12/20/2011 11:50:06 AM
SPIRITUAL DIARY
My Worship Time Focus: Psalm 5 PT-1
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Psalm 5
Message of the verses: “1 ¶ «For the choir director; for flute accompaniment. A Psalm of David.» Give ear to my words, O LORD, Consider my groaning. 2 Heed the sound of my cry for help, my King and my God, For to You I pray. 3 In the morning, O LORD, You will hear my voice; In the morning I will order my prayer to You and eagerly watch. 4 For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness; No evil dwells with You. 5 The boastful shall not stand before Your eyes; You hate all who do iniquity. 6 You destroy those who speak falsehood; The LORD abhors the man of bloodshed and deceit.
“ 7 ¶ But as for me, by Your abundant lovingkindness I will enter Your house, At Your holy temple I will bow in reverence for You. 8 O LORD, lead me in Your righteousness because of my foes; Make Your way straight before me. 9 There is nothing reliable in what they say; Their inward part is destruction itself. Their throat is an open grave; They flatter with their tongue. 10 Hold them guilty, O God; By their own devices let them fall! In the multitude of their transgressions thrust them out, For they are rebellious against You. 11 But let all who take refuge in You be glad, Let them ever sing for joy; And may You shelter them, That those who love Your name may exult in You. 12 For it is You who blesses the righteous man, O LORD, You surround him with favor as with a shield.”
This SD will only deal with the introduction of Psalm 5 and because of the importance of what it written about this Psalm by Warren Wiersbe I will be quoting two paragraphs from that introduction. There is a good reason for these quotations because we are introduced to the first imprecatory psalm in the book of Psalms and I want all to realize the importance of understand what this type of psalm is all about. First we I want to mention that this is like Psalm 3 in that it is a morning psalm. As I go through the book of Psalms I am finding out that there many different types of Psalm that I did not know existed, like “morning psalms.” It is not known as to when this psalm was written but some suggest that this was also written during the time of the takeover of Absalom, but that may not be the case. We cannot assume that because the words Your house that is used in verse seven that it was written after the temple was built for these words can also apply to the tabernacle. Since in am using the NASB we do not see the word “Nehiloth” in the introduction, which does appears in the KJV and it means flutes.
We will now look at the quotation from Warren Wiersbe: “Because of the prayer in verse 10, Psalm 6 is classified as one of the ‘imprecatory psalms’ (see 12, 35, 37, 58, 59, 69, 79, 83, 109, 139, and 140). In these psalms, the writers seen to describe a God of wrath who can hardly wait to destroy sinners. The writers also seem to picture themselves as people seeking terrible revenge against these enemies. But several facts must be considered before we write off the psalmist as pagan brutes who cannot forgive, or God as a ‘dirty bully.’ To begin with, the enemies described are rebels against the Lord (5:10), and in some instances, against the Lord’s anointed king. The Jews were a covenant people whom God promised to protect as long as they obeyed Him (Lev. 26; Deut. 27-29). In His covenant with Abraham, God promised to bless those who blessed Israel and to curse those who cursed them (Gen. 12:1-3). When the Jews asked God to deal justly with enemies, they were only asking Him to fulfill His covenant promises, He must deal with sin. Ever since the fall of man in Genesis 3, there has been a battle going on in the world between truth and lies, justice and injustice, and right and wrong; and we cannot be neutral in this battle. ‘If the Jews cursed more bitterly the Pagans,’ wrote C. S. Lewis in Reflections on the Psalms, ‘this was, I think, at least in part because they took right and wrong more seriously. For if we look at their railings we find they are usually angry and not simply because these things have done to them but because these things are manifestly wrong, are hateful to God as well as to the victim’ (P.30).
“Those who have difficulty accepting the ‘imprecations’ in The Psalms must also deal with them in Jeremiah (11:18ff; 15:15;17:18; 18:19ff; 20:11ff) and in the preaching of John the Baptist (Matt. 3) and Jesus (Matt. 23), as well as in the requests of the martyrs in heaven (Rev. 6:9-11). However, no one will deny that these servants of God were filled with the Spirit and wanted the Lord’s will to be accomplished. Perhaps our problem today is what C. S. Lewis pointed out: we don’t hate sin enough to get upset at the wickedness and godlessness around us. Bombarded as we are by so much media evil and violence, we’ve gotten accustomed to the darkness.”
I think with this quotation one can see that along with other portions of both the NT and the OT, and of course these imprecatory psalms that they are just as much a part of the Word of God as the passages that speak of God’s love for us. We must remember that one of the attributes of God is His justice, and as we read in Psalm 5 and other places justice is what is being asked for.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: As we get to this time of the year when we again celebrate our Lord’s birth we seem to be busier than other times of the year, and thus is the case with me and also my family. I desire to accomplish more on these Psalm SD’s, but today something came up and we had the privilege of taking care of two of our six grandchildren and so I was only able to write on the introduction of Psalm 5.
As I think of what both Warren Wiersbe, and C. S. Lewis wrote I must confess that the media has caused me to not look at sin as I should and therefore I need to think about this and pray about this in order to be able to see sinfulness as what it is.
My Steps of Faith For Today:
1. Remember the awfulness of Sin.
2. Continue to seek to learn contentment.
12/20/2011 1:22:14 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment