Psalm 31:21,22 – “Amazing”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

²¹Blessed be the LORD, because He has done amazingly His love to me in a besieged city. ²²And I spoke in my alarm, “I am cut off from before Your eyes!” Surely You heard the call of my prayers I cried for help to You.

If one reads different translations, you’ll see that some translate it “in a besieged city” and others “in a strong city.” Those would seem to be two different ideas. The problem is that in Hebrew it could be either. In their “picture-telling” kind of minds, there is no difference, since a besieged city would have to be a strong city. Enemies only laid siege because they found the walls impregnable. If the walls were flimsy, they’d just crash through and conquer it. So, it could be either.

Personally, I think the most natural understanding of the word would be “besieged.” David isn’t describing himself in any position of strength. Rather the exact opposite is true. All through this Psalm he feels under attack. He finds his strength in the Lord.

We all can relate of course. I’m guessing we all feel too often like we live in a besieged city. And at particular times it gets really bad. We get into bad situations and feel there is no way out. It seems like there are no answers and we can’t see any hope.

David even admits to his weak faith at that very time. “In my alarm I said, ‘I am cut off from Your sight!’” David was at that point we all get to in our troubles – that point where the hopelessness seems overwhelming and God’s promises seem very small and far away. We may feel at those times (and even say) that God has forsaken us, that He has turned away from us. Those feelings only get bolstered by the fact that “our sin is ever before us.” We are all keenly aware, if God did desert us, it would be exactly what we deserve.

We need to say here it is a shameful thing at times like this that we falter believing God’s promises, that we accuse Him and our hearts question His faithfulness. That’s what David is doing and exactly what we too often do. This is the same God who tells us, “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” This is the same God who says, because of Jesus, we can “come boldly before the Throne of Grace, that we might obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” This is the same God who promised, “I will never leave you nor forsake you,” and who promises that “all things work together for good to them that love God.” It is really a shameful thing that we doubt Him.

But notice in the middle of it all something very, very important – although David’s faith may be faltering, he’s still talking to God! Even in our weakest moments, the one right thing we can do is talk to God! Job got pretty surly in the middle of his book, but he never stopped seeing his problems as between him and God. Naomi seems like a bitter woman in the book of Ruth, but she brings the Lord into everything she says. Jeremiah in the book of Lamentations seems to challenge God to His face. And, like the rest of them, here David is, questioning God’s faithfulness – but he does it, like them, still talking to God. This is a great truth I realized at some point – that our God is a big God and He can handle it when people cry out to Him even in their despair, even when they accuse Him and are angry at Him. He can handle it if someone tells Him, “I’m not sure I even believe in You.” The important thing in the end is not the greatness of our faith, but rather the object of our faith and His greatness!

Under grace, this is simply a part of the struggle of faith for us forlorned believers living with our sinful selves in a fallen world. In every painful moment faith actually ends up being a wrestling match, as it were, for us to lay hold the promises of God. Dickson noted,

“There may be in a soul at one time both grief oppressing, and hope upholding: both darkness of trouble, and the light of faith; both desperately doubting, and strong gripping of God’s truth and goodness; both a fainting and a fighting; a seeming yielding in the fight, and yet a striving of faith against all opposition; both a foolish haste, and a settled staidness of faith; as here, ‘I said in my haste,’ etc.”

But as we take our doubts and fears and anger and even unbelief to God, what happens? He shows His “amazing love” to us. He hears our cries for help. I want to point out that many translations call it His “wonderful love.” The Hebrew word is better translated today as “amazing.” The word “wonderful” used to mean exactly that – full of wonder, amazing, but today I think “wonderful love” means more something like “pleasant” or “comfortable.” It definitely doesn’t have the connotation of amazement any more. What God shows us is His amazing love – a love that we didn’t expect, a love that turns out to be “immeasurably more than we could have asked or thought.” We cry out to Him even in our doubting and, as the years go by, one time after another after another after another, He answers with a love and kindness that simply leaves us amazed.

That is because He is amazing. I’ve heard people beat themselves up for being “amazed” at God. My answer is, “Of course you’re amazed. That’s because He is amazing! You can’t get close to Him without being amazed. Any time He touches your life, expect to be amazed. He is amazing! That is simply who He is.”

The right response is not to beat ourselves up about our lack of faith, but rather to just let Him amaze us and, with David say, “Blessed be the Lord, for He showed to me His amazing love when I was in a besieged city!”

His love is amazing. It’s okay to be amazed. It’s okay to struggle believing in that amazing love when despair and fear overwhelm us. We just need to keep crying, keep talking, keep calling out to Him. And as we do cry out to Him, it’s only a matter of time and we’ll be saying, “Blessed be the Lord for His amazing love!”

Psalm 31:19,20 – “Protected”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹⁹What great Your good which You have stored up to ones fearing You, have made to ones taking refuge in You, before the sons of mankind? ²⁰You will hide them in the hiding place of Your faces from plots of man. You will hide them in a booth from [the] contention of tongues.

