I behold the promise of God’s power in me through the gift of the Holy Spirit in Romans 6:14, “For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” And 1 Corinthians 10:13, “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation, he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.”
When I am tempted to believe that sin would be better and that suffering isn’t worth it, I behold the promise of eternal life and rewards in heaven in Revelation 21:4, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And Galatians 6:9, “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up.”
When I am tempted to think that no one appreciates what I am doing and that my life is a complete waste, I behold the promise that everything done for Christ is worth it in 1 Corinthians 15:58, “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”
Hearing these promises once isn’t enough. You need to behold them. You need to stamp them on your heart so that when you see dangers that are real, you can see them in light of God’s even more real promises. When you know them and behold them, you can pray them.
And here is what will happen as you do that.
Fourth, praise God with confidence (6-7)
After turning to God because he is honestly reflecting on the dangers facing him and then meditating on God’s promises, David turns to worship. He will make sacrifices with joy, not in fear. He will give thanks to God because he is good. And, in verse 7, we see that even though the situation isn’t yet resolved, David is confident that God will resolve it according to his promises, so he says of God,
“He has delivered me from every trouble, and my eyes looked in triumph on my enemies.”
Did you catch what he just said in verse 7? He speaks of being delivered from every trouble, but he still has the trouble of the Ziphites telling Saul where he is. Why is he speaking of being delivered when he is still in danger?
Here is why: he is taking the certainty of what will be and using it to influence his feelings in the present, even though he is still presently in danger.
God’s Promises Are Greater Than Earthly Problems
Here is what is happening in the psalm. As you behold the promises of God, they become more real to you, more vibrant and powerful, than the dangers of the world. And as they become more real to you than the dangers of the world, the result is confident worship.
This is not confidence in yourself—your abilities or powers. It is not a confidence in your independence. It is confidence in God—his abilities and powers.
It is a confidence that results from a joyful declaration of dependence on God in prayer.
David turns to worship even before the situation is resolved because the promise of God looms larger than the danger before him since God looms larger than any enemy before him.
Do You Have A Story Like That?
Has this ever happened to you? In the midst of adversity, have you ever had a moment of intense clarity where God’s promise to you is greater than the hardship before you? When this happens, you can sing because no one laments when they find themselves in the hands of the all-loving, all-powerful, all-wise God and he says to you, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
And even as I say this, I want to make sure none of us downplay the hardships that many face. In this world, you will have troubles—unemployment and fear that you won’t make ends meet; hard marriages that present one difficulty after another; debilitating sickness that erases the life you thought you would have; crushed dreams that make you feel hopeless.
But do not lose heart. Move your gaze from problems to God’s promises. Keep your gaze on the one who has overcome the world, Jesus Christ. When you do, you will worship. You will be sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.
Conclusion
This process of depending on God begins with a choice: will you turn to him? Every day, you are making a choice about who you will trust and on whom you will depend.
In God’s kindness, he will knock down your false sense of security and make you desperate for him. It’s easy to interpret this as God being cruel and a signal that he wants to destroy you, but it is actually his call for you to drop the charade of independence. Do you feel desperate today? Perhaps it is because you’ve tried to live as an independent person when you are really meant to live as one who depends on God.
If you’ve yet to entrust your life to Christ and go to him alone for your salvation, that is where you need to begin. Your greatest problem is not danger in the world, it is your sin that makes you an enemy of God. God tells us in his Word, and our conscience testifies that this is true, that you are a sinner separated from God by your sin. And the wages of your sin, what you have earned, is eternal death. But God, because of the great love with which he loved us, sent his Son to take our place. The Son of God assumed our nature, becoming fully human so that he could also assume all of our duties. While we are sinners, he never once sinned, dutifully obeying where we failed. But he did not just assume our duties, he also assumed our liabilities. When Jesus went to the cross, he did not die for his own sin because he had no sin. Rather, he took on the sin of his people and died in their place.
This is the good news. While you deserve hell, God provides the means of your forgiveness by taking the punishment you deserve and crediting to you the righteous life he lived.
How do you receive what God has provided? You turn to him in trust, confess that your sin is wrong and will destroy you, and receive the promise of salvation offered in Jesus Christ, and live a life of worshipping God. Do not delay in turning to him and finding life in his name!
And for those of you who have already trusted in Jesus, do you feel desperate? Don’t try to live in your own strength and merely call out to God when things get hard. Daily acknowledge your dependence on him, turning to him in prayer, confessing your daily fears and struggles, meditating on his promises as you find them in his Word, and experiencing the joy of depending on the all-sufficient God. Why would you even want to try to live as an independent person when you can have the joy of resting in his provision and strength?
Let’s depend on him right now by praying together.
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