Daily Devotions

Psalm 120 - Calling on the Lord in distress Psalms 120-134 are grouped together into the "songs of ascents".  They relate to people in biblical times going up to the house of the Lord in Jerusalem.  They actually form five sets of three with the keynotes in each set being distress in the first, power in the second, and security in the third. In Psalm 120 it's clear the Psalmist crys out and the Lord answers.  He admits his need for God in a very personal way.  It's useful for us when we've been far from God and want to come back to him.  But equally useful as we live among people who think the world is theirs.  Christians are an annoying intrusion who must be removed or neutralised. In a sense we are aliens, as the New Testament teaches. But where we are, there is Jerusalem, and even if it is surrounded by the tents of Kedar, this is where we stay, and this is where we build. __ Please now read Psalm 120 by clicking here or in your own bibl...

Psalm 119:169-176 - Grace and Truth The psalmist knows he is in fact sinful and desperately needs God’s grace. Despite all the ways he goes on about loving the law in Psalm 119, there is also petition and repentance. The psalmist pleads for God’s salvation, and desires mercy. He knows that life—his life—is not perfect. In fact, the psalm ends in the key of repentance: “I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek your servant, for I do not forget your commandments”. So acknowledging sin and loving the law are fully compatible according to this psalm. The psalmist knows that God’s speech does not just condemn sinners. God also redeems them through speech. While the words of God—his rules and commandments and statues—tirelessly remind us of our sin, they also reveal God's promise to fully redeem his people from sin. That is why the psalmist can't stop writing. He knows that by the same speech of God he is both condemned and redeemed. Affliction under the law and love for the law ...

Psalm 119:161-168 - Loving the Law We are nearly there! William Ross says that if there were Seven Wonders of the Hebrew Bible, Psalm 119 would top the list. At 176 verses in length, it is the Mt. Everest of the Psalter. If you have ever unwittingly begun reading Psalm 119 and given up part way, don’t feel bad. No one has ever unwittingly climbed Mt. Everest, either. Poetry is tough going after all. So if you arrive at Psalm 119 unprepared to trek its mountainous four or five pages of parallelism, you might not make it in one go. Psalm 119 is basically a love poem to the law. This theme might sound strange at first, but the psalmist finds the law so outrageously loveable because it belongs to God. Since the law is distinctly God’s law, and comes right from his mouth, it is better than anything else, including heaps of treasure and delicious honey. The notion of “law,” however, goes much further than just the Ten Commandments. “The law” is a big, multi-sided idea for the writer o...

Psalm 119:153-160 - Loving God's Word Psalm 119 teaches us 5 steps to loving God's word: 1. Trusting the Word of God. If a believer doesn’t really regard the Word of God as being fully and entirely trustworthy, then none of the other steps below will follow. This is why the church needs to be quick to deal with the repeated criticisms of the Bible that so often permeate our culture. 2. Studying the Word of God. The Psalmist doesn’t just believe the Word, he is a student of the Word. This step ought to naturally for the follow the first one. If God’s Word really is true, then we ought to commit ourselves to being diligent studiers of the Word. We need to embrace it with our minds, as well as our hearts. 3. Using the Word of God. It’s one thing to believe and know the Word. It is another thing to rely on it. To look to it as a guide during the difficulties and challenges of life. To lean on it for encouragement and hope. This reminds us of a very important attribut...

Psalm 119:145-152 - Drawing near to God The two halves of this section of Psalm 119 correspond to James 4:8, ‘Draw near to God’ (145–148) ‘and he will draw near to you’. If your prayer life has lost life and needs reviving spiritually (as mine sadly often does), this passage was inspired in part with people like you and me in mind. There are 4 patterns of prayer for us to emulate to revive our prayer lives: 1. Pray Earnestly (v. 145-146) One of the ways to revive and breathe life into your prayer life is to recognise your desperate need for God’s help. If you do not have the same heart cry as this text, all the more reason to earnestly pray for earnestness itself in your heart. As you read Scripture, if your heart falls short of what you read, pray and plead with God to make that the cry of your heart too! 2. Pray Constantly (v. 147-148) The Psalmist’s life was not compartmentalised to a “time with God” and then time for everything else. Every part of life, day or night, he was God-c...