As I’ve studied v20, in particular, I have been amazed to realize just how true it is that our God loves to hide things! It might be that He is hiding His wisdom from the “wise” and the “great” of this world, as in I Cor 2:7, “We speak of God’s secret wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.” In v.19, He has hidden away or “stored up” good He intends to do for us – like a parent storing away gifts to give their children as they grow older.

However, what has amazed is me is how He hides us.

Once again, in v19, David spoke of the “good” that the Lord has “stored up” for us – that He has hidden away good He intends to do us. That has certainly been true in my life. I am amazed to see how blessed I am and to look back and realize that, through all the very painful, difficult times, He knew He was going to bring me here. All I knew at the time was that it all hurt (a lot). But even while I was hurting, He had hidden away all this blessing. He knew I had to go through the pain, before He could give me these blessings, but He knew all the time He would. He had it all hidden away, stored up to give me at just the right time!

But then, interestingly, in v20, He hides us! The verse says He hides us “from the intrigues of men” and “from accusing tongues.” He is hiding us, so to speak, from the meanness of this world. For myself, as I’ve said before, I haven’t had to deal too much with people’s meanness. On the whole I work all day every day with what I find to be a lot of very nice people. I’m not rich or famous or powerful, so I suppose I don’t necessarily attract meanness like David would have being a king. But the fact is, it’s still there. It’s always there.

It is there ultimately because Satan is a liar and a murderer and “the accuser of the brethren.” Unfortunately too many people are in reality his children and “the lusts of their father they will do.” Jesus never did anything but love people and yet the religious leaders of His day lied about Him and accused Him and finally murdered Him for it. The meanness is there.

With Satan being so venomously determined to kill us, it is a wonder we know any peace or friendship at all. And why do we? This verse tell us exactly why – because the Lord has “hidden us” from it all. Satan complained about this very fact in relation to Job when he said to the Lord, “Have You not put a hedge around him and his household and everything He has?” (Job 1:10). Satan couldn’t touch Job without the Lord’s permission.

I guess I’ve known for years about this “hedge” and certainly prayed that the Lord would in fact keep it about my family; but I’ve never really thought about, for instance, why I basically find people pretty nice, even though I know the world is a pretty mean place. I’ve never thought about how it is actually very specifically because the Lord Himself is actually “hiding” me from it all.

That leads me to another thought, which is that, if the Lord is protecting us from people’s meanness, then there is a sense in which we don’t have to worry any longer about protecting ourselves. I fear a lot of times, that is what drives people to do what they do, that at times it’s even what is driving their meanness – that in one way or another they are protecting themselves.

I realized not too long ago, that is actually one of the things that drives mean, cruel people – that they are in reality fearful people who think by being angry and threatening and overbearing they can make things work to their advantage – that they can, in effect, protect themselves. If only those very people could realize that the Lord would take care of them, they’d realize they can just settle down, be nice, and in the end it will all work out anyway.

But do I really realize that? Do I really realize that I can count on God to protect me – so therefore I don’t need to be overly concerned about protecting myself – and that especially against other people’s meanness? I don’t know that I’ve ever really pondered these thoughts exactly. Obviously I still need to lock my doors at night and pay for uninsured motorist coverage. I still need to be responsible – but like worry or fear in any of its forms, I don’t need to be driven by it. I should do the basic things I need to do, but then I can rest in the goodness of the Lord.

I need to carry these thoughts with me into my day, even today, and try to be aware of this protection I’m enjoying. The real reason anyone is “nice” to me is because the Lord has hidden me away from the meanness they are capable of. And whether they are or not is in reality in His hands. He is the One wisely, kindly deciding just how high to keep the hedge about me. I am free to just be nice myself, to love people, to be kind to them, specifically because I don’t have to worry about protecting myself! God will do that.

Hmmmmmmmmmm. “In the shelter of Your Presence You hide them from the intrigues of men; in Your dwelling You keep them safe from accusing tongues.”

What a blessing to live protected!

Psalm 31:19 – “I Wish”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹⁹What great Your good which You have stored up to ones fearing You, have made to ones taking refuge in You, before the sons of mankind?

What a wonderful God we serve! Here we live in a world with an enemy who hates us and hounds us, who crushes us to the ground every chance he gets, who musters his minions in this world to do his hateful, murderous, lying for him. But we have a God who “stores up” goodness for us! We have a God who is more than ready to shower that goodness on us in the very sight of men – sometimes in the sight of those very minions so resolved to destroy us.

Satan must have loved it when he got to kill all of Job’s children and steal all his wealth, but what did God do? “The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the first … he had seven sons and three daughters … Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job’s daughters … after this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. And so he died, old and full of years” (42:12-17). And not only did the Lord pour out all these blessings on poor Job, but He wrote down Job’s story to be a blessing to the human race for as long as there’s a sun in the sky!

