Tag Archives: Psalms

Gimel – Learners and Lovers

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In Robert Murray M’Cheyne’s introductory notes to his Bible reading plan, he recommends that you pray the words of Ps 119:18 before each day’s reading:

Open my eyes that I may see
   wonderful things in your law.

This is another recurrent theme throughout Psalm 119. The Psalmist approaches’ God’s word as a student, eager to learn. The phrase “teach me” appears 11 times in the Psalm, and he repeatedly reiterates his desire to learn and understand.

A humble, teachable attitude is vital if we are to hear what God is saying through Scripture. Those who come to the Scripture looking only for things that they like or that will confirm what they already think miss out on the chance to be surprised by an encounter with God. There are wonderful things in there.

The Psalmist doesn’t just approach God’s word as a learner, but also as a lover. Some of his statements make him sound obsessed with God’s law:

My soul is consumed with longing
   for your laws at all times.

But this should not be misinterpreted as some kind of idolatry of the Bible at the expense of God. His passion for God’s word flows from his love for God himself. Willem VanGemeren makes this point in his commentary on the Psalms;

the beauty of this psalm lies not only in the recitation of devotion to the law but also in the psalmist’s absolute devotion to the Lord. … This is a psalm not only of law but also of love, not only of statute but also of spiritual strength, not only of devotion to precept but also of loyalty to the way of the Lord. The beauty in this psalm resounds from the relationship of the psalmist and his God.

So approach God’s word as a lover, delighting in it because you love him, and as a learner, eager to know more of it because you are eager to know more of him. There is a synergy between the two because the more you learn about God the more you will grow to love him, and the more you love him the greater your hunger to know him more. The two concepts are juxtaposed nicely in the final verse of this section (Ps 119:24):

Your statutes are my delight;
   they are my counsellors.

Beth – Memorising and Meditating

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In the second section of Psalm 119 (Ps 119:9-16, or “Beth”), I want to focus in on two concepts that recur throughout this Psalm, and that is of the value of memorising and meditating on the Word of God. I think there is an important link between the two. In our modern age of Google, we tend to assume that there is little to no point in memorising anything, since we can look it up quick enough. But I am convinced that we will get much more benefit from God’s Word if it stays with us in our minds throughout the day, allowing us to ponder its meaning as we walk down the street, or remember a relevant passage as we face a difficult situation. If you want to meditate on God’s word, you need to do at least a small amount of memorising God’s word.

I should point out that I am not talking primarily about the kind of memorising that enables you to recite verbatim entire chapters or books of the Bible, valuable as that may be. Instead, my goal is to have a thorough working knowledge of what is in God’s word – to know the general content of each book, to know the key and most important passages, even if I can’t quote chapter and verse for each one. When the Psalmist says “I have hidden your word in my heart”, he means that it has gone deep down within him. It’s not just in his head, it’s got right inside him, and is shaping his entire way of life.

Why Memorise?

This passage gives at least two reasons you should memorise Scripture. First, the word of God is for all of life. Life is portrayed here as a journey, and the decisions we face are forks in the road. How can we remain on the “path of purity” (Ps 119:9), and avoid “straying” from the right way (Ps 119:10)? Most of the important decisions we make in life are not taken while we are in a church meeting, or even necessarily while we have our Bibles open in front of us. We need the word of God to have taken deep root within us, if the choices we make in our day to day lives are to be governed by the wisdom of God’s word.

Second, the word of God is a weapon in the fight against sin. Verses 9 and 11 state this clearly – those who know the word of God will be able to wield the sword of the Spirit against the attacks of the enemy. The greatest example of this is of course Jesus. In his wilderness temptation, again and again he turned to the Scriptures to fend off the devil. And he didn’t have his iPhone with the ESV app on it to help him. He could turn to the word of God for help because it was already in his heart.

How to Memorise

Most of us are resigned to the idea that we are terrible at memorising Scripture. But its not as hard as you might imagine. This passage gives us two powerful ways in which God’s word penetrate deep into your heart.

