Because my self-image had been so thoroughly slaughtered, I was in a state of extreme daily dependence upon God and His good comfort in my heart. One harsh word from Him would have shattered me completely, but He was very gentle and very kind. (See Psalm 119 A Meditative Prayer, verse 131, this blog: "Your hands are steady, Your knives and needles sharp and clean, Your poultices soaked in soothing balm. You are amazing, Lord. There is none like You. You inflict the deepest wounds with steady, compassionate hand. When morning comes, I see Your work is perfect, even from the beginning. I look but cannot find at all where the festered splinter had been.")
It was during this exact period, during my spiritual recovery, that I came upon a small copy of just Psalms and Proverbs, NIV, written with extremely few notes, and no references. Just text. As the title of the book is "31 Days of Wisdom and Praise" (1), and the point of the book is to read through it all in one month, that's just what I did, repeatedly, many times over, in the course of a single year. The book is published by Zondervan, 1990. It was available on the web the last time I looked.
During the third straight through reading, a great blessing came. The Psalms began to open up in my heart. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that God is good; He loves His people; and He loves me.
But during this time and since, I began to hear the voice of my Lord within the Psalms. I hear the voice of Christ, prophetically spoken through the psalmists, to the extent that I would agree with Robert Hawker, "the whole of the Psalms are of him, and concerning him, more or less, and he is the great object and subject of all". (2) I pray that the Holy Spirit would open the Psalms this way in the hearts of all believers.
This brings me now to the subject of this blog, Psalm 88. This is what Robert Hawker says of Psalm 88, "The Psalm hath this striking peculiarity in it, namely, that it not only hath reference to the Lord Jesus Christ, and him alone; but that he himself is the sole speaker from the beginning to the end." (3)
The above statement by Hawker is enormous, and it's one that we so very seldom, if ever, hear today.
Just by way of encouraging other readers of the Psalms, and hopefully not of vainglory (forgive me, Lord, for I know my eye is not yet single), I did not need Robert Hawker to tell me the above statement in order to enlarge for me this identical apprehension of Psalm 88, for I understood the same simply by reading the Psalm itself, well before I ever encountered the statement by Robert Hawker. I do so truly believe that the Holy Spirit in our days wants to recover for us what has been lost in the years since Robert Hawker. Hawker was a well known and dearly beloved vicar of an Anglican church in England, at the the turning of the 18th century. (4)
We tend to read the Psalms, as we also read other parts of scripture, from our study Bible editions, frequently glancing to the bottom of the page to see what the famous theologian has to say about this verse and that verse, and so often we miss the very plain and simple prophetic meaning of the text.
The study notes have been written, sometimes, with the theologian's peculiar doctrines in his heart, to which he must be faithful and consistent. We all of us have our own editorial biases through which we view scripture. But the famous theologian who writes the study notes doesn't blatantly say, "This is my overarching doctrinal bias, and all my notes must be consistent with that."
We can always look at our study notes at some other time, for verification, correction if applicable, or further observation. But what happens when we see Christ in the Psalms in a way not verified by our study notes? Do we toss out as "incorrect interpretation" or "private interpretation" what we so blessedly received of Christ through what we thought was the hand of the Holy Spirit upon the understanding of our heart? Do we believe the word of scripture as opened by the Holy Spirit upon our heart, or do we believe the bias of our famous theologian, who perhaps believes that the Holy Spirit no longer interacts with believers as He did in the days the scriptures were written?
Do we believe the experiencing of the Holy Spirit blessedly opening scripture in our heart, or do we mistrust our intimate perception of Him whom we think is the Holy Spirit in favor of the highly educated, famous theologian with his authoritative voice in the notes of the well-known study Bible opened before us?
Yes, many people make many mistakes, especially nowadays, "The Lord told me such and such...", and "I heard the Lord tell me...". But, are we guilty of throwing out the proverbial baby with the proverbial bath-water? The two sets of verses below show us that one of Satan's greatest tactics is to try to drown the truth in a torrent of lies.
NAU Revelation 12:15 And the serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, so that he might cause her to be swept away with the flood.
NAU Matthew 13:24 Jesus presented another parable to them, saying, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 "But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went away. 26 "But when the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also. 27 "The slaves of the landowner came and said to him, 'Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?' 28 "And he said to them, 'An enemy has done this!' The slaves said to him, 'Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?' 29 "But he said, 'No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30 'Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, "First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn."'"
Yet God Himself is ever faithful to Himself and to His people.
I am so extremely delighted with God as I mull over Jesus the Christ's conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well. She was ever so sinful, ever so foolish, ever such a no-count, ever such a woman rather than a man. You could not find a more unlikely candidate as she for a great theological revelation from God Himself. And yet our precious Savior directly revealed more of Himself to her in a single conversation than He did to Nicodemus the erudite teacher in the previous chapter of John's gospel, or perhaps to anyone else in all the gospels.
When we approach God's word in prayer, with a beggar's heart, not pompously, but in simple, repentant submission to Him and to His word, we can expect that God the Holy Spirit will reveal Jesus Christ to us in just the way He did to the Samaritan woman at the well.
NAU 1 John 2:27 As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.
NAU Psalm 81:16 "But I would feed you with the finest of the wheat, And with honey from the rock I would satisfy you."
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Father, I am a nobody in the world's eyes. Even in Your kingdom, Lord, I am of the smallest sort. Yet, You have blessed me tremendously in the reading of Your Psalms. My prayer, Lord, is that You would bless many eager, hungry hearts through the word of Your Psalms, just as You have blessed me, but even more so. In Jesus' precious name, Christina, Amen.
1 31 Days of Wisdom and Praise, Copyright C 1990 International Bible Society, Zondervan, "with Special Thanks to R. Dean Jones"
2 Treasury of David, Volume Two (Part 2) Psalm LXXXVIII to CX, page 18, Hendrickson
3 Ibid.
4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hawker , Wikipedia
to be continued
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