OVERVIEW:
Psalms of victory (21), shame (25), innocence (26), devotion (27), hope (28), and glory (29); Psalms regarding the future sufferings (22), shepherding (23), and reign of Jesus Christ (24).
HIGHLIGHTS & INSIGHTS:
Sometimes Bible characters can almost seem “larger than life”. That may even be compounded if the Bible characters were also those God used to write the scriptures themselves. Most of us have no problem recognizing that we’re certainly no Moses, Ezekiel, Daniel, Jeremiah, or Paul, Peter, and John! With all of our human frailties, weaknesses, and sins, we may, at times, find it somewhat difficult to even relate to these men!
Perhaps that’s the reason most of us are able to find so much comfort and strength through the Psalms! In the Psalms, it’s almost as if David, and the other writers, pull back the curtain of their humanness and allow us to see that, though these were certainly amazing men, they still possessed the same frailties, weaknesses, and sins as the rest of us! The Psalms is very simply a book of the Bible where these men were pouring their hearts out, as they were personally relating God to their real, every-day lives, and just very honestly, candidly, and even emotionally, expressing whatever they happened to be thinking and feeling, at the moment. Sometimes those thoughts and emotions could be all over the map!
For example, just in today’s reading alone, in one place David cries out to the Lord, basically saying, “Answer me, Lord, because if You don’t, I’m going to feel like I’ve gone to hell!” (Psalm 28:1) In another place, he says in effect, “Lord, I know I’ve greatly sinned against you, but, O God, for Your name’s sake, please pardon me!” (Psalm 25:11) You can, no doubt, sense his extreme desperation in these verses! Yet, by the time we get to Psalm 29 in today’s reading, David finds himself sitting on top of the world again, joyfully declaring the unrivaled power, majesty, and glory of the word of God; what David calls seven times in this psalm, “the VOICE of the Lord”! Sometimes it’s difficult to get our minds wrapped around the fact that this man, who many might refer to as “flighty”, or even as an “emotional basket case”, is the same man who killed a lion and a bear with his own hands; the same man who slew Goliath with a slingshot and a stone; and was the same valiant warrior in battle who the women of Israel boasted had killed tens of thousands of God’s enemies. (1st Samuel 18:7) God did not want the man, that He had personally chosen to rule Israel in His stead, to be a man who could put on a fake smile and act like everything was okay when it wasn’t. God wanted a man with a heart brave enough to slay giants and tens of thousands of mighty warriors and yet, tender enough to lead Israel with a compassionate heart, like the heart of God Himself! (Acts 13:22)
Because the Psalms are so personal and candid, we can easily find one (or more!) for any and every circumstance or emotion we encounter. Again, just in today’s reading, if we need a reminder of God’s wonderful care and protection in our lives, Psalm 23 awaits to provide encouragement and strength! If we find ourselves weighed down by the guilt of our past sin, we can humbly turn Psalm 25 into a personal prayer to remind us of God’s amazing grace and forgiveness! Should we find ourselves being falsely accused, Psalm 26 can help us to lift, not only our voices to the Lord, but our very souls! To provide us this kind of biblical hope and encouragement is one of the key reasons God included this tremendous book into the canon of scripture! Praise the Lord!
Notice in Psalm 22, that God inspired David to write a song about the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross a 1000-years before His actual crucifixion! This Psalm cannot be about David, because never did God actually forsake him (22:1) though, as has already been noted, there were many times David “felt” as though God had! Never were David’s bones ripped out of joint. (22:14) Never was David so overtaken with thirst that his tongue actually clave to his jaws. (22:15) Never were David’s hands and feet pierced with nails. (22:16) And never were David’s garments stripped from him, and lots cast for them so they could be given to the “lucky winner”. (22:18) In all the annals of history, only one man and one event fits this precise description—our Lord Jesus Christ at His crucifixion! (See Matthew 27:35–49; John 19:23–24, 28–30.)
In the writing of Psalm 22, it’s almost as if God invited David to write down the most horrific kind of suffering and death he could possibly imagine and then put it to music. The song includes everything that is the most hurtful and painful in the human experience: betrayal, false accusation, humiliation, physical torture, and abandonment. Then, a millennium later, it was as if God turned David’s nightmare into an abominable reality, subjecting His only begotten Son to the very scenario David described. In so doing, however, God forever settled any accusations that He is ignorant of, indifferent to, or absent in our human sufferings, for He endured all that the human imagination could possibly contrive. Because of the cross of Christ, never could any human being accuse God of not understanding what they are going through! (See Hebrew 4:14–16; 2:9–10, 14, 17–18.)
Note that David’s “mission statement”, of sorts, is found in Psalm 27:4 and 8. David set his entire life to one goal: the passionate pursuit of God! (Remember, that’s our goal through the 365 Days of Pursuit: to passionately pursue God through the pages of His word!) David ferociously sought God in and through every situation and circumstance of his life. In the depths of depression, David scratched and clawed his way to find the reason for God’s apparent silence. At the peak of joy, he rejoiced and delighted in the glory and strength of his sovereign God, both in prayer and in song! In whatever emotional state David found himself, it caused him to cry out for God, and to seek Him with all of His heart! That’s why David was able to find such graphic pictures and illustrations of God in every aspect of his life. Again, just in today’s reading alone, David could see God as a SHEPHERD (Psalm 23), a LIGHT (Psalm 27), a ROCK (Psalm 28), and as THUNDER (Psalm 29). Because David was “seeking God”, he could see God all around him. Like Jesus said in Luke 11:9, “SEEK, and ye shall FIND”! Like Moses said in Deuteronomy 4:29, “But if from thence thou shalt SEEK the Lord thy God, thou shalt FIND him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul.” Oh, may we seek Him like that!
CHRIST IS REVEALED:
- Psalms 22, 23, and 24 provide a prophetic description of the person and work of Jesus Christ. Psalm 22 presents Christ as our suffering Savior (Matthew 27:46), while Psalm 23 reveals Him as our risen Shepherd (John 10:11), and Psalm 24 makes us witnesses of His future triumphant return as the King of glory. (Revelation 19)