Proverbs 31 contains the wisdom of King Lemuel’s mother.  She addresses two main topics.  The first concerns the dangers of drinking alcohol.  She warns him that alcohol isn’t for kings.  It will destroy him and lead him to forget justice.  If he wants to defend the rights of the poor and needy, he needs to abstain.

The rest of the chapter concerns the worthy woman.  She is a trustworthy wife to her husband, works hard in providing for her household, cares for the needy and the members of her own family, and earns their praise.

Psalm 82 is addressed to the judges of the earth (called “gods” in 82:1 and 82:6 because they exercise the authority of God).  It warns them that as they sit in judgment on others, God sits in judgment on them.  He calls them to account for their failure to judge in favor of the weak and vulnerable.  Because they have not judged wisely, God will strike them down, and they will die as other men do.  The psalm concludes with an appeal to God to exercise this judgment.

Psalm 83 asks God for His help in battle.  Many of the nations around Israel, from the Philistines to the Assyrians, have joined together and conspired against her.  The psalmist appeals to God to defeat this alliance as He defeated the Midianites in the time of Gideon.  He asks God to make them as impermanent as chaff and fire, so that they will be defeated and forced to acknowledge Him.

Psalm 84 is an expression of delight in God’s temple.  The psalmist longs to be in the temple, and he compares being in the temple to a bird being in its nest.  He belongs there, and he envies those who are always there.  Similarly, the most blessed people are those who know how to travel to Zion, where the temple is.  God will protect them. 

Finally, the psalmist asks God to hear his prayers.  Because of God’s presence and attention, a day in the temple is better than a thousand elsewhere, and dwelling in the temple is better than dwelling with the wicked.  God will surely bless those who seek Him.

Psalm 85 is an appeal to God to restore His favor.  It begins by pointing out His past kindness in bringing Israel back from captivity.  Now, the psalmist asks God not to remain angry forever, but to show similar kindness to His people in their current trouble. 

The psalmist then expresses his determination to wait for what God will do.  He is confident that God will bring peace and bless the land.  All sorts of virtues will come together there, the land will prosper, and God will dwell there.

Most of us don’t like causing controversy and stirring up trouble.  However, some do.  In Proverbs 25:21, Solomon warns, “As charcoal to hot embers and wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome man for kindling strife.”  To use a more modern metaphor, people like this are a spark to gunpowder.  With seemingly little effort, they cause an explosion.

Certainly, Christians should not be quarrelsome.  Especially in our dealings with brethren, but also in our dealings with everyone, we should seek to unite and reconcile.  If that means keeping our lips clamped down on personal opinions that others find offensive, so be it!  Romans 12:18 urges us to live peaceably with everyone so far as it is possible with us, and even if limiting our self-expression may not be pleasant, it is certainly possible.

Indeed, the only inflammatory views that Christians should express are those that come from the law of God.  Like Paul, we are to declare the whole counsel of God, even knowing that it will prove divisive. 

Too often, though, brethren shy away from proclaiming the gospel while freely expressing their provocative personal views on any number of topics.  They get the Biblical pattern exactly backwards. 

The sources of this problem are obvious.  There are many in our society, of every political and philosophical persuasion imaginable, who do not honor the Bible’s teachings on the importance of peace.  Instead, their goal in life is to stir up strife. 

This is often quite calculated.  They know that if they take a loud, obnoxious stand on some contentious issue, they will get lots of attention.  Half the people will hear them, get infuriated, and start screaming back.  The other half will hear them, applaud them for “telling it like it is”, and scream in the opposite direction. 

Page views and video clicks skyrocket.  Blood-pressure readings elevate.  Our poor, divided country becomes even more divided, as suspicion of the other increases.  People become more cynical, more embittered, less warm and loving. 

Incalculable spiritual damage is done, but the instigators don’t care because they got money and attention out of the deal.  Next week, they will try to do the same thing again and recklessly cause even more damage.  Only God knows where it will end, but the outcome won’t be good.

As Christians, we need to be very, very suspicious of the professional disturbers of the peace.  They want to manipulate us too.  They want to use fear and anger to enroll us in their hateful little tribes.  Even though it’s true that fear and anger leave no room in our hearts for the love of Christ, they’re not concerned about that. 

We need to be concerned.  Paul points out in Romans 13:8 that love is something we owe to everybody.  To Christians, there is no “them”, other than the devil and his angels.  We are on everybody’s side, even the side of the people who aren’t on our side.  When we stop listening to Christ’s call to service and self-sacrifice, we become less than the disciples He wants us to be.

Watch out for the strife-kindlers.   Watch out for the people who want us to look at others with anything less than love.  When they provoke enmity in our hearts, it is not the work of God that they are doing.  It’s the work of someone else.

Psalm 79 laments the destruction of Jerusalem.  The psalmist begins by enumerating several woes:  the temple has been defiled, the city has been ruined, its inhabitants have been slaughtered, and the survivors are being mocked by their neighbors.  He asks God to reveal how long this horrible state will continue and encourages Him instead to punish the heathen kingdoms that are responsible for Jerusalem’s destruction. 

The psalmist then implores God to forget their sins and rescue them for three reasons:  because of the magnitude of their suffering, for the glory of His name, and to rebut the nations who doubt His power.  He encourages God to hear the cries of the captives and punish Judah’s enemies instead so that they can glorify Him.

Psalm 80 expresses similar sentiments.  It opens with an appeal to God to save His people.  V. 3 contains a refrain that is repeated in vs. 7 and 19.  In the second “verse”, the psalmist observes that God has made His people suffer, figuratively feeding them their tears. 

