The Belt of Truth

The final 5 psalms form a 5 part Hallelujah by beginning and ending with that very word: “Praise the Lord! One part for each book of the Psalter.  Psalm 146 reminds us that our life is precarious. And it is a praise to God. With that limited view of life in mind, where do we find hope to praise God forever?  Our help cannot be found with the powerful or any force on this earth. Only with the LORD...

David concludes the psalter in Psalm 145 with an acrostic Doxology to God.  David has come through cross and trial to the side of the resurrection. And we are promised much of the same through our Lord Jesus David rounds through all the times God has saved or delivered him and this causes us to think back on God’s deeds toward us in Christ. The psalm ends with a praise of God where on all flesh wi...

Psalm 144 is David pulling from many of the prayers we have heard in the psalter to ties ideas and themes together.  We note that many of the psalms pull us into a conflict. We have enemies as Christians. Sin, death, and the power of the devil. And these are no joking matters. They seek to destroy us.  And so we call upon God to rescue and save us. To stoop down from on high and make his judgment...

Psalm 143 is the last of the seven penitential psalms (6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130). In this psalm, we pray for God’s mercy. That he would answer us in his righteousness. We have no basis for him to answer, the psalms have all taught us this, and this psalm knows that God answers because of his mercy and righteousness.  Our soul, life is in trouble. We are hotly pursued and the grave is before us and...

Psalm 142 has its context in David hiding from trouble in a cave. Like Psalm 57 David turns to God. But unlike Psalm 57 where David was steadfast and strong here he is at his wits end.  He goes between low points and high points. He does not see a path forward but he knows God knows the way.  So when David finds himself in trouble with no one to help, he knows that God is his refuge and strength....

Psalm 141 finds us in the desire to have pure speech before God.  God hears pure speech and prayer, and so we ask that God would grant that to us.  To that end we need God to cleanse us from sin and to also overthrow those in our world to hinder the cause of truth and purity.  We know that this is quite a challenge then. And evil won’t take that lying down. And so we ask God for those who plot evi...

David is confronted with his enemies in psalm 140 and describes them. They love violence and evil and want war. They are not just misunderstood. They delight in evil.  Against them, David does not respond as they do. He goes to God in prayer for God to sort it out. Evil is self destructive and so David knows that their cause will fail in the end. And so he asks God for deliverance.  In the end, Da...

The last half of Psalm 139 turns to contemplating God’s marvel of creating us in the womb. How he fashioned us and sees us intimately even there in the depths of our mother’s womb. Here we even have an image of our graves being a womb of sorts as we wait to come out on the day of resurrection.  God’s knowledge plans out our lives and knows them all even as we are not aware. Such knowledge is very...

God’s knowledge of us is complete and Psalm 139 spells out that in as many verses as it has. This thought is wonderful and glorious as it is terrifying. This puts us in our place, boxes us in, and makes us realize that God is God and we are not.  We also find out that God’s knowledge of the future is as known in the distant past. That before he made us he knew us. We find that we are fearfully and...

Psalm 138-145 is the final set of psalms attributed to David before the final Doxology of psalms 146-150 In this psalm, David debases himself in the sight of all before God, thanking him, and praising his glory through his name and Word that God has exalted above all. And what is this glory? How is it defined? That God’s glory saves the lowly, but does not know those who consider themselves high....

Psalm 137 is one of the imprecatory psalms. Or a psalm that prays against the enemies.  The image is of God’s people who have seen their homeland destroyed, their loved ones killed and who still have their captors and tormentors mocking them to sing songs of happiness.  It is a bitter psalm. The prayer then turns into a longing for home again and to not forget their home in a foreign land.  And fi...

The Steadfast Love of the Lord endures forever!  We have heard Steadfast Love often enough in the psalms. But Psalm 136 underpins God’s steadfast love with everything he does. From creation to the present moment.  This psalm invites us to see all of God’s actions as being done according to God’s mercy.  This psalm is creedal then in its prayer. It gives us a summary of God’s work in creation and a...

