Category: Psalms

Psalm 32 “Blessed Forgiveness”

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This week we welcome back John and are looking in Psalm 32. Unconfessed sin hurts us and damages our health. God is our hiding place, and steadfast love surrounds those who trust the Lord. The blessed are the forgiven.

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Psalm 32 (ESV)

Blessed Are the Forgiven

A Maskil[a] of David.

32 Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
    whose sin is covered.
2 Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity,
    and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

3 For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away
    through my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
    my strength was dried up[b] as by the heat of summer. Selah

5 I acknowledged my sin to you,
    and I did not cover my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
    and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah

6 Therefore let everyone who is godly
    offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found;
surely in the rush of great waters,
    they shall not reach him.
7 You are a hiding place for me;
    you preserve me from trouble;
    you surround me with shouts of deliverance. Selah

8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
    I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
9 Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding,
    which must be curbed with bit and bridle,
    or it will not stay near you.

10 Many are the sorrows of the wicked,
    but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord.
11 Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous,
    and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!

Psalm 95 “Worship”

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This week we are looking at one of our core values: Worship. Psalm 95 is a classic psalm on worship, where we are called to acknowledge the greatness of God.

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Psalm 95 (ESV)

95 Oh come, let us sing to the Lord;
    let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
2 Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
    let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
3 For the Lord is a great God,
    and a great King above all gods.
4 In his hand are the depths of the earth;
    the heights of the mountains are his also.
5 The sea is his, for he made it,
    and his hands formed the dry land.

6 Oh come, let us worship and bow down;
    let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!
7 For he is our God,
    and we are the people of his pasture,
    and the sheep of his hand.
Today, if you hear his voice,
8     do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
    as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
9 when your fathers put me to the test
    and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
10 For forty years I loathed that generation
    and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart,
    and they have not known my ways.”
11 Therefore I swore in my wrath,
    “They shall not enter my rest.”

Psalm 8 “Delight, Rest, Hope”

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Psalm 8 is a nature psalm – a song that helps the faithful to see the world with the eyes of faith. Do you know delight in God’s creation? Can you rest in his care? Psalm 8 helps us to do this as we sing it.

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Psalm 8 (ESV)

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[b]
    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!

Psalm 2 “Christ is King”

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Sometimes as Christians it can seem like things are going wrong in the world, and we can be tempted to despair. Singing psalm 2 can help us to move from despair to hope. John explains.

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Psalm 2 (ESV)

2 Why do the nations rage[a]
    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[b] 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.

Psalm 1 “What do You Really Want?”

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The Psalms were written in order to be sung. Part of their function is to shape our emotions. In this case Psalm 1 holds out a picture of what a flourishing Christian life looks like. John explains.

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Psalm 1 (ESV)

Blessed is the man[a]
    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[b] 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.

Psalm 13: “How Long, Oh LORD?”

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Often Christians today can get the impression that to be sorrowful exposes us as lacking in faith. Biblically that is not the case. About a third of the Psalms are laments: Songs that help the singers to worship God in difficult situations, by expressing sorrow in the presence of God. In Psalm 13 we look to see how our emotional life should be brought to God, and shaped by the truth. John Explains.

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Psalm 13 (ESV)

13 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.

Psalm 121 “Where does my help come from?”

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There are times in our lives when weariness can set in. We can feel as if life is too much for us. This Sunday, Jason Pickard from Grace in Dunedin explained the comfort and hope that we can have in God, from Psalm 121.

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Psalm 121 (ESV)

I lift up my eyes to the hills.
    From where does my help come?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
    who made heaven and earth.

3 He will not let your foot be moved;
    he who keeps you will not slumber.
4 Behold, he who keeps Israel
    will neither slumber nor sleep.

5 The Lord is your keeper;
    the Lord is your shade on your right hand.
6 The sun shall not strike you by day,
    nor the moon by night.

7 The Lord will keep you from all evil;
    he will keep your life.
8 The Lord will keep
    your going out and your coming in
    from this time forth and forevermore.

