psalmthing to chew on: psalm 51

‘For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.’

i mean, that’s quite an intro already, right? and possibly carries a profoundly deep message in terms of really getting our minds around the fact that David, altho he had messed up horribly, still ends up at the feet of God, rather than simply trying to hide or run the other way… where do you end up when you are caught up in the depravity of sin?

‘You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; You do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart
You, God, will not despise.’ [vs 16-17]

and there we see that David really gets it – he starts at the point of his brokenness and failure but realises that it is not the outward motions that God is after – it is not about performing the right religious activities or rituals – God wants to know and see that he has truly changed – God is interested in the heart…

‘Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.
Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.’ [vs 1-2]

this is the start of the Psalm – David appeals to what He knows of God, who he knows God to be – He appeals to God’s ‘mercy’ and His ‘unfailing love’ as well as His ‘great compassion’.

Note that David is asking for mercy, not justice. Which is a thing most of us do much of the time i imagine. David knew that calling for justice for his actions would mean his life. But knowing the God he serves, he knows deep down that even though he doesn’t deserve it and possibly might not even feel like he has the right to even ask, that God is all of those things and will likely respond with much mercy and grace and undeserved forgiveness and new life.

and then he speaks those words that Keith Green turned into such a brilliant and haunting song:

‘Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. [vs 10-12]’

this could be a daily prayer to start the day with… the search for a clean heart, the joy of really knowing God’s salvation and a spirit that is willing for whatever opportunity is placed in front of you…

[To return to the Intro page and be connected to any of the other Psalms i have walked through before now, click here]

psalmthing to chew on: psalm 38

‘Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath.
Your arrows have pierced me, and your hand has come down on me.
Because of your wrath there is no health in my body;
there is no soundness in my bones because of my sin.
My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear.’ [vs. 1-4]

Um, wait, what? This must be one of those other psalms, right, the psalms not written by david?… Nope, says it right there, a psalm of david, a petition…

Hm.

something must have happened.

the “them” became the “me” perhaps…?

which i have been alluding to as from psalm to psalm we have been seeing this gung ho “kill the bastards” type attitude from david towards “those who sin” giving the strong impression that he was not part of that team… and now suddenly, he has fallen, and not just a little [popular opinion places this psalm after the bathsheba incident] and now suddenly he is the prodigal shamefully crawling home with his tail between his legs and no longer the older brother indignantly declaring his worth and deservement of reward.

how quickly the tables turn.

i wonder how differently david would write most of the psalms we have looked at already now that he finds himself on the other side – do you think his “smite the enemy” and “decimate those who sin” calls might be more grace-filled restoration focused petitions?

how does this affect the way i view the people who i don’t like or who have hurt me [maybe really deeply and painfully] when i start to get how someone maybe doesn’t have to be a complete schmunglehead to do complete schmunglehead things? because i did those things so it can’t be SO bad, right?

‘Lord, do not forsake me; do not be far from me, my God.
Come quickly to help me, my Lord and my Savior.’ [vs. 21-22]

while it is a good thing to call on God in your time of need and brokenness, once has to ask the question of whether david might have had a lot more people to call on as well and to have gather around him [dispensing grace, mercy, love, forgiveness, compassion] if he had shown a lot more of it to others in his previous writings…

i hope this psalm in some small way is a reminder to us that God has shown us incredible grace and mercy [love, forgiveness, compassion] in sending Jesus to die in our place. How dare we not extend the same kind to those around us, whose sins against us will not likely compare with God’s need to pour His wrath on His very Son.

[To return to the Intro page and be connected to any of the other Psalms i have walked through before now, click here]

psalmthing to chew on: psalm 26

and i move on to psalm 26, and another psalm of david clearly set before the little bathsheba incident [2 samuel 11] where he starts by proclaiming how good and righteous he has been and inviting God to ‘examine my heart and my mind’ [vs. 2] which is a great practice to take from this psalm [altho maybe without the assumption of being clean and pure and righteous, unless it’s been a good week for you].

and then this next part is maybe not the bit that would jump out to most people – ‘I do not sit with the deceitful, nor do I associate with hypocrites. I abhor the assembly of evildoers and refuse to sit with the wicked.’ [vs. 4-5] and i imagine could be used by a lot of christians to promote just hanging out with other christians, but i don’t believe that is trying to say – flashbacks to psalm 1 and the ;don’t walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners’ which i think is encouraging us to not invite non Christ-following people to have the biggest influence and input in our lives – we are definitely called [and Jesus modeled this well and strongly] to be in the world, but to not let it affect us [‘do not conform to the pattern of this world but be trasnformed by the renewal of your mind’ – Romans 12.2] so perhaps it is talking about ‘sitting in agreement with’ or ‘being on the same page as’ which is not a good thing in the company that is mentioned.

