Psalm 17:

Introduction

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Welcome back to our journey through the book of Psalms, where we enter into the story of ancient Israel and receive words of grace that help us to live a better story today. We call this a Bible study, which may sound as though we’re all about learning the information. But really, this is more like a workshop where we experience the world of the Bible, where we practice the faith of God’s people, and creatively reimagine what that might look like in our own lives.

So let’s begin with a word of prayer.

[Prayer]

Context: Not All Sunshine And Roses

When we think about the Psalms, we generally think of joy and calm and peace. We think of passages like Psalm 23 where David describes this overwhelming sense of peace in the presence of God where no evil can touch him. Last week, we talked about Psalm 16 where David celebrates God’s blessings. Verses like Psalm 16:11 are representative of the poetry that we find in the Psalms:

English Standard Version Psalm 16

You make known to me the path of life;

in your presence there is fullness of joy;

at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

These are the kinds of Psalms that become adapted into Christian songs, and the kinds of Psalms that we read at the start of the Sunday worship service to prepare our minds to worship God. Sometimes we talk about learning to pray using the Psalms as a model, and we would think of passages like these that celebrate the goodness of God.

But then what do we do with Psalms that go like this?

The New International Version Psalm 17

12 They are like a lion hungry for prey,

like a fierce lion crouching in cover.

13 Rise up, LORD, confront them, bring them down;

with your sword rescue me from the wicked.

14 By your hand save me from such people, LORD,

from those of this world whose reward is in this life.

May what you have stored up for the wicked fill their bellies;

may their children gorge themselves on it,

and may there be leftovers for their little ones.

Is that a prayer that you would pray? If you were choosing Scriptures to read during a Sunday worship service, would you choose this? Most of us probably wouldn’t. It’s ugly, it sounds angry, it’s violent. It almost sounds like whoever wrote this wants God to kill evil people and then punish their children because it wasn’t enough! We usually like to stick to the nice and pleasant and joyful parts of the Psalms, but that’s not all that the Psalms have to offer. Actually, the majority of the Psalms are about just the opposite - anger and frustration and grief and a whole range of negative emotions. That thought might be uncomfortable for some of us because we’re used to the Bible being a story of good news.

Here’s the thing: life doesn’t always feel like good news, does it? Even as Christians and followers of God, life doesn’t always work the way that you want it to work. Maybe work is frustrating because of long hours or bosses and colleagues that you cannot work well with. Maybe it’s your family that you just cannot connect with, and the home is always filled with uneasy silence or burst of anger. Maybe it’s something about yourself that traps you into thinking you are inadequate or worthless. By the way, you are not.

Sometimes it may seem that Christianity is teaching us to be controlled and calm and joyful all the time. We have absorbed this mentality that if I am a Christian, I shouldn’t ever feel bad because I have a good God! And if other Christians know that I am struggling with something, they will judge me as though my faith isn’t strong enough or that I’m doing something wrong.

And that’s not true! We all encounter these rough patches in life. Jesus does not promise his followers that we will get to live an easy life. What he does promise is that he will be with us when times get hard.

In that light, the Psalms of ancient Israel that talk about anger and frustration and grief become a gift to us. These Psalms show us how we can articulate and express our pain and our frustrations to God. They teach us how to pray in the middle of our trials and tribulations, when we’re struggling and crying out in desperation and hopelessness, and they show us how we can find hope in God who is faithful and loving to the very end. And Psalm 17 is one of these Psalms.

So as we enter into the story of Psalm 17, we teachers would usually say “leave your cares and burdens aside so that we can focus on the word of God.” I’m going to flip that and encourage you to bring whatever care and burden and worry you may have so that together we can lay these burdens before the throne of God, and in the light of the Scriptures we can find true healing and peace and rest.

The Cry (vv.1-2)

English Standard Version Psalm 17

1  Hear a just cause, O LORD; attend to my cry!

Give ear to my prayer from lips free of deceit!

2  From your presence let my vindication come!

Let your eyes behold the right!

Like a lot of other Psalms that we’ve covered in this series, we’re relatively certain that David is the author of Psalm 17. And from beginning, clearly things are not going his way. He doesn’t actually say what he is going through, although some scholars have made some educated guesses. The point is that David is in great distress, not just a minor inconvenience. This cry is really the theme of this Psalm: it’s an appeal for God to hear, to give attention to this situation that David is in, and to intervene.

I am sure we can all relate to this kind of distress. A situation where we feel like our world is collapsing under our feet, and we’re just flailing about to try and stay in control of life until we realize we really cannot control anything. It’s at that point that we cry out to God for him to intervene and rescue us.

