It’s
started…the slide into nothing. If you
have been following recently, you know the goal was to post every Wednesday and
possibly on Sunday as well. June and
July have seen that goal start to falter.
Weeks have been skipped and I don’t have a real strong reason for it
other than “I was busy.” Lame. I know it’s a weak excuse and I mean to do
better. We all know summer can be crazy
and most churches back off the programming during the summer months because
everyone is busy with vacations and such.
But that doesn’t mean I get to take time off from my own personal devotions
and spiritual growth. Personal devotions
and time with God are an important part of being a Christian. With that said, back into the groove with
Psalms 9 and 10.
The
reason for combining Psalms 9 and 10 is that the research notes indicated that
these two Psalms may have been a single poem. The Septuagint (ancient Greek translation of
Hebrew scripture) has these two Psalms as one acrostic poem with each stanza
beginning with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. With that background it makes sense to take a
look at these two psalms together.
The
subject here is God’s response to our cries for help and his justice. Psalm 9 focuses more on the fact that God
does hear our cries for help and reminds us of our need to praise God. The first two verses are a simple offering of
praise to God. Whenever we find
ourselves in difficult circumstances, these two verses can be a simple
statement of thanksgiving. “I will
praise you, O Lord, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonders. I will be glad and rejoice in you; I will
sing praise to your name, O Most High” (Psalm 9:1-2). There are no qualifying statements here, just
a simple statement that David will praise the Lord with everything. David will be “glad and rejoice in [the Lord].” David doesn’t say that he will be glad only
when God blesses him, or only when he feels like it. David doesn’t say that he will praise God
with most of his heart. We should all
strive to worship the Lord as David does here.
Later,
David addresses his reasons for asking God for help, and, in doing so, points a
spotlight at our own motivations. “O
Lord, see how my enemies persecute me!
Have mercy and lift me up from the gates of death, that I may declare
your praises in the gates of the Daughter of Zion and there rejoice in your
salvation” (Psalm 9:13-14). Note David’s
goal in asking for help. It wasn’t so
that life would be a bit more comfortable or so that he could be a bit more
successful. It was so that he could
proclaim God’s greatness. The notes on
these two verses ask us to focus on our motivation when we ask God for
help. This is a good reminder for me
because I am most definitely guilty of seeking God the most when life is at a
low point. When I lost my job a few
years ago I spent time reading the Bible and asking God to help me find a
job. Once I found a job and things
started going well, reading the Bible wasn’t so important anymore. Life was good, why did I need to keep reading
scripture? God answered my prayer and I
was back to being comfortable again. Umm…wrong,
please try again. We should seek God so
that we can boast about His greatness, not so that we can avoid pain or
embarrassment. Yes, God’s answer to our
prayers may save us grief or humiliation, but that shouldn’t be the end point
of our prayers.
Getting
to Psalm 10, the focus shifts slightly to the question of why the wicked
succeed. There is still an underlying
current of asking God for help. In this
case, the writer sees the inflated importance of the wicked; he sees those who
think they alone are responsible for their accomplishments. The wicked crush the weak and abuse their
wealth and power. In those cases, it is
easy to feel that God has forgotten us.
But we find hope at the end of Psalm 10.
“The Lord is King for ever and ever; the nations will perish from his
land. You hear, O Lord, the desire of
the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry, defending the
fatherless and the oppressed, in order that man, who is of the earth, may
terrify no more” (Psalm 10:16-18). The
Lord reigns for all eternity and he does
here the cries of the weak and afflicted.
This earth will fade away and so with earthly power. Psalm 10 finishes on the theme first
introduced in Psalm 9 – God hears our prayers and cries for help. God is our help in times of need. He will strengthen and encourage us. He will defend us and be our protector. The wicked may succeed now, but those who trust
in God will see justice in the end.
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