Psalms 12-17

Psalms 12-17

            One of the things that many Christians find helpful in understanding the psalms is to understand Jesus as the most proper speaker. It’s a useful exercise in some cases to ask the question, “What would this sound like, what would this mean, on the lips of Jesus?” I say “in some cases,” because although people I respect a lot understand the psalms this way, I’m not sure it’s always as useful as it could be.

            I bring it up today, because in Psalm 12, I can see it. The psalmists opening lament that no one is faithful draws my mind to Jesus in Gethsemane where even His closest friends abandon Him to the cross. (Yes, Peter follows at a distance, but that’s a far cry from Peter’s earlier, “I will stand with you!”) And you can imagine the promise that the Lord would protect the plundered poor and the groaning needy on Jesus’ mind as the cross loomed in front of Him.

            The phrase, “How long?” appears some 17 times in 10 psalms, four times in the first two verses of Psalm 13 alone. Whether we’ve expressed it that way or not, I think it’s a question often on our minds: how long until the Lord finally and fully intervenes? How long until He sets everything to rights in fullness as He did in principle when Jesus dies and rose again. The last verse is important: “But I trust in your unfailing love.” And we New Testament believers have seen the fullness of that love in Jesus.

            Psalm 14 is well-known both for its famous opening line, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God,’” and for its use in Romans 3, where Paul adds it to the list of verses proving the point that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

            “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.” That’s a line I’ve often reflected on. Ministry has taken us to three congregations in two states, and we’ve been blessed by our relationships with them. Whatever boundaries the Lord has set on our lives, we are blesse there—if we but open out eye s to see it.