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Good understanding and psalm 111

Psalm 111 reads as follows from the New Oxford Annotated Bible:

Praise the Lord, I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart, In the company of the upright, in the congregation, Great are the works of the Lord, Studied by all those who delight in them, Full of honor and majesty is his work, And his righteousness endures forever, He has gained renown by his wonderful deeds, The Lord is gracious and merciful, He has shown the people the power of his works, In giving them the heritage of the nations, The works of his hands are faithful and just, All his precepts are trustworthy, They are established forever and ever To be performed with faithfulness and uprightness, He sent redemption to his people; He has commanded his covenant forever, Holy and awesome is his name, The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, All those who practice it have good understanding, His praise endures forever.

There is a tendency to stand back in lots of things that people do, for any number of reasons. It may be that there is a tendency not to test abilities, for the idea you may be found wanting. Then there is a tendency to forge ahead totally and with tremendous focus, and things can get lost or balanced out in that equation as well.

Overall, this psalm is speaking of the majestic presence of the Lord.

But this psalm is giving more of an invitation to delve into the works of the Lord, enjoy them and find a greater understanding of them.

If everybody just stayed back and took to the Lord’s great gifts with the same reaction of being on automatic, it would be like people were robotic and the robots were getting what they needed.

There is a lack of understanding in many ways as to what the Lord is doing, has done, and will do. The invitation of this psalm is not to just stay there, but to move towards the beginnings of understanding the works of the Lord and delighting in them, not just skimming their surface but going into the deeper waters of understanding in the here and now. This does not mean that we would bypass things that seem too material as opposed to spiritual, like provisions of food mentioned here in this psalm. The Lord’s mindfulness extends into provisions such as necessary food. Wisdom dictates that we would not bypass the physical plane in seeking understanding, as indeed we are in the physical plane.

Verse 2 in the King James version of this psalm reads as follows," The works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein."

The invitation of this psalm is not to stand back as much but to go further in studying and immersing in the works of the Lord at the level of understanding.

Verse 8 says, “They are established forever and ever, to be performed with faithfulness and uprightness."

Being faithful to the Lord is very important and there is reason to properly fear anything that might lead one away from the walk with the Lord.

In Matthew Chapter 16 starting with verse 5 it says, "When the disciples reached the other side, they had forgotten to bring any bread. Jesus said to them, “Watch out, and beware of the yeast of the Pharisees ad Sadducees." They said to one another, “It is because we have brought no bread," And becoming aware of it, Jesus said, “You of little faith, why are you talking about having no bread? Do you not perceive? Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? How could you fail to perceive that I was not talking about bread? Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees! Then they understood that he had not told them to beware of the yeast of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees."

This passage from Matthew brings into play three of the concepts in psalm, the provisions of food, the need to be careful of anything that might lead the disciples astray from the call to faithfulness, and the leading towards good understanding mentioned in the final verse of this psalm. In this particular passage from Matthew, Jesus wants the disciples properly perceive what is going on, and understand what he was talking about. He wants to take them up from their own misperceptions about what he was saying. The disciples were in the very presence of Jesus and they had misperceptions, so this shows the need to dialogue with the Lord about possible misperceptions and misunderstandings which can and do happen.

There is a here and now aspect to this as there was then for the disciples. There is an invitation to study the Bible and the great works of the Lord in the history of mankind, but even more so this psalm is talking about the great works of the Lord in your days and even for you personally. While it is important to perceive great works from afar, afar in either time or space, it is also important to perceive the great works which are right in front of you. If you were to do something amazing for another person, you would want them to at least understand what you are doing and not be oblivious to it. I had been at the beach on evening on the boardwalk and the sky suddenly from no colors lit up into complete colors about 20 levels deep which was just an incredible sight. Yet some people I noticed didn't even look up. There is something to be said for being aware of the wonders around you.

Verse 6 says, “He has shown his people the power of his works, in giving them the heritage of the nations."

The Lord actually gives things to people, not just small things but even the heritage of nations. Something the Lord may be giving you now can also be part of his blessings towards an ancestor of yours that you of course have never met. In receiving the blessings of the heritage, the works come forward into the present era. There is also spaciousness to this verse; there is a lot of room for blessings and mighty deeds, within the “heritage of the nations".

