In this past week’s sermon on Psalm 17, I mentioned that, at times, it can be difficult for us to relate to the situations and circumstances which the psalmist faced. Most of us are not leaders of a country. While each of us has a calling or vocation, none of us received it by direct revelation from God, as David did. We may feel that a host of enemies is pressing against us but most likely none of us has had an actual army poised to do us bodily, deathly harm. So, I suggested that when we are faced with such passages, they might be opportunities not for us to pray for ourselves but to pray for other believers.
The seed of that thought came from a former seminary professor of mine, Dr. Dale Ralph Davis. He is not only an Old Testament scholar but also spent many years as a pastor and preacher. Any of his commentaries I highly recommend to you. But to the point above, I thought I’d share his thoughts on Psalm 17 and vicarious prayer. They come from his book, Slogging Along in the Paths of Righteousness.
Dr. Davis writes,
Now it may sometimes be difficult for us as psalm readers to possess the same intensity as Psalm 17 reflects. I, for example, am not the covenant king under imminent assault as, apparently, David was. And, though the Lord’s saints, no matter where they live, seem to be a people beset with troubles, there are yet a number of them, perhaps especially in the West, who could honestly say that by God’s grace and mercy they have not yet faced the dire kind of hostility and hatred depicted in this psalm. No need to take on guilt over that. But it may be an invitation to prayer. Let’s go on a brief tangent.
In 1 Kings 17, Yawheh miraculously provides daily bread for a Phoenician widow, her son, and Elijah during a famine. Every day her jar and jug yield enough flour and oil for a ration of pancakes. Then her lad becomes ill and dies. In her anguish, she accuses Elijah of bringing up her iniquity for God’s judgment, so that her son was put to death (v. 18). Elijah does not enter into a debate on sin and suffering; he takes her son up to his room and begins to pray: ‘Even against this widow with whom I am sojourning have you brought disaster by putting her son to death?’ (v. 20). Do you see how Elijah prayed? He took up the widow’s own words in verse 18 and essentially passed them on to Yahweh. As if he puts himself in her place and pleads from her point of view. So, we can put ourselves as it were in the position of others and plead their anguish before God for them.
I suggest we can use Psalm 17 this way. We ourselves (some of us, at least) may not be in the thick of a verses 6-12 situation. Yet, at the present time Christians in Syria are there. So-called freedom fighters do not think freedom includes Christians, so thousands of Christians have had to abandon homes, employment, and churches to go where they can to obtain a hoped-for sliver of security. Or there are Nigerian Christians dying by the scores under the bombings, burning, and butchery of the Boko Haram terrorists. Or what of a Christian woman in South Sudan hoping against hope that the bombers of north Sudan will not fly over to massacre helpless civilians? If our trouble is not so severe, we can nevertheless vicariously adopt the position of our brothers and sisters and pray verses 6-12 to God on their behalf.
So, saints, who can you pray for today?
