RECIPE FOR RESTORATION

  PSALM 51  ABBY FREE, JULY 8, 2001        'RECIPE FOR RESTORATION'

When a novel begins with the agonizing cry, "O God, have mercy on me," you know that the character is in trouble. This person is so lost or so sick or so worried or so afraid or so guilty, that he or she can't go on without relief. Life has been interrupted by the deepest anguish. And when you read further and learn that this person is wealthy and healthy you really become curious. What could have happened here? - That's how Psalm 51 begins.

A psalm is a song, and there are 150 songs gathered together into one book or scroll called the Book of the Psalms. Psalm songs were sung or recited by Jews and also in the early church and in some present day churches. Ps 51 has been dubbed the Psalm of Psalms. We are about to find out why. This not a poetic composition but a desperate cry. There is a story behind this psalm.  Psalms often have back-stories behind them and Ps.51 may have the largest back-story of all the psalms. In fact, if this were on TV, it might begin with a content warning.

EVERYTHING IS MEANINGLESS

What kind of world are we living in? No matter how it may be described, God does have a word for us. It comes in Ecclesiastes, one of the canonical wisdom books. Ecclesiastes is a series of lectures in the Old Testament that speak about life, reality, and values for wise and successful living. Ecclesiastes has sometimes been misunderstood or neglected.  Some have considered it to be the strangest book in the Bible. The author has been accused of scepticism, fatalism, and pessimism. That's not an accurate appraisal. I recommend the following perspective. Approach the book with an open mind. Discard unflattering assumptions. It is possible to understand what the author was communicating to an Old Testament community of faith and to discern robust recommendations and warnings about life and for living in this age.

The descriptor "son of David" identifies the author as a male and although the author's personal name has not been divulged, the options are narrowed. "The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem …" (1:1). From among David's sons, it was Solomon who had a reputation for communicating wisdom and truth. He is called qoheleth meaning teacher as he takes on the role of a sage, a wise man, a scholar, a wise and older tutor of wisdom.  Like other sages of his day, Solomon spoke to the young people of his day. His primary audience was young adults embarking on life and making decisions about their priorities, their values, and their purposes in life.

The author begins the book by describing everything in life as vanity or meaningless. “Meaningless! Meaningless! says the Teacher. 
Utterly meaningless!
 Everything is meaningless” (1:2). How long would you stay with a counsellor who spoke like that? He must have something more to say. 
He does.

TO UNDERSTAND WHO WE ARE, WE MUST UNDERSTAND GOD

To understand who we are, we must understand who God is. Psalm 8:1 says, “O Lord our Lord, how majesty is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.” God is the ultimate reality, existing in and of himself with an infinite existence that is unlike any other being in the universe. He is without a beginning and he doesn’t have an end date. God has personality and the essence of God is distinguished in three persons, a trinity of persons, who are neither three gods or three parts or modes of God but rather are coequal and coeternal.

David wrote this psalm to praise the incomparable Creator of this entire universe. How big a deal is that?

We view the sun positioned in the heavens of our planet. The sun is 865,000 miles in diameter. If we create our own scale, reducing the sun to the size of a beach ball two feet in diameter, we can commence a staggering comparison. You step off eighty-two paces (a pace being two feet long), and put down a mustard seed to represent the first planet Mercury. Sixty more steps and you put down a beebee for Venus. Walk seventy-eight more paces and for earth you put down a pea. One hundred and eight steps further you will be at Mars and you will put down a pinhead. Then you may scatter some fine dust to represent asteroids and mark off seven hundred and eighty-eight more steps and mark Jupiter with an orange. Nine hundred and thirty-four steps further and for Saturn you put down a golf ball. Another two thousand and eighty-six steps and Uranus will be marked by a marble. Two thousand three hundred and twenty-two steps more and you mark Neptune with a cherry. That will have taken you two and one half miles and you aren't even near Pluto. However, if you swing this two and one half mile arm around you will have a mass surface of five miles in diameter and that will represent our solar system. You will have to travel another six thousand seven hundred and twenty-two miles on the same scale before you meet another two foot ball to represent the nearest other star.

GRASPING HOW MUCH GOD CARES FOR US

To best understand that God infinitely cares for each of us, I must begin with the Big Picture. Somewhere in the broad window of pre-history God determined to create humanity and a world in which the species would live. You and I are sitting in different places, a library, a living room, a Starbucks, some place where we can read. That’s the small picture. The big picture is that we are at this moment part of a whole human history. Human history had a beginning and it has always been moving toward a target. It is a matter of design, and this design originated with God. That design bears upon the theme that intrigued David, the psalmist, shepherd, soldier and king of ancient Israel. He wrote memorable conversation to God which is recorded as Psalm 8 in the Book of Psalms of the Old Testament.

8:1 O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
2 Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
you have established strength because of your foes,
to still the enemy and the avenger.

3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
4 what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?

5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
6 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
7 all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
8 the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

9 O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

DAVID WAS AMAZED THAT GOD MADE HIM

The psalmist David wrote a hymn that captures his own sense of wonder that God created the human creature to fashion Himself, that is to bear God’s likeness, to be the image or reflection of God. In Psalm 8, you read “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens… When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, (Psalm 8:1,3-6 ESV)