James 4:7
Resist the Devil,
and he will flee from you.
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As discussed in the previous meditation, the demons' chief weapon against us is our own desire to sin.
This tells us something of the character both of sin and of man.
Demons are not so much trying to dupe us. They just keep giving us cups of poison that we make reasons to drink. And they continue to give us what we do drink.
Demons understand* sin as opposition to God's will. It is that opposition they seek to uncover in us. They have no need to create it; as a potential, it already dwells in us.
So our job is to know our potential to sin ahead of time, 'beating the demons to the punch'. That's why we pray, "Do not lead me into temptation." We are asking to know our weakness or outright sinful desire before it can ensnare us again.
* They know sin very personally and intimately, per the sin they committed before the very face of God and which now characterizes them.
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1 Corinthians 2:14
But a natural man does not receive
the things of the Spirit of God,
for they are foolishness to him,
and he is not able to know them,
because they are spiritually discerned.
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True knowledge is primarily spiritual.
It is therefore all the more important to be crystal clear in presenting knowledge:
To say exactly what need be said;
only what need be said;
and to say it exactly how it need be said.
This is why Jesus seems rude in most of His dialogues in John chapters 1 - 6. To us He borders on tactlessness:
John 2:4 Jesus said to her, What is that to Me and to you, woman? My hour has not yet come.
John 3:10 Jesus answered and said to him, You are the teacher of Israel, and you do not know these things?
John 4:22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is of the Jews.
John 6:26 Jesus answered them and said, Truly, truly, I say to you, You seek Me not because you saw miraculous signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were satisfied.
Jesus was a fully spiritual man, so He was communicating pure spiritual truth. His terseness and seemingly indirect answers to some questions raise concerns to our natural sensibilities. We must in each case come to an understanding of His words, so we will know that He always said what needed to be said, only that, and in the appropriate manner.
We must also learn a basic lesson of communication for ourselves: that persuasiveness on our part cannot include 'sugar-coating' the truth or soft-peddling man's sinful condition.
We should, however, avoid enigmatic speech from a misguided attempt to sound like Jesus. He was not only the Messenger but the Message. Yet He also knew when to speak more directly:
John 16:29 His disciples said to Him, Behold, now You speak plainly and You say no allegory.
There were many things which were going to be nearly impossible to understand until redemption had been accomplished. Now that it has been accomplished, plainness is our main business. We must therefore speak precisely, concisely, and judiciously.
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Psalm 46:1
God is our refuge and strength,
in distresses He is very much found to be a help.
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God is our place of protection in "distresses", or, nearly literally, in "tight spots".
God is not just a mascot. But to rise above our treating Him as one, we must actually feel the weight of troubles and flee away from the troubles and from our resulting fear or anger to Him.
God is not a 'charm' to dispel our adversaries or adversities. But to rise above our treating Him as one, we must not imagine that His chief concern is to rid us of trouble. We must realize that His chief concern is to mold us during our distresses.
God is not a genie, be it the controllable or the unpredictable type. But to rise above our treating Him as one, we must make our requests for aid with the attitude of seeking His will, not bending His powers to our service.
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Psalm 46:2, 3
On account of this we will not fear,
though the earth change
and the mountains slip into the heart of the seas.
Its waters rage and foam;
Its swelling shakes the mountains. Selah.
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Notice the perspectives from which the Psalmist considers his safety in Jehovah (from verse 1).
The EARTH may shake; the MOUNTAINS may be lost; the SEAS may roar.
The EARTH is a whole outer perspective. Everywhere I look around me, I see the earth. God's protection is yet wider.
MOUNTAINS are an upper realm. Though their majesty be assaulted, yet I cannot be thrown down if God upholds me.
SEAS are an 'under' realm. Yet their subversion cannot melt my secure footing from underneath me, for God is my hiding place and my strength (46:1).
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Psalm 46:4
There is a river,
its channels gladden the city of God,
the holy tabernacles of the Most High.
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The "city of God" mentioned here is equated with the "holy tabernacles" of God. "Tabernacles" are tents. THE Tabernacle was a tent, a moveable dwelling of God.
This verse, then, is saying that God 'pitches His tent' here with us. He chooses to come among us and dwell with us. We would probably only have equatee the City of God with Heaven, but He equates it with a place on earth, a place with us.
He is the "Most High" in this verse, yet He dwells in as lowly a place as He might- among men.
