Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray with Me”.
Psalm 92 is constructed like a Big Mac. The bun on the outside and in the middle is praise to God. The top and bottom halves are identical twins: each contains a meaty offering of the poet’s experience of God’s faithfulness, garnished with an assortment of predictions about the overthrow of God’s enemies.
Or, to describe it more technically, the first half of Psalm 92 begins with praise to God,then predicts the downfall of his enemies, and climaxes by stating the central theme, “You, Lord, are forever exalted” (v. 8). The second half of the psalm repeats these themes in reverse order, predicting the destruction of God’s enemies and concluding with a confident statement that yes, the righteous will flourish and praise God.
Let’s pray some phrases from the psalm.
It is good to praise you, Lord,
and make music to your name,
proclaiming your love in the morning
and your faithfulness at night (vv. 1-2).
Lord, in the evening I see a full moon over a glittering field of snow. In the morning I see sunlight sparkling in the winter white. You paint a beautiful world, Lord, with palettes for each season. In our dark northern winter, we sing your love and faithfulness in morning sun and evening moonlight,
You make me glad by your deeds, Lord,
I sing for joy at what your hands have done.
How great are your works, Lord,
How profound your thoughts (vv. 4-5).
We praise you for your works: creating and sustaining the universe, giving your son to save us. We thank you for healing our minds from fear and superstition and ignorance, for freeing out hearts from narrowness and isolation, for caring for our bodies with medicine and exercise and food, for our souls with salvation and communion.
How great are your works, Lord, how profound your thoughts. Johannes Kepler, an early pioneer of the hypothesis that the earth circles the sun, said his research was “Thinking God’s thoughts after him.” In the 15th century, he studied the motions of the planets and cast horoscopes for his classmates and tried to explain scriptures where the sun was circling the earth. Lord, take our modern minds with their modern superstitions and assumptions, and change them until we think your thoughts after you. Give us the mind of Christ.
As the psalm says,
Senseless people do not know,
fools do not understand,
that though the wicked spring up like grass
and evildoers flourish,
they will be destroyed forever.
But you, Lord, are exalted forever (vv. 6-8).
Yes, Lord, your presence and your thoughts are light to our darkness, overshadowing senseless and foolish worldviews. With the poet, we believe that those who reject the light of your truth and reality and morality will be consigned by their choices to darkness. But you, Lord, will reign forever in light, you are forever praised.
Your enemies, Lord, will be scattered,
but the righteous will flourish like a palm tree.
They will still bear fruit in old age,
proclaiming, “The Lord is upright” (vv. 9c, 12a, 14a, 15a).
Yes, Lord, you alone are upright, you alone are our rock in the shifting sands of modernity, you alone are our compass in a morally bankrupt society, you alone our health in a diseased and decaying world. Care for us, that we may flourish like trees, bearing fruit even in our old age.
Amen.
I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”.
Pray with Me 