Precious Moments Seek

The Voice Of One And Psalm 109

Psalm 109 reads as follow from the New King James version of the Bible:

1 Do not keep silent,
O God of my praise!
2 For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful
Have opened against me;
They have spoken against me with a lying tongue.
3 They have also surrounded me with words of hatred,
And fought against me without a cause.
4 In return for my love they are my accusers,
But I give myself to prayer.
5 Thus they have rewarded me evil for good,
And hatred for my love.

6 Set a wicked man over him,
And let an accuser stand at his right hand.
7 When he is judged, let him be found guilty,
And let his prayer become sin.
8 Let his days be few,
And let another take his office.
9 Let his children be fatherless,
And his wife a widow.
10 Let his children continually be vagabonds, and beg;
Let them seek their bread also from their desolate places.
11 Let the creditor seize all that he has,
And let strangers plunder his labor.
12 Let there be none to extend mercy to him,
Nor let there be any to favor his fatherless children.
13 Let his posterity be cut off,
And in the generation following let their name be blotted out.

14 Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the LORD,
And let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.
15 Let them be continually before the LORD,
That He may cut off the memory of them from the earth;
16 Because he did not remember to show mercy,
But persecuted the poor and needy man,
That he might even slay the broken in heart.
17 As he loved cursing, so let it come to him;
As he did not delight in blessing, so let it be far from him.
18 As he clothed himself with cursing as with his garment,
So let it enter his body like water,
And like oil into his bones.
19 Let it be to him like the garment which covers him,
And for a belt with which he girds himself continually.
20 Let this be the LORD's reward to my accusers,
And to those who speak evil against my person.

21 But You, O GOD the Lord,
Deal with me for Your name's sake;
Because Your mercy is good, deliver me.
22 For I am poor and needy,
And my heart is wounded within me.
23 I am gone like a shadow when it lengthens;
I am shaken off like a locust.
24 My knees are weak through fasting,
And my flesh is feeble from lack of fatness.
25 I also have become a reproach to them;
When they look at me, they shake their heads.

26 Help me, O LORD my God!
Oh, save me according to Your mercy,
27 That they may know that this is Your hand—
That You, LORD, have done it!
28 Let them curse, but You bless;
When they arise, let them be ashamed,
But let Your servant rejoice.
29 Let my accusers be clothed with shame,
And let them cover themselves with their own disgrace as with a mantle.

30 I will greatly praise the LORD with my mouth;
Yes, I will praise Him among the multitude.

31 For He shall stand at the right hand of the poor,
To save him from those who condemn him.

In this very poetic psalm, the psalmist expresses in strong language his distain for those who have gone out of their way to falsely slander him in his troubles.

These slanderers are individuals who tend to band together, a sign of a pack mentality that might also be a form of cowardly behavior but it is also symbolic that in this psalm they were neither a voice for good nor a voice for one and showed that rather than investigating the presence of the Lord and finding their own voice of prayer and praise This scene that had turned to the pack mentality with mostly voiceless ways of the wicked in that the voices were lumped together as a crowded chatter of evil, rather than any true and distinguished voice that any could call theor own as they were all in a way just parroting one another as they banded together.

Slander, is a sin particularly insidious that is dealt with harshly in this and other places in the Bible.

The psalmist expresses the wish, and this is more akin to the idea of a curse, that the slanderous persons sins turn inward on them, where they get caught in the net of their own trap and that what they are extending outward comes right back upon them and permeates every aspect of things for them.

But not only this, but that the anti blessing extend further to children, their mother, and beyond themselves to where trouble firmly takes hold in everything that relates to them.

One of the keen insights from these set of verses which are akin to a curse, is verse 14 which says,  14 Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the LORD,
And let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.

The sin of his mother will not be blotted out, but at the same time this shows that the blessing of the Lord had it been upon them  would include the blotting out of sins which is a type of language that is very specific to sins no longer existing or having a reality as they are erased. Of course the sins can leave consequences that endure or linger..

What is being depicted in this psalm is often used as part of the plots of movies, novels in that what the bad guys try to bring upon others in the later portions of the story comes back upon them in some way where they get tripped up by their own devices.

But these verses again show the sometimes forceful presence of the evildoers and plotters, how they wish to intrude or go out their way to wreak havoc. They wish to inflect their voices as the overwhelming voice and the presiding voice that also rules and overules but this will not be the case..

Despite the troubles of the psalmist, as he himself has been fasting as well as praying, the focus of this psalm narrows to distinguish the presence of the Lord and the voice of the one to him, as there needs to be a separation from amongst these voices. He is asking that the Lord differentiate and that he deal with him with mercy and deliverance as he states in verse 21.

