Heart of a Psalmist - Worshipping Christ Through The Psalms

• Sickle- that reminds us of the purpose of the servants is to harvest the earth- “Then I saw the Son of Man sitting on a white cloud. He had a gold crown on his head and sharp sickle in his hand.”(Rev. 14:14)

“Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy, for we have had our fill of contempt. We have had our fill of the scoffing of the proud and the contempt of the arrogant.” (3, 4)

This psalm is known as the ‘Kyrie eleison’ (Greek for ‘Lord have mercy’) of the Old Testament. This ancient prayer of the church is mentioned three times alluding to the Holy Trinity. The first ‘kyrie…’ is mentioned in verse 2; “We look to the Lord our God for his mercy… and the prayer is repeated twice in verse 3. Only the mercy of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit can deliver his servants from the oppression of the proud. Now the ‘Song of Ascent’ technique is displayed from verse 3 to verse 4; “our fill of contempt” is ex- panded to “fill of the scoffing of the proud and the contempt of the arrogant.” Several of the Hebrew words of these verses end with the same vowel sound causing this psalm to be one of the unique rhyming songs of the Old Testament. “Fill” is the word “‘sated’ or filled up exceedingly, to be fed up!” 4 The psalm might have been written on the occasion of Sanballat and Tobiah’s mocking of the Jews as they returned to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem. Nehemiah prays in the spirit of these verses: “Then I prayed, ‘Hear us, O our God, for we are being mocked. May their scoffing fall back on their own heads, and may they themselves become captives in a foreign land!” (Neh. 4:4) Whatever the actual historical setting was, the truth of the psalm endures; when we are being criticized and mocked as servants of the Lord, we can lift our eyes to the one who is eternally enthroned in the heavens. His reign of justice and peace will never end!

1 Kraus 2 Spurgeon 3 Keil & Delitzsch 4 Scroggie

PSALM 124: WE ESCAPED LIKE A BIRD The Escape to Freedom

This psalm is composed in a rugged, unfinished style that coincides with the deliverance of the na- tion out of the captivity of an overwhelming foe. It is one of four psalms of Ascent that mentions the en- emies of Israel (123, 124, 125, 129). It is both an individual and a corporate thanksgiving prayer as he personally blesses the Lord for his deliverance in the heart of the psalm. Psalm 124 ascends from a direct quote from Psalm 121:2: “Our help is from the Lord…” and pro- vides the language for the later Psalm 129:1,2: “let Israel now say–“ . It builds upon its own thoughts from verse to verse causing one author to say: ‘in order to take one step forward it always goes back half a step.’ 1 The imagery used to describe the perilous situation with the unknown enemy is the ‘Beast of prey’, the ‘Burning fire’, the ‘Bursting flood’ and the ‘Bird escaped’ from the hunter’s snare. Christ is fore- shadowed as the ‘sacrificial bird’ who gave its life to secure freedom for others. It is outlined in two sec- tions:

I ON OUR SIDE - 1-5 - The Peril II OUR HELP IS FROM THE LORD - 6-8 – The Praise

INTRODUCTION:

“A song for the ascent to Jerusalem. A psalm of David.”

(See the introduction for ‘The Songs of Ascent.”) This is the second of four psalms attributed to David (122, 124, 131, 133.) although the use of Aramaic words suggests to some that it had a later date of composition. The caged bird imagery has some historical ties with the siege of Jerusalem by Sen- nacherib of Assyria during the reign of Hezekiah, King of Judah.

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