In the past few years I have found myself fighting sleepless nights on more than one occasion.  Keith always tells me that when that happens to him, he sings hymns in his mind until he falls back asleep.  I have yet to find a better thing to do, unless it is praying, but often they are the same.  How many songs can you find in your hymnals that are nothing more than prayers set to music?  I have a feeling that most of David’s psalms follow that same pattern.

            I recently found a phrase in the middle of a scripture that made me smile, even though the context didn’t.  Still, I think pulling that phrase out of its context is not wresting the scriptures in this case.  “God my Maker, who gives songs in the night,” Job 35:10.  I wonder how many times those hymns popped into our heads because a loving God sent them our way to help calm us and reassure us.

            The righteous sing for joy on their beds, Psalm 149:5.  After I found that verse, I began to wonder why “bed” was particularly mentioned, just as “night” was in Job. 

            Perhaps it is a metaphoric allusion.  We take to our beds when we are seriously ill.  I can get up and do things when I have a cold, but if I am really sick, I am in bed.  People who are nearing death are usually in bed, in fact, we call it the “death bed.”  In times of worry, when we try to sleep, we find ourselves tossing and turning in bed, just as I have done so often recently.  Why would we be inclined to sing at those times?

            Isn’t it obvious?  If we are God’s children, we have hope, we have a foundation of joy in our lives that keeps us grounded, and that joy often shows itself in song.  Even in prison, having been beaten and wondering what the morning would bring, Paul and Silas sang hymns of praise “at midnight,” Acts 16:25.  They weren’t in a comfortable bed, but the “nighttime” of trouble was upon them.  Even from childhood, aren’t we all just a little afraid of the dark?

            Do not think it strange that songs often come to us during these times.  Our God does not leave us desolate.  He gives us songs in the “night,” songs of comfort, songs of hope, songs of praise for his grace and love, songs of encouragement, songs of edification and even chastisement.  Those songs would not come to your mind without a God who cared enough not only to send his Son, but to send you songs in the times you need them most, in the night time of sorrow and fear and pain. 

            Often the grace of God comes in a song that keeps going round and round in your mind.  It’s up to you to sing it.
 
By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. Psa 42:8
 
Dene Ward

If you have been with me awhile, you know I have been teaching a Psalms class with lessons I compiled after a long, hard summer of study.  {You can read snippets from those lessons in the category “Psalms” on the right sidebar.}  I am still reading books about the Psalms and the last couple have brought a new idea my way that I would like to share.
 
           Of course, the early church, the apostolic church, as scholars often call the first century Christians, sang the Psalms.  The practice came from the Jewish heritage of the first congregations of Christians in Judea.  In fact, one of the books I read said this:  “…in the English-speaking world use of the psalms has often languished as hymns and worship songs with catchy tunes have tended to displace the psalms…This trend would have appalled the apostolic church…one may hope this modern failure to appreciate the psalms…to be a blip,” Gordon J. Wenham, The Psalms as Torah.  I find myself agreeing with Mr. Wenham.

 But here is something I had not realized:  The Psalms were often prayed by the early church and that practice lasted for centuries.  Mr. Wenham devotes a whole chapter to the affect that praying the Psalms would have on us if we did it.  Try this today.  Read the following verses from various psalms out loud.  All right, wait until you are alone if you want to, but don’t forget to do it.

I said, “I will guard my ways, that I may not sin with my tongue; I will guard my mouth with a muzzle, so long as the wicked are in my presence,”  Ps 39:1
I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds. I will be glad and exult in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High, Ps 9:1-2.

I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people, in the courts of the house of the LORD, in your midst, O Jerusalem. Praise the LORD! Ps 116:18-19.

I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. — Selah.  Therefore let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found; surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach him. You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance. — Selah Ps 32:5-7.

  I will ponder the way that is blameless. Oh when will you come to me? I will walk with integrity of heart within my house; I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless. I hate the work of those who fall away; it shall not cling to me. ​A perverse heart shall be far from me; I will know nothing of evil. Whoever slanders his neighbor secretly I will destroy. Whoever has a haughty look and an arrogant heart I will not endure. I will look with favor on the faithful in the land, that they may dwell with me; he who walks in the way that is blameless shall minister to me. No one who practices deceit shall dwell in my house; no one who utters lies shall continue before my eyes, Ps 101:2-7.

That should be enough for you to get the point.  Many of the psalms are written in first person.  When you pray it, you are praying for the same things the psalmist prayed for, and allowing the psalmist’s attitude to become your own.  You cannot pray these things without it affecting how you live—unless you are a hypocrite. 

