As we said last time, the first lament is one of overwhelming sadness.  In a mere 22 verses, the writer uses tears, weep, cry, and mourn a total of five times; distress, affliction and misery a total of seven times; sigh and groan a total of four times, and no comfort and desolate a total of seven times.  That is more words describing grief than there are verses in the lament.
            The speaker is Jerusalem herself.  She is no longer a "princess" but a "widow."   She whose streets were once full of people, is now lonely.  Her friends have become her enemies.  Even her roads mourn because they are no longer traversed by happy families traveling to celebrate the Jewish festivals. 
            In verses 8 and 9 she recognizes her sin, but at this point seems more embarrassed at the disgrace than anything else.  The pagans have seen her nakedness so she "groans and turns her face away."  "The Lord is in the right," she says. "I have been very rebellious, BUT…"
            Look at poor little me.  God has been so hard on me.  Everyone is laughing at me.  No one will comfort me.  See my suffering.  Yes, she is suffering badly, far worse than any of us ever have, but something is missing, even in her confession of sin.  She has more to learn about the purpose of punishment and the correct way to view it. 
            However, the grief itself is not wrong.  God has made that plain throughout his Word.  Even righteous men are shown to grieve, Abraham, David, Hezekiah, and Paul among them.  Even Jesus cried.  Paul told the Roman brethren to "Weep with those who weep," not look down on them and rebuke them for crying.  The promise we have ultimately is that God will wipe away all the tears from our eyes—then, not now.
            But our grief is to be different.  "We sorrow not AS those who have no hope" (1 Thes 4:13), not "We sorrow not."  And if on occasion, our grief is caused by our own sin, as with these people, we have an even larger obligation in our grief.  Godly sorrow works repentance (2 Cor 7:10).  These people are still working on that.  Eventually they will get there, but not quite yet.
            God made us to grieve.  It is human nature to miss a loved one, to be frightened by a bad diagnosis, to be overwhelmed by a loss of physical things, and especially by a spiritual loss.  It is even correct to grieve in such a dramatic and lengthy way as these people did.  As sinful as they were, when you read these laments and see what they went through, you still feel compassion and pity for them.
            But as with everything God made, He made grief to serve a purpose.  It can bring repentance, it can bring strength, it can bring clarity, and help us learn priorities.  Use it, not as self-pity, but the way He intended. 
 
Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like streams in the Negeb! ​Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him. (Ps 126:4-6)

Dene Ward        

My Tuesday morning class just finished a study of Lamentations, the first study of that book I have ever done.  Which means, of course, that I learned a lot of new things, and despite this being some of the saddest material in the Bible coming as it does immediately after the fall of Jerusalem, I have fallen in love with these little gems.
            That is the first thing I learned.  Lamentations is not one book that we have divided into five chapters.  It is five separate psalms of lament.  Once we figured that out we decided to study each one separately rather than go seamlessly from one to the other and perhaps have to stop in the middle of one if class time ran out and lose the train of thought.
            Another thing we learned:  each lament is an acrostic poem.  The patterns are not always the same, but the use of the Hebrew alphabet is prominent in them all.  In numbers one and two, each stanza has three lines and the first word of each stanza begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, all 22 in order, making 22 verses in our English Bibles.  Number three is a bit more complex.  Each stanza has three lines and each line within the stanza begins with the same letter that is next in the Hebrew alphabet, making a total of 66 verses in our English Bibles.  Number four follows the pattern of numbers one and two except each stanza has only two lines instead of three.  Then you reach number five, which is not an acrostic in the strictest sense, but which still has 22 stanzas in a nod to the Hebrew alphabet.
English poets are prone to look down their noses at acrostic poems as contrived and uncreative.  They served a real purpose in their time.  Those people did not have Bibles lying on their coffee tables.  They were used to listening and memorizing.  Knowing what letter the next stanza began with was a useful tool in that memorization. 
            Acrostics also had literary symbolism.  Using every letter of the alphabet meant a full expression of the emotion under discussion, in this case, grief.  After all this expressiveness, from A to Z we might say, nothing remains to be said.  And a study of these five poems will show you that is so.
            Number one is a poem of overwhelming sadness.  After we went through the verses and the figures of speech, the repeated words and synonyms and the nuances of expression, I read the poem aloud to the class.  They began reading along with me, but one young woman suddenly sat back, closed her eyes a second, then opened them and listened even more intently.  This poem will cut you to the heart.  You will want to weep out loud with this conquered people.
            Number two will shake you to the core.  Anger, fury, indignation, and other synonyms for the wrath of God appear several times both as nouns and verbals.  Enemy, foe, swallowed up, without pity, without mercy leave no question that what has happened is the doing of an angry God.
            Number three dwells on punishment, the reason for all this devastation and ruin, but suddenly turns close to the middle to remind the people that God is faithful.  A good God still punishes sin.  He would not be good if He did not.
            Number four brings home the consequences of breaking the Covenant.  Drawing heavily from Deuteronomy 28, the writer shows them item by item that God had warned them that this would happen, that making a covenant with the Creator involves the personal and corporate responsibility that the people had sworn to so many centuries before.
            Number five rounds out the collection.  Finally a humbled people feels remorse and repents.  They beg God for restoration and renewal, and the writer leaves it with a Hebrew idiom that seems to indicate that God's response will be positive.  After so much pain and terror, there is finally real hope.
            Do you see how the writer covers all the bases with these psalms?  Not only in the acrostics within the poems, but also by changing his focus from one psalm to the other, he has shown every possible emotion the people were feeling after the Babylonians destroyed their nation. 
And that means we can use these words in our own struggles too.  We will all have trials in our lives, but most of us will never experience what these people did.  Surely if their grief can find expression and relief in these words, ours can too. 
 
