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- Herausgeber: Crossway
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
Experience the Depth of the Psalms with Pastor and Author Dane Ortlund The Psalms could be called the Bible's devotional. Each psalm reflects on the greatness of who God is and how he cares for his people. Written with profound emotion, each psalm sheds light on the raw experiences of the human heart, revealing how God's people should turn to him in times of anguish, pain, remorse, joy, and thanksgiving. In the Lord I Take Refuge invites readers to experience the Psalms in a new way through heartfelt devotional content written by Dane Ortlund. Each reading is short enough to read in five minutes or less and will encourage believers to thoughtfully ponder and pray through each of the 150 Psalms. To further enhance the reading experience, this book features the full text of the English Standard Version Psalms; a large font; thick, cream-colored paper; and a ribbon marker to keep track of progress. All of these features, along with a helpful introduction on how to read the Psalms devotionally, encourage believers to pause and reflect on the riches of each text as they commune daily with the Lord.
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“This world has beauty and delight as well as brokenness and pain. As joy and sorrow mingle together, we long for words to express both our cries for deliverance and our songs of rejoicing. Dane Ortlund’s new devotional, In the Lord I Take Refuge, invites us to commune with God through the words of the Psalms. These encouraging daily reflections will guide your prayers, refresh your heart, and strengthen your soul as you walk with God in the ups and downs of life.”
Melissa Kruger, Director of Women’s Initiatives, The Gospel Coalition; author, Growing Together
“This devotional book beautifully reminds us that we need no better devotional material than the Psalms themselves. Dane Ortlund is pointing the way, serving as a wise and restrained guide to help us enter and join the prayers and praises of the psalter. He never fails to point us to Christ, the Savior who shines through the Psalms from beginning to end.”
Kathleen Nielson, author; speaker; Senior Adviser, The Gospel Coalition
“This is a book to keep by your bed, to begin or end each day feeding on these words God has given to us to pray and sing back to him. Dane’s brief insights into each psalm help us to bridge the gap between the psalmist’s time and our own, between his battles, questions, joys, desires, and laments and our own, leading us to love and worship.”
Nancy Guthrie, Bible teacher; author, Even Better than Eden
“Here it is! A devotional book based on the Bible’s own devotional book. It is an idea so obvious we may have missed it because—unlike our spiritual forefathers, who often read through the book of Psalms every week—we have allowed ourselves to be obsessed with the short term and the quick fix and to become devoted to the latest thing. But now the author whose Gentle and Lowly has helped so many to see Christ more clearly takes us gently by the hand to Jesus’s own devotional manual, the prayer book he loved, and the blueprint for his own life and ministry, and leads us to him all over again, day after day. Thank you, Dane Ortlund, for more treasure!”
Sinclair B. Ferguson, Chancellor’s Professor of Systematic Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary; Teaching Fellow, Ligonier Ministries
“A book like this is hard to find: not a commentary on the Psalms but a brief model, from a trusted voice, on how to meditate on them. Come to be fed by Dane’s meditations and learn how to meditate for yourself; to take a word or phrase in context and linger over it to obtain food, in Christ, for your soul; and to enrich and deepen your own communion with Christ in the Bible’s songbook. Take up and feed.”
David Mathis, Executive Editor and Senior Teacher, Desiring God; Pastor, Cities Church, Saint Paul, Minnesota; author, Habits of Grace
In the Lord I Take Refuge
In the Lord I Take Refuge
150 Daily Devotions through the Psalms
Dane Ortlund
In the Lord I Take Refuge: 150 Daily Devotions through the Psalms
Copyright © 2021 by Crossway
Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.
Cover design: Jordan Singer
First printing 2021
Printed in the Printed in China
The contents of this book are adapted from the ESV Devotional Psalter.
All Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4335-7770-3Gift edition ISBN: 978-1433-58475-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021935446
Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.
2022-03-15 01:59:13 PM
Introduction
The Psalms are unlike any other portion of Scripture. This is the one book of the Bible written to God. We are taught in many other places in Scripture how to pray. Jesus gave us the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:5–15). Paul tells us to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17). But the Psalms are themselves prayers.
In this way the Psalms are uniquely suited to foster communion with God. The Psalms give voice to our hearts. The wide range of human feeling is here given concrete expression. We are given language to address God with thanks and praise, but also with our feelings of desolation or despair or overwhelming guilt because of our sin.
And through it all we see the Savior walking through the Psalms. He is the one who embodies and fulfills all that we find in this book. He gives us supreme reason to give thanks and praise to God (Ps. 107:1). He is the one who experienced true desolation and despair, enduring separation from God so that his people never will (Ps. 22:1–2). Jesus rinses us clean through his atoning work and assures us that he has wiped away all the guilt of our sin.