the last bit i really liked about this psalm was the unashamed proclamation of Who God is: ‘I wash my hands in innocence, and go about
Your altar, Lord, proclaiming aloud Your praise and telling of all Your wonderful deeds.’ [vs. 6-7] and ‘My feet stand on level ground; in the great congregation I will praise the Lord.’ [vs. 12]

i don’t think this just means forwarding ‘pass this email to 30 of your friends or Jesus won’t like you any more’ emails or facebook statuses/stati – i do think it means using the networks we are a part of to boldly proclaim either directly or indirectly [just by who we are and how we relate to people and uplift rather than bring down – by a positive attitude rather than a whiny complainy one etc] who Jesus is, but also doing it live with real people in actual conversation – living it, speaking it, modeling it…

because, after all, we do have a great thing – ‘The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life and have it to the full.’ [John 10.10]

psalmthing to chew on: psalm 7

i know it’s early days, but already this is proving to be an exciting exercise for me and one of the benefits of working through the psalms is discovering ‘new’ ones… i am not saying someone has been sneaking into my bible and adding in new psalms when i haven’t been looking but often when we read the bible we stick to the passages we know well and like and avoid the harder ones or even the books with weird sounding names we have to use the index to find…

so with psalms it is often 23 or my favourite 34 or 121 and 139. it is great to go through one by one because i will get to those psalms in turn, but i will also discover some classic gems along the way…

and on to psalm 7:

this feels similar to the point i made about psalm 5 where David is saying things i’m not convinced his life can back up… certainly things i’d be a lot more nervous to utter… in verses 8-9 he says, ‘Let the LORD judge the peoples. Vindicate me, LORD, according to my righteousness, according to my integrity, O Most High. Bring to an end the violence of the wicked and make the righteous secure — You, the righteous God who probes minds and hearts.’

So David is asking God to judge him according to “my righteousness” and “my integrity” – again, this must have supposedly been written before the whole Bathsheba incident when David would not have been clamoring for those to be the measure points. I know, for my life, as much as i strive for personal righteousness and integrity, that i often fall short. i miss the mark and get it wrong a lot of the time which negates my righteousness. and i have really strong feelings on things like pirating movies/music and telling ‘little white lies’ but am not as strict when it comes to breaking the speed limit or some other things like that so personal hypocrisy in what i stand for and how i live it out often does surface which takes out my integrity from time to time.

so i am not convinced i would want to appeal to God to judge me on the basis of those two things. reminds me of the definitions of mercy and justice: justice is getting what we deserve and mercy is not getting what we deserve and i generally am super amped to lean towards mercy [especially when it comes to parking tickets and speeding fines if i deserve either of those]

i think the last phrase of that verse sums it up – ‘the righteous God who probes minds and hearts’ – God knows. And knowing that God knows [as David gets a lot more familiar with after the Bathsheba incident] i am a lot quicker to meet Him in a place more reliant on His righteousness and integrity than my own.

then the second thing that stood out for me was the language used towards the end which is just some great and explicit imagery that conveys well what he is speaking about – ‘Whoever is pregnant with evil conceives trouble and gives birth to disillusionment. Whoever digs a hole and scoops it out falls into the pit they have made. The trouble they cause recoils on them; their violence comes down on their own heads.’ [16-18]

Reminiscent once more of the depiction of sin in James 1 – ‘When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14 but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.’ [13-15]

And the message that is loud and clear is don’t give time to sin. The imagery of conception and birth refers to a pretty substantial time length – 9 months – and so the idea is that the person involved has entertained and nurtured temptation/sin until such time that it has become a destructive force. We need to kill sin at the root and deal with it as quickly as possible when it emerges or the effect it has on us will be devastating. Keep a short account with God – don’t go to sleep at nite with unconfessed sin lingering, because that way it is too easy for it to grow and give birth…

[To continue on to Psalm8, click here]

[To return to the start of this series on Psalms as well as some other Bible things, click here]

psalmthing to chew on: psalm 5

and on to Psalm 5:

this is an interesting one. powerful line in verse 5 – ‘You hate all who do wrong.’

is that true? of course it is. it is true to where david is at the moment of writing and what he is feeling [and maybe secretly wanting]

but is it Truth? absolutely not. we know from reading the rest of scripture that God does not hate anyone – His desire is that all will be saved [‘This is good, and pleases God our Savior, 4 who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.’ 1 Timothy 2.3-4] – but we can see this as an expression of the frustration david is feeling as he writes this piece.

what’s interesting is that david himself secretly doesn’t want it to be true… read a little further – ‘You destroy those who tell lies. The bloodthirsty and deceitful, You, LORD, detest.’ [vs 6] is that starting to sound familiar?

remember this same david when it comes to the story of bathsheba, the wife of one of his trusted army officials and how david tells lies, is bloodthirsty and deceitful and even more… he definitely does a whole lot of wrong and is not hoping at that point that God will wipe “them” out quite as passionately as he is in this psalm… which makes me think he wrote this before the events of 2 Samuel 11 had taken place, probably from a place of thinking he was so much better than those around him who get it wrong.

this feels like the psalm from someone who is largely naive and untested in the ways of temptation and needs a bit of the reality check that screwing up royally can bring you. which he later gets. to the extreme. i wonder how this psalm would sound if it was written after that incident? probably a lot more use of words like ‘mercy,’ ‘grace’ and ‘forgiveness’?

i do like how it ends though, ‘But let all who take refuge in You be glad; let them ever sing for joy. Spread Your protection over them, that those who love Your name may rejoice in You. Surely, LORD, You bless the righteous; You surround them with your favor as with a shield.’

[To continue on to Psalm 6, click here]

[To return to the start of this series on Psalms as well as some other Bible things, click here]