Psalm 9

Psalms 9 and 10 were originally one Psalm, so consider this post like to be like the first of a two-part episode of your favourite show (or any show, I’m not assuming you like my blog more than anything else you read online…). Together the structure of the two Psalms forms an acrostic poem, with each stanza beginning with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and there are several other Psalms that follow this pattern.

David, in this Psalm, tells us he is continually praising the LORD, the Good God, and telling people of what He has done. He is thankful, for God has overcome David’s enemies – those who are not righteous cannot stand in the presence of a Holy God. God is a righteous judge who rebukes those who persist in wickedness. He rules over the earth. David makes it clear that God will judge the earth and that He loves justice to be done, but he also wants us to know that God is a safe haven, a refuge, for those who seek after Him and want to know Him. He says to God: “those who know your name put their trust in You”. (v10)

This made me reflect on what names we know God by. I’ve said before, and will say many times in the future, that when we see God called ‘God’ in the Bible it is a translation of the word Elohim, which refers to God’s greatness, as in the first chapter of Genesis when God’s creative power is established. When we see the word ‘LORD’ used, written all in capitals, it refers to God’s covenant name, Yahweh, which is used to emphasis His goodness. The clearest example of this is Exodus 33/34, when Moses asks to see God and God says that He will pass by Moses and declare His name over Him. And this is what happened: ‘The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. 6 The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” 8 And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped.’

Notice how long God’s name is?! Because knowing God’s name is about more than knowing what to call Him. Knowing God’s name means recognising His character: His love, His grace, His mercy, His compassion, His faithfulness, His forgiveness, His judgement. And Moses’ response to hearing God’s name is the same as David’s, and is what ours should be: worship. Recognising the truth of what God’s character is like can only lead us to praising Him and telling others of His goodness and greatness. Seek Him, and lead others to Him.

Psalm Eight

This short Psalm is packed full of the wonder of God. The very first verse emphasises God’s goodness, by using His covenant name, Yahweh, LORD, but also His majesty by using the name Adonai, translated as Lord. We are also told what He rules over – all the earth and in the heavens display His glory and majesty for all to see. Even the very youngest of God’s creation can recognise the wonder of what He has made and praise Him for it, and through His creative power He has shown His authority.

This Psalm is deep, and I love it. David sits, pondering the wonder of creation, all the amazing things God has made and how tiny we are in the scope of it all, and yet, and yet, God cares about us. God cares about people, He is concerned with our everyday. He has given us such a high status in creation, and charged us with caring for His earth. He has honoured us and given us the great privilege of stewardship over the world He has made, over domestic and wild animals, fish and birds. We need to think about what we have done and are doing with this great responsibility entrusted to us.

God is good, but He is also Lord, the master of creation – the maker/owner, I once heard it put. His Name is majestic and He deserves glory, this is shown in creation. He created the universe, but He still cares about us, mankind, and has given us honour and responsibility. He has given us authority on the earth, we are His stewards.

In my mind this means we should be helping the earth to continue to display God’s glory, nurturing the planet and sharing the resources. Instead, we flawed human beings tend to plunder the earth and take what we can get with little concern for those we share the planet with – animals or other humans.

So I think it’s time for a challenge – what one thing can you do this week to help take better care of the planet? It could be as simple as reusing paper or recycling it instead of just throwing it in the bin. It could be only buying locally produced products for a while, or donating unwanted items to charity instead of chucking them away. For me it’s water – I’m going to make a real effort to waste less water this week: shorter showers, less water for washing up, not running the tap unnecessarily. This is a way of saying thank-you to God for the amazing earth He created for us, by taking better care of it.

So please share your ideas for looking after the planet!

Psalm 6

This Psalm finds David at a low point. He is ailing, weary, depressed. We’re given no context for his situation, though it seems he is expecting wrath and discipline, so we can assume he is feeling the need to repent from some sinful action. Exaggeration is common in the psalms to really emphasis the emotion, so it is possible that the physical symptoms David describes are just an example of that, or it could also be that he is feeling sick with guilt, that his sin has caused a physical reaction.

He is calling out for grace and mercy. He appeals to God’s goodness by using the covenant name, LORD, Yahweh. He calls on God’s steadfast love. He is in the depths of despair, and yet is confident of God’s answer. In an effort to rid himself of the enemies who are tormenting him, he sends them away, declaring: “The LORD has heard the sound of my weeping. The LORD has heard my plea; the LORD accepts my prayer.” Even though his situation may not have changed yet, David knows that he has been heard, and he knows that God is just and will respond to his cry.

Sin has consequences in our lives, but repentance restores our relationship with God, because He is merciful and will always forgive us when we ask. He always answers when we call to him. We can come to Him with confidence, even when times are tough, and know that we will be heard. We can trust in His steadfast love and trust Him for justice.