The third “verse”  (which is considerably longer than the others) begins by contrasting God’s past behavior to current conditions.  He established Israel in Canaan like a vine in a vineyard, but now the vineyard wall has been broken down and Israel’s enemies are ravaging it.  Then, the psalmist appeals to God to have compassion for His vine, and particularly for “the son of man”, who is probably the king.  If God will rescue His people, they will praise Him.

Psalm 81 is a contrasting psalm of praise.  It encourages God’s people to praise Him with various instruments during a feast day.  Then, the psalmist looks back to the historical origins of that feast day.  It stretches all the way back to God’s deliverance of His people from Egypt.

After this, the psalmist considers God’s words to His people at Meribah.  In exchange for their rejection of idolatry, He promises to bless them.  However, they ignored Him.  God then laments their decision, because if they were to listen to Him, He would defend them from their enemies and feed them with the best food.

Psalm 75 praises God for the way that He brings order to His creation.  He keeps the earth from tottering, and he rebukes the boastful and wicked.  No one else but God can be relied on to judge righteously, and the wicked cannot escape drinking the cup of His wrath.  In addition to bringing the wicked low, He will exalt the righteous.

Psalm 76 contrasts God’s power to the power of an earthly army.  He took Jerusalem for His dwelling place, and there he broke an enemy army’s weapons and rendered its troops unable to fight.  As a result, it is God, rather than they, who is to be feared.  No one on earth can oppose Him.  As a result, it is appropriate for mankind to worship Him because of the judgments He brings against even the rulers of the earth.

Psalm 77 expresses the psalmist’s confidence that God will hear him.  His trouble is so great that he is practically fainting.  At night, instead of sleeping, he finds himself asking whether God has abandoned him. 

He finds the answer to the question in God’s past works.  He has always worked wonders to deliver His people.  In fact, His power and determination to save them are so great that He even parted the Red Sea to save them. 

Psalm 78 explores the paradox of God’s faithfulness to Israel and Israel’s unfaithfulness to Him.  The psalmist begins by explaining his purpose, which is to teach the children of God’s people about the stories of God’s power that the fathers taught him.  Indeed, God established His law so that His people could hand that law down from generation to generation, so that they would not fall into the faithlessness of the Israelites of old.

The psalmist cites the Ephraimites as the foremost example of this faithlessness.  They did not walk according to His will, despite the power He displayed in parting the Red Sea and giving them guidance and water in the wilderness.  They doubted that He would be able to provide food for them too.

In response, God provided them with manna and quail, but their sin made Him angry, so that He struck down many of them as they ate.  Nonetheless, they continued in sin, only repenting briefly when He punished them.  However, He was merciful and did not destroy them altogether.

Their repeated sin was particularly offensive because of all that He had done to deliver them from Egypt.  He struck down the Egyptians with a multitude of plagues, but He led His people safely to Canaan. 

Even there, the Israelites continued to sin.  They provoked God with their idolatry.  As a result, God rejected Israel and abandoned His dwelling place at Shiloh, allowing His priests to be struck down.  Instead of continuing to dwell among the Ephraimites, He selected Mount Zion in the midst of Judah, to be His new dwelling place, and the Judahite David to be the new king of His people.

Psalm 71 is an appeal to God for protection in a time of trouble.  In the opening segment of the psalm, the psalmist says that only God in His righteousness can save him.  As usual, the problem is wicked people who are oppressing him.  He observes that he has trusted in God since he was young and that he always has praised God for His deliverance.  Now that he is old, he wants God to continue to deliver him. 

The problem is that his strength has declined with age, so that now his enemies think they can exploit him.  Instead, the psalmist hopes that they will fail and be humiliated, and that he will be able to continue to praise God. 

In fact, the psalmist always has been interested in glorifying Him, and he wants Him to spare him so that he can continue to do so.  He is confident that God will do exactly that, so he anticipates the rejoicing that he will offer Him as a result.

Psalm 72 is the last psalm that David ever wrote, and it asks God to bless the reign of the king (presumably Solomon).  First, David wants God to help the king be a righteous judge and a protector of the poor.  Next, he asks for the king to be respected and have peace as a result.  Similarly, he hopes that the dominion of the king will extend across the known world because God will bless his goodness and righteousness.  The psalm also expresses the wish that the king will prosper along with Israel.  All of this will lead to God being blessed and glorified.

Psalm 73 contains the psalmist’s reflections when confronted with evil people who appear to prosper.  He begins by acknowledging that his envy of such people almost led him into sin.  He reflects on how prosperous and carefree such people appear—they’ve literally gotten fat on evildoing.  What’s worse, their freedom from judgment leads others to question the justice of God.

Next to them, the psalmist finds himself wondering why he has bothered being faithful.  However, he recognizes that giving expression to these concerns would have undermined the faith of others.  Besides, after meditation in the temple, he found himself reassured.  The time would come when God would destroy them.

He concludes by reflecting on his relationship with God.  He treated God badly in his ignorance, but he sees that God always has been with him.  People who reject God will be destroyed, but those who seek Him will prosper.

Psalm 74 is a lament after the destruction of the temple by the Babylonians.  The psalmist asks God why He has apparently abandoned His people and invites Him to consider the ruin of the sanctuary.  The enemies of the Jews have gone through and destroyed everything.  They feel abandoned by God and wonder how long this intolerable state will continue. 

However, the psalmist also acknowledges God’s power.  He always has defeated His enemies and provided for His people.  The psalm concludes with an appeal to Him.  First, the psalmist wants God to remember the Jews’ enemies and punish them for their crimes.  Second, he asks God to remember His covenant.  Finally, He appeals to God to respond powerfully to the scoffing of those enemies.