Psalm 19:1-6

Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. (v. 4a) I’ve read these words many times – actually, surprisingly in each of the past two years! Paul quotes this verse verbatim in Romans 10:18. In the Psalm David applies these words to the heavens and the sky (v. 1). Paul applies this verse to ministers of the gospel. Beginning in Romans 9 Paul has been speaking of his fellow Jews and his sorrow at their unwillingness to accept Jesus as their Messiah. The immediate prelude to his verse 18 is in his verse 14: How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? The “they” pronouns in verse 14 refer to the Jews (see Romans 10:1). I/we have mentioned a number of times in the past two years that Paul clearly knew his Old Testament scriptures. It’s nice that we can “close that loop” ourselves some 2000 years later.

Psalm 18:46-50

The LORD lives… (v. 1a) The very beginning of today’s verses struck me. The Lord does, indeed, live – among us, within us. Where would we be without Him being! The Lord spoke to Moses at the burning bush and told him that His name was “I AM”. At Freedom Road a couple of weeks ago someone shared the following poem, “I AM” by Helen Mallicoat:

I was regretting the past
And fearing the future.
Suddenly my Lord was speaking:

“My name is I Am.” He paused.
I waited. He continued,
“When you live in the past
With its mistakes and regrets,
It is hard. I am not there,
My name is not I WAS.

“When you live in the future
With its problems and fears,
It is hard. I am not there.
My name is not I WILL BE.

“When you live in this moment,
It is not hard. I am here.
My name is I AM.”

Helen Mallicoat

It struck me then and it strikes me now – the Lord lives! Now.

Psalm 18:37-45

We have a term in our vernacular, the “presidential plural”, where a single speaker says “we” instead of “I” when speaking to an audience. It seems less boastful to say that a team has accomplished an activity rather than just one person doing the work. In today’s reading we see just the opposite. David speaks of all that he has accomplished, never speaking in the presidential plural, when in fact he certainly has had an army of men going to battle for him. And again, to put ourselves into the Psalm, we can imagine that we are among those who went through “basic training” in David’s army yesterday and joined David in his victorious battle today. David’s words spoken personally can apply to us corporately.

An extension to what I’m saying is this – we are seldom doing anything alone! A quarterback may get substantial media credit for having thrown five touchdown passes, but some sure-handed receivers were on the other end catching the ball, an offensive line was blocking for him, and a team of coaches had drawn up the plays with specific duties for each of the 11 players. Thankfully, most quarterbacks so highly lauded in most cases will defer praise to those teammates and coaches. Ben might give a great sermon on a given Sunday and no doubt he spent many hours preparing his talk. But he was trained for sermon delivery in seminary; he read books and Internet commentaries on the topic he was covering; and he very possibly consulted others (Stephanie?!) as to specifics that he might speak. Ben may stand alone at the pulpit, but he has had an army behind him, not unlike David today.

We can’t do it alone! David recognizes that in today’s reading. Five times in verses 39 to 43 David begins a sentence with “You”, acknowledging the Lord’s hand in his preparation, in his victory, and in his kingship. A few days ago I noted that David models prayer for us. Today he models action – the Lord working with him in everything he does. For us, the ultimate “we” in our lives is the Holy Spirit guiding us! It’s good to have that thought front and center in all that we do.

Psalm 18:25-36

Yesterday I noted that today David is moving from a focus on himself to bring in the rest of us. We see that particularly in today’s first three verses, almost an aside from the flow of the Psalm. Then the next nine verses, if we can stay with the “us” joining David in his plight, those nine verses sound like an army (or a platoon or a squad) in basic training preparing for the battle that begins tomorrow in verse 37.