These profound and precious truths have led to the creation of In the Lord I Take Refuge. The purpose of this book is to foster communion with God amid all the ups and downs of daily life in this fallen world. The devotional content is meant to facilitate fellowship with God in the words of the Psalms. The devotionals are therefore intended not to replace deep engagement with the Psalms but rather to help the reader move deeply into this book of the Bible—and thereby to move deeply into communion with the triune God. Whether one reads through this volume straight through, day by day, or instead opens it in a less programmatic manner, the devotionals will consistently draw the reader’s eye back to the words of the Psalms themselves, leading to reflection and prayer.
May you find consolation and comfort, assurance and grace, and indeed the very Savior himself as you ponder God and his presence in your life through In the Lord I Take Refuge.
Book One
Psalm 1
1 Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
2 but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.
4 The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
6 for the Lord knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
§
The first psalm serves as the gateway to the entire book of Psalms, stressing that those who would worship God genuinely must embrace his Law (or Torah)—that is, his covenant instruction founded on his redeeming grace. This psalm addresses topics found also in the Bible’s wisdom literature and makes them the subject of song. When we joyfully sing this psalm, its values become ours. We are changed.
In a sustained contrast, Psalm 1 reminds us that in the end there are only two ways to live. And whatever else happens in our lives today, the crucial, bottom-line question is: which of the two ways described in this psalm will we embrace? Beneath the never-ending list of “to do’s” clamoring for our attention lies the fundamental choice to receive instruction and influence either from God or from fools. Will we listen to the voice of life or to the voices of death? Will we breathe in God’s life-giving instruction, sinking deep roots (v. 3), or will we breathe in the empty instruction of those who “will not stand in the judgment” (v. 5)? Will the trials still to come in our lives prove us to be deep-rooted trees, incapable of being blown over, or will they show us to be chaff, blown away by the slightest breeze?
Happily, this psalm and its two ways to live are not a choice between stoic obedience or gleeful disobedience. The first word of the psalm makes clear that true, solid happiness—what the Bible calls “blessedness”—is found in God and his Word. Verse 2 reiterates—“His delight is in the law of the Lord.” Nothing can compare with the blessedness—the fruitfulness, the flourishing, the prospering, the delightfulness, of a life saturated with the Word of God.
Walk with God. Soak in his Word. Take his yoke upon you (cf. Matt. 11:29). You will be blessed—truly happy, with a happiness the winds of trial cannot blow away.
Psalm 2
1 Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,
3 “Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”
4 He who sits in the heavens laughs;
the Lord holds them in derision.
5 Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
and terrify them in his fury, saying,
6 “As for me, I have set my King
on Zion, my holy hill.”
7 I will tell of the decree:
The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;
today I have begotten you.
8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession.
9 You shall break them with a rod of iron
and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”
10 Now therefore, O kings, be wise;
be warned, O rulers of the earth.
11 Serve the Lord with fear,
and rejoice with trembling.
12 Kiss the Son,
lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,
for his wrath is quickly kindled.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
§
When we as the people of God sing Psalm 2, we remind ourselves of how God made David and his descendants to be kings, tasked with carrying out God’s redemptive purposes in the world. In the face of overwhelming opposition, this psalm exults in the promises made to the Davidic king at his coronation. With its prospect of a worldwide rule for the house of David, this psalm also looks to the future, when David’s ultimate heir, the Messiah, would indeed accomplish this.
With the coming of the Messiah, this psalm’s triumphant portrait of the Davidic throne takes on heightened significance and finds its ultimate meaning. Believers today are the heirs of this psalm, and its promises come to rest on the worldwide church and its faith in the true and final Davidic heir, Jesus. Those who take refuge in him have found the only truly safe place in this broken world. Those who persist in resisting God and his rule, even if they are powerful “rulers of the earth,” will be finally defied and justly destroyed.
Despite whatever tumults rock our lives today, David’s greatest son, Jesus himself, has been installed as the ruler of the world. One day this kingship will break open in universal acknowledgment and the universal execution of perfect justice. For now, we can go forth in the glad assurance that in Jesus we will one day leave behind forever the futility of the present. Every injustice in our lives will be undone.
Take heart. We are on the right side.
Psalm 3
A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son.
1 O Lord, how many are my foes!
Many are rising against me;
2 many are saying of my soul,
“There is no salvation for him in God.” Selah
3 But you, O Lord, are a shield about me,
my glory, and the lifter of my head.