Psalm 119:137-144 - Righteous Lord, righteous word How is it that when the word gives light the Lord gives light? Psalm 119:137-144 says: Because the Lord perfectly and eternally expresses and conveys himself in his word. He is righteous and his word is right(eousness), His statutes are ‘commanded in righteousness’ and his own righteousness is everlasting. The ‘match’ between the two is perfect. Thus he who is righteous gives righteous commands. He and his word are one. So what the bible says God says. In modern times Christian faith's claim to possess a unique revelation of God has faced numerous challenges.   A central issue has been the role of the Bible. The nature of revelation in the gospel comes to us via human speech, but in the end is a ‘word from God’ and not of human enquiry. It is because God is gracious that he has chosen to disclose himself to us and even more gracious of him to use us as his instruments for revealing himself. All through redemption histo...

Psalm 119:129-136 - I see the light! The Psalmist's exhausted eyes could see only a gathering darkness in the previous section. Now in Psalm 119:129-136 a door opens on to light—the light of the word which, before the section ends, has become the light of the Lord. Yet the situation is the same: his own appreciation of the supernatural quality of the Lord’s word bracketed with his grief over the flouted word. In this section there are eight things to pray for as we seek to "make disciples": That they would know the wonder of the word of God and delight in obedience. (vs. 129) That they would move from simple truths to the unfolding light of God’s word. (vs. 130) That they would pant for more of God’s will every day. (vs. 131) That God would be gracious to them as they stand for His name with other believers. (vs. 132) That God would keep them steady in the truth and free from enslavement to sin. (vs. 133) That others plans against them would not keep them from o...

Psalm 119:121-128 - Pursuing Righteousness Amidst Suffering What do miserable Christians sing? We sing and pray in our suffering, knowing that, as Paul said, it is producing in us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. How do you embrace your suffering, when you have done what is just and right. Of course we know that God has given us the ultimate pledge of good—his very own Son. So we face suffering by going deeper into God's love, cherishing his gospel, hating every false way and all the while knowing that God’s salvation is coming. Psalm 119:121-128 says we need a plan for perilous times. The Psalmist sees that, notwithstanding his determination to be a light in the world, oppressive and arrogant people are becoming dominant—and how much longer he can hold out? The ‘bottom line’ is that only divine action will suffice. To say ‘I can do no more’ and ‘You must act’ is far from being an opt–out. The proper prayers of the Psalmist for personal safety morph into pr...

Psalm 119:113-120 - Singlemindedness, not compromise Tim Keller in his book " Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters " poses the question for us today: What is an idol?  His answer: It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give… An idol is whatever you look at and say, in your heart of hearts, “If I have that, then I’ll feel my life has meaning, then I'll know I have value, then I’ll feel significant and secure.” There are many ways to describe that kind of relationship to something, but perhaps the best one is worship. In 1 Kings 18:21 Elijah challenged the people of Israel in these words, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” The people of Israel were double-minded – they acknowledged the God of Israel while at...

Psalm 119:105-112 - A light to my path In the beginning, God spoke the world world into existence with these words: "Let there be light!". Everyone needs light. You need physical light to make sure you can see the world around you, to avoid running into obstacles. Through his Word, God wants to provide light for your mind, too. God wants to give light — his light — to every single person. He wants to light up our minds with the truth of who he is, what he's done, and his plans for the world. Reading and reflecting on God's word is the key to turning on that light. You have to soak your mind in the light. It isn’t losing your mind to the universe; it’s focusing it on the Word of God. When you do that, you bring light to your life. Psalm 119:105 says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” . The metaphor of a lamp conveys the idea of imparting understanding, namely, how to live in the ordinary events on the “path” of life. We don't have to ...

