How Do We Face Betrayal? (Psalm 54)

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How Do We Face Betrayal? (Psalm 54)

GIST: We can face betrayal by centering our requests on God, focusing on His strength and faithfulness, expecting His movement, and thanking Him willingly.

After taking a week off for what would have been our VBS Family Day, we’re coming back to our study in psalms. Today, we’re looking at the first of several psalms written from a context we know (from the titles) came when David was facing some specific hardship. Today’s topic seems to hit most on betrayal.

Jedidiah is going to read the whole psalm for us in a second, but we can look at the context just in this title: “To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments. A Maskil of David, when the Ziphites went and told Saul, "Is not David hiding among us?"” This was during the time when Saul was trying to kill David. However, since he had been anointed by God to replace Saul, several groups had started coming to David’s side. Not the Ziphites. They turned David into Saul… twice. You can find them in 1 Samuel 23 and 26.  Interestingly, both times were followed by David having a chance to kill Saul but choosing to spare his life instead. 

What really hammered home this whole betrayal idea was that the Zipphites were from the tribe of Judah…just like David. They were like extended family. Those wounds hurt. This psalm, which is called a Maskil, is meant to teach us what God taught David through this experience. Let’s check it out.

“1 To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments. A Maskil of David, when the Ziphites went and told Saul, "Is not David hiding among us?" O God, save me by Your name, and vindicate me by Your might. 2 O God, hear my prayer; give ear to the words of my mouth. 3 For strangers have risen against me; ruthless men seek my life; they do not set God before themselves. Selah 4 Behold, God is my helper; the Lord is the upholder of my life. 5 He will return the evil to my enemies; in Your faithfulness put an end to them. 6 With a freewill offering I will sacrifice to You; I will give thanks to Your name, O LORD, for it is good. 7 For He has delivered me from every trouble, and my eye has looked in triumph on my enemies.”

Betrayal is hard. Maybe you haven’t been turned over to a violent king bent on your death, but I think most of us know what it feels like to have someone we trusted, someone we thought we could rely on, turn their backs on us. It’s not something I would wish on any of you, but it is a reality many of us will face. God knew that, and this isn’t the only time he addresses this in the Bible. So what does this passage tell us we should do when it happens? Here’s our gist: We can face betrayal by centering our requests on God, focusing on His strength and faithfulness, expecting His movement, and thanking Him willingly. Let’s break that down.

I. Centering Our Requests On God 

“1…O God, save me by Your name, and vindicate me by Your might. 2 O God, hear my prayer; give ear to the words of my mouth.”

Before David says anything about his situation, he orients his heart in the right direction. He doesn’t look to take matters into his own hands (which is where most of us start, right?). Instead, he addresses his requests to God.

God Save, Vindicate, and Hear. This is the right perspective. His salvation (his rescue, the end to this chaos) and his vindication (his name being cleared) come precisely because God hears his prayers and is paying attention to the words of his mouth. 

We’re going to come back to those words here in a second, but as we look at the next verse which leads us into a Selah (a pause to stop and take in what was just said), we see these requests set in context a bit. “3 For strangers have risen against me; ruthless men seek my life; they do not set God before themselves. Selah” Essentially, we see David starting this prayer exactly where we need to start all our prayers. “I need You.” Regardless of what situation you find yourself in, this is true. But he keeps going, “I need You because those who are attacking me have no regard for who You are or what You’re doing.”

God had made it clear what His plans were for David. Obviously, these betrayers were playing into what seemed most immediately advantageous for them, but they weren’t looking to God at all. They didn’t want Him, but David knew better. Guys, just pause for a second. This is going to be real in your lives too. There will be times people will cause a lot of hurt in your lives. They might want nothing to do with God or what He’s doing, but you can’t afford to fall into that same trap! Face betrayal by centering your requests on Him and→

II. Focusing On His Strength & Faithfulness

“4 Behold, God is my helper; the Lord is the upholder of my life. 5 He will return the evil to my enemies; in Your faithfulness put an end to them.”

There are several things to notice in these two verses, but let’s start with the implicit one. When David is acknowledging that God is his helper and the upholder of his life, he is acknowledging→

This Mess Would Not Be Fixed By David’s Strength. None of our messes are fixed by ours either. Oh, we expend a lot of energy trying to clean up messes and fix problems people create for us—and when I say we, believe me, I 100% mean me, too! But it’s such a waste of time. For me, it mostly just takes time away from my kiddos and raises my blood pressure. What should we do instead?

1. Remember, He Is More Than Strong Enough. David says, God isthe helper and the upholder of his life. What can God not do? This made me think of Isaiah 59:1, “Indeed, the Lord’s arm is not too weak to save, and His ear is not too deaf to hear” (CSB). Sometimes we say stuff in church about God’s power, but we live like He needs our help, or, really, like He can’t actually do anything at all. The opposite is true. We can’t do anything without Him, but there is NOTHING He can’t do. 