4 I cried aloud to the Lord,
and he answered me from his holy hill. Selah
5 I lay down and slept;
I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.
6 I will not be afraid of many thousands of people
who have set themselves against me all around.
7 Arise, O Lord!
Save me, O my God!
For you strike all my enemies on the cheek;
you break the teeth of the wicked.
8 Salvation belongs to the Lord;
your blessing be on your people! Selah
§
This is the first psalm with a title. David wrote this psalm, we are told, as a response to the heart-wrenching experience of being violently pursued by his own son, Absalom (see 2 Samuel 15–16). We see in this psalm how a man of God models genuine faith in the midst of dire circumstances. What must it have been like to be murderously hunted by his own child?
David felt utterly overwhelmed by the sheer weight of opposition: “Many are rising against me” (Ps. 3:1); “many thousands of people . . . have set themselves against me” (v. 6).
What strengthens David, however, is not strength mustered up from within. What stabilizes him is not self-generated optimism. David knows that earthly help is worthless when the tidal waves of life threaten to overwhelm and drown us. Instead he looks to God: “But you, O Lord, are a shield about me” (v. 3). This is the posture of faith. Only in this way does David’s internal frenetic anxiety die away so that he can sleep in peace once more (v. 5). Self-divesting trust in God is the channel through which the deliverance and power of God may flow.
What threatens to overwhelm you today? We have an even greater source of calm than David did, for there is one who did not strike God’s enemies on the cheek (v. 7) but instead let himself be struck on the cheek. Indeed, he experienced the ultimate rejection, being nailed to a Roman cross. Jesus allowed himself to be truly overwhelmed by his enemies. The result is that believers can be confident that every overwhelming experience they face is from a loving Father to help them.
Psalm 4
To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments. A Psalm of David.
1 Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness!
You have given me relief when I was in distress.
Be gracious to me and hear my prayer!
2 O men, how long shall my honor be turned into shame?
How long will you love vain words and seek after lies? Selah
3 But know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself;
the Lord hears when I call to him.
4 Be angry, and do not sin;
ponder in your own hearts on your beds, and be silent. Selah
5 Offer right sacrifices,
and put your trust in the Lord.
6 There are many who say, “Who will show us some good?
Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord!”
7 You have put more joy in my heart
than they have when their grain and wine abound.
8 In peace I will both lie down and sleep;
for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.
§
This psalm expresses quiet trust amid troubling circumstances, combining the classic psalm categories of “individual lament” and “psalm of confidence.” Many take this psalm to be a companion to Psalm 3, because 4:8 seems to echo 3:5. Perhaps the two psalms were meant to be read at the beginning and end of a single day, since the past tense of 3:5 sets Psalm 3 in the morning while the future tense of 4:8 sets Psalm 4 in the evening.
Psalm 4 echoes the feelings of being overwhelmed that are expressed in the previous psalm. Here, however, David is in anguish not simply because of overwhelming opposition but because of the slander and taunting of his enemies. This is the pain not only of fear but of shame as well (v. 2).
David is expressing the battle that rages within our heart at night as we lay our head down on the pillow. On one side is stacked up all of the clamoring accusations and misunderstandings and painful words of the day—of actual people in our lives or of demonic attack or of our own fallen minds. On the other side is the Lord. Both beckon to us; both invite us to listen. In the darkness of that moment, David makes up his mind: he will trust in the Lord (v. 5). The result? A greater joy than any material prosperity could ever provide (v. 7); a peace that supplies contented sleep (v. 8).
Trust in the Lord. He has set you apart for himself (v. 3). You are his. You have been united to his Son, and the sufferings of this present age can only heighten your future glory and joy (Rom. 8:18; 2 Cor. 4:16–18). Tonight, you may go to bed in peace. You could not be more secure.
Psalm 5
To the choirmaster: for the flutes. A Psalm of David.
1 Give ear to my words, O Lord;
consider my groaning.
2 Give attention to the sound of my cry,
my King and my God,
for to you do I pray.
3 O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice;
in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.
4 For you are not a God who delights in wickedness;
evil may not dwell with you.
5 The boastful shall not stand before your eyes;
you hate all evildoers.
6 You destroy those who speak lies;
the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
7 But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love,
will enter your house.
I will bow down toward your holy temple
in the fear of you.
8 Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness
because of my enemies;
make your way straight before me.
9 For there is no truth in their mouth;
their inmost self is destruction;
their throat is an open grave;
they flatter with their tongue.
