Day 11
Genesis 24:1-67; Matthew 9:14-38; Psalm 8:1-9
The story of Abraham had dominated the posts for the last few days, partly because it is such an amazing story. Today we have a bit of a love story and a rather strange request. “Put your hand under my thigh” … odd!
If we move away from Abraham’s story for a bit, there would be plenty of stuff in the Gospel for us to look at. I don’t want to forget the fact that a lot of healing has been going on lately, quite a significant part of Jesus life and ministry.
Today though I want us to take a real look at the Psalm. This is a good opportunity for us to take a passage on to the next level. First reading we may see a passage about God’s creation and how good he is. But what happens if we rack it up a notch.
For starters, what is a Psalm. English Lit lesson coming up. There are lots of different genres of literature and this is as true in the Bible as it is with what you do at school. There is the factual stuff, there is biography, there is some fiction and there is poetry and prose. The Psalms are poetry, just like we have hymn books at church the book of psalms is like the ancient hymn book, loads of poetry that will have been set to music. There are different writers of the Psalms and just like the different poets today they will have done different stuff, we are on David today. There were psalms of praise, psalms of lament (when things were rubbish), psalms about forgiveness. You name it it is in there.
And that is before we even turn to this particular Psalm. Psalm 8 focuses on praising God the creator. At Soul Survivor we watch the shooting stars, but just think about any night when you have looked up on a clear night and seen the wonder of all the stars in their glory. You could sit there for hours just contemplating the wonder of the universe. The psalmist though looks beyond the stars to the one who has created them. He is not in awe at the universe, he is in awe at the creator of the universe and we see this in the way that the Psalm starts with an address to God and ends with the same things. God is the focus.
Verse 4 speaks of an understanding of mankind. If this Psalm is written by the King David then it is written by an important man surrounded by important people. Status is huge in his life, but looking at God makes him put the status of man into perspective. Man is nothing compared to God. The following verses then go on to talk of all that man has dominion over. When you consider that this is practically everything the human eye could see, then people felt that they were the bees knees, the … they ruled all creation. But what the Psalmist is saying is that this counts for nothing, because God, the creator of it all rules over us and is so much more powerful.
And all this from a short passage. What I want to encourage you through this Psalm is that if you like the look of a passage and you are really interested in what it is saying then you can go so much deeper like I have here. Each book of the Bible has a commentary written about. So if you feel God is really saying something through Scripture, then dig deeper.
The story of Abraham had dominated the posts for the last few days, partly because it is such an amazing story. Today we have a bit of a love story and a rather strange request. “Put your hand under my thigh” … odd!
If we move away from Abraham’s story for a bit, there would be plenty of stuff in the Gospel for us to look at. I don’t want to forget the fact that a lot of healing has been going on lately, quite a significant part of Jesus life and ministry.
Today though I want us to take a real look at the Psalm. This is a good opportunity for us to take a passage on to the next level. First reading we may see a passage about God’s creation and how good he is. But what happens if we rack it up a notch.
For starters, what is a Psalm. English Lit lesson coming up. There are lots of different genres of literature and this is as true in the Bible as it is with what you do at school. There is the factual stuff, there is biography, there is some fiction and there is poetry and prose. The Psalms are poetry, just like we have hymn books at church the book of psalms is like the ancient hymn book, loads of poetry that will have been set to music. There are different writers of the Psalms and just like the different poets today they will have done different stuff, we are on David today. There were psalms of praise, psalms of lament (when things were rubbish), psalms about forgiveness. You name it it is in there.
And that is before we even turn to this particular Psalm. Psalm 8 focuses on praising God the creator. At Soul Survivor we watch the shooting stars, but just think about any night when you have looked up on a clear night and seen the wonder of all the stars in their glory. You could sit there for hours just contemplating the wonder of the universe. The psalmist though looks beyond the stars to the one who has created them. He is not in awe at the universe, he is in awe at the creator of the universe and we see this in the way that the Psalm starts with an address to God and ends with the same things. God is the focus.
Verse 4 speaks of an understanding of mankind. If this Psalm is written by the King David then it is written by an important man surrounded by important people. Status is huge in his life, but looking at God makes him put the status of man into perspective. Man is nothing compared to God. The following verses then go on to talk of all that man has dominion over. When you consider that this is practically everything the human eye could see, then people felt that they were the bees knees, the … they ruled all creation. But what the Psalmist is saying is that this counts for nothing, because God, the creator of it all rules over us and is so much more powerful.
And all this from a short passage. What I want to encourage you through this Psalm is that if you like the look of a passage and you are really interested in what it is saying then you can go so much deeper like I have here. Each book of the Bible has a commentary written about. So if you feel God is really saying something through Scripture, then dig deeper.
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