Psalm 6 - Crying Out to God

"Turn, O Lord, and deliver me; save me because of your unfailing love."

1O LORD, do not rebuke me in your anger
or discipline me in your wrath.
2 Be merciful to me, LORD, for I am faint;
O LORD, heal me, for my bones are in agony.

3 My soul is in anguish.
How long, O LORD, how long?

4 Turn, O LORD, and deliver me;
save me because of your unfailing love.

5 No one remembers you when he is dead.
Who praises you from the grave [b] ?

6 I am worn out from groaning;
all night long I flood my bed with weeping
and drench my couch with tears.

7 My eyes grow weak with sorrow;
they fail because of all my foes.

8 Away from me, all you who do evil,
for the LORD has heard my weeping.

9 The LORD has heard my cry for mercy;
the LORD accepts my prayer.

10 All my enemies will be ashamed and dismayed;
they will turn back in sudden disgrace.

Grace without remembering its cost can lead to a casual view toward sin.
The grace revolution has brought health to the body of Christ, but has the pendulum swung too far? Could we be forgetting another side of God? Whereas Grace relieves the sting of shame, God’s anger toward that sin should not be underestimated. David knew how God felt about sin. He begins this psalm by pleading to Him for patience regarding the condition he finds himself in. He asks that God not punish him in the heat of his anger. God hates sin, and because of this grace does not pardon without payment. Grace liberates because a just and full payment was made through Jesus Christ. We deserve death. Let’s not forget this in the face of our sin. As we plea for grace to flow, it flows freely as blood from His riven side.
David sees himself weak, sick, disturbed and gloomy. Not the picture we often associate with the King of Israel, the champion of wars, and the brilliant softhearted writer of the psalms. Yet, he had this moment where all he could do is cry out to God. How often do we petition God with such accurate assessment of our own lives? It’s all right to be honest with God about our condition. He often hears the cry of the destitute and afflicted before the proud and satisfied.
David, sensing God far away, now he cries for Him to return and deliver him. Perhaps he had tried everything else, or maybe he had learned that those avenues only postpone the grace of God. David has spent hours upon his bed, wetting his pillow with tears. Has God forgotten him? Will he rescue his chosen servant? Yes, he is comforted with the fact that, “The Lord has heard my cry for mercy; the Lord accepts my prayer. Does God accept some prayers and not others? He hears all, however some he will see the condition of the heart, weigh the motives and place the answer on hold until character compliments request. He will not give us anything that we are not ready to accept in humility.
Notice that those who do evil have accosted David. Perhaps some have counseled to reject this God who doesn’t act for His people. But David knows God will come. This faith on David’s part sounds like presumption, but it’s deeper than that! If we hadn’t seen him swimming in tears, we might be tempted to assume David far too sure of himself. But experience has shown me that confidence in prayer, and faith in the middle of hostility is only gained through wrestling God alone in prayer. Jacob had to wrestle God alone on that starless night. We too must defeat tendencies for doubt, pride and hostility. We do so alone in our closets. God will give grace to the humble, but will stand against the proud to cause their ruin.

Anyone not affected by the cost of the cross will need training before grace can be received in full. What is my view of grace in light of the cross? Do I weaken its power by cheapening its gift?

Psalm 5-Prayer Kindling...Our Hope in Battle!

"But I, by your great mercy will come into your house." v. 7

Psalm 5

1 Give ear to my words, O LORD,
consider my sighing.
2 Listen to my cry for help,
my King and my God,
for to you I pray.

3 In the morning, O LORD, you hear my voice;
in the morning I lay my requests before you
and wait in expectation.

4 You are not a God who takes pleasure in evil;
with you the wicked cannot dwell.

5 The arrogant cannot stand in your presence;
you hate all who do wrong.

6 You destroy those who tell lies;
bloodthirsty and deceitful men
the LORD abhors.

7 But I, by your great mercy,
will come into your house;
in reverence will I bow down
toward your holy temple.

8 Lead me, O LORD, in your righteousness
because of my enemies—
make straight your way before me.

9 Not a word from their mouth can be trusted;
their heart is filled with destruction.
Their throat is an open grave;
with their tongue they speak deceit.

