Day 105: Psalms 7, 27, 31, 34, 52

Welcome to 5 -Minute Bible, your daily guide for your daily reading. Today's April the 15th, and we'll be looking at Psalms 7, 27, 31, 34, and 52.

Now, today we step out of the action of 1 Samuel and into David's inner world. And the chase hasn't stopped.

Saul is still hunting him, and nothing has gotten easier for David. But now we get to hear what

David sounds like when he talks to God in the middle of it. This is sort of looking at his private prayer journal or the hymns to the songs that he's singing to comfort himself while he's on the run.

These Psalms come straight out of that pressure. David is not writing from a quiet place of tranquility.

He is a fugitive. He's being lied about, betrayed, and hunted. And these are the songs and really the prayers of a man who has nowhere safe to stand except for God.

Psalm 7 sounds like a man who's had his name dragged through the mud. He doesn't spin it.

He doesn't defend himself in front of everyone. He takes it straight to God and basically said, You've seen this.

You judge this case. May their accusations be turned against them. And he trusts

God to sort out what others are twisting. Psalm 27 feels almost shocking when you remember the context.

David is surrounded by enemies, and yet he says that the Lord is his light and his salvation.

Not will be, but is. And what he wants more is not safety. He wants to be near God.

And that tells you exactly what it is that is anchoring him. Psalm 31 gets more raw.

He talks about distress and betrayal and weakness. And you can feel the strain in it. But right in the middle, he makes a decision.

Into your hands I commit my spirit. He puts his life in God's hands while things are still hard, not after things calm down.

Psalm 34 comes out of that strange moment when he had to act insane just to stay alive.

And instead of just moving on, he stops and says, God rescued me. And then he pulls others in and says, taste and see.

This is not a theory for David. This is the experience of knowing God and tasting his deliverance.

Then we end with Psalm 52, which is a little bit darker. This is about doeg. This is about betrayal that leads to the priest being slaughtered at Nod.

Real blood, real consequences. And David looks at that kind of evil and says it's not going to last because evil is small.

And because God is big and his steadfast love is even grander.

So as you read today, I want you to sit with the following question. When you're hit, when you're misunderstood, when you're pressured, what is your instinct?

What is your first response? Do you move toward control or do you actually run toward God?

And this answer tells you what you really trust. When you're going through pain and suffering, what you turn to is what you trust.

And if it's not God, then we need to reorient our lives like David. What ties all of these chapters together is not the fact that David isn't afraid or he's endowed with some kind of superhuman courage.

It's that he doesn't stay there in his fear. He starts in very real places. He's being accused.

He's afraid. He's being betrayed. He's being pressured. And he says all of that out loud, but he doesn't clean it up.

He keeps moving and running toward God. In Psalm 7, he moves from being attacked to trusting

God as judge. In Psalm 22, he moves from being surrounded to fixing his eyes upon God.

In Psalm 31, he moves from strain in order to surrender. In Psalm 34, he moves from rescue to worship.

In Psalm 52, he looks straight at the evil and he says this is not the end of the story, which means that he's putting his hope and his trust in the

God who controls the future. And all of these movements matter because this is what real faith looks like in the life of a believer.

It doesn't pretend like things are fine. It doesn't collapse when things aren't. It brings everything to God and refuses to let our fears and our insecurities or evil have the last word.

All of this, in fact, is pointing forward to Jesus because David is a righteous sufferer, but he's not the final and most perfect one.

Jesus is the one who walks this road completely. He's slandered, lied about, betrayed, surrounded, and even killed.

And when he hangs on the cross, he quotes David's own words from Psalm 31 and makes them into his own, saying,

But here's the difference. David is delivered out of danger. Jesus continues to go through it.

David escapes death, but Jesus embraces it. And by that, he doesn't just show us how to trust

God. He becomes the place that we run to when everything is falling apart. So as you read these

Psalms today, you are not just looking at David's prayers. You are looking at Christ.

You are looking at how Jesus is going to teach us how to suffer without losing our footing because he has already secured the outcome.

And when we suffer, all we need to do is look to him. So as you read these

Psalms, listen for that movement from David, from the pressure to the trust, from the accusations to the faithfulness.

Remember, because tomorrow we're going to go back into the story and we're going to watch David live all of these things out in real time.

And with that, read your Bible carefully, devotionally, and joyfully. And may the Lord use his word to sanctify you completely.