Timeless Biblical Truth.
When they are disciplined by God for their unbelief and disobedience, believers must petition the LORD that He may graciously restore them to a faithful obedience and enjoy His blessing again.
- Believers pray to their Shepherd to bless them by saving them from the ruin caused by their enemies (1-3).
- Believers will lament His discipline and ask Him to save them (4-7).
- Believers will lament that God is angry with their prayers (4).
- Believers will confess how God’s discipline has brought sorrow and the mockery upon themselves (5-6).
- Believers will pray for God to bless and restore them (7).
- Believers may review how God has blessed them and admit that He used their enemies to discipline them, before asking Him to be gracious and save them (8-14).
- Believers rehearse how God has established and blessed them (8-11).
- Believers confess that God has disciplined them through their enemies (12-13).
- Believers may pray that God would restore them to His favor (14).
- Believers may continue to lament their painful condition while praying for Him to be gracious and save them and promising to serve Him (15-19).
- Believers will lament the effects of God’s discipline (15-17).
- Believers vow that if God delivers them, they will be faithful (18).
- Believes will pray for God to be gracious and save them (19).
Questions for Second Milers
- Describe God as the Shepherd of Israel. How can He shine?
- What does the psalmist want from God? To whom is he attributing this painful ruin that he is experiencing?
- How has the nation been like a vine? How has God prepared and tended it?
- How has it grown? Why?
- Why has He abandoned/disciplined it?
- How is God’s intervention necessary for the preservation of life?
- What is the purpose of the strength God gives you?
- Give your own short title to this psalm.
“The two greatest influences on the shaping of the English language are the works of William Shakespeare and the English translation of the Bible that appeared in 1611. The King James Bible—named for the British king who ordered the production of a fresh translation in 1604—is both a religious and literary classic. Literary scholars have heaped praise upon it. Nineteenth-century writers and literary critics acclaimed it as the ‘noblest monument of English prose.’ In a series of lectures at Cambridge University during the First World War, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch declared that the King James Bible was ‘the very greatest’ literary achievement in the English language. The only possible challenger for this title came from the complete works of Shake-speare. His audience had no quarrel with this judgment. It was the accepted wisdom of the age. . . . It can be argued that, until the end of the First World War, the King James Bible was seen, not simply as the most important English translation of the Bible, but as one of the finest literary works in the English language. It did not follow literary trends; it established them.” Alister McGrath: In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture, p. 1, 3.
Lanny Tanton is the Pastor at The Bible Church of the Lakes in Horseshoe Bay, Texas – just outside of Marble Falls. Pastor Tanton welcomes you to our website and hopes that you’ll enjoy reading these insightful blog posts. Please contact us if you have further questions!!
