“Touch Not The Lord’s Anointed”

If there has been a phrase in the Bible that has been recently tortured until it confesses a lie, it is the phrase, “Touch not the Lord’s anointed.” I hear it a lot in Christian conversation today. Usually, the phrase is meant to caution anyone who is criticising the questionable teaching or way of life of a famous preacher or church leader. That is meant to be a no-go area.

The popular understanding of this phrase is that if you say negative things about “an anointed servant of God,” something nasty will happen to you. You might even die a horrible death. This is African traditional religion creeping into the church through the back door. In Africa, you do not say anything negative against an elderly person or a chief or a witchdoctor. If you do, something nasty will happen to you. You can even grow a beard at the back of you neck!

Where this teaching is found
“Touch not the Lord’s anointed” is found in Psalm 105:15 in the first person. Its full statement is, “When they [the Israelites] were few in number, of little account, and sojourners in it, wandering from nation to nation, from one kingdom to another people, he allowed no one to oppress them; he rebuked kings on their account, saying, ‘Touch not my anointed ones, do my prophets no harm!’” (Psalm 105:13-15). Here it referred to Israel as a nation and, more specifically, the prophets whom the Lord had sent to minister among his people.

This is illustrated a number of times in the life of David when he had already been anointed as the next king of Israel. King Saul did not want him to succeed him and so he tried every trick in the book to kill David. Through a turn of fortunes, it was David who ended up with a number of opportunities to kill Saul. However, David desisted from doing so saying, “The LORD forbid that I should do this thing to my lord, the LORD’s anointed, to put out my hand against him, seeing he is the LORD’s anointed” (1 Samuel 24:6, see also 24:10, 26:9-11, etc.)   Continue at Conrad Mbewe

Don't Sanitize the Psalms

In some churches, if our public worship and prayers echoed what we find in the Psalms we might find ourselves called before the church board for correction. Unlike the stoic legalist or safe churchman, the psalmist expressed the full range of emotions in worship. He felt no need to pretend that he had it all together. He did not limit himself to safe clichés about God.

Yet God's people's deeply cherish the Psalms because they openly express many of the emotions we feel. Sometimes the psalmist expressed deep anxiety and fear; other times he was plagued with a sense of despondency and discouragement. He vented anger over injustices and admitted a loss of perspective when he envied the prosperity of the ungodly.

The psalmist reminds us that the language of lament is permitted in worship. Christopher J. H. Wright suggests,

It is precisely those who have the closest relationship with God who feel most at liberty to pour out their pain in protest to God---without fear of reproach. Lament is not only allowed in the Bible; it is modeled in abundance. God seems to want to give us as many words with which to fill out our complaint forms as to write our thank-you notes. (The God I Don't Understand: Reflections on Tough Questions of Faith)

The Psalmist's Full Range of Emotions

Although the psalmist pondered dark questions out loud---even expressing feelings of helplessness and despair---more often, he overflowed with joy and praise to the God who is his "mighty rock and refuge" (Psalm 62:7). His astonishment at the compassion and unfailing love of God resounds throughout the psalms as one amazed that God "does not treat us as our sins deserve" (Psalm 103:10).   Continue at Steve Cornell

Be Stressed Out and Do Not Sin

I love the Book of Psalms. As authoritative models of prayer and worship, we return to them often for help (When we don't know how to pray as we ought, the Spirit intercedes for us... and read some psalms). And in my experience, it's the easiest book to short-circuit meaning for application. Because the theology is so relevant, we can subtly gloss over what the text says to focus on us and our situations. But remember it's only for us — by God about his Son for us. 

So how might it look if we read like this? Say, Psalm 4? How would it look if we asked first, "what does this text say?" and then second, "what does it mean for me right now?"

Psalm 4:1–8,

¹  Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness!
You have given me relief when I was in distress.
Be gracious to me and hear my prayer!
²   O men, how long shall my honor be turned into shame?
How long will you love vain words and seek after lies? Selah
³   But know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself;
the Lord hears when I call to him.
  ⁴ Be angry, and do not sin;
ponder in your own hearts on your beds, and be silent. Selah
⁵   Offer right sacrifices,
and put your trust in the Lord.
⁶   There are many who say, "Who will show us some good?
Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord!"
⁷   You have put more joy in my heart
than they have when their grain and wine abound.
⁸   In peace I will both lie down and sleep;
for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.

