A Prophetic Psalm

Psalm 22

¹My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me? Why do you remain so distant?Why do you ignore my cries for help?

²Every day I call to you, my God, but you do not answer. Every night you hear my voice, but I find no relief.

³Yet you are holy. The praises of Israel surround your throne.

⁴Our ancestors trusted in you, and you rescued them.

⁵You heard their cries for help and saved them. They put their trust in you and were never disappointed.

⁶But I am a worm and not a man. I am scorned and despised by all!

⁷Everyone who sees me mocks me. They sneer and shake their heads, saying,

⁸“Is this the one who relies on the LORD? Then let the LORD save him!If the LORD loves him so much, let the LORD rescue him!”

⁹Yet you brought me safely from my mother’s womb and led me to trust you when I was a nursing infant.

¹⁰I was thrust upon you at my birth. You have been my God from the moment I was born.

¹¹Do not stay so far from me, for trouble is near, and no one else can help me.

¹²My enemies surround me like a herd of bulls; fierce bulls of Bashan have hemmed me in!

¹³Like roaring lions attacking their prey, they come at me with open mouths.

¹⁴My life is poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.My heart is like wax, melting within me.

¹⁵My strength has dried up like sunbaked clay. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. You have laid me in the dust and left me for dead.

¹⁶My enemies surround me like a pack of dogs; an evil gang closes in on me. They have pierced my hands and feet.

¹⁷I can count every bone in my body. My enemies stare at me and gloat.

¹⁸They divide my clothes among themselves and throw dice for my garments. (Psalm 22:1-18, NLT)

The Daily DAVEotional

Usually when I read the psalms, I think of poetic arrangements that communicate lament or praise from the author. I often try to put myself in the shoes of the author and imagine similar circumstances I may have experienced. I seek to lament with the psalmist when he laments and rejoice and praise God with the psalmist when he praises God.

On the surface, Psalm 22 may look like a typical psalm of lament or anguish but upon deeper reflection, it turns out to be so much more. I don’t usually think of the Psalms as prophetic, but Psalm 22 provides a number of verses in which David’s experience ultimately foreshadows the experience of the Messiah.

In verse 1, for example, David utters the very words that are expressed by Jesus on the cross in Matthew 27:46, when he cried out, “My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?”

In verse 7, David’s words accurately describe events that occurred in Matthew 27:39-43, when soldiers mocked Jesus after his arrest and onlookers jeered at Him during His crucifixion.

In verses 14-16, David accurately describes details of a crucifixion, such as extreme thirst, asphyxiation and the trauma to the hands and feet. These verses are all the more amazing because crucifixion as a means of execution was not known until Roman times.

Finally, in verse 18, David’s description of clothes being divided and dispersed by the casting of lots is fulfilled in Matthew 27:35.

All of these events were fulfilled by people who would have had no knowledge of the prophecies concerning Jesus. Yet their actions were accurately described over 1000 years earlier by the very man through whose lineage the Messiah would emerge.

David is not fearful of sharing all his emotions when he pens his words. He is honest with God when he’s sad, lonely and angry. Yet he praises God in spite of his circumstances and in the case of this psalm, his words foreshadow the emergence of the Messiah, the one who ultimately experiences everything David is feeling as he writes those words, yet emerges victorious as the Savior and eternal King!

Reflection

What has been your experience in reading and reflecting on the Psalms? How have they helped you to connect to God on a deeper level?

What is your response to the verses in this Psalm that are Messianic in nature, as they predict events that the promised Messiah would endure?

How do these verses strengthen your faith in the Holy Scriptures as an accurate revelation from God?

Photo by Yannick Pulver on Unsplash

February 3, 2021

The Whip of God’s Anger!

Isaiah 10

⁵“Destruction is certain for Assyria, the whip of my anger. Its military power is a club in my hand. ⁶Assyria will enslave my people, who are a godless nation. It will plunder them, trampling them like dirt beneath its feet. ⁷But the king of Assyria will not know that it is I who sent him. He will merely think he is attacking my people as part of his plan to conquer the world. ⁸He will say, ‘Each of my princes will soon be a king, ruling a conquered land. ⁹We will destroy Calno just as we did Carchemish. Hamath will fall before us as Arpad did. And we will destroy Samaria just as we did Damascus. ¹⁰Yes, we have finished off many a kingdom whose gods were far greater than those in Jerusalem and Samaria. ¹¹So when we have defeated Samaria and her gods, we will destroy Jerusalem with hers.’”

¹²After the Lord has used the king of Assyria to accomplish his purposes in Jerusalem, he will turn against the king of Assyria and punish him—for he is proud and arrogant. ¹³He boasts, “By my own power and wisdom I have won these wars. By my own strength I have captured many lands, destroyed their kings, and carried off their treasures. ¹⁴By my greatness I have robbed their nests of riches and gathered up kingdoms as a farmer gathers eggs. No one can even flap a wing against me or utter a peep of protest.”

¹⁵Can the ax boast greater power than the person who uses it? Is the saw greater than the person who saws? Can a whip strike unless a hand is moving it? Can a cane walk by itself?

¹⁶Listen now, king of Assyria! Because of all your evil boasting, the Lord, the LORD Almighty, will send a plague among your proud troops, and a flaming fire will ignite your glory. ¹⁷The LORD, the Light of Israel and the Holy One, will be a flaming fire that will destroy them. In a single night he will burn those thorns and briers, the Assyrians. ¹⁸Assyria’s vast army is like a glorious forest, yet it will be destroyed. The LORD will completely destroy Assyria’s warriors, and they will waste away like sick people in a plague. ¹⁹Only a few from all that mighty army will survive—so few that a child could count them! (Isaiah 10:5-19, NLT)

Assyria is an ancient nation that at one time was THE biggest, baddest empire around.