The first, and most important is that you need to delight in God’s word in order to be able memorise it. As a teenager I could tell you the full squads of all the Premier League teams, as well as recite every Arsenal result of the season complete with who scored what goal in what minute. It wasn’t because I tried to memorise that information, it’s just that I was so passionate about football that I absorbed vast amounts of useless trivia. The writer of this Psalm is so obsessive about the word of God that he compares the thrill he gets from it  to winning the lottery:

14 I rejoice in following your statutes
as one rejoices in great riches.
15 I meditate on your precepts
and consider your ways.
16 I delight in your decrees;
I will not neglect your word.

The more we delight in God’s word, the more of it we will retain and will be able to bring it to mind as the need arises.

A second and very effective way to memorise the word of God is simply to speak it out.

13 With my lips I recount
all the laws that come from your mouth.

With two of my children I read out loud a Psalm each night before they go to bed. They repeat it back to me line by line. It takes a couple of minutes. By the end of the month, my eight year old can recite it word for word, while my five year old can get through with a few prompts. There is something about speaking things out loud that causes it to stick in our minds.

I am told that reading aloud was the normal mode of reading for centuries. Rev 1:3 says “Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy”. Try doing your morning Bible readings aloud. It will slow you down and you’ll cover less ground, but you will retain more that way.

Another aspect of speaking God’s word out is making it a regular topic of conversation. The more you talk about it, the more deeply you will examine it, and passages of Scripture you discuss with others are more likely to take root in your heart. That’s one good reason why small groups should try to include discussion within their Bible study meetings. As Deut 6:6-7 says:

6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

 

Aleph – The Blessing of the Blameless Life

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Apologies for the lack of posts on this blog in recent months. Since the birth of our fifth child (Anna-Rose) in March, I have had less time than usual for reading and blogging. However, I don’t want to completely abandon the blog, so I’m going to attempt to post a series of thoughts on Psalm 119, which I have been studying recently.

Psalm 119 is of course famous for being the longest chapter in the Bible, with 176 verses – 8 for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The other interesting thing about this Psalm is that the dominant theme is God’s law. The word and commands of God are the Psalmist’s delight and obsession, the focal point around which his whole life revolves.

This poses something of a dilema as we try to interpret this Psalm though. Isn’t the New Covenant about grace triumphing over law? At first glance this Psalm can seem like a celebration of legalism. For example, consider the first four verses:

1 Blessed are those whose ways are blameless,
who walk according to the law of the LORD.
2 Blessed are those who keep his statutes
and seek him with all their heart—
3 they do no wrong
but follow his ways.
4 You have laid down precepts
that are to be fully obeyed.

We’re told here that there is a blessing for those who are (a) blameless, (b) wholehearted in seeking God, (c) do nothing wrong, and (d) obey every one of God’s laws fully. I don’t know about you, but that rules me out of receiving this blessing. But that’s not quite the end of the story. Verse 5 and 6 is an honest prayer from the Psalmist who knows that he is not always uncompromisingly obedient:

5 Oh, that my ways were steadfast
in obeying your decrees!
6 Then I would not be put to shame
when I consider all your commands.

He responds to this by making a personal resolution. He promises to (a) worship, (b) learn God’s rules and (c) obey them:

7 I will praise you with an upright heart
as I learn your righteous laws.
8 I will obey your decrees;
do not utterly forsake me.

Now we might be tempted to summarise Psalm 119:1-8 like this: “There is blessing for those who obey God, but ‘shame’ for those who don’t; therefore I will try really hard to obey and hope God doesn’t abandon me.” But that would do an injustice to the Psalmist, for reasons I will hopefully get onto if this series doesn’t come to a premature end. Suffice for now to say that for the Psalmist, obedience is primarily an expression of love not a fulfilment of a duty or an insurance policy for judgment day.

But I wonder too if there might be something prophetic about the opening section of this Psalm. In verse 8, the Psalmist prays that God won’t “forsake” him. It draws my mind to Mark 15:34, where Jesus cries out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”. The irony is that Jesus was the only one that Ps 119:1-4 truly describes. He is the only one who was completely blameless, was devoted to seeking God, did nothing whatsoever wrong, and fully obeyed every one of God’s laws. But instead of receiving blessing for it, he was put to shame and forsaken at the cross. He lived the blameless life we could not. He was forsaken in order that we might be accepted.

Psalm 119:1-4 then, is not about an unobtainable blessing, but about a blessing that has already been made available to us through God’s grace. And it does not describe a life that we are obligated but unable to live, but rather one that we are free and empowered to live by the Spirit. It is not about earning God’s favour through your blameless life, but enjoying God’s favour earned by Jesus’ blameless life.