10 Make them bear their guilt, O God;
let them fall by their own counsels;
because of the abundance of their transgressions cast them out,
for they have rebelled against you.
11 But let all who take refuge in you rejoice;
let them ever sing for joy,
and spread your protection over them,
that those who love your name may exult in you.
12 For you bless the righteous, O Lord;
you cover him with favor as with a shield.
§
This psalm is another individual lament and is the first instance of a psalm that includes prayers for the personal downfall of one’s enemies. Such psalms are not expressions of petty annoyances or insults but are cries to God for justice in the face of bloodthirsty and deceitful persecutors.
This psalm is one of many places in the Bible where we can be greatly encouraged by the sheer earthiness of the Bible. Despite being the religious book of billions, the Christian Scriptures are not abstract or ethereal, disconnected from the visceral emotions and experiences of life in a fallen world. The Bible is concrete, tangible, and rooted in gritty reality. David is “groaning” (v. 1). Disgusted by the deceitful schemes of the wicked, he pleads with God for justice, for a righting of wrongs, for the evil of the wicked to be returned on their own head (v. 10). Such language—even more, such prayer—sounds abrasive to modern ears, immersed as we are in a culture of tolerant niceness. Yet David knows that for God to tolerate wickedness would undermine the very character of God and his righteous purposes for the world.
Content to leave the punishment of all evil in God’s hands, David directs his heart elsewhere. He does not let thoughts of evildoers fester in his mind but finally rests in God, his refuge (vv. 11–12), who must do what is right.
And so God did. At the climax of all of human history, God showed us just how concrete and tangible he was willing to become, in the ultimate righting of all wrongs. Refusing to remain abstract or ethereal, the second person of the Trinity became one of us, knowing all of our weaknesses except sin.
Are you groaning today? Your reigning Savior knows what that is like. He too groaned, on a cross, so that every groaning you now experience may result in your ultimate strengthening.
Psalm 6
To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments; according to The Sheminith. A Psalm of David.
1 O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger,
nor discipline me in your wrath.
2 Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing;
heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled.
3 My soul also is greatly troubled.
But you, O Lord—how long?
4 Turn, O Lord, deliver my life;
save me for the sake of your steadfast love.
5 For in death there is no remembrance of you;
in Sheol who will give you praise?
6 I am weary with my moaning;
every night I flood my bed with tears;
I drench my couch with my weeping.
7 My eye wastes away because of grief;
it grows weak because of all my foes.
8 Depart from me, all you workers of evil,
for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping.
9 The Lord has heard my plea;
the Lord accepts my prayer.
10 All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled;
they shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment.
§
David is in anguish. He is in the valley. Life is suffocating him, apparently because of interpersonal strife (v. 8). His very soul is in agony (v. 3). But this is a suffering that is physical too, affecting him to his very bones (v. 2). We are given a portrait of David alone on his couch, weeping like a baby. His life has gone into meltdown.
Through it all, to make matters worse, he is keenly aware of his own sin and guilt, as evident from his opening words, in which he asks the Lord to withhold his heavenly rebuke and discipline.
Where does David go in such distress?
“The Lord has heard my plea; the Lord accepts my prayer” (v. 9).
Amid the storm of his life, David looks not out, at his circumstances, nor in, at his own internal resources, but up, to the Lord of mercy. Unloading the burdens of his heart to God in prayer, David does not apply a formula to his pain but rather this: God. When we are brought into the dark valleys of life as we journey through this fallen world, we have, and we need, one thing: God. And we can know that we have the Lord with us, moment by moment, because he sent his own Son to walk through this world’s sorrows. He was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3). And why? So that God could withhold his “anger” and “wrath” (Ps. 6:1) from us despite our deserving it. Bringing our complaints and afflictions to God in Jesus’ name, we can know for certain that “the Lord has heard my plea; the Lord accepts my prayer.”
Psalm 7
A Shiggaion of David, which he sang to the Lord concerning the words of Cush, a Benjaminite.
1 O Lord my God, in you do I take refuge;
save me from all my pursuers and deliver me,
2 lest like a lion they tear my soul apart,
rending it in pieces, with none to deliver.
3 O Lord my God, if I have done this,
if there is wrong in my hands,
4 if I have repaid my friend with evil
or plundered my enemy without cause,
5 let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it,
and let him trample my life to the ground
and lay my glory in the dust. Selah
6 Arise, O Lord, in your anger;
lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies;
awake for me; you have appointed a judgment.
7 Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you;
over it return on high.
8 The Lord judges the peoples;
judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness
and according to the integrity that is in me.