All her people groan as they search for bread; they trade their treasures for food to revive their strength. “Look, O LORD, and see, for I am despised.” “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me, which the LORD inflicted on the day of his fierce anger. (Lam 1:11-12)      
 
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

If you are under 50, this will take some explaining.
            Back in the "olden days," as my boys used to call them, you only got a couple, or maybe three channels on your television set—usually one each of the Big Three national networks back then.  And none of this hour long set up and downloading and hooking up to satellite dishes or cables.  You bought the thing, you took it home, you plugged it in, turned it on, and, voila! you could watch TV.
            One more thing you had to do was unfold the antenna, usually two metal rods, telescoped inside themselves.  You pulled out each rod to the desired length, then moved them around until the picture cleared up.  They usually wound up in some sort of V, which accounts for the name you might have heard your parents or grandparents use, "rabbit ears."  Depending upon how far away you were from the station, or in which direction it lay, your antenna might look more like an L than a V, or one side might be much shorter than the other.  Once you figured it out, you just remembered that ABC was a perfect V, CBS was an L that looked like nine o'clock, and NBC was an almost perfect straight line—or whatever configuration yours needed to get each channel.
            Everywhere we lived we got all three channels, but one was always a little snowy.  Sometimes it had ghost images.  Sometimes the horizontal and vertical holds wouldn't "hold."  In fact, we had one that we had to whack on the top to get the vertical hold to work.  And here is where the tin foil comes in.  Sometimes you had to take a square of aluminum foil (I have no idea why we all called it "tin foil") and wrap it around one arm of the antenna, creating a shiny silver flag on one end.  Sometimes it took one on each arm of the antenna.  And usually, when the person putting it on walked up to the TV, the picture improved so dramatically that we all shouted, "Stop!  Don't move!"  But of course, we couldn't expect anyone to stand perfectly still for the entire program, especially if his arms were halfway up ready to wrap the foil flag in place, and most especially if he couldn't watch the show himself during that time.
            I am sure that sounds incredibly primitive to many of you younger folks.  I am told that the reason the foil flags worked was that they increased the bandwidth of the antenna and the aperture so you could receive more of the incoming radiation.  Sounds like so much gobbledy-gook to me, but it did work.  Which leads us to today's lesson.
            Upon occasion, some have asked me if saying a prayer silently really counts.  If you will check out the 57th and 59th psalms you will see that they are described as "Maskils," and were prayed when David was hiding from Saul in a cave.  While most of those Hebrew designations for specific psalms are unknown, some scholars will make what amounts to "educated guesses."  C. H. Bullock suggests that "maskil" might refer to "silent prayers."  Most of the time Jews prayed aloud—it was the custom.  But at least once, when David was hiding in the back of a cave, Saul was sleeping in the front of the same cave.  Praying aloud might have defeated its purpose!
            When we try to lay restrictions upon prayers, our stance, their wording, and their occasion, I wonder if we aren't being a little like people trying to put tin foil on antennas.  We keep thinking we can make the reception better.  God doesn't need tin foil flags on your prayers to hear them.  His end of the matter works just fine.  It's more a matter of what you need on your end--a receptive soul, a humble spirit, a penitent heart.  It might come at a time when praying aloud would be inappropriate or simply impossible.  You don't have to worry.  He can hear those prayers just fine.  No snow.  No ghost images.  No problems with vertical holds or horizontal holds.  Just a crystal clear picture of a Father who loves you and a Lord who died for you, two Beings who want to hear from you every chance they get.  If David can pray silently, crouched in the back of a dark, dank cave, trying his best to breathe quietly and stay absolutely still, it seems to me that God is not nearly as picky as some of my brethren are.
            Just pray, folks, silently or aloud, standing or lying, in whatever words your heart needs to say.  I guarantee you won't need a box of tin foil to be heard.
 