I think it’s interesting that David uses several legal terms - he talks about a ‘just cause’; ‘lips free of deceit’ makes it sound like the oath that you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; ‘vindication’ and ‘beholding the right’ certainly sound like things that you might hear in a court prosecution. We’re going to see that the structure of Psalm 17 suggests that David, the victim and the prosecution, is making a case before God, who is both Judge and Lawgiver, against his enemies, the culprit and defendant. Like a lawyer, he is bringing up all the evidence of his innocence, the guilt of his enemies, and comparing them against the standard of justice that God has set forth. With that, let’s consider the case.

The Case for Innocence (vv. 3-5)

English Standard Version Psalm 17

3  You have tried my heart, you have visited me by night,

you have tested me, and you will find nothing;

I have purposed that my mouth will not transgress.

4  With regard to the works of man, by the word of your lips

I have avoided the ways of the violent.

5  My steps have held fast to your paths;

my feet have not slipped.

David here is making the case for his innocence and blamelessness. He has done nothing wrong, and certainly nothing to deserve what he’s going through. He has been faithful to God, he has lived in a godly way, and yet he is suffering for it.

There’s just one big wrinkle in David’s case: is he really innocent and blameless? Is he really so good that God cannot find anything wrong with him? We know that David was a good man, but he did sin at times in his life, and sometimes those sins were extremely serious. So how can he claim that God would find nothing wrong with him? How could he be so confident to say that he would not transgress with his mouth?

I bring this up not just because I’m a nerd and I find these questions interesting, although they really are very interesting. I bring them up because these are very real issues that affect the way we pray and approach God ourselves. You see, we’re not just learning about the life and faith of someone who lived and died long ago. These stories, this Psalm is a mirror that helps us

Concerning the first red flag, have there been times in your life that you’ve tried to pray, but God doesn’t seem to hear?

Concerning the second flag, this is something we do all the time.

There are three ways of looking at this:

The Righteousness of Clear Conscience

The first is that God counts David righteous because he has already examined himself and confessed all his sins. David is counted righteous because he has hidden nothing from God; he is not hiding any secrets.

The Righteousness of Faith

The second way we might understand David’s confidence comes from something we see more clearly in the New Testament. This is the idea that we are counted righteous by faith. We are not “righteous” because of anything we did. We did not earn our own righteousness by doing a whole bunch of good deeds and hope that it outweighs our bad deeds. It’s what Romans 4:3 says:

English Standard Version Chapter 4

3 For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”

So righteousness is not primarily about what you do. Righteousness is about who you believe in, who you depend on for your life and well being, who you worship with all of your being, and righteous action comes out of that relationship. Righteousness is this lifestyle of being oriented towards God, even if we haven’t reached God’s standard yet. In David’s case, he is clearly heading in this direction. Yes, he made some pretty big mistakes in his life. Yes, he was not perfect. But every time he failed, he came running back to God for forgiveness, even accepting the punishment that he deserved. And the rest of his life was characterized by his orientation towards God - he prepared the materials for the Jerusalem temple even though he couldn’t build it; he wrote almost half of the Psalms; no doubt he read and meditated on the word of God all the time. These actions by themselves did not make him righteous, but it was because David is always doing them out of love towards God.

Imagine that you’re a parent with a young child who has just learned to draw. And usually “drawing” means taking a bunch of color pencils and crayons and making a mess on a piece of paper. But then one day your child comes to you with a picture of some stick figures with a smiley faces and says “Look Mummy, look Daddy, I drew us!” Technically, that picture is terrible. Nobody really looks like a stick figure. But you don’t reject the drawing because your child did it out of love. They used what they knew and turned it into a gift for you, and that’s why you give them a big hug and say “That’s a beautiful picture.” I wonder if that’s how God looks at us and our efforts at obeying and pleasing him.

The Righteousness of God

I think might be a third dimension to David’s claim to righteousness. I wonder if David is not concerned about his own righteousness. It seems to me that he knows God’s true majesty and greatness too well to think that he could ever match up. I certainly don’t think that David is using his moral high ground to twist God’s arm (i.e. “God, you better obey me because I have earned my righteousness!”)

What if David is appealing to God’s righteousness? God intervenes not because we have some higher moral ground, but because he is righteous and just. God created this world, so if there is injustice in the world, God’s reputation as a righteous and just God is under threat. Because God is righteous, he cannot allow injustice to carry on.

We’ve spent a lot of time in this early section but I think it’s important that we set the right foundation for what follows.

The Appeal to the Judge (vv. 6-9)

English Standard Version Psalm 17

6  I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God;

incline your ear to me; hear my words.

