1/31/2012 6:36:07 AM
SPIRITUAL DIARY
My Worship Time Focus: David Worships the Lord
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Psalm 36
Message of the verses: “1 ¶ «For the choir director. A Psalm of David the servant of the LORD.» Transgression speaks to the ungodly within his heart; There is no fear of God before his eyes. 2 For it flatters him in his own eyes Concerning the discovery of his iniquity and the hatred of it. 3 The words of his mouth are wickedness and deceit; He has ceased to be wise and to do good. 4 He plans wickedness upon his bed; He sets himself on a path that is not good; He does not despise evil.
“5 ¶ Your lovingkindness, O LORD, extends to the heavens, Your faithfulness reaches to the skies. 6 Your righteousness is like the mountains of God; Your judgments are like a great deep. O LORD, You preserve man and beast. 7 How precious is Your lovingkindness, O God! And the children of men take refuge in the shadow of Your wings. 8 They drink their fill of the abundance of Your house; And You give them to drink of the river of Your delights. 9 For with You is the fountain of life; In Your light we see light. 10 O continue Your lovingkindness to those who know You, And Your righteousness to the upright in heart. 11 Let not the foot of pride come upon me, And let not the hand of the wicked drive me away. 12 There the doers of iniquity have fallen; They have been thrust down and cannot rise.”
David is called the servant of the LORD in verse one and this is a title we see several other places in Scripture. Moses is called the servant of the Lord in Deu. 34:5, and so is Joshua in Joshua 24:29. Daniel is also called the servant of the LORD in Dan. 6:20, and James calls himself the servant of the Lord in James 1:1 and we also see Paul calling himself a bond-servant of God in Titus 1:1.
Dr. Wiersbe divides this psalm into three categories; David ponders the reality of evil in God’s world (vv. 1-4), David praised God’s character (vv. 5-9), and David prays that God would protect him from evil and would eventually judge the world (vv. 10-12).
Revelation: The Corruption of the Human Heart (vv. 1-4): “1 For the director of music. Of David the servant of the LORD. An oracle is within my heart concerning the sinfulness of the wicked: There is no fear of God before his eyes. 2 For in his own eyes he flatters himself too much to detect or hate his sin. 3 The words of his mouth are wicked and deceitful; he has ceased to be wise and to do good. 4 Even on his bed he plots evil; he commits himself to a sinful course and does not reject what is wrong. (NIV)”
I have used the NIV for these verses because of what Dr. Wiersbe writes in his commentary about these verses and he uses the word “oracle” in his commentary and so does the NIV. He writes “In Scripture, an oracle is usually an authoritative pronouncement from the Lord; but here it is sin that is speaking an oracle deep in the heart of the sinner.” The word oracle is used in the writings of the prophets of the OT when they are writing about different nations. I did a search of the word oracle throughout the entire Bible using the NASB and came up with 26 times it is used all of them in the OT.
Dr. Wiersbe goes on to say “In Psalm 10, the sinner talks to himself, but here sin speaks to the sinner. Sin deceives us (Rom. 7:11) and flatters us (10:3; Deut. 29:18-19), giving us the false assurance that our rebellion will go unpunished (Gen 3:1-5). ‘Listen to your heart!’ the world tells us, forgetting that ‘The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?’” Jer. 17:9 NASB).
We see in verse one that David writes “there is no fear of God” and Paul quotes this verse in Romans 3:8. In the book of Romans Paul is like a defense attorney in the first three chapters and he is showing the world that all are sinners and in Romans 3:23 he writes “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We can see from this section of Romans what is called “total depravity,” and I heard a good definition of total depravity that has helped me understand what it means: “Total depravity does not mean that we are as bad as we can be, but we are as bad off as we can be.” Because we are as bad off as we can be God sent His Son into the world in order to take our place on the cross and He paid for our sins and then He did an amazing thing that I don’t know if I will ever understand, Jesus took my sin and gave me His righteousness so that when God sees me He sees the righteousness of His Son in me and can then accept me into His heaven. Of course there has to come a time in each person’s life when they realize that they are as bad off as they can be and in need of the cleansing that Jesus has offered them in order to be saved.
Solomon writes about fear, but he is writing about the fear of the Lord, “Pr 1:7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction. Pr 9:10 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.” David is writing that in the sinner’s eyes there is NO fear of God.
In verse two we see the results of having no fear of God and that is flattery, and because of flattery the sinner cannot recognize that he is a sinner for he is flattering himself. Next the sinner’s words deceitful, he is lying to himself and thinks that he has done nothing wrong. It gets worse as when he is lying on his bed he is thinking about doing evil to someone.
David is writing about the awfulness of sin and how sin affects a person, especially and unbeliever. When one looks around at the world they will see that the biggest problem that we have in this world today is sin.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: When a person is born again they receive a new spirit from the Lord, one that always wants to do good and to follow the will of God, yet that same person has an old nature that still lives in them that wants to do wrong and never do the will of God. There is a battle going on inside of every believer and Paul writes about this battle in Romans 7. Paul also writes about the need to have the “spiritual armor” on at the end of his letter to the Ephesians in Ephesians 6:10-18. As believes we are not exempt from sinning because we are in Christ, but we know how deceitful sin is and also the need to be protected by the spiritual armor so that we can walk in the Spirit. “Ga. 5:16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.”
My Steps of Faith for Today:
1. Gal. 5:16.
2. Ephesians 6:10-18.
3. Romans 12:1-2.
4. Philippians 4:11b.
5. Proverbs 3:5-6.
1/31/2012 7:37:23 AM
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