Heart of a Psalmist - Worshipping Christ Through The Psalms

II

SOME WANDERED IN THE DESERT - 4-9 The Impassable Desert

“Some wandered in the desert, lost and homeless. Hungry and thirsty, they nearly died. ‘Lord, help!’ they cried in their trouble, and he rescued them from their distress. He led them straight to safety, to a city where they could live.” (4-7) Nothing could be more graphic to the middle-eastern inhabitant than this description; lost in the track- less desert without direction. ‘Solitude is a great intensifier of misery’ Spurgeon wrote of this person’s predicament. The Jewish people navigated the desert to return to their beloved city, ‘Jerusalem.’ Ezra the Scribe wrote: “And the gracious hand of our God protected us and saved us from enemies and ban- dits along the way.” (Ezra 8:31) We are pilgrims like our father Abraham, crossing the deserts of life in search of an eternal city. In the Book of Revelation the city comes down from heaven; the ‘city’ is searching for us as much as we are looking for it. “And I saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven…” (Rev. 21:2) “Let them praise the Lord for his great love and for all his wonderful deeds to them. For he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.” (8, 9) The encouragement to praise the Lord is repeated 3 more times in the psalm like the chorus of a song (15, 21, 31). We praise him for who he is; “his great love…” and for what he does; “his wonderful deeds…” . The Sermon on the Mount echoes the last sentence here: “God blesses those who are hun- gry and thirsty for justice (righteousness)” (Mt. 5:6) The only ones who escape the burning desert of sin are those who are spiritually hungry and thirsty. “Some sat in darkness and deepest gloom, miserable prisoners in chains. They rebelled against the words of God, scorning the counsel of the Most High. That is why he broke them with hard labor; they fell, and no one helped them rise again. ‘Lord, help!’ they cried in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He led them from the darkness and deepest gloom; he snapped their chains.” (10- 14) No person in the Bible fits this description better than King Manasseh of Judah. Although he was the son of the great king Hezekiah, he became the most evil of all the kings of Judah and Israel: “…Man- asseh led the people of Judah and Jerusalem to do more evil than the pagan nations whom the Lord had destroyed when the Israelites entered the land.” (2 Chron. 33:9) As a result of this evil, God sent the Assyrian army to ravage the land and he was imprisoned in Babylon: “They put a ring through his nose, bound him in bronze chains, and led him away to Babylon.” (2 Chron. 33:10) Manasseh fulfilled the spiritual formula given earlier: “But while in deep distress, Manasseh sought the Lord his God and cried out humbly to the God of his ancestors. …the Lord listened to him and was moved by his request for help. So the Lord let Manasseh return to Jerusalem and to his kingdom.” (2 Chron. 33:13) III SOME SAT IN DARKNESS - 10-16 The Unbreakable Chains

“Let them praise the Lord for his great love and for all his wonderful deeds to them. For he broke down their prison gates of bronze; he cut apart their bars of iron.” (15-16)

Manasseh, whose name means ‘forgetting’, remembered the great love of the Lord: “Then he re- stored the altar of the Lord and sacrificed peace offerings and thanksgiving offerings on it.” (16) King Cyrus of Persia actually fulfilled the prophecy of verse 16 when he conquered Babylon: “This is what the Lord says: ‘I will go before you, Cyrus, and level the mountains. I will smash down gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron.’” (Isa. 45:1,2) The Jews regarded the exile as a giant jail from which they sought deliverance. Cyrus is the king that gave the decree for the Jews to return and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem where perhaps this psalm was composed.

IV SOME WERE FOOLS - The Incurable Disease

“Some were fools in their rebellion; they suffered for their sins. Their appetites were gone, and death was near. ‘Lord, help!’ they cried in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He spoke, and

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