WEEK 3 ● Day 5
READ PSALM 34:18-22
We could spend an entire week on this last section of Psalm 34! Instead, though, we’re going to focus on one key part of it: the courage, fortitude, and depth of obedience through brokenness. We discover a special kind of strength when life becomes difficult. We may feel defeated, shattered, and crushed. But this season we’re in is not the end. It is part of our story, though, and we need to decide how we will respond within it.
18 The Lord is close to all whose hearts are crushed by pain,
and he is always ready to restore the repentant one.
19 Even when bad things happen to the good and godly ones,
the Lord will save them and not let them be defeated
by what they face.
20 God will be your bodyguard to protect you
when trouble is near.
Not one bone will be broken.
21 But the wicked commit slow suicide.
For they hate and persecute the lovers of God.
Make no mistake about it,
God will hold them guilty and punish them;
they will pay the penalty!
22 But the Lord has paid for the freedom of his servants,
and he will freely pardon those who love him.
He will declare them free and innocent
when they turn to hide themselves in him.
1. Let’s begin in verse 18:
The Lord is close to all whose hearts are crushed by pain,
and he is always ready to restore the repentant one.
In the margin of my Bible are a ton of little cross-references (corresponding to those tiny letters within the text of verses). In Psalm 34:18, the cross-references help me discover where else in the Bible something similar is said. Some (like Luke 15:17-24, which is the parable of the Prodigal Son) don’t seem to help me much in understanding this verse better. But Psalm 51:17 sure does:
I learned God-worship
when my pride was shattered.
Heart-shattered lives ready for love
don’t for a moment escape God’s notice.
Now, when I look up this verse in my ESV, I feel like these verses are translated very differently:
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
2. Why does one version talk about God-worship and one speak of sacrifice? How might they be the same thing?
3. Let’s flip back to 1 Samuel 15:22 (ESV, NRSV, and NIV are great translations to look this verse up in). What does Samuel tell King Saul is better than sacrifice?
In the Old Covenant, arguably the biggest way the Jews could worship God was through sacrifice. But sacrifice as an act didn’t matter without a heart pursuing God behind the act. God’s call to us has always been about love and obedience.
4. Let’s look up 1 Samuel 15:22 in the BLB and write down several words or phrases that describe the word obey (shama‘; שָׁמַע, pronounced shah-mah).
I love the description “to hear with attention or interest.”[1] That certainly sounds like the definition of listening, doesn’t it? I’d even go one step further to say that after “hearing with attention and interest,” taking action would be the actual act of obedience.
5. How might these words and phrases in 1 Samuel 15:22 and Psalm 51:16-17 help us understand Psalm 34:18 better?
Our sacrifice in the midst of brokenness is obedience to and reliance on God. We hold onto Him white-knuckled, knowing He’s all we have to get us through to the other side. As we offer Him that sacrifice, David tells us, He is very near. God is with us. He has not walked away and abandoned us in our desperation and pain.
Not only is God near but also, as David proclaims, He is still working, even when our circumstances scream otherwise. Psalm 34:19 (TPT) goes on to say,
Even when bad things happen to the good and godly ones,
the Lord will save them and not let them be defeated
by what they face.
The ESV says it this way:
Many are the afflictions of the righteous,
but the LORD delivers him out of them all.
6. Head to the BLB and type in “Psalm 34:19.” In the Interlinear section, scroll down to the Hebrew word for delivers (natsal; נָצַל, pronounced nah-tsal) and pen down several of the words and terms:
I’m going to be honest: I had a bit of a hard time with this word. I kept thinking about all the people who don’t seem to actually be rescued. All the families in the Middle East who live with the terror of bombings and beheadings. All of the people who are sold, kidnapped, or tricked into sex slavery. Where’s their rescue, Lord?
But as I continued to pore over these defining words, praying for fresh eyes, the phrase to be torn out or away suddenly popped out at me. I felt like the Lord was saying, Remember, this life isn’t it. It’s not the end. Sickness and pain do not have the final say. The horrors of earth will not exist in the glories of heaven. I offer each person the breath of eternal life with Me, and even though their rescue may not be here and now, it will be someday.
