A Boomer in the Pew

Psalm 42: Learning to Suffer Well

Bible in a Year Series - Day #139 & 140 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible.  Click here to learn more.  You are most welcome to join along at any time. 

We are near the end of King David's life, and with the death of David's son Absalom we find the kingdom in total disarray. 

A fraction has begun between north and south that will eventually cause civil war, and we see bloodshed and infighting as promised by the prophet Nathan.

As I here consider King David's frame of mind, it seems certain that he is fighting a constant battle of spiritual depression.

Spend a few moments considering all that has happened to David, and subsequently Israel, as a result of that sinful day with Bathsheba.

In today's reading we encounter Psalm 42, which is clearly a Psalm written by one enduring a deep spiritual depression, and a feeling that God is far, far off.

Here is a video of Dr. John Piper's exposition of Psalm 42.  I highly recommend that you spend 40 minutes understanding the painful depths of this Psalm, and as Dr. Piper teaches, learn to "suffer well".

Who is the Captain of Your Soul?

Bible in a Year Series - Day #138 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible.  Click here to learn more.  You are most welcome to join along at any time. 

Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: Psalms 26, 40, 68, 61-62, & 64.

What is the end purpose of man?  Who is the captain of your soul?  Why did God create man?  Do you believe that God created man?

As you understand who King David was, and read his Psalms, we find a man with a strong desire to have a right heart towards God.

He was the most powerful man on the planet in his day, yet he pens this:

For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence,
for my hope is from him.
He only is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress; I shall not be shaken.
On God rests my salvation and my glory;
my mighty rock, my refuge is God.

The atheist William Ernest Henley, in his famous poem, "Invictus" got it wrong.  We are not the captains of our souls. 

We were created to bring glory to God.

Can you wrap your mind around that?  Can you feel the fight in your soul with those words?

Understanding the Wailings of King David: O Absalom, Absalom!

Bible in a Year Series - Day #137 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible.  Click here to learn more.  You are most welcome to join along at any time. 

Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: 2 Samuel 16-18.

I wrote this piece in September, and thought a re-post was in order.

2 Samuel 18:33 - And the king was deeply moved and went up to the chamber over the gate and wept. And as he went, he said, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

I suppose it is possible that to fully grasp the pain in David's soul you must be a parent.  And in particular, perhaps a parent who has watched their child walk down the wrong path.  And to drive this point even further, perhaps this is even more deeply grasped by a man, who would add massive amount of guilt to the scene, and take upon himself massive pain for the wanderings of his son.

This painting by Marc Chagall seems to illicit this gut-wrenching pain of David's.  Here we see David hugging his son Absalom, mixed with the imagery of Absalom hanging dead on the oak tree.

David knows full well that this immense pain was brought about by his sin.  God made this explicitly clear through the prophet Nathan.

I am also moved to consider God crying over his children's sin as well.  Remember God crying, through the prophet Ezekiel, "...Why will you die, O house of Israel? 32 For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord God; so turn, and live.” (Ezekiel 18:30-32)

Certainly we must also consider our Christ crying over Jerusalem, "And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, 42 saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. 43 For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side 44 and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” (Luke 19:41-44)

Oh, the pain of sin. 

When we feel its sting, we cry, "Why Lord?"  But if we are students of Yahweh, if we sit in the classroom of Jeshua, we learn the answer.  We don't like the answer, but learn it we must.  The wages of sin is death, we have all sinned, and go after our own way.  We would all, left to our own devices, seek to become gods.  This is the nature inherited from our elder brother Adam.

This is why we must cling to our Father.  We must purpose each day to be obedient, and plant ourselves by the Living Fountain, ere we stray in our pride, and find ourselves too wailing in deepest agony over sin.

Oh my Father, my soul wails with David.   Draw near, keep us close, protect us from our pride, the temptations of that Great Bastard Satan, and please dearest Abba, gather our loved ones around us.  Keep us all under your wing, until that great day, when you burst through the clouds, and remove this plight from our lives once....and thankfully....for all.

But you, O Lord, are the Lifter of my Head

Bible in a Year Series - Day #136 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible.  Click here to learn more.  You are most welcome to join along at any time. 

Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: Psalms 3-4, 12-13, 28, & 55.

David is on the run again, this time from his son Absalom. During this time, David penned Psalm 3, and verse three in particular caught my attention:

"But you, O Lord, are a shield about me,
my glory, and the lifter of my head."