Psalm 119:97-104 - Loving God's Law There was once a military man who married his bride and then took off for war. To keep the fires of romance burning, he regularly wrote her love letters. One of them was lost, and he didn’t know that his wife never received it. Eventually he came home from war. Several decades later, his town was tearing down the old post office, and they discovered an old envelope in the paneling. They used old records to track down the intended recipient, and sent it to her. When she opened it and read her husband’s decades-old love letter, she said, “It was good to know that you loved me then, but it is even better to know that you still love me now.” God has written a love letter to the world, and it is our great privilege and opportunity and responsibility to tell the world about this letter, and about this Saviour.  There are three reasons the Psalmist says he loves God's law in Psalm 119:97-104: 1. The Word of God will make you wise...

Psalm 119:89-96 - The Eternal Word Don Carson highlights three themes that surface in Psalm 119:89-96. (1) God's revelatory word, that word that has been inscripturated (i.e., written down to become Scripture) is not something that God made up as he went along, as if he did not understand or could not predict exactly how things were going to pan out. Far from it: "Your word, O LORD, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens" (Ps. 119:89). It was always there, eternal, in his mind. That is one of the reasons why he can be trusted absolutely: he is never caught out, never surprised. Because God's word stands firm in the heaven, the psalmist can add, "Your faithfulness continues through all generations" (Ps. 119:90). (2) There is a connection between the word of revelation and the word of creation and of providence. Thus the first line of verse 90, "Your faithfulness continues through all generations," is tied to what precedes (end of v. 89) and to ...

Psalm 119:81-88 - The end of the tether In Tim Keller’s book, "Walking with God through Pain and Suffering" he says: “You don’t really know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.” “Christianity teaches that, contra fatalism, suffering is overwhelming; contra Buddhism, suffering is real; contra karma, suffering is often unfair; but contra secularism, suffering is meaningful. There is a purpose to it, and if faced rightly, it can drive us like a nail deep into the love of God and into more stability and spiritual power than you can imagine.” “While Christianity was able to agree with pagan writers that inordinate attachment to earthly goods can lead to unnecessary pain and grief, it also taught that the answer to this was not to love things less but to love God more than anything else. Only when our greatest love is God, a love that we cannot lose even in death, can we face all things with peace. Grief was not to be eliminated but seasoned and buoyed up with love...

Psalm 119:73-80 - Making suffering a testimony Billy Graham had an itinerant evangelists’ conference in Amsterdam in 1990. He tells the story of a Masai warrior showed up there who was an evangelist. One day Joseph, the Masai warrior, who was walking along one of these hot, dirty African roads, met someone who shared the gospel of Jesus Christ with him, and then and there, he accepted Jesus as Lord and Saviour. The power of the spirit began transforming his life, and he was filled with such excitement and joy that the first thing he wanted to do was return to his own village and there share the good news to the members of his own local tribe. Joseph began going from door to door telling everyone he met about the cross, suffering, and the salvation that it offered, expecting to see their faces light up the way his had. And to his amazement, the villagers not only didn’t care, they became violent. The men of the village seized him, held him to the ground while the women beat him wi...

Psalm 119:65-72 - Learning through affliction These verses say that God sends affliction to help us learn his word. How does that work? How does affliction help us learn and obey the word of God? There are innumerable answers, as there are innumerable experiences of this great mercy. According to John Piper there are five: 1. Affliction takes away the glibness of life and makes us more serious, so that our mindset is more in tune with the seriousness of God’s word. And mark this: There is not a single glib page in the book of God. 2. Affliction knocks worldly props out from under us and forces us to rely more on God, which brings us more in tune with the aim of the word. For the aim of the word is that we hope in God and trust him. “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” ( Romans 15:4 ). “These [things] are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Ch...

Psalm 119:57-64 - Delighting in the Lord Dick Lucas, Rector of St. Helen’s Bishopgate Church in London from 1961-1998, once told a story about a man who walks into the Metropolitan Museum of Art, goes into the Renaissance exhibition and, with those who are alongside him, he begins to give critical remarks of the works: what the artist should have done, what would have brought more colour to Giovanni Bellini’s “Madonna and Child,” how Jean Fouquet could have been more discreet, and on and on and on. And, of course, this was about as much as the curator could handle and he walked straight up to the man and said, “Sir, these works are not up for evaluation, you are.” It’s easy to come to the Bible with a skeptical eye. To ask, can we really trust it? Do you not see the audacity to come to the Bible with a critical eye, to judge whether you believe it’s true or not, whether it’s worthy of your attention or not? God has revealed Himself and His great salvation. It is not up for evaluation...

