Psalm 72

I truly appreciate John stepping up when I am unable, but for now, at least until Tuesday morning I can share a bit to start us off.

I may have found a new favorite psalm. If not number one, Psalm 72 is right up there! Very quickly as I was reading through it the first time, although Psalm 72 was relating to King David or King Solomon or other Israeli kings, I could see it applied to Jesus. My lead Study Bible said the same thing, that the early church saw this Psalm as a description of the Messiah. Then Jesus fulfilled these verses in His own life. Consider a few verses (capitalized pronouns added):

• May He judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice! (v. 2)
• May He defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the children of the needy, and crush the oppressor! (v. 4)
• For He delivers the needy when he calls, the poor and him who has no helper. He has pity on the weak and the needy… (vv. 12-13a)
• May His name endure forever… (v. 17a)

We also look forward to His return:

• May He have dominion from sea to sea… (v. 8a)
• May all kings fall down before Him, all nations serve Him! (v. 11)
• May His name endure forever… May people be blessed in Him, all nations call Him blessed! (v. 17)

Finally, a glorious conclusion:  

• Blessed be His glorious name forever; may the whole earth be filled with His glory! (v. 19)

AMEN!!

Psalm 71:14-24

The second half of this psalm turns from plea to praise, or more accurately, to the promise of public praise:

But I will hope continually
and will praise You yet more and more.
My mouth will tell of Your righteous acts,
of Your deeds of salvation all the day,
for their number is past my knowledge.
With the mighty deeds of the Lord GOD I will come;
I will remind them of Your righteousness, Yours alone.

Psalm 71:14-16

I envision a soldier in a foxhole under a barrage of artillery desperately praying to survive the night and promising to serve the Lord thereafter. My guess is that such “foxhole commitments” number in the thousands, if not millions. (As the saying goes, there are no atheists in foxholes…) But I wonder about the rate of follow-through; that is, what percentage of those who “make a deal” with God under stress go on to fulfill their half of the bargain? The percentage is certainly not zero, but neither is it 100.

My guess — and it is only a guess — is that the answer is far closer to zero than 100. I base that only on observation of human nature and of myself. I have never been in combat, but I am pretty sure that I have nonetheless bargained with God along the lines of, “If You save me from X, then I’ll do Y.” The problem is that I have conveniently forgotten all those commitments and am only “pretty sure” that I might have made them…

All of that goes to say that we ought not forget to return praise and thanksgiving to God for all the wondrous things He does as He pours out His steadfast love on us. He deserves such praise regardless of whether we vow to give it or not. So as we read this psalm together, with its promises of praise, take the opportunity to actually follow through and praise the Lord, right here, right now.

Psalm 71:1-13

With Fred “otherwise occupied” for a bit, I guess you’re stuck with me again…

This psalm is a cry from the heart for God’s protection and deliverance. My guess is that we can all fairly readily “put ourselves into” the psalmist’s position, appealing to the Lord for rescue. For some of us, that may reflect very real current circumstances. For others, even when we are sitting in comfort we can reflect back on prior trials and difficulties that seemed (and were) insurmountable without the Lord’s grace. In all cases, the Lord remains our Rock of refuge. (v. 3)

Right now, knowing Fred’s situation while reading Psalm 71, I cannot help but read it from (what I imagine to be) his perspective. With the exceptions of the references to enemies and accusers in Ps. 71:10,11,13, it does not take much effort to imagine Fred as the psalmist. And so, I propose that we all, in one spirit, intercede for Fred with this psalm. God is indeed our Rock of refuge to which [we] may continually come.

Psalm 70

It seems a bit unusual – Psalm 70 has only five verses, but David addresses God (“O God…” v. 1), his enemies (“Let them…”, vv. 2-3), the faithful (“Let all…, Let those…”, v. 4), and himself (“But I…”, v. 5).

Yesterday I mentioned that God seems to favor the poor and needy. Today David includes himself in that group: But I am poor and needy; hasten to me, O God! (v. 5a) I backed off on further comments yesterday, but in the back of my mind I thought that most of us are not poor; in fact, compared to much of the U.S. population most of us are quite well off. But that’s only the “poor” part of that phrase, “poor and needy”. So today I am reminded that I am indeed needy. Unfortunately, all too often I don’t see my needy-ness, in that I am too busy taking it all on myself without seeking help or guidance from the Lord. That needs to be corrected: O LORD, make haste to help me! (v. 1b)

Psalm 69:29-36

I am always touched when I see the Psalms reflect on the Lord’s concern for the poor and needy: For the Lord hears the needy and does not despise His own people who are prisoners. (v. 33) No doubt God loves all of us, but the poor in a special way? Nothing more in the way of comments, but a good thought to consider all day long…

Psalm 69:13-28

There are two things going on in today’s section of Psalm 69 – the psalmist’s lamenting of his own situation (vv. 13-21) and his documenting of his enemies’ evils and crying out for justice/revenge against these enemies (vv. 21-28). I’ve said before that I can relate to the former more than to the latter. I don’t wish for the best for my enemies (whoever they might be) but I also don’t wish them harm.

