Let those who fear you turn to me, so they may understand your testimonies.
Sometimes we’re afraid to point to ourselves. It seems arrogant or proud to ask someone else to follow your example, or even to turn to you to learn. The rule of teacher or mentor is demanding.
But there are many times when we need to be willing to put ourselves on the line as examples, teachers, and mentors. We’re called on to make disciples. Other people are bound to ask how we are doing as disciples.
Now none of this means that we are to present ourselves as perfect or even as better than everyone else. There’s also no reason to claim that we are doing all this on our own. If one bathes in this Psalm a bit, one cannot imagine the Psalmist as presenting himself as faultless. Over and over he asks God to get him on the path and keep him on the path.
But having asked God to do so, he believes God will do that. As such, he can ask God to send others to him personally precisely because all of those prayers have been answered. His desire is to keep God’s law, and God is working in him, so others can learn from him.
Look around you. Is there someone that God could send your way to learn about God’s testimonies? Watch for them and let God work through you for them.
Let the arrogant, who wrong me with lies, be put to shame. I will meditate on your precepts.
The Psalms are very real. You’ll get all the emotions represented. “Get the bad guys” is a common prayer, though it’s often disguised as praying for them, asking God to change them into someone we would like better.
I’m taking a bit of a side-trip with this verse, because the question is so familiar. When people ask about God and what God does for/to people, there are two big questions. First, why do such bad things happen to good people? Second, why do the wicked (or the proud or arrogant) prosper?
Both of these questions come from comparing ourselves to others. The question is why don’t we do better than people who are not as good as we are, and why do people who are nastier than we are prosper.
And thus the prayer to get the bad guys is most often a prayer for God to make people who are worse than we are prosper less than we do or suffer more. After all, they deserve worse than what we do!
I don’t blame the psalmist for praying that his enemies be put to shame. From time to time I’ve joined him. I don’t think God goes along with that plea. God’s more interested in getting through to me. And I expect to them.
Let those who boast, boast in the Lord. For it is not the one who recommends himself who is genuine, but the one the Lord recommends.
2 Cor 10:17-18 (Author’s Translation)
Whose recommendation are you seeking?
Due to the connection to theodicy, I’m embedding my own interview in my series on that topic, just for fun!
Let your compassion come to me that I may live for your instruction is my meditation.
I’ve been writing about God’s compassion. Follow the trail back for a couple of verses for more on that. Today I’ve been meditating on the importance of God’s instructions for life. It turns out I was meditating on that even though I forgot which verse I was on and had to look it up again this evening.
I read this as a Christian. As such I recognize that we often jump past ethical concerns in scripture. As soon as someone talks about the rules, we tend to shout works. At the same time, in my experience, we’ll be pushing certain “works” as necessary. “If you aren’t doing _____ you’re not really saved.”
Unfortunately, we don’t get much teaching that combines God’s compassion and love for us along with God’s wisdom, represented in the things he lays out for us to do. The only thing that will create holy people is God’s grace. Grace creates action. Note that action is not equal to grace. Grace does not require action as a trigger, or a prerequisite.
So here we have two things, God’s compassion coming on the Psalmist, and meditation on God’s instruction. Let’s look at another passage from Deuteronomy.
Look! I have put before you today life and good, death and evil.
Deuteronomy 30:15 (author’s translation)
We can’t forget that God has the way to life, that God’s instructions are of great value.
When I fail to spend time with God in prayer or in Bible study, I pay for it. I pay in time spent worrying, in distractions, in decisions poorly made. No, I am not concerned that I’m losing my salvation when these things happen, but I am still losing out on the peace, joy, and comfort God offers. I’m designed to need those things. My life is better for them.
Now I can also lose something if I forget God’s instruction that tells me that God loves me, cares for me, and knows my weaknesses. Knowing those weaknesses, God still loves me. His compassion comes on me. I can doubt God, but God remains faithful.