Psalm 119:49-56 - Cling to God's Word in Suffering Are you suffering right now? If your answer is no, this life guarantees that all of us will hurt in some degree before we meet the Lord. If your answer is yes, take heart; you are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who’ve known suffering in all its depths…and have endured.  Whether affliction has touched or devastated you, God promises in his Word to be your help, just as he did the psalmist. Psalm 119:49-56 gives us seven reasons to cling to Scripture in your suffering: 1. SCRIPTURE WILL GIVE YOU HOPE WHEN YOU FEEL HOPELESS. When circumstances seem hopeless, how do we not despair? We open our Bibles and behold God’s salvation plan from Genesis to Revelation. God speaks to us through Scripture so we may know the hope to which he has called us (Ephesians 1:18). And what is this hope? God raised Jesus from the dead, and with that same power, someday he will raise us to glory in his presence! 2. SCRIPTURE WILL RIGHT YOU...

Psalm 119:41-48 - Living and speaking God's word God's word is a truth for everyone, and they need to hear it. And yet, if you've ever spoken about Jesus in public – if you've ever dared to put the Bible into practice in your business life – you will probably have experienced some kind of criticism for doing so. That's the experience of the Psalmist in 119:41-48 – he's taunted for trusting God's word. We don't know what the circumstances were, but some people were taunting him for believing the Bible and for putting it into practice. Perhaps you need reassurance and a reason to be more open about the Bible.  Well, that's just what the Psalmist gives us here – reasons to be confident in God's word. We find that God's love and salvation come from his word. It is as we believe and trust God's promises that his love & salvation come to us.  And where do we find God's promises? In the Bible.  And we receive the benefits of this p...

Psalm 119:33-40 - Inner renewal Psalm 119:33-40 says that a spiritually divided heart is selfish.  Left to my own devices I am bent towards selfishness. When I argue with my spouse over what I want, so often I put my needs in front of theirs. So often when I am offended by the opinions of others, threatened by the status of a peer, or hesitant to give of my abundance to someone in need, I am selfish. I have strayed from God’s word and will and allowed my flesh to take over. My heart has been divided. I have failed to esteem others as better than myself (Philippians 2:3). A divided heart can have many forms. There is the insincere heart, in which what is said out loud is not matched by the inner attitude. There is the irresolute heart, which cannot fully commit itself. Even hearts regenerated by the Spirit and loving God retain much of their older willful resentment of his authority. The Psalmist's goal is not psychological healing for its own sake but for God's teaching a...

Psalm 119:25-32 - Time to pray Psalm 119:25-32 contains seven prayers. Prayer for renewal, for progress in knowledge, for strength in need, for grace, God's favour to the undeserving needy, and for a favourable outcome. The time of trouble is also a time of special commitment, to fix the mind on his wonderful word, to choose and set the heart on his truth, to meet trouble with obedience, and to make the effort. But the time of trouble is also a time of rest, for God will always be true to his word. Praying the Scriptures is so important in the Christian life. If we don’t form the habit of praying the Scriptures, our prayers will almost certainly degenerate into vain repetitions that eventually revolve entirely around our immediate private concerns, rather than God’s larger purposes. You can pray all day if you pray the Bible. Some people wonder how you can pray longer than five minutes, because they would lose things to pray for. But if you open the Bible, start reading it, a...