Psalm 5

This is one of the many Psalms which includes the instruction: “For the choirmaster” (or director of music in other translations). It is thought that these Psalms were meant to be included in the collection of works for use in Israel’s worship services, making it an act of corporate worship. For some reason it often surprises me to see this annotation, as I get used to thinking of the Psalms as personal prayers and songs, and individual crying out to God in different situations. While that is definitely true of many of the Psalms, it is striking how many are labelled as congregational, reminding us that our faith is not an individual affair, but one requiring fellowship for growth, in the good times and the bad.

Psalm 5 is titled “Lead me in Your righteousness” in my Bible, and this is David’s prayer throughout the Psalm. He addresses his application first of all to the LORD, using God’s covenant name, which emphasises His goodness, but in the next verse David calls on “my King and my God” to highlight God’s authority over him and His greatness. David has an attitude of humility – he is making the right sacrifices and waiting for God to act. He wants to be right with God. He knows what displeases God – boasting, evil, deceit, bloodthirstiness – and he knows that God’s unfailing and abundant love has made it possible for us to be right with Him. He also recognises that the right response to God’s holiness is fear and respect.

The next verse (8) intrigued me: “Lead me, O LORD, in your righteousness/because of my enemies/make your way straight before me” – why because of his enemies? Was it because they were trying to lead him astray, or he was worried about his anger towards them leading him to sin? Or was it so that they would have no ammunition against him, as he would be living God’s way? Or could it be because he wanted to show them a better way to live? As I thought about this, I realised that though these are different interpretations of the same phrase, they actually don’t contradict each other – any or all of these thoughts could be accurate. David may very well have mixed emotions and motives when thinking about those who stood against him! What is clear, though, from verse 10, is that David is handing the situation over to God, and letting Him deal with them, instead of trying to seek his own vengeance. This is a pattern we see time and again in the Psalms – let God be God and let go of our own agenda.

The Psalm ends with a promise of the blessings for those who seek refuge in God, and seek after righteousness – they will be made righteous and they will be protected and favoured, and their response will be to praise.

So, what’s the takeaway from this today? First, to take requests to God freely, appealing to His goodness but with a right respect for His authority. Second, remember that God is holy and hates sin – be repentant, be humble, and seek after righteousness. Third, trust Him for justice when others seek to hurt you, but also by your actions show them the way of grace and righteousness. Finally, remember God’s unfailing love and seek refuge in Him.

Psalm 4

This has been one of my favourite Psalms for a long time, partly because it was recited in a song on a favourite album when I was a teenager, so I knew it word for word at one point.

I love the assurance with which David speaks of God. He knows God will answer, he doesn’t doubt that in the slightest. Even when people are trying to bad mouth him, or doubt his God, he knows, is certain that God hears him. He knows that God is the source of his righteousness (v1), his joy (v7) and his security (v8). He also knows that God will bring justice, that those spreading lies about him will be shown to be deceitful and that he is set apart by God as righteous.

There is also some very wise advice in verses four and five. “Be angry, and do not sin” (or, “In your anger, do not sin” as the NIV puts it). A few weeks ago a good friend of mine was in a situation where he got so angry he was about ready to punch someone who was really winding him up. I have never seen him so angry. And he walked away. He let someone else make the peace and he went off by himself to calm down. He did not let his anger control him. He wasn’t wrong to get angry, but he would have been wrong to act out of his anger. In Ephesians 4v26, Paul quotes this verse and takes it a little bit further: he instructs us not to go to bed angry, to always try to make peace within ourselves before the sun goes down. This action of letting go of what has wound us up is another way of letting God be God, and trusting Him to make things right.

We don’t have to make sacrifices in the way they did in the Old Testament, but there are sacrifices we need to make to help us be right with God (v5). Letting go of things that anger or upset us and choosing to forgive is one way. Last week someone upset me and I really wanted to get them back by doing the same thing to them that they had done to me, so they would know how it had felt. Instead I chose to do something nice for them, and they came and thanked me and I was so glad I had chosen helping instead of hurting, as that only leads to a cycle of pain and revenge.

In choosing to follow God, we have to give up a lot, Jesus asks His disciples repeatedly to leave their homes and security and to follow Him, assuring them that they will face many trials and persecution along the way. There have been many times in my life where all I could do was cling onto the slivers of faith and just trust and hope that God would pull me through, and He always does. David finishes off the Psalm with the assurance that God will give him rest and security. We may not have it easy when we follow God, but we know that He is with us through everything and is working for our good, and it is so worth it.

