Pray, Preach, Praise
So the three words this morning I hope we can remember from Psalm 54 go like this:
- Pray
- Preach
- Praise
These are the three words that form the outline of Psalm 54 (as we’re gonna see), and at the same time, these three words give us a three-part guide for what to do when we find ourselves in crisis situations. Psalm 54 is an amazingly practical psalm — and it’s meant to be.
David is meant to be a model for us of faithfulness to God. The rest of Book II here in the Psalms (from 51 through 72) except for two of them are all “Psalms of David.” And many of these psalms have little notes above the first verse that tell us when David wrote them.
And those notes are there so that we can link these psalms to actual moments in David’s life, and so that we can connect the dots to our own lives. These psalms are for when we find our own selves in the midst of crisis … when we are overwhelmed by the threat of harm; when there are forces set against us that seem to be advancing against us. David shows us that in faith we do three things: pray, preach, praise.
I want to show you this in Psalm 54, but first let’s ask for God’s help:
Father in heaven, thank you for your word, and thank you that there is life in your word. Give us life today, we ask. Refresh our hearts; steel our faith; in our thoughts and actions, make Jesus stand forth as good and mighty for us, because he is. We ask this in his name, amen.
So the outline again is three words, and one of my goals is that these three words get stuck in our heads. Say it with me if you can: pray, preach, praise — and we’re looking first at pray in verses 1–3.
Pray (verses 1–3)
O God, save me by your name,
and vindicate me by your might.
O God, hear my prayer;
give ear to the words of my mouth.
For strangers have risen against me;
ruthless men seek my life;
they do not set God before themselves. Selah
Right away in Psalm 54 David is praying, and he’s praying to God for two things:
First, David prays that God would save him.
Second, David prays that God would hear his prayer to be saved.
And that gives you an idea of the kind of desperation he’s in. Verse 3 tells us the occasion of his prayer. David says:
“For strangers have risen against me.”
Psalm 86:14 repeats this exact verse except there the word “strangers” is replaced with the word “insolent men” — and there are some questions as to why that happens — but I think it’s the same idea: these men, these enemies of David are, at the very least, estranged from him. They don’t know David; David doesn’t know them — and they are insolent and disrespectful to him. Verse 3 here says they’re “ruthless.” They unjustly seek to destroy David … and that was certainly true of the Ziphites.
In your Bibles, take a look right above verse 1 at that little note in small caps. That little note is called a superscript, and as many of you know, and like I mentioned, it’s been added there to tell us about the particular moment in David’s life when he wrote the psalm:
To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments. A Maskil of David when the Ziphites went and told Saul, “Is not David hiding among us?”
Meet the Ziphites
So I need to tell you this story. The story behind Psalm 54 comes from 1 Samuel 23. David had been on the run from King Saul. Saul understood that David was a threat to his kingship, and so he wanted to hunt David down and kill him. And by the time of chapter 23, David had built this ragtag army between four to six hundred men and they were camping out west of Jerusalem.
Well, David found out that the Philistines were attacking a little town called Keilah. The Philistines were just going in and robbing their food, having their way, and Keilah didn’t really stand a chance against them. So David inquired of Yahweh — he asked God:
“Should I go and fight against the Philistines and save Keilah?"
(1 Samuel 23:2).
And God said Yes.
But it seems David’s men were reluctant. They didn’t want to do this. They were already on the run from Saul, and now this would mean they’re fighting the Philistines too. It didn’t make sense to them, but …
- David asked God
- God told him to do it
- God promised to give the Philistines into his hand.
So David and his men did what God said; they attacked the Philistines and they were victorious. 1 Samuel 23:5 tells us,
“So David saved the inhabitants of Keilah.”
And then the word gets to Saul. People say: Hey, we know where David is! He’s in the city of Keilah. And so Saul advances west toward this city. David knows that Saul is coming, and so he asks God: When Saul gets here, will this city that I just saved hand me over to Saul?
And God tells him Yep, they’re gonna turn you in.
So David and his men have to leave the city. They head south, to the Wilderness of Ziph — and so, everybody, meet the Ziphites.
As soon as the Ziphites found out that David was in their area, they went straight to Saul to tell him David’s location. They said to Saul, 1 Samuel 23:19,
“Is not David hiding among us?”
You hear that? The superscript of Psalm 54 is taken straight from 1 Samuel 23:19.
