Category: Devotions

THURSDAY 25^th

Psalm 93

NIV – (v5) ‘Your statutes, LORD, stand firm; holiness adorns your house for endless days.’

ESV – (v5) ‘Your decrees are very trustworthy; holiness befits your house, O LORD, forevermore.’

This short psalm is a very definite declaration that the LORD reigns. It doesn’t matter how hard anyone or anything else, be it the principalities and powers of darkness, man himself, authorities, rulers of the earth, or anything else that has been created, nothing will ever overthrow Almighty God, he reigns forever. The devil tried but failed miserably, and we know what his end will be, how stupid he was to even attempt to arise and be greater than the one who is eternally the greatest, eternally the enthroned One.

The LORD reigns, this gives us a confidence assurance that what he has declared or decreed will always come to pass, for as the eternally enthroned One he will be faithful in all that he says and does, for the psalmist concludes in his final statement that ‘Your decrees are very trustworthy’ The Lord is a King whom we can depend upon, he is the King who is trustworthy, he is the King whom we can trust upon confidently.

For us who have placed our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ we have confidence in all that God has promised for those who love him, but for those who have not placed their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, because God will always do what he has decreed, the news is not good, for the day is coming when all who have not come to acknowledge Jesus as Saviour, and as such will also have refused to acknowledge God as King will be banished from his presence. It is straight forward, accept the rule of God now and enjoy his presence for ever or fail to acknowledge his rule now and be banished forever.

Because Gods decrees are very trustworthy there is no reason to doubt him, and there is certainly no reason to ignore, for you ignore at your peril. God has provided a means for eternal redemption, and it is through the Lord Jesus Christ and we while are here for the short space of time that we have in this world we need to make a determined decision to surrender our lives over to him. To allow the Eternal King to be our personal King. He reigns, he is robed in majesty, will you allow him to reign in your life.

WEDNESDAY 24^th

Psalm 92

NIV – ‘It is good to praise the LORD and make music to your name, O Most High, proclaiming your love in the morning and your faithfulness at night’

ESV – ‘It is good to give thanks to the LORD, to sing praises to your name, O Most High; to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night’

The psalmist continues to say that it is also good to do these things, give thanks, praise the LORD and to sing with the accompaniment of music, he mentions the lute, harp and the lyre and then continues with ‘For you, O LORD, have made me glad by your works; at the work of your hands I sing for joy.’ The psalmist had contemplated the wonder of all that God had done for him, and continues ‘How great are your works, O LORD! Your thoughts are very deep!’

What were the works that the psalmist was thinking about? It may have been the work of creation, and that certainly was great, but I wonder if he was thinking more in line with God’s working towards his people, Israel, the way that he had called them, delivered them and had continue to lead them and to provide for them and protect them, and on a personal level he may have been contemplating the way that God had worked in his own life, for he recognises the personal things that God had done for him in verses 10-11.

The heading above the psalm says that it is a song for the Sabbath, and for us it can become a song for us, not on the Jewish Sabbath which was a Saturday, but on what is called the first day of the week, the Sunday which has become the Sabbath for the believer, we know that it is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, to sing praise and to declare God’s steadfast love as we also remember the work of his hands, and for us in particular it is his hand working out his wonderful plan of redemption, the work of the Cross which has given to us salvation, and as a result we can give thanks for his work in our own lives personally as he has called us by his grace and is keeping us by his grace. God is good in all his ways, and he is worthy of all our praise and adoration, his work towards us in and through the Cross should cause us to want to give thanks and sing praises with grateful hearts. And what a joy to be able to do it with music.

FRIDAY 12th

Psalm 91

NIV (vv3-4) – ‘Surely he will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.’

ESV (vv3-4) – ‘For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.’