Satan thought he was winning when he moved his minions the chief priests and the Pharisees and even Jesus’ own disciple Judas Iscariot to turn against Him, to beat Him, to torture Him, to lie about Him, and to murder Him. But in the blindness of his arrogant pride, Satan never dreamed that the greatest possible goodness of the Father’s heart was being poured out, even as he was reveling in the victory of his cruelty!

“How great is Your goodness, which You have stored up for those who fear You, which You bestow in the sight of men on those who take refuge in You.” What a treasure grace is! “The prodigal thought he had spent all in the ‘far country,’ but he found an ocean of love still flowing from his father’s heart” (The Biblical Illustrator, W. Birch).

Pause a moment and consider what there is for us who’ve chosen to fear Him, to take refuge in Him. See in this passage two aspects of God’s goodness toward us. First of all, there is no measure of the goodness he has “stored up” for us. Heaven is a pile of gold as big as all the universe and what is every little kindness He shows us but just a little foretaste, just a little cordial of that heavenly blessing stored up for us in Christ!

And those kindnesses are in fact cordials of that endless wealth of goodness which actually get “bestowed” upon us. Every day we enjoy His kindnesses. We know that His big kind heart is so great that He even makes His sun to shine on the evil and the good and His rain to fall on the just and the unjust. He does great good to the very people who hate Him and never will bow to Him. But those people will never know what you and I know. They’ll never see the unfathomable kindness that we enjoy every day!

I think it is a part of growing as Christians that we actually see more and more clearly those kindnesses. I will never forget the first time I really realized just how much I don’t deserve His mercy and yet He loves me with an everlasting love. But I feel today I see that very blessing all day every day, in a thousand different kindnesses.

I love too that He does it “in the sight of men.” That’s what I want Him to do. I want the world to know how kind He is. I want them to see what they’re missing – not because they see me but rather they see Him being great in His kindness to me.

Lord, help us to see Your kindness, but more than that, that others would see Your kindness to us, that You’d soften their hearts and draw them to You.

I wish the whole world could read this simple little verse and know all the same joy it gives us who know Him.

“Behold what manner of love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God!”

Psalm 31:17,18 – “Loving With Our Eyes Open”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹⁷YHVH, do not let me be ashamed because I have called on You. Let the wicked ones be ashamed. Let them be silent to Sheol. ¹⁸Let lips of a lie be silenced, ones speaking upon righteous ones arrogance in pride and contempt.

Wise as serpents; harmless as doves. The more we know Jesus, the more kind and gentle we become. “A bruised reed” He wouldn’t break, nor a “smoldering wick put out.” “For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him should be saved.” To know Him is to more and more wish for others’ salvation, not judgment.

On the other hand, to know Him is to know the truth. To know Him is to see wickedness for the murderous lying madness that it really is. To know Him is to know it isn’t just a “difference of opinion” and “alternative views.” Evil is evil.

And unfortunately the world is full of evil people. To know Jesus, to truly love people, to love the truth, is to be very, very deeply grieved by the evil. The Lord told the angel in Ezekiel 9:4: “Go throughout the city of Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of those who grieve and lament over all the detestable things that are done in it.”

It’s just life in the real world.

As I sit here typing in the America of May 5, 2018, I have to say I find it frankly unbearable to listen to and read the constant barrage of murderous, lying scoundrels doing exactly what David speaks of here. I think in my own heart, “… let the wicked be put to shame and lie silent in the grave. Let their lying lips be silenced, for with pride and contempt they speak arrogantly against the righteous.”

Boy do they.

It is almost a joke, if it weren’t so sad, to have Congress doing all these investigations. Congress? Has there ever been a “more wretched hive of scum and villainy?” You have a bunch of filthy lying scoundrels accusing and investigating all the other filthy lying scoundrels. We finally have a president who actually wants to be sensible and fix problems and what does that hive of scum and villainy do? Investigate!!! Never mind that they do nothing. They always do nothing. The only thing they do well is vote to themselves benefits. The most basic simple thing they ought to do is balance a budget, but that of course is entirely impossible when their real goal even for being in office is not to fix the system but rather to milk it.

We have actors and actresses who can’t stay married telling the rest of the country what is and isn’t right. We have liberal journalists who cruelly destroy anyone who disagrees with them, while proclaiming themselves the champions of free speech.

And on and on I go. “… let the wicked be put to shame and lie silent in the grave. Let their lying lips be silenced, …” I find myself at the same time wanting to pray for these people’s salvation, knowing they are simply captives of their murderous, lying father, then on the other hand, wanting to pray they would somehow be exposed for their utter hypocrisy and lies.

I guess I’m in good company. That’s how David felt.

Wise as serpents; harmless as doves.

God help us to love, even loving with our eyes open, seeing the evil, being grieved by it, praying You’d somehow conquer it, yet never losing sight of the worth of a single soul, even of the most evil people.

That said, I do pray that their lying lips would be silenced. I do pray that, if anyone is to be ashamed, it would be them, and that somehow, even in a very wicked world, those who really are trying to do right “would shine like stars in the firmament,” that He would “make their righteousness like the light and their justice like the noonday sun.”

God help us.