As is typical of big, bad empires, they conquered other nations, took captives, plundered and slaughtered people and generally enforced their will wherever they went.

In this chapter of Isaiah, God describes the Assyrians as “the whip of my anger.” Its mighty military power is described by God as “a club in my hand.”

God explains that He is going to use the Assyrians as His tool to punish the Israelites, His people who have continually forsaken Him, despite many warnings about the consequences of abandoning the Lord for other gods.

After the Lord has used the Assyrians to accomplish His purposes, He explains that He will then punish the Assyrians.

Why would He punish the Assyrians if they were simply God’s tool to accomplish His plan of destruction against Israel?

Verses 12-15 give the answer. The reason Assyria will be punished is because of pride and arrogance. The Assyrian king won’t acknowledge that He is subordinate to God and that the Lord was simply using Him as His vessel of discipline. Instead, the Assyrian king will embrace the belief that everything he’s accomplished is because of his superior nature over those whom he’s subjugated.

The king of Assyria will essentially make himself out to be a god as he mentions all the gods he has conquered from the various lands he now controls.

God reminds the listener that Assyria is no different than an ax, a saw or a cane. They are all just instruments that are completely useless unless there is an active agent to employ the tool for its purpose.

Assyria, at one time, WAS the big bad empire bullying all the surrounding nations of the Ancient Near East. WAS! Somewhere between 612 and 605 BC, Assyria was destroyed. They were overtaken by the next big, bad empire – the Babylonians, but not before God fulfilled His promise of using the Assyrians to discipline and punish His people who had forsaken Him.

Reflection

Under what circumstances are you tempted to take credit for actions and outcomes that are ultimately orchestrated by God?

The Assyrians were supplanted by the Babylonians, who were supplanted by the Persians, who were supplanted by the Greeks, who were supplanted by the Romans, etc. Why do you suppose empires come and go? What conditions do you think would be necessary for an empire to last?

What do you think is the difference between pride/arrogance/boasting and confidence and self-assurance? How can you ensure that you’re confident in yourself without being boastful or proud?

Photo by Jamil Kabar on Unsplash

January 29, 2021

Who Knows?

¹¹The LORD has said to me in the strongest terms: “Do not think like everyone else does. ¹²Do not be afraid that some plan conceived behind closed doors will be the end of you. ¹³Do not fear anything except the LORD Almighty. He alone is the Holy One. If you fear him, you need fear nothing else. ¹⁴He will keep you safe. But to Israel and Judah he will be a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall. And for the people of Jerusalem he will be a trap that entangles them. ¹⁵Many of them will stumble and fall, never to rise again. Many will be captured.”

¹⁶I will write down all these things as a testimony of what the LORD will do. I will entrust it to my disciples, who will pass it down to future generations. ¹⁷I will wait for the LORD to help us, though he has turned away from the people of Israel. My only hope is in him. ¹⁸I and the children the LORD has given me have names that reveal the plans the LORD Almighty has for his people. ¹⁹So why are you trying to find out the future by consulting mediums and psychics? Do not listen to their whisperings and mutterings. Can the living find out the future from the dead? Why not ask your God?

²⁰“Check their predictions against my testimony,” says the LORD. “If their predictions are different from mine, it is because there is no light or truth in them. ²¹My people will be led away as captives, weary and hungry. And because they are hungry, they will rage and shake their fists at heaven and curse their king and their God. ²²Wherever they look, there will be trouble and anguish and dark despair. They will be thrown out into the darkness.” (Isaiah 8:11-22, NLT)

We are obsessed with the future. It seems like half of the movies and TV shows being released these days depict some sort of dystopian future.

Doomsday prophets seem to fill the airwaves and the media platforms with predictions of the earth’s and mankind’s demise.

My e-mail inbox is flooded with people who want me to pay them for financial advice because they claim to be better than others at predicting the future of the stock market or the technology sector, or the energy industry, or the….well, you get the picture.

The truth is that we are not that great at predicting the future. It’s interesting to watch older movies that are set in a future that is equivalent to our modern day. It’s never close to being right.

Sure, we can plan for the future and we can take all the relevant information at our disposal and make educated guesses about what we think will happen, but there are just too many variables for anyone to be able to make accurate predictions about the future with any degree of consistency.

This is why God, via the prophet Isaiah, asks the question in verse 19:

So why are you trying to find out the future by consulting mediums and psychics?

God is the only person who can tell the future, and that’s because He’s sovereign over everything, including time.

If you’re comparing track records, nobody even comes close as He’s 100% accurate.

Some of our obsession with the future is due to fear. We’re afraid of what might happen to us, to our loved ones and to our community. If this is you, listen again to these words from the prophet Isaiah to the people of God:

Do not be afraid that some plan conceived behind closed doors will be the end of you. Do not fear anything except the LORD Almighty. He alone is the Holy One. If you fear him, you need fear nothing else. He will keep you safe… (Isaiah 8:12-14a, NLT)

Reflection

When have you been tempted to rely on a psychic or medium for advice or information?

When you think of the future, what fears do you have?

What are some practical tips or ideas that will enable you to connect with the Lord and trust him for your future?

Photo by Dave Lowe