David acknowledges that sometimes good and godly people will go through unimaginable pain. He also knows that we will not be defeated and that death is not defeat. In verse 20, we discover something that points toward the ultimate fulfillment of this truth.
He keeps all his bones;
not one of them is broken.
This verse doesn’t mean we will never have a broken arm, leg, or rib. Instead, David’s words here are a fantastic example of how everything in the Bible leads us toward the character of God and the death and resurrection of Jesus, our Savior. We are actually reading a prophecy of Jesus here. David may not have even realized it when he wrote these words down. He may have simply been implying that God offers protection.
But here’s the thing: There are many places in the Old Testament that point straight to Jesus. If we dig into what David says here in this verse, we are directed to a few places. One is Exodus 12:46, where we read about the Passover Lamb, whose bones are not to be broken when it is sacrificed. And we see this theme again in the New Testament, at Jesus’ crucifixion.
7. Flip to John 19:31-37, and write below what it says in verse 36.
Jesus is the ultimate Passover Lamb! Pretty amazing, right? The prophet Samuel’s reminder to Saul (back in 1 Samuel 15:22) could be seen as foreshadowing Jesus coming as the One True Sacrifice for us all. Because of Jesus’ death for our sin, God told the Israelites (and therefore us) that we no longer needed to take part in animal sacrifice. Jesus’s own sacrifice (out of His obedience to God) allows us to live out a sacrifice of obedience, no matter what we’re facing.
Christ is the Righteous One who was taken out of His suffering in death. But suffering and death didn’t have the last word, and they won’t have the last word for us either. Verse 21 in this week’s psalm speaks about how those who hate the righteous (us) will ultimately be condemned.
Affliction will slay the wicked,
and those who hate the righteous will be condemned.
Some of us have been kicked by other people. Perhaps by a spouse, a grown child, a friend we thought we could trust, or a coworker. But as this psalm reminds us, God is the one who wins in the end. And if we are walking with God, then we, too, win! Death cannot keep Him down, and death of a relationship, dream, or desire will not keep us down either. There is always hope, always a future, always love when it comes to Christ Jesus.
Ultimately, that is what Psalm 34:19 says. In the end, all of us who love the Lord will ultimately be “torn away” and delivered . . . because that’s what we are: saved. Being saved doesn’t mean we’re immune to the pain of this world, but it does mean that God will deliver us —sometimes we’re freed or removed from the circumstance here on earth, but even if we’re not, we can look forward to the reality of being forever released from it on the day we find ourselves face-to-face with Him. Sometimes being torn out of a situation looks different than we think it should, but in God’s graciousness, He knows the best way to deliver each of us according to what we’re going through.
The final verse of Psalm 34 (verse 22) reminds us that we are redeemed and have freedom, though we may be brokenhearted:
The LORD redeems the life of his servants;
none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.
GOD pays for each slave’s freedom;
no one who runs to him loses out.
The LORD redeems the soul of His servants,
And none of those who trust in Him shall be condemned.
The Lord has paid for the freedom of his servants,
and he will freely pardon those who love him.
He will declare them free and innocent
when they turn to hide themselves in him.
8. Using those four translations as a guide, rewrite this verse in a way that helps you remember the freedom you have been given. Look up the words in the Hebrew, if you wish to go one step further:
A final word: Our freedom is not for us alone. As I scrolled down below the lexicon in the BLB entry for Psalm 34:19, I saw that the word natsal is used 214 times in 194 verses in the Hebrew concordance. Reading all the verses that use this same word within them, I realized yes, God’s hand is at work time and time again to deliver all sorts of people and groups into safety, protection, and freedom. But the thing is —often, it’s after He’s asked someone else to do something. This is where obedience comes in. His promptings cause action, and we get to assist in His plans of deliverance. Let’s not simply wait for Him to pick us up and release us from our current season of pain —let’s be women who say yes to His call to action in the darkness.
Take some time in prayer and ask God how He may be asking you to natsal, to bring deliverance and to love well amid your pain.
Amen.