 And it shall be said, “Build up, build up, prepare the way, remove every obstruction from my people's way.” For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite (Isa 57:14-15).
 
Dene Ward
 

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

Oh come, let us sing to the LORD; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!  Psalm 95:1,2.
 
            Psalm 95 is generally thought to have been one sung during the Feast of Tabernacles.  Meribah and Massah are used in its body, a time in the wilderness when God taught His people a hard lesson.  But this psalm starts just as you would expect a festival psalm to.  Come let us sing, let us make a joyful noise. 
            Just as an interesting point, the Hebrew word translated “sing” in this passage is not a musical word.  Ranan means to emit a stridulous sound (not exactly how I would want my singing described) or to shout, and is indeed translated shout, cry out, rejoice, joy, or triumph half the time in the KJV.  And that makes that opening couplet much more parallel to the second one, “make a joyful noise to him.” 
            About that “joyful noise:” that particular Hebrew word means to mar, especially by breaking, to shout, or to split the ears.  In our words we might say, “He burst my eardrums he was so loud.”  Think about standing at a football stadium in the middle of the game, or beneath a jet engine as it revs for take-off.  That’s the noise we are talking about.  In fact, this word is translated “blow an alarm [with a trumpet]” a couple of times.  As the second verse continues, we are to do this in psalms of praise so singing is involved, but the point of these two words is not the melody but the volume, caused by unabashed joy and celebration.
            You find this often in the psalms.  Noise and clamor seemed to be a part of the Jewish worship.  Perhaps the psalmist, and God as his inspiration, had noticed.  Right in the middle of the psalm, he throws what amounts to a cold bucket of water on all the festivities. 
            Their celebration of the feast had made them forget what the wandering was all about—and it wasn’t fun and games.  An entire generation died because of their faithlessness.  Toward the end of verse 7 he interrupts their self-congratulation that God loves them and cares for them with, Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof.   
            Yes, God made a covenant that He would be with them and protect them, but only if they performed their half of the contract.  Their ancestors did not.  God goes on to say that He loathed that generation.  That English word, I am told, is far too mild for the Hebrew idea.  It means they disgusted Him, they nauseated Him, as in “I will spew you out of my mouth” nausea.  Because of that, they did not receive the promised rest, a rest like God’s, a Sabbath rest not because you are tired, but because have finished the task (Heb 4:1-11).
            Those people seemed to think, as the prophets testified, that all it took was loud worship to please God.  The tendency is to judge our own worship as lacking because of this, too.  We ask, “Why don’t we ever do that?” as if anything solemn and quiet is not sincere worship and certainly not acceptable to God.  It is easy to think, as they did, that volume is all that matters. 
            “If you hear his voice” the psalmist says and then makes it clear that hearing involves reverence and obedience.  In order to underscore this emphasis, the psalmist does not go back and say, “Okay, get on with the celebration now.  I just wanted to interject a warning.”  No, this is where he ends it.  He wants this to be the last thing on their minds as they finish singing this psalm:  “Therefore I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter into my rest.”
            What started out as a jubilant service ends up with the wrath of God.  I am sure their songs were not quite so ecstatic, their noise not quite so loud, for who can be carefree when he contemplates the wrath of the Almighty, the one the psalmist has already reminded us created everything and holds it in His hand? 
           
