Psalm 17 – 150 Days of Purposeful Meditation (Day 17) Part 1

God is Just. Why should we cry out to the Lord in our distress?  Because God is a God of justice.  His eyes are upon the righteous and righteousness.  And His ears attend to their cry.  God desires justice from His creation because He is just.  Justness is a  part of His essential character.  There is no falsehood with God.  There is no partiality.  There is no turning of the eye to oppression.  God is just.  And because He is essentially just in His character the righteous have great reason to come to Him for justice.  This is in fact the great confidence that the righteous have, that their righteousness has not fallen on deaf ears and blind eyes.  That in the end they will be repaid for their righteousness even as the wicked are repaid for their wickedness.  Of course the righteousness of the righteous is not their own for they would have no reason to cry out to God for vindication.  But it is His righteous standard that they uphold.  It cannot be their own righteousness for why would God then fight on their behalf?  Where then would be His glory?  What then would be His praise?  He would be nothing more than a body guard.  One whose job is to protect the glory of another.  Neigh but the righteousness by which the righteous is called is God’s righteousness.  It is His name, it is His glory.  And that is also their confidence and their hope.  that His righteousness shall be in the end vindicated.  That He will pursue the vindication of His own righteous standard.

God’s justness shall prevail and His righteousness shall be vindicated.  This He has made clear in many other ways.  The glory of His name and His holiness is His great passion.  Thus to pursue His glory in our own lives is the wisest course of action.  And it is an action which again will yield great reward.  The righteous may unashamedly pursue God’s righteous standard because He will vindicate it Himself.  And in vindicating His righteous standard, they will be vindicated.

The folly of the wicked is in assuming that their own glory is necessary.  It is assuming that their own standard of righteousness is enough.  However their own standard of righteousness is as transient as their own lives.  It will in the end be cast aside.  God will bring it to nothing.  It cannot stand in comparison to His own holy and righteous Word.  They may have their “portion in this life” but in the next their portion will be to drink the cup of God’s wrath and indignation against those who have scorned His righteousness and His righteous ones.  Thus the wicked are short sighted.  They fail to see past the reality of the moment to the reality of the next.  Consequence has become an illusion to the wicked.  It has dropped out of their vocabulary along with absolute and even God.  For them there is only the moment of pleasure without the thought of consequence.  If there were no consequence, the righteous might fail in heart however the righteousness of God reminds us that it is only His great mercy which has thus with held the flood of His wrath upon this earth.  It is His mercy which has stayed His hand this long in the condemnation of the wicked.  It is not for their glory.  It is not for their cunning or wisdom which has wrought them success.  It is the merciful hand of their creator which ought to lead them to repentance, but which because of their hard hearts has led many to both mock His very existence – by whose mercy they stand – and to mock His holy and righteous ones.

What then is the final hope of the righteous?  The punishment of evildoers?  No.  It is our expectation but it is not our hope that they should meet what demise they are sure to who mock the Almighty.  Do we seek the vindication of our own name or righteousness?  No.  Before God, there are none who have reason to boast in any righteousness of their own doing because before His standard we are all guilty.  What then is our final hope?  Our final hope is that the pursuit of God’s righteousness in this life will not be for naught.  Our final hope is that because of His righteousness, “we shall see His face…[and] we shall be satisfied when we awake in His likeness.”

Psalm 15 – 150 Days of Purposeful Medidation (Day 15)

God is Holy.   There are many who recognize God, in theory, as love, all that is pure and right and perfect.  And this is something that they aspire to.  Perhaps they desire his goodness and rightness as an end.  In other words, they desire to have his goodness and rightness in their end.  At the end of their lives they want the security of knowing that they will be in another much better place than the present.  The present is wrought with difficulty and chaos.  Confusion and strife, at every turn.  And people long for rest.  They want the rest that they know that no matter how hard they try and no matter what they try, they will not find in this life.  And so people envision “god” and/or heaven as the epitome of perfection and goodness and rest.  However their conception of their god is so far below the truth that they will never come to fully grasp the truth of who God is nor will they be able to fully please God according to that truth.

