Bible Reading Challenge Blog

So there are a lot of references in this psalm to agricultural imagery.  We see deep furrows being dug…on the backs of people.  We see grass which grows quickly and cannot be gathered…as an example of those who do not follow the Lord.  But the Bible is ripe (see what I did there) of agricultural examples.  Think of Jesus’ parables when he speaks of vineyards, when he curses fig trees, when he walks the wheat fields with his disciples on the Sabbath.  We could go on and on.  This might be why I love this place I call home… Strasburg.  The images we have in the Bible are easily accessible and easily understandable for us living here in the farmlands, as opposed to those in the big cities.  

So there really isn’t much development of the thought of eternal life in the Old Testament.  There is the very well developed concept of God’s blessings that extend beyond this life through the birth of children, actually specifically sons.  This Psalm perfectly reflects that well developed concept which we find in the Old Testament.  Verse 6 really shows that this is what we all want, isn’t it?  Don’t we all want to see our children’s children and have peace in the land in which we live?  I would say we do.

But as Christians we know that life consists more than how many children we end up producing and how many children our children end up producing.  While it is a great goal toward which to look, we know that the eternal life which is promised of us also entails an eternal life where we are present both bodily and spiritually once we die on this earth.  This is what we look forward to more than anything else.

There are a number of different intersecting points in this psalm that should be shared.  The first is the most obvious which is that this psalm, and especially the beginning of vs.1, points to the necessity of the presence of the Lord in all of our lives.  .  Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build, labor in vain.  The statement is that it doesn’t matter how hard you work, if God is not a part of your life, then what you work towards will never come to the kind of fruition you would want.  If the Lord is not a part of our life then we can never realize the dreams that God has for us.  This is an important concept.  But we can’t forget that God still calls us to work hard.  The converse of this psalm is not true.  While if you work hard but God is not a part of your life it will inevitably lead to unrealized potential.  There is no truth to thinking that if I don’t work hard but just pray enough and know that God is on my side then God is going to bless me.  Uh, no, sorry, it doesn’t work that way.  I have heard pastors say at times that they don’t prepare for their sermons on Sunday because they just want the Holy Spirit to move them.  For me, that is an excuse to not work hard.  There are other examples in other lines of work for other people as well.

But this first verse is used more often than not in building dedications, and specifically in the dedications of church buildings.  It is nice and it is a great reminder that God always has to be in charge of all that we do.

The other aspect of this psalm which has been burned in my memory is seen in vs.4-5.  We were on a bus in Israel and I was in my second year at the church in Florida.  I was maybe 30 or 31.  I was in Israel with a bunch of people that I knew who had graduated from Princeton, probably 6 years earlier, so it was a great reunion of sorts for all of us.  I was reading the Psalms (I do have some good habits every now and then!), and I ran across this psalm.  For some reason it struck me as especially significant.  Maybe it was when Stacy was pregnant with Bethany and I was feeling especially blessed.  I leaned over to a friend of mine and said that this psalm is especially powerful because it speaks about the incredible blessing that children are.

He looked angry and said something like: “What if you are someone like me who has been married for 5 years and has not been able to have children, does that mean that God has cursed me?”  I was much more circumspect after that in my eureka moments.  But I’ll never forget that and I’ll always remember it as a perfect example of something that may seem obvious to me is sometimes incredible painful and opaque for others.  It was a good lesson and I was grateful for his candidness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFu1MvU0rfo

A total flashback.  Really appropriate for this area of the nation, even if we don’t really have much wheat in this area.  But if look at vs.6 it speaks about the bringing in of the sheaves.  I had no idea where this hymn had come from, but if you listen to the last verse of this hymn you see it comes directly from this psalm.  

The entire psalm is a thanksgiving for the Lord having brought them out of captivity and into the land of Israel.  So, keep in mind that the people of Israel have had a number of times in during biblical history when they were made slaves.  Egypt was probably their best known time of slavery, but there were also a couple of times when nations came into Israel and invaded and took the Israelites in what were called times of exile.  So the restoration of the fortunes of Zion would have been in the times of Nehemiah when the wall around the temple was being built up again after years of exile.  It was a time of celebration, even while at the same time there was some bittersweetness realizing what once was.

I fully recognize that it is called a song of ascents so it would be a psalm that the pilgrims would say as they entered Jerusalem.  But just think if they were coming back to Jerusalem after years and years of exile.  What a celebration, and sadness, that would have been.  

So when we lived in Florida there really were no mountains around.  It was wonderfully flat and so I loved to go to the Ravines and run.  Here is a link to the Ravine State Park in Palatka, Florida: https://www.floridastateparks.org/park/Ravine-Gardens

You can’t tell from the pictures but there is a loop around the park which is a few miles and it is incredibly steep and hilly.  It was the closest thing to a mountain that I could find to train on.  I needed mountains.  Then just a few years ago as I was training for the half ironman I had to find mountains, or at least steep hills, in order to train for the bicycling.  I can’t tell you how helpful that was because when the race came around the course proved to be much less hilly than my training runs.  I wish I could say the same for the running.

Here, the psalmist is giving thanks for the mountains that are surrounding Jerusalem.  We normally see mountains as obstacles, as things which need to be moved, but here in this psalm the author sees it as a place of refuge and protection.  As vs. 2 tells us, just as the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people.  It is quite awe inspiring to drive into Jerusalem as you make your way either over a mountain or through a tunnel which has been cut through a mountain.  The city itself does gleam on a hill.  

