Pastor's Ponderings: Old Testament bible study of Psalm 54 (May 14, 2026)

May 14, 2026:  Thursday Bible Study on Psalm 54

Blessing and Peace be with you on this warm desert morning. I must admit that it was beautiful at 5AM this morning as I drove Jesse to his work at Handicar. With windows down it was about 75 degrees. I hope that your week is going well, and that your NBA playoff team is still in the running. This week we are studying the 54th Psalm. It holds for us some important messages. Perhaps the most important message is to let God be the one who takes care of a faithful person's detractors and those who think that faith, hope, and love are foolish. What true Christians see is a people, including some congregations, who are looking for power and wealth in their ministries. It is easy to say that it is all for Christ that such endeavors take place, but at whose expense? And usually that kind of ministry is meant to empower the members and the leaders, so that at the expense of all other people, including other styles of Christianity who really do work to keep their focus on the humility of Christ, the Love of Christ, the self-sacrifice of Christ, and the offering to make others’ lives better by ministry in the name of the Savior, come under criticism and attack by those who believe that only they are on the right path in their Christian journeys.

Today in our reading from Psalm 54 we discover that David is truly dependent on God as David faces those who would destroy him out of their own fear and insecurity.

A perfect situation that describes this for David is his relationship with King Saul, who at his beginning as the nation's monarch, was a person of faith and God's kind of justice for those who were his charges in Israel. But over several years, what happened so often was that Saul became less stable in his place as king, and he was indeed afraid, jealous, and hostile toward anyone who the people saw as their next king. In this Psalm David turns to God to help him, and even when he refuses to destroy Saul's reign as king, David refuses to harm Saul even when opportunities arise, which they did two times. Instead, David turns to God for God's action to set this issue right, and that is exactly what happens. (You may read I Samuel 23 and 26 if you would like to expand your understanding of how David behaved, and how Saul responded even when David refrained from harming Saul.)

There are three elements that are important for us to realize in this prayer of David's.

1.       The Appeal to God to listen to the offered Petition.

2.     Rescue Me!

3.     Put my attackers down!

We are probably fine with numbers 1 and 2, but this third one may give us pause to think. It seems like a very radical prayer appeal, yet we see God acting in ways that may make us uncomfortable when our prayers are answered. Remember who God is, he tells Moses that He is to be identified as "I AM". The mind of God is ours to comprehend through the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, yet that is not the fullness of who God is. In the greater picture of God's plan for his creation, and His children, God can certainly act with wrath against those who move to harm the faithful ones. But He may not. That simply means that God will act in the future, and His action may be something we don't even live to see. So that issue here is David's faith and trust in the LORD. Rather than move to bring destruction to Saul on his own, David relies on God to take care of all that needs to be done. It also includes worshiping and honoring God with a person's very life. In fact, it means leaving such actions up to God alone. Through Christ, you and I can be confident that God can, and will, act on our behalf. When we get into Psalm 55 next Thursday, we will see how difficult it can be to fully trust God, especially when our journey gets tough.

God Bless you and keep you every day.

In Christ's love, Pastor Kim