PSALM 54 - Goodness, Goodness

Willingly I will sacrifice to Thee.  I will give thanks to Thy name, O Lord, for it is good.
For He has delivered me from all my trouble, and my eye has looked with satisfaction upon my enemies.  (Vs. 6-7)

I'm ready now to worship, so ready.  I thank you, God - you're so good.  You got me out of every scrape, and I saw my enemies get it.  (same verses from The Message Bible)

Good.  We overuse the word for lack of a more explicit term.  A good marriage.  A good dinner.  A good friend.  A good time.  You get the drift.  So when we say God is so good, what do we mean?  I am thinking of the time when Moses was on Mount Sinai to meet with God.  Moses has asked to see His glory.  The Lord's response is:  "I, Myself, will make all My goodness pass before you."  That is His glory.....His goodness.  Towb.  It describes that which is appealing and pleasant to the senses, abundant and plentiful, kind and benevolent, and good as opposed to evil.

Jesus had just blessed a group of small children and was walking away when a young rich man approached Him.  He seemed to sincerely want to know how to get into heaven, so the man asked Jesus, "What good deed must I do to have eternal life?"

"Why do you ask me what is good?"  Jesus replied.  "There is only One Who is good.  But if you would enter life, keep the commandments."

"Which ones?" queried the man.

Jesus gives him a list - don't murder, don't commit adultery, steal or bear false witness.  The man hadn't done any of these things - ever. 

"If you would be perfect, go sell everything you have, give it to the poor and come follow Me."  All out for God.  Loving Him with all your heart, mind, strength and soul.  The first commandment.  Left out of the earlier list.  It was too much, for the young man was very rich.  Wealth had become the young man's idol and Jesus was challenging him to examine his heart.  The ultimate answer to "What good deed must I do to inherit eternal life?" was "Follow Me."  Wholeheartedly. No other gods.  That is "good."

Apart from understanding the benevolence, kindness, rightness and abundance of God, there is no understanding of good.  His goodness flows from His very nature seen even in a creation He pronounces good because He made it so.  In our trying to be good, we might just miss it if we don't know that He is the very essence of it.  Our good deeds might be nugatory at best, harmful at worst.  Only God is good.  Only He can impart it.  The rich young man was, on paper, pretty darn righteous!  He had kept the law in an outward show of his desire to be right enough to get into heaven.  I am sure he tithed, gave to the poor and kept himself ceremonially clean.  All outward.  What Jesus knew was the young man was hiding an idol in his inmost being.  Not carved from wood or stone.  No.  Not that obvious.  But the goodness of God wasn't what motivated his life.  Money was.

To trust in the goodness of God is to know Him personally.  It is the one word He chose to describe His glory.  Glorious that He is good, benevolent, kind, right, pure, appealing and pleasant to the senses, abundant and overflowing in mercy and grace.  Who is like our God?  That is why Jesus said only One is good.  Pure of motive, abounding in love, infinite in beauty, just in all things, longsuffering and kind, prescient and gracious, and eternally merciful.  Taste and see that the Lord is good!



 

PSALM 54 - Getting Rid of the Bad Guy

God is my helper.  The Lord is the sustainer of my life.  He will repay my adversaries for their evil.  Because of Your faithfulness, annihilate them.  (vs. 4-5)

"Vengeance belongs to Me.  I will repay.  In time their foot will slip, for their day of disaster is near, and their doom is quickly coming. "
 The Lord will indeed vindicate His people and have compassion on His servants when He sees that their strength is gone and no one is left.   Deuteronomy 32: 35-36

I remember watching "The Bourne Identity" when Jason Bourne had the chance to kill the bad guy and didn't finish him off.  Whenever I watch the good guy/bad guy movie I always want to shout: "Kill him now!!!!!  You know he'll be back!"  It makes for a better movie that the bad guys survives, of course.  "The Bourne Identity" would have ended in the first few minutes without all the gunfights and chase scenes.  I don't, however, want that much drama in my own life.  And, actually, I cannot kill the "bad guys" who disrupt my tranquility with their actions and accusations.  I have been crushed before by the unfair words and deeds of others.  Backed up against a wall with no recourse but to be silent and go forward doing what I know is right to do.  "Killing" the adversary in my story line would mean making sure everyone knew my side of the story - every one!  Or fighting strange fire with stranger fire.  The problem is, I don't know where the other person is coming from all the time.  God does.

