Daily Meditations

Psalm 56:5-6 All day long they twist my words I have worked in many places in my life, mostly offices, and mostly with a mixed crowd of individuals. There was one era where every day was dominated by gossip. The discipline by the managers was slack and there were a couple of ladies who did nothing but pass on tittle tattle. The place was a breeding ground of insinuations, rumours and scandalous hearsay. Eventually this affected everyone, most wanted to engage in the fabricated stories and the embellished chatter and those who didn’t were often the subjects of the scheming that went on. The result was an office dire with mistrust, broken relationships and a real sense of wariness affecting the whole workforce. I tried to ride above it, but I knew I was the subject of some of what was being said, it was so hard to ignore it all.  David suffered in a similar way, he knew that there were evil people around him who took his every action and his every word and twisted them for their own ...

Psalm 56:3-4 What can mere mortals do to me? I have commented before about a period in my life when I was gripped by fear. I was in my early thirties and had broken down under the pressures of work and church and family and my own ridiculous lifestyle. After weeks of inertia, I knew that I had to try to pick up some of the reigns and move forward. And that is when the fear kicked in – fear of almost everything. Fear that cast an icy spell around my soul and made me want to hide away – forever. That fear remained with me for years and could be the subject of a book all on its own. That is why these verses are so precious,  “When I am afraid, I put my trust in You. In God, whose word I praise – in God I trust and am not afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?”  It was trust in Him that brought about my deliverance. For some of us faith is rooted in an awareness of our own inadequacies, life has taught us that we cannot do things in our own and that we are dependant. For others t...

Psalm 56:1-2 Fear v Trust We are back to that time in David’s life when, as a younger man, he had to flee from King Saul. Saul was intent on killing him and relentlessly pursued the young fugitive who was accompanied by a loyal band of followers. David was an outlaw in his own land and constantly on the move as the king’s spies discovered his latest hiding place. It seemed to him and his friends, that there was nowhere to find safety, so they decided to take a gamble and put themselves under the shelter of a foreign nation, in this case the Philistines. The fear in their group must have been incredible, to go over to the Philistines! Why, we all know about David’s reputation with the Philistines, he had killed their talisman, the giant Goliath, an event which led to the rout of the Philistine army and a great victory for Saul. But that was the problem, the Israelites knew it was David who had obeyed the Lord and killed the giant, so they sang his praises. Saul was jealous and that was ...

Psalm 55:23 Only half a life! This is a sad end to the Psalm! It’s a job to know whether to take it as a prophetic statement that had application only to Absalom, or to see it as a more general indictment of the ways of the wicked. Certainly, Absalom was brought down into the pit of decay, and he did not live out half of his days. As we have seen, he was caught by his long hair, in the branches of a tree, and left hanging in the air. Joab sealed his doom with the tip of a javelin through his heart. Whether we can consign all wicked people to an early grave is probably a matter for dispute, it is the Lord who gives and the Lord who takes away, so I think I would rather leave such matters to Him. However, we do see that those who live their lives to excess and who deliberately gamble with their health and their sanity, can bring a premature end to their time in this world. It is also true that those who have lived violently and who sacrifice the lives of others to their dictatorial ways,...

Psalm 55:22 Cast your cares on the Lord This is one of the most comforting verses in the Bible. It is an invitation to bring all of our worries, our fears, our anger, our frustration, our hurt and pain, our grief and sorrow, our loneliness, and all other inner anxieties and burdens, and cast them on to the Lord. This is more than just an invitation to “tell all”, it is a command to throw these negative afflictions away, to throw them at Him! To take them off ourselves and cast them on to Him. This is the Lord’s Counselling Manual at its very best for it does not ask us to psychoanalyse ourselves or to look deep within and then think positive thoughts. It tells us to name the problems and then chuck them over to the burden-carrier, to give them to Him. Hallelujah! Then comes the promise!  “He will sustain you; He will never let the righteous be shaken.”  The life of a “follower of the way” is all about letting go, about trusting, about laying-down, about surrender and obedience...

