Psalm 49 - Who can redeem a life?

"Hear this" The call is made to all peoples. The word of the Lord is for everyone, high and low, rich and poor.

When we meditate on the word of the Lord we can speak wise words. Note that he will also use music to expound the proverb.

It is natural to fear when evil days come, but if we trust in the Lord we have no need to do so. A moments consideration shows the futility of normal human thinking. No matter how rich or well equipped someone is, they can do nothing to redeem the life of another. It is God who decides who lives and dies. It is not the rich or the powerful who hold the keys of life and death, no matter what they may claim.

Of course we do have One who has paid a ransom and redeemed our lives. The only reason that Jesus' death on the cross was able to do this is that He is both God and Man. 

The fact the everyone dies, regardless of their earthly status, shows us that no earthly wealth is sufficient to buy eternal life. This is blindingly obvious if you think about it, yet so few do think about it.

So we should not be impressed by wealth or human wisdom, for it all ultimately comes to nothing. God alone is the one who can redeem a life.

Psalm 48 - Delight in the Lord

"Great is the Lord .. in the city of our God". The Psalmist is calling on the people to praise the Lord and realise that He is great amongst them. He is great in their midst. Time and time again they forgot that the Lord was great in their midst. So when danger loomed they turned to other nations and other gods, instead of calling on the Lord.

We can apply this to ourselves as well. The living Lord has come to dwell within us. Jesus said that whoever believes in Him, streams of living water will flow from him. We should expect the Lord to do great things among us. We should praise His name always.

The Psalm then moves on to declare the beauty of Zion. She has this beauty because of the Lord. In the same way the Holy Spirit is making us beautiful in Him. 

We get fearful when danger looms, but verses 4-7 tells us that when forces attack they soon become afraid and flee in terror. We belong to Christ, we are marked as belonging to Him.We need to learn to delight in our security in the Lord.

How do we do this? By meditating on His love. We need to delight in what the Lord has done, in what He is doing, and in what He will do.

Psalm 47 - King over all the earth

Always get reminded of Ian White's version of this Psalm when I read it!

The Psalm is a celebration of the greatness of God. Note that the Psalm calls on all the nations to shout to God with cries of joy. Our God is not just one god among many, or even a superior god. He is the only true Lord. He is Lord of all the earth, and His salvation goes out to all nations. When Abraham was blessed by God he was told that all nations on earth would be blessed through him.

Some people get upset when we talk of winning people from all nations, especially from other religions. They should not. What we are doing is calling all people into a God's kingdom to know His love. It can only be to the advantage of a Muslim or a Hindu, or an atheist to come to know the love of God shown in Jesus Christ.

"God has ascended.." This refers to the ark being taken up the temple steps. Now we know that we are temples of the Holy Spirit, and elsewhere it says that "now the dwelling of God is among men" (Rev 21:3). There will be an enormous shout of praise that day. When an individual comes to know the Lord there is great rejoicing, imagine the praise when multitudes from all nations come to know Him and He dwells with them.

Psalm 46 - Be still and know that I am God

"God is our refuge" A great many of the Psalms include declarations that God is a refuge, a protection, a place of safety. In life we all experience difficulties of some sort or another. This is normal! It is fantasy to imagine that we can be spared all difficulties. Instead we can be confident that God can help us in the midst of trouble. As David said in Psalm 34, the righteous man may suffer many troubles, but the Lord rescues him from them all.

So whatever happens we will not fear, for we are confident in our God. 

"There is a river that makes glad the city". Although life contains troubles, we should also be full of joy. The Lord dwells within us, both as individuals and as the church, and the Holy Spirit makes us glad. Joy is part of our inheritance. Just as suffering is part of the package of following Christ, so is joy. We need to remember this. They go together, yet we consider them to be mutually exclusive. In the midst of trouble we can experience the joy of the Lord, and it can help us to overcome.

The Lord is the Almighty One, He alone is all powerful. So we are to be still before Him. We need to still our troubled hearts. When we are still before Him we can then hear His voice.

Psalm 45 - Prepare for a wedding!

This is a wedding song, sung originally for the wedding of a king. We can view it in this light, but we can also see it as referring to the wedding of Christ and the church as well.

Verse 2, in particular, is so clearly applicable to Christ. He is excellent in every way, He speaks the words of grace, and He is blessed forever by the Father.

Our Lord is a warrior. We must never think of Christ as passive. Although He is seated at the right of God, it is a position of reigning (1 Cor 15:25). However, He does not use this authority in a worldly way, but in the interests of truth, humility and justice.

The king is clothed in glory, and He rules with justice. We serve a mighty king. 

Yet we are also the bride of this king. We need to realise our highly privileged position. So we are to forget our past, and make ourselves beautiful for the king. Revelation 19:8 speaks of the church clothing herself with righteous acts. And all the nations will come with gifts.

We need to prepare for a wedding!

Psalm 44 - Where are you now God?

The Psalm starts with a reminder of how God had helped the nation in the past. All this information was gained by what their fathers had told them. What God had done had been passed on from one generation to the next.

God had given the people victory. They had not won these victories by their own military might, but because God had given them victory.

Then the Psalmist applies this to himself. He declares that the Lord is his God. He trusts not in himself, but in the Lord. For it is the Lord alone who gives victory.

But now there is a problem, for it seems that God has rejected them. He no longer goes out with their armies. Instead of victory they experience only defeat. Verse 11 and 22 are verses quoted by Paul. Instead of being an exalted nation, they are scorned by the nations around them.

Moreover, there was no apparent reason for this happening. They had not forgotten God, they had not started to trust in something else. There is an important lesson for us here. There can be times when things go wrong for no apparent reason. When it seems as though God has deserted us, even though we have not hardened our heart against Him. We need to realise that times like these can happen.

So what is his response? It is to call on God to rise up and help them. So if we are going through this sort of experience, then we too should call on God to help us. Sometimes God puts us through stuff to see how determined we are to receive His help. 

Psalm 43 - Put your hope in God

This is a continuation of the previous Psalm. Indeed in some Hebrew manuscripts Psalms 42 and 43 constitute a single Psalm.

This, together with the previous Psalm, read as though they could have been written during the time when Absalom took over the kingdom. In the previous Psalm David remembers the times when he joyfully lead worship in the temple. Here he calls for God to vindicate him against an unfaithful nation, which for a time turned to Absalom. 

David's greatest fear is that God has rejected him. He can cope with the rejection of men, but not rejection by God. He calls on God to send His guidance and care to look after him. He desires to be in the presence of the Lord.

When in trouble what do you desire most? Is it just to be released from your troubles? Or is it to know and feel the presence of God in your life?

The Psalm closes with David again instructing his soul to trust in God. We live by the Spirit not by the flesh. So even in the midst of difficulties when our flesh is crying out against us, we can command our soul to worship God. Eventually our flesh will have to fall in to line with our spirit.