SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/20/2011 11:50:06 AM
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 5 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
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