10 Declare them guilty, O God!
Let their intrigues be their downfall.
Banish them for their many sins,
for they have rebelled against you.

11 But let all who take refuge in you be glad;
let them ever sing for joy.
Spread your protection over them,
that those who love your name may rejoice in you.

12 For surely, O LORD, you bless the righteous;
you surround them with your favor as with a shield.

Commentary:
This psalm has been used for centuries as kindling for hearts weary in the battle. For many in the thick of temptation, or running ashamed, these words breathe hope and expectancy for God to come to their aid. The secret is in the asking, but more importantly, in asking with a tender and desperate heart. The normal experience of mankind is to cry, deeply sigh under burdens and to lose hope. While Christians are never sheltered from the principles that govern the world, a greater overarching principle comes into play. God breathes perspective into the wilds. He grants his children to understand enough to keep hopeful. For that, I personally am grateful. The psalmist has made it his practice to seek God at first light. We need direction for the day, and encouragement to stay at our post. By any standard, a good model to follow.
The best defense against spiritual discouragement is to be reminded that God hates sin, and will be its judge. It’s not easy to watch the wicked thrive while we struggle. Yet, Scriptures tells us that they have had their reward in full. No one will stand in judgment who has not bowed the knee to our Sovereign Lord.
The arrogant, repugnant in God’s eyes, must leave his presence. This sinister wellspring of sin was the cataract of Satan’s anarchy. God does not tolerate it. If the pride is too strong, or we are too weak to change, he will lead us to the fire where that dross will be consumed. In addition, it says God will destroy liars. Do you take seriously God’s standard for holiness? Remember, a half-truth is a whole lie.
How easily we become distracted in trusting others more than God. But who can be fully trusted? That kind of knowledge is essential in the heat of battle. As God leads us in His righteousness, he will make a broad path for our feet before His enemies. The psalmist asks God to punish the wicked because they have rebelled against Him. Yet, often I am aware of my own heart’s rebellion, and I need first to get right with God, and then call others to a standard. Lord, don’t let syncretism embroil me lies and deceit. There’s nothing more punishing to my spirit than duplicity.
What does it mean, practically, to take refuge in God? I see that doing so makes one glad, actually singing for joy. The pressures of life counteract the deep assurance joy wants to bring. Yet, can this otherworldly canopy of God’s grace become such a protective element in my life, that under it, I stay unmolested? The nature of a real Christian is that from him shall flow rivers of living water. When the battle, pressures and defeats take their toll on us, there’s nothing to flow. Yet, as we trust God under his shade, he will preserve us, bless us, and surround us as with a shield. Behind Him we can peek out at our enemies with confidence. “My daddy’s bigger than yours! My daddy catches bigger fish.”
We die daily. This Psalm walks us into the battle and shows us that we can sing aloud, for the Father’s good hand at Calvary has made it so.
The kindling of this psalm is the voice of Jesus beckoning me into holy fellowship.

Psalm 4 Come Still the Dawn

"Let the light of your face shine upon us, O Lord."

1 Answer me when I call to you,
O my righteous God.
Give me relief from my distress;
be merciful to me and hear my prayer.
2 How long, O men, will you turn my glory into shame [a] ?
How long will you love delusions and seek false gods [b] ?
Selah

