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1 Save me, O God, by your name;
\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0vindicate me by your might.
2 Hear my prayer, O God;
\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0listen to the words of my mouth.

3\xa0Arrogant foes are attacking me;
\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0ruthless people are trying to kill me\u2014
\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0people without regard for God.

4\xa0Surely God is my help;
\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0the Lord is the one who sustains me.

5\xa0Let evil recoil on those who slander me;
\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0in your faithfulness destroy them.

6\xa0I will sacrifice a freewill offering to you;
\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0I will praise your name, Lord, for it is good.
7 You have delivered me from all my troubles,
\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0and my eyes have looked in triumph on my foes. (Psalm 54)

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We tend to read things in a linear fashion, from beginning to end.\xa0 We assume, therefore, that the point of whatever it is that we\u2019ve read comes at the end.\xa0 But in the scriptures, that\u2019s not necessarily the case.\xa0

Material that is written for the ear instead of the eye, that is, material that was transmitted orally in a largely illiterate culture, often has a different logic to it.\xa0 Instead of linear, it is cyclical, such that the main point falls in the middle instead of at the end.\xa0

You can picture it like the ripples of the water when a pebble is thrown in.\xa0 The pebble falls in the middle, and the implications radiate outward in all directions in the form of waves.\xa0 This is the reality of acoustics as well: sound waves also radiate outward from the centre.\xa0 Such is the logic of an oral culture and its rhetoric.\xa0

You\u2019ll find this logic of composition all over in the scriptures: in the prophets, the psalms, the gospels, even in Paul\u2019s first letter to the Corinthians that Pastor Michael and I recently did some preaching through.\xa0 You may have heard a different selection of verses to mark out a section and a different emphasis come out of our preaching on this letter than you\u2019ve heard before, because we were looking for the point in the middle of a section, instead of at its end (see, for instance, how the cross shows up at the beginning, end, and middle of 1 Corinthians 1:17-2:2).

So it is here in Psalm 54.\xa0 Looking at this psalm acoustically you can see the parallel rings that radiate out from the centre.

Verses 1-2 and 6-7, the verses that mark the beginning and ending of the psalm, both speak to God\u2019s salvation and the activity of worship.\xa0 Verses 1-2 ask that God save, deliver, and hear prayer.\xa0 Verses 6-7 report that God has done just that, even as the psalmist continues in prayers and offerings of praise and thanks.

Verses 3 and 5 speak of the foe.\xa0 Verse 3 names these people as ruthless and faithless people bent on killing.\xa0 Verse 5 sets the faithfulness of God against the faithlessness of the enemy, and asks God to deal with them accordingly, that the faithful God might let their ruthless, faithless ways recoil upon them.\xa0

Verse 4 is the centre.\xa0 It is the pivot around which the whole psalm moves.\xa0 It is the affirmation of faith that changes the first half of the psalm into the second half.\xa0

The psalmist says this in that central verse: \u201csurely God is my help; the Lord is the one who sustains me.\u201d\xa0 This is the reality that causes the psalmist to ask that faithless people be dealt with by the faithfulness of God.\xa0 It is the reality that transforms the prayer for salvation in verses 1-2 into deliverance and praise by verses 6-7.

Because God is our help and sustainer, we can trust that he will hear when we pray, that he will save us when we ask, and that he will remain faithful even when we are surrounded by faithlessness.\xa0

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