MY EXCEEDING JOY:
Psalms 38–51
By Dale Ralph Davis
Christian Focus. 174 pages. £9.99
ISBN 978 1 527 110 687
This is a new devotional commentary on a selection of Psalms, the fourth in a series working through the Psalter by the same author, its title from Psalm 43:4.
Absolutely typical for Ralph Davis, his extended reflection on each psalm is well and interestingly illustrated, helpfully explained under two, three or four catchy headings, and brilliantly applied. The text is considered thoroughly and competently by accepted Bible-handling principles, as is expected from this author, but not woodenly or clinically.
Ralph Davis’s warm humanity is self-evident here, as it was to me years ago when, as a guest speaker at a pastors’ conference, he sidled up to little me during a coffee break, and took time to take an interest in me, and likewise to many others.
He is clearly a people-person who understands what it is like to be walking with Christ in the modern world with all its pressures and opportunities, all its sorrows and joys. Accordingly, he brings the psalmists’ own inspired reflections to life and capably applies them penetratingly to you and me. From his insightful understanding of each psalm, it is clear to me that he understands the psalmist and he understands me, and brings God’s word from the psalmist to bear upon my heart and life, relevantly and perceptively.
This is not a verse-by-verse commentary, but that doesn’t mean that the author cherry picks ‘precious thoughts’ selected according to his own fancies. Rather, his helpful headings reflect the psalmists’ own agendas no less exhaustively as if he were (less readably) ploughing through the text a verse at a time. An example will suffice. Under the title of a ‘Crushed Heart’, Ralph Davis uses the penitential Psalm 51 to lament the dearth, as he considers it, of corporate confession in many or most evangelical churches of all ‘franchises’ today, contra King David who is thereby held before us as an example of someone in whom God’s Holy Spirit has wrought ‘a saving change’. ‘So repentance should be one of our finest exercises, as it is for David’. Consequently, ‘Psalm 51 is a bit dangerous for us’, for any tendency in us to ‘look down on David’ for his failures renders us ‘proud in [our] rectitude’. The structure of the psalm is shown clearly, and the author’s headings are ‘The God I seek’, ‘The sin I know’, ‘The restoration I need’, and ‘The worship I bring’.
I thoroughly and warmly commend this welcome new addition to the Ralph Davis collection.