9 Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end,
and may you establish the righteous—
you who test the minds and hearts,
O righteous God!
10 My shield is with God,
who saves the upright in heart.
11 God is a righteous judge,
and a God who feels indignation every day.
12 If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword;
he has bent and readied his bow;
13 he has prepared for him his deadly weapons,
making his arrows fiery shafts.
14 Behold, the wicked man conceives evil
and is pregnant with mischief
and gives birth to lies.
15 He makes a pit, digging it out,
and falls into the hole that he has made.
16 His mischief returns upon his own head,
and on his own skull his violence descends.
17 I will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness,
and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High.
§
The certainty of a final day of judgment is not meant to be a matter of trembling and anxiety for believers. Instead, it is meant to be a matter of deep consolation. David has been slandered by a man of the tribe of Benjamin—a fellow Israelite is verbally attacking him. Leaders, in particular, know what this feels like, but all believers can testify to times in which they were misunderstood, misrepresented, or otherwise treated unjustly. What does David do?
Note first what he does not do. He does not exonerate himself before others. He does not explain to others how mistaken this accusation is. Instead, he takes his complaint to God. As he does so, David pleads for divine vindication based on an honest assessment of matters: “The Lord judges the peoples” (v. 8). Liberated from his own need to defend himself, David places judgment solely in the hands of God.
It might seem perplexing that David asks God to judge him according to David’s own righteousness (v. 8). But we must understand that David makes clear throughout the Psalms that his only hope of being acquitted before God is God’s own mercy (“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love,” 51:1; “Give ear to my pleas for mercy,” 143:1). David is also simply pursuing the truth. Note that in verses 3–5 he asks that he would be assessed accordingly if he is indeed in the wrong. David is not putting on blinders to his own sinfulness; rather, he is asking for truth and objective honesty to be pursued.
Are you misunderstood today? Even if you are sure you are in the right, why not be wronged rather than fight back, even in subtle ways (1 Cor. 6:7)? After all, our Lord Jesus himself was right his whole life yet treated as wrongfully as anyone in human history—“yet he opened not his mouth” (Isa. 53:7). And why? So that for all the times we truly are in the wrong, we can be truly exonerated and acquitted, despite what we actually deserve. Reflecting on this gospel freedom, we are freed from insisting on defending ourselves now.
Psalm 8
To the choirmaster: according to The Gittith. A Psalm of David.
1 O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
2 Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
you have established strength because of your foes,
to still the enemy and the avenger.
3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
4 what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
6 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
7 all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
8 the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
9 O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
§
The Bible restores our human dignity, scarred but not lost in the fall. Alluding to the opening chapters of Genesis, where mankind is called to exercise dominion over the created order, David brings us to praise God for the remarkable care he has entrusted to us. He is the God of the heavens, having placed the stars in their orbits, and yet he has entrusted to humanity the care of the earth. When he speaks of our being crowned “with glory and honor” (v. 5), David speaks of the image of God bestowed upon every human.
The references to “foes,” “enemy,” and “avenger” in the course of praising God for his creation remind us that there was also a fall (v. 2; Gen. 3:1–24). Yet despite our fall into sin, God still dignifies his people as the stewards of his creation (Ps. 8:5–8; Gen. 1:28–31).
And yet we need a Savior to overcome not only personal sin but also the fallen condition of the creation (Gen. 3:15, 18–19). By quoting this psalm, the writer of the book of Hebrews later clarifies that Christ, our Savior, is the perfect representation of the humanity described in this psalm (Heb. 2:6–8).
The One through whom the world was created (John 1:3; Heb. 1:2) came to restore the image marred at the fall. Verses 1 and 9 of Psalm 8 not only serve as bookends for the psalm; they also anticipate the end of all things, when Christ’s enemies will be made a footstool for his feet and his name will be majestic through all the earth (Eph. 1:22).
Psalm 9
To the choirmaster: according to Muth-labben. A Psalm of David.
1 I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart;
I will recount all of your wonderful deeds.
2 I will be glad and exult in you;
I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.
3 When my enemies turn back,
they stumble and perish before your presence.
4 For you have maintained my just cause;
you have sat on the throne, giving righteous judgment.
5 You have rebuked the nations; you have made the wicked perish;
you have blotted out their name forever and ever.
6 The enemy came to an end in everlasting ruins;
their cities you rooted out;
the very memory of them has perished.
7 But the Lord sits enthroned forever;
he has established his throne for justice,
8 and he judges the world with righteousness;
he judges the peoples with uprightness.
9 The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed,
a stronghold in times of trouble.