Jesus is "Immanuel"- "God with us". He came among us but has departed from us. Yet Jesus says that, until we come to Heaven, it is better for us to have the Holy Spirit than it is for us to have Himself. The Holy Spirit, then, can be called 'God with us' now. He makes us part of the city of God
Therefore, if we offend the Holy Spirit, we endanger our dwelling with God. Any offense we give the Holy Spirit, then, is an assault against our own dwelling with God.
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Psalm 46:5
God is in the midst of her;
she shall not be shaken;
God will help her
at the turning of the morning.
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God is in the very midst of His people, even though she is not truly aware of it.
She feels the shaking of the ground beneath them as the enemy assaults them in great mass and fury. Yet God promises that she will only feel the shaking. She herself will not be shaken. The mountains shake (v. 2), but His people He holds firm.
But God does not help her by going "Boo!", and chasing her enemies away before they reach her gates. Rather, His people may feel that He has clearly abandoned them, at least to some extent, for the enemies mount a successful siege!
God has a sense of drama, if you will. He has a sense of timing, both for our despair at our supposed undoing and for the actual moment of our undoing. When martyrdom is not His chosen means for our glorifying Him, He doesn't allow our actual undoing to occur. He effects our actual rescue "just at the face of dawn" (Hebrew).
How much longer did Job have to wait after the seven days before God would have removed his loathsome boils? Job never found out. He despaired of rescue some hours or moments before 'dawn'.
Perhaps that is the hardest area of self-trust to abandon: our sense of our own demise, especially the timing of it.
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Psalm 46:6
The nations raged,
the kingdoms were moved;
He uttered His voice,
the earth melted.
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Nations and kingdoms may come against God's people, but He will protect His own.
When He "gives" (the literal Hebrew) His voice, it is not only the nations and the kingdoms that pull back from their tumult; the land under them gives way! God melts the very earth in avenging His people!
The ground under us looks stable enough. The earth seems a stable base of operations for the ungodly. But we must picture the scenes from this Psalm when we are harried by the cruel of the earth. We must pray according to this Psalm on behalf of our persecuted brothers and sisters in many parts of the world.
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Psalm 46:7
Jehovah of Hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is a refuge for us.
Selah.
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In this Protection Psalm, God is identified as the God of Jacob. Therefore, our specific knowledge of Jacob and God's protection of him are helpful.
Jacob was a wily, self-serving fellow who only came to know God little by little. His story is very encouraging, then, in that he is so much like us. And, as happens with all true Christians, God had set His love on Jacob and wouldn't let him go. Nor would He leave him in his wiles or his selfishness.
So when God is identified as the refuge of people like Jacob, we cannot help but be humbled. God opposes all the forces of nature and man in Psalm 46 in order to protect His people; but in that He is Jacob's God, He spends even more time opposing us. He won't let the world harm us, but He does a great job at deconstructing us Himself (in order to reconstruct us better).
Of course, God can and does use the forces of nature and man in His designs to purify us, but we must remember that He does not simply give us over into their hands. They can only do what He wills.
The harder our road in life is, then, the more miles we are able to backtrack out of our wilderness of wily self-service. Like Jacob.
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Psalm 46:8, 9
Come, behold the works of Jehovah,
who makes ruins on the earth;
who makes wars to cease
to the ends of the earth;
He breaks the bow,
and cuts the spear in two;
He burns the chariots in the fire.
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"Come, behold!"
See for yourself!
What had you feared the most? Name it. It is vanquished.
The greatest tumult man can produce- war- is stamped out by God like a cigarette that has caught a few dry leaves on fire.
God invites us to look on His works. Then He shows us His great destruction countering man's great destruction. God does not apologize for His violence. In His case, we must define violence as righteous force*. His works are broken weapons and burning war machines. He simply will abide no destructive force that threatens us.
He could prevent weapons' manufacture. He could disband them before they go on the march. He chooses to beset them after they have threatened us. He purposely allows us time to wonder if we have been abandoned.
If we haven't seen God's destructive works in our day (or haven't recognized them as such), we must look back in Biblical or extra-Biblical history to see them. Having His destructive works before our mind's eye is what bolsters our faith to know that He does deal with His enemies and protect His people. Setting God's destructive works before us obeys His command to "Come, behold!"
* Violence would generally be defined as the unrighteous use of force
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Psalm 46:10
Be still and know that I am God!
I will be exalted among the nations;
I will be exalted in the earth.
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A prerequisite for Divinely imparted knowledge is inactivity. Until we become motionless, information about God does not truly move into our souls. Inactivity may be the wrong word, for it is not a comatose state that is being commended, but rather the complete focus of our attention on one thing. Until every other activity stops, our attention will never properly converge on just one thing. So God tells us to be still. He tells us to desist. He tells us to do so in order that we may know.