Psalm 55:20-21 Flashbacks Well, if you thought that David had had enough of complaining about his adversary, you were wrong. Just at the point when he appears to be making progress and trusting in the Lord, he has another swipe at the one who is his enemy; the one we believe to be his son, Absalom. “My friend, my companion, the one whom I trusted; he is duplicitous beyond words. He treated us so amiably, we yet he was stabbing us all in the back. Nothing he said was true, every promise, every agreement has been broken. All the while we thought him an ally and true friend, he was maliciously plotting our downfall and his own prominence. How smoothly he talked, how utterly believable he was, yet every soothing word was a sword, every smile hid a scheming assassin. He cared nothing for us, his thoughts were only of civil war and division.” Listen carefully my friends, when we are on the road to recovery, there will always be flashbacks, moments when the old hurts are resurrected, and the ...

Psalm 55:19 God does not change t’s a great day when we learn that we do not have to fight any more. When we decide to hand over the reins of our lives completely. When we realise that someone greater and wiser has control of the situation and He will bear our suffering and provide retribution where it is needed. Just as God is from old and He is the eternal God who never changes, so there are men and women who will never change. They will always revile Him, disobey Him, seek to undermine His purposes and look out only for themselves. The wicked are heard by God, just as the righteous are heard by Him. He knows their plans and their scheming. He knows their intentions. No man or woman ever acts in isolation or secret, their hearts are revealed to Him who created them and their evil ways are monitored and recorded. They may think that by denying Him or having no fear of Him, that they can carry out their schemes without accountability, but they will all have a shock one day! For the rig...

Psalm 55:18 He rescues me What a triumphant statement this is! As is so often the case in David’s Psalms, he lays out his dilemma to the Lord, he pours out the anguish that is in his soul, he appropriates blame where he thinks others have failed him, he identifies his enemies and, let’s be honest, reveals his own weaknesses which sometimes includes self-pity! Having done all of that, David begins to feel better, it really is a case of, “a problem shared a problem halved.” Except that David has more than halved his problem, he has handed it over completely to the Lord his God and he is feeling a lot more than half better! The Lord has, “ Rescued me unharmed from the battle waged against me, even though many oppose me.”  He is free, the problem has been passed over to One who is greater and wiser and more powerful. David feels vindicated, he knows that everything will work out for the good. He knows that he is safe, and he knows that he will not be harmed.  We do so well to lear...

Psalm 55:16-17 Evening, morning and noon We are again linking a couple of verses here because there is a natural progression. In the evening and the morning and at noon, David cried out to the Lord in distress and the Lord heard his voice and He saved him. Daniel got into a similar habit; particularly when his jealous contemporaries got King Darius to sign an edict that said prayer should only be made to him for the next 30 days. Anyone breaking the decree was to be thrown into a den of lions!  “Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to God, just as he had done before.”  Daniel 6:10.  Maybe there is something in this praiseworthy habit? Maybe it would do us all good to be disciplined enough to have designated prayer times. At least 3 times a day? Some might argue, “But I pray all of the time.” That’s fine if...

Psalm 55:15 Be careful what you pray for! This verse may sound at first like a vitriolic threat, uttered in a moment of pique and to be later regretted. Surely David didn’t really mean that he wanted his son to be killed in an unnatural way, to have his life snatched away when he was least expecting it? Surely the song-singing shepherd boy who lovingly plucked at his harp would not wish for his son to be consigned to eternal punishment, in the realm of the dead? We have a saying do we not, “Be careful what you wish for?” Well, we should also “Be careful what we pray for.” Did that prayer request make David a heartless, vengeful father? No, because when the conflict reached its head and the men of David faced the men of Absalom in combat, David instructed his commanders,  “Be gentle with the young man Absalom for my sake.”  2 Samuel 18:5. However, that was after he had prayed this prayer, a prayer heard in heaven and a prayer that the Lord God answered. Absalom was riding his m...