You will remember a few days we pondered upon the thought that although God is Spirit we often see him described in Scripture as though he has body parts, today we see in this psalm other ways of describing God, in verses 1-2 he is described as if he is made of bricks – a refuge and a fortress – and in verses 3-4 it is as if he is a chicken, ‘under his wings you will find refuge’ But rather than let these pictures puzzle us we should allow them to be a means of strength and comfort to us for they remind us that God is both our protector and protection at the same time in times of trouble!

We used to have hens when I was growing up on the farm, I had my own hen called Ginge (short for ginger) because that was the colour of her feathers, and every so often she would have a brood of chicks, sometimes quite a few at the same time, and when Ginge was out and about with the chickens scratching about for food, if you appeared near her, she would suddenly allow all of the chicks to run underneath her and she would cover them, protect them from what she perceived to be a threat to them.

What a beautiful picture the psalmist is portraying for us here in this psalm, as we are scurrying about as God’s children doing whatever it is we need to do here during our sojourn in this world, God is like a hen, he is near us, he is watching over us, and as soon as God sees trouble, he lifts his wings and he allows us to run, to allow us to find shelter and protection under his feathers! What a safe place to be found, under God’s protection, knowing that in that place of security he is going to fight our battles for us.

Now, with whatever way you visualise God today, be it as a castle or fort or as a chicken with its wings outspread, run into him today, if you know you are mid battle come into the protection he offers you, for he is willing to deliver us from the snare of the fowler.

I will be taking a short break from today with the devotions while we take a holiday, returning with them on Wednesday November 24^th.

THURSDAY 11th

Psalm 91

NIV (vv1-2) – ‘Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”’

ESV (vv1-2) – ‘He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the LORD, “My refuge and my fortress,  my God, in whom I trust.”’

The psalm before us today is one of the most familiar in the book of psalms, even now I can remember this being read by a certain very elderly lady in the Church in Hereford when I was just a young child, she would have been one of many in the local community at that time who had gone through two world wars and who would have used this psalm possibly many times as they sought the Lord’s protection during both wars.

Today is the day in which we remember those who served in both world wars and other conflicts since, and we thank God for all who have given so much so that we have been able to live in freedom from those who would otherwise have ruled with a rod of iron. Let us not take this freedom for granted but continue to pray for those in authority that they will govern wisely and righteously. While we remember those who fought and gave their lives, pray also for those who are not so fortunate as ourselves and are living under cruel regimes that seek to repress them and especially our Christian brothers and sisters who cannot safely live out their faith in the public square. Let us also give thanks from grateful hearts for the One who came to fight the greatest battle of all and who conquered victoriously over the devil, and over sin and over death. He is Jesus, the King of kings, and the Lord of lords. We are constantly reminded that so long as time continues as it is there will continue to be trouble, strife and conflict, but the day is coming when King Jesus will reign, he will subdue all his enemies, and once the final and greatest battles upon the earth has been fought, he will reign forever and ever and all that have opposed him will be dealt with, with a sure finality as they are cast into the lake of fire, the place reserved for the devil and his angels.  

Read through this palm today, meditate upon it and I will return to it tomorrow.

WEDNESDAY 10th

Psalm 90

NIV (v3) – ‘You turn people back to dust, saying, “Return to dust, you mortals.”’

ESV (v3) – ‘You return man to dust and say, “Return, O children of man!”’

Our psalm today is a prayer that Moses, the man of God wrote, in this psalm he teaches us some important lessons that remind us of how fragile life is, that our time here on earth is short and therefore we need to make it count. For example, in verse 3 he says ‘you return man to dust’ something that we read again in Ecclesiastes 3:20 ‘All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return.’ In verse 10 he says that ‘the years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty’, because of his contemplation concerning life, he then says in verse 12, ‘teach us to number our days’ and in verse 15 ‘make us glad’ in other words he realised the importance of making what time we have count, not only to make it worthwhile but also to make it purposeful.

