As we come to Psalm 18, recall that I mentioned when blogging Psalm 3 that some of the psalms come with introductions that are actually part of the text. I call them “verse 0.” In the scriptures our Hebrew friends carry, they’re “verse 1.” In seminary, apparently, they are called “Superscriptions,” and here’s a reminder not to miss them: When Reading the Psalms, Don’t Forget the Superscriptions by Andrew Wilson. Early on, he explains:

I am talking about…the way that many (if not most) Christians treat some of God’s inspired words as if they do not exist. I am referring, in particular, to the superscriptions in the Psalms. I have noticed it frequently in my church: If, for example, someone is given Psalm 51 to read, the reading typically begins with the first verse—in this case, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love.” Which means it omits what the passage says immediately beforehand: “For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.” Most people hardly realize they have missed anything. If you mention it afterward, they might be puzzled, as though someone had suggested reading the contents page or the index.

Psalm 18 has such a superscription:

To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David The Servant of the LORD, Who Spoke to the LORD The Words of This Song on the Day that the LORD Delivered Him from the Hand of All His Enemies and from the Hand of Saul. And He Said: (Psalm 18.0, NKJV)

We looked at this last year when we went through 2 Samuel: Psalm 18 is identical to 2 Samuel 22 except for the verse numbering. The superscription is called “verse 1” in 2 Samuel.

Here are some verses that spoke to me, beginning at the beginning (after the superscription!):

I will love You, O LORD, my strength. The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; My God, my strength, in whom I will trust; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I will call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised; So shall I be saved from my enemies. (verses 1 – 3, NKJV)

David had problems:

The pangs of death surrounded me, And the floods of ungodliness made me afraid. The sorrows of Sheol surrounded me; The snares of death confronted me. (verses 4, 5)

So he prayed:

In my distress I called upon the LORD, And cried out to my God; He heard my voice from His temple, And my cry came before Him, even to His ears. (verse 6)

And here’s the cool part: God acted…violently!

Then the earth shook and trembled; The foundations of the hills also quaked and were shaken, Because He was angry. Smoke went up from His nostrils, And devouring fire from His mouth; Coals were kindled by it. He bowed the heavens also, and came down With darkness under His feet. And He rode upon a cherub, and flew; He flew upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness His secret place; His canopy around Him was dark waters And thick clouds of the skies. From the brightness before Him, His thick clouds passed with hailstones and coals of fire. The LORD thundered from heaven, And the Most High uttered His voice, Hailstones and coals of fire. He sent out His arrows and scattered the foe, Lightnings in abundance, and He vanquished them. (verses 7 – 14)

It goes on…50 verses! Take the time to read it all, see what jumps out at you. I’ll leave you with one of my favorite sections – promises and something about the Word (in bold):

For You will light my lamp; The LORD my God will enlighten my darkness. For by You I can run against a troop, By my God I can leap over a wall. As for God, His way is perfect; The word of the LORD is proven; He is a shield to all who trust in Him. For who is God, except the LORD? And who is a rock, except our God? It is God who arms me with strength, And makes my way perfect. He makes my feet like the feet of deer, And sets me on my high places. He teaches my hands to make war, So that my arms can bend a bow of bronze. (verses 28 – 34)

David closes:

The LORD lives! Blessed be my Rock! Let the God of my salvation be exalted. It is God who avenges me, And subdues the peoples under me; He delivers me from my enemies. You also lift me up above those who rise against me; You have delivered me from the violent man. Therefore I will give thanks to You, O LORD, among the Gentiles, And sing praises to Your name. Great deliverance He gives to His king, And shows mercy to His anointed, To David and his descendants forevermore. (verses 46 – 50)

PS As this comes out, June is recovering nicely from her fall, but I am a week into a bout with a severely enlarged prostate. It will be several more weeks before I have a permanent fix. I will be singing Psalm 18 when God defeats all these enemies!

Psalm 17 is a prayer as its introduction states. David is upset, as we tend to get sometimes, when the wicked seem to do better than the righteous.