When I think about sacrifice, I am reminded of that amazing quote from Jim Elliot, a man who put is faith into action and was killed trying to share the gospel with the Aucas in Ecuador in the 1950s. He said: “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”

Psalm 3

Psalm 3 gives us a spotlight on a really low point in David’s life. The story behind the Psalm is in 2 Samuel 15, though the scene is set four chapters earlier when David sins by committing adultery and murder (chapter 11), and God makes it clear there are going to be consequences (chapter 12) – lesson 1: whenever we go against God’s ways, even though He forgives us in His mercy, there will always be repercussions to our actions.

The first consequence is that the child born from the affair dies, but things soon get worse for David. In chapter 13, when one of David’s sons, Amnon, rapes his half-sister Tamar. David is angry about this (verse 21) but doesn’t do anything about it, so Tamar’s brother Absalom takes matters into his own hands, and kills Amnon, and then flees. Eventually David is persuaded to let Absalom return to Jerusalem, who appears to make peace with his father (chapter 14).

But Absalom soon starts to undermine his father’s rule and eventually leads a power coup, and David is forced to flee, and this is the situation in which David writes this Psalm.

I can’t imagine what it must have felt like for David to be betrayed by his own son, particularly knowing that in some way it was a result of bad choices he had made. His response in this Psalm, however, is so challenging to me as he turns to God in his anguish but not in anger. He repeatedly refers to God as LORD, using God’s covenant name (Yahweh) that emphasises God’s goodness.

When his enemies are trying to tell him that God has left him, David calls out to God for protection, because he knows that the LORD has always responded in the past to his cries for help (v4) He was able to rest, despite everything, because God sustained him. He develops this idea into hope for the future, he knows that God has helped him, so he has no need to fear, however many enemies he is facing, because God has answered him whenever he called. He calls out to God, trusting Him for justice to be done to his enemies.

Often those without faith can try to talk us out of ours. We need to always remember what God has done for us in the past, as this knowledge will sustain us and help us to keep trusting Him for our present and our future. God is faithful and will answer when we call to Him. He is the source of justice and salvation.

David’s story is at times victorious and at times heartbreaking, for me this is one of the saddest chapters in his life. His failures as a father and the consequences of his actions make for difficult reading, and remind us that while we can learn a lot from Biblical characters we must remember that they were human and usually screwed up pretty badly at times (apart from Jesus, who, being fully God as well as fully human, was awesome and is literally the perfect role model). But this is a great lesson for us too – David, despite all his screw-ups, is still referred to as being ‘a man after God’s own heart’. What we see throughout the Psalms is that whatever happens in his life, good or bad, David is constantly turning to God, whether in anguish or in praise, or sometimes both. Life is messy, often as a result of our own actions, and we need to learn from David to take all our mess to a loving and powerful LORD and God who will always answer when we call to Him.

Psalm 2

This is a Messianic Psalm – meaning it talks about the Anointed One who God will send to rule the earth in the future (Jesus).

It opens up with a rhetorical question – why are people setting themselves up against God? These are people of power – kings and rulers – who are coming together against God. They seem to see Him as a killjoy, setting restricting rules for the sake of it, but the Psalmist undercuts this by using God’s covenant name – the LORD (Yahweh) to highlight His goodness and love. He cares for our wellbeing.

The word Lord also appears not written all in capitals – this is usually a translation of the word Adonai – a name for God that emphasises His authority.

The Psalmist sees the futility of their rebellion – he can see that God has anointed a King – His Son – who will rule over the earth and one day everyone will be subject to Him. But this can be a good thing – those who seek refuge in the Anointed will find it, those who worship Him will be spared.

The Psalms often present this choice to us – our way or God’s way: will we stand against Him or submit to His authority in our lives? This Psalm urges the nations to give up their rebellion and submit to the LORD who will give them refuge – if they don’t they will face His judgement.

I was struck by verse 11: “Serve the LORD with fear and rejoice with trembling” – it brought to mind those similar verses in Philippians 2v12-13, which tell us to “work out [our] own salvation with fear and trembling”. I think we can sometimes forget or even ignore the judgement and holiness of God – this reminds us that He deserves our respect and our worship.

Verse 8 also sent me searching for references: “I will make the nations your heritage”. One verse that suggests Jesus as the object of this promise (the one receiveing the heritage) is Hebrews 1v2, where He is described as the ‘heir of all things’.

What this verse reminded me of is the only clue Jesus gave as to when He would return. In Matthew 24v1-14, the disciples are asking Jesus how they will know when ‘the end of the age’ is coming. Jesus warns them not to be distracted by false teachers telling them the end is coming, then He gives the clue: “And the gospel of the Kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”

Way back in the Psalms, Jesus, the Anointed One, was promised that all nations would be His inheritance, and He won’t return until every nation has been given the opportunity to hear and follow. Which makes our mission clear. We must take the news that Jesus is God’s Anointed One, who will judge those who set themselves up against Him, but will provide refuge to those who fear and trust Him.

(Photo is of the stained glass window in the chapel at Goodrich Castle, Herefordshire)