Mark's Memoirs

David was in trouble.  He was surrounded by his enemies and inhabiting a cave.  He had every flesh reason to despair, to give up.  But he didn’t give in to the flesh.  Instead, he surrendered his problems and his emotions to the Lord.

One of the amazing things about our God is His perspective.  Often we have become so familiar with the ideas and mindset of this world that we think it strange to consider the ways of the Lord.

This Psalm is one of the alphabetical or acrostic psalms. It has twenty-two parts, with each part corresponding to the letters in the Hebrew alphabet. The Psalmist’s desire was to know God’s Word first in heart, so that he would not sin against the Lord.

Ethan the Ezrahite writes this psalm in commemoration of God’s covenant with David.  Verse 1 is prophetic—Ethan desired to make God’s faithfulness known to all generations.

This Psalm points to the character and lasting impact of the Messiah’s reign on earth.

We know that God is love, and that His love surpasses even what we can understand.  We know it, but cannot fathom it, for it is greater than anything else that we know.

God is worthy of praise for all the things He has done.  First, the writer praises Him for His past works among men—“He turned the sea into dry land” (v. 6).  This is just one example of how God demonstrated His superiority to all other gods.

David relied wholly on the Lord.  He chose not to get caught up in circumstances, but to confidently entrust himself to the Lord.  Waiting on the Lord became a key feature of David’s life.

David addresses here a problem that plagued Israel continuously, both before and after his reign.  The key principle is this: any task attempted without the Lord is doomed to failure.