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 52-59.

    When I write these commentaries on the passage I have read for the day, I try to find a theme. That is often difficult in the Psalms because each psalm is, more or less, an independent work of literature. The theme of today’s psalms is seeking God’s protection. The first two psalms might appear to not be about that, but indirectly they are. The first psalm addresses someone who is confident that his prowess in battle, political connections, and wealth will carry the day. The psalmist assures us that God will have the final say and that this individual will become a byword on relying on yourself rather than God. The second psalm continues that theme. Reminding us that it is foolish to believe that there is no God. We all sin, but the wicked think that they can get away with oppressing others, using lies and evil acts to satisfy their desires at the expense of others. They foolishly believe that God will not hold them to account (because they believe there is no God). The psalmist also tells us that, in part, the wicked believe that there is no God because they desire to do wicked things.

    The rest of today’s psalms, except for Psalm 58 (which I will get to presently), call on us to take the opposite approach. When trouble surrounds us, let us call on God for rescue. Let us call on God to protect us and avenge us against those who wrong us. We need not, even should not, count on our strength and ability to deal with trouble or those who attack us. Instead, we should strive to do good for everyone we encounter and count on God to protect us from their unwarranted attacks. People may twist our words and misconstrue our deeds, but God will see if those accusations are justified and protect us from those which are not. If we call out to God when trouble overwhelms us, He will hear our cry and come to our rescue.
    Which brings me to Psalm 58. Here the psalmist warns and condemns those rulers who do not implement justice. As a warning he tells them that God will implement justice if they do not. And, if God implements justice, those rulers who failed to do so will suffer. God will break their power and sweep them away.

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 45-51.

    I know what I want to write about today, but I am struggling with how to introduce the topics (see, what I did there. I couldn’t figure out an introduction, so I used that as the introduction). The psalmist tells us that if we place our trust in God we do not need to fear trouble. In Psalm 46, he sets aside the fear of natural disasters. In Psalm 49, he sets aside the fear of human beings. When all is going crazy around us, we just need to be calm and recognize that God has power over all of it. Panic and fright will not aid us in any way, but calmly waiting for God to tell us what to do will. Others may trust in their wealth and/or political power, but no matter how rich they are, no matter how powerful they are, they cannot buy their way out of dying. Only God can redeem us from death.

    God has no need of our wealth or possessions. All of the earth is His. What He desires from us is thankfulness. The psalmist warns us to not think that talking about God and His commands will do us any good if we spend our time commending those who violate them. Slandering our brother (and I want to point out that I think Jesus’ example about who our neighbor is applies to who our brother is as well) is an indication that we are not living with the thankfulness which God desires. Ultimately, we have all sinned. Let us throw ourselves on God’s mercy and pray for Him to wipe us clean from those sins. Then strive to sin no more. As I read these psalms and write this blog, I am reminded once more how much less skilled I am at word crafting than the psalmist. Please read these psalms, my ability to express the thoughts they evoke is inadequate to the task.

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 38-44.

    The first of today’s psalms, Psalm 38, is a counterpoint to the Book of Job; sometimes we suffer because of our sins. Of course, today’s set of psalms ends with one which supports the point of the Book of Job, that sometimes our suffering is from no fault of our own. In either case, the psalmist tells us confess our sins, for all of us have sinned whether that causes us suffering or not, and wait patiently for God. If we put our confidence in Him, He will give us joy. God does not desire offerings; He wants us to do His will. And in Psalm 41, he tells us what is God’s will: that we be kind to the poor. In Matthew 25 Jesus tells the story of the sheep and the goats which gives us a little more detail about God’s will for us.

    I am not going to write about all of the things which these psalms cover, but I really want to talk about Psalm 43. The psalmist is feeling sad and unhappy, put upon. He remembers being happy, but feels like that has all gone away. I think that we have all felt that way at some point in our lives. He identifies what was different about the good times from “now”. During the good times he walked among a crowd of people praising and worshiping God. Now God feels distant. Then comes the insight. It was not God who changed, it was himself. He will once again put his trust in God, worshiping and praising Him. The psalmist is expressing the same thought as in Psalm 34 where he said, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” Sometimes we need to move forward in faith in order to experience the joy that comes from obeying God. Singing joyful songs praising God will often bring us joy, even if we were sad when we began to sing.

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 32-37.

    The psalmist begins today’s psalms by reminding us of the joy which comes from God forgiving our sins. In fact that sets the stage for a theme which runs through today’s psalms: how to obtain joy. One of the sources of depression and unhappiness is unconfessed sin. I want to be careful here. I am not saying that everyone who suffers from depression has sins to which they are not admitting. However, if you are suffering from depression, examine your life for any unconfessed sins and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you any such sins. I also want to add that even if your depression is caused by unconfessed sins, that does not make you any worse than I. I am certainly no better than you. Perhaps I am even worse. Perhaps the fact that I do not suffer from depression is an indication that I am not as bothered by my sin as you are by yours. I am quite confident that I am no less of a sinner than you. I want to repeat that I am not saying that everyone suffering from depression has sin which they are not admitting. I do not even know that most people suffering from depression have such sins. I am just saying that some people suffer from depression because of unconfessed sin.

