psalmthing to chew on: psalm 64

This short one feels like a traditional David rant against his closing in enemies and while his enemies were more than likely actual enemies wanting to do him physical harm, i find connection to the description of them more through a metaphorical sense of people who are against me or something i’ve said or done, in less combatative but still quite real-feeling ways:

1 Hear me, my God, as I voice my complaint;
    protect my life from the threat of the enemy.

2 Hide me from the conspiracy of the wicked,
    from the plots of evildoers.
3 They sharpen their tongues like swords
    and aim cruel words like deadly arrows.
4 They shoot from ambush at the innocent;
    they shoot suddenly, without fear.

5 They encourage each other in evil plans,
    they talk about hiding their snares;
    they say, “Who will see it?”
6 They plot injustice and say,
    “We have devised a perfect plan!”
    Surely the human mind and heart are cunning.

But when i read the next piece i have to see this as David’s wishful thinking or heart’s hope and desire rather than a Biblical teaching on how things are going to play out:

7 But God will shoot them with his arrows;
    they will suddenly be struck down.
8 He will turn their own tongues against them
    and bring them to ruin;
    all who see them will shake their heads in scorn.

Because i’m not convinced God was actually going to shoot arrows at them or that they would necessarily even be struck down, not in this life anyways. We read elsewhere in Scripture how often the wicked seem to prosper and i can bear witness to that. And while we trust in an eternal justice from God, there does not always seem to be a local karmic system in place that brings bad to those who commit bad. And often, rather than scorn, it is praise and delight and adulation that is heaped upon these people. So we really have to believe there is something more bigger picture going on…

But, as always, even in the midst of a gloomy situation, David manages to end off strongly with a focus on the God who saves and is worth praise:

10 The righteous will rejoice in the Lord
    and take refuge in him;
    all the upright in heart will glory in him!

And so we are left with that challenge that regardless of present circumstances, where d we put our faith and trust and are we glorifying God as we should?

[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 53

this is a really short psalm and i don’t have a lot to say about it… seems like another bad day in the office for David, starting with:

‘The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, and their ways are vile; there is no one who does good.’ [verse 1]

i mean, come on now David, that seems a little overly dramatic… and are you including yourself in that or is this another typical everyone-else-sucks-but-I’m-good that we’ve seen so much of?

but the first line is at least true. i’ve said this before and i will probably say it again – i believe that it takes a lot more faith to not believe in God, than to believe in God.

i get this from looking at my little finger. just stop and look at yours for a second. now bend it. i mean that’s a little finger and it freakingly amazingly brilliantly designed. creation speaks of a creator. to think an explosion happened and somehow that resulted. now add in your whole body. now look at it under a microscope and start thinking about atoms and DNA and smaller and more intricate and you have to go WOW, something is happening. something has happened here. the fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’

you can come up with the conclusion that it’s not the same God i believe in, but there has to be something. and that’s a start.

and he continues with this:

‘God looks down from heaven on all mankind
to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God.
Everyone has turned away, all have become corrupt;
there is no one who does good, not even one.’ [verse 2,3]

this reminds me of the story of Elijah, who after seeing God pour fire from heaven on his water-drenched sacrifice in 1 Kings 18 and the death of hundreds of Baal worshipers, ends up fleeing from one woman and alone and depressed in a cave:

‘He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”

The Lord said to him, “Go back the way you came, and go to the Desert of Damascus. When you get there, anoint Hazael king over Aram. Also, anoint Jehu son of Nimshi king over Israel, and anoint Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel Meholah to succeed you as prophet. Jehu will put to death any who escape the sword of Hazael, and Elisha will put to death any who escape the sword of Jehu. Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him.”’ [1 Kings 19, 14-18]

woe is me, it’s just me, i’m the only one who gets this… No, you’re not David. No, you’re not Elijah. No, you’re not [insert your name here]. I have this. It is My kingdom and I care about it more than you do. That person you are so concerned about, I love them more than you do.

Trust Me. Give me your hand, get up off your face and let’s do this thing…

[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 52

i think the first very interesting thing to note with this psalm is the intro:

‘For the director of music. A maskil  of David. When Doeg the Edomite had gone to Saul and told him: “David has gone to the house of Ahimelek.”’

if you read the first seven verses you see David’s response to basically ‘being told on’ and he is not amused. should we learn from that example of David and go to ourselves, ‘ah cool, so that makes it okay to rant publically about someone?’

i would suggest no. i don’t think this is a teaching passage that ends in ‘Go and do likewise!’ – but i do think we can take some kind of relief at seeing how this ‘man after God’s own heart’ still got really annoyed with people and even lost it to some extent in a public way. David lost his cool. does that mean i should lose mine? no, but it makes me feel so much better when i do. i am in good company.

we see this later with the disciples trying to get rid of the kids that ‘are bothering Jesus’, we witness this as Peter valiantly pulls out his dagger and removes the ear of one of the guards come to arrest Jesus and we have seen this in Moses smashing the tablets with the ten commandments on them because he is so pissed off by the Israelites actions.

it’s not the right way to behave… but we ‘get’ it.

and then it’s like he manages to pull himself together right at the end and finishes with a focus on God. kind of like he is saying, ‘I am mightily pissed off right now, i’m so angry, i’ve been so hard done by… but God is faithful. This too shall pass. And what does any of it really matter because i have God on my side and He is loving and faithful.

