Summer in the Psalms - Week Three Gathering Place

Hi Girls - and welcome to our weekly, Summer in the Psalms Gathering Place! This week, it has been my prayer that God's revealing of Himself, through Psalm 30, would become a blessing to your own soul as much as it has to mine. This week has actually unfolded quite beautifully into a lovely time of retreat for me and I am receiving it with gratitude and joy!

OK, so, I just need to let you know that because I have been so full of the Lord's blessing through this Psalm, and because that blessing is still lying heavy upon this girl, I am finding it extremely difficult, at this moment, to be able to put into words all that is in my heart! All I can tell you is that after writing and deleting and writing and deleting (honestly, a little book lies somewhere in the world of "cyber-delete"), I am simply "ceasing to strive and know that HE IS GOD!" So-o-o, if what follows seems just a tad "without form", just know that it is as pure an expression as I can give you at this moment!

My first thoughts on Monday morning as I received this Psalm, centered around the superscription that is found at the very beginning. Superscription's usually reveal several things in the Psalm that follows it - who the writer is, the occasion of the Psalm, perhaps who it is for, or how it is to be musically accompanied, or even what kind of Psalm it is. Psalm 30's superscription reads, "A Psalm, a Song of Dedication of the House. A Psalm of David", so we know that David is the writer and that this Psalm is a song that was to be sung at the dedication of the House. And here is where my blessing began!

And yes, if any of you would like, we can discuss what 'dedication' to which 'house' this superscription is referring to - whether it is David's own house (2 Samuel 5:11), or the house of the Lord (2 Samuel 7:5; 1 Kings 6:1), or whether this Psalm written by David was given a superscription at a later date and used at the temple re-dedication after Antiochus Epiphanes destroyed the temple in 165 BC...

...however, what occurred to me right away is this - a house is a dwelling place, and as believer's we know that God Himself dwells in us (2 Corinthians 6:16), we are His house, His dwelling place, His temple where He dwells..."Or do you not know that your body is a temple (sanctuary, house) of the Holy Spirit Who is in you, Whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore, glorify God in your body."

And then v.1 continues with..."I will extol You, O LORD...". 'Extol' means to praise, to glorify, and we know from our previous studies that to glorify God means to give a correct opinion of, a correct estimate of Him - that everything in His house, in our bodies would give a correct opinion, a correct estimate of The God Who dwells there! And my next thought was this...if this Psalm is a song that was to be sung at the dedication of the House, (and it was), then this entire week is to be about 'me' re-dedicating 'this house', 'this temple' in which He dwells, back to the Lord!

In order to understand this Psalm, we need to understand v.6-9. It was in David's prosperity that he stated, in some form of arrogance, that he would 'never' be moved. This is such a snare for us as well, whether it is soul prosperity or whether it is circumstantial prosperity, there is the danger of becoming spiritually arrogant or spiritually sloppy - when we believe to some degree or other, that we are beyond that temptation or that sin; when we believe that our prosperity of the moment is a ticket from any future difficulties of life. This is where assurance can turn into self-assurance, where confidence can turn into conceit, where blessing can become a curse, forgetting ' from whence we came.'

In v. 1-5 we hear David praising God for lifting him up, healing him and not allowing his enemies to rejoice over him. Whenever I read through the Psalms and see references to 'enemies', very rarely do I think about people; the reason for this is because I know from Scripture that our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against those powers that are behind that flesh and blood! (Ephesians 6:12)

In Genesis 4 we hear God speaking to Cain and telling him that "If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at your door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it." Our enemies are spiritual in nature, but it is hard to remember that when flesh and blood is getting right into your face! Cain was given the truth by God, but he did not walk in it and ended up murdering his brother. The 'doing well' that God spoke to Cain about was not 'good works', it was the attitude of his heart towards God.

Just like Cain, David knew the displeasure of God in regard to the attitude of his heart ; the difference between the two men was that the displeasure of God caused David to become dismayed (v.7) and caused him to cry out to God in prayer (v.2,8); however, with Cain, the displeasure of God caused him to become angry and sullen, and although God reached out to Cain, there was no turning of Cain's heart towards God and with a hardened heart towards God, he murdered his brother.

But when David cried out to God, God healed him! We see David in v.5 telling us that God's anger, His displeasure is only for a moment, but that His favour is for a LIFETIME! Yes, David wept before God in the darkness of his night, but praised His Name, when that darkness turned to Light, when Morning came, there was a shout of joy that came from David! He goes on to say in v. 9 that there is no profit to God in David going down to the pit and turning into dust, much better to be saved and healed of God and declare His praise for all to hear! I laughed out loud when in v. 4 David exhorts all those who love God to go ahead and give thanks to His Holy Name - I just so get that! I mean, there is nothing quite like gathering with a bunch of God loving, Jesus praising people and just telling out loud to one another the goodness of God!

Another giggle I had was in v. 9 when David, in the throes of his praising and conversing with God says, ..."Will the dust praise you? Will it (dust) declare Your faithfulness?". I giggled because I was thinking that God formed man out of dust (Gen 2:7) and later on in Psalm 103:14 David himself writes that God "is mindful that we are but dust", and I was further thinking that isn't it just like God to breathe life into dust and then watch as that dust goes about praising and declaring His Name...and all to His glory? I wonder if God smiled as dusty David, caught up in the healing and saving grace of God, asked Him this supposedly rhetorical question regarding dust and it's implied inability to praise and give glory to God....(I'm just sayin'!)

Sheol and the pit (sounds like a bad children's book title doesn't it?) was something else that stood out to me. Sheol and the pit are two different places - Sheol is a place that is encountered on the way to the pit! In v. 3 we see that the LORD had brought David's soul up from Sheol so that he would not go down to the pit.

On this side of the cross I see it this way - we were all born in Sheol, in sin; for those of us that have been born again, God has delivered us from Sheol, from sin, so that we would not ultimately go down into the pit. Now there are a whole lot of pits that we can fall, jump or be pushed into in the course of our life, just like there are many sins that we can commit (1 John 1:8-10). The difference is, that for believers, sin does not characterize our lives in the habitual practice of it nor does the presence of an occasional pit characterize our ultimate destiny, the ultimate and final pit. No wonder David was telling the godly ones to sing praise to the Lord and give thanks to His Holy Name!

I'm thinking that I would like to leave v. 10-12 for further discussion in our Comment Cafe! They are just such good verses and I would really like to hear what you have to say - I am looking forward to meeting with you there and learning all that the LORD has shown you this week...