3 Know that the LORD has set apart the godly for himself;
the LORD will hear when I call to him.

4 In your anger do not sin;
when you are on your beds,
search your hearts and be silent.
Selah

5 Offer right sacrifices
and trust in the LORD.

6 Many are asking, "Who can show us any good?"
Let the light of your face shine upon us, O LORD.

7 You have filled my heart with greater joy
than when their grain and new wine abound.

8 I will lie down and sleep in peace,
for you alone, O LORD,
make me dwell in safety.

The wise and seasoned warrior cries out, “answer me when I call.” Our mightiest plots and noblest schemes are puny miniature battle formations compared to God’s glorious cavalcade. When we call on God, who is our righteousness, He takes tension, anxious wringing hands and troubled hearts into a wide space, and then shows the way to journey through. No man can lament long whose God is the Lord.
Men have always been tempted to worship the seen over the unseen. The gods of this world reap a harvest of worship from babbling fools. Don’t trouble yourself to follow their ways. They speak to stone, and entertain the wind! But know this, God sets apart from the sons of men, holy ones, who do His will. They will invest and reap a reward; they will speak truth and enjoy freedom to soar above the armies of night. God will hear their prayers! But how do I enter into that life of intimacy, where trust grows deep like fall potatoes?
Hold the Lord in holy fear, and do not let sin have dominion in your soul. Meditate in the quiet creases of night. Sense it’s penetrating heat softening your heart to be a conquered muscle trained to conquer in battle. Use the night watches to think upon this awesome God we love. The more we muse, the more we will understand that he wants nothing from us but our redeemed heart. The sacrifices of God are a broken and contrite heart. This is the first and most glorious faith we can possess. All other fruits and virtues flow from this fountain. Make sure that your fountain has its source in the Godhead!
All too often we hear men and women rail against God’s purposes. It reminds me of the story of the man who raced up and down a train platform grieving the loss of his son. He would stop people and ask, “where was God when my son died?” No one could answer him, and so on he ran searching for an answer in the faces of the crowd. Until he came upon an elderly gentleman, whose face radiated peace and calm, and he asked again, where was God when my son died? With a voice hewn through a life of pain and triumph, the old man responded, “I suppose the same place He was when His own son died.”
We will not hear God unless we look up and allow the light of His countenance to shine upon us. Trusting Him involves an act of our will to look up when we want to look to someone, or some thing to still our fears. God is enough! Do this, and the strands of your character will become gladness, peace and deliverance—the gift of sleep for those who know Him.

Am I experiencing a wide path of life, or has it narrowed and made me anxious?

This companion psalm ends the bookends that make up Psalm 3 & 4. Let the words become a part of your daily prayers and devotions. Our adversary cannot stand against the sound of God’s soothing lips pressed against our ear. Listen, He whispers to YOU!

Psalm 3 - He Takes Up Our Defense

"He Answers us from His Holy Mountain..."
Psalm 3
1 LORD, how my adversaries have increased!
Many are rising up against me.
2Many are saying of my soul,
"There is no deliverance for him in God." [a]Selah.
3But You, O LORD, are a shield about me,
My glory, and the One who lifts my head.
4I was crying to the LORD with my voice,
And He answered me from His holy mountain. Selah.
5I lay down and slept;
I awoke, for the LORD sustains me.
6I will (I)not be afraid of ten thousands of people
Who have (J)set themselves against me round about.
7Arise, O LORD; (L)save me, O my God!
For You have (M)smitten all my enemies on the cheek;
You have (N)shattered the teeth of the wicked.
8Salvation belongs to the LORD;
Your (P)blessing be upon Your people! Selah.