Psalm 119:17-24 - The Lord’s dependant. The verses belong together in pairs: verses 17-18 (acts of God enabling obedience) are matched by verses 21-22 (acts of God punishing disobedience and rewarding obedience); verses 19-20 (the psalmist as an alien on earth) are matched by verses 23-24 (the psalmist as an object of rebuke). Our passions do not make the life of holiness easy, neither, do our circumstances. The earth is an alien place; society contains those who desert the word, personal—even official—opposition is encountered. How are we to live the life of God in the courts of earth? First by requesting divine action. Do good, ‘make full provision for’. Open. In the ‘full provision’ sought, one thing is specified: the ability to understand the word in all its wonder. Secondly, by recognizing the realities of the situation and maintaining a true priority. Stranger, resident alien. Yet, notwithstanding the potential difficulties of such a life, it is not earthly comfort, pr...

Psalm 119:9-16 - Preaching the gospel to your heart In Psalm 119:9-16 the practical way forward in discipleship is to focus your deep longing's on to God’s word and on to the Lord himself. The case is posed of a young man, in a situation where the life of purity is under constant pressure. The possibility of a pure life depends on the direction of the will, the contents of mind and memory, the pre–occupations of the mouth, and of the emotions, and the subjects of thought. The outward life then arises from inner factors, all absorbed in the word but centred on the Lord in praise and instruction. The problem is outward, but the answer is inward. When the deliberate direction of your heart (the whole inner being) is Godward coupled with specific prayer, then the heart stored up with the word is the antidote to sin. The result: talking to oneself or to others, our conversation becomes filled with what God has spoken. And our commitments must be bathed in prayer. This what Je...

Psalm 119:1-8 - Good News NOT Good Advice Psalm 119 is the greatest example of the art of the alphabetic or ‘acrostic’ psalm. Reflecting on the "Word of God", it has a subject worthy of its skill. We do not know when it was composed and therefore cannot tell how much written material was intended when it speaks of the word of the Lord, or his commands, precepts and promises. It was the psalmist’s privilege to celebrate the fundamental reality that, however it came and in whatever form it existed, the word of God is central to the life of God’s people. Our God is a God who speaks and it is the possession of that verbal revelation which marks his people off from all others on earth. Obedience to the word of God is the key to life. Doubly blessed are those who live by his word with constancy and commitment —for it is his word and he intended it to be obeyed. Oh that I were like that —for then there would be no disappointed hopes but rather praise. Only with God’s help I will o...

Psalm 118 - Give thanks to the Lord Psalm 118 illustrates how God's purpose in the exodus from Egypt went beyond liberation to redemption, as God takes the former slaves to be ‘my people’. Its overall movement is a procession up to the temple gates, then through the gates to the altar. But as the procession moves along there is a dialogue. The psalmist recounts the story of his experiences through suffering, international hostility, and divine discipline up to the point where he asserts his right to enter the gates of righteousness, all the time bringing along with him a company of those who respond approvingly to his position of trust and endorse his victory in the name of the Lord. After v 19 the tone changes. So speaking about the Lord becomes speaking to the Lord. So the feel of the psalm suggests a real occasion, possibly an annual Passover celebration within the temple. Yet there are elements in the psalm looking beyond God’s remembered mercies, exceeding what the people ...

Psalm 117 - Tune my heart When Robert Robinson penned the words, “Come Thou Fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace,” he wasn’t speculating. He knew the reality of the human condition. We come from a long line of people who are restlessly prone to wander. The heart is a fickle thing and needs to be tuned regularly. Psalm 117 serves as a tuning of our hearts as it calls us to worship God. Psalm 117 says we worship because it is God’s idea.  This Psalm is God’s word, which means it is God who is speaking to his people, commanding, inviting, and exhorting us to praise him. This call is rooted in a firm commitment to both his glory and our joy. He has initiated and invited us into fellowship with him. The response in Psalm 117 implies a recognition of who God is — of his worth. God alone who is worthy to have our hearts, lips, and lives. As truth rings through our bones, we are reminded of the object of our worship. Worship, in the rhythm of revelation and prais...