When I gave my life to Christ, He came to live in me.  To sustain and energize my life.  Jesus is not my crutch.  He is my iron lung!  I live because He does!  It is my deepest desire to allow Him to perfect in me those qualities and characteristics He designed for me before I was found to be forming in the body of Flossie Strickling, my mommy.  Because my father was arrested for molesting a young man from their church as she was dying of cancer, Mother thought her life had been a waste. Married the wrong man.  Didn't know how sick he was.  Had listened to him define and inform her life and didn't know she was taking to heart the perspective of a deeply troubled man.  What was it all for?  What had her life meant?  So it was that for her imminent funeral,  Mother wrote a prayer to be read after her death.  In it, our mother prayed for our destinies.  That each of us, children and grandchildren mentioned by name, would fulfill all that we were born to do.  Not miss what God had planned for us.  It has been my daily prayer, also.  For our family and loved ones.

If God lives in us to accomplish His plans, then our adversaries are not coming up against only our flawed flesh and blood, but against the One Who lives in us.  Our lives should be moved along in a steady path created by the inertia of His purposes.  The enemy of our souls and of our very lives can throw dissension, gossip, lawsuits, and an infinite combination of roadblocks in the way.  Backed up against the wall, powerless to explain ourselves or change the impression of others, we wait for the vindication only God can produce.  He is not only fighting for our lives, but for His purposes.  Since it is He Who is our help and sustenance, it is also He Who understands the battle.  If we take it into our own hands, we can mess it up so badly that He steps back from it.   I am sobered by Proverbs 24: 17-18:  Don't be happy when your enemy is defeated.  Don't be glad when he is overwhelmed.  The Lord will notice and be displeased .  He may not be angry with them anymore.

In humble recognition of God's sovereignty in even our distress, He wants us to let Him take care of those who treat us unfairly lest we "take care of them" and become as guilty as they.

PSALM 54 - A Storm Blowing Against A Wall

O God, hear my prayer.  Give ear to the words of my mouth.  For strangers have risen against me.  Ruthless men seek my life.  They do not set God before themselves.  (vs.2-3)

For You have been a stronghold to the poor, a stronghold for the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat.  For the breath of the ruthless is like a storm against a wall, like heat in a dry place.  You subdue the noise of the foreigners.  As heat by the shade of a cloud, so the song of the ruthless is put down.  Isaiah 25: 4-5

Nothing worse than when the enemy is our friend.   The Ziphites were from the tribe of Judah.  Jews.  Acting like Gentiles toward David.  The young warrior had been dwelling quietly and safely in their land until they decided it was to their advantage to give information about his whereabouts to King Saul.  "Strangers" in this context can also be translated to mean "insolent men."  Insolent - arrogant, insulting, disrespectful, rude, impertinent, cocky, offensive or impudent.  The Ziphites failed to put themselves before God in this matter for Him to lead their way.   Perhaps, thus the arrogance.

The passage doesn't say if David did anything to make these men decide to sabotage him in favor of the king's adulation for their great compassion on him.  That would be enough for most of us, I think.  "Good job!  You guys did the right thing!"  The king is thrilled that his agenda is approved by the men from Judah. Will we do anything for the approval of men?  Without first taking our options...our hearts to God?  Loyalty to an earthly king put these men on the wrong side of God and of the new king He had already established.   It seemed reasonable to them, I am sure, though.  One man, David, could not be right when the king has an opposing take on what is going on.  The Ziphites thought themselves to be heroes for championing the king.  But the heart of the king was black with jealousy and David was God's anointed.  Had the Ziphites checked this out with God, perhaps the Philistines wouldn't have attacked Israel in the midst of the manhunt.