Book Review–Seeking the Face of God (Martyn Lloyd-Jones)

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This book contains nine “reflections on the Psalms” from the famous preacher Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones. What is curious about this book is that it contains no preface or introduction explaining why these particular sermons were chosen for this volume. Obviously nine sermons is no systematic coverage of the Psalms and, starting with sermons on atheism (Ps 14:1) and dead religion (Ps 50:21), it is not obvious that the original series (if indeed there was one) was necessarily on the topic of “seeking the face of God”. Whilst a couple of the sermons are clearly follow-ons from the previous one, there is no other indication that these form either part or the whole of a series. A footnote reveals that at least one of the sermons was preached in 1957.

Following the evangelistic thrust of the first two sermons, the remainder of the sermons focus in on the importance of knowing God. Lloyd-Jones has a way of homing in on single phrases that other expositors might rush past to get to the more readily “preachable” verses. An example would be his two-part treatment of Ps 84, in which he devotes an entire sermon to Ps 84:3.

For me, the high points in this brief volume are the sermons in the second half, particularly the one on Ps 63:1-3. It is in these sermons that the book earns its title of “Seeking the Face of God”, as Lloyd-Jones presses home the importance of knowing God’s presence. The most important thing is to know that God is with us, that we have access to him, and that we can enjoy his presence, in the most humbling, the most difficult, the most truing of circumstances. He makes several of the same points that he does in the sermons contained in “Joy Unspeakable”, arguing that we need to become “God intoxicated”, and that we give him no rest until he has satisfied the longing of our hearts and granted us the Spirit in fullness.

Are you enjoying God? We are meant to. Shame on us if we are not.

Just because a man is an outstanding preacher, does not mean you can select a bunch of his sermons and automatically get a coherent book. However, despite its slightly disjointed start, I really enjoyed these reflections on the Psalms, and especially appreciated the fact that Lloyd-Jones is not content to simply be a master expositor, helping us understand the meaning of the text, but also preaches to the heart, urging us to desire to know God personally.

Make it the central thing of your life to gaze upon God, to arrive at a knowledge of Him that will be intimate and personal, a communion with Him that will ravish your heart and cause your soul to rise up to Him. Seek His face, and go on seeking it.

Book Review – The Message of Psalms 73-150 (Michael Wilcock)

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I read the first volume of this commentary on the Psalms a couple of years ago. Many of the comments made about that volume apply to this one also. Michael Wilcock is very interested in historical background, the structure of the Psalm and also its placing within the Psalter. He also is a keen appreciator of older hymns and liturgical forms of worship, and will often discuss various hymns based on that passage. All this information can be fascinating, but it seems a little out of place in a series like Bible Speaks Today, which is focussed on the application of Scripture. The end result is that there is rarely space for key individual verses to be discussed, and those who do not make extensive use of liturgy or hymns will also find some of the material a bit alien.

Having made those criticisms, it is worth pointing out that there is still some very valuable material in this book, particularly for those planning a Bible study on a Psalm, and wanting to get a feel for its structure and setting (both historical and its place within the Psalter as a whole). He encourages a Christian application of the Psalms, seeing relevance for the church as the people of God in references to Israel. He quotes Bruggemman in a number of places, and talks of the “nonspecific” troubles of the Psalmist being able to speak into our situations.

He understands book 4 of the Psalms to be an “exodus collection”, and the Psalms of ascent are explained in the light of having a background in the Nehemiah story. He takes some time to discuss a Christian approach to the ‘imprecatory’ Psalms. There is a long section dealing with Psalm 119, and his exposition of Psalm 139 was one of the best in the book – he describes it as a theology of omniscience and omnipresence made simple and personal.

Overall, I would say its not the most thrilling of books to read cover to cover, but it still has something to offer. Each Psalm has on average two or three pages of comments, and would be helpful reading as background material to stimulate ideas for preparing a talk or study. It is common for Christians to quote parts of Psalms without having any real feel for their historical setting, or structure as a whole, so at least this book provides some useful corrective to that. It also encourages those preparing worship based on a Psalm to consider appropriate related Bible readings they could make use of.