    I did not intend to spend that much time on that because the main focus of these psalms is joy. God offers to guide us along the best pathway for our lives. That will not be the same for each of us. It will not even be the same for any two of us. The greatest joy will come to us if we readily and willingly follow the guidance which God gives us. Part of that path is recognizing God’s greatness and praising Him for it. There is joy in praising the Lord and in boasting about His power. In the middle of explaining how God will save us from our troubles if we call out to Him the psalmist has one of those lines which, for me, sum up making the case for believing in God.

“Taste and see that the Lord is good.”

I can, and will, make every argument I can think of for why you should put your faith in God. But until you actually do so you will not understand just how wonderful faith in God is. Until you put your faith in Him, you will not truly know that He is. When I was younger I struggled looking for evidence of God’s existence. I wanted proof that He existed. Finally one day I was contemplating my life and its utter meaninglessness. The thought went through my head, “If there is no God, I may as well kill myself.” My very next thought was, “I cannot do that to my mother.” At that moment, I realized that I could not live with the idea that the God of the Bible was not real. So, I decided from that moment on to live my life as if He was indeed real, even though I had no proof. By the end of the following week, I had the proof I had been so desperately seeking. I cannot prove to you that God exists, that can only happen when you put your faith in Him, but it has been proven to me that He exists.

    I was going to stop with the last, but as is usually the case, I skimmed over the passage for today one last time and found more advice for long-term joy and happiness in our lives. There is no reason to be envious of the wicked. They may have things we do not, and they may experience pleasures we do not, but in the end they will face suffering we would not wish on our worst enemies. There is more pleasure and joy to be found in doing the good which God calls us to do than in any of the things which the wicked may obtain. Commit our actions to God and leave our anger at others go. If your anger is justified, those it is directed against will face God’s judgment soon enough. If it is not, you may allow it to cause you to do wrong to another. Let you anger go and do the good to which God directs you.

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 23-31.

    Psalm 23 is well known and as a result is often discussed. So, I am only going to make a few comments about it, mostly in context with the rest of today’s Psalms. God will provide us with all of our needs and we need never fear, not even death itself, because God is with us. God is able to provide our needs because, not only is the earth and everything in it His, but He made everything that is in the first place.

    If we seek the Lord He will show us the path to follow and the decisions we should make. If we trust God enough to do the things He directs us to do we will never be disgraced. If we turn to God for knowledge He will teach us all that we need to know. The psalmist even tells us how to recognize where God is directing us: He will never direct us to lie or to do that which is not pure. If the path we are travelling calls for deceiving others, it is not the one to which God has directed us. God will not direct us to accompany liars, defend hypocrites, or join in with those who do evil. No, God directs us to live with integrity and according to His truth, which is the only truth that there is. I want to emphasize the importance of not lying, of not being deceitful. I had a discussion with someone who said that any religion which does not allow for lying to avoid persecution is irrational. Unfortunately, I was distracted by other issues in the discussion and failed to point out that neither Judaism nor Christianity do so. There are passages in the Bible which can be interpreted as supporting lying in order to protect others from harm, but none that support lying for your own protection.

    I have a few final points I would like to make today, but I am not sure I will be able to tie them together. The antidote to fear is meditating on God’s words and instructions. Meditating on His commands and instructions should lead us to act in accordance with those instructions. If we do so, we will know that we are under His protection and that no true harm may come to us. God is calling us to come to Him to talk with Him. I pray that you are willing to have a conversation with Him. I pray that I am willing to converse with Him when He calls to me. Sin will drain our strength, when we find this happening we can either let it drain us completely or we can allow the Holy Spirit to cleanse the sin from us. I will praise the Lord for He has stored up goodness for those whose fear of Him leads them to follow His instruction.

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 18-22.

    Every time I read Psalms 18 it evokes the image of a fantasy movie in my mind. Our protagonist has been trapped by his enemies. They have tied him up and placed him where the rising flood waters will drown him shortly. Even if he were to escape his bonds there are more traps between him and safety, he has no hope of escaping. In his desperation our protagonist cries out to his Protector, the Mighty Wizard King. Far away the Mighty King magically hears our protagonist’s cry. He is furious that anyone would dare attempt to bring harm to one under His protection. The entire palace trembles, even the land outside of it. The Mighty King bursts forth from His palace. Not taking time to saddle a mount, He rides storm clouds summoned by His anger to where our protagonist is trapped, firing arrows (think Legolas from Lord of the Rings, only more devastating) and lightning bolts at our protagonist’s enemies who are standing around watching him drown, scattering those who are not killed. Arriving just in time, the Mighty King reaches out His hand and plucks our protagonist from the rising waters and placed him on a high point safe from the waters.

    After this dramatic scene the psalmist tells us the unalterable characteristics of this Mighty King. He is faithful to those who are faithful. He shows His integrity to those who have integrity. His purity is revealed to those who are pure. But those who seek to take advantage of these characteristics by deceit and trickery discover that He is shrewd enough and wise enough to see through their plots. When they think they have found a loophole they can exploit by appealing to the letter of the Law, in violation of its spirit, they discover that the letter of the Law catches them out elsewhere.