This gives us a very good reason to set apart a time each day called 'quiet time'. A good argument can be made that more spiritual good is accomplished by merely coming to a complete standstill than by wedging in five hurried minutes of Bible reading with a quick prayer. Of course, if we plan better and read and pray at our leisure, our session will more closely resemble a real time of quietness. We still must be careful to avoid 'perpetual motion.' There is a fear native to the human soul which causes us to avoid close contact with God:
Gen 3:8 ... And Man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Jehovah Elohim, in the midst of the trees of the garden.
Man has been on the move ever since. Our only stillness has been crouching in a hiding place, hoping God won't notice us.
Look at God's Self-motivation. He requires us to be still for what purpose? To know that He is God. Specifically, He would have us know that He is God among the nations, that He is God in relation to the earth and all He has made.
Why does He press this particular knowledge on us? Because this is the information we always forget. The world naturally takes on a God-like quality to us. It is bigger than us and seems to be running our lives. Unless we actually focus our vision on God and His control over the world, the world naturally remains an idol to us.
God wants us to focus on Him. Let us be still that we may do so.
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Matthew 9:37,38
Then He said to His disciples,
The harvest truly is plenteous,
but the laborers are few.
Therefore pray to the Lord of the harvest
that He will send out laborers
into His harvest.
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In a previously evangelized nation, the harvest is complex. In the verse just preceding the ones quoted above, Jesus had compassionate regard for a crowd that followed Him, for they were as shepherdless sheep. This crowd was certainly predominantly Jewish. They were instructed in the ways of God, already believed in Scriptures, and in this case were listening attentively to the Messiah Himself ! Yet they evoked a comment from our Lord about evangelism.
'Evangelism', then, in a properly broad sense, includes:
1) Converting men to Christ;
2) Converting men to Christian thinking; and, if you will,
3) Converting men to Christian living.
There is a sense in which all three parts should be one and the same. In a 'Christianized' nation, then, we may be trying to convert a professing Christian to consistent, Biblical thinking or living, only to find that his inconsistency was due to his lack of regeneration (he hadn't been born again).
Neither should Christian living properly be separated from Christian thinking. Christian thinking is really only Christian thinking when it results in Christian living.
Nonetheless, as workers in Christ's harvest fields, all types of shepherdlessness should be approached with the same compassion He felt and with this prayer (box at the top) He taught us to ask concerning it.
The ultimate answer to the prayer Jesus instructed is God 'thrusting forth' (lit. Gk.) knowledgeable, authoritative pastor-teachers, who will instruct the flock, who will in turn take an intelligent, persuasive gospel into their circles.
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Psalm 66:1, 2
Make a joyful sound to God, all the earth;
Sing out the honor of His name;
make glorious His praise.
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Psalm 66, as many of the Psalms, is very exuberant.
Christianity is exuberant.
Any mealy-mouthed brand of Christianity, then, is not really Christianity.
We must not insist that someone else's style or degree of exuberance match our own, nor must we insist that Christian living or worship be primarily evidenced by vitality (as opposed to, say, seriousness), but we must insist that Christianity cannot lack enthusiasm altogether.
There are those who are very staid of spirit naturally. They may be expressing a relatively great amount of joy without much recognizable expression. But they would not oppose the fact that a deliverance so great as that wrought by Christ requires a full-hearted response from those He has rescued.
Some people's rather quiet, mainly inner exuberance is more sincere and acceptable to God than some people's loud clamor.
But let us be sure that Christianity does not bottle us up and make us stoic, unfeeling, or unresponsive. Psalm 66 could not be rightly obeyed or expressed to God that way.
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Psalm 66:3
Say to God,
"How awesome are Your works!
Through the greatness of Your power,
Your enemies submit to You."
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Sin opposes God, but He has final sway over all opposition.
Psalm 66:7 He rules by His power forever; His eyes search out the nations; let not the rebellious exalt themselves. Selah.
There is definite motivation here to separate ourselves from opposition to God. But the Psalm also points out how God does not leave our separation from sin to chance:
Psalm 66:10 - 12 For You, O God, have proved us; You've refined us, as silver is refined. You've brought us into the net; You've laid affliction upon our loins. You've caused men to ride at our head
God uses affliction to purify us. The fiery heat of our difficulties is measured out to us for our ultimate good.
