Psalms 5:1-12

Psalms 1:41

Gordon Churchyard

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Pray about your Enemies

Psalms 5

Gordon Churchyard

Jesus said, "Love your enemies. Pray for them that hurt you". (Matthew 5: 44)

Psalms 5

(Tell the) music leader to use *flutes.
(This is) a song of David.

v1 LORD, hear my words.
Listen to what I am saying to you.

v2 My king and my God, listen to my voice.
I am praying to you for help.
I am shouting to you!

v3 LORD, at sunrise you will hear my voice.
I will watch and pray early in the morning.

v4 My God, you do not like what is wrong.
Bad people cannot live with you.

v5 Some people think that they are important.
They cannot stay near to God.
God, you hate everyone that does wrong.

v6 You destroy all that do not speak the truth.
The LORD hates all people that do murder.
He hates people that do not keep their promises.

v7 But I will come into your house
because you are so loving and kind.
I will bend low in your holy temple.

v8 Lead me in your righteous way
because of my enemies.
Make your path straight for me.

v9 Nothing that my enemies say is true.
They want to destroy me.
Their mouth is like an open *grave.
They only speak what is not true.

v10 God, tell them that they are not right.
Show them that their ideas are wrong.
Send them away because they are bad.
They argued with you.

v11 Make all the people happy that hide with you.
Make them always sing for *joy.
Cover them that love your name. Keep them safe.
Then they will *rejoice in you.

v12 LORD, you do such good things to the righteous.
Your love is all round them.

The Story of Psalms 5

Psalms 3 was a morning song. Psalms 5 is another morning song. We do not know when David wrote it. We do know that David had enemies. He prayed to God about them. We must pray about our enemies. God will do something when we pray.

What Psalms 5 means

Verses 1 – 3: David told the LORD that he would pray early in the morning. Christians must pray like David did. It is important to pray every morning. It is also important to look for the answer from God. That is why David said, "I will watch and pray".

Verses 4 – 6: The enemies of David were really the enemies of God. David says that God will destroy them. Really, they destroy themselves. A man called Hosea wrote part of the Bible. He wrote, "Israel, you destroyed yourself. But your help is in me". (Hosea 13:9) We destroy ourselves if we do not ask God for help. Even the enemies of God can ask for help. Then they will become God's friends.

Verses 7 – 8: David did not have a temple in Jerusalem. He had a tent. This was a small house made from goatskins. (Look at the end of Psalms 4 for a note on the Temple.) David met God there. Our God is everywhere. We meet him when we pray to him. It is good to pray the words of Psalms 5:8. A straight path means a good path. The word righteous is a special Bible word. Look below, after 'Something to do' for a note about it. "Lead me in your righteous way because of my enemies" means this: Help me to obey you, God. My enemies are making it difficult for me to obey you.

Verses 9 – 10: An open grave has dead bodies in it. They are not nice. "Their mouth is like an open grave" means "what they say is not nice".

Verses 11 – 12: The psalm finishes with a picture. The LORD is all round the people that love him. He is like a cover over them that stops people from hurting them. This makes the people of God happy, even when their enemies are near.

Something to do

1. Pray to the LORD Jesus every morning.

2. Pray for the people that hurt you. Ask God to show them that they are not right. Remember, God loves them as well as you. He does not want them to destroy themselves. He wants them to become his friends. Pray that they will become friends of God.

The word RIGHTEOUS

This is a difficult word to understand. In the Bible, it means 4 things. The context usually tells us what it means. The context is the verses before and after it in the Bible.

Here are the 4 things that it means:

1. It tells us about God. It means that he has never done anything that is wrong. He has never broken his own rules. He has always done what is right.

2. Even though only God is really righteous, he calls his friends righteous. It does not mean that they are good. It means that they have asked God to forgive them. The word "forgive" means "to give away". God gives away all the sin of the people that he forgives to Jesus. Jesus takes it away. This happened when Jesus died on the Cross at Calvary. By some strange way that we cannot understand, Jesus took our sins away. Our sins are the things that we do that are wrong, the things that we do that do not obey God's rules. When Jesus died, he took away the sins of the people that lived before him and that lived after him. That includes us... if we ask!

3. The people that God forgives usually try to obey God. They do what he tells them to do. This is also called "being righteous" in the Bible. When they fail, they pray again, "God, forgive me". God will always forgive us when we ask him.

4. In the Old Testament, the Jews tried to obey the TORAH. This was all the rules in the Old Testament. Most of them were in the first 5 books of the Bible. The Jews called them the Torah. Later, other books like Isaiah and Jeremiah were also called Torah. Jews that kept these rules were called "righteous". This meaning of the word is not important for Christians today. They are righteous for reasons 2 and 3.

Righteous people have what the Bible calls RIGHTEOUSNESS. It means that they have asked God to forgive them. It does not mean that they are very good. It means that they are friends of Jesus, because they have asked him to take away their sin.

flute ~ a pipe that you blow across to make music
grave ~ a hole in the ground where people bury dead bodies
joy ~ when you feel really happy deep inside you
rejoice ~ when we tell of our joy to other people