Psalm 55:12-14 A man like myself Here is the heart of David’s lament. He had endured years of taunts from his enemies. He had been subjected to abuse and been reviled by those who opposed him within the kingdom, and he had listened to the mocking and jeering of foreign adversaries from the time of Goliath. None of this was new. All of it was to be expected, and it was therefore bearable. But the one who led the present revolt against David was no stranger nor foreigner nor outsider with a grudge. The enemy he now faced had been a close companion. He was a member of the royal family, “one like myself”. He was a close friend and confidante. It was Absalom!  Father and son had often visited the House of God, the Tabernacle, they had walked amongst the worshippers, greeting them and sharing their joy and excitement on the great Feast Days. Their friendship and family bond had been visible to all and a further cause for celebration among the many pilgrims who travelled for days to be in...

Psalm 55:10-11 The rule of evil These verses continue the theme of verse 9 as David views the great City of Jerusalem, his home, his pride and joy, the place that he had made a bastion of Israel, and the location where he believed the glory of the Lord to dwell. His lament therefore, in this Psalm, is not just for himself and the crown, it is for the city and its inhabitants. David knows that violence and strife characterise the current regime, that brutal means have been employed by Absalom to carry out his coup.  The watchman that prowl the walls at night are not guarding the people, but instead are spreading malice and abuse. Out in the streets, threats and lies are being used to enhance Absalom’s status and to undermine all that David stood for. Jerusalem is, without doubt, a seething cauldron of evil disquiet and anything but a place of peace. And this truly hurts its rightful King.  Any regime or political group that uses violence and strife to achieve its ends is e...

Psalm 55:9 Lord, confuse the wicked I believe that the Lord God heard and answered this prayer of David. He had been ousted as King, from Jerusalem, by his son Absalom. Absalom’s years of plotting and scheming and devious undermining of his father’s authority had led to a coup. David had fled the city of Jerusalem with a few loyal followers and once again, he was a fugitive. He had an adviser who had been trusted by David as a man of God. His name was Ahithophel. When Absalom sought advice as to how he should get rid of the threat that David still posed, Ahithophel advised that he should choose 12,000 men and go after him, that very night.  “You will strike him down with terror and the people with him will come back to you. ” That advice was correct and would have been the end of David, but Absalom listened instead to other advice from a man called Hushai. He suggested that all of the fighting men from across Israel be brought together into a vast army, only then could they take on...

Psalm 55:7-8 Let's run away These two verses continue the theme of having “wings like a dove.” Do you have a fantasy place to flee to when the going gets tough? Some imaginative children spend a lot of time in such places, I suspect there are adults who do the same thing but prefer to keep quiet about it! Strangely, the previous Psalm had David fleeing as a fugitive, in barren places, from King Saul. Now his mind wanders back to his time in the desert and it has a kind of comforting lure, it suddenly seems more friendly and less inhospitable than the palace in Jerusalem!  Is there a real place that we can flee to when the storms of life rage around us? Is there a shelter where we feel safe and secure? Is this just a fantasy? In truth if we run away from our problems we only take them with us. Yet, within us all, is a strong yearning to be protected and sheltered and far away from the really difficult people and problems that life puts before us. I know it sounds “super spiritual” o...

Psalm 55:6 The wings of a dove Just a bit of trivia for you before we probe a bit deeper into this verse. The composer Felix Mendlessohn wrote a piece of music called “Hear my Prayer” and incorporated in it a song entitled “O for the Wings of a Dove.” This was recorded by a young soloist called Ernest Arthur Lough and the record became HMV’s biggest seller for 1927. It was still being played when I was a boy (many years later I might add!).  Ernest Lough built some retirement homes for Christians in Frinton-on-Sea and our next-door neighbours, who were a lovely God-fearing couple, went to live in one of these. We visited them frequently and so Ernest’s name and his song was a significant influence in my early life. I used to wonder what it would be like to be able to fly like a dove.  This bird is, of course, a symbol of peace. But I think David was thinking of the dove that was sent out of the ark by Noah. The world had gone through a time of total devastation. The flood...