God is holy.  He is not just a concept of goodness and rightness and rest that we can come to enjoy at the end of our lives while living any way that we want or conceive of on our own apart from Him.  God is holy.  That should mean something.  David asked “who may sojourn in your tent, who may dwell on your holy mountain?” He doesn’t just call it a holy mountain.  He calls it literally “the mountain of your holiness.”  It is a mountain and it is holy, but it is holy because it belongs to God.  It is holy because His presence is there.  And therefore the question is rightly asked “who may sojourn…who may dwell” in such a place as that which is holy by virtue of God’s holy presence.  Who is fit for such a thing?

David goes on to take that thought to its logical end.  He doesn’t stop like so many others who would suppose that it is their right to dwell on God’s holy mountain simply because He is love.  They don’t presume upon God’s love or justice as if He were obligated to be loving toward them.  Rather, he observes the fact of God’s holiness and supposes that anyone who would enter into His holy presence, must himself also be holy.  Listen to the description…

“He who walks soundly, the doer of righteousness and who speaks truth in his heart.” I think that we could stop there.  Perhaps there are some who consider themselves sound in their lives…one who does acts of supposed righteousness and piety for others to see.  But how many can say that they speak truth in their hearts?  And how many acts of righteousness, and how many words of truth would that same one have to do in order to be considered “holy” enough to dwell on the mountain of God’s holiness.  His holiness is essential to His character.  There isn’t a time at which it could be said that He isn’t holy.  He doesn’t take a time out.  He doesn’t get tired.  He doesn’t have an off day.  He is Holy.  The very definition of holiness…the standard by which holiness is measured, is God.  That could never be said of the common man.  The common man is at times holy, does “righteous” acts, and perhaps occasionally has pure thoughts…but this is certainly not the rule for man.  We can sometimes fool other men who cannot see our hearts, but God is certainly not fooled.  The intents and thoughts of man’s heart in God’s eyes, is continually wicked.  Just look back at Psalm 14.  Already he is disqualified.  Though he would wish to sojourn and to dwell in God’s Holy mountain at the end of his life, he has no merit nor inherent holiness in himself to be fit to dwell there…and that’s just verse 2.

“He does not slander upon his tongue, nor do harm to his friend, nor lift up a reproach upon his neighbor.” The simplest way to understand this is to ask how your neighbors would classify you.  Not your family, but those who you live around.  This is somewhat different for us because our society is not as communal as it is for so many other societies in the world and as it was for Israel.  The neighbor would have been another Israelite and so their relationship to their brother in the flesh would have either glorified the God whom they worship corporately or brought disrepute to His name.  The closer correlation would probably be for those in the Church and how we either love or do not love one another.  We are all called by His name and therefore we all ought to show love for one another in His name.  But whether it is a fellow believer or not, the principles are the same.  Do you openly, or in your heart, curse your neighbor?  Do you look for opportunities to bless your neighbor or do you look for ways to take advantage of them?  Would your neighbor say that you are clean, loud and obnoxious…or would they say that you are generous and loving?  How would they characterize you?  Are you “me” centered or “others” centered?  Christ is the perfect example for us in His self-less display of love for us on the cross.  He exemplified that humble others-centered attitude that we ought to imitate in all of our relationships and especially within the body of Christ (Phil 2:3-4).

“In whose eyes the reprobate is despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord, He swears to his own hurt but does not change.” Here we see that this one who is worthy to dwell on the holy mountain of the Lord despises those who are reprobate…and this is most likely reprobate in the eyes of the Lord in contrast to those who fear the Lord and are therefore accepted by Him.  Some revel in the wickedness of others.  Perhaps they themselves are not wicked but they enjoy and feed off of the lasciviousness of others.  Let me be more specific.  There are some who would not themselves fight…but who rush off to witness the fight.  There are some who would not themselves make coarse and inappropriate jokes, but who themselves would listen to and laugh at such joking.  There are some who would not…at least not normally…conceive of or commit adultery or fornication, but who would easily watch others do the same.  Do you love holiness enough to despise the wicked for their wickedness?  Do you love the holiness of God enough to hate the wickedness of wicked men who by their actions defame God’s holiness?