Take away from me the noise of your songs; for I will not hear the melody of your viols. But let justice roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream, Amos 5:23,24.
 
Dene Ward.

Yes, there are more obvious things we simply read over in Psalm 23.  (Scroll down for part 1 if you missed it.)
              When do you usually hear a reading of the twenty-third psalm?  Funerals and deathbeds, right?  We have consigned this little gem to those two occasions, probably because of the translation, “the valley of the shadow of death.”  Yet, if we had simply done a little study—very little, in fact—instead of just accepting what we always hear and assuming it the beginning and end of the matter, we would have found many other uses for this psalm.
              “The valley of the shadow of death” is actually one Hebrew word--tsalmaveth—and it can mean “deep darkness.”  It is, in fact, translated that way in the modern versions.  Yes, in Job 38:17 it seems to refer to physical death, but in Jer 2:6 it refers to the wilderness wandering, certainly a dark era for the people of God.  In Jer 13:16 it refers to the coming destruction and captivity, perhaps their darkest period.  In Job 34:22 I am not certain what it refers to, but it certainly isn’t death.  This is important because all of us experience times of deep darkness in our lives.  To know that God is with us during those times too, not just at death, is a comfort beyond any other.
              And do notice this, God is the one leading us to and through this dark place.  In fact, coming immediately after “he leads me in paths of righteousness” (literally, “right paths”), this dark place is the right place for me to be.  It may be a severe trial, but for some reason I need to be there.  It is right for me to be there, and God will lead me “through” it.  He will not put me there and leave me there.  Even something as severe as losing a child, becoming disabled, or becoming terminally ill, is one He has led me to and through, accompanying me all the way. 
              But there may well be other kinds of dark places I must go through, and will realize He has been with me when I get out on the other side.  That is, if I have remained His faithful servant, trusting in His wisdom and care.  As long as He is with me, “I will fear no evil.”  It may be that His presence involves correction or discipline (His “rod and staff”), but I know that He loves me and this is the right place for me to be, and that even in this dark place, “goodness and mercy follows me,” that is, “pursues” me.  His goodness and mercy are on the hunt for me, even in the dark places--especially in the dark places.
              Don’t miss out on the gold in this little treasure chest just because you have heard it all your life.  Use it to help you navigate those dark places, with Him as your guiding star.  Trust Him, as this particular genre of psalms is called, the Psalms of Trust, or Psalms of Confidence--in God. 
              You can make it through the dark to a light beyond, which is also implied, for you can’t have a shadow without a light shining somewhere.
 
The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? When evildoers assail me to eat up my flesh, my adversaries and foes, it is they who stumble and fall. Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war arise against me, yet I will be confident. One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple, Psalm 27:1-4.
 