Psalm 55:4-5 Overwhelmed by horror! I would guess that this is about as bad as it gets! Remember, David is not sick or physically ill. He is not overwhelmed by personal sin or guilt. He is not on the run, fleeing from Saul, or the like. He is not anticipating a foreign nation launching an attack on his kingdom. David’s terror, at this moment in his life, is caused by the treacherous actions of one who was his close companion, maybe even one of his sons. His hold over his kingdom has been undermined by a deceitful traitor and such is the anxiety this has caused, that David is filled with horror and reduced to a quivering wreck. He feels the fear so deeply that he literally has trembling fits! That does suggest to me that the deceiver is one who is close to home, one whom people will follow and one whom David cannot bring himself to “dispose of”. In other words, his son, Absalom.  Perhaps this is a little “eye-opener” into the anxiety brought upon Jesus by the actions of His friend, ...

Psalm 55:2-3 Because of my enemy Here we have the complaint of David powerfully expressed. Some might call him a whinger and a weakling, “ Get on with it man. Get out there and sort the problem out. If you have a conspiratorial adversary, face up to him. Have him dealt with; you’ve got contacts. Nip it in the bud. You are the King after all.”  But David has learned not to act impulsively and not to take the law into his own hands. While he seems in control, in front of his contemporaries, once in the privacy of his own quarters he comes before the Lord and he “tells it like it is.” I love this. Why did I not do it before? Instead of putting myself through days of misery and anxiety I should have just told the Lord about it! Warts and all. Listen to David.  “Lord my thoughts are causing me great trouble, they’re racing all over the place. I can’t stop thinking about what is going on right now. Have you heard what my enemy is saying about me? Lies and falsehoods and gossip and s...

Psalm 55:1 The treachery of friends   This is yet another Psalm of David where he faces threats and conspiracies and where he does not know who is for him and who is against him. Who can he trust? Some suggest that the chief conspirator could be Absalom, although David would hardly describe one of his sons as, “ a man like myself, my companion, my close friend,”  v13, or would he? Absalom’s conspiracy and successful attempt to take over the throne was a source of great trouble to David and caused his withdrawal from Jerusalem and, ultimately, the untimely death of his son. Whatever the background, we get a picture here of a city in turmoil, where no one can be trusted, where gossip and slander are rife and where David is overwhelmed by fear and anxiety. Psalm 55 allows us to taste the heartache and anxiety of the king and to understand his deepest fears, but it also shows, once again, that a man who trusts in the Lord may find respite and help, even in the darkest of times. ...

Psalm 54:7 You  delivered  me! Psalm 54 has opened our eyes to the fact that this collection of ancient songs is effectively God’s Counselling Manual. In the Psalms we discover every type of human anxiety and woe, every emotion is expressed, and the songs plunge us into deepest despair at the door of death, and then we are raised up to the highest place atop the mountain of God. We are therefore allowed to share in the morbid sufferings of the darkest places visited by human beings, and then we are transported to the heavenly dwelling of God and our spirits are encouraged to soar as high as it is possible to go in this world. Like so many others, this Psalm begins with David in a bad place, besieged and fearful for his life as he pleads for divine intervention. And, like so many others, it ends on a note of hope and praise.  “You have delivered me from all my troubles, and my eyes have looked in triumph on my foes.”  May I encourage you to come honestly before the Lo...

Psalm 54:6 Freewill offerings The big question this verse poses is; - “What is a freewill offering?”  The freewill  offering was a sacrifice made to the Lord but it was completely voluntary. In the Law, it was an offering of a male bull, sheep, or goat with no physical deformities or blemishes, and it was not to have been purchased from a foreigner. The offering was to include flour mixed with oil and wine; the amounts varied on whether the sacrifice was a lamb, bull, or ram. It had to be made before the Lord and it could be given at any time. Families often bred, what they called the fatted calf, for this very purpose because part of it could be taken home and eaten at a family gathering. Unlike other offerings governed by stricter rules, the priests could eat their share of the freewill offering on the day it was sacrificed or the day after. It was not always an animal or grain or a drink offering, when the people brought their possessions to Moses to allow him to build...