I went in to see a member of our church yesterday who was in the hospital for minor surgery (is there such a thing as minor surgery?).  Anyway, we read this psalm and for some reason it proved to be especially meaningful.  In the face of having overcome a difficult medical situation we are able to say in vs.6: “Blessed be the Lord who has not given us as prey to their teeth.”  We can be thankful that when an organ, even if it is a useless one, is removed we have not succumbed, or been given up, to the elements which would seek our life.

You know, this psalm really begins with a key verse: “If it had not been the Lord who was on our side…”  We can all rest assured that God is on our side.  If God were not on our side…, well, I don’t even want to think about it.  The Psalmist thinks about it and lists a whole bunch of things that would happen if God were not on our side.  Now, I don’t want any of you to jump to a double effect where you say: so, if God is on our side, then it means He isn’t on the side of…, and then you fill in the blank (wow, I have a lot of …).  That is not where this psalm is going and that is not where we ought to go either.  Just rest assured that God is on our side now and forever more.

So how do we understand a psalm which uses two examples which are simply not appropriate in our 21st century lives?  We can’t really understand language of slaves and masters.  I guess not understanding isn’t the point, the point is more that it simply is a tragic example for us and not one that we would hope someone who wrote Scripture would write.  The same is true with maidens and their use in religious rites as the vestal virgins in the days of David and after.  

So maybe we could say something along the lines of: as the eyes of the players look to the hand of their coach and as the eyes of the workers look to the hand of the employer, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, until He has mercy.  That works for me.

Did you know that there is a hidden meaning when people say: “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.”  I had someone come to me early in my time here and say that and I responded that of course I would pray for the peace of Jerusalem, just as I would pray for the peace of Palestine.  She was not happy with that.  You see, the assumption is that we think that the only way that there can be peace in Jerusalem is if it is a peace governed by a people of Scripture.  That is not my understanding.

The peace of Jerusalem can only happen when the Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Armenian sections of the city agree to live together in peace.  It cannot happen if only one of those factions, or even if two of them, agree together to impose their will upon the others.  That is not peace, that is heavy-handedness.  

Psalm 122 is a prayer of David, who was the king who made Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who wanted there to peace in his home.  Jerusalem was his home.  

Favorite psalm alert!!  Who can read this psalm without feeling a sense of peace and security only on par with psalm 23?  It is once again a song of ascents which means that this would have been sung by pilgrims as they made their way from the Mount of Olives up to the hill where the temple stood, or where Jerusalem was located.  It is a psalm which also has ties to Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness in each of the Gospels.  

It is nice to know that God is never napping on us.  I like to know that when I find myself in some tight situations.  Praise God that He is ready to take on whatever comes our way.

I really didn’t mean to take a vacation from the blog even while I was on vacation this past week.  But…I guess that is what happened.  Here are some thoughts on 119 and then we’ll get to 120.

119:  Did you know that every section of this massive psalm begins with another successive letter of the alphabet?  For example, vs. 1 begins with the word: Happy which in Hebrew is “ashrei” which begins with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, aleph.  Then vs. 9 begins with the word in Hebrew:  בַּמֶּ֣ה which begins with the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet, bet.  The psalm follows all the way through till the end with every single letter of the alphabet represented.  It is called an acrostic poem.

There has to be meaning in the completeness of this psalm.  As I read through it and made my way through it I was somewhat surprised that I was actually looking forward to what came next.  It flows naturally and gives what I would consider one of the most complete life lessons in Scripture on how to live your life.  It sounds very much like the advice which we receive in Proverbs, but it is…complete.  

In almost every single one of the sections of each letter of the alphabet we find the phrase: “word” or “law”.  So, that would lead me to believe that the verse which we all know and which we enjoy: “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and light unto my path.” (vs.105), is really one of the central tenets of this psalm.  It speaks to how the Word of God has to be central in our lives and has to guide and direct our every step.  

It is so tempting to make decisions that we think have nothing to do with our faith and so take a time out on the Scripture and how we ought to make our decisions.  We see that happen with our families, with our finances, with our friends.  There is no time out in our lives from following the way of Scripture.  We sometimes treat family members in a way that is contrary to Scripture and we don’t even think about it.  But Scripture tells us to love and to turn the other cheek.  It is interesting for me to study people and try to figure out why they made a certain decision and discover that it really had nothing to do with their faith and or their understanding of Scripture.  The decision was made with a suspension of belief.  Not a very healthy thing to do.  So, as you read Psalm 119 (again), be reminded of the centrality of Scripture as our guide in life.

120:  I was about to say that this psalm is more manageable, but I’m not so sure.  It is entitled a song of ascents, which means that it would be used by pilgrims as they made their way into Jerusalem.  So what I am envisioning is the small town feel that many of these pilgrims may have felt.  You see, everyone knew each other and each family knew each other.  What happens in this setting is that automatically people get a label and words fly quickly whenever something bad happens.  Once a label is attached it is hard to shake.  So the pilgrim, or maybe it was David himself, is hoping that people would not judge him based on the words that have gone before him which don’t necessarily represent him.  

The book of James has something to say about this as well.  Go ahead and read James chapter 3 and see the intersection of this psalm and that chapter in the Bible.  There is a great lesson to be learned in these verses.