I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.
Today, I am reading and commenting on Psalms 98-104.
Psalms 98 starts off setting the theme for today’s scripture reading:
Sing a new song to the Lord,
for he has done wonderful deeds.
The theme which ties together all of today’s psalms, and I know this is going to come as a surprise (or perhaps not if you have read the Book of Psalms before), is praising God. Before I go into the rest of these psalms I want to write about my thoughts regarding this opening line. I dislike current contemporary Christian music. Yet here we are told to sing a new song. My problem with current contemporary Christian music is not with those who produce it, but with the way the Church uses it (or, at least most of the Church). The problem I have is that we are constantly bombarded with new songs to replace the existing ones. This means that the good ones do not have time to seep down in our souls and become expressions of deep, lasting praise for God. I first became aware of the problem at funerals. The songs sung at the funerals for my parents’ generation (my mother is still alive, but my father and all of his siblings have died) were much the same as those sung at the funerals for my grandparents’ generation. Those songs are deep expressions of the faith which filled the lives of those whose life was being celebrated at these funerals. I realized that most current contemporary worship songs lacked the same depth of meaning, and those that did have it were not sung often enough for those singing them to have the same level of investment in their meaning.
OK, rant over. I do not think the psalmist was just calling for new songs. He was calling on us to find new ways to worship and praise God. We must never allow our praise and worship for God to become stale. Interestingly, in Psalms 101 the psalmist tells us the steps necessary to accomplish this.
- Live a life of integrity, even in private, where only our own family (and maybe not even them) can see
- Refuse to look at anything vile and vulgar, not for educational value let alone for entertainment, not for any reason at all.
- Have nothing to do with those who deal dishonestly.
- Reject perverse ideas.
- Stay away from every evil.
- Do not tolerate those who slander others.
- Do not endure conceit.
- Associate with faithful people
- Hire people who are above reproach.
Our integrity should be real, not just to project an image.
That one is probably harder for many of us to do than it seems.
I do not think this means never associating with such people. I think it means not entering into partnership or alliance with them.
This is one which I think requires more emphasis than most of us place on it, and more thought about what constitutes a “perverse idea”.
Not just most evil, every evil.
This is about listening to negative gossip which leads you, and others, to think of people in a negative light. The NIV says it is about those who slander others in secret.
To me this means rooting out my own conceit and building up those who others put down in their own conceit.
Now the psalmist gets to the active things we must do to successfully serve and praise God. If we spend our time with faithful people, we will not have time to hang out with wicked ones. And, the influence of faithful people will make us more faithful.
This is not just good for our spiritual lives, but it will make whatever business we are in more successful as well.
Every year, I think I should do a blog entry on just Psalms 101, and every year I forget until I find it taking over the post on the rest of the passages included in my reading.