Psalm 54:5 Passing the buck Following on from yesterday’s revelations it’s good to discover, once again, that in the Counselling Room of Almighty God there is the opportunity to “tell all”. He allows us to spill out all of our emotions and fears, anger and frustrations. We can almost hear Him asking, “So, how does that make you feel?” He wants us to be truthful with Him about the situations that have darkened our path, but also to be completely honest with ourselves about the resulting reactions and feelings and desires that have been stirred up within us.  God already knows all about David’s problems and the relentless pursuit of his enemies, particularly Saul. The frustration of not being able to follow his calling. His inability to find people to trust, for all but a few seem to be deceitful and devious. The constant anxiety of not being able to plan ahead. Every day brings a hand to mouth existence and who knows what will happen tomorrow? All of this is historical fact and now ...

Psalm 54:4 The Lord is the one who sustains me Some of these beautiful Psalms open doors into the very depths of the human soul. David is never one to hang back, he tells it like it is. He allows us to share in his travails and to taste the despair, the anxiety, the terror and the loneliness of his plight. The resulting laments are both depressing and sorrowful for here, in the central library of the Bible, are heart cries and woes that we would usually prefer to be without. Even when others suffer and foist their troubles on to us, it is a relief to walk away and resume normality. In fact, we go further and tell ourselves that such people are self-obsessed and “need to get a grip!”  What we are reading here is the most honest accounts of the darkest walk that men and women can take and how, as believers in the Lord God, we may speak to Him and lay bare our sorrows. This is God’s answer to psychobabble, in these Psalms we find a way through the wilderness and discover that there is...

Psalm 54:3 The opposition It’s the same old story. Most of his life this great King and great man, David, was beleaguered by a succession of arrogant troublemakers and lying contemporaries who were intent on cutting him down and removing him from public life. They would go to any lengths to shut him up. In King Saul’s case, he would gladly have murdered his perceived enemy. Here, in this Psalm, as we have noted, David was a fugitive, he had no power, no influence and no place to hide and yet Saul was still terrified of his intentions and his potential threat to the throne. Saul may never have voiced it, but he also saw that the Lord God was with David. I’ve been in leadership for many years, both secular and in the body of Christ, and nothing changes! David must learn to realise, long before I did, that if you exercise any kind of godly influence, you will have enemies! And they don’t just come from the world. Leadership is a lonely business at times, there are always those who want yo...

Psalm 54:2 Hear my prayer Well, we’ve all prayed prayers, haven’t we? I mean, most of us have a regular list of people, programmes and problems that we use as the foundation of our prayers. The family, work, church, the community, the nation, the world and ourselves! Some of us tell God about it all and make time for our long lists of requests. Others are so overwhelmed by all of the needs that they don’t know where to start and so they give up before they have started. One solution is to just say the “Lord’s Prayer” or to have a Book of Prayers and simply to recite the prayers that others have published. Whatever our method, or indeed, our attitude to prayer, words are at the heart of it. We come as simple human being who are perplexed by life’s many problems and by our needs, and we bring these many challenges to the attention of the Lord God. Prayer is spoken, either from the heart or from the mouth. Prayer is composed of words.  It appears that David’s wish, here in this verse,...

Psalm 54:1 A Prayer for deliverance David was a fugitive when he penned this song; he spent many months fleeing from the jealousy of King Saul. It was a time of constant moving from place to place, never being able to settle, never knowing if the local people could be trusted, never being sure whether a contact was a spy or not. 1 Samuel 23 gives us a glimpse of what it must have been like; David and his 600 fighting men have been authorised to go to a city called Keilah and to save the people there from the Philistines. He did as commanded and inflicted heavy losses on the Philistines and saved the inhabitants of Keilah. However, when he enquired of the Lord if it was safe to stay there the Lord made it clear that King Saul would come and destroy the city and that the local people would willingly hand over David, who had saved them, to him.   So, the company led by David remained as outlaws, often living in the wilderness, surviving by their wits and never daring to stay in one pl...

