Seeing Jesus in the Psalms

  Psalm 79 (Skip the rant and scroll down two paragraphs) The Bible has so much to teach us. Each time I read it my modern sensibilities and conventions are challenged. We saw yesterday and today a Psalm by Asaph that ends with God shepherding His people. But we also see a rather macabre depiction of death, dying and vengeance. What is suitable for general audiences? Well God thinks that everyone who reads and even children should be learning His word--and His word, like today in Psalm 79, is graphic, bloody, full of war and grisly judgement and labels and categorisations. It is full of deeply disturbed emotional descriptions and outbursts of disbelief. One of the notable differences is between children who grow up agrarian or children who grow up urban. Because often the child who has grown up in a rural, agrarian life has lived with raising and slaughtering animals for food, and had to deal with loss, blood and death on the scale of a small farmstead. In smaller, poorer household...

Even if my father and mother abandon me, the Lord will hold me close. Psalm 27:10 NLT   Psalm 27 The feelings of insecurity are not sin. Such fears lead us to need God more. These inevitable niggling doubts cause us to consider the character of God. Although David knows who God is, he still faces significant struggles and obstacles in his life, and these even erode the confidence He has in God. His faith is tested so he explores his priorities and his allegiances and concludes that when all is said and done, he has only one desire. And that is to be in the presence of God where he will meditate on the character of God. No other relationship, not even his parents, is as important to him.  Mark 3: 20-21,31-35 20 One time Jesus entered a house, and the crowds began to gather again. Soon he and his disciples couldn’t even find time to eat. 21 When his family heard what was happening, they tried to take him away. “He’s out of his mind,” they said. 31 Then Jesus’ mother and brothers...