Pity For The People Along With Revival from Ps. 80:4-19

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/1/2012 7:41:38 AM

My Worship Time                              Focus:  Pity for the people along with revival

Bible Reading & Meditation                                     Reference:  Psalm 80:4-19

            Message of the verses:  We will continue to look at Psalm 80 in today’s SD.  “The refrain ‘Restore us’ (vv. 3, 7, 19) marks out the three requests Asaph made to the Lord for both kingdoms.”  (Warren Wiersbe)

“Pity Your People” (vv. 4-7):  “4 O LORD God of hosts, How long will You be angry with the prayer of Your people? 5 You have fed them with the bread of tears, And You have made them to drink tears in large measure. 6 You make us an object of contention to our neighbors, And our enemies laugh among themselves. 7 O God of hosts, restore us And cause Your face to shine upon us, and we will be saved.”

“4 O LORD God of Heaven’s Armies, how long will you be angry with our prayers? 5 You have fed us with sorrow and made us drink tears by the bucketful. 6 You have made us the scorn of neighboring nations.  Our enemies treat us as a joke. 7 Turn us again to yourself, O God of Heaven’s Armies.  Make your face shine down upon us.  Only then will we be saved.”  (NLT)

            We see in verse four that God is angry with His people and will not even listen to the prayers of His people.  I want to quote a passage that goes along with verse four from the NT book of 1 John:  “16 For instance, if we see a Christian believer sinning (clearly I’m not talking about those who make a practice of sin in a way that is "fatal," leading to eternal death), we ask for God’s help and he gladly gives it, gives life to the sinner whose sin is not fatal. There is such a thing as a fatal sin, and I’m not urging you to pray about that.”  (Message)  When we look at this verse, I think that it gives us a better understand of what Asaph is saying in verse four for God’s people were involved in sins that were about to lead to death for many of them especially those living in the Northern Kingdom of Israel.

            Verse five goes on with the same theme as we saw in verse four, for God was angry with Israel and was causing them to feed on their tears because of their sorrow.

            Verse six speaks of what their neighbors were saying about them.  This verse kind of reminds me of what the Pharisees were saying to Jesus while He was on the cross dying for our sins, and they told Him that He had saved others, and wanted Him to save Himself.  Israel’s neighbors were taunting Israel because of their so called belief in the God of all creation, and wondering why He could not save them.

            We see in verse seven the refrain that is seen three times in this psalm, “restore us.”  Asaph is asking God to restore His people and he wants them to have the face of God shine upon them and then they will be saved.  In the NLT we see that it shows more accurately that Asaph is speaking of the God of heavens armies, the God who leads all of His armies, but His people were not marching with His army for they were sinning against the Lord.

            “Revive Your Vine” (vv. 8-19):  “8 You brought us from Egypt like a grapevine;  you drove away the pagan nations and transplanted us into your land. 9 You cleared the ground for us, and we took root and filled the land. 10 Our shade covered the mountains;  our branches covered the mighty cedars. 11 We spread our branches west to the Mediterranean Sea; our shoots spread east to the Euphrates River. 12 But now, why have you broken down our walls so that all who pass by may steal our fruit? 13 The wild boar from the forest devours it, and the wild animals feed on it. 14 Come back, we beg you, O God of Heaven’s Armies.  Look down from heaven and see our plight. Take care of this grapevine 15 that you yourself have planted, this son you have raised for yourself. 16 For we are chopped up and burned by our enemies.  May they perish at the sight of your frown. 17 Strengthen the man you love, the son of your choice. 18 Then we will never abandon you again.  Revive us so we can call on your name once more. 19 Turn us again to yourself, O LORD God of Heaven’s Armies.  Make your face shine down upon us.  Only then will we be saved.  (NLT) 19 O LORD God of hosts, restore us; Cause Your face to shine upon us, and we will be saved. (NASB)

            God’s people are seen as God’s vine in different sections of both the old and new Testaments.  We see Jesus call Himself the “Vine” in John 15 and in Revelations 14:17-20 we read about the vine of the earth and this time we see this term being used of the corrupt Gentile nations during the end times.  We see in verses 8-11 Asaph is speaking about how the Lord brought His “vine” from Egypt and transplanted them in the Promised Land, removing the corrupt nations from the land, but then because Israel did not drive all of the nations out of the Promised Land they became a thorn in their side and Israel began to practice the very things that caused the Lord to remove those nations from the Land, and the “vine” began to produce corrupt fruit.

            Asaph prays that the Lord would return and have pity on Israel in the way that He had in times past.  This is seen in verse fourteen.

            Dr. Wiersbe writes the following as he concludes his commentary on Psalm 80:  “The final refrain introduces a third name for God, borrowed from verse 4:’O Lord God of hosts [Almighty, NIV]. ‘Lord is the name ‘Jehovah,’ which is the covenant name of God.  The psalmist appealed to the covenant and asked God to be faithful to forgive His people as they call upon Him and confessed their sins (Lev. 26:40-45; Deut. 30:1-10).  This is the Old Testament version of 1John 1:9.  Spiritually speaking, the roots of Israel are still strong (Rom. 11:1ff, especially vv. 16-24), and one day the vine and olive tree will be resorted, and Asaph’s prayer will be answered.”

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I will surely be glad when Asaph’s prayer will be answered, for at that time the Church will have been raptured and then returned to earth to help our Lord in the 1000 year kingdom on planet earth where that land will be filled with the glory of the Lord. 

            Restore and revive are similar words and we spoke of in the last SD, and I continue to pray for revival in a land that is in great need of it.

My Steps of Faith for Today:  I desire to continue to learn contentment in every area of my life, and some of those areas are difficult now, so contentment is truly needed.

5/1/2012 8:48:17 AM