‘But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God;
I trust in God’s unfailing love for ever and ever.
For what you have done I will always praise you in the presence of your faithful people.
And I will hope in your name, for your name is good.’ [vs. 8-9]

 [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 36

another psalm from David and again, it appears as if he hadn’t committed his major facefall yet as he is still muttering about those who have “no fear of God before their eyes.” [vs. 1]

but once he has gotten over looking at “them” and “their awful sin” he has some useful things to say [so useful we turned them into songs… from songs into other songs that it]

Your love, Lord, reaches to the heavens,
your faithfulness to the skies.
Your righteousness is like the highest mountains,
your justice like the great deep.
You, Lord, preserve both people and animals.
How priceless is your unfailing love, O God!
People take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
They feast on the abundance of your house;
you give them drink from your river of delights.
For with you is the fountain of life;
in your light we see light.

so much so that i want to just share it like that, so all the poetry and music can drip from it… it is amazing how when a poet/songwriter/artist gets it so right, they can transport other people along with them on their journey and i feel that happens here – basically the writer is shouting out, “God you are big in this way and huge in that other way and just so incredible in that way” and uses amazing language to take us right there with Him…

Your Love reaches to the heavens [which are not necessarily a physical up there, just past the stars, kind of place, so really Your Love just goes on and on and on]…

Your faithfulness is like the mighty mountains [you know, standing firm, unmoveable, unshakeable, You are trustworthy]…

Your justice like the great deep [going way beyond what we see and can experience and even know about or can safely enter into without super special hectic gear – it just keeps going and is much greater than we can imagine]…

and on and on… God you are Huge and Great and Mighty and everything about You is just desirable and mind-blowing and life-transforming…

it is great, and necessary to every now and then [or really regularly actually, which is why i love corporate worship times cos that is a place i feel encouraged to do so] just lose it in your praise and adoration of God, for who He is and what He does and what He has done…

when last did you do so?

For with you is the fountain of life;
in your light we see light. [vs.9]

[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 35

been great hearing some thoughts from my friends and may have some more at a later stage but back to me for now… with psalm 35:

as i was reading this psalm [of david once again calling besmitement upon his enemies for all the nasty things they are doing or plotting against him] i had the thought that david’s only reference was the old testament God… now one of the big contentions of the Bible for a lot of people who don’t follow Jesus [and believe me, a whole lot of those who do as well] is that the God of the old testament seems to be different from the God of the new testament… old testament God = angry and violent and vindictive and new testament God = loving and full of grace and mercy – and a quick reading of the whole bible may help give you this opinion as there is a lot more killing in the old testament and appears to be a lot more forgiving and teaching on it in the new testament…

but a deeper reading will show that while God may change the way He interacts with people or reveals Himself to them, He doesn’t change in character… i assume this psalm is another of the pre-bathsheba stories of david’s life as he is once again appearing innocent while wanting all the ‘guilty’ around him to be taken down – and i imagine after that whole episode where he has received the punishment of his sin [loses the child conceived in sin] but also the forgiveness, grace and mercy of a loving God who will one day come Himself to bring release from the pain, sin and suffering of the world and bring the message of His heart of Love, Grace, Mercy and Freedom to us personally, that david would have had a different understanding of who God is and also chosen to be a lot more lenient on his enemies.

in the old testament we see a lot of God’s Grace, Mercy and Love shown in the way He holds back from destroying His people when they do the equivalent of showing Him the finger in disobedience time and time again and after every punishment He allows them to go through He always ends up rushing back with forgiveness and the next plan and opportunity for kingdom growth. and in the new testament we witness in the Acts 5 story of ananias and sapphira how God is still able to step in and say “enough is enough” – I am Loving, Gracious and Merciful but also I am a Holy God and will not just sit back and watch my name and character be mocked without ever intervening… so two examples of which there are more of the old testament God suddenly seeming very new testament and vice versa – God doesn’t change – His character and heart are consistent throughout Scripture even if His methods, style and ways of communication and even being followed might.

so the psalm made me want to introduce David to the new testament understanding of God as we see Him portrayed in Jesus Christ with the words and life on Love and Forgiveness and cheek-turning and enemy-Loving and so on…

and then i really loved verse ten which says, ‘My whole being will exclaim, “Who is like You, Lord? You rescue the poor from those too strong for them, the poor and needy from those who rob them.”’

Both the question of “who is like You, Love?” with the obvious answer of “No-one!” And the heart for the poor and needy, the least of these, who are shown to be on God’s heart all the way through the story of the bible… and the strength of the statement coming from the exclamation of the writer’s whole being. definitely words to live by.

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]