If you find yourself feeling depressed today, remember that you are loved by your Creator with an everlasting, unquenchable love.
Let your lovingkindness comfort me as you have promised your servant.
Lovingkindness is the Hebrew word hesed, which can also refer to faithfulness, favor, goodness, or grace. It also refers to the loyalty involved in a covenant relationship.
I think one of the most commonly forgotten aspects of Christian faith (also true in Judaism) is living in the knowledge of being in a relationship with God. A covenant is a relationship. We often talk about our relationship with God as a sort of romantic adventure based solely on emotion.
I don’t want to deny emotion. Emotion is important. Experience and the emotion that grows out of it is as critical as the facts on which it is based. One can get lost either way. The idea of meeting a God who demands that we keep his commands outside of such a relationship is quite daunting.
You know that YHWH your God, he is God. He is a faithful God who keeps covenant and lovingkindness – to those who love him and to those who keep his commands – for a thousand generations.
Deuteronomy 7:9 (author’s translation)
Now keeping all those commands is a lot of work! Works will not save you. Works will not make you a child of God. But the book of Deuteronomy doesn’t teach that the works are somehow earning the favor. Rather,
Not because you were more numerous than all the peoples did YHWH passionately desire you and choose you, for you were the smallest of all the peoples. Rather, because YHWH loved you and because he kept the oath which he swore to Abraham, YHWH brought you out with a powerful hand and ransomed you from the house of servitude, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
Deutereonmy 7:7-8 (author’s translation)
Now there’s something interesting about the word used to describe God’s passionate desire. It’s the same word used by Hamor of his son Shechem and his desire for Dinah, daughter of Jacob. I don’t bring this up to somehow ransom the sordid story of Shechem and Dinah. But this illustrates the strength of the emotional bond. Hamor, in using this word of his son, is telling the people of the town that the prince has to have the girl he desires. He can’t do without her.
God’s love for God’s people is powerful, demanding, and must be satisfied. When God gives a covenant to Abraham, and repeatedly renews and restates it, God is saying that his love is overwhelming.
In ancient times, the breaking of a covenant was regarded as a very bad thing, often resulting in a penalty of death. In Ezekiel 17:11-21 God’s message is that the people made a covenant with the king of Babylon and then violated it. God asks regarding the king who did this, “Will such a man be successful? Will he escape destruction if he acts in this way? Can he violate a treaty and escape unpunished?” (Ezekiel 17:15b). This is a condemnation of violating a human treaty.
In Jeremiah 31:31, God says he will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah, and in verse 32 he says the old one was “one they broke.” Do you hear what’s going on here? Violation of a human covenant is condemned. And yes, violation of God’s covenant is condemned. But what does God do?
God makes a new one. Why? Because he loves his people so much. He has to have that relationship. Notice that the new covenant is in what we Christians call the “Old Testament.” The same love expressed in Deuteronomy 7 as Israel prepares to enter the land, is again expressed by creating a new covenant to replace the broken one.
So does this only apply to Israel? We have only to pay attention to the covenant from the start to realize that God invites Israel to be his to be a blessing to all. God claims sovereignty over all the nations and moves the save them.
It is in this overwhelmingly faithful, overpoweringly loving relationship that we can find that comfort. That kind of love is the best atmosphere in which to grow. Holiness only occurs immersed in God’s all-encompassing grace.
I know, LORD that your judgments are righteous. It’s in truthfulness you have humiliated me.
If I were making a translation for publication, there would be a footnote on “truthfulness” that would include “faithfulness,” “honesty,” and “trustworthiness” as a minimum. It’s important not to imagine that a Hebrew word brings all of its applications into each use. The Amplified Bible does this by giving many synonyms in a single verse.
But in poetry, we can see a less limited way of reading, because the text is intended to be brief and to evoke a range of related ideas.