Verse 4 says “He has gained renown by his wonderful deeds; the Lord is gracious and merciful." Renown doesn’t come about for something people have absolutely no grasp at. There is an understanding involved with renown and why would say someone have renown for something no one can understand?

Verse 3 says," Full of honor and majesty is his work, and his righteousness endures forever."

We don’t only want to look at minutia but also what the Lord has in the bigger pictures as well. He has a skyline of possibilities for you maybe. There is fullness to what he does. We shouldn’t be looking for just drips and drabs of help from the Lord.

This is the reason why one individual can pray for example, for a whole continent. The prayer can have fullness, to where it can address towards the whole continent and all the people who reside in that continent. You can really only mail a letter to one address say in South Africa, but in prayer because of the fullness of prayer you can get to every address in South Africa in just one prayer. Also, part of this reverts back to the verse 2 with the invitation to study the works of the Lord. A particular prayer may be crafted on some individual study of an issue, maybe you can craft a prayer for a region of the world based on an article you read, and with your prayer you are developing' good understanding and possibly mysteriously participating in the wonders and will of the Lord for that region of the world. Whatever we can understand, we do know that prayer does also operate in the realm of mystery and there must be proper deference to the mystery of the prayer efforts. Other things we may attempt also have elements of mystery but that doesn't necessarily block the invitation to proceed in some of the available ways and this psalm is saying that we can proceed in the mysteries of the Lord and study them. That the Bible in so many places admonished us to pray showing that there is and will be an invitation towards mystery and we shouldn't back off because of the mysteriousness involved. I'm sure when Peter was asked to join Jesus in walking on water, that this was a mysterious moment for him, but the invitation was to proceed, and not to back off from the moment.

Verse 9 says, “He sent redemption to his people; he has commanded his covenant forever."

He does send things direct. It is not done with a light touch but out of his command. Like the fleet of a navy is sent out by command. Something to ponder in studying the works of the Lord and trying to understand them is that things coming your way may be out of a command. In another psalm it says, he commands his angels to take charge of you.

In James Chapter 1 verse 5 it says:

" If any of you is lacking wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given to you."

The final verse in this psalm says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, all those who practice it have a good understanding, His praise endures forever. The Lord doesn't want to send us out to pasture when it comes to understanding. He wants to engage us at the level of understanding and invites us to study his works which are present to us personally as well as present throughout history. It is not a robotic call as everybody has their unique way of studying. We can't expect someone else to immerse their way into studying the works of the Lord in the exact same way as we do or in the prototypical way. This is part of the spaciousness of the Lord and how much room he has to maneuver. He can meet you by the sea, he can meet you inland, and he can meet you in the rising of the dawn. He can meet this person in the uniqueness of her personality and meet another person in the uniqueness of his personality, and the invitation to study the works of the Lord is only to be received at the level of a response and the call will heed to unique responses from unique individuals. You can't be Peter or James because they were different people living in a different time. You can only follow their example under the banner of your own uniqueness; otherwise the Lord could have just created a team of robots to follow him.

Also, when this verse refers to the beginning of wisdom, we really don't want to put ourselves in the position of beginning to pray as opposed to having been prayed up or having a buildup in your prayer life. All of the sudden today, it hits me, I should have been praying all along. I have mixed feelings about starting now, as good as this; I realize I could have as this verse also says a practiced prayer life. Just because I'm at the beginning of wisdom, doesn't mean I want to be at the beginning of a prayer life I could have been practicing. And this can also go into two strong a shift in your prayer life. I need and want to for example pray for myself, but not at the expense of totally neglecting a practiced intercessory prayer life. And even within that, I don't want to keep those intercessions only focused say on one area, when I want really to practice spreading out, or spreading abroad with my intercessions. Don't let or try not to let personal problems ride so deep that it affects important practiced areas of prayer. Another example is the prayer of thanksgiving, just because deep down I am not grateful over what has taken a wrong turn, that doesn't mean I should altogether give up the practiced prayer of thanksgiving, as this type of prayer is also at the beginning of wisdom with regards to what I am being thankful for, and I despite this setback, still can find things to be thankful for and keep that type of prayer in practice.

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