These sons of Korah must really be suffering. If the psalms they scribe are going to continue in the same vein, I’ll have nothing much to write about it myself.

Once again, the psalmist is questioning where God is in the midst of their suffering. Citing old tales of God’s goodness, wondering why God has now rejected and shamed them (v.9). The nations around them taunt them, deride them, simply making fun of them because the God of Israel that led them to victory against her enemies is now not evident, leaving Israel for free picking.

Now I can’t possibly know why God will allow such things to befall them even though Israel hasn’t done anything wrong.

²⁰ If we had forgotten the name of our God,
         Or stretched out our hands to a foreign god,
²¹ Would not God search this out?
         For He knows the secrets of the heart.
²² Yet for Your sake we are killed all day long;
         We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. (NKJV)

And right at the end, the Psalmist appeals to God’s unfailing love to save them.

²⁶ Rise up and help us;
       redeem us because of your unfailing love. (NIV)

The thing about love though is that one of its characteristic is long suffering (1 Cor 13:3-8). I do recognise I get the benefit of having the entire bible before me, whereas the Psalmist is still in the Old Testament, but (I speculate) maybe that’s what God is trying to develop in His children.

And with that I extrapolate that even for us, sometimes we also feel as if God isn’t there, withholding for us despite us not doing anything wrong. Maybe, just maybe God is developing the long suffering love to be patient and endure.

According to the footnotes in my bible, it says Psalm 42 and Psalm 43 are one Psalm in many Hebrew manuscripts. And reading through it you can see a similar theme flowing through it. Thus this should be read with Psalm 42 in mind as I continue on from it.

The theme that continues on from Psalm 42 is that of spiritual depression. The psalmist feels so far away from God, actually not just distant, but rejected.

² You are God my stronghold.
       Why have you rejected me?
       Why must I go about mourning,
       oppressed by the enemy? (NIV)

Despite knowing the truth that God is his strength, he still feels rejected. I think it’s very similar to our Christian life as well, especially if you know how Christianity works, the different truths and promises of God over your life. No matter how much you claim it or you know it, they still seem to be absent from your life, feeling rejected or cast off as the NKJV puts it.

What is needed is not the promises of God, but God Himself. His light and His truth to guide.

³ Send forth your light and your truth,
       let them guide me;
       let them bring me to your holy mountain,
       to the place where you dwell.

Guide you where? Back to His presence.

Last night, I heard something interesting about the curses of God. In the Hebrew language, when the bible talks about curses, it turns out not how I imagined it to be, and certainly the majority of Western thinking I believe. Before last night, my understanding of a curse was an active one, where God acted out, such as droughts and famine across the land.

Instead, a curse is simply the lack of God’s presence. That means, the mere fact that the land produces fruit is God’s blessing, but when God removes Himself from the picture, there are no fruits.

Or on a much more relevant example, how we are cursed because of man’s fall from God in the Garden of Eden. We are cursed from birth because we don’t have God in our life, He is removed from us. And the only way to overcome it is by inviting Him in, or turning on the metaphorical light in the metaphorical dark room that is our life without God.

That’s all we need, His light and truth to be our guide back to God. Overcoming our spiritual depression because He is my exceeding joy and delight (v.4; NKJV merged with NIV ).

I’m really fortunate to be living in Australia. Where life is a lot freer, safe and generally quite peaceful. I’m free to believe in whatever I want, and the worse I can suffer for my faith is the social stigma attach to Christianity resulting in at the very worse not having any friends. That’s okay.

But when you become an exile like the psalmist here, running away from his oppressors, and only having tears as his food (v.3), you know you got the shit end of the stick.

¹⁰ My bones suffer mortal agony
       as my foes taunt me,
       saying to me all day long,
       "Where is your God?" (NIV)

That is some serious pain and persecution by my reckoning, that even the scathing sarcasm of his foes is as painful as the breaking of bones. And like I said, I’m grateful once again that I have never been through such mortal agony before in my life.

On the continuum that is pain, though I’ve never suffered such hardship, pain is still there. The question now is what do you do to deal with the pain.

As I’ve been going through the psalms, my hesitations with many of the depressing prose is slowly diminishing, as I recognise that with God it’s alright to express such feelings. And the one thing that remains constant through it all is that despite those adverse circumstances of mortal agony, God is always praised, and hope is in Him.

¹¹ Why are you downcast, O my soul?
       Why so disturbed within me?
       Put your hope in God,
       for I will yet praise him,
       my Savior and my God.

We as a human being are tripartite, that is we are comprised of three parts – body, soul, spirit. I’ve  been learning a lot about this recently from a book titled “The Spiritual Man” by Watchman Nee. It’s such an insightful book into man’s makeup as God designed, that I’m barely a tenth through it and I’ve learnt so much already.

But let’s not deviate too much since this post is about Psalms, and not a book review. So what was it from Psalm 41 that struck that train of thought?

⁴ I said, “LORD, be merciful to me;
         Heal my soul, for I have sinned against You.” (NKJV)

David’s cry for his soul to be healed.