Verse 36 struck me today: You gave a wide place for my steps under me, and my feet did not slip. I was noticing a very large tree yesterday all by itself in a large field. It was snow-covered but still majestic in the 25-degree weather. Even the limbs and branches looked strong. So today I’m thinking of its roots, that …wide place for my steps under me… Some roots go deep and some roots go wide. I was guessing that this tree must have had roots that went both deep and wide, roots that continued to absorb moisture and nutrients and continued to feed the limbs and branches, even with this adverse weather condition. We all need roots that go both deep and wide. For many of us that could be Scripture reading, both in small sections and in large chunks. I’m much better with the large chunks. Reading Psalms this year is helping me with the small sections. We need both, those small sections and the big picture!

Psalm 18:16-24

As we follow the whole of Psalm 18 and not just the verses that are on our reading schedule we see that our reading yesterday was all about David’s enemies and their activities (not to be taken literally), then today’s verses are about David, himself, and tomorrow’s reading will focus on others – the rest of us.

So today the focus is on David and his claim to righteousness: The LORD dealt with me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands He rewarded me. (v. 20) I’m sure that this statement, in fact the whole of verses 20 to 24 might raise red flags for many people who know that “There is none who does good, not even one.” (Psalm 14:3b) My Study Bible commented on that thought: “David’s assertion of his righteousness is not a pretentious boast of sinless perfection. Rather, it is a claim that, in contrast to his enemies he has devoted himself heart and life to the service of the Lord, that his has been a godliness of integrity – itself the fruit of God’s gracious working in his heart.” I have put the key phrase in bold – it’s not what we do on our own, it’s God working within us that guides us to His goodness.

Archbishop Beach often talks about others seeing God at work in our lives. It’s one of his favorite sayings, “Walk the walk and talk the talk.” When I try to follow that mantra, I have a tendency to feel self-satisfied for things that I am doing or have done. I need regularly to draw on that whole phrase in quotes above – if there’s anything good in me, it’s because God has put it there!

Psalm 18:1-15

Today’s Psalm 18 is 50 verses long. Breaking it down into smaller chunks is not an easy task. I made the first break at verse 15. Following his introduction and plea for help in the first six verses, David describes the Lord’s intervention in dreamlike, visionary terms (not likely to be taken literally) in verses 7 through 15, a wholistic chunk in itself. Then we see the Lord’s deliverance in the next four verses in more realistic terminology. So verse 15 seemed a good break point.

David models a prayerful life that we should copy: In my distress I called upon the LORD; to my God I cried for help. From His temple He heard my voice, and my cry to Him reached His ears. (v. 6) We have a prayer team at St. Andrew’s. Almost daily, sometimes two or three times a day, we get an e-mail note from Courtenay with a request for prayer for someone in our congregation or for people known to one of our members. I would guess that ninety percent or more of these requests are prayers for healing – for comfort, wisdom, medical intervention, etc. That’s all well and good, but we also have “smaller” needs in our lives than our physical ailments and it’s good if we feel comfortable to have others reach out in prayer with us for those other needs – our anxieties, our finances, our direction in life, whatever.

If I may relate a true story from my past… Early in my Christian walk I had written a 50-page Master’s thesis with zero input from my major professor. He had already turned down two proposals that I had made for topics to write on. It’s early December and I’m wanting him to grade this paper in short order so that I could be included in the December 1976 graduating class. I was part of a prayer group and they knew of my predicament and had said that they would surely be praying. When I knocked on his door he was not in his office, so I studied other courses while I waited in the departmental reception area. I had sat there for 30 or 40 minutes or more, occasionally looking around and glancing up whenever anyone came in from outside. Finally the secretary/receptionist engaged me:

She: “Fred, are you waiting for someone in particular?”

Me: “Yes, Dr. Kahn.”

She: “Oh. Didn’t you hear? He went blind last night! He developed a detached retina in one eye and the doctors have shut both eyes for a month. He’ll be on sick leave for six months.”

Me: “Oh my gosh! That’s terrible! [Pause] I had wanted him to read my Master’s thesis. Now I’m not sure what I should do.”

She: “I would suggest that you go see the graduate director.”