At first, taking the phrase ‘you return man to dust’ and ‘all go to one place’ it would seem that it is all about being here today and gone tomorrow, returning to dust ends it all, there is nothing afterwards, but in verse 12, he not only says ‘teach us to number our days’ but also ‘that we may get a heart of wisdom’, is this a prayer that he may look beyond what seems to be at face value to eternal values, to look beyond what seems to be temporal and discover there is that which is also eternal? When we all stop and contemplate life, its fragility, and its fleetingness, we must ask the question is this all there is? There must be more than just being born, living a few years, and then dying, the end. Thankfully as we look at what others have learned in their walk with God, we discover there is more, much, much, more as we consider the provision of God toward mankind in salvation. The returning to dust is but temporal, it has come about because of sin, but Jesus in coming into this world has undone, or destroyed the curse of death so that for all who trust in him there will be a glorious resurrection, from the dust of the earth to the glory of God’s presence. Job records for us that he knew that he was going to go to the dust, but he had such a strong faith in the LORD God that he also knew it would not be the end, he says, ‘FOR I KNOW that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself . . .’ (Job 19:25-36) Imagine this, even before the Redeemer came, even before the prophet Zechariah had prophesied that the Redeemer would stand again at mount Olivet, Job knew!

It is simply my responsibility today to remind every reader of this devotion, that yes we will all die, we will all return to the dust, but there is going to be a resurrection, for those who have come to believe and accept this wonderful Redeemer it will be to life everlasting, but sadly for those who have rejected the Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ it will be a resurrection to eternity in the lake of fire, eternally cut off from the presence of God.

Choose Jesus today, accept him as your Lord and Saviour, allow him to become the Lord in your life and then like Job you to will be able to say ‘FOR I KNOW that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself . . .’

TUESDAY 9th

Psalm 89

NIV (v52) – ‘Praise be to the LORD forever! Amen and Amen.’

ESV (v52) – ‘Blessed be the LORD forever! Amen and Amen.’

One more visit to this psalm, and the final verse, it is simply a declaration that because of who God is and for all that he has done, may he blessed forever, with a double amen, so be it, so be it.

When we consider all that God has done, ponder on these few aspects, firstly in his creative work secondly in his recreating work, thirdly in his constant care, fourthly with his compassionate love and sixthly in his personal work in our own hearts and lives, surely, we cry out with the psalmist, Blessed be the LORD forever! Amen and Amen, or as the NIV puts it ‘Praise be to the LORD forever! Amen and Amen.

Wherever you are today. Make some time to worship the Lord, and blessing him for all he has done, thank him for his goodness toward you, as David says in a later psalm, ‘Bless the LORD, O my soul and all that is within me, bless his holy name!’ Psalm 103:1.

I’ll praise my Maker while I’ve breath,

and when my voice is lost in death,

praise shall employ my nobler powers;

my days of praise shall ne’er be past,

while life, and thought, and being last,

or immortality endures.

Why should I make a man my trust?

Princes must die and turn to dust;

vain is the help of flesh and blood:

their breath departs, their pomp, and power,

and thoughts, all vanish in an hour,

nor can they make their promise good.

Happy the man whose hopes rely

on Israel’s God: he made the sky,

and earth, and seas, with all their train;

his truth for ever stands secure,

he saves th’oppressed, he feeds the poor,

and none shall find his promise vain.

The Lord has eyes to give the blind;

the Lord supports the sinking mind;

he sends the laboring conscience peace;

he helps the stranger in distress,

the widow, and the fatherless,

and grants the prisoner sweet release.

He loves his saints, he knows them well,

but turns the wicked down to hell;

thy God, O Zion! ever reigns:

Let every tongue, let every age,

in this exalted work engage;

praise him in everlasting strains.

I’ll praise him while he lends me breath,

and when my voice is lost in death,

praise shall employ my nobler powers;

my days of praise shall ne’er be past,

while life, and thought, and being last,

or immortality endures.

^{Isaac Watts}

MONDAY 8th

Psalm 89

NIV (v13) – ‘Your arm is endowed with power; your hand is strong, your right hand exalted.’

