Today, I am reading and commenting on Psalms 18-22.
I love both the message of Psalm 18 and the imagery which the psalmist uses. First, the imagery (I am just going to pull a few phrases out and paraphrase them together):
The chords of death entangled me, so I called to the Lord in my distress. He heard my voice, the earth trembled and quaked because He was angry. Smoke rose from His nostrils, fire came from His mouth. He parted the heavens and came down. Out of His presence clouds advanced with hailstones and lightning. He reached down from on high, took hold of me and pulled me out of deep waters.
There is much more to this, and the psalmist says it so much better, but that imagery relates the power God will use to deliver those who put their trust in Him. The psalmist goes on to point out that putting our faith in God is more than just calling on Him when things go bad. God is faithful to those who faithfully follow Him, He is blameless to those who strive to be blameless, He is pure to those who seek to be pure, but to those who think they are clever enough to find loopholes in His Law, He will demonstrate that He is no less clever.
When I started writing the above I intended to write about how the psalmist tells us in Psalm 19 about how the Universe testifies to God’s greatness, and a bit about Psalm 22, which Jesus cited while He hung on the cross, but the above seems so complete I will stop here and leave those for you to read and meditate on your own.
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
3 They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
4 Yet their voice[h] goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
Keep your servant also from willful sins;
may they not rule over me.
Some trust in chariots and some in horses,
but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.
I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.