Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

I call to you, Lord, come quickly to me;
    hear me when I call to you.
May my prayer be set before you like incense;
    may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice.

• Psalm 141:1-2

But I am like an olive tree
    flourishing in the house of God;
I trust in God’s unfailing love
    for ever and ever.
For what you have done I will always praise you
    in the presence of your faithful people.
And I will hope in your name,
    for your name is good.

• Psalm 52:8-9

“If we want to read and to pray the prayers of the Bible and especially the Psalms, therefore, we must not ask first what they have to do with us, but what they have to do with Jesus Christ. We must ask how we can understand the Psalms as God’s Word, and then we shalI be able to pray them.  It does not depend, therefore, on whether the Psalms express adequately that which we feel at a given moment in our heart. If we are to pray aright, perhaps it is quite necessary that we pray contrary to our own heart. Not what we want to pray is important, but what God wants us to pray. If we were dependent entirely on ourselves, we would probably pray only the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer. But God wants it otherwise. The richness of the Word of God ought to determine our prayer, not the poverty of our heart.
“Thus if the Bible also contains a prayer book, we learn from this that not only that Word which he has to say to us belongs to the Word of God, but also that word which he wants to hear from us, because it is the word of his beloved Son. This is pure grace, that God tells us how we can speak with him and have fellowship with him. We can do it by praying in the name of Jesus Christ. The Psalms are given to us to this end, that we may learn to pray them in the name of Jesus Christ.”

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer, psalms, The Prayer Book of the Bible

Dietrich Bonhoeffer makes an excellent point here.  Jesus did not only quote the Psalms, but much of His answers were quotations of Scriptures.  He was kind of saying, “Why ask me?  The Scriptures already have this proclamation.”  And Jesus used Scripture to combat Satan during His fasting in the wilderness.  He used the Scriptures, for the most part, when combating the Pharisees and the religious leaders.  They would know the Scriptures.  Even though chapters and verse numbers were added centuries later, these learned religious leaders would have been able to pinpoint the Scripture Jesus had quoted.

He did this to illustrate that He spoke with His own authority, and how could any of them continue the argument when they would have to reject the Scriptures in doing so.

But Bonhoeffer takes it a step further.  The Scriptures are part of God’s Holy Word.  What better way to communicate what we feel in our hearts other than quoting Scripture back to Him, and the Psalms in particular seem to come from the heart.  This poetry language elicits an emotional response for it was written with the writer’s emotions in full view.  If the “paper” that was used could show emotions, the paper would laugh, cry, sing, rejoice, and even go into despair or anger.

The Scriptures above were quoted but not referenced in this chapter, but we can see Jesus within them.  Psalm 141 asks for God to listen to his prayer.  He wants God to accept his prayer like God accepts the pleasing aroma of the burning of incense.  Revelation 8:3-4 speak of the smoke from the incense rising along with the prayers of the saints.

The short passage at the end of Psalm 52 starts with a simile.  We are each like an olive tree.  We rely on God to water us with His rain and bring nutrients into the soil so that we can grow.  We could fill volumes of books with all the things God does for us each second of every day.  We trust in God’s love, for only through God’s love can we go on, just like the olive tree.

We praise God and we hope in His name.  Ah, this is where Dietrich Bonhoeffer was going with this.  We pray the psalms “in the name of Jesus.”

Lord, guide us as we pray.  You are our guide, our shining light.  You show us the path.  Psalm 52 speaks of us being like an olive tree.  Psalm 1:3 states for the person who delights in the Law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night, “That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers.”  Lord, may we have that zeal in loving and meditating on Your Word.  In the name of Jesus, I pray.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.