ESV (v13) – ‘You have a mighty arm; strong is your hand, high your right hand.’

A few days before I was preparing this devotion, I had been thinking about the whole concept that God is Spirit and yet we read so often through Scripture of him possessing what we would consider as bodily parts. Today’s text is one of them using the words arm and hand. How do we reconcile this? The simple answer is that God through the inspiration of Scripture shows himself to us in ways that we as human beings can understand, he is a powerful, living God, who acts in many ways toward that which he has created, and the easiest way for us to understand it is for God to use human concepts. We know that God speaks, for this was the way in which he created the universe, ‘God said, ‘Let there be . . . and there was’ We know that he hears, that is why we come to him in prayer, we know that he can see, for we are told that the ‘eyes of the Lord roam the earth’, and in our text today we see that his arm is endowed with power, his hand is strong and his right hand is exalted. (v15 mentions the face of God)

Although God is Spirit the way in which he has revealed himself to us is comforting and helpful, for as a result we know that God is interested in us, men, and women whom he created in his own image. He is concerned about you; he cares for you and me and as a result he expresses himself in ways for us to be able to understand and embrace.

Isn’t it comforting to know that God watches over you and me, to know that he is listening out to hear us when we cry out to him, and that his arm is strong enough to save us and to deliver us, he is always standing (that gives the imagery of legs and feet!) ready to stoop down, (that speaks of a back and knees that will bend) to pick us up into his everlasting arms. What an amazing God, Spirit yes, but with the ability to be all that he needs to be to reach out to all he has created, to reach out and save, to reach out and deliver. This is our God, contrastingly, the gods of this world have eyes but cannot see, ears but cannot hear, hands but cannot pick up, arms but cannot save,  . . .’

FRIDAY 5th

Psalm 89

NIV (v1) – ‘I will sing of the LORD’s great love forever; with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known through all generations.’

ESV (v1) – ‘I will sing of the steadfast love of the LORD, forever; with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations.’

Psalm 89 is the last of the psalms in what is termed as Book Three of the psalms, it is quite a lengthy psalm with 52 verses and commences with a declaration of the steadfast love of the Lord and ends by saying ‘Blessed be the LORD forever! Amen and amen’.

I will just touch on a few key verses as we look briefly at this chapter. Firstly, from verse one, the psalmist is saying that ‘I will sing of the steadfast love of the LORD, forever; with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations.’ His confidence was based upon his own personal experience of the steadfast love and faithfulness of the LORD. He had experienced God’s steadfast love, he had experienced God’s faithfulness and he wanted to make it known, he would sing about it, with his mouth he would make it known. His own experience was an undeniable testimony, whatever man or woman might say about God, even if they choose to deny God, they could not deny him of his own personal experience. And we who have come to know the Lord Jesus Christ and have known of his hand upon our lives in so many different ways have a testimony that is real and powerful, and all those who would seek to deny God and his saving grace cannot take our own personal experience from us, and just like the psalmist, it should also be our desire to ‘sing of the steadfast love of the LORD and with our mouths make known his faithfulness.’

In verses 5-13 he is looking at how awesome God is and to sum it up is saying there is no one nor nothing that can be compared to the LORD God, in verse 5 he says ‘Let the heavens praise your wonders, O LORD, your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones!’ the call is for the angelic beings who day after day and night after night have constantly seen the faithfulness of God to praise him, and yet the wonder is that the angelic host do not know the wonder that we know of what it is to have been saved by the amazing grace of God. In 1 Peter as I have been doing our Bible studies from this epistle, I highlighted the verses in chapter one which tell us that the angels long to look into the good news which has been preached to us, to them it is an awesome thing that God should send his only Son into the world to redeem lost mankind, and we are the ones who have received the good news, we have responded by faith to the grace of God in our hearts and lives, therefore we have so much more to give God thanks for than even the heavens and the angels in heaven, so as the instruction goes out to the heavens to praise the Lord, in response to God’s faithfulness to the angelic beings, may our praise also ring out in response to Gods faithfulness in reaching out to redeem fallen humanity. He deserves the glory, and the honour and the praise that’s due his name, for he is great, he does miracles that are great, there is no one else like him.

