Psalm 139

We're actually going to spend 3 days in total reviewing Psalm 139.  Spend today and tomorrow reviewing this psalm.

Review Psalm 139

This is a long Psalm so we're going to spend both today and tomorrow reviewing Psalm 139.

Psalm 139

For the director of music. Of David. A psalm.

¹ O Lord, you have searched me
    and you know me.
² You know when I sit and when I rise;
    you perceive my thoughts from afar.
³ You discern my going out and my lying down;
    you are familiar with all my ways.
⁴ Before a word is on my tongue
    you know it completely, O Lord.

⁵ You hem me in—behind and before;
    you have laid your hand upon me.
⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
    too lofty for me to attain.

⁷ Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence?
⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths,^[a] you are there.
⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast.

¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
    and the light become night around me,”
¹² even the darkness will not be dark to you;
    the night will shine like the day,
    for darkness is as light to you.

¹³ For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.
¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you
    when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
¹⁶     your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
    were written in your book
    before one of them came to be.

¹⁷ How precious to^[b] me are your thoughts, O God!
    How vast is the sum of them!
¹⁸ Were I to count them,
    they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake,
    I am still with you.

¹⁹ If only you would slay the wicked, O God!
    Away from me, you bloodthirsty men!
²⁰ They speak of you with evil intent;
    your adversaries misuse your name.
²¹ Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord,
    and abhor those who rise up against you?
²² I have nothing but hatred for them;
    I count them my enemies.

²³ Search me, O God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my anxious thoughts.
²⁴ See if there is any offensive way in me,
    and lead me in the way everlasting.

Tomorrow review Psalm 139 again.

Psalm 121 Review

Spend the day reviewing Psalm 121.

Psalm 121

A song of ascents.

¹ I lift up my eyes to the hills—
    where does my help come from?
² My help comes from the Lord,
    the Maker of heaven and earth.

³ He will not let your foot slip—
    he who watches over you will not slumber;
⁴ indeed, he who watches over Israel
    will neither slumber nor sleep.

⁵ The Lord watches over you—
    the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
⁶ the sun will not harm you by day,
    nor the moon by night.

⁷ The Lord will keep you from all harm—
    he will watch over your life;
⁸ the Lord will watch over your coming and going
    both now and forevermore.

Tomorrow and Wednesday we will review Psalm 139.

Psalm 46 Review

Spend the day today reviewing Psalm 46.

Psalm 46

For the director of music. Of the Sons of Korah. According to alamoth. A song.

1 God is our refuge and strength,
    an ever-present help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
    and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
3 though its waters roar and foam
    and the mountains quake with their surging. Selah

4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
    the holy place where the Most High dwells.
5 God is within her, she will not fall;
    God will help her at break of day.
6 Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;
    he lifts his voice, the earth melts.

7 The Lord Almighty is with us;
    the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah

8 Come and see the works of the Lord,
    the desolations he has brought on the earth.
9 He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth;
    he breaks the bow and shatters the spear,
    he burns the shields with fire.
10 “Be still, and know that I am God;
    I will be exalted among the nations,
    I will be exalted in the earth.”

11 The Lord Almighty is with us;
    the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah

Spend the weekend reviewing Psalms 1, 23, and 46.  Monday we will review Psalm 121

Psalm 23 Review

Hope you did well with reviewing Psalm 1 - I've got it back in my memory now!

Today is Psalm 23...

Psalm 23

A psalm of David.

1 The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
2     He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
3     he restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness
    for his name’s sake.
4 Even though I walk
    through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
    for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
    they comfort me.

5 You prepare a table before me
    in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
    my cup overflows.
6 Surely goodness and love will follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
    forever.

Tomorrow is Psalm 46

New Year - back in gear! Psalm 1 Review

Time to get this going again.

One of my excuses for not getting back into this was that the NIV 1984 edition was no longer available on my Bible apps, so it was more difficult to review.  Well, I solved that problem by creating Voice Memos on my iPhone for everything I've memorized.  With that no longer a legitimate excuse, here we go :)  And Janet Pope herself emailed me a few app suggestions that might solve the problem as well.

Speaking of Janet Pope - she has a new blog with some great inspiration for scripture memorization.  Check it out!

I am now starting to memorize in the ESV.  In all the new memorizing we do, I will include NIV and ESV options - you can feel free to memorize in any translation you choose!

We're going to take some time to review all the chapters we've memorized previously, and then continue on in James.

Today I'm reviewing Psalm 1.

Psalm 1

1 Blessed is the man
    who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
    or sit in the seat of mockers.
2 But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
    and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
    which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
    Whatever he does prospers.

4 Not so the wicked!
    They are like chaff
    that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
    nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

6 For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
    but the way of the wicked will perish.

Tomorrow will be Psalm 23.

