God's Word for You (Monday, Dec 28, 2009)
A Daily Devotion by Pastor Tim Smith
Psalm 96:7-13
Psalms Of Faith And Doubt In Ancient Times
7 Ascribe to the LORD, O families of nations,
ascribe to the LORD glory and strength.
8 Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name;
bring an offering and come into his courts.
9 Worship the LORD in the splendor of his holiness;
tremble before him, all the earth.
10 Say among the nations, “The LORD reigns.”
The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved;
he will judge the peoples with equity.
The first line of verse 10 ends with the additional words a lingo “(the LORD reigns) from a tree” in the Old Latin version. Since they also appear in some copies of the Greek Septuagint, some early Christians like Justin Martyr (writing around 150 AD) assumed they had been removed from the Hebrew text of the Psalm by Jews who did not want a reference to Christ which also used the Lord’s name, “LORD.” But such mischief seems unlikely. Without these words, there are references enough and proofs enough that Jesus Christ is himself God (Titus 1:3, Jude 4, etc.).
The Lord Jesus reigns. He is our judge. And he will never change.
11 Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad;
let the sea resound, and all that is in it;
12 let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them.
Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy;
13 they will sing before the LORD, for he comes,
he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness
and the peoples in his truth. (NIV)
- He came down from the heavens—let them rejoice and sing his praise!
- He deigned to touch his created earth with his own feet—let it be glad and praise him!
- He commanded the sea’s silence and he preached upon the least of the seas—let all that is in the sea echo his praise!
- He stepped through the fields, fulfilling and freeing us from the Old Testament laws—let them laugh out loud for their Lord!
- He reigned and bled on a tree—let the forests sing with joy!
David’s cavalcade before the ark continued to bump along the road up to Jerusalem. Some of the bumps would be bigger than David expected. His heart was in the right place—this Psalm is proof—but there was a failure in the past that would affect the future. But there once again, Jesus Christ (only dimly foreshadowed by the ark) has covered all of our sins, and he has made us right with God.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul's Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. His wife, Kathryn, attended Chapel from 1987-1990 while studying Secondary Education (Theater and Math) at UW-Madison. Kathryn's father, John Meyer, was also the first man to serve as a Vicar at Chapel.
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