Maybe it’s just me, but normally when people are sick in the church, usually the common prayers are to heal the body of that sickness, or sometimes it’s a forgiveness of sins and a restoration of the relationship between God and person.

Yes, though the latter somewhat relates to David’s soul healing cry, it’s not quite as specific, and the implications of a healed soul are greater. And this is where I deviate slightly again into what I’ve learnt from Watchman Nee, and will apply it to this.

The soul was birthed when man’s spirit merged with his body. This occurred when God breath life into the dust. Thus the soul is man’s link from the physical to the spiritual, standing between the spirit and the body acting as a medium, and binding the two together. “The spirit can subdue the body through the medium of the soul, so that it will obey God; likewise the body through the soul can draw the spirit into loving the world.” (pg 26)

And so David’s cry for his soul to be healed, drives the point home that he wants his only medium to access the spiritual to be restored. It was damaged when he sinned, allowing his body to lead, when instead what’s most important is following the spirit.

So for me, I’m not worried about my body falling sick. I trust that if I ever even do get sick, God’s promises of healing are clearly stated in the bible. Whether my body is healed or not is not the point, despite the imperfections that befall my physical body, it would pain me more to be severed from God from a damaged soul.

Thus to ask God to heal your soul, is to choose to give up your life to Him, relinquishing your control over who and what you are, simply because you’re now guided by the spirit.

I must apologise that I’ve been slacking off on my posting. Dropping my consistency game. But it’s a new week! And what better way to start it than reading through more Psalms and delving into His word!

Just something really simple today.

³ He has put a new song in my mouth—
         Praise to our God;
         Many will see it and fear,
         And will trust in the LORD. (NKJV)

Extremely simple no?

I got two reasons why this verse struck me.

Firstly, when David said a new song was put in his mouth, to bring Praise to God, it’s not that many will hear, instead it’s many will see.

This to me, tells me that singing new songs, praising God, isn’t so much about what the song sounds like that will turn people’s trust to God. Rather it’s the life of the person behind the mouth that will cause people to fear and trust God. That is extremely reassuring to me, simply because I’m reminded again that is not my own skill to create this new song as aurally pleasing as possible, but the life behind it, my life, that is what will be the witness.

And the second reason flows on from that, that yesterday I had some words ministered over me first at my awesome church called FGAP by Rod Christensen, which went on the line that I would bring about a fresh sound, a prophetic sound with words and music. Pretty powerful I must say. Then later in the evening I went to visit my friend’s church in the train station that ministers to the lost and forgotten, the homeless (awesome ministry just by the way), and they had a guest speaker from South Africa who then prayed for me as well after the service and confirmed pretty much word for word what Rod prophesised over me.

And so this verse is like icing on the cake of those two prophecies for me. Reminding me that it’s my life that is most important, as people will see me as a praise witness for God.

Some of you more observant one would notice that I’ve taken a retrospect step back, breaking the sequential counting order that is to be writing on Psalm 40 now because it follows Psalm 39. However, I was reading through what I wrote for each psalm a couple nights ago and realised that I didn’t touch on this psalm. So thus I would like to fill that gap at this juncture.

One particular word struck me in this Psalm, and if you have not guessed it from my title, this word is ‘bribe’.

⁹ Do not gather my soul with sinners,
         Nor my life with bloodthirsty men,
¹⁰ In whose hands is a sinister scheme,
         And whose right hand is full of bribes. (NKJV)

Take note that it says a sinister scheme, that is singular and not plural. And to fulfil their sinister scheme, they would buy their way through, using whatever they have to achieve it, thus the bribe which is incidentally placed in their right hand.

Now you may think that I’m just nitpicking on a word. However, if you think about it, the right hand is often associated cross-culturally as the hand of power, the hand that does everything, the hand that gives, and the hand that receives. And to me, in this case a man who is in sin, attempts to buy his way through the world, to fulfil whatever scheme he has.

This scheme can be anything, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be bad. Yes it does say sinister, and you may wonder what’s so sinister about giving millions and millions of dollars to charity for good. Well, because we cannot purchase our way into heaven. So unless you have God’s lovingkindess before your eyes, and walking in His truth, the sad truth is that you are a sinister and in your hands you possess your own scheme that you yourself are trying to achieve.

For me, it’s much easier. I’ve already been bought and purchased by Jesus Christ when He died on the cross. I don’t have to worry about accomplishing my own desires by my own strength. All that I have in my hand is the purpose that which God has given me, and in my right hand are the gifts and talents that I’ve been blessed with to accomplish what the sinner has to bribe for.

This Psalm has been a tough nut to crack, trying to find something to write about. I spent a good few hours racking my brain yesterday before I needed to get on with my day hence why I decided to delay it till today. Heck I even wrote two drafts on slightly different things, but I didn’t like what I wrote.

