Psalm 37

March 14, 2016 Monday Message:

“Turn from evil and do good; then you will dwell in the land forever!” Psalm 37:27

Psalm 37 is an acrostic poem; each verse begins with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. This reminds us that David is not only King and Worship Leader, but a creative writer as well. He was a master of this new language concept, alphabetic script.

Before alphabetic script, writing was done with pictures. If you owed for a cow that you purchased, you’d draw a picture of a cow. If you bought 5 cows, there might be 5 hash marks after the picture. But there was no way to note a partial payment, interest on the debt, and certainly not compound interest. For purposes of worshiping God, you can’t draw a picture of compassion, repenting, forgiveness or everlasting lovingkindness.

But the relatively new Hebrew language, developed about the same time the Phoenicians were perfecting their language, used letters to represent sounds, and combinations of letter to form words, much the same as we write nowadays. Finally, there was a way to write about repenting and returning to the LORD.

So in the Psalm 37 poem, David uses these new words to recommend high moral standards, and gives advice to put God’s value system to work in each of our lives.

“The LORD loves the just, and will not forsake his faithful ones.” Psalm 37:28

Norton Lawellin

Jesus in the City Fellowship (JICF) meets every Sunday at 10 am in the North end (gym) of the Oliver Ministry Building, 2647 Bloomington Ave., Minneapolis. This Sunday, March 20, 2016, is Palm Sunday, and Pastor Pilla looks in on Jesus’ Triumphal Entry.