I’m leaving “righteous judgments” for another day. But righteous judgments are also truthful judgments. In much of what I’ve read of court cases, I get the feeling that the judgments rendered by human judges are often constrained by current custom, and less so by written law or by principles of justice. I would say that the idea of divine justice involves an expectation of total truthfulness and faithfulness as well as adherence to statutes of law. This is an unreachable goal for humans, I think, though it is a good goal for which to strive.
I couldn’t think of an efficient way to say it, but the final words of this verse suggest that we are brought humiliation by truthfulness/faithfulness. One might say “integrity.” God simply brings truth to bear on our actions, and it’s humiliating.
It’s in our human nature to get upset at this. We don’t want to be humiliated. But how often does reality do that to us? We think we’re great, and then reality strikes and something goes wrong. We announce that we can handle a situation, make a repair, or pass a test. Then reality comes to get us.
Most spiritual things have everyday analogies. Spiritually, we decide to do things a certain way, accomplish certain goals, spent certain amounts of time in prayer or service, keep our motivations pure, avoid unjust anger. And then we get busy and we don’t get that time in prayer, we don’t read out Bible as we planned, and we find we have less time and resources to serve others as we had determined.
I can give an example from this series. On the one hand, I’m happy to be 75 verses (and days) into a 176 verse plan. But I can’t count the number of times I’ve actually forgotten which verse I was working on during the day. I’ve sat back, intending to bring the verse to mind, and I can’t remember it. I’m supposed to be meditating on it. That’s a minor failure, but it’s still a failure, and it annoys me that I do it.
I wish I could say that my faults are generally small, like forgetting a verse. I can always look it up again. But when I speak hurtful words in anger, for example, the problem is not so easy to repair.
So what shall I do? To echo Paul, “Who will rescue me?”
Well, actually, the same God who provides the truth that puts me in my place over and over. The same God the psalmist has been praising for these 75 verses and will continue to praise for another 101. This help comes in three ways:
I can learn to know my own limitations. It may be humiliating to come up against the truth, but if I’m not arrogant, it’s not going to hurt as much!
The same God also provided this law, this distant goal, that helps keep me pointed in the right direction.
Coming up against the real standard is good for us in all these ways. We tend to want to pretend that the standard is lower so we can feel better. We’d like God to protect us from the results of our own stupidity and failures. But those options results in a lack of growth. God wants to grow you up. To take the next step. And the next.
Those who fear you see me and rejoice, Because I wait for your word.
Again, there are a number of ways to translate, especially the verb tenses. In a poetic form, that is challenging. I see this as a continuous state rather than a prediction. Those who see the psalmist rejoice, precisely because he is awaiting God’s word.
We could discuss the value of recognizing God’s work in the lives of others. That is one of the things that helps create community. We recognize God’s grace in action and it’s time to rejoice.
But the word that caught most of my attention today is the word “wait.” It can be translated “hope” as well as “wait.” We don’t like the word “wait” and even “hope” can be a problem when we remember that if we’re hoping, we don’t have it yet! And we’re back to “wait,” which we don’t like.
But waiting is critical. Timing can be important and if you don’t learn to wait, you are likely to miss many things. You can miss something as easily by rushing and being too early as by being too late.
And what is the psalmist waiting for? God’s word.
With waiting there is listening, listening for God’s word. This can come to you in so many different ways. I recall once that I had been trying to make a decision. The situation was one were right and wrong seemed ambiguous. I was talking with a friend asking for prayer and advice, and as we were praying and talking about it, suddenly something became very clear.
Did I hear a voice? No.
Were there words written on tablets of stone? No.
Did I have a vision? No.
I believe God can speak in all of those ways. God has spoken in all those ways. But the “word of God” that I received after waiting that time was simply the sudden understanding of what was the right thing to do. In a flash I knew that one of the courses of action I was considering could not be carried out ethically, so there was really only one choice.
Can you wait for that knowledge of what God’s word says about any situation?
