This Week’s Reading Schedule

Wednesday’s (today’s) Bible Reading is Psalm 6-10
Thursday, April 5: Psalm 11-15
Friday, April 6: Psalm 16-20

Next week we will read Joshua.

The overall year’s plan is here.

Psalm 6

The Psalms were actual songs, and many were written by David during times of great hardship. All of them can teach us something, but sometimes it is more important to be able to sing or pray the Psalm the way David did in his anguish than to look for some other spiritual lesson.

Psalm 6 is such a Psalm. Yes, there’s despair and tears, but the end of crying out to God is a faith that fills the heart, gives us the power to forsake evildoers, and is confident that God will forgive us and bless us.

Psalm 7

This Psalm begins with David in trouble, apparently about to lose a battle to his enemies. The whole Psalm, however, is about how God is the righteous Judge and ultimate determiner of victory. He will redeem the righteous, and he will sharpen his sword and prepare his weapons against those who do not repent.

This is perhaps the most common theme in David’s Psalms: complete trust in God. No matter what the circumstances, it is God who determines victory.

That kind of trust is also the most common theme among all the great men of faith. They never lost sight of the fact that God is in control and no circumstances are so great that God cannot rescue us from them.

Psalm 8

A Psalm of praise.

In v. 5, the word translated "angels" in the KJV and "God" in the NASB is Elohim. Usually, that is the Hebrew word for God, but it can also be translated "mighty ones." The Septuagint—the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures—says that man was made "a little less than the angels." That is also the wording used when Psalm 8:5 is quote in Hebrews 2:7.

Verse 6 says that he made us to rule over the works of his hands. This has special application today when our activities make such a big impact on the planet. God gave this earth to us, and we should feel some responsibility towards it.

But it is not just the earth, but the riches of the kingdom of God that he has turned over to us. He is the King from the parable that went away, leaving his servants with treasure to invest until he comes back. Let us be busy doing good with the wealth he has entrusted to us!

Psalm 9

This Psalm, too, is written by David, the prophet, and it goes far into the future, foreseeing the final judgment of the nations. It also begins and ends with personal judgment, a call for God to ‘maintain David’s just cause,’ and also a call to rise up on behalf of the afflicted. All of it is written in confidence that God, the just Judge will and has executed just judgment on behalf of the oppressed and the righteous.

Notice verse 14 as well. Zion is representative of the gathered people of God. David does not only want to tell the praises of God, he wants to tell those praises to God’s people so that he can rejoice together with them in the salvation of God.

Nowadays, we think of Christianity as an individual religion a lot, but the very testimony of ourselves as Christians and Jesus as the Christ hinges on the love and unity shared among those who share salvation through Christ (Jn. 13:34-35; 17:20-23).

Psalm 10

Psalm 10 deals with the reality of life we all face. God is the just Judge, and in the end righteousness triumphs. But along the way?

Along the way, we see boastful, powerful, evil men who oppress and torture other men while living in luxury and scoffing at divine judgment. There are Hitlers and less famous leaders like him throughout history, committing atrocities, and seemingly getting away with it. Psalm 10 cries out for God to respond.

We know that on the final day God will judge all things. He will set all things right. Nonetheless, we long for justice on this earth, and like the Psalmist, we can cry out to see it. God hears prayer, both of the afflicted and of those who pray for the afflicted and for the leaders of nations (James 5:16-18).