Which I did… She suggested (with my input) that I go see Dr. Hendricks, another professor in that same field of study, and see if he would read it. So I gave it to “Wally” (I knew him informally in another context); he was happy to oblige me and I finished in the following spring’s graduating class. I’m not suggesting that Dr. Kahn going blind was an answer to our prayers, but clearly the “last night” item, together with my arrival on that next morning made this incident more than coincidental. Had I gone in one day earlier I’m certain that my paper would have been rejected and that it would have been another year before I finished. So I credit the Lord’s timing in my life as His answer to prayer. Bottom line: We need to be praying for everything in our lives – big and small.

Psalm 17

Baby-sitting, so a very short post today… I have avoided the ways of the violent. My steps have held fast to Your paths; my feet have not slipped. (vv. 4b-5) My immediate thought as I read through these verses was that if I were able to avoid the violent and stay on God’s paths and kept my feet from slipping… If I were able to do all that, then I’d still have to deal with myself – my mind, those other temptations and distractions all around me. The only way that I can get on top of all that is to spend time in prayer and reading – and even then distractions abound! I resonate with the apostle Paul in Romans 7:24-25, Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. Too true!

Psalm 16

A portion of today’s reading is well known to many of us. Peter quotes verses 8-11 verbatim in Acts 2:25-28 when speaking to the crowd after the Holy Spirit landed on the apostles at Pentecost. Paul also quotes verse 10b: And as for the fact that He raised Him from the dead, no more to return to corruption, He has spoken in this way, … “You will not let Your Holy One see corruption.” (Acts 13:34-35) The apostles clearly saw these verses as pointing to Jesus.

However, as David wrote this Psalm, I don’t sense that he was speaking of his descendent, the Messiah. In our translations of “the Holy One” the Hebrew word is “hasid”. It’s the same word that David uses back in Psalm 4:3, But know that the LORD has set apart the godly for Himself; the LORD hears when I call to Him. In Psalm 4:3 David is clearly linking the godly to himself. By association, there is reason to assume that David is speaking of himself in today’s reading where “hasid” is translated “the Holy One”.

Beyond all that, verse 3 is the one that jumped out at me today: As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight. As before I am drawn to my fellow worshipers at St. Andrew’s, in whom is all my delight. A nice thought to close…

Psalm 15

For the first time in many days we don’t have David or any other psalmist crying out about his enemies or asking God for His deliverance. Today’s psalm is about “the righteous” (though they are not exactly named as such). I like to consider myself as among “the righteous”, along with the rest of us RTB’ers and all those with whom we’ll worship at church together this morning. But then as I do that, I look at the standards asked of those who are actively seeking God – verses 2 through 5. And I see myself falling short, especially a long-known difficulty in my heart of being overly judgmental. Somehow I weave that into “slander” or “reproach” (think, gossip…) from verse 3. And I was touched by Jim’s “confession” yesterday of being “stupid” or even “evil”. We know that we all fall short: “There is none who does good, not even one” from yesterday’s psalm.

Then I look further and evaluate myself on other aspects of today’s psalm, asking myself if I am moving toward those things that David considers good. My eternally optimistic self seems to always find sunshine peeking through clouds of gloom. But each of us should also look to where we are growing in those things “good”, confessing our shortcomings and looking beyond our faults to the One who forgives us and knows that we fall short. Later we will read in Job 19:25, “I know that my Redeemer lives…” – not only that He lives, but that He also loves me/you/us, eternally. Hold that thought…!

Psalm 14

Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers who … do not call upon the LORD? (v. 4) David is speaking these first words sarcastically, I think, Have they no knowledge…? Surely everyone has knowledge of God! Paul says this in Romans 1:19-22, For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools… I’ve often said that we can look around us at the everyday, or at the macro (the skies), or at the micro (our cellular structure) and see God’s glory revealed. Yet people persist in their unbelief. Personally, I don’t think they’re “fools”. I think they are either stubborn or excessively prideful, unwilling to yield themselves to the One who created them. But also, I can look in a mirror and see a “fool”, one who is stubborn and excessively prideful. Probably that’s why I see it in others…