Psalm 17
Prayer: Father, teach us to pray and live with the right kind of urgency. Guard us from presumption and apathy and despair. Give us true faith that believes Your Word and claims Your promises, and asks great things with great confidence – and so be pleased to send Reformation and Revival on our land, in Jesus name, Amen.
Introduction
Psalm 17 is an urgent prayer for a judicial vindication in the face of false accusations and persecution – perhaps while David is on the run from Saul. While David knows that his ultimate peace and satisfaction will come in Heaven and at the resurrection, this does not make him apathetic or ambivalent about his enemies; it makes him the right kind of urgent, the right kind of persistent.
The Text: “A Prayer of David. Hear the right, O LORD, attend unto my cry, give ear unto my prayer, that goeth not out of feigned lips…”
Summary of the Text
David prays that God would hear his just cause – literally his “righteousness” and that a verdict would come directly from God, who is the perfect standard of justice (Ps. 17:1-2). And in this appeal, David swears that he is the innocent party; and despite the actions of men, God’s word has guarded him from taking up the tactics of his enemies – he has not returned evil for evil (Ps. 17:3-4). Therefore, David prays that God’s vindication would be his preservation – saving him from his enemies and guarding his path by His marvelous covenant-mercy – like at the Red Sea crossing (Ps. 17:5-7).
David appeals to God’s own covenant identity with him – to keep His people as the apple of His eye and under the shadow of His wings – which means an attack on him is an attack on God Himself (Ps. 17:8, cf. Dt. 32:10-11, Acts 9:4). David finds himself surrounded by violent and arrogant enemies, enclosed in their own fat (i.e. heartless), who are hunting him like hungry lions (Ps. 17:9-12). So David’s prayer is that God would arise and run out in front of him and fight for him against these men of the world, who seem to be enjoying their lives, even the gifts of children and generational longevity (Ps. 17:13-14). But David asks for this knowing that these troubles are only for a moment, and when he wakes up in glory, he will see God’s face and be like Him (Ps. 17:15).
Unfeigned Lips
One of the striking lessons of the psalms is the objective righteous status of God’s covenant people. The Psalms know man’s intrinsic guilt in Adam (Ps. 14:1, 51:5), but the Psalms also know God’s covenant mercy – that those who know that their only good is in God’s grace – are reckoned righteous (justification) and have begun to be conformed to that righteous status (sanctification). And David appeals to that righteousness here when he insists that God has tested his heart and examined him and could find nothing to charge him with (Ps. 17:3). This is an astounding thing to pray. Elsewhere, the psalmist acknowledges, “if thou shouldst mark iniquities, who could stand?” (Ps. 130:3) Therefore, biblical fidelity must hold these two things together: considered only in ourselves, we have nothing to stand on and God could find plenty to sentence us to Hell, but considered in Christ, we stand on a solid rock that cannot be moved and we must learn to pray that in Christ, God cannot find any sin.
The key here is an honest commitment to dealing with every sin in Christ – confessing every sin we know about, having a truly clean conscience – those are unfeigned lips. And since this is God’s righteousness that is at stake, David pleads urgently for God to act. Do you pray like this?
True Enemies
Far too many Christians have been lulled into a spiritual lethargy by teachers and preachers who downplay the idea of enemies. But the Bible teaches from Genesis to Revelation there is a great war between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent (Gen. 3:15). And here David teaches us to see and appeal to God for vindication from our enemies in this world. Our enemies are all of those in rebellion against the God of Heaven – knowing full well that we were all once in that position (Rom. 5:10). And therefore, we must fight our enemies bound by God’s law and not take up the tactics of darkness (Ps. 17:4) – we are not to return evil for evil but we are to overcome evil with good (Rom. 12:21) – but this doesn’t’ merely mean making them cupcakes – it can also include good legislation, good lawsuits, good arguments, good mockery and jokes, and good works of every sort. But when they attack us, they are attacking God, and therefore the cruelty and violence of our enemies heightens our urgency for God to act. And we should tell God about their cruelty in our prayers. (“They are murdering babies; they are mutilating the bodies of confused children; they are plundering the houses of orphans and widows…”)
Some translations have David praying that God would rise up and deliver him with His sword/by His hand (Ps. 17:13-14), but the Hebrew suggests that the wicked is God’s sword/hand. David could have Saul in mind who turned into an enemy, but who was also in fact God’s anointed (bearing God’s sword) (Rom. 13:4). This also underlines the urgency – God’s sword in this world is supposed to execute justice, but when it is turned to evil, it does great harm (Eccl. 8:11). David is pointing out that God’s justice is being perverted.
Applications
David also points out that these wicked men seem to be enjoying God’s good gifts in this life (Ps. 17:14). On the one hand, we know that God is that kind of generous to the good and the evil (Mt. 5:45). And we know that these gifts are meant to be burning coals on their heads (Rom. 12:20-21), convicting them of their sin – a form of grace, we are called to imitate (Mt. 5:46).
But it seems likely that David is also raising this as an argument for why God should act now. There comes a point where it really is subsidizing evil (2 Chron. 19:2, Eph. 5:11, 2 Thess. 3:10-15). Of course, God knows that point perfectly, but we need to learn to pray and plead with God to remember this.
Nevertheless, David knows that when he awakes, he will see God’s face in perfect “righteousness.” He knows that he will be completely satisfied. David asks for justice with absolute confidence that God is perfectly just. When He gets to Heaven he will see with his own eyes perfect justice. This is the right kind of urgency: it cries out to God for justice because of His righteousness and because of the horrific evil of our enemies and their complacency – the current contradictions we see in this world. And it is utterly certain that Heaven will reveal a righteousness that solves these contradictions beyond all satisfaction.
Husbands, a particular application of this is found in 1 Pet. 3:7: “Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honor unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.” Your job is to listen and love and lead in imitation of our faithful God – knowing that your prayers will be heard like that.
But this text says that as you lean-in to know your wife, to honor her, you will learn to pray rightly and you will be assured that your prayers are heard. Don’t be functional Deists, picturing an aloof who God is far off. Picture the Triune God who sent His Son, who sent His Spirit, who hears and acts.
Prayer: Father, we want to apply this message now, and so we plead with You to look down upon our situation, where our enemies surround us, taunting Bible-believing Christians, threatening to take our children, seeking to corrupt them with perversion and confusion, and they accuse us of hate and bigotry and violence, but we are innocent of these false accusations, and we are Your righteous ones – not in our selves, but in Your perfect Son, Jesus, and so we are bold to ask for you to act now for us. Vindicate Your name which You have placed upon us and demonstrate to the world that You are God and there is no other, and we pray this knowing that in only a blink of an eye, we will wake up in Your glory and see Your face, and so we pray, as Jesus taught us…
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