Psalm 135 is the beginning of the end of the Psalter. The joy and the challenges of the psalter are all brought together in the rest of the psalms before the climatic shout of praise of Psalm 146-150.  This psalm names God in all his actions and deeds in creation and salvation for his people Israel God is listed in this way as his name locates his presence with his people where he has placed his n...

We have come to the end of our journey for the Songs of Ascent (120-134).  We started off in a distant land amid strange people who spoke violence and war but now we end in God’s place with God’s people, blessing him day and night in his temple, which is his body, the church.  And the psalm ends with God’s blessing being extended to us. And with the language of creation applied, we remember God’s...

Psalm 133 describes how God’s blessings flow down. They originate in the high priest and flow down to his people and into the creation.  Psalm 133 also shows the beauty of God’s command to locate his presence where people can find it. God being everywhere is not comforting. Where God is for you is where the Gospel can be held onto.  For us, that is God’s Word and Sacraments. That is where Jesus’ c...

These pilgrim ascent songs have been about going to God’s place of rest.  Here in psalm 132 we get the story of how God is the first one to make pilgrimage to this location. David is the one who picked the spot, but from the view of God, Zion is the place that he chose.  Still today, God has chosen Zion, which is his body the Church. And Jesus Christ, the head has founded her.  This psalm is rich...

This psalm presents David as one who does not see the things of this faith as below him. But as one who submits himself to the words and promises of the Lord. This humility inspires hope and begs for vindication to come from God. This is the true sense of the first verse of this psalm which desires us to not run into speculation but to rather trust as a child does who quietly is content with mothe...

Psalm 130, the 6th of the penitential psalms is a cry from the depths of death and hell itself to God.  This psalm teaches us to cry to God because he is the source of our salvation. He keeps steadfast and mercy.  And so we wait for God’s Word. His word gives what it promises. He speaks and it happens.  This psalm gives us the image of the thief of the cross waiting to hear Christ make him a promi...

This psalm shows the persistence of God’s people through eras of persecution. We can think in the Scriptures of all the times that God’s people have been hounded and been treated like their Lord.  We can even see this psalm in the life of the church and how still God’s Church is maligned and mistreated. Just as our Lord said. And we can see how this all zeroes in on Jesus. It is Jesus that is mist...

Psalm 128 describes the good life, a happy life that is blessed by God.  This is shown in work and labor and enjoying fruit of what our labor brings. Work is a good thing, a God given thing. Even though the curse infects it, and frustrates it, God still gives it.  Family life is also described as the chief blessing. Husbands and wives, parents and children are seen to be the bedrock in receiving b...

We learn in psalm 127 that God is the one who gives success and growth and defense to his people. It is not the work of man, it is the gift of God.  In the church, God is the one who grants growth to his people. This keeps us from boasting.  Likewise, God grants us rest. We find here then that it is in rest that God grants even the fruit of the womb. Children are then seen to be a blessing from Go...

Psalm 126 calls back to God’s actions in the past that cause a complete reversal of present circumstances.  These moments of God’s actions turn tragedies into triumphs. From sorrow to joy. It is no wonder then that this psalm brings to mind the Apostles in the upper room who stared at Jesus in dreamlike disbelief.  This psalm is also one of comfort, or the Holy Spirit.  Also present here is the wo...

Psalm 125 compares God’s people who trust in the Lord to the fortress of Zion and the Temple Mount of Jerusalem.  These are spiritual protections, not political or ethnic ones. Here God’s protection surrounds them and guards them.  This gives confidence that wicked rulers will not be over God’s people forever. Their reign is fleeting and they will not find rest in the places where God’s glory peop...

Psalm 124 recounts the relief one feels after a close call with death.  David, who knows more than most what it is like to rescued in the nick of time, has all Israel, which is all believers in Jesus join in on the praise of God.  Four scenarios are given of rescues that give us words to speak of our own close calls. Of being devoured, of being swept away, or being mauled and finally of escape fro...

Psalm 123 puts us at the edge of our seat, waiting for our Father in heaven to act.  Like a dog watching his master with food in his hand, so too does our gaze focus in on our God who is in heaven.  We implore him to show us mercy, especially since the Lord’s enemies mock and mistreat those who focus in on God.  This psalm, while furious and brief, leaves us with only a sense of longing and waitin...