Day #141

Sermon - Audio
Pslam 5, 38, 41-42 - Audio
Pslam 5, 38, 41-42 - Reading

Daily Insights - Please Comment

Psalm 5

• Psalm 5 is a Psalm of a person who is particularly struggling because of what people are saying about him.
• 5.1: Sighing: a person who is groaning i.e. this is a deeply felt hurt.
• 5.2: “my King and my God” the Psalmist trusts that God is interested in his subjects and both desires to and is able to care for them. The Heidelberg Catechism in Q&A 128 says, “We have made all of these requests of you because, as our all-powerful king, you not only want to, but are able to give us all that is good.”
• 5.3: “I lay my requests before you” The Hebrew word is simply “order” The idea is to arrange something in order—soldiers, physical objects, or in this case prayers. It seems that as part of his morning ritual that the Psalmist places his prayer requests before God in an orderly way. What is interesting is that many Jewish and Christian traditions follow this “orderly prayer” by creating prayers books where you bring your requests to God in the morning using set prayers. What is also interesting is that many of the Psalms are used for these set prayers.
• 5.5: “The arrogant” are a group of people who are mentioned in several Psalms. They are, if you will, the bad guys of the Psalms. They are boastful, proud. To be proud means that one follows his/her own way rather than humbly following God. The Heidelberg Catechism in answer 124 says, “Your will be done on heaven as it is on earth means, Help us and all people to reject our own wills and to obey your will without any back talk. Your will alone is good.” Proud people are “back talkers”.
• 5.7: “Mercy” Hebrew word is “hesed” which is a word that speaks of God’s covenant faithfulness. The Psalmist enters the temple based on the covenant and God’s faithfulness to it.
• 5.8: When enemies start getting at us, our righteousness can slip away. Here is a cry to keep acting in righteous ways in the face of people who make you want to attack unrighteously.
• 5.9-10: a picture of the arrogant and their ways.
• 5.11-12: Again the Psalmist takes his eyes off of himself (see 3.8) and puts them on the needs and good of the community.

Psalm 38

• Psalm 38 is a cry of David for God’s healing from illness. David is convinced that his illness comes because of sin he has committed.
• Psalm 38: In this Psalm David speaks of his sin. One of the surprising things is that David is a man after God’s own heart and yet sin is so strong in his life. This sets us to wondering: Is David a greater sinner than we are or is he just more aware of his sin that we are?
• Psalm 38.3: “Wrath” carries the idea of extreme indignation that comes with a curse. The curse David may be experiencing is a covenant curse i.e. when you break the covenant curses come (see Dt. 28).
• 38.3: “no health” is a word that refers specifically to not being physically sound.
• 38.10-12: One of the things that consistently is true is that along with illness and sin comes friends running away zand enemies attacking.
• 38.15: This verse is about the only word of hope in this Psalm. Like Psalm 88 it does not speak of being delivered, only of the hope that deliverance will come.
• 38.16: A cry to God not only for David’s good, but for God’s good. When one of God’s people slips and enemies attack it is also God’s reputation that is on the line.

Psalm 41

• Psalm 41 tells who is delivered (those who have regard for the poor) and a cry to be delivered.
• 41.1: Blessed: to be in a state of joy.
• 41.1: To have regard for the weak means that you contemplate their state, think about their state and do something about it. To act in this way is to be faithful to the covenant (cf. Dt. 15.1-11)
• 41.1: The weak are those who are in extreme distress/deprivation and cry out to God to rescue them.
• 41.1: To be delivered in times of trouble means to be saved from an enemy or from sickness. This deliverance is spelled out in verses 2-3.
• 41.4: David now speaks of his sin against God. This verse can be understood in two ways. First, that David has not regarded the weak and now he is suffering because of it. He is confessing his sin and asking God to forgive and restore him. Second, that David has regarded the weak, but there is some other sin in his life and he is appealing to his care for the weak to call God to heal him.
• 41.7: His enemies are whispering a curse so that his illness will continue and he will die. The words of the curse are spoken in verse 8.
• 41.9: To lift up his heel means that he has betrayed David. Jesus quotes these words in John 13.8 when talking about Judas.
• Comment: one of the things you notice in the Psalms is that David’s life was not easy. There was sin, betrayal, enemies and more. Yet in all of this he holds tightly to God.
• 41.11: David holds that God is still with him because he is still breathing and his enemies are being put to shame. This is a wonderful confidence to have even while confessing sin.
• 41.12: Integrity means to be blameless. David seems to be saying that he has confessed his sin, he has done what God has called for in the covenant when you sin, therefore, he is blameless.
• 41.13: This verse is not a part of the original Psalm. An editor who put together the collection of Psalms uses it to end Book 1. The Psalms have been divided into five books to parallel the five books of the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) i.e. as the Torah has five books so the Psalms have five books. Each book ends with a doxology.

Psalm 42

• Psalms 42 and 43 were originally one Psalm. You will notice the same theme and a repetition of the same verse, namely 42.5,11 and 43.5.
• 42.1-2: For the Psalmist whose life is in trouble God is his food and drink. He can no more survive without God than a deer can survive without water.
• 42.2: “living God” is a way of speaking of God as a powerful God who can act in the world. As the Psalmist longs for an end to his desperate situation he wants not only to see God, but the God who can act for him.
• 42.2: “When can I go…?” This Psalm reflects the idea that the presence of God particularly resides in the temple. The author is separated from the temple and he longs to be there to find God and to be with God’s people.
• 42.3: His enemies –who it will be revealed in 43.1—are the surrounding nations that have not relationship with God mock his reliance on Yahweh. We see a picture of this kind of mocking in 2 Chronicles 32.10-15 when Sennacherib threatens Jerusalem.
• 42.4: The power of memory is very important to maintaining faith and hope in difficult times. The Psalmist remembers the times he led processions that went to God’s house and the joy it brought him.
• 42.5: “Hope” is a very important word. It means a confident trust in God and his coming to act on your behalf. But it is important to note that such hope is not a simple waiting for God to show up. True hope reveals itself in continuing to live out God’s Torah i.e. his direction for life while waiting for God to rescue. True hope combines a surety that God will come with living the life he calls us to while we are waiting for him.
• 42.6: Again, memory is a powerful helper as he faces hard times.
• 42.7: This verse is a picture of despair and trouble. We can get a sense of the imagery by remember a time when waves have knocked us over and we were under their power.
• 42.8-9: A conflict of emotions. He is doing all he can to run after God but it just seems that God has forgotten him.