10 And those who know your name put their trust in you,
for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you.
11 Sing praises to the Lord, who sits enthroned in Zion!
Tell among the peoples his deeds!
12 For he who avenges blood is mindful of them;
he does not forget the cry of the afflicted.
13 Be gracious to me, O Lord!
See my affliction from those who hate me,
O you who lift me up from the gates of death,
14 that I may recount all your praises,
that in the gates of the daughter of Zion
I may rejoice in your salvation.
15 The nations have sunk in the pit that they made;
in the net that they hid, their own foot has been caught.
16 The Lord has made himself known; he has executed judgment;
the wicked are snared in the work of their own hands. Higgaion. Selah
17 The wicked shall return to Sheol,
all the nations that forget God.
18 For the needy shall not always be forgotten,
and the hope of the poor shall not perish forever.
19 Arise, O Lord! Let not man prevail;
let the nations be judged before you!
20 Put them in fear, O Lord!
Let the nations know that they are but men! Selah
§
David writes this psalm in the midst of international strife and tumult—not unlike our own days in the twenty-first century. While many believers around the world today live in relative political stability, many others, like those in Israel in David’s time, do not. The news headlines each morning remind us of the unrest of the world and of the anxiety that accompanies such unrest.
“But the Lord sits enthroned forever; he has established his throne for justice, and he judges the world with righteousness” (vv. 7–8). God is never caught by surprise amid global upheaval and strife. He is never perplexed or left groping for solutions. He reigns. And one day, all that is done in this stormy world will be brought into the light and into judgment.
Our part is to trust him. David does not take a posture of haughty superiority when he considers the godlessness of the nations. Rather, he remembers his own need: “Be gracious to me, O Lord!” (v. 13). David does not deserve God’s help; it is a matter of God being “gracious.” David lifts his eyes, and ours, beyond the walls of this life into the unending world of the next life—“The needy shall not always be forgotten, and the hope of the poor shall not perish forever” (v. 18). Indeed, it is only the needy who cry out for God’s help. Our need is all we bring. As he delivers us in times of adversity and in our ultimate need—the need for saving mercy from him, which has been granted to us in Christ—we sing with David and rejoice in God’s saving mercy (v. 14).
Psalm 10
1 Why, O Lord, do you stand far away?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?
2 In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor;
let them be caught in the schemes that they have devised.
3 For the wicked boasts of the desires of his soul,
and the one greedy for gain curses and renounces the Lord.
4 In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him;
all his thoughts are, “There is no God.”
5 His ways prosper at all times;
your judgments are on high, out of his sight;
as for all his foes, he puffs at them.
6 He says in his heart, “I shall not be moved;
throughout all generations I shall not meet adversity.”
7 His mouth is filled with cursing and deceit and oppression;
under his tongue are mischief and iniquity.
8 He sits in ambush in the villages;
in hiding places he murders the innocent.
His eyes stealthily watch for the helpless;
9 he lurks in ambush like a lion in his thicket;
he lurks that he may seize the poor;
he seizes the poor when he draws him into his net.
10 The helpless are crushed, sink down,
and fall by his might.
11 He says in his heart, “God has forgotten,
he has hidden his face, he will never see it.”
12 Arise, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand;
forget not the afflicted.
13 Why does the wicked renounce God
and say in his heart, “You will not call to account”?
14 But you do see, for you note mischief and vexation,
that you may take it into your hands;
to you the helpless commits himself;
you have been the helper of the fatherless.
15 Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer;
call his wickedness to account till you find none.
16 The Lord is king forever and ever;
the nations perish from his land.
17 O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted;
you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear
18 to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed,
so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.
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The tone of Psalm 10 turns sharply from the psalms that have come just before. Here we find the psalmist distraught at the victimization of the helpless. And this cruelty seems to come not at the hand of foreign nations but at the hands of fellow Israelites—fellow members of the people of God.
The sight of such evil carried out against fellow humans—fellow members of God’s people—can easily cause deep cynicism and emotional fatigue. How does one persevere in the face of horrors done to others, especially horrors perpetrated by those who ought to have been the kindest? Everything in us screams out for justice.
David feels the same way, but he realizes that “you [the Lord] do see, for you note mischief and vexation, that you may take it into your hands” (v. 14). The Lord will “do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed” (v. 18). God will, one day, right all wrongs, straighten out all that is bent, and rinse this world clean of all injustice.
