Today, I am reading and commenting on  Psalms 108-116.

The psalmist declares that he will praise God before the whole world.  He will not allow fear of what others think to keep him quiet, because he knows that God’s love and faithfulness exceed the animosity of God’s enemies.  Praise God and depend on His aid against those who declare themselves our enemies as a result.  Do not make the mistake of pandering for human help.  For without God’s aid, human help is worthless.  God will not remain silent when people repay us with evil for good and hatred for our friendship.  The psalmist then calls on God to do something interesting: he asked God to appoint an evil person to oppose his enemy.  The psalmist did so because he wanted his enemy’s suffering to equal his wickedness.  A good person would not do, not even to the wicked, that which the truly wicked deserve.  Even the psalmist was unwilling to do that which he felt his enemy deserved.  Let us avoid the actions which led the psalmist to call on God to deliver such misfortune, and let us not be the ones to visit such misfortune on others, even those who deserve it.

The psalmist contrasts himself with his arrogant enemy by calling himself poor and needy.  The psalmist refers to himself that way multiple times throughout the psalms, not because he lacked material wealth.  Rather, he recognized that before God we are all broken, poor, and needy: we need God, God does not need us.  Let us come before God with this same attitude, recognizing that we need God to save us, that we cannot save ourselves.  We must come before God with fear because we have no power before Him.  Once we humbly recognize that we can do nothing against Him, we begin to learn wisdom.  We gain understanding as we learn to follow His directions and commands.  As we follow His commands out of fear of Him, we learn of His love because of the delight doing so brings us.

Finally, I want to touch specifically on Psalm 115.  Here the psalmist declares that whatever good we do should not reflect glory onto us.  Instead, others should praise and honor God for whatever good they see in us.  The credit for whatever good you see in me does not belong to me. It belongs to God, because without Him, and His grace, I would be a poor excuse for a human being.  The psalmist goes on to point out something about the meaning of Genesis 1:27, where we are told that God created mankind in His own image, which I never thought of before.  We become a reflection of that which we worship.  The psalmist tells us that idols have eyes, but cannot see, ears, but cannot hear, hands, but cannot feel, and feet, but cannot walk.  He then tells us that those who worship them become like them.  We have been made in God’s image, and if we worship Him we will be transformed into His likeness.  Let us worship God so deeply and sincerely that others see Him when they look at us.  Then, no one will ask, “Where is their God?”  

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.