SPIRITUAL
DIARY FOR 1/21/2012 10:05:10 AM
My Worship Time Focus: The victorious Christian life is a series of new
beginnings.
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Psalm 30:1-12
Message
of the verses: “1 A Psalm; a Song at the Dedication of the House. A Psalm of David: I will extol You, O LORD, for You have lifted
me up, And have not let my enemies rejoice over me. 2 O LORD my God, I cried to
You for help, and You healed me. 3 O LORD, You have brought up my soul from
Sheol; You have kept me alive, that I would not go down to the pit. 4 Sing
praise to the LORD, you His godly ones, And give thanks to His holy name. 5 For
His anger is but for a
moment, His
favor is for a lifetime; Weeping may last for the night, But a shout of
joy comes in the morning.
“6 Now as for me, I said in my prosperity, "I will never be
moved." 7 O LORD, by Your favor You have made my mountain to stand strong;
You hid Your face, I was dismayed. 8 To You, O LORD, I called, And to the Lord
I made supplication: 9 “What profit is there in my blood, if I go down to the
pit? Will the dust praise You? Will it declare Your faithfulness? 10 “Hear, O
LORD, and be gracious to me; O LORD, be my helper." 11 You have turned for
me my mourning into dancing; You have loosed my sackcloth and girded me with
gladness, 12 That my soul may sing praise to You and not be silent. O LORD my
God, I will give thanks to You forever.”
Psalm 30 is a personal psalm of
David with the exception of verses 4-5 where he includes the nation in this
psalm of thanksgiving. Dr. Wiersbe sites
two possible places in the Scriptures where this psalm could be referring
to. The first was when David and his
army captured the city of Jerusalem and made it the capital of Israel. This would be when David had built a palace
(house) for himself to live in and after that could have become proud of being
king over all of Israel. The second
possible scenario would be when David sinned by numbering the people of Israel
and the Lord killed 70,000 people because of David’s sin. David bought a piece of property from a man
named Ornan and sacrificed to the Lord so that the plague would stop. There are three things that are very
interesting about this piece of property.
The first was it was the place David bought as mentioned above, the
second is that is the place where the temple of the Lord would be built (1 Chron.
22:1), and the last goes back to Genesis 22 where we find that God would test
Abraham and God told Abraham to go to a certain mountain where he was to offer
his son Isaac as a sacrifice to the Lord.
We know that Abraham obeyed the Lord and the Lord provided a lamb to
take the place of Isaac, which is a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb
of God dying for our sins, but the place where all this happened was the same
place that David offered the sacrifice to stop the plague and the place where
the temple of God would be built.
David had become proud of what he
accomplished, forgetting that the Lord had accomplished all of this through
David. David became sick, near death as
the psalm speaks of, and then the Lord would bring him back to health so that
David could praise the Lord and be thankful to the Lord and thus write this
psalm.
Dr. Wiersbe quotes from a noted
Scottish preacher named George Morrison in many of his commentaries with a
quote that every believer should put to memory and it is the theme of this
psalm that David has written. Morrison
writes “The victorious Christian life is a series of new beginnings.” This is a wonderful truth to remember, for we
all will need new beginnings.
A New Victory—From Death to Life (vv. 1-3): “I will extol You, O LORD, for You have
lifted me up, And have not let my enemies rejoice over me. 2 O LORD my God, I
cried to You for help, and You healed me. 3 O LORD, You have brought up my soul
from Sheol; You have kept me alive, that I would not go down to the pit.”
We see in these verses that David
experienced three problems; David was distressed from within because of the
problem he was facing, he was sinking down to the pit, and his enemies would
rejoice if David died. We see that the
Lord delivered David from all three problems.
The healing that is mentioned in
verse two does not necessarily mean a physical healing, for it could have meant
an emotional healing from emotional distress.
When you look at the circumstances that occurred when David sinned by
numbering the people it was mostly emotional because David knew that it was
because of his sin that those 70,000 people had died.
A New Day—From Night to Morning (vv. 4-5): “4
Sing praise to the LORD, you His godly ones, And give thanks to His holy name. 5
For His anger is but for a
moment, His favor is for a lifetime; Weeping may last for the night, But
a shout of joy comes in the morning.”
These two verses are written for
corporate worship that came from David’s personal worship. Dr. Wiersbe writes “Personal worship that doesn’t enrich our
corporate worship may become selfish and lead to more pride! The contrasts in verse 5 are the motivation
for David’s praise: from God’s anger to God’s favor; from chastening for only a
moment to a lifetime of His grace (Isa. 54:7-8); from a night of weeping to a
morning of joy. For David, this was the
dawning of a new day after a painful time of suffering in darkness. Each morning, God’s mercies are new (Lam.