Here are some helpful books I publish on this topic
I had an interesting experience in the checkout line at the grocery store. The customer-facing display was off-color, in the sort of way that indicates some color data is not making it through. I commented on this fact, saying, “Either there’s something wrong with that monitor or it has a damaged or loose cable.”
The young man doing the bagging says, “Oh,” and turns the monitor slightly, which suddenly corrected the color issue.
“Most likely the cable in that case,” I said. Then I explained that I have worked IT for many years.
“We got that!” says the young lady who was ringing up the groceries. Then she commented that her dad worked with carpet installation and he would always notice and comment on issues with the carpet.
“It sort of changes the way you look at things, doesn’t it?” I commented.
To which both young people agreed.
That incident reminded me of one from long ago. Jody and I were at church, I believe shortly after we got married, and she mentioned something about a particular woman. Jody described the woman’s appearance and clothing. It took me some time to place her in my mind. Then I replied, “Oh, the one who was carrying the wide margin NIV Study Bible.” (I made up the particular Bible edition, which I don’t remember. But I identified the Bible she had been carrying in detail.)
We notice different things. I didn’t remember the woman’s appearance or her clothes. She could have passed me on the street the next day in the same outfit and I would likely not have recognized her. But I would have recognized the distinctive Bible edition she was carrying.
I think there’s an important reminder her. When we look at someone, we tend to see those things that are most important to us. Not to them. To us. A good deal of what we see in others we see because of who we are, not who they are. In a way, we don’t see them at all. Just the parts that fit us.
Let me suggest a few situations in which this is important.
As a church leader, do you see a new member only for how they’ll fit into existing jobs you need to fill?
When you meet someone is your main thought how they can be of use to you?
Do you see someone as defined by one aspect of their identify, such as sexual identity, religious persuasion, political affiliation, or social class?
I suspect most of us do one or another of these things. I know I do from time to time.
Perhaps it’s time to start really seeing other people instead of just seeing our reflection in them.
To help you see others better
PERFECTLY SQUARE provides a way of thinking about differences and learning to value them. Learning about the world that was perfectly square and what happened to it may help you make your own world less square by recognizing others more fully.
Your hands made me and put me together. Give me understanding, and I will learn your commands.
This verse starts the next eight verse section, but it’s still discussing God’s relation to us. We’ve seen God as good, and also as one who either brings or allows hardship. Now we get to the basics. God is the creator. More precisely, God is our creator.
This verse illustrates why we bring nothing we independently own to the table. We owe our very existence to God. We are not in a position to demand anything. God created it all and made all the rules. We can say that all understanding as well as all existence comes from God.
There are hints throughout the psalm that point to our dependence on God to truly carry out God’s commands. This verse points to our dependence on God even for our understanding of what those rules are.
We often debate about whether we can earn or complete any part of our salvation. In doing so we are missing this one major point. Not only can’t put God under obligation by anything we do, we can’t conceive of how to or not to do so on our own.
Does this seem oppressive? Well, as created beings we are, by definition dependent. Such independence as we have is made, fashioned, and established (all possible translations of the words of the first half of this verse) by God. Our desires are. Such freedom we have (and I believe in the power of the human will) is also a gift given by God at God’s own choice.
And we are given great freedom, which we frequently misuse, and the same sovereign, all-powerful God lets us go and do those things.
My company, Energion Publications, uses the slogan “Educate! Energize! Empower!” If you feel empowered today, remember whose gift that empowerment is.
I value instruction from you more than thousands of gold or silver coins.
If I were to write a list of things Christians say, but don’t really mean, this would be near the top. We like to say that we’re interested in what God has to say, but in practice, it’s not that high on our priority list.
Psalm 19 says that God’s laws (after using a number of the same terms found in Psalm 119) are more to be desired than gold. I once suggested to a class that a good experiment would be to put a Bible and a gold bar on a pew and see which disappeared first.