But something struck my fancy this morning, that is the word vanity. The psalmist sings that:

⁵Behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee: verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity. Selah. (KJV)

Vanity can pretty much be found in the King James Version only, it was translated as vapour and breath in the NKJV and NIV respectively, and it was leading me down the wrong track. I was thinking of the vapour as something good. But instead understanding the word as vanity, allows me to recognise that David is driving the point home at how transient our lives on earth is.

The Chinese bible goes one step further and uses the word 虚 幻 and is translated as unreal (according to babelfish). Our very image, our beauty is just a facade that is consumed away like a moth (v11). So really there isn’t any point in busying ourselves with the world.

⁶ Surely every man walks about like a shadow;
         Surely they busy themselves in vain;
         He heaps up riches,
         And does not know who will gather them. (NKJV)

No one cares who you are, as you are but a shadow. If you go about trying to get rich, even if you think it’s for yourself, you can’t even be secure about it, because ultimately our life is still hollow, mere vanity.

⁷ “And now, Lord, what do I wait for?
         My hope is in You.

I don’t like punishment, and I don’t think any normal person does too.

When I was young, when I did wrong,I would usually eat a few strokes of the cane across the hand. I remember once my mother used the hanger because she couldn’t find the cane (quite likely that it was because I hid the cane).

But man the cane is nothing like that which David received from God.

¹ O LORD, do not rebuke me in Your wrath,
         Nor chasten me in Your hot displeasure!
² For Your arrows pierce me deeply,
         And Your hand presses me down.
³ There is no soundness in my flesh
         Because of Your anger,
         Nor any health in my bones
         Because of my sin. (NKJV)

I googled this and apparently Psalm 38 was written after David murdered Uriah, and he was experiencing God’s punishment. And quite simply, David was trying to petition with God to take him out of it, because it was getting too much for David to bear.

However one thing about David is that, despite the heavy punishment dealt to him, he doesn’t run away. Rather he wants to get closer to God. I remember some of my punishments when I was a young child, I would plan of ways to run away from home. David doesn’t.

²¹ Do not forsake me, O LORD;
         O my God, be not far from me!
²² Make haste to help me,
         O Lord, my salvation!

David pleads with God to not forsake him, but David himself did not forsake God despite the extenuating circumstances. When we fall into sin, how often do we try and runaway from God, spiraling into a vicious cycle? The fastest way out is not to forsake God and admit that you need His help.

I rather have God’s hand punish me than Him forsaking me.

I was out with my friend Billy late last night, and we were musing about Christians being discouraged and losing faith because they look around and see God-less people doing much better off than them. I admit that I myself also get distracted by that, wondering where my material riches are, heck I don’t just compare myself with non-Christians, I even compare myself to those in the church!

I speculated last night with Billy that it could be because we lose the fear of God, hence we let such issues creep into our thinking because our focus is not on Him anymore. But this Psalm goes one steps further in suggesting that the best way to overcome our insecurities about this is to take on an eternal perspective.

⁷ Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for Him;
         Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way,
         Because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass.
⁸ Cease from anger, and forsake wrath;
         Do not fret—it only causes harm. (NKJV)

This eternal perspective is to recognise that what we have here is merely temporal. It definitely is hard, especially when you see others that are significantly better off than you. But we got to maintain our focus on Him, ask yourself what do you place value in, for

¹⁶ A little that a righteous man has
Is better than the riches of many wicked.
¹⁷ For the arms of the wicked shall be broken,
         But the LORD upholds the righteous. (NKJV)

I really would much prefer having my arms and enjoying my little, then to have all the riches but not any means to use it!

I am greatly encouraged by the fact that as long as I can wait patiently for God’s timing, He will give unto me what he deems fit for my inheritance, and I truly recognise that it quite possibly will not be money, gold, silver etc. but instead the ‘abundance of peace’ (v11). And that is the currency of our eternal riches.

Wisdom is something I cherish a lot. The thing is, only God can grant you wisdom, but it is freely available to all who fear God.

¹ An oracle within my heart concerning the transgression of the wicked:
There is no fear of God before his eyes.
² For he flatters himself in his own eyes,
         When he finds out his iniquity and when he hates.
³ The words of his mouth are wickedness and deceit;
         He has ceased to be wise and to do good.
⁴ He devises wickedness on his bed;
         He sets himself in a way that is not good;
         He does not abhor evil. (NKJV, emphasis mine)

It seems to me from that line, that being wise is associated with doing good. They operate hand in hand. It also implies to me that wisdom is innate in all of us, and choosing to flatter ourselves before our own eyes (i.e. putting ourselves first instead of God) is not exercising wisdom. Not just being unwise, rather completely stop being wise.

And so for me the wise thing to do is really to fear God. Even if you want to cheapen God but comparing His rewards for those who fear him, it makes wise business sense to choose God. Look at this:

⁷ How precious is Your lovingkindness, O God!
         Therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Your wings.
⁸ They are abundantly satisfied with the fullness of Your house,
         And You give them drink from the river of Your pleasures.
⁹ For with You is the fountain of life;
         In Your light we see light. (NKJV)

I’ll definitely cease to be wise if I choose to put myself first, especially with promises like that!