And how do we know this? Because in the middle of human history God proved the lengths to which he was willing to go to undo injustice. He sent his own Son, the one man who was ever truly just, to go to a cross and swallow all of the injustice of all of those who would simply trust in him. Does this mean we can overlook injustices committed against the helpless today? On the contrary—it means that we are freshly empowered and motivated to fight the horrors of this world, knowing that the horror of our own sin has been justly wiped away, by sheer grace, in the work of Christ, received by faith.
Psalm 11
To the choirmaster. Of David.
1 In the Lord I take refuge;
how can you say to my soul,
“Flee like a bird to your mountain,
2 for behold, the wicked bend the bow;
they have fitted their arrow to the string
to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart;
3 if the foundations are destroyed,
what can the righteous do?”
4 The Lord is in his holy temple;
the Lord’s throne is in heaven;
his eyes see, his eyelids test the children of man.
5 The Lord tests the righteous,
but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.
6 Let him rain coals on the wicked;
fire and sulfur and a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup.
7 For the Lord is righteous;
he loves righteous deeds;
the upright shall behold his face.
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Those who walk with God experience a range of trials, a few of which are mentioned in this psalm. They are told to flee to a mountain (v. 1), implying that they are vulnerable and unprotected. They are shot at (v. 2), implying that they are the target of attacks, such as verbal ostracism. But God “is in his holy temple,” and “his eyes see” (v. 4). Nothing goes unnoticed by the Lord of heaven. He will bring justice one day. And on that day, “the upright shall behold his face” (v. 7). Have you considered this promise? Have you taken it down deep into your soul?
What does this promise mean? The term “upright” refers not to the sinlessly perfect but to those who operate out of a basic trust in God, knowing their imperfections; those who, like God, love righteousness and hate wickedness (v. 7). What does it mean that believers will see the face of God?
It means we will become ourselves, finally. It means dawn will rise on the dark gray of this fallen world. It means final rest will be ours. It means we will be with the One of whom even the best earthly friendships are only a faint glimpse and to whom the most sublime earthly joys are finally pointing. As the very end of the Bible puts it: “They will see his face” (Rev. 22:4).
Psalm 12
To the choirmaster: according to The Sheminith. A Psalm of David.
1 Save, O Lord, for the godly one is gone;
for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man.
2 Everyone utters lies to his neighbor;
with flattering lips and a double heart they speak.
3 May the Lord cut off all flattering lips,
the tongue that makes great boasts,
4 those who say, “With our tongue we will prevail,
our lips are with us; who is master over us?”
5 “Because the poor are plundered, because the needy groan,
I will now arise,” says the Lord;
“I will place him in the safety for which he longs.”
6 The words of the Lord are pure words,
like silver refined in a furnace on the ground,
purified seven times.
7 You, O Lord, will keep them;
you will guard us from this generation forever.
8 On every side the wicked prowl,
as vileness is exalted among the children of man.
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This psalm is a community lament, suited to occasions when the people of God are under the authority of liars in positions of leadership. Note the repeated theme throughout the psalm: dishonesty with the lips.
What is the pain of dishonesty? Why does being lied to, or lied about, hurt so deeply? Is it not because we are being misrepresented such that others think more poorly of us than they ought? In other words, who we really are, and what others think we are, become separate realities instead of corresponding. Being lied to is also a barbed pain. We are being manipulated or taken advantage of; we become a victim of another’s deceiving words.
God comes to us in that darkness and says: “Because the needy groan, I will now arise. . . . I will place him in the safety for which he longs” (v. 5). And note what the psalmist then says: “The words of the Lord are pure words” (v. 6). That is to say, God, unlike the liars in leadership, is not being deceptive when he promises this.
And what does he promise? Safety. Deliverance. Calmness. God delights to rescue us in our need. How do we know this? Because in Christ he’s already achieved the greatest deliverance and accomplished our greatest safety—deliverance from hell and condemnation, safety from Satan and eternal death. Jesus groaned on the cross in this life so that you and I need never groan in the next one.
Psalm 13
To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.
1 How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I take counsel in my soul
and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
3 Consider and answer me, O Lord my God;
light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
4 lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,”
lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.
5 But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
6 I will sing to the Lord,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.
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David is on the verge of despair. His emotional resources are spent. He sees no way forward. Darkness closes in. He feels as if God has forgotten him.
This is not an isolated experience, shared by merely some of us. It is an experience that all of God’s children walk through, in ways and times and seasons unique to our own journey and walk with the Lord.
Where does this psalm lead us? As is the pattern of the Christian life, David begins in darkness but fights toward light; he begins in feelings of death (v. 3) but moves toward life; he begins, in a sense, in crucifixion but moves to resurrection. For David knows he can trust in God’s “steadfast love,” his covenantal insistence on delivering his people (v. 5).
