Psalm 6

A psalm of David.
¹ O LORD, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath.
² Be merciful to me, LORD, for I am faint; O LORD, heal me, for my bones are in agony.
³ My soul is in anguish. How long, O LORD, how long?
⁴ Turn, O LORD, and deliver me; save me because of your unfailing love.
⁵ No one remembers you when he is dead. Who praises you from the grave?
⁶ I am worn out from groaning; all night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears.
⁷ My eyes grow weak with sorrow; they fail because of all my foes.
⁸ Away from me, all you who do evil, for the LORD has heard my weeping.
⁹ The LORD has heard my cry for mercy; the LORD accepts my prayer.
¹⁰ All my enemies will be ashamed and dismayed; they will turn back in sudden disgrace.

In the devotional My Utmost for His Highest for April 2, 2009 Oswald Chambers writes “The lasting characteristic of a spiritual man is the ability to understand correctly the meaning of the Lord Jesus Christ in his life, and the ability to explain the purposes of God to others.” as the spiritual insight that we need to portray in our daily walk. This psalm is an example of those events that take place in our life in which we know God, but we cannot grasp an understanding on how God is using those events in our life at that moment to shape us for his purpose.

In this psalm David knows the Lord. He knows of God’s anger and discipline and he knows of his unfailing love. He had witness how God had used Saul to united Israel as a nation, but also witness how God had deserted Saul when he refused to obey God. He saw the pain and suffering that Saul went through when the Spirit of the Lord left Saul. He also saw the type of person that Saul became when he forsook the Lord’s way and pursued his own path. However, he also saw how much pain and suffering Saul could inflict on others. Events such as when Saul had Doeg the Edomite kill eighty-five members of the priest family were hard for David to grasp when it came to understanding God intervention in the affairs of man.

As I study the issues that David must have faced in this psalm and apply it to the issues that I face I realize that David is wrestling with gaining an understanding of the events surrounding him. The more I study the psalms the more I realize that David was writing his psalms to help him understand the nature and attributes of God. David knew that God was in control, however, he also realized that evil existed in the world and that this evil was godless. Godliness and godlessness cannot exist together. Therein lays the conflict that we see in the world today, those who walk in the way of the righteous and those who opposes the righteous way of God. The major issue that I see today is that many believers strive to make a stand against all unrighteous that they see exist all around them and take matters into their our hands, instead of leaving it to God. We should become like David and become obsessed with the pursue of knowing God and living a blameless life. If we truly believe like David; then we like him, will know that the four results of verses nine and ten will take place.

The LORD has heard my cry for mercy

the LORD accepts my prayer.
All my enemies will be ashamed and dismayed

they will turn back in sudden disgrace

Living a blameless life is different than living a perfect life. One of the earliest struggles that I faced as a Christian was striving for human perfection. Paul also gives us an example of his struggle with living a life of perfection in Philippians chapter three. Paul purpose changed from striving to live a life of perfection to knowing God and the power of his resurrection. He sought the fellowship of Christ suffering and being made conformable unto God’s nature. Oswald Chambers summarizes Christian perfection in his devotional from December 2 as “Christian perfection is not, and never can be, human perfection. Christian perfection is the perfection of a relationship with God that shows itself to be true even amid the seemingly unimportant aspects of human life.” So as we go through times in our life that we cannot understand God’s leading look at them as a time that God is making us conformable unto His nature.

Thought for the day. Do I really know the ten commandments?

Thou shall have no other gods before me.
Thou shall not make unto thee any graven image.
Thou shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Honor thy father and thy mother.
Thou shall not kill.
Thou shall not commit adultery.
Thou shall not steal.
Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
Thou shall not covet.