Psalm 116 - God cares Psalm 116 reminds us of our need for the Lord’s help and gives us three reasons to call on the Lord in prayer. 1. Because we need help. Many of us hold up our accomplishments as though they are substantial and monumental, but when the reality of life hits you like a car, you realise that they were like tumbleweed—empty and hollow. If you haven’t been hit by life, you will. And then you will understand what the psalmist is saying here. In those difficult moments of life, those moments where the snares of death rise up and surround us, those moments where the tumbleweeds we have built our lives on collapse, we recognise the depth of our need for God. And in those moments, when we cry out to the Lord, he rescues us. He is not only willing to help; he has already done all that is necessary in Christ. Therefore, we call on him. 2. Because he cares about us The psalmist says he is going to keep his vows, as if he holds great power to keep them. His great powerful acco...

Psalm 115 - The Lord, blessed and blessing We can only guess at the setting for Psalm 115. Does v 2 imply that the people of God are in some disarray before the taunting world and ask the time–honoured question, ‘What about your good name?’ (1, cf. Jos. 7:9). More likely, but still only guesswork, a recent victory has been won, so credit might be given to the king or the army. The enemy, strong in its idols, may have taunted a people whose God is invisible. More likely still, the psalm is imaginative, dwelling on the occupation of Canaan: the battles were hard but the victory was the Lord’s, pagans were exposed as the devotees of dead gods and the Lord revealed as faithful and sovereign disposer of all.  At all events the psalm is as ‘alive’ as an act of worship as it is in its theology. Verses 4-8 are typical of the Old Testament view of idols and idolaters. On the one hand there is no spiritual force or reality behind the idol; it did not represent an invisible ‘god’; it had n...

Psalm 114 - The Sovereign Lord The message of Psalm 113 is not wishful thinking for Psalm 114 displays the Lord supreme over nations, identifying with the outcast, sovereign over creation, and providing for the needy. The facts of the exodus undergird the facts of revelation. When the Lord redeems, he comes to stay. The psalm goes beyond the fact that the Lord’s sanctuary (his ‘holy place’, where he dwells) was in Judah, rather, Judah, his people themselves, became the place where he lived (Eph. 2:19-22). For those whom he redeems he transforms. Natural marvels accompanied the exodus, at the Red Sea (Ex. 14:21ff), Jordan (Jos. 3:14ff) and Sinai (Ex. 19:16ff). Thus what the Lord begins, he completes—and the assurance that he can do so is his sovereign power as Creator whereby humanly unsurmountable barriers ‘flee’ before him. Questions hurry us forward to the climax. The simple reality of the Lord’s presence was sufficient to achieve his marvels of deliverance. In his mercy he i...

Psalm 113 - The Lord, exalted and exalting The theme of Psalm 113 is the universal and transcendent, Lord, exalted above heaven and earth, embracing all time, filling all space, over the nations, raising the poor and transforming the frustrated. The movement of thought is from the sovereignty which rules all, to the goodness which touches each. The Lord’s name (what he has revealed of himself - Exodus 3:15) excites the praise of his servants and is worthy of endless and universal acclaim. The threefold reference to the name in verses 1-3 is matched by a threefold statement of exaltedness in verses 4-6: exalted... heavens, enthroned, stoops... heavens. He is exalted over every people and every place, incomparably exalted, so transcendent that he must stoop even to see the heavens. His glory is the highest of all realities, his person is above all dignities, he rules over all creation. God is exalted and so he lifts, or ‘exalts’ the needy. He takes people in their helplessness (poo...

Psalm 112 - Blessed are those who fear the Lord We find Psalm 112  is another acrostic like Psalm 111 and they are clearly related. In fact Psalms 111 and 112 are like a mirror, the left hand panel being a portrait of the Lord and the right hand panel being a portrait of a believer.  In Psalm 112  we find the first eight verses are in pairs describing the character and expectations of the person of God. There are four aspects: individual and family, fortune and misfortune, generosity and security, threat and trust. The two verses that complete the psalm are a summary of the rest. The dominant thought with which Psalm 111 and 112 together leave us is that of the reflection of God's character that he looks for in the life of his people. The fear of the Lord is indeed the beginning of wisdom (Psalm 111:10). And so Psalm 112 points us back to Genesis and the creation of people in God's image (Gen 1:27) and forward to the hope of the new humanity 'like God in true...