James 1:16

Today is Wednesday so begin by reviewing 1 Corinthians 13.


¹⁶ Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. (NIV)

¹⁶ Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.  (ESV)

Today's verse is a short, but powerful one.

We saw yesterday that sin is a process.  It begins in the emotions when we desire something, maybe even something good, but we desire it to excess or in a twisted way.  It then moves into our minds when we rationalize the sin.  It then moves into our will as we design a plan to carry out our sin.  And then it ends in the actual act of sin.

What's the most effective way to deal with our sin?  The earlier the better, of course!


MacArthur again:

At what point then in our lives do we deal with sin? Out here at the level of behavior? No. Way back at the level of what? Of desire. It is the person who is able to control their emotional responses that is going to deal effectively with sin. Or, the person who if feeling those emotional responses has a mind that is sanctified. And when it gets from the emotions to the mind, it is halted at that point. If it makes it to the will and something is conceived, it will be born. A child conceived is a child born. That child's got to come out.

And so, in dealing with sin in our lives, we don't just deal on the end of the line effectively, we've got to go way back to the beginning. If the emotions are allowed to be exposed to the baited hook, you've got problems. And, you know, everything in our evil society will work on your emotions. All the dramatic things, all the movies and television and books and music and clothing and all the alluring sights and sounds and things that attract our attention are all designed first to capture the emotion. There's all a facade that is intended to allure us....

A woman puts on perfume and leaves a trail. That is not for your intellect. We need to guard at the level of emotion and secondly, at the level of mind. And so the mind is to be brought into captivity to Christ. Isn't that a great truth? Bringing everything in the mind into captivity to Christ. An unprotected, uncontrolled, unyielded mind is going to be filled with evil images. So I have to control my emotions. I have to control my mind because that's where the thing gets started. So I want to be sure that my emotions are given over to the things of God....

You cannot expose your emotions continually to things which lure you away from the things of God. You can't do that without paying a dear price.

And the mind, it's very simple, you need the mind of Christ. You need a renewed mind. You need a mind that is set on things above and not on things on the earth. You need a mind that is saturated with the Word of Christ dwelling in it richly. You need a mind, Paul says in Romans 12:2, that is transformed and not conformed to the world. You need to, can I put it simply? love the Lord your God with all your mind. What's in your mind? What's in your mind? If your mind feeds on the Word of God, then you're going to stop sin way back. If your emotions are under the control of the Spirit of God, and your feelings have been brought captive to Him, you're going to stop sin back where it starts. If you let your emotions go and expose them to everything the world is throwing out and you let your mind be an open door for everything to fly in and out and it's not cultivated and plowed deeply with the Word of God, then you will conceive sin and you will bring forth the child....and the child turns out to be a killer. Sin is a killer. The wages of sin is what? death. Spiritual death separating the soul from God, physical death separating the soul from the body, eternal death separating the soul and body from God.

And he's not here particularly talking about Christians or non-Christians, he's just saying all sin ever produces is death. Even for a believer, can be physical death, as 1 Corinthians 11 and 1 John 5:16 demonstrate. All kinds of death flows out of sin. So the idea that you're bringing some satisfying behavior to life is a lie. All you bring is sin and all sin brings is death...

Stop being deceived....Know where the trouble is, he's saying, don't be deceived. Stop blaming God and start blaming yourself. And start looking within and don't go blindly through life just accepting what is and then blaming God. Realize that you have within you an enemy and that enemy is your own fallenness and your own lust and that enemy must be dealt with. You cannot expose your emotion to everything that lures you. You cannot let your mind become captive to those things. You've got to know where the problem is, not be deceived about it, go back there and deal with it at that level. Stop it at the start. Fill your mind with the things of God so that they can never mate with your feelings and conceive sin in your will.

If your emotions are controlled or if your mind is controlled, either one, leaves the other without a mate to conceive sin. 

Even as believers - perhaps, especially as believers, we need to take sin seriously.  We serve a holy God.  Yes, we serve a merciful God.  Yes, we serve a gracious God.  Yes, we serve a loving God.  But we serve a holy God.  And that makes His mercy, grace and love even more amazing.  We need to take sin as seriously as God takes it.

We need to deal with it at a grass roots level.  We need to be proactive.  We cannot expose our emotions to the things we know lure us - and only you know what that is for you.  It's not the same for everyone.  And then, we cannot allow our mind to become captive to those things.

The best way to deal with it is both positively and negatively.  Yes, remove the evil temptations, and don't allow yourself to be exposed to the things you are susceptible to.  But also purposefully fill your emotions and mind with things that are pure.

A great companion verse would be Philippians 4:8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Think about these things.