A Prayer of David. Hear a just cause, O LORD, Attend to my cry; Give ear to my prayer which is not from deceitful lips. Let my vindication come from Your presence; Let Your eyes look on the things that are upright. (Psalm 17.0 – 2, NKJV)

He wants deliverance from the wicked:

Show Your marvelous lovingkindness by Your right hand, O You who save those who trust in You From those who rise up against them. Keep me as the apple of Your eye; Hide me under the shadow of Your wings, From the wicked who oppress me, From my deadly enemies who surround me. They have closed up their fat hearts; With their mouths they speak proudly. (Psalm 17.7 – 10, NKJV)

Then he realizes an important truth: these are

…men who have their portion in this life… (verse 14)

So David closes with this word, which was a huge encouragement for me. It’s not about this life:

As for me, I will see Your face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness. (Psalm 17.15, NKJV)

I think I’ll memorize this one and meditate on it along with the Apostle John’s word:

Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure. (1 John 3.1 – 3, NKJV, emphasis mine)

Back to the psalms… Please recall that I’m not going to comment on all of them. That said, there are a few I won’t miss starting with today’s: Psalm 16.

I can’t read verse six without thinking of Sam and Shirley Hershey:

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. (Psalm 16.6, NIV

“The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places”? Sam and Shirley lost one son very early; another was killed on a California freeway and was a fine young man. The third was profoundly disabled. He died September 2023 at age 41, and my blog Not an Interruption tells their story. Sam ended a presentation on life lessons with Psalm 16.6.

And I can’t read verse 11 without thinking of my wife, June. It’s one of her favorite verses:

You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore. (Psalm 16.11, NKJV)

What do we “get” for following Jesus?

Pleasant places (even when life is hard)…pleasures forevermore

I was privileged to sit down a few days ago with the discipleship pastor of a large church. His aspirations were noble: “We’re good at getting people involved in worship, but I’m concerned about helping them grow. How can we help the flock do the kinds of things that will make them better disciples?”

A good question, and the answer, with respect to “the flock,” is, “You don’t. You don’t help ‘the flock,’ you help individuals in the flock.”

This is what I wrote about last week in What Makes a Difference? Our friend’s church was trying to disciple “the flock.” I preached, her pastor preached, we made the Time with God Tool available, but it was intentional personal attention that made the difference.

To use a metaphor, I listened to a few minutes of the Lions’ radio broadcast of the Lions/Commanders game where the 12 – 5 Commanders beat the 15 – 2 Lions by two touchdowns. Early in the game those announcers observed that the Lions’ defensive linemen were not beating the Commanders’ offensive linemen. I hardly ever pay attention to those matchups, but these announcers were watching. Their guys were getting beat one-on-one. Individually. The team doesn’t pressure the opposing quarterback, individual linemen do. And when they don’t…

To use another metaphor, the discipleship pastor had heard me play the piano and complimented me on that. I reminded him that I didn’t learn to play the piano by going to concerts! I was taught one-on-one.

We don’t disciple the flock. We find disciple-makers to disciple individuals in the flock. And when enough individuals are discipled, the character of the flock changes.

We exhorted, and comforted, and charged every one of you… – The Apostle Paul, 1 Thessalonians 2.11, NKJV

Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. (Colossians 1.28, NKJV, emphasis mine)

This falls under the heading “You can’t make this stuff up!” The Denver Post published: A Colorado pastor thought he could make flat-Earthers see the light in Antarctica. It didn’t work. – Noelle Phillips, January 17, 2025. The story opens this way:

Colorado pastor Will Duffy’s obsession with the flat-Earth conspiracy theory began with a longtime friend’s post on Facebook.

A quick direct message led to a months-long debate between Duffy and his friend, who held the archaic and false belief that our planet is a flat disc.

Three years later, after immersing himself in the conspiracy online, Duffy thought he could end the debate for everyone by traveling to Antarctica to livestream 24 straight hours of sunlight. The phenomenon occurs because the Earth’s Southern Hemisphere is tilted toward the sun as the planet rotates around it, and Antarctica is at its closest point to the sun on the rotation. Flat-Earth believers do not believe this happens.

Duffy launched a YouTube channel called “The Final Experiment” to promote the trip, then invited flat-Earthers and well-known “globers” — people who understand the Earth is round — to accompany him this past December on a four-day stay on the continent.

