SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
3/24/2012 9:21:42 AM
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 were 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 rule 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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