3/24/2012 9:21:42 AM
SPIRITUAL DIARY
My Worship Time Focus: Praising, Remembering, and Rejoicing in God.
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Psalm 63:3-11
Message of the verses: I missed doing my Spiritual Diary yesterday because I had to visit my mother who had taken a fall and ended up in the hospital. I will continue with Psalm 63 in today’s Spiritual Diary.
Praising God (vv. 3-5): “3 ¶ Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, My lips will praise You. 4 So I will bless You as long as I live; I will lift up my hands in Your name. 5 My soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness, And my mouth offers praises with joyful lips.”
David did not need the Ark of the Covenant to praise the Lord or to worship the Lord for when he was fleeing from Absalom the Ark was brought out to him and David told them to take it back to Jerusalem. David did this because he knew that it belonged in Jerusalem and if the Lord would bless him then he would return to Jerusalem where it would be.
David knew that God’s character and works were declared in the furnishings that we in the Ark so he did not really need it in order to worship the Lord. The Ark of the Covenant was a superstitious thing to many people of Israel, but not to David for he knew the power of God, and he knew the character of God, for many of the attributes that make up the character of God are found in the passages of Scripture that David wrote in the psalms.
David had no priest or altar, but David could lift up his hands to praise the Lord, something we see in verse four. Paul writes to Timothy: “Therefore I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and dissension.”
David had no portions of the sacrifices to eat, “but his soul feasted on spiritual delicacies that even the priests were not permitted to eat.” “Marrow and fatness” typify the very finest of food (Deut. 32:14; Isa. 25:6). Dr. Wiersbe writes “Instead of complaining, as we are prone to do when things go wrong, David sang praises to the Lord.”
Remembering God (vv. 6-8): “6 When I remember You on my bed, I meditate on You in the night watches, 7 For You have been my help, And in the shadow of Your wings I sing for joy. 8 My soul clings to You; Your right hand upholds me.”
Let’s begin this section with the ending portions of it, verse eight speaks of clinging to the Lord and Dr. Wiersbe explains this important truth: “Faith without works is dead. Believers are safe in the hands of the Father and the Son (John 10:21-29), but that doesn’t give us license to do foolish things that would endanger us. ‘My soul cleaves after you’ is a literal translation of verse 8, including both submissive faith in God and active pursuit of God. Jesus described this experience in John 14:21-27.” “21 "He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him." 22 Judas (not Iscariot) *said to Him, "Lord, what then has happened that You are going to disclose Yourself to us and not to the world?" 23 Jesus answered and said to him, "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him. 24 "He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me.
25 ¶ "These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you. 26 "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. 27 "Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.”
Now I want to focus in on verses 6-7 where David speaks of meditating on the Lord in the “night watches.” The night watches three in number, from sunset to ten o’clock and then from ten to two o’clock and from two until sunrise. We don’t know if David was talking about all three of them or if he was talking about the times that he awakened and then meditated on the Lord. What was David remembering? David was remembering the things that the Lord had already done for him, and this would give him reason to praise the Lord and also reason to believe that the Lord would continue to take care of him. Dr. Wiersbe writes “Our God is “I AM”, not ‘I was,” and He must always be recognized in our present situation.”
When David was speaking of being under the shadow of the wings of God he was speaking of the wings of the cherubim that were in the Holy of Holies.
Rejoicing in God (vv. 9-11): “9 But those who seek my life to destroy it, Will go into the depths of the earth. 10 They will be delivered over to the power of the sword; They will be a prey for foxes. 11 But the king will rejoice in God; Everyone who swears by Him will glory, For the mouths of those who speak lies will be stopped.”
We see in verses 9-10 that David speaks of those who are his enemies and what will happen to them. David knew that his enemies were also God’s enemies, for God’s enemies were those who wanted to destroy Israel, for God had a purpose for Israel then and still does now. One of God’s purposes for Israel then was to have the Messiah born through the descendants of King David and we know that this did not include Absalom. As far as God’s purposes for Israel now we know that the Lord will again deal with Israel in the future and that when the Lord Jesus Christ return from heaven to set up His kingdom on earth that He will reign from Jerusalem for 1000 years, so God is not done with Israel.
Dr. Wiersbe writes “David didn’t rejoice in the destruction of his enemies; he rejoiced in the God of Israel. Furthermore, he encouraged all people to praise God with him. Often David’s personal praise became communal praise as he publicly glorified the Lord for His mercies, and so it should be with us today.”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I have said many times in the past that I love David so much because he was a man after God’s own heart, and as I look at these writing of David’s and remember other psalms that he has written I understand better why he is a man after God’s own heart. David knew the character of God and David also remembered all of the good things that God did for him and this increased his faith, and this is a great example for me.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I desire to remember the great things that the Lord has done for me, and of course the first thing was that He saved me from sin and will one day take me to heaven. I desire to think about God’s character and they are summed up in His attributes such as His goodness, His wisdom, His power, His love, His justice, and His being in all places at the same time.
3/24/2012 10:26:08 AM
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