“I decided that is it. That will solve this once and for all,” Duffy said in an interview this month. “We need to go to Antarctica. I need to take a flat-Earther or two with me and see the 24-hour sun and then this whole thing is over. So that began the journey of ‘The Final Experiment.’

Duffy went to Antarctica with four “globers” and four “flat-Earthers,” and, sure enough, it was light for 24 hours straight, captured on camera and broadcast live. The result was the Flat-Earth Society no longer exists, and all the Flat-Earthers have renounced their folly. Oops. No such luck.

The article continues:

Duffy was correct about the 24-hour sun. But he was wrong in believing he could bring an end to the flat-Earth conspiracy.

Now, the 41-year-old pastor of a Wheat Ridge church is at center of a global firestorm among flat-Earthers, who are flooding social media with ideas on how to debunk “The Final Experiment” by picking apart camera angles, shadows and footprints…

“The flat Earth community is imploding,” Duffy said. “They cannot decide what to believe. They’ve all come up with their own conspiracies.”

You can read the article in its entirety, including the part about an Alabama pastor “…preaching that Satan was involved in the deception.”

The flat-earthers are attacking Duffy’s credibility or coming up with odd theories like “they filmed the trip in a studio, a dome or a sphere similar to the live-music venue in Las Vegas…”

Duffy had at least one convert:

But one person who is changing his mind is Jaren Campanella, a well-known flat-Earth believer who has produced YouTube videos under the name Jarenism for almost 10 years and who traveled with Duffy to Antarctica.

Campanella told The Post he is going to “step away” from the flat-Earth community.

He said the flat-Earth map that he used, called the azimuthal equidistant map, would not be legitimate if a 24-hour sun existed. Once he saw it with his own eyes, he realized his theory no longer worked.

“Even if I don’t feel like I’m on a sphere, even if I don’t feel like I’m upside down, even if I don’t feel like I’m flying through space, the flat Earth doesn’t work for me,” Campanella said. “I couldn’t go on once I knew it was not the case…”

I sent the article to Seth Godin, a marketer who writes a daily blog on a variety of common-sense subjects, telling him the story looked like something he would write about. He replied simply:

no cure for intentional blindness, I’m afraid – Seth Godin

An atheist friend told me once, “If Jesus Christ stood in front of this car right now and told me he was God, I wouldn’t believe him.”

Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them. 2 Corinthians 4.1 – 4, NKJV)

It’s not often that Martin Luther King, Jr., Day and the Presidential Inauguration occur on the same day! MLK Day is the third Monday in January since President Reagan signed the bill making it a federal holiday in 1983. The Presidential Inauguration occurs on January 20 and is a Monday in an election year, once every 28 years. Until now, only President Clinton was inaugurated on MLK Day (1997), and the next confluence will be 2053.

Is there a so what? I don’t know…

But let’s focus on MLK Day for a minute. Four years ago I quoted Rodney Stevens, a black writer and life coach born and raised in South Carolina. His comments offer hope and perspective and remind us that Martin Luther King, Jr., and others made a difference. Here’s some of what he wrote:

Many of the authors, commentators and journalists who spend all their energy thinking and talking about race today fail to acknowledge how much has improved with regard to race in this country. There are countless successful black Americans today—doctors and lawyers, entrepreneurs and academics, journalists and artists, compassionate politicians and famous Hollywood actors. Their numbers will keep growing as long as we remember six things:

