Day 185

2 Kings 8:16-9:37, Acts 23:12-35, Psalm 80:1-7

I want to take a quick look at the Psalm today. This Psalm falls into a genre that we do not yet fully appreciate … but we will. We have already taken a very brief look at the fact that the temple will fall and the people will be in exile and Psalm 80, like many others, are written during that time. Soon however we will come to the point in our reading when all this happens and we will appreciate the exile a lot better.

To return to the Psalms, many of them are laments, “oh woe is me, the world is nearly over”.

“How long, LORD God Almighty,
   will your anger smoulder
   against the prayers of your people?” (v4)

This verse kind of sets the tone but that is how the people felt, a general feeling that the exile was because God had deserted them. One of the good things about the way we are reading the Bible is that we see a lot of things alongside each other. On the one hand we see a Psalmist write a song because he felt as though God was angry with the people, and on the other hand we see the death of Jezebel because God was indeed unhappy.

2 Kings 8:27  tells us that Ahaziah “walked in the ways of the house of Ahab and did evil in the eyes of the Lord”. We have read this time and time again over the last few weeks and you start to see why the people thought that God was a bit peeved.

Even though God might have been angry at that point, Paul is stood where he is, facing a plot to kill him, because Christ came that that anger may be satisfied. Because of Christ, because of the love that we have experienced, we don’t necessarily appreciate the God that we are reading about here. Just like Paul we know grace, a grace that can overcome all things, and so we know forgiveness. Let our songs and our Psalms tell all who hear them of the immense grace of a God of love.

What would your psalm say?