Episode Details

Psalm 18: The Large Place

This is the longest psalm so far, and for good reason — it is a song composed after a great rescue, and when you have been rescued you tend to want to tell the whole story. David does. He tells of the sorrows of death compassing him, the snares that nearly had him, the cry that went up from his distress. And then the language suddenly breaks into something cosmic: God bowing the heavens, riding upon a cherub, flying on the wings of the wind. You can feel the poet reaching for bigger and bigger images, as if no ordinary word could contain what has happened to him. But then, in the middle of all that thunder and lightning, comes the line that has always seemed the quiet center of the whole song: "He brought me forth also into a large place; he delivered me, because he delighted in me." A large place. Spaciousness. Room to breathe again after the walls had closed in. And the reason given is not David's worth but God's delight. Later comes a line that ought to stop every reader in his tracks: "Thy gentleness hath made me great." That what made a warrior king into something more than a warrior was not strength but gentleness, not God's power but God's tenderness. The whole psalm, with all its fire and chariots and trembling mountains, turns on that one quiet word.

00:00 I Will Love Thee, O Lord, My Strength
00:25 The Sorrows of Death Compassed Me
00:50 The Earth Shook and Trembled
01:15 He Bowed the Heavens and Came Down
01:45 He Drew Me Out of Many Waters
02:15 He Brought Me to a Large Place
02:50 With the Merciful Thou Art Merciful
03:20 Thy Gentleness Hath Made Me Great
03:55 Feet Like Hinds' Feet
04:30 Girded With Strength for the Battle
05:00 Beat Them Small as Dust
05:30 The Lord Liveth, Blessed Be My Rock
06:00 Great Deliverance to His Anointed