But shouldn’t we read all scripture that way?  Shouldn’t we read the epistles in such a way that we are praying to be what we are told to be, to speak as we are told to speak, to live as we are told to live?  Shouldn’t every recitation of a memory verse be a phrase we are willing to live by?  Yet how often do we quote what we have learned by rote and then continue to live as we always have, never taking to heart the words that have just left our lips?

Maybe if you start with these few verses from the Psalms today you can train yourself to pray the prayers of the saints gone by instead of the selfish carnal prayers we usually pray—for physical blessings and physical convenience and physical health--and maybe, just maybe, we can start to be the people we talk about being every time we read our Bibles.
 
Dene Ward

My two grandsons love to go to the park.  They love to swing and slide.  I’m not sure they have discovered the joys of my own childhood favorite—the seesaw.  Back then I was always looking for someone else to sit on the other end, and seldom found the perfect playmate.  She was always either too heavy or too light to balance it out, and one of us always hit the ground with a bang.
 
           Over the years I have come to see that God requires His own kind of balance.  Nearly every major fault of His people has come with that old pendulum swing—from one extreme to the other.  From undisciplined emotionalism to empty ritualism, from faith only to works salvation—we struggle all the time to get the balance just right.  “Obedience from the heart,” Paul calls it in Rom 6:17.  And it has been so for thousands of years.

            In our Psalms class, we came upon another passage recently that emphasized yet again the problem of balance.  Over and over and over you read things like this:

            …you have tested me and you will find nothing; I have purposed that my mouth will not transgress, 17:4

            I have kept the ways of the Lord and have not wickedly departed from God, 18:21.
 
           Vindicate me, O LORD, for I have walked in my integrity, and I have trusted in the LORD without wavering, 26:1.

            It always bothered me a little when I saw passages like this, especially the ones written by David, as these three are.  Isn’t he being a little arrogant?  Especially him?

            But, as with all the Bible, you have to put things together to find the balance point.  Psalm 130, one of the Psalms of Ascents, certainly shows the opposite feeling:  If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? v 3.  After that, another quickly came to mind:  Enter not for judgment with your servant; for in your sight no man living is righteous, 143:2.

            The psalmists all seemed to understand the balance.  No one deserves salvation, but yes, we can be righteous in God’s eyes when we do our best to serve Him, when obedience is offered willingly, when adoration, reverence, and gratitude are the motivations behind every thought and action, when we don’t just do some right things, we become righteous.  The author of Psalms 130 goes on to say, “But there is forgiveness with you…” and “with Jehovah there is lovingkindness and…plenteous redemption.”          

            These men saw that salvation was a matter of a relationship with God, not ritualistic obedience nor self-serving obsequiousness, both of which are more about “me” than the God I claim to worship.  They proclaimed the balance that would fall before the Lord in reverence and service and yet stand before a Father singing praise and thanksgiving. 

            And I love that they did not feel required to offer qualifications to what they said.  “I am righteous,” they said, not bothering to add, “but I know I have sinned in the past, and may sin in the future.”  They never let the false beliefs of others compel them to soften a strong statement of faith in their Lord to do what He says He will—be merciful.  Why are we always dampening the assurance of our hope by pandering to the false teaching of others?  Let’s strive for perfect balance with this long ago anonymous brother:  With Jehovah there is plenteous redemption, and he shall redeem us!
 
Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom Jehovah does not impute iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no guile, Ps 32:1-2.
These things have I written…that you may know you have eternal life, 1 John 5:13
 
Dene Ward

I am constantly shocked by the way people, including Christians, treat the Bible.  We act like God wrote it in some way other than normal communication.  I have actually heard these things come out of the mouths of believers:  “Jesus never used figurative language.”  “You won’t find irony in the Bible.”  “Sarcasm is neither present nor allowed in the scriptures.”  And because of that you will hear some of the weirdest interpretations of scripture imaginable.

            We knew a man once who said that since Jesus said you should not “let your right hand know what your left hand doeth,” that you should reach into your pocket before the plate is passed and take out whatever you find without looking at it.  I wonder how he got whatever was in his pocket in there that morning without knowing what it was, or did he make sure nothing over $10 was lying on top of his dresser?         

            But you will also find those who deny there is any literary aspect to the scriptures at all.  Try studying the psalms in detail and see if you think that’s so.  The psalms are poetry.  Like all poets, those inspired poets used poetic elements to make them catch our fancy, speak to us more keenly than prose would, and make us think deeper thoughts than we might have otherwise.  You have fed them with the bread of tears and given them tears to drink in full measure.  Doesn’t that say more to you than, “These people are really upset”?

