3/5/2012 7:52:51 AM
SPIRITUAL DIARY
My Worship Time Focus: The corrupt deeds of the wicked
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Psalm 53
Message of the verses: In today’s SD we will begin by looking at several introductions to Psalm 53 and then look at the commentary that I wrote on Psalm 14 as it is almost the same as Psalm 53.
Title. To the Chief Musician. If the leader of the choir is privileged to sing the jubilates of divine grace, he must not disdain to chant the miseries of human depravity. This is the second time he has had the same Psalm entrusted to him ,{ see #Ps 14} and he must, therefore, be the more careful in singing it. Upon Mahalath. Here the tune is chosen for the musician, probably some mournfully solemn air; or perhaps a musical instrument is here indicated, and the master of the choir is requested to make it the prominent instrument in the orchestra; at any rate, this is a direction not found in the former copy of the Psalm, and seems to call for greater care. The word "Mahalath" appears to signify, in some forms of it, "disease," and truly this Psalm is THE SONG OF MAN’S DISEASE— the mortal, hereditary taint of sin. Maschil. This is a second additional note not found in Psalm 14, indicating that double attention is to be given to this most instructive song. A Psalm of David. It is not a copy of the fourteenth Psalm, emended and revised by a foreign hand; it is another edition by the same author, emphasized in certain parts, and rewritten for another purpose.” (Charles H. Spurgeon) At the beginning of Spurgeon’s comments on this section of the book of Psalms he writes something that is very interesting to me for although I will never preach like Charles H. Spurgeon, I do have a great desire to study all of the Bible and I still have a great deal of it to finish. At any rate he writes the following “This volume completes one half of my labor upon this priceless book, and my humble prayer is that I may be spared to conclude the other portion. So uncertain is human life, and so often have men’s best designs remained unfinished, that I will press on with all diligence, lest, perhaps, the lamp of life should go out ere the writer has seen by its light the word FINIS at the conclusion of the last verse.”
“God speaks once, yea, twice, and it were well if man would even then perceive it; God, in this psalm, speaks twice, for this is the same almost verbatim with the fourteenth psalm. The scope of it is to convince us of our sins, to set us a blushing and trembling because of them; and this is what we are with so much difficulty brought to that there is need of line upon line to this purport. The word, as a convincing word, is compared to a hammer, the strokes whereof must be frequently repeated.” (Matthew Henry)
“This is Psalm 14 with some minor revisions and the addition of the last two lines in verse 5. On of the sanctuary musicians revised the original psalm to fit a new occasion, perhaps the defeat of the Assyrian army in the days of King Hezekiah (v. 5; Isa. 37). It’s a good thing to adapt older songs to celebrate new experiences with the Lord. The major change is the use of Elohim (‘God’) instead of Jehovah, the God of the covenant. The psalm still exposes and refutes the foolish unbelief of those who reject God. The boasting of the Assyrians is a good example.
“Verse 5b describes the scattered corpses of a defeated army after God’s great victory. For a body to remain unburied was a great disgrace in the ancient Near East, even an executed criminal was supposed to have a decent burial (Deu. 21:23; see 2Kings 23:14; Ezek. 6:5). The Lord despised the arrogance of the Assyrians and put them to open shame. So will He do to the armies of the world that oppose Him (Rev. 19:11-21),” (Warren Wiersbe)
At this point I am going to insert my commentary on Psalm 14 because of the similarity of the two psalms. “Sometimes when you look at the briefness of a Scripture Passage before starting to dig into it you think that there is not a lot of learning from such a short passage. That is not the case with Psalm 14 and for that matter Psalm 53 for they are almost identical and when we get to Psalm 53 there will be little left to talk about after going over Psalm 14 in some detail.
When April the first rolls around each year we are always trying to fool someone by playing a trick on them. When someone has asked if the atheists have a holiday people often say that April first is their holiday because of what it says in verse one of this psalm “The fool has said in his heart, ‘there is no God.’” As I was looking over the commentary from Dr. Wiersbe’s writings on this psalm he picks up on that by outlining this psalm using the characteristics of the “practical atheists.”
Before doing this we must understand that this psalm goes along with Psalms 10 and 12 as these three psalms present a very vivid picture of the ungodly. In Psalm 10 we see their proud attitudes, and in Psalm 12 we see their deceitful words, and now in Psalm 14 we will see their corrupt deeds.
Willful Folly—They Ignore God (vv. 1-3): “1 ¶ «For the choir director. A Psalm of David.» The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds; There is no one who does good. 2 The LORD has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men To see if there are any who understand, Who seek after God. 3 They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt; There is no one who does good, not even one.”
