David hears of Saul's death, and correctly exacts the death sentence from the messenger. David and his men mourn for the deaths and David composes a funeral song for Saul and Jonathan.
We come to another of my favorite psalms, and this one also causes me to remember Brian Adams— who frequently read this psalm as part of leading our worship in our church in South Carolina. In E.C. Olsen’s book on the psalms (which is a transcription of his radio programs) he said that this psalm has a message for America. That message is in the repeated refrain found in this psalm. Then Olsen (published in 1939) gave examples of the Great Depression starting in 1929, the Dust Bowl plagues in 1933-34, and the drought of 1936. Olsen observed, “Do you think we heeded [God’s warnings]? Indeed not. … Did we cease our wicked doings? Indeed not.” And I similarly ask about our response to the increasing pace of disasters right now. My observation is that we as a nation turned to God when we confronted the first disasters (say, 15-20 years ago). But our turning to God lasted only a few days. Now, even as natural disasters multiply, we steadfastly talk of Global Warming and never talk about God. Consequently, we are NOT like the people we hear about in this psalm.
As Paul said in his topic sentence in this book (Rom. 1:16-17), the way God has revealed for making people right with himself is— from start to finish, by means of fully believing. In chapter 10 we have a great and succinct summation of the content that we are to 'fully believe'. Our confessing the belief that is in our hearts is also important. At the end of chapter 10 there are a series of Old Testament quotes. Two of those quotes are about the non-Jews. Paul was not changing his topic. He is still talking about Jewish rejection of the Gospel. The two Old Testament prophecies about the non-Jews (19-20) are quoted as a powerful sign to the Jews. This is the topic Paul continues with in chapter 11.
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