The psalmist recognizes, though, that sin is so deeply and stubbornly engrained in him, that it takes all the means at God's disposal to keep sin from characterizing his life:
Psalm 66:18 If I gazed at iniquity in my heart, then the Master would not have heard.
So all of the Psalm's worldwide scope of God dealing with enemy nations returns to His dealing with me. Sin opposes God, so if sin rules me, I am rejected; I am not heard by God.
But by coming to God, I find that His power over sinners AND SIN is available to me. I find God Himself, I find deliverance from the troubles surrounding me, and I find victory over prevailing sin:
Psalm 66:19 Surely, God has heard; He has attended to the voice of my prayer.
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Psalm 66:18
If I gazed at iniquity in my heart,
the Master would not have heard.
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Psalm 66 exemplifies the exuberance of Christianity, as we said two meditations back.
Yet mortification of sin is part of this overall exuberance:
Col 3:5 Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness (which is idolatry)
The psalmist recognized that if he had his gaze fixed on some forbidden thing, this would effectively cut off God's ear from him. God wants focused eyes, as it were, to insure a sincere mouth for praising Him. (Do you realize how many Scriptures speak of rejected prayers? James 4:3; 1 Pet. 3:7; Prov. 21:13; 28:9; James 1:6, 7; Ps. 18:41, Prov. 1:28; Isa. 1:15; Jer. 11:11; Micah 3:4; Zech. 7:13)
The psalmist implicitly confesses his natural affection for idols. All men are natural idolaters (with self-worship being the most prevalent brand of idolatry). But God doesn't hear us when we regard idols. Therefore, we know the psalmist had dealt a successful death-blow to his idol, for the moment at least, when he says:
Psalm 66:19 Surely, God has heard; He has attended to the voice of my prayer.
Hence, again, this Psalm, while expressing great show of emotion, does not shy away from the more private and painful aspects of the Christian life. In fact, the overall exuberance seems to be an outgrowth of God's mercy guiding the psalmist out of his idolatry.
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Psalm 54:7
For He has delivered me out of all trouble;
and my eye has seen regarding my enemies.
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"My eye has seen regarding my enemies" is literally "my eye has seen in my enemies." Most translations have "my eye has seen its desire upon my enemies", or "has looked with satisfaction ..." Certainly these translations take the word "in" beyond its necessary meaning.
The psalmist is merely saying that he has seen the outcome of his enemies' bad behavior. He may mean that he had literally seen evil come back upon the head of evil men who were against him. Or he may mean that by faith he had envisioned the latter end of those who were boasting against him now. This would be like Psalm 73. The psalmist spent the whole first half of Psalm 73 bemoaning the happiness of the wicked. Then the realization struck him:
Psalm 73:16, 17 And I thought to know this; it was a travail in my eyes, until I went into the sanctuary of God; now I understood their end.
But neither of these vantage points implies that the psalmist is looking with glee upon his enemy's downfall. In fact, there would even be room for the psalmist envisioning some of his enemies being cast down unto their salvation:
Psalm 83:16 Fill their faces with shame and they will seek Your name, O Jehovah.
In any case, we know that our rejoicing or satisfaction at our enemy's downfall is strictly limited by Scriptures:
Prov 24:17, 18 Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles; lest Jehovah see, and it displease Him, and He turn away His wrath from him.
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Leviticus 19:17
You shall not hate your brother in your heart.
You shall surely rebuke your neighbor,
and not bear sin because of him.
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The word "confrontational" should describe a Christian.
"Confront" is simply made of the prefix "Con"- "with", and "front" ('frons' in Latin, meaning forehead or face). So a confrontational person relates to others 'with his front.' He does not come at them sideways or backwards, if you will. His dealings are straightforward rather than indirect (not to say he cannot properly employ subtlety when appropriate).
The verse above equates indirect dealings with hatred. If I'm unwilling to confront my neighbor's sin, I hate him. I'm leaving him in his sin.
We tend to think of a confrontational person as an unpleasant one. This is not the kind of confrontation a Christian should generally display, though. While fitting the definition of being frontal, a Christian should nonetheless be pleasant. There is no need to be 'in your face' just because you are facing someone. A Christian should directly apply God's patience and kindness with himself to his dealings with others. Though stern, God is not a Marine drill sergeant berating us over our sins, so neither should we use harassment on others.
This does not mean we are unwilling to inflict pain. Reproving another, as God commands in the verse, is necessarily painful. It is simply that we have experienced the shame of the log in our own eye, so we will naturally be tender when we reach to extract the splinter from the eye of another. Any lack of tact, then, reveals the presence of self-righteousness: that we haven't dealt with sin in ourselves first.