All the Ziphites knew of David was that he just saved their neighbor — but still they decide to set themselves against David and they conspire with Saul. And Saul gets very close to catching David here. David and his men are on the run, in a hurry, and Saul gets just around the corner from him, until suddenly Saul gets called back to Israel to fight the Philistines because the Philistines had attacked Israel while Saul was away (So there’s a neat irony in the story: David had saved Keilah by attacking the Philistines. Now God saves David by the Philistines attacking Israel.)
The point, I think, is that God is the one who saves David.
We Can’t, God Can
God saved David just like David prayed — and David prayed because he knew he was in a crisis situation!
He didn’t waste any time here trying to figure out his next move. He just prayed. He prayed because: What else do you do when you find yourself in a place so out of your control?
I’m talking about a place that seems like, by all accounts, somewhere you never wanted to be — this is a place that if things don’t change, I’m going to be destroyed; I’m in a cutthroat dilemma here; I’m stuck in a slow-motion train wreck and I cannot do anything to stop it.
That was the case for David in Psalm 54 — and I think we can relate.
You’ve been there. The stress is high. The prognosis is grim. The darkness is overwhelming. And when you’re there, what do to you? You pray. You ask God to help you.
And that alone is an evidence of his grace to you. It’s the simple fact that you’re going to him. It’s that you know you can’t, but he can.
That’s the simplest explanation for prayer that I can think of. We can’t, but God can.
See, the only reason we pray in the midst of crisis — or in the midst of anything — is because the grace of God at work in us leads us to desire things we know we cannot create and so we ask God to. It’s that simple.
It’s the same reason my five-year-old asks me to get a cereal bowl for him out of the cabinet.
So try to imagine this: The bowl is in the cabinet here; I’m here; he’s there. He can’t reach the bowl; I can reach the bowl; and so what should he do? He should ask me to get him a bowl! Right? That’s prayer.
A few weeks ago at Ultimate Goal soccer camp I was teaching about prayer to a big group of kids and I used this illustration, and after explaining everything, I said: So what should my little boy do if he wants a bowl? And one of the campers said, “He should climb up on the counter!”
And the funny thing is that’s what my kids do most of the time … if they want a bowl, they climb up on the counter and get one. You know how kids are. They go their own way; they can get it; they can do it! I’ve been telling my kids to get off the counter for 15 years; but I realize God’s been telling me the same thing for about four decades.
See, we’re always climbing on the counter, right? What does it take for us to know we can’t but God can?
The very act of prayer is the exact opposite of the fool in Psalm 53 who says there is no God. Praying is the practice of not being that fool; and David shows us this in Psalm 54. Following his example, in the midst of the crisis, first, we pray.
Then next, we preach.
Preach (verses 4–5)
Verses 4–5:
Behold, God is my helper;
the Lord is the upholder of my life.
He will return the evil to my enemies;
in your faithfulness put an end to them.
So David has been speaking to God, and now he is speaking to himself. That’s what I mean by preach. This is David’s self-talk. This is how he addresses his own soul, like we’ve seen before in the Psalms. David is preaching the truth of God to himself. He looks at his heart and says: “Behold!” Hey, get this! Know this!
See, in praying, David brings himself before God’s attention; but now in preaching, David brings God before his own attention. He remembers the God to whom he prays. And David makes that clear in verse 4, but it doesn’t start there. Right at the beginning of his prayer in verse 1, we can see that David knows who God is. That’s evident in David’s appeal. Look back at verse 1 for a minute. David prays:
“O God, save me, by your name…”
By God’s Name
David then must know something about God’s name, and he prays this way for good reason. Remember David’s enemy in verse 3! They had come out of nowhere while David was on the run from Saul. They were a stranger enemy, and at the end of verse 3 here, David links them to the fool in Psalm 53:1.
These ruthless men “do not set God before themselves.” David’s enemy was precisely the type who says, “There is no God” — which like Ryan explained last week: it’s not that they don’t believe God exists, it’s that they don’t submit to him. According to David’s enemy, God is real and out there and that’s all fine, but, to them, God is not worthy of their honor, so they don’t acknowledge him.
And so when David says, “O God, save me by your name,” he is saying: Save me according to your reputation that my enemy has defamed! God, hallow your name by saving me from those who have belittled it!
