Psalms 9 – 11
Interesting that in Hebrew Psalms 9 & 10 are actually a “acrostic pome”, meaning each stanza begins with the next letter in the Alphabet. As you can easily see this is lost in English. Verse 9:1 opens with thanks to God:
All my heart will give thanks to You, Eternal One.
I will tell others about Your amazing works.
Notice that is one of the first things David says in most of his prayers. Maybe that should be integrated into our prayers. “The attitude of gratitude” is one of the main themes in many new age thoughts like “The Secret”. Unfortunately they express the gratitude to get things and not just to be thankful. It’s a fine line between loving God and loving stuff that gets blurred frequently in new age thinking.
Off on a tangent now, but think about how much of these “new age” ideas integrate much of the Bible and prayer. The focus or idea is to get us thinking we don’t need God. The Secret is dangerous in a way since it implies we are all like gods and can manifest our desires. True we tend to go where we are focused, but take your eyes off God and the tangents can get hairy.
Verse 10:2 often I pray this, but think it may be selfish:
Mean and haughty people hunt down the poor.
May they get caught up in their own wicked schemes.
Shouldn’t we ask for protection and also for their salvation? Love is the main key to Jesus’ teachings and is it “love” to wish harm on anyone? Unfortunately we are seeing this happen in full bore today. I honest look at the government and wonder if they are hunting down the poor. Think about how rich some are getting on the backs of the poor? Sure the poor are not “paying” for this, but they are being held down to continue the scheme. Take money from caring people use some for helping and the rest for and ever growing “administration”.
Let’s stop this tangent before it gets out of hand. The key to this verse is David did not like the acts of evil people and hoped they “got theirs”. I guess that is ok, if they cannot accept salvation. Either way I say, let God sort it out and we just “keep on keeping on”.
Verse 11:4 has some issue with the illustration:
But the Eternal has not moved; He remains in His holy temple.
He sits squarely on His heavenly throne.
He observes the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, examining us within and without,
exploring every fiber of our being.
The reason I have problems with things like this is we are making God in OUR image and not trying to make ourselves in HIS. Now God may reveal himself to us in this way since we would not comprehend all His glory. I think of the film Contact, where the scientist meets her father and it’s explained that she would be overwhelmed otherwise. Maybe that’s the same for us?
The only real danger I see is for non-believers who read this and then get confused when they hear God is all knowing and everywhere. We have to look at God in different ways as we grow in Jesus; otherwise we get stuck on the old man in the clouds and not His real glory!
How arrogant was that? Dissin’ David’s writings! I really think we need to be aware that most of these are “examples” of David’s faith and not Biblical truths. If not we can get into this contradiction spiral that atheists love to glom onto.