Reading: Psalm 34-36

QUESTIONS
  • In Psalm 34:1-3 How does David’s continual praise of God encourage or challenge your personal worship practices?
  • How does Psalm 34 shape your understanding of what it means to fear God?
  • What role does prayer play in this Psalm 35, and how might it influence your personal prayer life?
  • In Psalm 36:5, what does it mean that God’s love “extends to the heavens” and His faithfulness “reaches the clouds”? Take a moment to praise God for His love and faithfulness in your life.
DEVOTION

The imprecatory Psalms can be a bit confusing in light of the truth that “God is Love”.  But God is also a God of justice, who has the omniscience, moral perfection and omnipotence to carry out perfect justice.  God says, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay” (Deut 32:35, Rom 12:19; Prov 20:22).  The Psalmist shows proper outrage against rebellion and sin against God (and his chosen King).  The Psalmist also accurately describes the wicked: “There is no fear of God before their eyes. In their own eyes they flatter themselves too much to detect or hate their sin. The words of their mouths are wicked and deceitful; they fail to act wisely or do good.” Psalm 36:1-4

Yet he also recognizes his own sin and need: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (139:23-24); and elsewhere states that “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God…there is no one who does good, not even one.” (Ps 14, 53).  For in reality, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:10-12, 23).  So we are all transgressors, rebels against the authority and laws of God.  We are sinners, missing the mark and failing to measure up to the standards of a holy and righteous God.  Our iniquity with its resultant guilt or blameworthiness (Ps 51:2) carries with it inevitable divine punishment and wrath.  

But God does not take delight in the death of the wicked (Ez 33:11, 2 Pt 3:9).  Consider Nineveh “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown” (Jonah 3:4). But God reversed that judgment when Nineveh repented.

So the good news, planned all along by God and hinted at through the various types and shadows of the old testament, finds consummation in the cross of Christ.  All those that trust in Christ are “justified freely by his grace through the redemption (release from sins slavery) that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a propitiation (one who turns aside Gods wrath) through the shedding of his blood —to be received by faith.” Romans 3:24-25.  God lays the guilt and punishment of our sins on his Son at the cross, and imputes to us the perfect righteousness of Christ – and so declares believers righteous in his sight (2 Cor 5:21). God therefore justly forgives us, i.e., bears and carries the crushing burden of our sinful rebellion against him. This gracious justifying work of God is provided to sinners who honestly acknowledge and confess their sins (Ps 32:5).

What is our response to such wonders!  “Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart” (32:11)!  In the joy of knowing you have been forgiven in Christ, love him and give your life wholly to Him in sacrificial service – loving the saints, and a lost world in need of the forgiveness of sins through the cross of Christ!

– John Faber