It is interesting that the verbiage of " deal with me" first includes that ideas that the Lord does care and does deal with us as individuals. There could be that idea that even good behavior in the throes of surrounding evils becomes undifferentiated and everybody gets lumped together as judgment looms.

He has given himself to prayer and this is where the request that he is making is founded and built upon. It might have been the feel of the land and of everything out there had been so corrupted that the psalmist himself felt this sense of corruption and felt unworthy of being dealt with by the Lord out of his mercy but his practice of prayer had strengthened his belief the Lord would single him out and deal with him out of mercy, goodness and deliverance. Even though his physical strength has been drained by his troubles, he still had built up a measure of spiritual strength and fortitude to call forth the mercy of the Lord and not let the curses of others rest upon him.

The words of the psalmist are guarded, in that he asks that the Lord deal with him according to the ways of goodness and mercy and in the case of this psalm he is really singling himself out as the only one who may be deserving of this mercy and deliverance.

There are all sorts of competing voices out there, and In the psalmist's case, most or just about all of the voices he is dealing with that are making themselves heard are for curses and despair, and he is only saying that the curses being espoused towards him reverberate back upon those who are spewing curses with their speech and actions without cause. He will not let this rising tide of corrupt voices drown out the presence of the Lord to him for goodness and mercy and he keeps the voice of the Lord for him as singular.

Within all this he is distinguishing,

the voice and actions of the Lord as different and paramount..

The solitary person might say there are so many people out there, that in a sense what I have too say doesn't count for much or have much of an effect. And in many ways we can lose our voice in the world even while striving hard towards what at first might seem like good motives and good ideas.

For the psalmist he has kept alive his own voice in prayer and if he didn't he may have been swept away with or by the evildoers, but he had found and maintained his own voice in prayer even as his surrounding troubles mounted.

There is the danger of losing or not finding your voice. In the natural sense, this is more often or more likely true in that my say, your say in many areas does not count for much. . In the spiritual sense however, in the mysterious realms of prayer, praise and worship of the Lord, yours might be a very powerful voice and also a singular voice as what you are intervening for in prayer in certain instances might be the only voice for this particular intervention at this time. While the voice of one may not carry far in the natural world, in the spiritual world and as it affects the natural world as well, the voice of one can be a very powerful voice.

It mentions In James that Elijah prayed for rain and it rained for years. This is a case where the voice of one in prayer affected the natural physical realms through the realms of the spiritual.

The voice can be the voice that rings through the ages.

This can be in the manner of intercessions for the distant future and this psalmists prayers may be affecting events as they are occurring in these days, in this era, in these precious moments of time..

You can be the voice among man and in the case of this psalmist you must be the voice among many because there might not be that other voice in prayer to uphold, It would be hoped that there were other voices joining in prayer, but you can't rely on this, it may be that you are the voice of one. The psalmist needed in the scenes of this psalm to be the voice of one for himself.

This psalm gives pause to reconsider the meaning of your own voice in the world of all that is significant and all that truly matters, in the world of the supernatural and spiritual as well as the material and physical.

This psalm is also giving a blueprint as a reminder to seek the voice of blessing from the Lord and to maybe lessen the all to common immersion into the competing voices out there and to consider the possible need to deflate their presence and effect in your life as you more strongly seek the voice of blessing from the Lord.

It is a matter of rejoicing that the psalmist is seen by the Lord as among the multitude in giving praise.. This might have been either among the many that are praising him, or the many that were errant but in either case, the Lord singles him out and his voice.

It does seem from the very final verses of the psalm that there is a third group, of the poor that may not have a voice, or may not have developed a voice in the presence of the Lord and indeed the psalmist was praising the Lord amidst the silent multitude.

This was more likely the case, as there is no mention earlier in the psalm that there were other voices of power in prayer that could join with him and it was only his own and maybe last remaining voice left amongst the very many who were lost in the ways of corruption, slander and evil intentions and actions towards others.

The psalmist as well singles out the voice of the Lord as the voice that counts in what matters, that despite the curses of those around him, if the Lord says blessing, it will be blessing.

The psalmist has had many troubles that had increasingly become up front and personal, , but in that moment of praise the Lord does see him, in the crowd of all else that is out there mostly for wrong and no good  and because he is seen this way, he is now the voice of the one to the Lord and he asks the Lord be the voice of the one to him out of his his enduring mercy and goodness..

About the Author