            One place this is obvious are the fifteen Psalms of Ascents.  Psalms 120-134 are presumed to have been sung while the Jews traveled up the hill to Jerusalem to worship on the various feast days.  The word for “ascents” is the same Hebrew word translated “steps” in Ezek 40:26 and 31, as in the steps of a staircase.  One psalm in particular uses words to show these steps.

            Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy! If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. O Israel, hope in the LORD! For with the LORD there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption. And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.  Psalm 130.

            Imagine each of the following words, taken in order from the psalm above, sitting on the steps of a staircase from bottom to top:  depths, pleas, iniquities, wait, hope, steadfast love, plentiful redemption.  Now add this to the mix:  the word for “depths” is used several times in the scripture for the deepest places on earth, including the very bottom of the ocean.  And that implies a man’s complete inability to get himself “out of the depths.”  All through this psalm we see the literary devices of the poet, gradually pulling us out of the mire we are stuck in and up the staircase to the place of full—and even more than necessary, “plentiful”—redemption.  God didn’t barely save us, He pulled us up on top of the mountains.  Read through that psalm again now.  Can you see it?  Can feel it? 

            God is the one who made us able to appreciate art of all kinds, including literary art.  He gave us the emotions that a good artist of any type can evoke.  It’s one of the things that makes you different from your dog!  God wrote the Bible.  He made you and made you able to communicate.  He speaks to us the way He knows is best for our understanding.  Who am I to say otherwise?
 
The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person discerns all things…1Cor 2:14-15.
 
Dene Ward

Blessed is everyone who fears the LORD, who walks in his ways! You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the LORD. The LORD bless you from Zion! May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life! May you see your children's children! Peace be upon Israel! Ps 128.

            Nearly every commentator believes the Psalms of Ascents (120-134) were psalms sung by families as they made their way up the hill (ascending) to Jerusalem to worship on the feast days, especially the agricultural feast days of Passover, Tabernacles, and Weeks.  As such you see in your mind’s eye the extended family of parents, children, grandparents, and perhaps maiden aunts or other singles stepping out to the tune of these psalms, year after year, a tradition kept by every generation.  This particular psalm is a picture of the life that family leads the rest of the year, another routine that some might even consider dull but which God calls blessed.

            The father works, but the implication is not one of a career-minded workaholic.  This man labors for his family, to provide those meals they meet around the table to eat together and the sacrifices they are able to make on their annual pilgrimages. 

            The mother is “a fruitful vine within the house.”  That does not mean she never steps outside the door—it means she, too, is family-oriented.  Like the ideal woman of Proverbs 31, caring for her family may force her to leave the home occasionally, but she is the direct opposite of that other woman in Proverbs:  She is loud and wayward; her feet do not stay at home; now in the street, now in the market, and at every corner she lies in wait, Prov 7:11-12.

            This blessed family meets at the table every evening and has their meal together.  And several times a year they make that journey to Jerusalem, to God’s Temple, to the assembled worship prescribed by the Law.  When I think about this family, I think of my childhood.  Every Sunday we had a routine.  We rose, ate breakfast together, and then dressed to go meet with the saints.  No one ever asked where we would be or what we would do on Sunday.  We all knew exactly where we would be and what we would be doing.

            When I raised my family, the same thing happened.  Maybe the routine was a little different, but it was a routine.  My boys never had to ask what or where.  They knew.

            And now I watch my son and his family doing the same thing.  It may be a different routine, but it leads them to the same place—a meeting with the people of God.

            A lot of people think that routine is useless, that since it is so much routine it no longer has any meaning.  But consider this for one minute.  What if we had to do this in secret?  What if the church had been bankrupted because of its beliefs, its leaders fined or even jailed, and our only recourse was to go “underground?”  This country is fast moving in that direction.  These things may not happen in our lifetimes, but our children or grandchildren will almost certainly face them.  I know God has a plan, but His plans have not always meant that none of His people suffered or even died.

            What you look at with disdain today may sometime in the future be a distant memory of how well we had it.  Of families that could meet every Sunday in a place they had pooled their resources to buy, with a sign on the side of the road that proclaimed who we are and what we were doing:  Christians meet here.

            Suddenly, the routine you consider boring and unmeaningful will be the thing you wish you had appreciated far more when you had it.  Think about that and appreciate it like you ought to today.