David is asking God to save him on the basis that God’s highest allegiance is to his own glory. David knows this about God. David knows that God’s glory is why anything else exists at all.
Yahweh, the one true God, the Creator of the universe, the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob; our Father through Jesus Christ our Lord, together with the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever — this God made the world and all that’s in it to showcase the glory of his name.
God’s name is his self-disclosure; it’s who he shows himself to be in creation and providence and redemption. God’s name is the truth of who he is that is put on display for us in his works and ways, so that we can trust him, which just magnifies his glory even more.
See, when God tells Moses his name at the burning bush, God says:
“This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations” (Exodus 3:14–15).
God is saying there: I’ve told you my name, and I will always act according to my name. Remember this!
God authorizes those who trust him to invoke him by his name. God says: You can come to me on the basis of who I’ve told you I AM.
That’s what David is doing here. When David appeals to God’s name, he’s appealing to how God has revealed himself. David is appealing to the deepest, most glorious reality he knows.
And of course David wants to be rescued— the enemy is right on his heels — but central to David’s petition is that God is jealous for God’s glory, and David is jealous for God’s glory too. David wants the record of God’s name to be set straight. He knows that his salvation is bound up in God showing himself to be who he is.
God Is My Helper
And so it’s standing on that truth that David preaches to himself:
“God is my helper; the Lord is the upholder of my life”
David says that based upon the truth of God, in the security of his relationship with God.
There is a covenant of grace behind these words, because God had set his mercy on David and David has responded in repentance and faith.
So just to be clear, God is not everybody’s helper. He’s not. God is not the helper of the Ziphites or Doeg the Edomite or anybody who does “not set God before themselves” (54:3).
God is the helper only of those who trust him. God is the helper of the one who encounters the display of his name and receives it in humble faith. God is the helper of those who know they need a helper — which is why it is pray then preach. First, go to God as your helper! That’s the immediate reaction of the heart of faith. God, help me! Help me!
First, go to God as your helper; then, preach to yourself that God is your helper!
That’s David’s example for us.
We preach the truth of God to ourselves. And a lot of times when we do this, it means we’re repeating basic truths.
And I want to say this because when you hear this idea of preaching to yourself, it might sound intimidating, like What do I preach? What would I say to myself?
Well you could just copy David here. That’s a good place to start. But I want you to know that we don’t necessarily need to learn new truths to preach to ourselves; we just need to remember the old truths we’ve already learned.
The Key in Your Pocket
It reminds me of Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress. At one point on his journey, Christian and his friend, Hopeful, get captured by Giant Despair and the giant takes them to Doubting-Castle and throws them into the dungeon. And it was a
“very dark Dungeon, nasty and stinking to [their spirits] … they were without one bit of bread, or drop of drink, or Light, or any to ask how they did.”
And John Bunyan tells us that Christian had “double sorrow.” He was dangerously low, and from Wednesday to Saturday Giant Despair attacked Christian and Hopeful with lies and he beat them, and he said that they had no chance of escaping; they were stuck forever.
And they almost believed the lies, except that on Saturday night they begin to pray. And as Christian and Hopeful were praying, Christian “as one half amazed, broke out in passionate speech” and he says: Why am I in this dungeon? I have the key in my pocket. And the key was called Promise, and it actually unlocked every door in Doubting-Castle, and so Christian and Hopeful went, unlocked the doors, and continued on the way.
The key was in his pocket. The truth he needed all along was right there.
Brothers and sisters, you’ve got the key in your pockets.
And it’s a basic key.
God is my helper! … that’s pretty basic.
Or how about:
“God is great, God is good”
That’s truth that some of you learned when you were kids. … To know that God is great — that he is sovereign, that he reigns over all things and that his power is unstoppable.
And to know that God is good — that his greatness is always wielded for what is ultimately best, and that for his people all his paths are steadfast love and faithfulness … we remember this and we preach this to our souls! God is great, God is good.
Or, how about …
“Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so” …
When’s the last time you said that to your soul? That Jesus loves me. That I know he does. That I know Jesus loves me because the Bible tells me he loves me. We remember this and we preach this to our souls!
And of course we always want to go deeper and learn new truths about God in his Word, and we will, but, Christian, you know enough truth about God right now to be a good preacher to your soul. You’ve got the key in your pocket now. So use it. Like David does here:
God is my helper;
the Lord is the upholder of my life.