3:22-23), and God’s special help often arrives in the morning. The resurrection
of Jesus Christ brought the dawning of a new day for all who trust in Him
(Matt. 28:1). Weeping comes as a guest,
but God’s gracious favor is with us for a lifetime. As Jesus explained to His
disciples, God doesn’t
replace sorrow with joy; He transforms sorrow into joy (John
16:20-22). The same baby that causes the
mother pain also brings the mother joy.”
A New Heart—From Pride to Humility (vv.
6-10): “6 Now as for me, I said in my prosperity, "I will never be
moved." 7 O LORD, by Your favor You have made my mountain to stand strong;
You hid Your face, I was dismayed. 8 To You, O LORD, I called, And to the Lord
I made supplication: 9 “What profit is there in my blood, if I go down to the
pit? Will the dust praise You? Will it declare Your faithfulness? 10 “Hear, O
LORD, and be gracious to me; O LORD, be my helper.’”
We see the story beginning from
these verses for it was David’s pride that made it necessary for the Lord to
discipline him. Dr. Wiersbe writes: “One reason the Lord permits trials is that
we might not get comfortable in our faith and stop growing.” In a very personal way that I am not going to
go into I understand exactly what David went through when he became comfortable. I knew this feeling and I also knew that
there was something that was going to happen in order to shake up my world so
that I would not be comfortable, but go through a trial that has changed my
life. Dr. Wiersbe writes: “Prosperity without humility can lead to adversity.”
The Hebrew word translated “trouble”
(KJV) and “dismayed” (NASB) describes intense agony or terror, or anguish, and
is the same word used to describe King Saul’s feelings when he was in the house
of the witch (1Sam. 28:21). David knew
that he had sinned and so he cried out to the Lord and even bargained with the
Lord to restore his health, either mental or physical, in order to be able to
praise the Lord again, for if he was in the grave he would not be able to
praise the Lord.
A New Song—From Mourning to Rejoicing (vv.
11-12): “11 You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; You have loosed my
sackcloth and girded me with gladness, 12 That my soul may sing praise to You
and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks to You forever.”
David speaks of having put on
sackcloth which he did when he sinned by numbering the people of Israel. I want to take just a moment to speak of the
two great sins that were committed by David and it turns out that both of them
would end up, by the grace of God, having to do with the temple of God. David’s sin with Bathsheba would end up with
David marrying Bathsheba and out of that union would come a number of children
including Solomon who would succeed David as king and would be the one that God
chose to build the temple. David’s sin
in numbering the people of Israel would end up, by the grace of God, the
purchasing of the property where the temple would be built. I see Romans 8:28 in both of these sinful
stories of David, for God did cause something good to come out of them, yet it
was not God who caused David to sin in order for this to happen, but did as
Romans 8:28 says He worked it out for the good of David and the glory of
God. This is how awesome the God whom I
serve is.
Dr. Wiersbe points out that in this
psalm we see seven times the words “You
have’, which bear witness to the strong and gracious hand of the Lord
working on David’s behalf. We even see
the sin working on his behalf (Hebrews 12:1).
When David was forgiven he went from the funeral to the feast and took
off his sackcloth which depicted sadness and put on the garments of
gladness. Dr. Wiersbe has mentioned in
some of his other commentaries that a change of clothes marks a dramatic
alteration of one’s life: (Gen. 35:2;
41:14; 45:22; Ex. 19:10, 14; 2Sam. 12:20; Luke 15:22).
In his closing comments Dr. Wiersbe
writes: “Every difficult experience of
life—and David had many of them—is an opportunity to have a ‘pity party’ or
attend a rehearsal for singing in the choirs of heaven! We have a lifetime of grace (v. 5) to prepare
us for an eternity of glory.”
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: Comfortable
can mean trouble for believers for as pointed out above it can cause us to stop
growing and then we may have to have the hand of God’s discipline come upon us
as described in Hebrews 12. Even though
it is done in love it is still painful, but we can profit much from it. I sometimes have to catch myself when I begin
to think about what I want to do realizing that it may not be what the Lord
wants me to do, and therefore is prideful and that is something that the Lord
does not like in a person. Contentment
is relying upon the Lord to guide my life in places that I may not want to go
and do things that I may not want to do, but in doing them it is what the Lord
desires me to do. Trusting the Lord in
all of life’s circumstances that come my way is learning contentment.
My Steps of Faith for Today:
1. Remember that the victorious
Christian life is a series of new beginnings.
2. Continue to trust the Lord to
teach me contentment.
3. Proverbs 3:5-6.
1/21/2012
11:46:13 AM
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