 

I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the LORD!” Our feet have been standing within your gates, O Jerusalem! Jerusalem— built as a city that is bound firmly together, to which the tribes go up, the tribes of the LORD, as was decreed for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the LORD. There thrones for judgment were set, the thrones of the house of David. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem! “May they be secure who love you! Peace be within your walls and security within your towers!” For my brothers and companions' sake I will say, “Peace be within you!” For the sake of the house of the LORD our God, I will seek your good, Psalm 122

            We finally got there in our Psalms class—the infamous imprecatory psalms.  And yes, if you just start reading one of them without any sort of preparation they shock you with their intensity.  Is this really the Bible?  Should a Christian have anything to do with these vicious prayers?  And so we show our ignorance—just as I did for years and years and years.

            You will find all sorts of explanations for these psalms, including the assertion that they are not inspired.  Considering the fact that they are quoted by approved men in the New Testament (the apostles and even Jesus himself), I think we should take a careful step back and completely ignore that one before the lightning strikes.  Look at a few of those psalms yourself without preconceived notions and read carefully.  Psalms 35, 55,59,69,79,109, and 137 will explain themselves if you let them.

            The psalmist in each case has his relationship with God in good order.  He is under attack, but not for anything evil he has done.  His cause is the Lord’s cause.  He asks God to act “for thy name’s sake.”  His own personal faith has not been affected, but he is concerned that what the weak see will turn them away from God and destroy their faith.  In short, this is not about personal vengeance.  It is about justice.  It is about God keeping His covenant.  Remember when the people stood on Mt Gerizim and recited the blessings of the covenant?  The other half of them stood on Mt Ebal and recited the curses—that’s what an imprecation is—a prayer to curse.  Curses are every bit as much a part of the covenant as blessings are.  These psalmists are asking God to keep the covenant for His sake, not theirs.  (I must make a quick thank you to Tom Hamilton for showing me this.)

            And there is this obvious point:  inasmuch as I cannot become indignant at evil and injustice in the world, I cannot rejoice at the good in the world.  They are two sides of the same coin, a coin that points inevitably to my own moral compass.

            Do not for a minute think imprecations are only an Old Testament concept.  Besides quoting the psalms themselves, the New Testament has a few imprecations of its own.   "But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed."  Gal 1:8.  That is as obvious an imprecation (curse) as you can find anywhere, and then for good measure, Paul repeats it in the next verse.  Flip over to chapter 5 and read verse 12.  "I wish that those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves."  Whoa!  Sounds “pretty severe” as one of my students quietly understated.  Want some more?  Try 2 Tim 4:14,15.  In fact, hang around that book for a good while.  Have a look at Rev 6:9,10.  There is a place for judgment in the New Testament just as much as in the Old.  We would do well to remember that.

            And please notice this:  in many cases the plea comes because of injustice, but in the New Testament nearly all of them are directed at people who are hindering the gospel.  What they are doing keeps new people from listening or undermines the faith of the babes.  This is not about personal vengeance any more than the psalms—it’s about spreading the gospel, about sharing the message of salvation to a lost world and those who try to keep that from happening.

            So let’s turn this around.  Would it be possible for someone to pray these prayers (curses) about me?  What do I do or say that will impede the spread of the gospel?  Do I complain about my brethren to my neighbors, effectively turning them away from the church?  Do I stand in the parking lot and provoke strife between brothers and sisters with my gossip?  Do I incite rebellious attitudes toward the leadership?  Do my words and actions, and the world’s knowledge of where I hang my spiritual hat, cause people to look down on and turn away from the church and their opportunities to hear the gospel?  Anything that hurts the reputation of the Lord’s body in the community or causes dissension and conflict within makes me a worthy target for an imprecatory prayer. 

            The psalmist always left his request in the hands of God to do His own will, and God very often said yes to those imprecatory prayers.  Read some of those psalms listed above today.  Do you want God to even consider saying yes to those things about you?

Dene Ward

            I live where the animals meditate quite often.  When we first moved here, the bobcats screamed in the woods every night.  Even after all these years of people moving closer and closer in on us, the mourning doves still cry and moan every day, morning and evening.  I hear one out there now even as I type.

            “Meditate?” you ask. 

            Exactly.

            For thus the LORD said to me, As a lion or a young lion roars over his prey… Isa 31:4.

            Like a swallow or a crane I chirp; I mourn like a dove…Isa 38:14.

            “Roars” and “mourn” are the same Hebrew word translated “meditate” in the KJV, including this one:  But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.  Ps 1:2.

            I grew up in a time when “transcendental meditation” was popular.  Most of those who participated sat in the lotus position and hummed the syllable in the above title.  I have no idea what was in their minds at the time, but it seems a far cry from the passages above.  Yet, from what I have seen, we don’t really understand what meditation is any better than they did.