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Psalm 96:3
Tell of His glory among the nations,
His wonders among all people.
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God is to be spoken of admiringly by those who know Him.
Psalm 96:4 For Jehovah is great and much to be praised; He is to be feared above all gods.
In particular, God is to be admired more than any other potential or actual object of admiration. The gods of the world are merely the invented deities, people, or things we sanctify by our service to them or their control of us. God is specifically to be accorded more honor than they. He is "to be feared"; that is, He is to be the actual controlling factor in our lives, the One whose disapproval we actually avoid.
The only way we can accord God more honor and reverence than anything else is to see Him for who He is compared to the realization of all other things for what they are. This comparison happens quite naturally when we catch a fresh glimpse of God and are 'revived' spiritually. Most of the time, though, we must deliberately bring the comparison to our minds (thus reviving ourselves by His Spirit). Fresh visions of God wear off, and service to gods creeps in quite naturally and unavoidably.
Most of us are aware of the idols that preoccupy us. We know the gods that steal honor from God (although we are the real thieves. The gods can only take what we give them).
"Tell of His glory" is an exclamation, but it is also a command. When we obey the command to communicate the true God's glories with others, the power of lesser gods diminishes. When we communicate from true admiration of God, the dominion (though not the presence and potential dominion) of gods is broken.
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Psalm 96:6
Honor and majesty are before Him;
power and beauty are in His sanctuary.
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Certain blessings are reserved for those who enter into corporate worship.
God's sanctuary- the Temple in the Old Covenant- is the people of God in the New Covenant:
Eph 2:19 - 22 So, then, you are no longer strangers and tenants, but you are fellow citizens of the saints and of the family of God, being built up on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the cornerstone, in whom all the building being fitted together grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.
Power and beauty are in God's sanctuary. On earth, this sanctuary is among His people.
No Christian is called outside the body. Christians are only called into the body of Christ. Into the body is part of it.
Many believers depart the body because of its defilements. It is not a place fit for God's dwelling. But in leaving they do not secure a dwelling place for God outside the Church. There is some group meeting somewhere where God is present. He does not promise power and beauty to quitters. Nor will He be manifested to flitters (who flit from church to church, finding fault wherever they go, or else hearing the siren call of greater blessings down the street).
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Psalm 96:6
Say in the nations, Jehovah reigns!
Yes, the world is fixed, it shall not be moved;
He will judge the peoples with uprightness.
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The world is fixed. It is established. God made it, and He sticks by it.
This implies that God is going to work within the existing spheres of creation.
By considering God transcendent, we must not think of His creation as something arbitrary. He has hung His glory, in one sense, on what He made. It is not as though His handiwork is as nothing just because God Himself is so much greater. He speaks through what He has made. His 'fingerprints' are all over everything.
Even miracles themselves are not so much acts of defiance against the created order of things. Miracles are more like exceptions that prove the rule. Miracles do not say that creation is inadequate as is. They simply say that the creation depends on the God who designed it and holds it together. The creation is so efficient as God put it together that it's easy to think that it runs all by itself. Miracles help remind us otherwise.
The world is established. This is a law. It therefore serves as a comparison point for God's moral law, as the verse further declares, "He will judge the peoples with uprightness." God is fixed. His standards are fixed. Judgment is, therefore, already fixed. There will be no surprises on Judgment Day for those who know God's law.
After saying this, the Psalmist breaks out into waves of successive praise. The firmness of the created order, physical and moral, is a great underpinning for our soul's security and therefore its joy and thanks.
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Psalm 96:12, 13
Let the field be joyful, and all that is in it;
then shall all the trees of the forest rejoice before Jehovah;
for He comes,
for He comes to judge the earth;
He shall judge the world with righteousness,
and the people with His truth.
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God will judge the people with His truth.
The truth never sleeps.
Everything we do is always being evaluated by truth. Final judgment waits, but each action we take receives solid form, you might say, by its relation to the truth. Our actions do not await Judgment Day for the decision of their correctness. By the standards of truth, our acts are as correct or incorrect today as they will be at judgment.
Nor do subtleties, varied degrees of issues, or areas where one moral concern bleeds over into a competing one put truth on hold until it can resolve the complexities. God's infinity surrounds each situation completely, fully factoring in each shade of motive, weighing every disparate aspect with its due influence. The truth has us covered.
Why would God bother? Of course, it's 'no sweat' for Him. But neither are these trivial matters to Him. Righteousness requires not only details, but all the details in all their proper proportions. That's one thing the truth does: supply all the details.