But that was not one of my smartest suggestions. The point is not having the book, but consuming God’s word in various forms.
I was once invited to speak to a group of visiting youth who were accompanied by their youth pastor. At the end I invited questions, and once we’d discussed such deep theological issues as where Cain got his wife, things wound down. The youth pastor asked if he could put in a question. His question: “I’ve been studying the New Testament for around five years now and I think I’ve pretty much got it. What do I do next?”
That one pretty much stunned me. I’ve been studying the New Testament, and the whole Bible, pretty much my whole life, and there’s no end in sight. There’s always something new. I’ve heard people who have been in the church for years say they don’t need to study or attend Sunday School class, because they’ve really got it all covered.
So let’s change the question. Can you give up the money you’d earn in an hour of work in favor of learning from God? In this I include more than reading scripture. I include time spent meditating, listening to God. I include time spent in nature or studying science. Anything that is dedicated first and foremost to learning the truth.
Is that truth more important than your bottom line? Will you give up money in order to know that truth? Will you practice truth, that is integrity by practicing what you know, even at a financial cost?
This could be a serious question for someone who does not believe in God. Do you believe in learning truth and having ethics over your own living?
We talked about hardship in yesterday’s post. The fact is that while hardship drives learning in many ways, most times we’ll skip the learning if we can cheat reality and dodge the hardship. Often this is accomplished my making others take our hardship for us.
What will you prioritize today? Will it be absolutely genuine?
It was good for me to have suffered hardship so I could learn your statutes.
We tend to complain a good deal over hardship. We don’t like it. We ask why God allows it, or perhaps does it.
But hardship is worked into the basic structure of the universe. That’s where we get the law of sowing and reaping. Our standard condition has us destined to work hard for many things. This is, in fact, how we learn most things.
Two stories from my childhood and youth come to mind. When I was just eight years old I announced that I wanted to learn to use a typewriter. This launched a family debate. Would I ever learn to write? Could I actually learn to use the typewriter at that point. At that time “typewriter” meant a manual machine and took a certain amount of energy to use.
My dad made the decision. I’d be allowed to learn to type, but only if I would complete every single lesson in the Typing Made Simple workbook perfectly. There was no number of allowed errors. I could redo the lessons as many times as I wanted to, but I couldn’t move forward until I had completed it without error.
I honestly don’t know whether my dad expected me to succeed or not. There was no pressure other than the one requirement. That was a hardship! I had to do some of those lessons several times. But I learned something that has served me all my life. In high school, I attained a top typing speed of over 120 words per minute without error.
Again, when I wanted to raise goats, my parents simply made sure I understood the work involved. There would be no morning when I didn’t have to get up early to milk. There would always be things that I needed to do at various inconvenient times. I understood, and I got the goats.
Now raising those goats was hard! In my spare time I had to install an electric fence. Then I had to deliver the milk to customers up to a mile or so away, which I did either on foot or by bicycle.
The point of these two experiences is that they are not extraordinary. Nobody was trying to make my life difficult. The hardships involved were not that terrible. Some people have told me the “perfection” requirement was outrageous, but I disagree. It gave me a goal and a standard, and it was attainable. The work done to attain that goal contributed to much of my work since, including the speed with which I am typing this.
We can make a distinction between causing trouble or allowing trouble. I think that is a distinction of limited value. If someone is picturing God sneaking about looking for ways to make their life difficult, that might be theologically problematic. But God has created a universe in which everything from stars and planets to human beings are shaped by things that put pressure on them.
And what do we suppose is necessary to make us ready for eternity?
“But grace!” you say.
Yes, God’s grace saves us. Yes, God’s grace is sufficient. It brings us into the family. But that is the beginning of a journey, not the end.
“And grace will see us through,” you say.
Yes, indeed it will. But it’s going to see you through the process of growing you up, of preparing you for eternity in the presence of God.
Be “carried on to perfection” (Hebrews 6:2) for a few more steps today!