Have you ever felt so alone, that it hurt to see others smile?
To trust God when the winds are fair, this is but religion. To hold on when gales are fierce and threatening takes the gaze of a noble faith. Even more trying is when those gales are filled with the faces of those who despise you, taunt you, and await your demise. Then you must cling to God. God teaches the most valuable lesson of life in the school of rejection. But remember, we don’t go off somewhere to learn it, but He graciously teaches us as a Father in the home. Regardless of how severe our circumstances we are still at home with our Father. We can pray, “Our father who art in heaven...and know that he gazes upon our stammering lips and quiets our rhetoric long enough to fill us with peace. The Psalmist is experiencing aloneness. His adversaries have increased in the land, and many are saying God will not come to save. They have attacked what is most sacred and most reflective of the Father’s nature. A father is a protector first, because in protecting all other faculties are preserved. The accusers(and the Great Accuser most often is behind their words) slap him across the face with the bold assertion that God will not be found in his troubles.
Verse 3 resounds through the heavens, “BUT...” and God is there. He is a shield that stands in the way of the fiery darts of the enemy. Those darts are words, and they wound the stoutest of hearts. Next, He is Glory, pure love and divine fellowship with God. That unmistakable birth certificate brought out of moldy files and paraded for all of hell to see. “This one belongs to me, he is my Glory!” Because of this, the psalmist can keep his head lifted high.
Prayer, too helps keep perspective. The psalmist cries out to God, and He comes from His holy mountain. On close inspection we see one seeking God in all His holiness...himself right with God, he can enter boldly (Heb 4) into that holy of holies and find there the answers to his troubled heart. Real prayer will enter in and remain until God lifts the veil of confusion, and shows the path of execution of His perfect will.
What a gift when sleep comes in the face of tormentors. Jesus slept in the boat in the middle of a storm. A fitting picture for those caught in storms that threaten life’s equilibrium. The Psalmist hears from God, then sleeps well, awakes refreshed because it was the Lord who was watching over him during the dark evil filled night. For those troubled at night, cry out to God for deliverance. He will guard you as a night watchman. New strength and perspective has entered the psalmist’s mind, and now fear has been cast off, and the cloak dropped at every one of the feet of those who had harassed him. Now, rejection means nothing, only divine fellowship with the One who alone delivers from death.
The battle belongs to the Lord. God will strike our enemies on the cheek, if only we hand over our rights and station ourselves beside Him. It is a child king who nestles against the train of the King of all Kings. He will come to our defense on the decisive day of battle. Do you manage your skirmishes on our own time-table, or in your own strength? We must trust God in the day of evil, and to triumph and put to shame our darkest enemies in that most decisive moment.

Psalm 2-Install the King Upon the Throne of your Heart

"Why do the peoples plot in vain?" Psalm 2:1

1 Why do the nations conspire
and the peoples plot in vain?

2 The kings of the earth take their stand
and the rulers gather together
against the LORD
and against his Anointed One.

3 "Let us break their chains," they say,
"and throw off their fetters."

4 The One enthroned in heaven laughs;
the Lord scoffs at them.

5 Then he rebukes them in his anger
and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,

6 "I have installed my King
on Zion, my holy hill."

7 I will proclaim the decree of the LORD :
He said to me, "You are my Son ;
today I have become your Father.

8 Ask of me,
and I will make the nations your inheritance,
the ends of the earth your possession.

9 You will rule them with an iron scepter;
you will dash them to pieces like pottery."

10 Therefore, you kings, be wise;
be warned, you rulers of the earth.

11 Serve the LORD with fear
and rejoice with trembling.

12 Kiss the Son, lest he be angry
and you be destroyed in your way,
for his wrath can flare up in a moment.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