What It Means

Prayer is an important theme in this Psalm of David. It begins with the plea, "Answer me when I call" (verse 1). Again, "hear my prayer!" Then, "the Lord hears when I call to him" (verse 3). It's an amazing picture of fellowship. David talks to God and God hears David. And he keeps David. He sustains and guards him (Psalm 3:5; 4:8). 

Now these are observations. They are all by the way of discovering what the text says. But don't think we're blank-slate readers. Jesus has let us in on an important tip: the whole Bible is about him (Luke 24:25–27; John 5:39, 46). So an integral part of discovering what this psalm means is seeing how it's connected to our Lord.  Continue at Jonathan Parnell

Feeding Your Soul

When your soul is in turmoil, it’s hard to see clearly. Fear, anger, sorrow, and despair can distort your perception of reality. It’s hard to keep things in perspective. They can actually magnify your troubles.

Often, when you’re feeling overwhelmed, what you need is somebody to take you by the shoulders, look you square in the eye, and speak some sense to you. Sometimes that somebody is you.

I get this from the Bible. Listen to the psalmist talk to himself: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God” (Ps. 43:5).

This was a man in trouble. He felt threatened and overwhelmed. And in the first part of the psalm, he was doing exactly the right thing by pouring out his soul in prayer to God. But then he stopped praying and spoke directly to his soul.

God is very intentional about what He includes in the Bible. So, when God includes this kind of soultalk in the inspired hymnal for the ages, we’re supposed to notice. God clearly intends us to speak to our souls. So, we need to understand why this is important.

When the psalmists talk to themselves, what are they doing? In every instance, whether in desperation or celebration, they are reminding themselves that their hope is in God. Why? Because in a world of tribulation (John 16:33), hope drains away, and they know how crucial it is to feed one’s soul.

Hope is to our soul what energy is to our bodies. Hope is the spiritual energy generated in the soul when we believe that our future is good, even if our present is bad. Our souls must have hope to keep going, just as our bodies must have energy to keep going.   Continue at Jon Bloom

A Great God and Our Worst Moments

Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with author and speaker Nancy Guthrie and discuss the subject matter of suffering. Nancy and her husband, David, lost two children to Zellweger Syndrome – a genetic disorder where the body does not produce peroxizones which aid in metabolism on the cellular level. Infants diagnosed with Zellweger usually live only six to eight months. Both Hope and Gabriel were born with the rare genetic disorder. The family’s journey through the experience is captured in Nancy’s book Holding On to Hope. God has used the Guthrie’s experience to minister to countless numbers of individuals and couples who’ve lost children. You can read more about their ministry here. I asked Nancy to help us understand what those suffering are going through and what we should expect to see as we minister to them. Her answer, which will be posted soon on the ReNew Conference website, echoed the perspective of the Psalmist in Psalm Seventy Three. Basically, our initial responses in the midst of pain are our worst. The Psalmist takes us through a play-by-play of his worst moments. It unfolds like a you’re not crazy session for the suffering.   Keep Reading...

Connections Between the Tree of Life in Revelation and the Psalms

"But his delight is in the law of the Lord...He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, Which yields its fruit in its season
And its leaf does not wither."
(Psalm 1:3)

"Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of the street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations."
(Revelation 22:1-2)

Here is something I've been thinking about with reference to these two verses. I'm not actually taking a stand here and arguing that this is the case, but I want to bounce this idea off of our readers and see what everyone thinks, because I can't find anyone who has ever discussed the relationship between these verses before.

There seems to be an allusion to Psalm 1:3 in the tree of life section of Revelation which I want to understand, but I can't find any commentaries that observe the connection. I'm defining an 'allusion' as when the New Testament refers to the Old Testament using similar imagery and language. Keep Reading...

Introduction to God from the Psalms

Psalm 1: A Micro-Exposition