2. Remember, He Is Faithful. We’re going to come back to this a bit in the next point, but I want to point it out here too. David knows God will punish wickedness because He has promised to do that. During the outside service, I made this observation I had heard from Frank Turek. Often, this idea of God punishing wickedness doesn’t sit easily with us in our culture because though we claim to want God to take care of sin, often we’re offended when we hear about Him doing that. But the bottom line is this: we don’t want God to ignore sin. A “god” who is indifferent toward the sin that destroys us is not the God of love described in the Bible. When bad stuff happens to us, we can trust that God cares. In fact, that’s exactly why Jesus came!

On that note, let me add an additional observation here from the text. When David is praying here, he makes a statement that is actually pretty harsh. “Putting an end to them” is a picture of them being killed. That’s raw. Those of the parts of psalms that can sometimes be most challenging to address. But what are we seeing here?

3. Be Honest With Your Prayers. David wasn’t writing this from a place of intellectual contemplation about betrayal. He had experienced the pain. He was in the middle of the hurt. He was learning from and calling out to God while this wound was real. So he is honest about what he’s feeling. The fact that these kinds of prayers make it into the psalter remind us that God doesn’t need us to edit our prayers to make them more palatable for Him. Bring your heart to Him, and let Him do the changing. Being real, there have been times in my life that I have had to ask God to help me love stupid people. I even wrote a song (which helps me focus my prayers sometimes), and the chorus went like this. “God, I know You love stupid people because You died to set me free, so help me see these stupid people the way that You see me. Cuz’ right now I just want to blow up, but that won’t make it any better. Yeah, right now I just want to blow up, but I need to keep it together… so help me love.” I know that’s not a nice word, but in the moment it’s where I was. I was hurting, and I knew only He could make the difference. Trying to hide the pain from Him wouldn’t have made that any better.

So face betrayal by centering your request on God, focusing on His strength and faithfulness, and→

III. Expecting God’s Movement

“6 With a freewill offering I will sacrifice to You; I will give thanks to Your name, O LORD, for it is good. 7 For He has delivered me from every trouble, and my eye has looked in triumph on my enemies.”

We’re going to come back to the beginning of verse 6 in our last point, but first let’s notice this. In the last two verses, David is expecting God to show up. He is giving thanks and looking forward to His deliverance. Why? There are at least two reasons provided.

1. Based On His Character. David starts by giving thanks because God’s name, who He is, is good. We can expect God to be good because He will always be who He is ☺️ (I know that was a mouthful, but it’s true!) That’s what also fueled this second reason→

2. Based On His Track Record. This was true for David. He’d seen God show up in awesome ways again and again. I mean, if he’d only seen God use him to defeat Goliath, he’d probably have been set for life, but God never abandoned him. This is true for us too. There’s never been a moment when God wasn’t moving in your life. If ever we doubt that, look at the cross!

Tim Keller, in his book The Songs of Jesus, connected this to one of my favorite C.S. Lewis books, Perelandra. This is the second book of The Space Trilogy. In that one, Lewis sets the story on a planet very similar to earth where God has created another perfect world like Eden, and there is another Adam and Eve. Lewis wasn’t by any means saying he believed this is what the other planets are like, but it gave him a way to play with questions like, “What if man never fell?”. The main character is from Earth, and he ends up realizing he had been sent to help prevent the corruption of this world. Specifically, he is constantly fighting against another man from earth who had been possessed by Satan. Keller summarizes it well: “The character possessed by the devil gloats over the death of the Son of God until Ransom, the Christian, asks him, essentially, “And how did that work out for you?” The demon throws back his head and howls, because he remembers that in killing Christ he defeated himself and ended death. Evil is not locked in a battle with good. . . . The good has already triumphed and evil everywhere recoils on itself.” Whatever you are facing, remember, you’re facing it with the God who has overcome the world!

That should lead us to the last point here naturally→

IV. And Thanking Him Willingly

“6 With a freewill offering I will sacrifice to You; I will give thanks to Your name...”

A Freewill Offering Was Not A Required Sacrifice. That means this psalm eneds where it started—with the right perspective. He started by turning his heart toward God, and he ended by turning his heart toward God. How can we face the pain of betrayal? Start praising God. I know that might seem counterintuitive, but when we praise Him, we’re reminded of all His goodness and all we have to be thankful for, and it pulls from the despair that wants to suck us in. 

Ok, like last week, let’s just recap in our→

TAKEAWAY

We can face betrayal by centering our requests on God, focusing on His strength and faithfulness, expecting His movement, and thanking Him willingly.