Heart of a Psalmist - Worshipping Christ Through The Psalms

Just as our thoughts are known before they are formulated God knows the words that will come from our mouth; he has heard before it is pronounced. At the last supper Jesus told Peter that he would deny him three times before the day dawned; “’Peter’, Jesus replied, ‘the truth is, this very night, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.’” (Mt. 26:34) He is not limited by space; he is preceding us both in time and location and yet he remains behind us in our journey and the past. This psalm com- pletely dismantles ‘theism’; the philosophy that God created the universe and then detached himself from its operation. This prayer is placed in the Scriptures to show the depth of his care for each individual that he has created and only heightens the crime of rejecting such a loving God. The “hand of blessing” on our head is the blessing of the firstborn child. In God’s kingdom each believer is a ‘firstborn child’ and worthy of the highest blessing: “You have come to the assembly of God’s firstborn children, whose names are written in heaven.” (Heb. 12:23) “If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the place of the dead, you are there. If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans, even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me.” (8-10) God is all-present in the person of his Holy Spirit; there is no time dimension, spiritual locality or earthly distance where he is not fully aware of all that is happening. We can’t escape from God; “’Can anyone hide from me? Am I not everywhere in all the heavens and earth?’ asks the Lord.” (Jer. 23:24) “Heaven” and the “place of the dead” are two opposite spiritual localities, the highest and the low- est of conditions; ‘Heaven and Hades, [Sheol] as being that which is super-terrestrial and sub-terrestrial’ 4 . Jesus was fully aware of the realities of heaven: “For I have come down from heaven to do the will of God who sent me, not to do what I want.” (Jn. 6:38) He was also fully aware of the horrors of Hades; “The rich man also died and was buried, and his soul went to the place of the dead. [Hades] There, in torment, he saw Lazarus in the far distance with Abraham.” (Lk. 16:22, 23) Leaving the spiritual regions, the psalmist turns to geography and the physics of the speed of light. ‘If I should lift wings such as the dawn of the morning has, could I fly with the swiftness with which the dawn of the morning spreads itself over the eastern sky, towards the extreme west and alight there…’ still God is present to guide the fugitive. Jonah tried to flee from the presence of God as mentioned in this psalm; he headed for the “farthest seas”. “But Jonah got up and went in the opposite direction in order to get away from the Lord. He went down to the seacoast, to the port of Joppa, where he found a ship leaving for Tarshish. He bought a ticket and went on board, hoping that by going away to the west he could escape from the Lord.” (Jonah 1:3) God arranged a storm to confront his ship and after the crew threw him overboard, the Lord prepared a great fish to swallow him. Jonah used the very language of this psalm to describe his experience: “I called to you from the world of the dead [Sheol],…I was locked out of life and imprisoned in the land of the dead…”(Jonah 2:2, 6) “I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night–but even in darkness I cannot hide from you. To you the night shines as bright as day. Darkness and light are both alike to you.” (11, 12) The darkness described here goes beyond the physical properties of light. It is the darkness that enveloped the primeval world: “The earth was empty, a formless mass cloaked in darkness.” (Gen. 1:2) It was the darkness of the plague in Egypt; “…a deep and terrifying darkness will descend on the land of Egypt.” (Ex. 10:21) The darkness that also enfolded the world at Calvary was not the shadow of the earth or the moon shielding the rays of the sun, but the absence of light itself; “By this time it was noon, and darkness fell across the whole land until three o’clock. The light from the sun was gone.” (Lk. 23:44, 45) It is the darkness of ‘nothingness’ itself and yet God is not shut out. There is no darkness to the one who is the very essence of light. When Jonah was experiencing his most hopeless moment in the belly of the fish, he turned on the ‘light’ by praising Lord and was delivered: “When I had lost all hope, I turned my thoughts once more to the Lord…I will offer sacrifices to you with songs of praise, and I will fulfill all my vows. For my salvation comes from the Lord alone.” (Jonah 2:7, 9) II THE WINGS OF THE MORNING - 7-12 God is All-Present “I can never escape from your spirit! I can never get away from your presence!

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