God has already told us the gist of His judgments. We can be sure that our unaided self-evaluation will fall short. We are not only limited; we are biased. His Word gives us unbiased bad news about ourselves, but the bad news is the truth.
Amazingly, God tells us the truth to warn us. He is being patient and compassionate in telling us these things about the truth. Our lazy self-flattery takes this as a sign that God means to shade the truth in our favor.
Be assured- He will not.
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Psalm 101:1
I will sing of mercy and judgment;
to You, O Jehovah, I will sing praise.
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With mercy and judgment as his subject, the psalmist is on familiar Biblical ground. The Bible is a book about both mercy and judgment. Furthermore, when you've covered both, you've covered pretty much everything there is to cover in the Bible!
(Many people say that the theme of the Bible is redemption. That would be like saying the theme of the Bible is only mercy. That cuts out half the Bible's message!)
God's dealings with man are both in mercy and in judgment. We should sing about both. This is one area where hymns and spiritual songs have lost pace with Psalms as Christian musical expressions. Psalms are full of the doctrine of God's judgment. Hymns and spiritual songs, including modern praise choruses, are very lacking in the doctrine of judgment. The saddest part of this commentary is that we therefore consider our newer songs superior. They fit the modern gospel better because they are all about the love of God- period.
So we need a gospel that is balanced. The good news of God's mercy is not good news without the backdrop of God's judgment- the bad news, the warning about who we are and what we therefore deserve.
We need such habit and practice of this balanced gospel, the true one, that we can freely sing of God's mercy and judgment together, understanding the link between them.
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Psalm 101:2
I will behave myself wisely in a matured way.
O when will You come to me?
I will walk within my house with a heart complete.
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"I will walk within my house."
This is a thought that gives us rest.
My house is a definite place. I am within known boundaries. I am familiar with my territory.
My house has definite duties. There are no "what if's". My position demands certain activities and attitudes of me every day.
This makes my house a 'can-do' place.
When we think of our houses in relation to morality, we usually think what a disadvantage it is to have our weaknesses exposed to the monotony of the same people and same situations day in and day out.
There is, of course, such a disadvantage; but we can think just as easily about the advantage which limitation and familiarity give us. I can actually practice enough to get this right and have a "complete heart" and walk in a "matured way."
Obviously, I must center on my heart's progress rather than my house's progress in order to gain this advantage.
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Psalm 101:4
A deceptive heart shall depart from me;
I shall not know evil [or "evil ones"].
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For a deceptive heart to depart from me, I have to know the evil that tends to slide 'under the radar' for me. A deceptive heart within me is one that finds ways to allow disobedience.
The verse right before this one said:
Psalm 101:3 I will not set a worthless thing before my eyes; I have hated the deeds of those who turn aside; it shall not fasten upon me.
I must know what a worthless thing is in order to avoid it. The world packages many activities as good and wholesome, or at least as lacking harm, which God says are deadly. My own sense of things tells me that certain transgressions will be worth indulging in- that they are not that harmful, or that any harm they incur can be remedied.
"I will not set a worthless thing before my eyes." I cannot help worthless things crossing my path, but I have a choice as to what I will bring into my life to own my attention, to fix my gaze upon, so to speak.
Worthless things, literally, things or matters or words "without profit", only lose their power over us when we categorize them as harmful. Our deceptive hearts tell us they are not harmful. And they may only be harmful to me; they may not be harmful in themselves.
When something is in competition for the worship I owe to God, it is almost always entirely the way I treat the idol that makes it one. There are some idols that are borrowed straight from the world, but most are just created things that I relate to improperly.
There are typical idols that endure from generation to generation because they relate to our senses and our felt needs (the desires of the flesh and of the eye,
1 John 2:16); others relate to our sense of possession and connection to earthly life (the pride of life, same verse).
When a deceptive heart departs from us, we are no longer deluded about our natural love for idols. We are also no longer deluded about the idol's power to deliver on its promises of fulfillment and liberation.
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Psalm 101:5
Whoever secretly slanders his neighbor,
him I will remove;
he who has a high look and a proud heart
I will not endure.
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We can easily see Jesus' special relation to this Psalm. There are some things in the Psalm that only He could fulfill in their ultimate sense. Only the Christ, as Judge of mankind, can utterly remove a person or consign him to eternal rejection.
But a Christian is also an anointed one (Christ = "Anointed One") in a lesser sense. We fulfill this Psalm in a lesser way.
David fulfilled the Psalm as a king over his realm, banishing evil-doers from his dominions by various means.
