Psalm 17
As I began
to read through Psalm 17 I couldn’t help but to read through those words with a
sense of amusement. Does David really
claim to have avoided the ways of the violent?
And if so, did he miss a significant portion of his life as recorded in
the chronology of Samuel and Chronicles?
Does he really claim that God will find nothing against David when God
should examine him? Has his steps really
held fast to the ways of the Lord?
The neat
thing that we can learn from David is the assurance of forgiveness. Clearly David sinned. He took Bathsheba from Uriah after having him
killed in battle. He had a major revolution
to stave off from his own son – in which his son was killed. His own family acted with little sexual
restraint – as did David throughout his whole life. David fought with the Philistines for a time
against the Hebrew people. Then he
turned on the Philistines and plundered their own land while blaming it on
other people. David did many sketchy
things over the course of his life.
However,
David understands that God desires repentance.
This is not a free “pass” to sin as much as you want knowing that God
will forgive. Rather, it is a reminder
that God forgives our sinfulness so long as we are genuinely repentant. David did some horrible things in his
lifetime, but he was a man genuinely after God’s own heart. When he sinned – and especially when his sin
is presented before him – David repented with all that he had. He admitted where he was wrong and he stopped
the behavior.
This is
precisely why the second half of the psalm turns into a plea to God to keep
David close to God. David knows that
this is a tough world. There are many
temptations that abound. There are many
pitfalls into which we will stumble. The
only way that we will remain faithful is if it is God who holds us close to Him
and we remember to repent before turning and worshipping Him for His
faithfulness. It is only when God goes
out and subdues our enemies – even our sinfulness – that we can genuinely turn
to Him with all of our heart. It is God
who keeps us close to Him, not we who keep ourselves close to God.
Psalm 18
Psalm 18
begins with a tremendous outpouring of the spirit. “I love you, oh Lord.” Keep in mind that this is not just a man who
wrote this, but a man who is king of an entire country. There is no “restrained sense of control”
that we see in our world leaders today.
There is no “straddling the issue so as to be able to pull support from
both sides.” No, here is David pouring
forth his love for God. It doesn’t
matter to him who will reject him because of his public display of love to his
God. God is the priority. God is the rock to which we cling. God is the foundation upon which we build our
lives.
In fact,
David is here to give God praise because he knows that the snares of his
enemies are already out there. There is
no point in straddling issues because people who desire it will always find
something bad to say about you. When you
take a stand, people can legitimately love you or hate you for your stand. When we sit on the fence, people cannot
genuinely love us or hate us because they don’t really ever know where we
stand. Faith in God – our love for God
especially! – is not a fence-straddling issue.
What then
follows for the majority of the rest of this psalm is a testimony from David’s
perspective about what the Lord had done for Him. David is witnessing! He is given a testimony to the glory of
God. Look at what David says. He gives specific examples of the deliverance
he found in God when his enemies closed around him. He gives specific examples of when he went to
the Lord in search of an answer and he found an answer from the Lord. David is not at all bashful about talking to
people about how great God’s presence has been in his life. We have much that we can learn from this man
of many mistakes but genuine pursuit of the heart of God.
As I
conclude this post, I hope that you also picked up on the contemporary praise
chorus that is derived from the worlds of this psalm. The praise song, “I will call upon the Lord”
is drawn from the witness of the words found here. “I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to
be praised … so shall I be saved from my enemies.” (v. 3) “The Lord lives, and blessed be the rock and
may the God of my salvation be exalted.” (v. 46) For all the people in the world who have an
issue with praise songs … remember that many of the praise songs that we sing
are simple quotations of scripture set to music – much like most of our
liturgies are also simply just sung scripture.
In my book, any song – liturgy or praise chorus – that teaches us
scripture is worth my time singing.
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