God is the author of our vindication.  A stronghold against our enemy.  Our shade when things get too hot for us to handle.  With hurricane Isaac blowing its way up the coast today, the imagery here is poignant.  The belief in personal "rightness" can be ruthless, like a hurricane blowing against a wall.  A smug arrogance that one has the answer when God hasn't even been sought.....or, more upsetting, even when He has.  The only thing to do when we are found on the other side, like David, is to wait for God to subdue the noise of the foreigners because the more we assert our own position, the more the danger we become like the adversary.  If we are on God's side, have sought Him as our shelter and strength, He will subdue the noise of our enemy.  The cloud of God's presence will defuse the heat so that our enemy will not be able to sing the victory song over us forever.

I am saddened when our enemy is from within our circle of Christian brothers and sisters.  We are all so capable of reading our circumstances out of the context of our separate experiences.  How I was raised might well make me a judge of how well a sister is raising her own kids.  My own anger that lies beneath the surface of my life might rise up over the words of a brother when the brother was not the root of my anger in the first place.  An infinite number of scenarios can bring us to the place where we are "strangers" to each other and the offense so deeply rooted that we don't even bother to "set it before God."  It just is right because that is how we feel.

I am learning to do what David did with the "breath of the ruthless."  Stay away from it and let God deal with the circumstances and hearts of His children who are involved.  Mine included.  David didn't want to be accused of being like the enemy.  I don't either.  So, God has the right to change me, too.

PSALM 54 - The Same Side of the Mountain

O God, save me by Your name and vindicate me by Your might.  (Vs. 1)

Ever need to be vindicated?  It is always amazing to me that people can see the same situation from so many different angles.  Especially Christians who have the Holy Spirit and the Word to guide us.  Yet we can come to diametrically different conclusions about the same problems.  On the wrong end of that scenario right now.  And you?

David was running from Saul.  Seemed to be the bane of his existence since Samuel anointed him king over Israel in Saul's place.  Saul, still the rightful king, was in constant fear of the day when David would take his place.  In is heart he just knew that David would work this out by killing him.  That was the usual procedure for usurping a throne, so why not?  In light of his perspective, Saul was always trying to kill David first. 

David had a different view of the way things were going to work out, however.  His intent was not to kill Saul but to wait for God to give David the throne he had promised.  David ran away not only from Saul's attempts to kill him but from the opportunity to take a position that only God could give.  In fighting Saul, David might kill him.  God's anointed. 

David read Saul correctly.  Saul totally missed it.  He judged David by his own motives.  Driven by his insecurities, Saul so misread David that he got on the wrong side of God Himself.  This psalm was written as David is fleeing Saul yet again.  David ran to the wilderness of Ziph to hide from the king.  Jonathan, Saul's son, met David there to encourage him.  "Dave, don't worry about Dad.  I will make sure he won't find you here.  I am sure you will be king and I want to be right there with you.  Dad knows this and it drives him crazy.  Literally, man!  So stay here and hide out for a while."

The Ziphites, however, squealed on David.  Went to Saul and revealed David's hideout to the king.  I think his response is interesting.  Like all of us, the king sees the circumstances from his own self-righteous point of view.  "Bless you guys for having such compassion on my situation," Saul says, sighing with relief that at least these Ziphites understand him.  "David is very sly, though, you guys.  Go and make sure he is there because he slips through my fingers all the time.  See where he is lurking and hiding, and then come back and tell me for sure it is David."

"Lurking and hiding."  Assessing motives to David that are not there.  Running for his life, yes.  Lurking in the dark to take the king's life, no.  David cannot change the king's mind about him.  It is fixed because it is based upon the king's fears and his jaded heart filled with jealousy.  The king knows that David will take his throne because God told Saul this.  The fight is essentially against the word of God.  His own hubris, however, and the powerful inertia of being king, has convinced Saul he can kill David and keep the throne.  David could never vindicate himself in this regard.  Only God can fight the battle that is His.

Saul's troops are coming.  David hears of it and runs with his men to the wilderness of Maon where he hides in the mountains there.  In what I think is an appropriate picture, David finds himself on one side of the mountain and King Saul on the other.  Same mountain.  Different perspectives.  And David was "hurrying to get away from Saul" while Saul was "closing in on David."  Both men of God.  Can't come to an understanding of what is going on.