The King sits upon the throne of a conquered heart
Men, by nature think too highly of themselves. Independence feeds the ego that will eventually destroy us. God desires relationship, and in that context He trains His children to trust Him. At some point God must confront us with a choice for holiness. If we lack the will to surrender to it, anger steps into the void. The psalmist states that men rage against the Lord in their folly. They actually think that they can outsmart God! Banded together with enough nations throwing their zeal and energy against God, somehow together they dream that their force will be enough to break the yoke of slavery.
We either surrender, or risk God’s ultimate judgment.
Twenty years ago I pled with God to take all of me without reservation to become His slave. What I discovered was that God, rather than being a taskmaster invited me to His dinner table. I accepted his invitation, drawn by His irresistible love, to voluntarily give my life to Him. I discovered that if love draws us, then it will be love that will heal and sustain us on the way.
In verse 4 God observes the best that nations can muster, and He actually laughs! Who but God could make light of an alliance assembled against Him? The one who created their rulers, and who breathed life into them, can just as easily and without effort snuff out their existence. And he does stiffen their backs a little, by speaking thunderous oratory, rolling like a storm in His anger towards such pride and indolence.
The Psalmist steps back from the vision of execution to summon his heart again toward the true King. He speaks for God when he says that he has installed, or consecrated His King upon His holy mountain. This psalm breathes prophecy about the coming Messiah. Who else can conquer the heart? God’s holiness occupies the theme of the Old Testament, but One is coming that will call God His Father. He will conquer not only nations, but also the hearts of men. Inside the prophetic utterance is the answer for everyone’s greatest need. We must, like God has done, install the King upon the throne of our own hearts. To consecrate means to completely give one self over to another. We must make Jesus Lord of our lives, or risk the same condition of the nations who rage against the Lord’s anointed. God will not hold back His fury forever. Someday, we all must stand before His holy presence and give an account of our heart’s desires and life’s ambitions. What will He see on that day?
Little attention is given today toward the God of fury. In verses 8-9 we see that God can crush nations like a clay pot. What stops this just punishment? None of us are righteous, all have sinned. Only the blood of the One spoken of here. His death has given our future wings to fly beyond our natural senses and live in the presence of God.
“Show discernment O nations”...a message more relevant today perhaps than when it was written. The Psalmist warns that God’s wrath will soon be kindled. Yet what a tremendous hope He ends with: “How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!”

Psalm 1-"Planted by Streams of Water"

Psalm 1 – By the Streams We are Strengthened

1 Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD, _ and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water, _ which yields its fruit in season _ and whose leaf does not wither. _ Whatever he does prospers.
4 Not so the wicked! _ They are like chaff _ that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, _ nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, _ but the way of the wicked will perish.

The Psalmist, David elevates the virtue of right living by outlining the folly of moving in the direction of sin. Note the progression; “How blessed is he who does not walk, stand and sit” within evil’s grasp. If we walk by temptation, and think for one moment we are immune, then our natural defenses have been breeched. We way even say, “I could never do such a thing.” Our assertion is bold, but foolish. In time these thoughts, if gone unchecked will lead closer to the enticement, literally standing near. We linger for a while, smelling its fruit, and craving its juices. We rationalize that we feel most alive in these moments, and deep within a soul hunger is being nourished, and so we linger just a little while longer, until God’s grieving heart can be heard over the clamor of our stupidity. Finally, we decide in a moment’s time one day that we will fully entertain. We sit, and therefore buy the package evil has offered. You and I have found ourselves here, haven’t we? At first, the fruit is good to the taste, but soon leaves an aching burning and gnawing cancer in the belly. Like sweet wine, it’s drained easily, but bites hard in the aftermath.
The silver lining is this: God uses our decisions; even foolish ones to build wisdom, if we take heed and turn back to Him. When we do, our enemy is broadsided, and though he has won a victory, the Paraclete (Holy Spirit – John 16) whispers in our ear, we have not lost the war. Next time we walk by this evil, wisdom will shout in the streets and we will hear and heed its demand for a more perfect way.
Sin deadens us after it’s been tasted, but the Psalmist shows us that through our delight in the law of the Lord, and through meditation day and night we become strong like a tree planted by waters. The Word acts as the perfect food for reviving, restoring and rejuvenating a heart. We will always have soul hunger, but our futile attempts to curb the hunger pangs with evil will keep us unsatisfied. The promise is a future grace.... we will bear fruit “in it’s proper season.”
The wicked are unstable and vulnerable to any wind of adversity. They will be blown away by its first gust like chaff upon the open ground. Interesting point made in verse five that the wicked will not “STAND” in the assembly of the righteous. Does this have reference to the judgment? All will fall down and worship God at that moment, but the word used here to rise, or help up. God will not take the hand of the wicked like He will the righteous (those bought by the blood of the Lamb). God will rise up the righteous, but will leave the wicked groveling in their isolation and damnation.