But if David can bank everything on God, even when on the brink of despair, how much more can we today? For David saw God’s steadfast love only in fairly abstract terms, in past acts of deliverance through events such as the exodus. We see God’s steadfast love in concrete terms, in the great climactic act of deliverance in the person of his own Son. Jesus Christ was steadfast love embodied not merely in an event but in a person.
Psalm 14
To the choirmaster. Of David.
1 The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds;
there is none who does good.
2 The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man,
to see if there are any who understand,
who seek after God.
3 They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt;
there is none who does good,
not even one.
4 Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers
who eat up my people as they eat bread
and do not call upon the Lord?
5 There they are in great terror,
for God is with the generation of the righteous.
6 You would shame the plans of the poor,
but the Lord is his refuge.
7 Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion!
When the Lord restores the fortunes of his people,
let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad.
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The apostle Paul quotes Psalm 14 in Romans 3, the greatest passage in the New Testament describing universal human sinfulness. We can see why Paul does so when we read this sobering lament. David emphasizes that not a single person acts justly throughout his life. We live in a world that does not operate the way it was meant to. Sickness, disease, strife, dishonesty, theft, backbiting, bitterness, selfishness—a world that was created beautiful has become ugly in many ways, brought into ruin through mankind’s sin.
Especially painful are the ways in which God’s own people are afflicted by evildoers (v. 5). “Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion!” laments David (v. 7). What David saw dimly we see clearly. Salvation would come out of Zion—but not salvation for Israel alone. For Israel was not merely victimized by human sinfulness; they themselves were part of the problem. They were not exempt from human evil. Salvation would come out of Israel, but it would be for all the world.
Sin is universal. No one is exempt. But grace is universally available. No one need be exempt. All that is required is a trusting faith in Jesus Christ, the living embodiment of the salvation that came out of Israel.
Psalm 15
A Psalm of David.
1 O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent?
Who shall dwell on your holy hill?
2 He who walks blamelessly and does what is right
and speaks truth in his heart;
3 who does not slander with his tongue
and does no evil to his neighbor,
nor takes up a reproach against his friend;
4 in whose eyes a vile person is despised,
but who honors those who fear the Lord;
who swears to his own hurt and does not change;
5 who does not put out his money at interest
and does not take a bribe against the innocent.
He who does these things shall never be moved.
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The psalm speaks of one who is truthful “in his heart” (v. 2), one “in whose eyes a vile person is despised” (v. 4). Such a person has a certain moral internal compass or perspective. This is someone who “honors those who fear the Lord” (v. 4)—that is, he lives in reverent devotion to the Lord, inside and out.
To such a life we are called. But who can claim to live such a life perfectly?
Verse 1 speaks of dwelling on God’s holy mountain. Strikingly, this exact phrase is used earlier in the Psalter in what is, according to the New Testament, one of the most christologically charged psalms: Psalm 2. In Psalm 2:6, Yahweh says: “As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill” (same Hebrew phrase as in 15:1). In Psalm 2, though, God is not asking who will dwell on this holy mountain. He is declaring whom he himself has set there—a man whom the New Testament identifies as Christ himself (Heb. 1:2; 5:5).
Who shall dwell on God’s holy hill? Jesus.
To dwell on God’s holy mountain means to pass into and abide in the temple. But Jesus did not come simply to the temple; he came as the temple. Jesus dwells on God’s holy hill not by entering a humanly made building in order to meet with God but by entering a divinely made body to meet with us. The Word “tabernacled” among us (cf. John 1:14). He himself does what the temple was meant to do—to restore man to God, to rejoin earth to heaven, to bring the “walking together in the cool of the day” of Eden (cf. Gen. 3:8) back to reality once more.
Psalm 16
A Miktam of David.
1 Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
2 I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord;
I have no good apart from you.”
3 As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones,
in whom is all my delight.
4 The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply;
their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out
or take their names on my lips.
5 The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup;
you hold my lot.
6 The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.
7 I bless the Lord who gives me counsel;
in the night also my heart instructs me.
8 I have set the Lord always before me;
because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.
9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices;
my flesh also dwells secure.
10 For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol,
or let your holy one see corruption.
11 You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
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This psalm ushers believers into a renewed confidence and contentment in the care of the Lord. The ringing note on which the psalm ends has been deeply calming encouragement to saints down through the ages. “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (v. 11). Nothing else is needed. “The Lord is my chosen portion” (v. 5).