    While not as dramatic, Psalms 19, 20, and 21 paint as magnificent of a picture of how God works in this world as Psalms 18. Through them we learn that following God’s commands and instructions lead to greater happiness and pleasure than can be gained from the sins they warn against. The psalmist makes clear that we do not need great training to understand what God says to us in the Bible. As I have read through the Bible over the last several years, this has become more and more clear to me. From time to time, I come across something which insight can be gained by referring to the original Greek or Hebrew words, but such is not necessary to understand the basic meaning anywhere in the Bible.

    Then there is Psalms 22, which Jesus cited as He died on the cross. Every since I became aware of the rabbinic tradition that quoting the first line or so of a Scripture passage invoked the entire passage I have found Jesus’ citing of it uplifting. The psalmist begins the psalm by expressing complete despair. He feels completely abandoned by God. He has declared his faith in God and now his enemies are mocking him with it. The psalmist is defeated and has no hope of rescue. Yet from this position of complete despair, he makes a further declaration of hope and faith. Despite feeling, and appearing, abandoned by God, he is confident that God will bring him through victorious. It appears that he is going down to defeat for the final time, but he is confident this is not the case. The psalmist declares that in the future he will declare God’s greatness before God’s assembled people. The time will come when he will share the story of what happened here as an example of God’s great power and faithfulness. Despite his feelings of great despair, when Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” He was declaring His faith that soon He would be telling people that His death was a reason to praise God. We should have similar hope and faith when we face despair. Jesus cried out so that we would know that it is OK to feel despair when we are in the midst of suffering, but we must not allow that despair to cause us to lose hope.

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 10-17.

    In many ways I see these psalms as reflections of the world today. The wicked seem to prosper. They prey upon the weak, who cry out to God for aid. The wicked are sure that no one will hold them to account because they control the levers of political power. Bit by bit, the foundations of law and order are destroyed, while people foolishly look on and say, “What does it matter? There is no God.” Some people react to this by moving to the mountains, or other remote locations. But I know that there IS a God and that He will call the wicked to account. He will protect the righteous. The wicked may proudly stand and be praised for their evil deeds, but God will not be mocked. He will bring about justice. It may seem like evil is triumphant, but that will not last.

   The psalmist tells us that no one does good and then in the very next psalm declares that only those who do right may worship in God’s sanctuary. What does that mean for us? Does that mean that no one can worship in God’s sanctuary? No, it means that we all have to acknowledge that we have sinned, that we are no better than the wicked I condemned in the last paragraph. It is only when I accept my sinfulness and accept God’s forgiveness that I can begin the process of being healed. However, that does not mean that I can just continue to sin either. If I desire to enter into God’s presence I must seek to lead a blameless life. Here is the goal:

• Do what is right.

It is not enough to not do what is wrong. We must also do what is right.

• Speak the truth from a sincere heart.

If we speak the truth with the intent of hurting others, we have missed the point.

• Refuse to gossip.

OK, I think this one is pretty straightforward, but it is harder than it looks.

• Refuse to harm out neighbors.

Remember what Jesus says about who our neighbors are.

• Refuse to speak evil of our friends.

I think that Jesus would tell us that our friends are in the same category as our neighbors.

• Despise flagrant sinners.

This one is tough because we are supposed to love everyone, but I think we get an understanding of what he means when we look back to where it talks about evil being praised…we should do the opposite and call evil evil.

I could go on, but I think you can see where I am going as you read the rest of Psalms 15. There is so much more to be said about what is written in this passage, but I will leave off with this: “I am determined not to sin in what I say.”

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 1-9.

    I love these psalms, but I always struggle to write my blog entry because each one of them expresses a different thought about our relationship with God. Psalms 1 tells us of the joy in studying God’s word and meditating on His commands. Those who do so are firm and established. While the wicked get blown around as if by the wind. The wicked view God’s commands as chains which they desire to break and godliness as slavery (Psalms 2). However, they will discover that their rebellion leads only to heartbreak and loss. Whereas those who embrace God’s commands find them to be protection from the winds of life (Psalms 3). Even though they are surrounded by enemies they can lay down and sleep knowing that they will wake up in God’s peace. I think the points made here are reflected in society around us, those who reject God’s commands keep changing what is, and what is not, acceptable behavior. While the godly calmly continue to allow God to direct their thoughts despite the attacks against them.

    As you can see, when I started to write a theme emerged. Now I am going to make a stretch and put together some things which are not exactly connected in the passage (but which I think are connected in life). The psalmist warns us allowing our anger to lead us to sin. Instead we should put off comment and/or action until we have had a chance to get a night’s sleep and think about it. In the meantime we should do as the psalmist did in Psalms 8 & 9. Praise God, look at the night sky and see His wondrous handiwork. Yes, before we act on our anger let us sing praises to God and recognize His majesty. Then we will be prepared to rely on God to mete out the appropriate punishment to those who have angered us, and to be satisfied with His justice if He does not appear to do so.