We are called on to strike certain people from our rolls too:
1 Cor 5:11 But now I have written to you not to associate intimately, if any man called a brother and is either a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such a one not to eat.
It may not seem much of a banishment, to banish someone from our dinner table or our conversation. But there is great power in it. On the one hand, such banishment tends to shame the straying brother into repentance:
2 Thess 3:14 And if anyone does not obey our word by this letter, mark that one and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed.
On the other hand, an official church banishment can mean death. Of a brother continuing in a grievous form of fornication, Paul commands the church:
1 Cor 5:4, 5 in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, with my spirit; also, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ; to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.
So it is a serious consideration, those who will be on our rolls, whether as a church or as individuals.
Can you say that you have the resolve to speak as the psalmist? "He who has a high look and a proud heart I will not endure." Are you willing to shut out acquaintance or friend whose attitude mocks God most high?
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Psalm 101:6
My eyes shall be on the faithful of the land,
so that they may dwell with me;
he who walks in a perfect way,
he shall serve me.
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Like the previous verse considered in the previous meditation, this one considers a 'list'. Last time, we considered who should be off of our list. This time we consider who should be on our list.
Again, Jesus is obviously the primary reference point in this verse. He is the ultimate King who decrees who shall serve Him.
Similarly David, the Psalm's original author, had to decide who would be his trusted companions and servants.
You and I have a similar decision to make, though much less weighty on a national or global scale. We must decide whom we will walk with as friends. After choice of spouse, this is probably the most important kind of choice we will ever make. (Choice of church is not properly a choice, but in a day in which the body of Christ is badly fragmented, it has become such a choice as well).
Friends make the man. Whom we befriend, we shall be in the end:
Prov 13:20 He who walks with the wise shall be wise, but one associating with fools shall suffer harm.
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Psalm 119:19
I am a stranger in the earth;
do not hide Your Commandments from me.
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God's commandments are naturally hidden from men.
God hides certain commandments from certain individuals.
We should not expect to perceive any commandments ever unless God opens our eyes.
We should not expect Him to open our eyes unless we ask for it fervently: (the next verse)
Psalm 119:20 My soul breaks for the longing that it has to Your judgments at all times.
Have you ever uttered a prayer in which your soul was breaking with longing?
Was it ever so in asking for understanding of Scriptures?
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Psalm 119:19
I am a stranger in the earth;
do not hide Your Commandments from me.
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Christians are 'betwixt and between', as the saying goes. We are unsatisfied by earth ("I am a stranger in the earth"), yet we do not automatically enjoy heavenly things ("Do not hide your Commandments from me").
Without understanding the tension between these extremes, we either become very frustrated individuals, or we become fakes.
When we feel that our distance from God's commands is abnormal, we are tempted to become fake and pretend that there is no distance, rather than confess our strangeness as the psalmist does. We are encouraged in this pretense by large segments of Christendom fairly standardizing various forms of this hypocrisy.
There are as many ways to fake holiness as there are personality types. Hypocrites tend to gather with those of like personality types.
Some prefer their packaged righteousness in solemn rituals. The symbolism of otherwise inoffensive rituals becomes a hiding place for those who lack true meaning in their relationship with the Lord.
Others prefer highly personal and passionate worship to displace the confession that God's commands are hidden from them. They would perceive themselves to be grubbing with paupers to make such a confession!
Man naturally puts a 'safe mode' of righteousness into gear when he feels spiritually insecure. Most of us, on some level, live our whole Christian lives masking our insecurity and living on 'automatic'. It is simply too awkward, constantly expressing our 'stranger to righteousness' side.
But it is our gain to comperhend the balance the psalmist found. Memorize his words and come to embrace them. See to it that his words are the expressions of your own soul. "I am a stranger in the earth; but the world locking me out hasn't locked me into the storehouse of Your truths, Lord. Show me the door, Lord! Ever show me the door!"
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Psalm 119:22
Remove from me reproach and contempt;
for I have kept Your testimonies.
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How many Christians today could or would follow the psalmist in 'basing' a prayer request on their obedience or faithfulness? Surely this is virtually unknown in our day.
Of course, the psalmist is not basing the whole acceptance of his prayer and himself before God on his own faithfulness. But he is clearly making some kind of 'trade-off', if you will. He is saying, "I have given You this, God. Will You not now, therefore, give me that?"
We live in such a justification-heavy age that we cannot fathom basing any kind of prayer request on our sanctification. Yet does this not clearly finger our Biblical ignorance?