We get or English word for fool from a Latin word that means “bellows” and this suggests that the fool is a person who is full of hot air. However there are three basic words in the Hebrew language for fool. Kesyl the dull, stupid fool; ewiyl, the unreasonable and perverted fool; and nabal, the bestial person who is like a stubborn animal. We find the word nabal as our word for fool in Psalm 14. When we look at the story of Nabal and Abigail in 1Samuel we get the picture of the fool that is being spoken about in Psalm 14, for here is a man who surely lived up to his name for Nabal was a great example of a fool.
“The American evangelist Billy Sunday used to say that sinners can’t find God for the same reason criminals can’t find policemen—they aren’t looking.” (From Dr. Wiersbe’s commentary on Psalm 14) He goes on to say, “Nabal fools are self-righteous and don’t need or want God. They want to live their own lives the way they please. Their problem is willful ignorance and not lack of normal intelligence. But this decision causes sad consequences in both their character and their conduct. By leaving God out of their lives, they cause their inner person to become more and more corrupt—the heart (v-1), the mind (vv. 2,4), and the will (v-3).”
The indictment that David gives here by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is universal as we see these words repeated in Paul’s letter to the Romans where he is making the point that all people in this world are guilty before God and the only way that they can ever be saved from their sinfulness is through the grace of God through Jesus Christ and His work on the cross to save sinners.
Dr. Wiersbe describes human depravity by writing “Human depravity doesn’t mean that all persons are as wicked as they can be, or that all are equally bad, or that no man or woman can ever do anything good (Luke 11:13). It simply means that all have a fallen nature they cannot change, and that apart from the grace of God, none can be saved from eternal judgment.”
Sudden Fear—They Meet God (vv. 4-6): “4 ¶ Do all the workers of wickedness not know, Who eat up my people as they eat bread, And do not call upon the Lord? 5 There they are in great dread, For God is with the righteous generation. 6 You would put to shame the counsel of the afflicted, But the LORD is his refuge.”
Let’s explain the phrase “Who eat up my people as they eat bread,” first of all as we look at this section. Dr. Wiersbe writes that this phrase is a biblical metaphor for exploiting the helpless and is seen in other places of the Scriptures like Psalm 27:2; 35:25; 55:4; Mic 3:1-3; Lam. 2:16; and see Isa. 3:12, Jer. 10:25; Amos 2:6-8, and Mic. 2:2 And 7:3.
Dr. Wiersbe quotes a British philosopher Bertrand Russell when asked what he would say if when he died what would he say to God and he replied, “You did not give us sufficient evidence!” This answer is hard to believe and makes me think of the quote by Billy Sunday that is seen above, and that is that this philosopher was not looking for any evidence that God does exist, and put his blind faith in circumstances like evolution, and not seeing the creation that God has made in things like the heavens for Psalm 19:1 reads as follows, “The heavens are telling of the glory of God; And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.” There is as much evidence that God created everything in this world of ours and this universe that we live in to hold people accountable to the God who created all of this, but people don’t want to hear this.
It is not made clear as to what time David was speaking of in verse seven, but to be sure when it does happen the Lord will judge the foolish people that David is writing about in this psalm.
Joyless Future—They Have No God (v. 7): “7 Oh, that the salvation of Israel would come out of Zion! When the LORD restores His captive people, Jacob will rejoice, Israel will be glad.”
We know that the salvation of Israel did come out of Zion in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the son of man through David’s line. We know that in the future that God will restore Israel from captivity and this could very well mean what Paul writes about in “Ro 11:26 and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, ‘THE DELIVERER WILL COME FROM ZION, HE WILL REMOVE UNGODLINESS FROM JACOB.’” This will happen during the tribulation period when all Israel will finally see that Jesus is their Messiah.
As far as the wicked are concerned Dr. Wiersbe writes, “Those who reject Jesus Christ will spend eternity apart from the Lord and will honestly be able to say in hell, ‘There is no God—here.’”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: Yesterday after going to church my wife and I visited one of her close relatives who is going on 95 years old. He is a man who we have given the truth of the gospel to on many occasions. Many times he has questions for me to which I will explain from the Scriptures the answers, but he still does not believe them. We spoke about the creation yesterday and he has the answer that unfortunately there are many believers’s who have, and that is the earth is billions of years old because they too have fallen into the trap of evolution. The subject of the deity of Jesus Christ also came up and other things that one must believe in order to have a saving relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Psalms 14 & 53 reminds me of the many conversations that I have had with him and I must say that it is heartbreaking.
My Steps of Faith for Today:
1. I pray that my desire to continue to study the Scriptures every day.
2. I pray that the Lord will melt the cold heart of the one I spoke to yesterday.
3. I pray that the Lord will continue to teach me contentment as I deal with the circumstances that I am dealing with.
3/5/2012 8:35:40 AM
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