A number of today’s verses are quoted/cited in the New Testament. The most prominent is verse 21 which is quoted/cited by each of the Gospel writers. A number of the crucifixion details are different in each of the Gospels, but this one item is common to all four. Second, verse 25 is applied by Peter in Acts 1:20 with respect to Judas’ death. Finally, Paul cites verses 22-23 in Romans 11:9-10.

Psalm 69:1-12

Short informational item – one of my Study Bibles reports that no psalm other than Psalm 22 is quoted more often in the New Testament than today’s Psalm 69.

So today it seems we have a leader who is actively seeking to follow the Lord (v. 9), but acknowledges his own sin (v. 5), has a group of faithful followers (v. 6), has a group of friends who have turned away from him (v. 8), and has enemies unknown to him (v. 12) who are wrongly charging him (v. 4). Frankly, sadly, that sounds like any church pastor – any church, any denomination.

Verse 6 struck me: Let not those who hope in You be put to shame through me, O Lord GOD of hosts; let not those who seek You be brought to dishonor through me, O God of Israel. As Christians we have an image that we portray to everyone around us. And sadly, in this verse we see that other Christians are affected by how an outside world views us. How often have we heard the charge that Christians are just a bunch of hypocrites? An entire body of Christians get judged because of the actions of a few. The Apostle Peter offers good advice to counter these accusations: Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God on the day of visitation. (I Peter 2:12, NASB)

Psalm 68:19-35

I have said before that pronouns can be confusing. Perhaps in the original languages it was clear to whom a particular pronoun referred, but we don’t have that luxury in English. However, I think I can clear up some pronoun confusion in today’s reading. Naturally I could be wrong, but it helps the passage makes sense. The springboard for all this is verses 11-18 from yesterday which we saw as a major military victory for Israel

Think of the Roman victory parades that we have seen in the movies, with the Generals leading the legions of armies and the defeated prisoners forced to march along as demonstration of the Roman victory. Now imagine the same happening in Israel during Solomon’s reign, when the Temple had already been built. Start with verse 21, But God will strike the heads of His enemies, the hairy crown of him who walks in his guilty ways. So the psalmist here is speaking of Israel’s enemies. His pronouns in verse 22 (them) and in verse 23 (their) reflect back to these enemies. I’m guessing then that these enemies are part of the procession to the Temple (vv. 24-27). He continues with the enemies bringing tribute (vv. 29, 31). In between he cries out for victory against Egypt and her supporters (v. 30), the only major power that Israel has not yet defeated in Solomon’s time. He then closes the Psalm with praise to God. I hope this helps your reading.

Psalm 68:1-18

When I first read today’s Psalm 68 (1-18) I thought that it was the most convoluted psalm that we had read to date. Then I read from a second (Study) Bible, which had pretty much the same reaction: “This is the most difficult of the Psalms to interpret, and there is no general agreement either as to its meaning as a whole or in many of its details. Some scholars regard it merely as a collection of unrelated fragments.” So maybe I was not too far off the mark?!

But further reading brought greater understanding and I saw two major incidents (vv. 6-10; 11-18) bookmarked with praise sections (vv. 1-5; 19-20). Verses 6-10 seem to refer to the Exodus from Egypt while Verses 11-18 seem to refer to a major victory, likely for King David after he had established Jerusalem (Mount Zion) as God’s “dwelling place”. Read it in that context and it all falls together better.

Verse 18 is worth a comment. You ascended on high, leading a host of captives in Your train and receiving gifts among men… The Apostle Paul quotes this verse in Ephesians 4:8, Therefore it says, “When He ascended on high He led a host of captives and He gave gifts to men.

If we take verses 11-18 as David the conquering hero ascending to Jerusalem, the gifts that he gave would likely have been the jewelry and other valuables mentioned in verses 11b-13. But Paul sees this Psalm in a Messianic context, with Jesus ascending to Heaven and giving grace to each one of us (Ephesians 4:7) and equipping some as apostles, prophets, etc. (vv. 11-12). I have never known the context of those Ephesians 4 verses and they never made sense to me. Hearkening back to Psalm 68 opens my eyes! Yours, too, I hope!

Psalm 67

The essence of today’s Psalm is pretty clear – the nations of the world will come and praise God when they see His blessings poured out on Israel. This led me to wonder about Christianity in the United States and other highly developed countries in Europe. It wasn’t that long ago that belief in God and church attendance were standard in the USA and these European countries. I remember growing up that France, Spain, and Italy were Catholic nations, Germany was Lutheran, and England was Anglican. And God was certainly blessing these nations during our post-WWII years. But it doesn’t seem that the other nations of the world are embracing our faith. In fact, in all these developed nations, belief in God and church attendance are way down. As Carol and I have visited magnificent churches in Europe we are saddened that churches built for thousands to worship are now much less populated. I’m afraid that our Christian “model” has not played out well to the rest of the world.