1 John 3:22 And whatever we ask, we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.
Amazing, eh? This is exactly the same basis for prayer as in our Psalm, yet what Christian knows it and prays accordingly?
Another reason we probably fail to comprehend or employ such praying is that we only know how to ask for personal things in prayer. "Give me ... Bless us with ... Heal so-and-so ... Help so-and-so..." Whereas, God instructs us to put His name, His kingdom, and His will first in our requests.
The psalmist's request might seem personal also, but it is actually part of His appeal for God's name to be reverenced (the first request Jesus teaches us to make). The only reason the psalmist was being shamed by men was His allegiance to God. So he references that adherence to God in his appeal for removal of dishonor.
Let's try that the next time we pray. Find some way to include our obedience as a reason that God should grant us what we ask. It will help if we are asking wisely in the first place; and- oh, it might also help if we actually had a consistent record of obedience to bring with us in our suit.
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Psalm 119:24
Your testimonies also
are my delight and my advisers.
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In Psalm 119:19, the psalmist entreated that God's commandments not be hidden from him. Obviously, God had greatly favored the psalmist's request (no doubt, his many and continued requests). Psalm 119 is a cache of amazing insights on Scriptures and many other themes.
And whatever God had testified (Scriptures, in short) had comforted the psalmist. Those matters to which God had given witness were the "delight" of the psalmist. They brought a smile to his face and deep satisfaction to his heart.
Whatever was sworn out by affidavit from God acted as "adviser" to the psalmist. He actually heard direction for his life in what Scriptures avowed. He no doubt followed Scriptures' direction to make friends of those with wise counsel, but ultimately, his chief counselor was always Scripture itself.
What about us?
Are Scriptures deeply satisfying to you? When is the last time you simply sat back with a warm sigh and satisfied smile at what God had spoken?
Is the Bible your adviser? Or when you hear what God says, do you go running from person to person hoping to find that no one else is obeying this undesirable counsel either?
The faithful man would try and find someone who IS obeying it before having to decide to be the only one he knows who goes out on this limb.
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2 Samuel 16:11
And David said to Abishai and to all his servants, Behold, my son, who came forth from my bowels, seeks my life; and surely now this Benjamite?
Let him alone and let him curse,
for Jehovah has spoken to him.
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David said this in response to a man named Shimei openly cursing him for the blood of Saul's house. David knew that Shimei was worthy of death, but he withheld the sentence in favor of receiving this chastening from Jehovah. (Later, Shimei's cursing came back on his head in a death sentence through Solomon)
Whenever men hate us and plot against us, their pretexts can only be consistent with God's pruning. We are the vines, God is the Vinedresser. He prunes us by many means. Even when men's words are utterly false, God works through them to humble us and make us better.
(This is not to say we do not defend ourselves in answer. There is a time and place for that, without a spirit of malice, of course)
Where are we frustrated in our lives that we should be recognizing God's pruning?
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Psalm 119:25
My soul clings to the dust;
give me life according to Your Word.
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"If we say we have no sin ..." begins a line from the first chapter of First John. John's statement goes on to assert that we definitely HAVE sin.
"My soul clings to the dust" is a rough equivalent of that truth. That is why the psalmist goes on to ask for life. We need continuous vivification because of the presence of indwelling sin. One 'shot' of life does not give us all we need for our spiritual journey.
"But you're either dead or alive, right? If the psalmist asks for life, he must be dead. I'm not dead. I'm a Christian!"
Let's answer that on two levels.
You can be a Christian and be spiritually dead- not dead as in "having no life at all", but dead in a definite sense:
Revelation 3:1 And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: ... I know your works, that you have a name that you live, and are dead.
Jesus goes on to tell the church in Sardis:
Revelation 3:4 You have a few names even in Sardis who have not defiled their garments.
So the general 'spiritual temperature' of the church of Sardis was room temperature (i.e., they were dead); yet there was definitely spiritual life in the church. The death present in the church was its prevailing description, even though life existed.
So with a Christian. Life might be there; nevertheless, death can predominate.
Another church had no signs of life,
Revelation 3:17 Because you say, I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing, and do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked
Jesus described nothing in the spiritual condition of the Laodiceans to indicate that they had life; yet He tells them to invite Him back into their church, for He is outside knocking at the door! Furthermore, He said His rebuke was reserved for those He loved. There apparently were true Christians in Laodicea, too!
So do not fall for the false logic that a Christian, having life, would be inconsistent to ask for life. No, indeed- we need life daily! The wisest Christian begs for life as though he had none !
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