Imagine the shame David must have felt to feel the stinging words of God against him for his sins regarding Bathsheba.  And now, many years later seeing the disastrous fruits of his sin.

Yet, wonderfully yet, God is the lifter of his head.

Do you see the infinite beauty in that?

If God's man King David Capitulated to his Flesh, What Chance do any of us Have to Live a God Pleasing Life?

Bible in a Year Series - Day #135 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible.  Click here to learn more.  You are most welcome to join along at any time. 

Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: 2 Samuel 13-15.

Many years have now passed since David's sin with Bathsheba, and we are now deeply mired in Nathan's prophetic condemnation of King David:

"Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.’ 11 Thus says the Lord, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house. And I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. 12 For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun.’” (2 Samuel 12:10-12)

Furthermore, Nathan prophesied:

"And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die. 14 Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord..." (2 Samuel 12:13b-14a)

What pain it must have brought to David's heart to know that he had "utterly scorned the Lord".  God had blessed this man with so much.  Furthermore, God told him that he was prepared to give him even more:

"I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul.  And I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your arms and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more."  (2 Samuel 12:7b-8)

Yet, for some reason we find that David made the dark exchange of God's glory for the selfish pleasures of his own lusts.

And now, we find King David weeping his way atop the Mount of Olives as his whole world has ferociously spun out of control.  I also found it interesting that this is also where, centuries later, Jesus ascended and spent his horrible night in Gethsemane.

The battle that began in the Garden of Eden is on full display here.  The "man after God's own heart" has given in to  his flesh, and will now spend the rest of his life under God's condemnation.

It makes one wonder if this man fell to his flesh, what chance do any of us have?  Or...were his temptations greater because of his position?  And...was his condemnation also much greater because of his position?

I suppose, after mulling this over in my mind for quite some time, we should all be very thankful for God's grace.  In spite of David's great sin, he was still the beneficiary of God's unmerited favor (grace), and today is hangin' with Moses undoubtedly talking about God's great grace in spite of their great shortcomings.

This all produces a great deal of chin rubbing, doesn't it?

Have you Ever Been Through God's School of Brokenness?

Bible in a Year Series - Days #133 & 134 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible.  Click here to learn more.  You are most welcome to join along at any time. 

If I were going to make up Christianity, I would probably leave the rest of David's life out of the storyline. 

It puts our hero, King David, in a despicable light, and from here on out his life is going to be very difficult to view.

David raped Bathsheba, got her pregnant, killed her husband in an effort to cover it up, and ultimately watches the baby from this mess die.

David, the man after God's own heart, is desperately trying to cover the tracks of his sin.

The prophet Nathan confronts David, and in Psalm 51 we find David completely broken before God, and teaching us the proper frame when we find ourselves in a similar "found out" before God way.

Oh that we might all have a Nathan in our lives.

God's school of brokenness is a very difficult course that we must all take.  Some of us have many years of "cover-up" in our lives, and it is not until God mercifully breaks us that we learn who we really are, and begin to have a right relationship with God.

In fact, Jonathan Edwards, in his famous Religious Affections, tells us:

"Gracious affections are attended with evangelical humiliation.  Evangelical humiliation is a sense that a Christian has of his own utter insufficiency, despicableness, and odiousness, with an answerable frame of heart."

As King David confessed:

"Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." (Psalm 51:5)

Jonathan Edwards is telling us that if we don't completely understand our own utter insufficiency, then we do well to wonder if we might be Christian at all.  We should also not forget that Messiah told us that many will cry Lord, Lord.  But a great many of them he (Messiah) doesn't know at all.

Psalm 51 is a Psalm that all God's chosen must participate in.  I implore you, don't let another day pass without understanding this most important lesson.

Here is an outstanding video of Dr. John Piper explaining this great Psalm of David.

God: When you Look Upon the Red Rocks of Sedona, I am Clearly Seen

Bible in a Year Series - Day #132 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible.  Click here to learn more.  You are most welcome to join along at any time. 
Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: Psalms 65-67, & 69 - 70.

We are currently in Sedona, Arizona, and this is the scene right outside our casita. 

Sadly, Sedona has become world renown for New Age spiritual mumbo jumbo. They have exchanged the truth, and the glory of God for a lie:

 "because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie" (Romans 1:25a)

It is my belief that when we gaze upon such beauty in God's creation, a code written in our very DNA responds to God:

"For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made." (Romans 1:20)

Creation is screaming to us that God is here.