Psalm 53:6 When God restores His people As we have noted before, the seat of God’s throne on earth and the centre of His activities with mankind has always been Mount Zion. A lowly hill in earthly terms but a giant mountain in heavenly language. Thus, when David prays that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion, he is simply asking the Lord God to act, to save His people, to relieve the land of its trouble and to bring blessing and hope to a beleaguered nation.  However, in the last verse of this Psalm it is not a question of if God will act but when He will act.  “When God restores His people, let Jacob rejoice and Israel be glad!”  Jacob means,  “He grasps the heel”  and it is a Hebrew idiom for “ he deceives.”  In Genesis 32:28, after he had wrestled with God, Jacob was told,  “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”  Israel probably means  “He struggles wi...

Psalm 53:5 Overwhelmed with dread! It’s interesting to note that this verse is not just a form of words, it is actually a summary of a number of occasions when the Lord God filled the hearts of Israel’s enemies with fear and dread and there was nothing for them to fear and dread! For example, Gideon saw this literally happen when he took 300 men to fight the vast army of the Midianites and they fled in terror at the sound of breaking pitchers and the lights from 300 torches! Read Judges 7.  Elisha saw God in action when the Arameans surrounded the city of Samaria; the Israelites were besieged by a vast army and without hope of relief until the Lord stepped in! Four lepers decided to take their chance one evening and see if they could beg food from the enemy army. When they arrived at the edge of the camp “ No one was there, for the Lord had caused the Arameans to hear the sound of chariots and horses and a great army … so they got up and fled in the dusk… they left the camp as it w...

Psalm 53:4 They never call on God These words are attributed to our God as He looks down from heaven. He sees the deeds of the wicked, their corruption, their vile ways and their willing allegiance to the devil they do not believe in. He sees the sin and degradation of mankind and our perversion and misery and asks Himself what it’s all about? How could we live and behave in such ways? What have we learned, if anything, from history? It is as if we know nothing although we claim to be so wise! Paul talks at length about the foolishness of the world and the so-called wisdom of the wise in 1 Corinthians 2 and he concludes that God has deliberately chosen the foolish things to shame the wise and the weak things to shame the strong. v27.  Our verse exposes the ignorance of the world when it “ devours God’s people as though eating bread!”  The Lord has put us in place to reveal Himself to the world. He has given us moral values and standards to fly, like a flag, in the face of evil...

Psalm 53:3 There is no one who does good We have a tendency, as Christians and as churches, to point the finger at the world and to be highly critical of its standards and its morals. But, when God looks down on us all He does not see a church full of good people, what He sees are sinful people who have been made clean by the blood of His sacrifice. Our text today says that  “Everyone has turned away, all have become corrupt.” If citizens of the world do not believe in God and have no understanding of His ways, then we can hardly criticize them for doing as they please. Why should they act in fear or awe before someone who they think does not exist? The ones who are accountable and whose lives should be above reproach are those who acknowledge Him as God and who claim to be His children. It is the church that should be under the microscope and our lives should be so different and so God-like, that others will take note and some may even want to be part of it! Peter agrees with this...

Psalm 53:2 Are there any who understand? I have this picture in my head of our amazing, compassionate, creative God Almighty, seated upon His throne of glory and looking down upon the beauty of the planet He created. The colours, the variety, the energy and the beauty of this earth are a glowing tribute to His ingenuity and skill, His creative power and His glorious attention to fine detail. Then He looks at man – the jewel in the crown, the climax of His handiwork, for man is made in the image of God. God searches and ponders and carefully sifts through the masses of the human populations and He asks these vital questions; “Are there any who understand? Are there any who seek me?” He is looking for those whose sole intention is to do good and to pursue justice, who love truth and also love others. He looks for those who are not greedy and selfish but who care for their fellow men. He searches for those who live simple lives of faith and trust, who will obey Him and serve Him with no t...