Then God intervenes.  Brings relief.  By starting an altercation with the Philistines who have raided Israel.  Saul has to give up the smaller fight to engage in a much larger arena.  David spared, if not completely vindicated.  David called the mountain The Rock of Escape.  Saved by the name of the Lord and by His purposes.

I must wait.  And pray that my heart is right before Him.  That I am cleansed of everything in me that would break His heart.  Trust that I see this difficult situation correctly.  Then wait for His vindication.  Not in a hurry to right the wrong myself.  That ultimately we who know Him can be on the same side of the mountain.

PSALM 53 - Ground Zero Grudge

The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God."  They are corrupt and have committed abominable injustice.  There is no one who does good.  God has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there is anyone who understands - who seeks after God.  (Vs. 1-3)

The fear (reverence) for the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.  Fools despise wisdom and instruction.  Proverbs 1:7

For some reason, God saw fit to repeat Psalm 14.  Perhaps that is just how concerned He is about the foolishness of denying His existence.  That "foolishness" causes great harm to the children of God as they are treated cruelly by those who hate God.

On September 13, 2001, the massive clean-up of the fallen World Trade Center twin towers was barely under way. Tons of dust and blackened steel rose from the earth like monoliths to mayhem.  The effort looked overwhelming as twisted metal heaped in tall mountains in downtown Manhattan. Frank Silecchia had walked four hours from 34th and 12th, a ten minute drive, to the site of the attack carrying his hard hat, a flashlight and a bottle of water.  He was the last volunteer taken into the area for the clean-up.  He walked through dust over a foot high and saw firetrucks mangled and twisted; ambulances and police cars flattened as if they had been stepped on by a giant's foot.  The search was for bodies.  Some were found whole; others were in pieces.  Frank was allowed into Building #6.   The area was dark, visibility limited.  With flashlights aglow, the men searched for any who might have survived the carnage.  A ray of light ahead caught Frank's attention and took his breath away.  The grotto was illuminated to reveal a cross, seventeen feet high, standing upright and glimmering in the sun as it peaked through the wreckage.  Frank fell to his knees.  His pilgrimage and the overwhelming scenes of the day had left him hopeless and despairing.  But the cross, gleaming before him, revitalized Frank to pursue and persevere. Later in the day, Frank saw Brian Jordan, a Franciscan priest, and called him over to see the cross.  Many others joined the priest to see the visage of hope rising like a phoenix from the fire.   The icon became a symbol to all the workers at Ground Zero.  Of hope and courage.  Daily prayers were said at the cross.  Not only Christian prayers, but those of all faiths who saw it as a sign of comfort.  Ultimately it stands as a permanent reminder to those who worked at Ground Zero and carried replicas of the cross in their pockets as they went about the clean-up.  Who looked up at the lighted symbol of hope in the dark nights of filtering through dusty debris for those who lost their lives in the crumbling of the buildings. 

Kenneth Bronstein, the president of the New York Atheists has filed a lawsuit to remove the cross from the Ground Zero memorial.  His group suffers dyspepsia, depression, headaches and anxiety every time they look at that "dusty girder."  Unfair, he says, that the cross should be a symbol there, despite 100,000 signatures from people of all faiths who would argue against the removal of the cross from the memorial grounds.  He at least wants to make sure that the religious hate his group before he quits what is probably a futile desire to abolish the cross.  That is not what it brings up in me, however.  Hate.  If the cross of Christ makes the atheists dyspeptic, what is it they are experiencing?  Were He only a prophet as some claim, would they then become ill because of Him?  If He were only a human like they, would He give them such a headache?  Or is it that He claimed to be the great I AM?  God in the flesh.  The One Who could represent Himself with a symbol so unique it is recognized the world over as the representation of suffering for mankind. 

Why, if He is God, did He not then keep Al Qaeda from the attack in the first place?  That is their question.  Why worship a god who instead of saving you throws a cross into the rubble to make you look?  Good question.  And the upshot of Psalm 53.  The foolish are corrupt, doing abominable iniquity.  There is none who does good.

God looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God.  They have fallen away. Together they have become corrupt.  There is none who does good, not even one.
Have those who work evil no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call on God?   (Vs. 2-4)

Reverence for God is at the root of wisdom, for we have only our own perspective without Him.  The cross is a symbol that God is sovereign even over the enemy who would lay us at his feet.  For those who know Christ as their Savior and for those who see Him only as One Who suffered great loss, the cross represents hope of salvation and resurrection.  I am deeply sorry this makes the atheist want to vomit.   For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God for salvation....Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?  For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe....For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.  I Corinthians 1.

 

PSALM 52 - This Little Grape Vine

But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God.  I trust in God's unfailing love forever and forever.   For what You have done, I will always praise You in the presence of Your faithful people.  And I will hope in Your name for Your name is good.  (vs. 8-9)

And I'm an olive tree, growing green in God's house.  I trusted in the generous mercy of God then and now.  I thank You always that you went into action.  And I'll stay right here, Your good name my hope, in company with Your faithful friends.  (The Message Bible)

"I am the Vine and you are the branches.  When you're joined with Me and I with you,  the relation intimate and organic, the harvest if sure to be abundant.  Separated, you can't produce a thing."  Jesus right before He died.  (John 15)


The evil, God uproots.  The righteous, God plants.  He is the Gardener.  The Vinedresser, walking among the grape vines and pruning away what is deadwood.  Bill and I just returned from a trip to Tahoe then back through wine country in Paso Robles.  There we walked through the Opolo Vineyard and had lunch among the vines heavy with new grapes, their green leaves sparkling in the summer sun.  Bearing much fruit.  But we have driven through those same vineyards in winter.  The vines are severely pruned and woody,  sticking up from the dark soil like so much kindling buried in mockery of the leafy green abundance to come.  Hard to believe the spindly deadwood could ever produce a leaf, much less a grape.

That is I.  Stripped and barren, a dead limb planted by God in the hopes of summer blossoming and fall harvesting.  No life in me until He planted me in the soil of His amazing love.  I know I looked strange there to those who knew me, for they couldn't imagine, either, that I would bear fruit.  That I would be beautiful for Christ.  But the Vinedresser watered me.  Pruned me back even more than when I first came into the vineyard to grow among the other vines.  It hurt.  Not going to lie about that.  Because I was new to the place, I had no idea why He would cut more branches off.  Of course, I knew the limbs were useless, but, hey, they were my limbs!  Added to the water that moistened my shriveled roots was Miracle Grow.  Fellowship with like vines....the older more established grape makers.  The Words of the Vinedresser pulsing through the veins of my parched limbs as I was grafted into the best Vine in all of the fields.  Not overnight, but day by day, my roots plumped, wriggling their toes down into the damp, cool soil and catching on there.  That first season I was pelleted by wind and rain.  Had to hang on tightly.  Funny, though, the adversity made me stronger.  More deeply attached. 

Miraculously, one day I noticed a little bulge on a couple of my limbs. Then more and more, like a bursting of my skin, so rich was the nourishment coursing through me.  I didn't have to hold my breath and push out the leaves and grapes.  Their appearance seemed the most natural by-product of my planting.  It occurred to me that I had nothing to do with the adornment of my once wizened body.  The Vinedresser knew just how to make me fruitful. 

From time to time, in different seasons of my life in the vineyard, I must be pruned.  Deadwood cut back so new growth can emerge.  Still a bit painful.  But I am now accustomed to the fact the Vinedresser knows best.  He has a vision for this particular little branch and for all the other branches in the vineyard.  The Vinedresser is always walking among the branches drinking in the beauty of the conforming whole while noting with joy the individual beauty of a single plant. 

I think, like the psalmist, that I will stay right here.  Thankful to be so well cared for.  Constantly amazed by the grapes bursting from this branch that once was dead.  Comfortably rooted in the rich soil of His grace and mercy, hanging on to it with all my heart through sunshine and storm.