            A Bible class teacher once told us he had decided to meditate more.  He did this by memorizing a passage every week and then reciting it at various times during the day.  As he continued talking, it seemed he expected that repetition to magically change his attitudes and his heart.  As an educator, I understand that repetition is the key to learning, but simple repetition itself is as useless to your heart as saying Hail Marys.  The New Testament calls such things “vain repetition.”  Maybe it’s time to see what the Bible says about meditating instead of what the world does.

            I looked up every occurrence of the Hebrew word found in the three passages above.  I found 24.  In the King James Version, the word is translated “meditate” 6 times, which is the most frequent translation.  But here is a really interesting case.  While in Psalm 1:2, the word speaks of the action of a righteous man, in Psalm 2:1, the action is of the wicked and is translated “plot” in the ESV (“imagine” in the KJV).  The word clearly involves some mental activity.  In Psalm 38:12 the wicked are imagining “treachery all day long.”  In fact, in the ESV that is translated “meditating” treachery.

            Seven times the word is translated “speak” or “talk” or “utter” so it does involve sound, but not that mindless hum or rote repetition so many think.  If you check out the passages, the wicked “speak” (meditate) deceit or perverseness or falsehood.  The righteous “speak” (meditate) wisdom and truth, and “talk of” (meditate) God’s praise and righteousness.  Try doing any of those things without some serious thought.

            So where does the “sound” involved in this word come from?  Sheer effort and emotion.  The young lion roaring over his prey in the Isaiah 31 passage has reached a moment of intense effort in his hunt for food.  Although the dove is not really mourning, the passage is a metaphor for God mourning over his lost people, trying to save them.  Imagine reaching out to grab someone who is about to take a serious fall, or step in front of an oncoming vehicle.  Would you do it quietly?

            No, meditating on God’s word is not a time of quiet, mindless repetition.  It is a time of intense mental effort.  “Ponder how to answer” the ESV translates it in Prov 15:28.  Run it over and over in your mind for the various possibilities, for the possible results of actions or the ideas to which those thought processes might lead.  Meditate today on meditation, for clues in the texts themselves or, as we have done, in how the word is used in other places.  Memorizing is wonderful.  Reading the word of God is a necessity for one of his children, but if all you do is speak the words either aloud or in your mind, you have done no better than a pagan on his yoga mat.

Be diligent in these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy progress may be manifest unto all.  1Tim 4:15

Dene Ward

We just finished helping my mother move up here near us, probably the last move she will ever make.  She has accumulated a lot in 87 years.  Even though she gave away at least half of her kitchen equipment and several pieces of furniture, as the movers traipsed in and out and the little house begin to fill, we no longer said, “In the living room,” or “In the back bedroom.”  By the end we were telling them, “Just find an empty corner and put it there.”  True, the house is 100 square feet less than the one she left, but that’s only a 10 x 10 room, perhaps one very small bedroom, and there seems to be many more times that much furniture we have yet to find a place for.  It appears that she will need to give away even more.

    I found myself thinking what I might give up when we need to leave this place we have lived for 33 years now.  Relatively small as family homes go, just 1350 square feet, we still managed to raise two boys to manhood and have accumulated far more than will fit in a house the size of my mother’s new one.  So what can I do without?

    The answer is really simple.  You can do without practically every possession you have.  Just look at what we take camping.  It’s a lot to take for a vacation, but for living, it’s practically nothing and we manage just fine for well over a week.  

    But maybe the answer is even easier than that.  What will you take in the moving van when you die?  Absolutely nothing.  It will be empty from front to rear, top to bottom.  Absolute essentials for this physical life may be the smallest and plainest amounts of food, clothing, and shelter, but for your spiritual life, all those things that you spend so much time picking out, caring for, and working to pay for are completely nonessential  

    So why do we spend so much time and energy on them?  Why do we care so much where we live and how it is decorated, what we wear and who designed it, what we eat and how good it tastes?  Could it be because we have forgotten this fundamental truth:  things of this life—possessions, status, wealth, connections—none of it matters to the wise child of God.  

Do they matter to you?  If you could not give them up, they matter more than you probably want to admit.  And if losing them would turn you into an emotional wreck, your priorities need a serious overhaul.

Today, think about that moving van on the day of your death.  It doesn’t really matter what you might like to put in it.  Your soul is going somewhere, but it won’t move an inch.

Be not afraid when a man becomes rich, when the glory of his house increases. For when he dies he will carry nothing away; his glory will not go down after him, Ps 49:16-17.

Dene Ward