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Welcome to today’s Daily Scripture Reading and Meditation covering Psalm 70:4 wherein our hearts can be moved to take the knowledge of the Lord and turn it into praise.
May all who seek You rejoice and be glad in You! May those who love Your salvation say evermore, “God is great!”
Knowledge and emotion do not always reflect one another. In other words, you or I can say that we know the Lord but don’t always feel excited about who He is. But the word from God through David here is that such a position is not one in which we should remain. Although it is good and necessary to seek Him, it is far more wonderful to add to this rejoicing and gladness. An intellectual acknowledgment is not the sum of worship but is rather its starting place, and David, even with all his blunders, understood this so well. In fact, he pursued this lifestyle to such an extent that his living out of it was not always well received by others. His wife, Michal, thought him foolish for displaying exuberant joy in the Lord, and earlier in life his brothers likely thought it enough that he would say that the Lord was real and true, but not that he should go and proclaim the Lord’s glory before an angry giant. The Scriptures are full of people not who merely claimed faith in God but who displayed through their lives that He was their true passion!
The second half of this text gives us a more specific example of what it means to be glad in the Lord that we seek. May those who love Your salvation say evermore, “God is great!” Two things we can note here. The first is that there is something very wonderful that God provides, something to rejoice in; salvation is available, and for those who know it in a personal way, they have a great love for it! This salvation is one that sometimes comes for the one whose physical well-being is at risk, a situation David was all too familiar with. But certainly the salvation David had in mind was not limited to this because of a second thing that we learn concerning the salvation he wrote about. The saved would be able tell of God’s greatness evermore. God’s work on their behalf was for the enjoyment in the present moment and in an eternity to come. Though David only through faith spoke of His coming, this is fully realized in Christ, the salvation Securer. How much more then, having an increased knowledge of God’s goodness through Him, kindnesses that David was only allowed to dream of, should we experience an accelerated and magnified gladness! Again, if knowledge leads to exultation, we have much reason to rejoice.
Do you think much on the wonders of God and in particular of His salvation? Do your understandings lead you to praise flowing from a splendid inner joy? In the midst of David’s praise, it was his prayer that we would join Him. Let us weed out the gladness-killers in our hearts, the plants that spring up quickly as if of great promise but never bear fruit…never yield harvest. It is not enough to know of our Lord if what does not follow is an according happiness in Him. May we say evermore with impassioned hearts alongside His servant David, “God is great!”
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