• First, every life mat­ters. Mine is not one cell more or less valu­able than any­one else’s. That this idea has to be de­bated or de­fended is lu­nacy.
• Sec­ond, racism still ex­ists but it is no longer sys­temic. Those who claim that racism is every­where to­day are delu­sional.
• Third, we tend to think too highly of our in­di­vid­u­al­ity. My color, weight, sex and sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion are four of the least in­ter­est­ing things about me. I am a South­erner and love South­ern food. Now that is in­ter­est­ing.
• Fourth, po­lice­men have to be held ac­count­able for their ac­tions, as is be­ing done more and more.
• Fifth, do what law en­force­ment of­fi­cers ask you to do. Ob­vi­ously that won’t solve every prob­lem be­cause po­lice­men are hu­mans, not an­gels. But that’s part of life. Sim­ply do­ing what the peo­ple in blue ask you to do would dras­ti­cally re­duce need­less con­fronta­tions, in­juries and deaths.
• Sixth, if you must talk about race, be gra­cious and re­spect­ful. Dis­cus­sions about it shouldn’t be an­tag­o­nis­tic—one’s race isn’t a choice, af­ter all—but for some rea­son many pop­u­lar fig­ures in­sist on mak­ing the sub­ject as un­pleas­ant as pos­si­ble. – Rodney Stevens, Wall Street Journal, December 28, 2020

Now into this environment on this day we inaugurate a new President. Some Americans are ecstatic; others, despondent. I hope President Trump will, by words and actions, promote unity – Americans of all kinds working together to make their lives and others’ lives better.

But more importantly, no matter what the President does, I pray that we will do our part. I can’t improve on what Seth Godin wrote on MLK Day in 2020:

Along the way, we’ve been sold on the idea that difficult tasks ought to be left to heroes, often from somewhere far away or from long ago. That it’s up to them, whoever ‘them’ is.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. quoted Theodore Parker: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

But it’s not bending itself. And it’s not waiting for someone from away to bend it either.

It’s on us. Even when it doesn’t work (yet). Even when it’s difficult. Even when it’s inconvenient.

Our culture is the result of a trillion tiny acts, taken by billions of people, every day. Each of them can seem insignificant, but all of them add up, one way or the other, to the change we each live through.

Sometimes it takes a hero like Dr. King to wake us up and remind us of how much power we actually have.

And now it’s our turn. It always has been. – Seth Godin

As I reminded us yesterday,

And let our people also learn to maintain good works, to meet urgent needs, that they may not be unfruitful. (Titus 3.14, NKJV)

If you’re from some traditions, today’s title, “Works Righteousness” gives you pause. After all, isn’t the Apostle Paul clear?

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. (Ephesians 2.8, 9, NKJV)

But I’m not using “works” as a noun but as a verb. I’m quoting Psalm 15:

LORD, who may abide in Your tabernacle? Who may dwell in Your holy hill?

• He who walks uprightly, And
• works righteousness, And
• speaks the truth in his heart;
• He who does not backbite with his tongue,
• Nor does evil to his neighbor,
• Nor does he take up a reproach against his friend;
• In whose eyes a vile person is despised, But he honors those who fear the LORD;
• He who swears to his own hurt and does not change;
• He who does not put out his money at usury,
• Nor does he take a bribe against the innocent.

He who does these things shall never be moved. (Psalm 15, NKJV, bulleted for clarity, emphasis mine)

A good list! Ten items, of which “works righteousness” is the second. ESV translates it “does what is right,” but let’s stick with NKJV. God’s people ought to be “working righteousness” – doing righteous things.

A friend of mine comes from a tradition that’s so afraid of not living by the spirit of Ephesians 2.8, 9, that people won’t do anything. “I couldn’t shovel snow off of my neighbor’s driveway, that would be works righteousness!” No, as my friend Pastor Aaron Dorman would say, “It’s not works righteousness, it’s righteous works!”

There are things God expects us to do and not to do, not to earn salvation (“works righteousness”) but to be God’s people in the world, full of righteous works:

And let our people also learn to maintain good works, to meet urgent needs, that they may not be unfruitful. (Titus 3.14, NKJV)

This verse pops up again tomorrow…stay tuned!

My wife and I are leading a discipleship group with one additional participant. I wrote about this before. What is she learning? Well, 2:7 Series, Book 1, Growing Strong in God’s Family, asks that question in session 8: What is the most important thing you’ve learned so far? She said something like:

I’ve always spent a lot of time talking to God in prayer. In this course, I’ve learned how to listen to God so that it’s not a one-way conversation! I can now sit with my Bible and hear what God has to say to me.

Ding, ding, ding! That’s exactly what she was supposed to get! I’m excited. She went on to say:

This is something I thought I should be able to do, but no one showed me how.