God’s justice will be executed. God will put all things right.
This is preaching to yourself.
So we pray (verses 1, 2, 3); we preach (verses 4–5); and now we praise (verses 6–7).
Praise (verses 6–7)
Verses 6-7:
With a freewill offering I will sacrifice to you;
I will give thanks to your name, O Yahweh, for it is good.
For he has delivered me from every trouble,
and my eye has looked in triumph on my enemies.
Later this fall we’re going to talk more about the meaning of sacrifices and offerings in the Book of Leviticus, but when David mentions a “freewill offering” here, he’s talking about an offering to God that hasn’t been commanded or isn’t part of any vow. David didn’t try to make a deal with God in verse 1. He didn’t say “In exchange for saving me, then I’ll praise you.” David wants to be clear that’s not what this is. David will offer a sacrifice to God; he will thank God, because we wants to.
Now we saw in Psalm 50 and 51 that sacrifices by themselves, apart from the heart of faith, are worthless. God despises them. But when the heart is humble, when the affections are true, these kinds of sacrifices were the Old Testament way of entering God’s presence and staying awhile.
In other words, David is saying he desires fellowship with God. Verse 6 is an act of worship.
So entering into the presence of God, before and unto God, David says,
“I will give thanks to your name, O Yahweh, for it is good.”
And there’s God’s name again. The same name he invoked in verse 1, and remembered in verse 4, David now worships in verse 6. This is David’s praise.
Pray. Preach. Praise.
And we praise God because God is worthy of praise. God deserves our praise. There’s no debate about this. But I want us to slow down for a minute and look at the language here.
Notice that this psalm starts in the present tense. Verse 1 and verse 4:
God, save me.
God is my helper.
It’s present. David wants God to do this now. And yet from this same place, in this same psalm, in verse 6 David speaks about the future:
I will sacrifice to you.
I will give thanks to your name.
But now notice in verse 7 that David grounds this future act of praise in what God has done in the past. Verse 7:
For he has delivered me from every trouble;
My eye has looked in triumph on my enemies.
So there’s past, present, and future in Psalm 54, and so what do we make of this?
Well, I think here it is: David’s confidence that God will save him today and that he will praise God tomorrow is grounded in the fact that God has saved him in the past.
Up to this point, David says, God has delivered me from every trouble. Up to this point, I have looked in triumph on all my enemies. And if God did it in the past, he can do it again. If God acted then according to his name, he will do it now, and I will praise him.
From where David is standing now, he can thank God for past victories; and he knows that in the future he will stand at a place and look back on this moment, when this moment is another past victory, and there he will thank God for this.
That’s David’s confidence in God. And if David has this kind of confidence in God because of his past victories, how much more confidence do we have because of God’s greatest victory?
See: we have more than the examples of God’s victory in our own lives to look back on; we have more than God’s faithfulness to his people in the Old Testament — because when we look back, we look back to an empty tomb.
Jesus Christ, by his life, death, and resurrection,
has saved us
has vindicated us
has given us his Holy Spirit and the assurance that he is always with us and that God hears our prayers
has put our enemies to open shame by triumphing over them; including the worst enemy of all
Jesus has returned the evil of death to death because by Jesus death has died. Death does not have the final say. Jesus has conquered it — in fact, he has more than conquered it, because now, Jesus has made this great enemy of mankind our chauffeur into the eternal presence of God, where we will be with him forever, which is far better.
Death is our enemy — we don’t make friends with it — but Jesus has triumphed over death, and one day, in him, so will we. And so we praise him. Praise him!
Only God knows all the crisis situations in this room — what’s happening now and what might be ahead — only God knows. But whatever situation you’re in, Psalm 54 is a guide for you. If you’re stuck. If you’re in danger. If you’re afraid. If you’re overwhelmed … in God’s mercy, by faith … pray, preach, praise.
Father in heaven, we do praise you! We praise you because you are worthy of praise. You are above all. There is nothing greater and nothing better. You are the Most High over all that is, and you are the exceeding joy of our souls. You created us for your glory, and in Jesus alone, because of Jesus, we come to you in absolute surrender. Thank you, Father, that you set your love on us by your grace and that you have poured your love out for us in the death and resurrection of your Son. Jesus is our salvation, and we give you all praise and honor, in his name, amen.
