Psalm 96

Psalm 96:2

Sing to the LORD, bless His name;
Proclaim good tidings of His salvation from day to day.

The second line is what caught my attention today.  We are told all over the place that we are to tell of God's salvation through Christ.  It's one of the few things that we're specifically commanded to do.  And yet, it's probably the one thing I talk myself out of the most.

Why is it that I'm afraid to talk about salvation?  I'm not embarrassed by it, certainly.  I realize I'm not all that chatty under the best of circumstances, but this is something I'm supposed to do, and don't.  Why not?!  Why don't I care about others enough to want them to be saved?

Psalm 95

Psalm 95:10

"For forty years I loathes that generation,
And said they are a people who err in their heart,
And they do not know My ways.

This is obviously talking about the people of Moses' day.  They were instructed to send scouts into the land, and those scouts said it couldn't be taken.  They believed the scouts, rather than God's promises that they would win.  As a result, they were not allowed to go into the land, and instead had to stay in the wilderness to the east until they all had died 40 years later.

It's odd to see God talking about loathing.  Today, we all hear about how God loves all, and is pained that they do not accept Christ to be with Him.  But either God doesn't always love all that way, or else love and loathing can coexist.

Psalm 94

Psalm 94:12

Blessed is the man whom You chasten, O LORD,
And whom You teach out of Your law;

I forget where the passage in the Epistles is that says that those who God loves, He chastens.  But the idea in both passages is the same.  God cares for those who want to follow Him.  But to follow Him, you have to know what you should be doing.

As humans, we aren't very good at following God automatically.  Thanks to the Fall, obeying God isn't our default setting.  So we have to be taught.  Even when we know the rules, we don't always follow them.  So in order to encourage us to follow them, God disciplines us when we mess up.  By doing this, we (hopefully) will pay better attention, and get it right when life's tests come along.

Psalm 93

Psalm 93:2

Your throne is established from of old;
You are from everlasting.

God is the supreme ruler of everything.  He created it, after all.  Unlike us, He can't lose control of His creation.  He alone decides what happens.  While oftentimes He may simply allow events to play out, they occur even then according to the rules He established.

Having created everything, this means He also created time.  Before He created the universe, time did not exist.  He is not controlled by time, and not bound by it, though He does have to use it to interact with us.  However, He comes from before time began, and will continue when He destroys it, which truly makes Him everlasting.

Psalm 92

Psalm 92:1

It is good to give thanks to the LORD
And to sing praises to Your name, O Most High;

The heading of the Psalm says it's a song for the sabbath, so it's interesting timing that I come to this on a Sunday, having worshiped at church earlier today.  It is definitely good to give thanks to God.  It reminds us that we are not in control, that we are the servants, not the masters.

I also enjoy singing, and so can agree that it's good to sing praises to Him.  My only wish is that I could focus better when singing; I tend to go into autopilot, and let my ears and mouth do the work while my brain is elsewhere.  But still, praising God is very important.

Psalm 91

Psalm 91:1

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
Will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.

I guess there are two ways to look at this verse.  The first would be fairly literally, which certainly appeals to my engineering mindset.  If you're going to dwell in the shelter of God, that means you are spending a lot of time there.  It therefore makes sense that therefore you would be near God, since it's His place.  That means you will be in His shadow, since He is obviously greater than you.

In a metaphorical sense, this would say those who come to God for refuge, or strength, or help, do not get to just come whenever they want.  They have to accept the results of coming to God.  He will be near them, but that means they also have to accept that He is the Almighty, the one who has ultimate authority.  It gives protection, but also responsibility.

Psalm 90

Psalm 90:8

You have placed our iniquities before You,
Our secret sins in the light of Your presence.

We like to hide things.  We don't trust others with our deepest secrets; that's why they're secrets in the first place.  We bottle them up, and do our best to not even hint that they exist.  If someone suspects they exist, they might pry, and then all our ickiness would be revealed.

But God doesn't pry.  He doesn't have to.  He already knows, and like everything else about us, they're laid out before Him.  Every last ugly detail that we don't want anyone else to know, He can see just as clearly as all the good stuff we want people to see.  And even with all that, He doesn't turn away from us; all we have to do is accept the offer He's made us.

Psalm 89

Psalm 89:29

"So I will establish his descendants forever
And his throne as the days of heaven.

God had made a covenant with David, to keep his line unbroken as the rulers of Israel forever.  As it happened, his grandson split the nation in two, and his descendants ruled only a part of it for the next several centuries.  Then the nation fell, and it seemed David's line with it.

However, a new king would emerge, Jesus.  He would not take the throne at the time.  Instead, He would die as required to save the nation, and then would ascend to heaven.  He now is in heaven, at the throne of God.  One day He will return to earth, and take the throne here for Himself.

Psalm 88

Psalm 88:12

Will Your wonders be made known in the darkness?
And Your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?

How can there be darkness, when God is light?  Nothing He makes can ever truly be hidden.  We may not have noticed it yet.  We might have decided He didn't do it.  We could have even hid it, and rejected His work in it.  But it's there, and so is the truth.

We are, however, a very forgetful people.  We forget things all the time.  Sometimes they're small things, that are inconsequential.  But we forget so often how gracious God has been to us.  We forget that He sets the rules, and we must live by those rules.  Even if we forget them, or reject them, they are still the rules, and He will judge us according to them.

