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…

Psalm 13

Yesterday I put my New King James Version (NKJV) Chronological Study Bible on the shelf and grabbed my old Revised Standard Version (RSV). I’ve been using the NKJV many years; one thing I like in particular with this translation is capitalized deific pronouns and found myself disappointed that the RSV chose not to do that. (There are reasons for that – I’ll discuss at another time.) So I brought my NKJV back off the shelf and now I’ve got both the NKJV and the RSV, along with my NASB and our church’s ESV.

So this morning as I picked up that RSV bible and saw how torn the cover and binding were, I realized that it was January 1972, fifty years ago this month that I bought this bible at the beginning of my first semester back to college after a five-year lapse. It was a required textbook for a New Testament class that I was taking to fulfill a Humanities requirement. Then the Old Testament course followed in the fall semester. And it was because of this RSV bible that I met Jim, a second-semester freshman who was to lead me to the Lord some three-and-a-half years later. I am again intrigued at how the Lord leads in our lives! At a public institution (U. Illinois) a bible sequence was offered as an alternative to other sequences. I was to read Moses and Isaiah and Jesus and Matthew instead of Cicero, Shakespeare, Hawthorne and others. GLORY!

As for today’s Psalm 13: How long??!! David begins four questions in the first two verses with “How long…?”. It strikes me that he was a bit exasperated at the Lord not delivering him from his difficulties and making him endure them day after day, week after week, month after month…!!! But always faithful, he is confident of the Lord working in his life and rejoices in that thought in the last two verses: …my heart shall rejoice in Your salvation. (v. 5b) So my heart goes to things for which Carol and I have been praying for a long time, praying, we believe, “in God’s will”. But “how long”? How long, Lord? How long?

Psalm 12

I recall John saying a few days ago, essentially, that the psalms are timeless. I surely see that in today’s reading: You, O LORD, will keep them; you will guard us from this generation forever. On every side the wicked prowl, as vileness is exalted among the children of man. (vv. 7-8) David is asking to be guarded …from this generation forever. He goes on to speak of the wicked and of vileness being exalted. Again I think of Hollywood – television and the movies! Yes, wickedness IS exalted. We do need to be guarded from this generation.

Psalm 11

I really hope that each of you has a study Bible with notes that can help your understanding of the Psalms. I regularly look to my two or three study Bibles for guidance and understanding. Such was the case today, and punctuation is the key. David is writing this Psalm; in the first verse “you” is not capitalized in any translation that I read, so David is speaking to someone else – individual or group. Then beginning in verse 1b we have quotation marks around David’s speech until the end of verse 3. Putting it all together, it seems clear to me that David is speaking to his followers who want him to flee from imminent danger, to go hide in the mountains. But David’s confidence in the Lord shows up in the rest of the Psalm. He knows that he may be getting tested (see verse 5), but he also knows that he is among the righteous and that the Lord is on his side.

So David occasionally gets tested; soon we’ll be reading Job where Job endures some serious testing; and last year we read of Jesus being tested – initially in the wilderness, then regularly by the scribes and Pharisees, then finally that ultimate test that He faced in the Garden of Gethsemane. What do we learn from all that? We are not immune from testing! How we respond is the key. Look at David’s immediate response to those who are suggesting flight: The LORD is in His holy temple; the LORD’s throne is in heaven; His eyes see, His eyelids test the children of man. (v. 4) Our Lord knows everything that is going on in our lives. Rest. Pray. Wait.