Day 2788 Wisdom Nuggets – Psalm 109:1-5 – Daily Wisdom

Welcome to Day 2788 of Wisdom-Trek. Thank you for joining me. This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom. Day 2788 – Wisdom Nuggets – Psalm 109:1-5 – Daily Wisdom Wisdom-Trek Podcast Script - Day 2788 Welcome to Wisdom-Trek with Gramps! I am Guthrie Chamberlain, and we are on Day two thousand seven hundred eighty-eight of our Trek. The Purpose of Wisdom-Trek is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, and to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. The tile for today’s Wisdom-Trek is: The Courtroom of Lies – When Love is Repaid with Hatred Today, we are stepping off the mountain peak of victory and descending into the deepest, darkest valley of the human experience. We are beginning our journey through Psalm One Hundred Nine, and today we will navigate the opening complaint, verses one through five, in the New Living Translation. To understand the emotional whiplash of the Psalter, we have to remember where we just were. In our previous trek through Psalm One Hundred Eight, we stood with King David on the mountaintop. He was the confident Warrior Poet. He woke the dawn with his song. He looked at the map of the nations and declared, "With God’s help we will do mighty things, for he will trample down our foes." It was a psalm of absolute certainty, military strength, and divine conquest. We left feeling invincible. But today, the music changes. The triumphant horns of Psalm One Hundred Eight fade away, replaced by the dissonant, scratching sound of a lawsuit. Psalm One Hundred Nine is famous—or perhaps infamous—as the most intense of the "imprecatory" or cursing psalms. Later in this psalm, David will unleash a torrent of curses against his enemy that makes many modern readers cringe. But before we get to the curses, we must understand the pain that birthed them. We must sit in the defendant’s chair. In these opening five verses, David is not the General commanding an army; he is a man alone in a courtroom, surrounded by a mob of liars. He has been stripped of his reputation, betrayed by those he loved, and—most terrifying of all—he is facing the silence of God. This is a psalm for anyone who has ever been slandered. It is for anyone who has loved someone deeply, only to have that love thrown back in their face as hatred. It is the raw, unedited cry of a heart that has been stabbed in the back. So, let us enter the courtroom and hear the plea of the innocent. The first segment is: The Silence of the Judge: The Crisis of Communication. Psalm One Hundred Nine: verse one. O God, whom I praise, don’t stand silent and aloof The psalm opens with a desperate appeal to the only One who matters. "O God, whom I praise..." Literally, "O God of my praise." This is a statement of history and identity. David is saying, "Lord, You are the subject of all my songs. I have spent my life building a throne of praise for You. I have defined myself by Your glory." It is an appeal to relationship. He is reminding God, "We are friends. I am Your worshiper." But this intimacy makes the current situation unbearable: "...don’t stand silent and aloof." The Hebrew simply says, "Do not be silent." In a legal context—and this psalm is full of legal imagery—the silence of...