Transcript

Podcast Introduction

Today is Psalms Wednesday. We’ll read chapters 12-14. Before I read each chapter, I’ll have an introduction for you. I’m calling today’s episode “Look Up.”

Design: Steve Webb | Photo: Rod Long on Unsplash

Comments on Psalms 12-13

Thoughts on Chapter 12

In this Psalm, which is truly a prayer, David is crying out to God. Those who had been faithful to him have become gossipers and liars, and being unable to stop the lies, he asks God to cut them off...to stop them in their tracks as it were.

And these liars even bragged that they could not be stopped. They said, “We are great speakers.

No one else has a chance.”

Sounds a bit like today, doesn't it? We hear lies from politicians, from the media (both main stream and social), even from sources that at one time were seemingly bulwarks of truth: the medical and scientific communities. They all seem to think that they can lie with impunity. 

God heard the liars, and He said, “I will do something! The poor are mistreated and helpless people moan.

I'll rescue all who suffer.”

When God said, "I'll rescue all who suffer," David believed that God was also speaking to him. 

And Family, I believe God is speaking to us today. The Bible is not a dusty old book about what happened thousands of years ago. It is the vibrant, living Word of God. 

Listen to the next verse:

6Our Lord, you are true to your promises, and your word is like silver heated seven times in a fiery furnace. 

Here David declares first that God always keeps His promises, and that unlike the words of the liars, God's word is pure and true, as silver is after being purified in the fire seven times. Again I say, the Bible is not a dusty old book about what happened thousands of years ago. It is the vibrant, living Word of God. Beloved, the Bible has withstood the test of time. God HAS preserved it through the centuries. No other manuscript has as many ancient copies as does the Bible. It is trustworthy. It is true. It is God's Word. Unchanging. Reliable. True. 

James Montgomery Boice wrote that “The French atheist Voltaire…once said, ‘In twenty years Christianity will be no more. My single hand shall destroy the edifice it took twelve apostles to rear.’ He wrote that in fifty years no one would remember Christianity. But in the year he wrote that, the British Museum paid the Russian government five hundred thousand dollars for a Bible manuscript while one of Voltaire’s books was selling in the London book stalls for just eight cents.” 

Charles Spurgeon said, “Give up no line of God’s revelation…. Brethren, we cannot endure this shifty theology. May God send us a race of men who have backbones! Men who believe something, and would die for what they believe. This Book deserves the sacrifice of our all for the maintenance of every line of it.” 

Beloved, we could use some people like that today, don't you think? People with backbone who speak truth, and willing to die for their beliefs. People who's God is the Lord, not the lies that are so prevalent today. 

Thoughts on Chapter 13

We find David in prayer again. Four times in the first two verses David asks "How long?"

1How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me?

2How long shall I take counsel in my soul, Having sorrow in my heart all the day? How long will my enemy be exalted over me?

Have you ever felt like that? Have you prayed a similar prayer? Probably most of us who are believers have.

Listen again to the words of Spurgeon: “Whenever you look into David’s Psalms, you may somewhere or another see yourselves. You never get into a corner but you find David in that corner. I think that I was never so low that I could not find that David was lower; and I never climbed so high that I could not find that David was up above me, ready to sing his song upon his stringed instrument, even as I could sing mine.” 

Yes, even David,