We will return to this same chapter in our next devotion.

THURSDAY 4th

Psalm 88

NIV (v1) – ‘LORD, you are the God who saves me; day and night I cry out to you.’

ESV (v1) – ‘O LORD, God of my salvation, I cry out day and night before you.’

The heading over this psalm in my ESV says ‘I cry out day and night before you’ it is a psalm in which the psalmist is in despair and as a result he is calling out to for God to him. I don’t want to highlight his troubles, rather to remind us that we can learn from him, that the way is available for us also to come before God night and day when we are in trouble and in distress. Now of course we shouldn’t just wait for those moments to come before God, it should already be something we do as his children, but there are those times when things come pressing upon us, seeming to crush us and fill us with anxiety or care and we need to know with confidence that it doesn’t matter what the need is, it doesn’t matter what time of the day it may be, it doesn’t matter how rock bottom we may be feeling, we can come before God and make our need known unto him, we can cry out to the Lord with our voice and know with confidence that he will hear us from out of his dwelling place.

Note the times when the psalmist prayed – v1 ‘I cry out day and night’ v9 ‘every day I call upon you, O LORD; I spread out my hands to you’,  v13 ‘But, I, O LORD, cry to you; in the morning my prayer comes before you’, it was a perpetual plea, it was as if the psalmist had decided that he was not going to give up until he knew that God had not only heard him but also answered him. In Luke 18 we are told that Jesus taught a parable about a persistent widow, the purpose was that the hearers including us who can read the parable today ‘that they ought always to pray and not lose heart’.

May we also learn the lesson of perpetual prayer, persisting without giving up, not just concerning our personal circumstances, but also in our praying for others, praying for the needs of the nation, and more importantly in our praying for the salvation of souls. In the words of Jesus himself, in Luke 9:38 ‘therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.’

WEDNESDAY 3rd

Psalm 87

NIV (v3) – ‘Glorious things are said of you, city of God . . .’

ESV (v3) – ‘Glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God. Selah’

This short psalm is simply a psalm about Zion, the city of God. Perhaps familiar to us through the words of the hymn based around it, ‘Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion city of our God . . .’ Where is Zion? or to which city is it referring? The answer is the city of Jerusalem, the city in which God has chosen to dwell and the city which he loves, it was earlier known as Salem in Genesis 14:18.

One bible scholar says about Jerusalem, ‘No city has been coveted after, fought over, besieged, destroyed, and rebuilt as often as Jerusalem.’^*  It is the city in which the very birth of Christianity took place, for just outside the city wall, our Lord and Saviour was crucified, it was in an upper room on the day of Pentecost where the Holy Spirit fell upon and filled the waiting disciples, it was from Jerusalem that the missionary enterprise of this new body of believers began to spread, fulfilling the prophetic words of Jesus that the gospel would go from Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

It is to Jerusalem that one day the Lord Jesus will return in power and glory to set up, establish his throne and he will reign for a thousand years, (Zechariah 14:4, Acts 1:10-11) the prophet Isaiah prophesied the following about the future of Jerusalem in Isaiah 65, in verse 18 it says ‘I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness’  it is after this very same city that the new city will be named where we will live eternally with our Saviour, the new Jerusalem. (Revelation 21:2) In Scripture, we are asked to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, we also should pray for its people that God will bless the city and the nation, and   particular that many Jews will yet respond to the glorious news of the gospel, realising that it was from outside their beautiful city that the way has been made available in what Christ Jesus accomplished for us all, both Jew and Gentile to have access to the true and living God who is the God of their forefathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

^{* J. Flanigan – Psalms}