Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Your True Enemy | The Writings | Psalm 9

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to 10 minute Bible talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. One of the strange features of the Psalms is that there's small notes before the lyrics, the actual words of the text, begin. Sometimes they give the context of a song. David wrote this while he was fleeing from Saul. Or sometimes they tell musicians how to play the music.

Starting point is 00:00:30 Use stringed instruments for this one. But every now and then, they tell us the melody that the song. song is to be sung to. And Psalm 9 is one of those examples. David's musical instructions read this, for the director of music to the tune of the death of the sun, a Psalm of David. Did you catch the name of the tune? The death of a son. We don't know what this melody sounded like, but the name is jarring and awful. It must have been a dirge, a funeral song painted in a minor key, each stroke of the melody putting to music the worst thing any parent can imagine the death of a child in the ancient world when child death was frequent i must imagine that people knew this song by heart but i doubt that that ever made

Starting point is 00:01:16 it easy to sing i've had friends who've held the broken lifeless bodies of their infants in their hands i've had friends who've lost their teenagers to awful diseases their adult children to terrible accidents and I'll tell you, this experience changes you. It not only fills you with grief, it also deepens you. It reminds you never to take life for granted and to use every moment you have to love those you have and to thank God for those you have and to glorify him in your relationships. So when I imagine this melody, the death of a son, that's what I imagine came to the average ancient Israelites mind, all the lifeless children they'd seen.

Starting point is 00:01:56 This was a horrible melody, a horrible song, even though it was a necessary song, because in such moments all we can do is cry out to God in rage and pain and sadness. But the strange thing about this instruction is that it doesn't seem to match the lyrics that follow. Psalm 9 isn't about the death of a child. It's about a man rejoicing. He's rejoicing because God's preserved his life and poured ruin on his enemies. If you only had the words, you'd assume that it should be set to a jubilant tune. But it wasn't. It was set to the death of a son. As I read this psalm to you, I want you to imagine hearing it the same way the Israelites did, set to the saddest song that they knew. I want you to ask yourself, how does this tune, the death of a son, inform what's being said?

Starting point is 00:02:45 Let's pick up in verse one. I will give thanks to you, Yahweh, with all my heart. I will tell of all your wonderful deeds. I will be glad and rejoice in you. I will sing the praises of your name almost high. My enemies turn back. They stumble and perish before you. For you have upheld my right and my cause, sitting enthroned as the righteous judge. You have rebuked the nations and destroyed the wicked. You have blotted out their name forever and ever. Endless ruin has overtaken my enemies. You have uprooted their cities. Even the memory of them has perished. Yahweh reigns forever. He has established his throne for judgment. He rules the world in righteousness. He judges the peoples with equity. Yahweh is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble.

Starting point is 00:03:35 Those who know your name trust in you. For you, Yahweh, have never forsaken those who seek you. Sing the praises of Yahweh enthroned in Zion. Proclaim among the nations what he has done. For he who avenge his blood remembers. He does not ignore the cries of the afflicted. Yahweh, see how my enemies persecute me. Have mercy and lift me up from the gates of death that I may declare your praises in the gates of Daughter Zion and there rejoice in your salvation. The nations have fallen into the pit they have dug. Their feet are caught in the net they have hidden. Yahweh is known by his acts of justice. The wicked are ensnared by the work of their hands. The wicked go down to the realm of the dead. All the nations that forget God, but God will

Starting point is 00:04:22 will never forget the needy. The hope of the afflicted will never perish. Arise, Yahweh. Do not let mortals triumph. Let the nations be judged in your presence. Strike them with terror, Yahweh. Let the nations know they are only mortal. So what do you make of this psalm? Celebrating God's kingship and justice and the way he protects the afflicted and the oppressed and those who are being persecuted. What do you make of this celebratory song being set to the saddest? tune. Perhaps you could assume that the psalmist doesn't actually believe the good news of God's kingship. He doesn't believe it's good news at all. It's bad news. God never delivers. But of course, that hardly makes sense. It would mean the entire psalms a joke, a lie. I believe that the sadness

Starting point is 00:05:07 of the tomb points us towards something different, something deeper. It begs us to ask, who are our true enemies? Who are the true enemies of the poor, the weak and the oppressed? Who are David's true enemies when he was purses? pursued by people who wanted to murder him, who are the true enemies of every mortal? On the one hand, their enemies were flesh and blood, scammers and slavers, assassins, and soldiers. But the tune, the death of a son, it presses us deeper. Our truest enemy is death itself. And we know this because those flesh and blood enemies, they're only scary because they carry the threat of something more frightening in their hand. Death, the threat of murder of murder.

Starting point is 00:05:52 murder, the threat of destruction. Death is the greatest enemy. And every person who dies, well, every person who dies is a dead son or a dead daughter. And so the tune reminds us that there is a terrible enemy. While the lyrics speak in even deeper truth, there's also a good God who is full of justice, who turns back the great enemy of death, who routes him and sends him from once he came. There is a true God who is a king protecting his people from death and who will somehow make death come untrue. The original singers didn't know how God would do that, but we do. God did it by becoming a human, Jesus. He became the true king of Israel and the true king of the cosmos, and he made across his throne, dying upon it to send death to death, to give his people

Starting point is 00:06:42 the promise of resurrection and life everlasting. So whatever woes and tragedies have befallen you, or are befalling you right now you must not forget god said death to death and jesus said let there be life rejoice even as you mourn death does not have the final word the king rose to life and so will you

Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Your True Enemy | The Writings | Psalm 9

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.