Psalm 65

Praise is due to you, O God, in Zion,
and to you shall vows be performed.
2 O you who hear prayer,
to you shall all flesh come.
3 When iniquities prevail against me,
you atone for our transgressions.
4 Blessed is the one you choose and bring near,
to dwell in your courts!
We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house,
the holiness of your temple!

5 By awesome deeds you answer us with righteousness,
O God of our salvation,
the hope of all the ends of the earth
and of the farthest seas;
6 the one who by his strength established the mountains,
being girded with might;
7 who stills the roaring of the seas,
the roaring of their waves,
the tumult of the peoples,
8 so that those who dwell at the ends of the earth are in awe at your signs.
You make the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy.

9 You visit the earth and water it;
you greatly enrich it;
the river of God is full of water;
you provide their grain,
for so you have prepared it.
10 You water its furrows abundantly,
settling its ridges,
softening it with showers,
and blessing its growth.
11 You crown the year with your bounty;
your wagon tracks overflow with abundance.
12 The pastures of the wilderness overflow,
the hills gird themselves with joy,
13 the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,
the valleys deck themselves with grain,
they shout and sing together for joy.

Some Trust in Chariots and Some in Horses, but we Trust in the Name of the Lord our God.

Bible in a Year Series - Day #131 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible.  Click here to learn more.  You are most welcome to join along at any time. 

Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: 2 Samuel 10, 1 Chronicles 19, & Psalm 20.

Have you ever heard someone say, "God helps those who help themselves"?

This is quite a different thing than the trust we see displayed today in God, and in God's chosen King David, by those under King David's early reign.

Even Joab displays a different type of faith than modern America: "Be strong, and let us use our strength for our people and for the cities of our God, and may the Lord do what seems good to him."

O Lord, increase our faith!

Do you Think Judgment Day is a Christian Invention? Then you Haven't Read Psalm 50

Bible in a Year Series - Day #130 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible.  Click here to learn more.  You are most welcome to join along at any time. 

Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: Psalms 50,53, 60, & 75.

The serious student of the Bible quickly sheds America's post-modern image of God as Bono in a bathrobe, running around saying cool, pithy things for us to admire.

In fact, all you have to do is read Psalm 50 to dash this image.

Here, God speaks of a future judgment, and he is not happy with those who might trifle with his words.

In fact, not happy doesn't begin to properly convey God's displeasure with those who are not truly thankful for his salvation:

“Mark this, then, you who forget God,
lest I tear you apart, and there be none to deliver!
23 The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me;
to one who orders his way rightly
I will show the salvation of God!” (Psalm 50:22-23)

God desires that there be a true thanksgiving in our hearts, and that we live our lives according to his will.

Although this scene is judgment day, today God has let us all off with a warning.  The door of salvation is still open. 

The fool is the one who will ignore this warning, and will someday find himself in God's tribunal to face his wrath.

Wondering What we Should Learn While Standing at the Pinnacle of King David's Life

Bible in a Year Series - Day #129 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible.  Click here to learn more.  You are most welcome to join along at any time. 

Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: 2 Samuel 8-9, 1 Chronicles 18.

In these chapters we have reached the pinnacle of David's success.

When we look back at the life of David we see God's blessing in the young boy, followed by 10 years of misery with Saul hunting him like a dog, followed by many years of success, and even God himself proclaiming that through David will come an everlasting kingdom.

Yet...here comes chapters 11-20. 

Beginning with Bathsheba, we are going to witness another period of extreme pain and suffering in the life of David.  Actually, the rest of David's life will be filled with pain and suffering.

Have you ever wondered why?

God has blessed this man beyond any of our wildest dreams, yet he is going to enter into a series of sins, and we will witness even great fighting in David's family.

What was in this man that caused all this grief?  What was David's thorn in the side? 

Perhaps too many wives and concubines?  God told him not to have so many wives, yet he had many.

Consider our natures.  We fight and claw our ways to reach the pinnacle, and oft times, when we get there, we find only trouble.

Underneath all this success, did David become comfortable and begin to idolize its trappings?

While we are standing on the pinnacle of David's life, it would behoove us all to do a great deal of reflection on where David's life is about to head, and ask God what we might learn from this vantage point for our own lives.

Put on your seat belts, it is going to get very turbulent from here on out.