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Psalm 7 “Refuge from Attack”

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This week we looked at psalm 7, where David sings to the LORD in response to verbal attack.

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Psalm 7 (ESV)

A Shiggaion of David, which he sang to the Lord concerning the words of Cush, a Benjaminite.

7 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[b] 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,[c]
    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[d] does not repent, God[e] 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.

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Psalm 73 “Envy, Doubt, and Grace”

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The psalms can help us to express the struggles we have, and teach us how to bring our struggles to God. In psalm 73 the psalmist sees people ignoring God and prospering. This raises doubts and questions for us and the psalmist. Peter Boyd from Shore Presbyterian Church (GPCNZ church on the North shore of Auckland), explains.

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Psalm 73 (ESV)

Truly God is good to Israel,
    to those who are pure in heart.
2 But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled,
    my steps had nearly slipped.
3 For I was envious of the arrogant
    when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

4 For they have no pangs until death;
    their bodies are fat and sleek.
5 They are not in trouble as others are;
    they are not stricken like the rest of mankind.
6 Therefore pride is their necklace;
    violence covers them as a garment.
7 Their eyes swell out through fatness;
    their hearts overflow with follies.
8 They scoff and speak with malice;
    loftily they threaten oppression.
9 They set their mouths against the heavens,
    and their tongue struts through the earth.
10 Therefore his people turn back to them,
    and find no fault in them.[a]
11 And they say, “How can God know?
    Is there knowledge in the Most High?”
12 Behold, these are the wicked;
    always at ease, they increase in riches.
13 All in vain have I kept my heart clean
    and washed my hands in innocence.
14 For all the day long I have been stricken
    and rebuked every morning.
15 If I had said, “I will speak thus,”
    I would have betrayed the generation of your children.

16 But when I thought how to understand this,
    it seemed to me a wearisome task,
17 until I went into the sanctuary of God;
    then I discerned their end.

18 Truly you set them in slippery places;
    you make them fall to ruin.
19 How they are destroyed in a moment,
    swept away utterly by terrors!
20 Like a dream when one awakes,
    O Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms.
21 When my soul was embittered,
    when I was pricked in heart,
22 I was brutish and ignorant;
    I was like a beast toward you.

23 Nevertheless, I am continually with you;
    you hold my right hand.
24 You guide me with your counsel,
    and afterward you will receive me to glory.
25 Whom have I in heaven but you?
    And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
26 My flesh and my heart may fail,
    but God is the strength[b] of my heart and my portion forever.

27 For behold, those who are far from you shall perish;
    you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you.
28 But for me it is good to be near God;
    I have made the Lord God my refuge,
    that I may tell of all your works.

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Psalm 62 “God, Our Fortress”

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We can look to many things to try to bring rest, security and comfort to our souls. For the Christian, we look to God alone for these things. Do you know what it is like to have God as a refuge? John opens up psalm 62 to explore this.

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Psalm 62 (ESV)

To the choirmaster: according to Jeduthun. A Psalm of David.

62 For God alone my soul waits in silence;
    from him comes my salvation.
2 He alone is my rock and my salvation,
    my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken.

3 How long will all of you attack a man
    to batter him,
    like a leaning wall, a tottering fence?
4 They only plan to thrust him down from his high position.
    They take pleasure in falsehood.
They bless with their mouths,
    but inwardly they curse. Selah

5 For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence,
    for my hope is from him.
6 He only is my rock and my salvation,
    my fortress; I shall not be shaken.
7 On God rests my salvation and my glory;
    my mighty rock, my refuge is God.

8 Trust in him at all times, O people;
    pour out your heart before him;
    God is a refuge for us. Selah

9 Those of low estate are but a breath;
    those of high estate are a delusion;
in the balances they go up;
    they are together lighter than a breath.
10 Put no trust in extortion;
    set no vain hopes on robbery;
    if riches increase, set not your heart on them.

11 Once God has spoken;
    twice have I heard this:
that power belongs to God,
12     and that to you, O Lord, belongs steadfast love.
For you will render to a man
    according to his work.