Dene Ward

Back in my younger years I was a jogger.  If you missed the story, slip over to the right sidebar under “categories,” and click on “Country Life.”  Scroll down to “One Fencepost at a Time”—even farther back than “Backwards One Fencepost at a Time”—and you can read about it with its own lesson of encouragement.
            When I finally progressed to jogging on the highway instead of the cow pasture (explained in that previous post), the first time I took nearly twice as long as I should have to jog the same distance.  Ordinarily, jogging on a firm surface is easier because your feet push off and the momentum is with you instead of all sinking down into the dirt, sand, mud, or grass of the softer surfaces.  That was not what slowed me down.  What kept distracting me were the things I had passed every day for three years and never seen before.
            In a car, you usually see the road, the signs, and possible problems—other cars, animals both domesticated and wild, pedestrians, potholes, discarded bottles, trash bags that fell off other vehicles, boards that might have nails in them, pieces of blown tires.  You must look for those things if you want to avoid an accident. 
            But that morning as I jogged slowly by I found out for the first time that a tiny creek ran through a four foot diameter culvert under the road just past the neighbor by the woods.  I discovered a path through those same woods that led to a ramshackle cabin a hundred feet off the road, nearly hidden by the ramrod straight pines.  I discovered that another neighbor had a second driveway, much smaller, that led to a shed behind the house.  Then as I approached the bridge over the New River, I found a path snaking off to its side, probably used by fishermen looking for bait, or kids swimming in the shallows.  All those things had been there the whole time I had, but it was as if I had discovered a brand new place.
            That is exactly how I felt after our ladies’ class studied Psalm 23.  I almost skipped that one—everyone knows it.  We all memorized it as children.  If there is a Bible passage in a movie, it is apt to be that one.  Why should we include that in what I hoped to be a study of brand new material for most of us?  Because it was brand new material, too.  I had gotten out of the speeding vehicle passing through it, and had jogged at a slower pace, seeing the details for the first time.  We are going to talk about what I found this time and next.
            Psalm 23 is classified as a Psalm of Trust.  I doubt that David, Ethan, Asaph, Solomon, Heman, the sons of Korah, Moses, or any other of the writers of the psalms actually made a decision to write a particular type of psalm and then followed some carefully laid out pattern.  No, the elements and patterns have been analyzed by scholars thousands of years removed from them, but it is interesting that they do follow something of a pattern.  For instance, Psalms of Trust (some call them Psalms of Confidence [in God]) tend to view God in metaphorical terms.  He is variously called a shield, a fortress, a rock, a shelter, a master [of slaves], and in this familiar psalm a shepherd.
            But here is the part I always missed—the metaphor in these psalms is apt to change abruptly, as it does here in verse 5.  Suddenly God is depicted as a host.  Some of the older commentators do not want to see this change, but please tell me, when was the last time you saw a sheep eating at a table or drinking out of a cup?  No, the shepherd feeds the sheep in verse 2: he makes me to lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters.  Sheep eat grass and drink water, and the shepherd has fed them exactly what they want and need.  Now it is the host’s turn to feed his friend in a brand new metaphor.
            And notice this, the host in verses 5 and 6 is not just an acquaintance fulfilling the obligations of hospitality in the Eastern tradition.  He is a close friend.  He takes you into his house not just for a meal but to “dwell forever.”  Indeed the Hebrew word for “house” often implies “household.”  That last verse could easily and correctly be translated “and I will remain in the family of the Lord forever.”  We’re not talking about being a pet sheep in the family, but a human member of the family, someone who eats at the table with the rest of the family, the truest sign of acceptance in that culture.
            See what you miss when you just breeze through an old familiar passage without a second thought?  You need to get out of the car and walk through it, paying attention to every detail and thinking about every nuance.  That’s how you learn new things.  And this new thing is nothing compared to the one I will show you tomorrow.
 
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, Eph 2:19.
 
