Daily Bible Encouragement

Psalm 62:1-2 Truly my soul finds rest in God; my salvation comes from him.  Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I shall never be shaken. 2020 has been a year of great turmoil – our usual routines completely destroyed by Covid-19 lockdown, economies around the world decimated, huge protests challenging long-established injustice. Everything seems to be changing around us. Many...

Psalm 51:19 Then you will delight in the sacrifices of the righteous, in burnt offerings offered whole; then bulls will be offered on your altar. Some people just love trying to find parts of the Bible that appear to contradict each other, in an attempt to undermine our confidence that it is God’s perfect, infallible word. Those people would have a field day with Psalm 51! In verse 16 David clearl...

Psalm 51:18 May it please you to prosper Zion, to build up the walls of Jerusalem. For most of this psalm we've been listening to David relating to God individually. He's talking very personally about his sin, his need for forgiveness, his own individual faith. But in the final two verses we see that he doesn't consider his faith to be purely a private, individual matter. He is part of...

Psalm 51:16-17 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.  My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise. Even though it’s a familiar psalm, I still find these verses surprising. Why would David say 'you do not delight in sacrifice'? He can't mean that the whole temple sacrificial...

Psalm 51:14-15 Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, you who are God my Saviour, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.  Open my lips, Lord, and my mouth will declare your praise. Yesterday we saw that one aspect of David's response to being forgiven is a renewed commitment to telling others about his saviour. In today's verses we see a second response ... Singing God'...

Psalm 51:13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, so that sinners will turn back to you. Now that David has confessed his sin and asked for forgiveness, this next section (verses 13-17) shows us how a forgiven sinner responds to their forgiveness. Firstly, here in verse 13, he commits himself to sharing what he knows of God with others, so that they too can turn away from sin and be forgiven....

Psalm 51:12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. Back in verse 10, David asked God for a 'steadfast spirit". And perhaps you thought that that sounded a bit dreary. Steadfast can be the sort of word we associate with over-long walks in the rain: plodding along, one foot in front of the other, knowing you'll get there eventually but cert...

Psalm 51:11 Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Throughout the Psalms we keep coming across this idea of God turning his face away from sinners, or sending sinners away from him. And I keep saying that if we are trusting Jesus we need never be afraid that it will happen to us.  But how can we be sure? After all, it's too important just to take my word for it!  I...

Psalm 51:10 Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. David knows that deep down, in his heart, he is a sinner. His adultery and murder were not an accidental, out-of-character slip-up. They were the outworking of his lifelong sinful nature. And so he needs more than forgiveness. More than just having his sin wiped from God's record of his life. He needs a new n...

Psalm 51:9 Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. When we looked at Psalm 80 together we saw how 'God's face' symbolised his relationship with his people. The psalmist prayed that God's face would shine on them with favour. Many other psalms contain prayers for God not to 'hide his face' - in other words, not to withdraw from his people or reject them. Th...

Psalm 51:7-8 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. David has been totally honest about the seriousness of his sin. He has done evil. He is unclean before God. What's the solution? How can his sin be dealt with? Notice that he doesn't even consider trying to get rid of it...

Psalm 51:5-6 Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.  Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb; you taught me wisdom in that secret place. There's a strong similarity between the story of David's sin of adultery with Bathsheba, and Adam & Eve's sin in the Garden of Eden.  Both Adam and David have a God-given position as ruler and representati...

Psalm 51:4b so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge. We all want justice. We have an inner instinct that longs for right judgements and hates unfair decisions. We see it clearly in children, even from a very early age, railing against any perceived injustice: "it's not fair!" Yet we don't have a corresponding ability to judge rightly. We're very quick to...

Psalm 51:4a Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; As we saw yesterday, David recognises his own sin and calls it what it is. Today we see that he also understands WHY it is so serious. He knows that when he sins, he sins against God himself. If you're familiar with the Psalm, perhaps v.4 is no longer surprising. But as we slow down to think about it we see t...

Psalm 51:3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. I realise that many things about coronavirus have been terrible for many people, and I don’t want to make light of that in any way. Nevertheless, the Covid lockdown has also been useful, for me at least, in one way. It has shown me my sin more clearly! Perhaps the same is true for you. Being in close contact with the same peo...

Psalm 51:1-2 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.  Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. So far in these psalms we've thought a lot about how God's unfailing love is a help to us in times of trouble. We've seen psalmists facing direct assault from armed enemies, and the treachery of dec...

Psalm 80:19 Restore us, Lord God Almighty; make your face shine on us, that we may be saved. Here we see again the repeated chorus of this psalm - a prayer that God would restore his people to their special relationship with him, look favourably on them and save them. These words are familiar, but if we look back through the whole Psalm, we see that verses 3, 7 and 19, while very similar are not i...

Psalm 80:18 Then we will not turn away from you; revive us, and we will call on your name. How competent do you feel today? How able are you to do the things that you want or need to do? I imagine that some of us feel totally UNable today. We may be ill or tired or struggling with difficult circumstances, either temporary or permanent, that make us really aware of our own weaknesses and inabilitie...

Psalm 80:17 Let your hand rest on the man at your right hand, the son of man you have raised up for yourself. Yesterday's verse warned us that at God's rebuke his people perish. Fortunately, that's not the end of the story. In the final 3 verses of the psalm we discover that there is still the possibility of restoration. Instead of judgement, they could receive the blessing the palmist...

Psalm 80:16 our vine is cut down, it is burned with fire; at your rebuke your people perish. Have you ever experienced the frustration of giving an ineffective rebuke? Perhaps a family member, or friend, or colleague, says or does something that is clearly wrong or unacceptable, and you need them to know that it shouldn't ever happen again. Not simply because it annoyed you, but because what t...

Psalm 80:14-15 Return to us, God Almighty! Look down from heaven and see! Watch over this vine, the root your right hand has planted, the son you have raised up for yourself. I doubt know about you, but I'm finding this psalm quite surprising in places. Just when I think I know what the palmist is going to say next, he says the opposite! First we had the shock of discovering that the people&#3...

Psalm 80:8-13 You transplanted a vine from Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it.  You cleared the ground for it, and it took root and filled the land.  The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches.  Its branches reached as far as the Sea, its shoots as far as the River. Why have you broken down its walls so that all who pass by pick its grapes?  Boars f...

Psalm 80:7 Restore us, God Almighty; make your face shine on us, that we may be saved. Here we read again the repeated 'chorus' of this psalm, that we looked at back in v3. We reflected on the great blessing it is to have God turn his face towards us and smile on us. But alongside the encouragement, this verse also contains an uncomfortable truth. Why do we need God to smile on us? Not sim...

Psalm 80:6 You have made us an object of derision to our neighbours, and our enemies mock us. We saw yesterday that God's people's suffering at the time of this psalm was a direct consequence of them turning away from him. It's bad enough that their rebellion caused them to lose their land and its blessings. But here we see that they also lose their reputation. Their neighbours laugh a...

Psalm 80:4-5 How long, Lord God Almighty, will your anger smoulder against the prayers of your people?  You have fed them with the bread of tears; you have made them drink tears by the bowlful. Yesterday, we delighted in the idea of God turning his face towards us and shining his favour on us. But as today's verse make clear, that wasn't the palmist's experience. It's what he prays...