7  Wondrously show your steadfast love,

O Savior of those who seek refuge

from their adversaries at your right hand.

8  Keep me as the apple of your eye;

hide me in the shadow of your wings,

9  from the wicked who do me violence,

my deadly enemies who surround me.

This is the point where David actually makes his request.

I think we can learn something from that fact alone. David spent a third of the Psalm reflecting on God’s faithfulness and righteousness before actually telling God what he wanted. Isn’t it often the case in our own prayers that we start off my saying “Dear God, please help me with this thing.” We might slip in a “thank you for today” at the beginning, but we just jump towards what we want, don’t we? I think we could all afford to spend a little more time in our prayers genuinely recognizing the God to whom we are praying.

Perhaps you may be wondering, “John, you don’t understand how big my problem is! If I try to thank God for something at the beginning, I can’t be sincere because I’m worried about this thing!” Well first of all, we can’t say for certain, but it’s very likely that David was facing literal death, as in someone was about to stab him with a sword or chop off his head. If David could take time to recognize God in the middle of his trial, I’m pretty sure that we could to. It is hard, yes. It may seem unnatural, absolutely. But I believe that when we actively choose to worship God as faithful and righteous, when we put that understand at the front of our minds when we go to him, that chances our whole perspective on things. Suddenly it’s not a big problem that we are bringing to God; it’s a big God who can handle anything.

Notice that David is essentially saying “God, help me,” but he’s using a lot more words to say it. But David is not just being frivolous; that’s not just vain repetition for the sake of sounding smart and pious. I’m someone who really loves language, and I believe that when we can use better language to articulate who God is and how we want him to help, that language does something to us. When we can pray with specific language instead of vague language, we begin to think of God more concretely or like an actual Person rather than a vague idea out there. And when we can conceive God in concrete terms, we become more confident that he will respond.

By contrast, I think that in many of our prayers for help, we don’t always know what to say, so we phrase things generally. For example,

God, help me with this problem. But how do you want God to help?

God, be with this person who is struggling. But what does it mean for God to be with someone?

Of course, God knows exactly what we need even before we say a word. And there are times that we feel so overwhelmed that the only words we can utter are simply “God, help me.” But when we move beyond a general, vague request and

Steadfast love (חֲ֭סָדֶי) goes beyond what we tend to call ‘love’ - it’s not just a warm, fuzzy feeling of affection, but a deep, fiery passion that will cause one to go to any length for the well-being of another.

Refuge

The Case Against the Wicked (vv. 10-14)

English Standard Version Psalm 17

10  They close their hearts to pity;

with their mouths they speak arrogantly.

11  They have now surrounded our steps;

they set their eyes to cast us to the ground.

12  He is like a lion eager to tear,

as a young lion lurking in ambush.

13  Arise, O LORD! Confront him, subdue him!

Deliver my soul from the wicked by your sword,

14  from men by your hand, O LORD,

from men of the world whose portion is in this life.

You fill their womb with treasure;

they are satisfied with children,

and they leave their abundance to their infants.

Here we have a turn in David’s prayer. This is a turn we do not usually make in our regular prayers - David is calling out the sins and injustices that others have committed and ultimately invokes God’s wrath upon them. Maybe you can sense him seething, like he’s saying all this through gritted teeth as he burns with anger towards his enemies. I’m not saying that we should necessarily say this in our prayers, but I’m certain that we can all relate to this sentiment. Sometimes people just need to be slapped very hard in the face; sometimes they just need to suffer the consequences that they have invited upon themselves.

Qualities that David calls out as affronts to God’s good order and nature:

Apathy (lack of compassion)

Arrogance, that is, pride - the chief sin from which all others spawned, the self-absorbed sentiment where I set myself above the stars of God

Destructive tendencies

Surrounding David - crushing of confidence, like Peter looking at the winds and waves

Two Dimensions of David’s request

It’s raw and honest

David believes that God can and will act - it’s not within his control to inflict judgment, and that’s for the better

Unshakable Hope (v. 15)

We may automatically assume that this refers to the hope of eternal life, when we have escaped from this cruel world into a better place. We should note that for David and the ancient Israelites, they did not have a defined concept of heaven or the afterlife.

That being said, our hope as Christians builds upon this earthly hope.

“As for me”

Conclusion

There is one more thought I would like to tackle at the end. Why is David making this case at all? “Everything happens for a reason.” Okay, even if we assume that David really is innocent and blameless, maybe God is sending this trial to test him and develop him into a better person. We might quote Romans 8:28 at him and say that all things work together for good to those who love God, so David, stop whining and just count it all joy because God is going to make something good come out of it!