Here’s what’s interesting: training in how to have daily time with God has been offered in her church. I taught two four-week sessions a couple of years apart, but she didn’t participate. I taught it once in a 45-minute session after a Sunday morning service, but she didn’t participate in that one either. I’ve preached in that church a number of times and referred to daily time with God more than once. The pastor made my time with God handout available in the narthex every week and referred to it from time to time. All of those things were there, in her church, and they didn’t make a difference for this lady.

What did make a difference? For whatever reason, she decided to sign up for the discipleship class this fall. No one encouraged her specifically to do that, except maybe the Holy Spirit. And in that class, in a relationship with June and me, using material that “requires” daily time with God as part of the training. Personal attention, engagement, relationship, accountability: that’s what makes a difference.

But we were gentle among you, just as a nursing mother cherishes her own children. So, affectionately longing for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God, but also our own lives, because you had become dear to us.

For you remember, brethren, our labor and toil; for laboring night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, we preached to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses, and God also, how devoutly and justly and blamelessly we behaved ourselves among you who believe; as you know how we exhorted, and comforted, and charged every one of you, as a father does his own children, that you would walk worthy of God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory. (1 Thessalonians 2.7 – 12, NKJV)

I have a friend who has been actively working with Muslims for many years now. He recently sent this picture:

It’s a map showing all the countries of the world and what percent of them are Muslim.

He writes:

I got to visit a mosque with [another American Christian working with Muslims]. I was speaking Arabic, while he was speaking Urdu, and we were invited back into their prayer room. Inside the prayer room I took a photo of their “prayer map”- this is what they see – this is what they are praying for. What are we praying for?  Where are we going? What risks are we taking?

He then cited Psalm 2.8:

Ask of me and I will make the nations your inheritance and the ends of the earth as your possession.

We believe as heirs with Jesus, we can ask and receive!

Amen. Bless you, my brother.

When I decided I would write one blog on my biggest takeaway from the late Coach Bill McCartney’s Promise Keepers event, I didn’t know I’d be forecasting it in yesterday’s blog. Note what Chad Brown said about unity:

Obviously he is a great football coach. But the ability to unite people may have been his greatest gift. The football, the X’s and O’s, were great. It was the way he was a uniting force. Mac was able to get us all going in the same direction, kids who had come from different parts of the country with different backgrounds…Teammates became brothers. And he built that. – former CU All-American linebacker Chad Brown, as reported in the Denver Post, emphasis mine

My big takeaway from Promise Keepers was unity in diversity. I’ll never forget being in that stadium with 50,000 other men, men of all kinds: different skin colors, all ages, some charismatic, some not, different socio-economic levels. It was a Revelation 7 experience:

After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Revelation 7.9, 10, NKJV)

We Christian men tend to segregate ourselves by our theology and our church identification. I’ll never forget at an early Promise Keeper’s event talking with a fellow in the lunch line. He physically increased his distance when he learned what church I attended. We were both from Colorado Springs, and he perceived that his church was more conservative than mine. Coach Mac would NOT have approved!

One Promise Keeper’s event featured two well-known preachers in the Saturday morning session: one was Chuck Swindoll, conservative Bible teacher, who later became president of Dallas Theological Seminary – a seminary known for being anti-charismatic. (I wrote a blog about this issue almost three years ago.) The other speaker was Jack Hayford, well-known charismatic preacher, author of more than 600 hymns and choruses including “Majesty, Worship His Majesty.”

Get it? Mac brought these two men together, one charismatic, the other anti-charismatic. They both lived in Southern California at the time, and they spoke one after the other. In each sermon, each referred to the other several times as “my friend Jack”…”my friend Chuck.” And the one who spoke on the power of the Holy Spirit was Chuck!

Unity in diversity. That’s what a football is about, and it’s what the Christian community should be about. Mac lived it, Promise Keepers demonstrated it, and I remember it vividly 30+ years later.

I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me. (John 17.20 – 23, NKJV)

I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all. (Ephesians 4.1 – 6, NKJV)

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is For brethren to dwell together in unity!…For there the LORD commanded the blessing— Life forevermore. (Psalm 133.1, 3, NKJV)