Dene Ward

Years ago I sang in the evening chorus at the university.  Chorus was required for my degree, and this was the only chorus that fit my schedule, a schedule that included teaching private piano lessons, running a home, and interning as a music teacher in a local elementary school.  Add to that, I was a preacher’s wife—just learning, as he was, but still dealing with extra obligations.
              We had a program scheduled and the director called an extra rehearsal.  That rehearsal did not fit my schedule.  I would have had to cancel a few lessons and more important, miss a Wednesday evening Bible study.  He made it clear that no misses would be excused short of death beds.  So I took a deep breath when I broached the lion in his den the next afternoon.
              My heart sank when I saw three others waiting outside his office.  Instead of calling us in one by one, he came out and stood in the hall and listened as the first one asked to be excused.  “Absolutely not!” he said sternly.  “You already miss too many rehearsals.  If you don’t show up, you will be dismissed from the chorus.”  The next one received a similar reply and the next.  They all left, crestfallen.
              Then he saw me at the back of the line.  “If you have to dismiss me, I understand,” I began, “but my husband is a preacher and we have a Bible study that night.  I just cannot miss it.” 
              I was shocked when a small smile twitched at his lips.  “You I don’t worry about,” he said quietly.  “You are always there.  You listen when I give directions.  You know your part.  You haven’t missed a single performance.  Go to your Bible study.  You still have a place in my chorus.” Talk about relief.  I drove home praising God in my heart.
              Have you read Psalm 123?  That psalm is classified as a psalm of trust, written on behalf of the entire nation of Israel.  Many psalms are full of hallelujahs, with shouts of Hosanna, with dancing and leaping and loud expressions of joy.  Not this one.  Psalm 123 is a quiet psalm.  It is presented as servants watching quietly from the corner of the room for the smallest sign from the master that he wants something. 
              Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maidservant to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the LORD our God, till he has mercy upon us, v 2.
              Leupold says, “There is nothing powerful, moving or sublime that finds expression here.  A quiet, submissive tone prevails throughout.  It is subdued in character.”  This is simply a servant doing his master’s will in an unobtrusive manner, calmly asking for relief but going about his duty even in the midst of trial, trusting that his prayer will be answered without his further interference.
              I like this psalm.  I have never been one who needs to demonstrate my love for God loudly, yet everyone knows it is there simply from the way I live my life.  If my chorus director could know I was a “faithful student” despite the fact that I was quiet instead of boisterous, certainly God can know the same about my spiritual life.
              God, the Father of spirits, made all kinds of personalities.  And because He made them, he accepts them—just look at the apostles and all their differences.  If He will accept that varied crew, He will accept my worship, even if it is quiet and restrained, as long as my emotion and intent are sincere and obedient.
              Nowadays it seems people are quick to judge others as less thankful, less sincere, and less loving if they sit quietly and say little aloud about their feelings.  This psalm says it isn’t so.  If I sit quietly in the corner waiting for my master’s smallest cue, I may, in fact, be a whole lot more likely to see it than someone who can’t sit still long enough to notice, or be quiet long enough to hear someone besides himself.  
              We are all different, yet God accepts all worship that is “in spirit and in truth,” the brash, the boisterous, even the analytical and the subdued.  Perhaps our judgments of one another should be more subdued as well.
 
But let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious, 1 Pet 3:4.
 
Dene Ward

As for me, I said in my prosperity, “I shall never be moved.” Psalm 30:6.
 
              Several scholars believe Psalm 30 concerns the time David numbered the people of Israel and God punished them with a pestilence.  Before we get any further, let me caution you to read this in the 1 Chronicles 21 account and not just 2 Samuel 24.  You will get a much better portrait of David in Chronicles, one much more fitting a “man after God’s own heart.”
 
             But no matter when in David’s life this psalm was written, he tells us in verse 6 exactly what caused his problem.  In his prosperity he relied too much on himself.  Oh, he recognizes that his wealth and security came from God, v 7a, but he was so smug about it that God “hid His face.”  It was “my mountain,” not God’s, and if this is the time of the numbering, he was so full of himself that he sent Joab around not to take a full census, but to count “those who can wield a sword.”  He wanted to know how strong he was now that his foes were destroyed and his land was at peace, even though God told the people not to worry about such things, but to trust Him.  Even a man such as Joab knew that this numbering was not a good idea. 

              Here is what we as Americans steadfastly refuse to see, even Christians:  there is no temptation so great as prosperity.  Not just wealth, but security and peace along with it.  The scriptures are full of the warnings, but we heed them not.  What do we all want?  To get ahead.  What do we spend our lives doing?  Making money.  What do we dream about?  Being rich. 

              But hear this:  the New Testament does not speak of wealth in any way but as dangerous to our spiritual health. 

                Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth…For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.  Matt 6:19,21.

              As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful, Matt 13:22.

              Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God, Matt 19:24.

              And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions, Luke 12:15.

              But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs, 1 Tim 6:9,10.

              Why do we insist on standing in the rattlesnake’s nest?  I understand wanting your children to have more and better than you did, but I do not want their souls at risk, and from everything I see and read in the Book that really matters, that is what wealth will do to them.  If David can fall because of it, so can you and so can I and so can they.  Any time you feel secure in your wealth, in your preparations for the future or for “unforeseen circumstances,” be careful.  God may very well send you a reminder that you cannot count on anyone but Him, just as He did to David.  It may be the most painful reminder you ever get.
 
​​Do not toil to acquire wealth; be discerning enough to desist. When your eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven, Prov 23:4,5.
 
Dene Ward