Conversely, do you love those who fear the Lord?  Do you…perhaps to your hurt (which may or may not be the intent of the last phrase of this verse)…intentionally honor those who live uprightly before the Lord?  Loving righteousness is not popular.  But perhaps more than that is loving others who openly stand for righteousness.  Would you associate yourself with those who call upon the Lord even when those are despised and rejected by others?  I remember the common thought about those who were virgins in high school…those who had kept themselves pure…that they were insignificant and foolish for doing so.  Furthermore those who didn’t go to all the parties and clubs were dishonored.  And anyone who associated with them…and in fact none of the “cool kids” would associate with them.  Maybe for you its a situation at work where someone, in their integrity, have made a decision that makes a lot of people upset.  And therefore are being ostracized and/or have lost their job.  Would you take your stand with this person who on account of their fear of the Lord has made an unpopular decision at the risk of your own job?  Paul said “all who desire to live godly will face persecution.”  Would you face persecution to live a holy life before your God, knowing that He is the Judge?

The third phrase of this verse speaks to his faithfulness and integrity.  “To his own hurt, he swear.”  He will not change his mind regardless of the cost to him.  He has decided upon following the Lord, upon upholding those also who follow the Lord and he will not allow the ostracizing of his peers, financial or physical harm to deter him.  Will you honor the Lord and those whom the Lord honors?  Will you pursue what the Lord honors even when its not popular…and even when it hurts?

Finally, this one “does not put out his money at interest, nor does he take a bribe against the innocent…”   Are you generous with what God has blessed you?  Do your finances control you or do you control your finances?  Paul said that the “love of money is the root of all evil.”  Money is not the root of all sorts of evil…the love of it is.  Those who would love money and the comforts that it gives would have no desire to share it with others.  And if they did share it with others they would have no desire to give without interest.  Is it inherently wrong to give out money with interest?  No.  But which demonstrates grace, to give out money with interest for the sake of gain, or to give out money without interest for the purpose of helping one who is already down?

Furthermore…and perhaps this speaks more to the judges of the land…would you take a bribe to sentence one who is truly innocent?  In other words, in spite of the facts, would you side with someone who can provide you with some benefit or service without thought to justice or truth?  The root of this issue is not so much with the act of a judge taking a bribe as it is with the heart which seeks its own gain at the expense of another, and at the expense of God’s justice and righteous standard.  Again all holiness and righteousness is measured against God’s standard, but men have perverted God’s standard for their own gain.  And the heart which accepts bribes is the heart which does not accept God’s standard.

So how does your heart measure up?  How does your life measure up to God’s standard?  In all of these things, in this description of a man who is fit to dwell on God’s holy mountain, where do you stand?  “He who does these things will never be shaken.” Why is that true?  It is not true because these are a list of things that you must do in order to be good enough.  It is true because these things show a heart and a life which has been transformed by God’s grace to exemplify His holiness.  All men sin.  All men are “worthless” in God’s eyes, according to Psalm 14.  Therefore the man who would desire to stand on God’s holy mountain…the man who would desire to see rest and the goodness of God in His life must be made worthy.  And the only way that a man can be made worthy in God’s eyes and according to God’s will is to submit to His Son Jesus who has cleansed us from our sins and has given us a new life, with a new heart which is able to live according to God’s holy standard.

“He who does these things will not be shaken eternally” because they will be in the hands of Him who is eternally strong to save.  “Therefore He is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them…by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified and the Holy Spirit also testifies to us; for after saying ‘ this is the covenant that I will make with them after those days says the Lord, I will put my laws upon their heart and on their mind I will write them.’  He then says ‘and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.'”  (Hebrews 7:25; 10:14-17)

If you do not know Christ, then you have no hope of dwelling with God once your life is over.  If you do know Christ, and He has become your salvation, then live like it.  Forsake the idols of your heart and walk in His holiness, with thanksgiving.  Rejoice in the confidence of one who rests in the unshakable grace of the Almighty.