“I will praise You with my whole heart: Before the gods I will sing praises to You. I will worship toward Your holy temple, and praise Your name For Your loving kindness and Your truth; For You have magnified Your word above all Your name. In the day when I cried out, You answered me, And made me bold with strength in my soul…Though I walk in the midst of trouble, You will revive me; You will stretch out Your hand Against the wrath of my enemies, And Your right hand will save me. The Lord will perfect that which concerns me; Your mercy, O Lord, endures forever; Do not forsake the works of Your hands.” (Psalm 138:1-3, 7-8. NKJV) [Read Psalm 138]This psalm of thanksgiving is attributed to David. We may have trouble with the statement in verse 1: “Before the gods I will praise you.” But when we think that in Old Testament times, many of the nations against whom King David and other Israelite kings fought worshiped idols, it does not seem strange that this best-known of Israel’s kings would say that he praised the Lord God, even in the midst of idol worshipers. What would be relative to David’s stand in our own day? Examples are those who seek after the gods of pleasure to the exclusion of worshiping the one true God, or for those who depend on mammon—money—or think more of climbing the corporate ladder than of seeking God—do we not also have “other gods” in our midst? I recall church history and some of the great leaders of the Reformation who proclaimed One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism, One Scripture, standing firm on salvation through confession of Jesus Christ and faith in Him alone and in the inspired Word of God. In David’s age and even into our modern age when some in our day are proclaiming that there are more ways than one to faith in God and salvation, we must stand firm and faithful on the revealed Word of God. David was right when he proclaimed: “You have magnified Your Word above all Your name" (2b).
It is admirable to stand firm amidst unbelief and idolatry, and it takes God’s help to thus hold faithfully to the truth. This whole psalm is praise for answered prayer. Alton H. McEachern states (comments on Psalms, The Disciple’s Study Bible. Nashville: Holman, 1988, p. 740): “Answered prayer leads to prayers of thanks. Answered prayer not only helps the person but even more exalts God. Thanks leads us to invite the universe to join us in praise, to gain confidence of God’s help for the future, to catch a new vision of God’s purpose for us, and to petition God with renewed energy.” In courses I have both studied and taught on prayer, there has been encouragement to keep a prayer journal, dated, with one column stating the time of the prayer request and the second column giving the time noted when the prayer was answered. Such a journal can prompt us to pray consistently and rejoice with prayers of thanksgiving when our prayers are answered. How confidently David declared: “The Lord will perfect that which concerns me!” (v. 8). Oh! That we, as David, might approach our own prayers for the Lord’s loving kindness and goodness to the faithful with such confidence! And we can! God hears and answers us, even as He heard and answered David of old!
c Ethelene Dyer Jones; Monday, November 29, 2010
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