SPIRITUAL
DIARY FOR 12/20/2011 11:50:06 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1 “Psalm 5”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Psalm 5
(Intro)
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 understanding
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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