Blessed Be the LORD, My Rock Of David.
“Blessed be the LORD, my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle. He is my steadfast love and my fortress, my stronghold, and my deliverer. He is my shield, in whom I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me.
O LORD, what is man, that You regard him, the son of man that You think of him? Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow. Part Your heavens, O LORD, and come down; touch the mountains, that they may smoke. Flash forth Your lightning and scatter them; shoot Your arrows and rout them. Reach down from on high; set me free and rescue me from the deep waters, from the grasp of foreigners, whose mouths speak falsehood, whose right hands are deceitful.
I will sing to You a new song, O God; on a harp of ten strings I will make music to You—to Him who gives victory to kings, who frees His servant David from the deadly sword. Set me free and rescue me from the grasp of foreigners, whose mouths speak falsehood, whose right hands are deceitful.
Then our sons will be like plants nurtured in their youth, our daughters like corner pillars carved to adorn a palace. Our storehouses will be full, supplying all manner of produce; our flocks will bring forth thousands, tens of thousands in our fields. Our oxen will bear great loads. There will be no breach in the walls, no going into captivity, and no cry of lament in our streets. Blessed are the people of whom this is so; blessed are the people whose God is the LORD.”
“Blessed be the LORD, my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle. He is my steadfast love and my fortress, my stronghold, and my deliverer. He is my shield, in whom I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me.” Just as surgeons spend long years in training so that they can do delicate operations, so David has spent long years training as a soldier. That training began when David was herding sheep for his father and fighting off wild animals with a slingshot. Little does David know that all the time he has been shooting those lions and bears, he has been practicing to nail a giant and fight off a hostile king.
“O LORD, what is man, that You regard him, the son of man that You think of him? Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow. Part Your heavens, O LORD, and come down; touch the mountains, that they may smoke. Flash forth Your lightning and scatter them; shoot Your arrows and rout them. Reach down from on high; set me free and rescue me from the deep waters, from the grasp of foreigners, whose mouths speak falsehood, whose right hands are deceitful.” Here David uses some of the same phrases he does in Psalm 8. After years of herding sheep in the wilderness, David has seen lots of storms as well as flash floods. In Israel there are many wadis-stream beds that only have water during rainy season when floods can suddenly roar out of the hills without warning. These are the deep waters that David is comparing to treacherous foreigners.
“I will sing to You a new song, O God; on a harp of ten strings I will make music to You—to Him who gives victory to kings, who frees His servant David from the deadly sword. Set me free and rescue me from the grasp of foreigners, whose mouths speak falsehood, whose right hands are deceitful.” Exactly when David wrote this psalm is unclear; however, there were many times during the years David was dodging King Saul that David had to hide with the Ammonites or Philistines. An entire city of priests and their families died when Saul’s herdsman, a foreigner, reported that the priests had innocently assisted David.
“Then our sons will be like plants nurtured in their youth, our daughters like corner pillars carved to adorn a palace. Our storehouses will be full, supplying all manner of produce; our flocks will bring forth thousands, tens of thousands in our fields. Our oxen will bear great loads. There will be no breach in the walls, no going into captivity, and no cry of lament in our streets. Blessed are the people of whom this is so; blessed are the people whose God is the LORD.” Here David is describing a time of unparalleled prosperity and peace, one in which children will grow to be tall and strong and handsome while flocks and herds and fields yield bountifully. In that time, those who worship the Lord will dwell in safety without fear of attack.
APPLICATION: This psalm is particularly meaningful for me because I have spent most of my life as a surgeon. Looking back, I realize that even while I was growing up on a Midwestern farm, God was already training me to do medical work in places with few resources. My first patients were my father’s hogs and cattle and my brother’s sheep. While we had excellent veterinarians, no farmer would call a vet for a simple injection; they would buy the antibiotics and the syringes and do the injections themselves. My first delivery on a pregnant patient came when my brother and I delivered twin lambs in an unheated sheep house on a bitterly cold January night. After the delivery, we carried the lambs to our house and then chuffed the ewe through snowdrifts and into our basement where mama sheep could nurse her babies in relative comfort.
In those days, my friends and I were all in 4-H clubs where sewing for competition was a big thing. I learned to sew so proficiently that I created much of my college wardrobe and all my own white uniforms when I began working on the wards in medical school. Perhaps the highlight of my career as a seamstress came at the end of my junior year of college. One of my friends was getting married and insisted that all seven of her bridesmaids should sew their own dresses. To complicate matters, we were combining two different patterns. Only three of us could sew well, and we three had to pull an all-nighter the night before the wedding to complete the dresses. I finished mine ten minutes before the wedding. I might or might not have put in the hem with Scotch tape. Fortunately, the wedding was in the college chapel, only 100 meters from my dorm.
God is not a God of confusion, but a God of peace. Many times, we endure all kinds of problems, never realizing that God is using those circumstances to prepare us for greater things. In David’s day, those proficient with slingshots were the equivalents of modern-day soldiers with high -powered rifles and scopes. The Bible notes in more than one place that there were entire troops of soldiers who were equally proficient with slingshots in either hand. Al llthe time David was out on those lonely hillsides playing his harp to comfort himself, God was preparing him to write glorious psalms. And each time David let loose with rocks against wild animals, God was sharpening his aim so that one day, David would take down a giant.
Perhaps you are struggling right now and you do not understand why things must be so tough. Why can’t you have it easy like those around you? But you have no idea what God wants to do with you. Be advised: You only think you are playing with a slingshot while God is preparing you to take down giants!
PRAYER: Father God, thank You for loving us and for caring for us. Lord, help us to trust Your purposes for our lives and to faithfully follow Your leading, even when we don’t understand why we are enduring hardships. Help us to remember that we think we are playing with slingshots while You know you are preparing us to kill giants. In the mighty and precious Name of King Jesus. Amen.
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