Psalm 87

Psalm 87:2

The LORD loves the gates of Zion
More than all the other dwelling places of Jacob.

God always had high value for Jerusalem.  There's been a lot of speculation on why this is. It's not the highest mountain in the area.  It's not the biggest.  It's somewhat centrally-located, but not exactly so.  So why is this place special to God?

Some think it's because this is where David chose to make his capitol, after he conquered it.  Some say that it's the site of the city that Melchizedek came from, when Abram offered him a tithe of the spoils from rescuing Lot.  Whatever the reason for its significance, it obviously was important to God, and should therefore be valued by us.

Psalm 86

Psalm 86:11

Teach me Your way, O LORD;
I will walk in Your truth;
Unite my heart to fear Your name.

The goal of all believers is to be more like Christ, to represent Him better in this world, that others might follow Him as well.  In order to know how we should act, we need to be taught.  Without a teacher, we're only guessing at what we should do.

Once we are taught, though, we still have a choice.  We can either choose to put into practice what we're taught, or we can turn away from it.  We can know things without applying them; I can be rather good at that.  But if we don't apply the teachings, they are useless to us, and it shows we don't truly fear God.

Psalm 85

Psalm 85:9

Surely His salvation is near to those who fear Him,
That glory may dwell in our land.

Fear is an important thing.  We should fear God.  To use an old saying, He made us, and He can take us out whenever he wants.  While He doesn't usually go around striking people dead, His ability to do so should always be tickling the back of our minds.

When we die, He will judge us, and we should also fear that.  Without that fear, we don't have much reason to want His salvation. If we don't fear Him, we don't respect Him.  Without that respect, we have no reason to think we need salvation.  But without salvation, our current fears will be nothing compared to what really happens.

Psalm 84

Psalm 84:8

O LORD God of hosts, hear my prayer;
Give ear, O God of Jacob!      Selah

I feel like I need to say something like this every time I pray.  There's a line in a song I hear on the radio, "sometimes my prayers feel like they're bouncing off the sky."  That sums up how my prayers feel pretty much all the time.

Intellectually, I know God hears them.  I know He responds, in one way or the other.  It just seems like 99% of the time, the answer is "wait," which tends to be delivered via dead silence.  Of the remainder, 0.9% is "no,"  which doesn't leave much "yes" left.  I don't know if it's that I'm asking for the wrong things, or there's something in my life that's keeping me out of sync with Him, but it has become quite discouraging.

Psalm 83

Psalm 83:18

That they may know that You alone, whose name is the LORD,
Are the Most high over all the earth.

You could call this a psalm of smiting.  Asaph has just been bemoaning how all the neighboring nations are against Israel, and he's asking for God to punish them appropriately.  In fact, the previous verse ended with him wishing that God would kill them all in dishonor.

I suppose this is the Old Testament equivalent of "kill them all, and let God sort them out."  It's hard for dead people to realize their faults and change, but they do know who is in control then.  As Christians, this is not something we should be wishing for; instead, we need to be trying to reach them now, before it's too late.

Psalm 82

Psalm 82:1

God takes His stand in His own congregation;
He judges in the midst of the rulers.

Those who rule have the highest authority.  They make the decisions that affect the rest of us.  Sometimes, those decisions are good; sometimes they aren't.  Sometimes those decisions have consequences long after what they expected.  But God has given them that right, and it is our call to obey.

However, they are not immune from consequences themselves.  God has authority over them, whether they recognize it or not.  He will decide their fates, both in this life and afterwards.  If they have not put their faith in Christ, those eternal fates will be decided very simply.

Psalm 81

Psalm 81:12

"So I gave them over to the stubbornness of their heart,
To walk in their own devices.

When we rebel from God, He doesn't usually need to send supernatural events down on us.  All He normally has to do is let go of us, and let us do what we want.  We are inherently sinful, and when we go away from Him, we're automatically sinning.

When we take actions, there are consequences.  When we take actions God wants, the consequences of those actions are beneficial.  When we take actions contrary to God, the results are harmful.  Sometimes the harm isn't immediate, or apparent, but in the end the results are always disastrous.

Psalm 80

Psalm 80:18

Then we shall not turn back from You;
Revive us, and we will call upon Your name.

Looks like Israel had gotten itself into trouble again.  Don't know what happened, but they thought God had turned away again, and they were back begging for help.  The sequence worries me, though.  They were making their return to God conditional upon His saving them.

Our call is to worship God regardless.  We don't get to pick and choose when we praise Him.  The circumstances don't matter, we are to praise Him regardless.  Fair-weather faith doesn't cut it.  If we don't praise Him in both the good times and the bad, we have no reason to expect His response.  Not that we should expect it anyways; that's up to His plans.

Psalm 79

Psalm 79:8

Do not remember the iniquities of our forefathers against us;
Let Your compassion come quickly to meet us,
For we are brought very low.

This psalm was written at a time when Israel's enemies had invaded, and may have fought there way to Jerusalem itself.  The enemies of God are laughing at His supposed power, since they've almost defeated His people entirely.  The Israelites are saying that this is because they've turned from God, and are now repenting.

In this verse, they're asking God to look at their present contrition, rather than the sins of their fathers.  While today the sins of the father don't directly condemn the child, that wasn't true at the time.  For certain sins, generations after of that family would be sentenced.  Here they are begging for that not to be the case, because they realize their fault.