Hoping in God’s goodness

When we see others grossly mistreated, we want to tell their abusers off. In David’s imagined talk, he does just that, but with a twist. He lets his angry words against the brute lead him to the God who cares.

A David psalm. When Doeg the Edomite went and told Saul, “David went to Ahimelech’s house.”

¹ Why do you brag
about your evildoing, Strongman
when God’s unfailing love
holds strong all day long?
² Like a well-honed razor, your tongue
plots atrocity and crafts betrayal.
³ You love evil instead of good
lying instead of truth-telling.
⁴ You love using your words to devour,
you treacherous tongue!

⁵ But God will demolish you once and for all—
grab you and rip you out of your home—
uproot you from the land of the living.

⁶ God-seekers will see it and be stunned.
Then they’ll laugh and say
⁷ “Look what happened
to the guy who didn’t put his trust in God
but relied on his wealth and brute power
to get ahead!”
⁸ But me? I’m like an olive tree
flourishing in God’s house.
I’ll trust in God’s unfailing love
forever and ever.
⁹ I’ll never stop thanking you
for what you’ve done, Lord.
In company with all your loyal servants
I’ll wait for you to act
in keeping with your good name.

David wrote this after Doeg, Saul’s cutthroat Edomite employee, told Saul he’d seen the priests at the national shrine assist David. Doeg knew this would trigger a murderous rage in Saul, but he didn’t care. He cared only what it would do for him—namely, win him points with Saul. When Saul’s guards blanched at his order to slaughter all the priests, Doeg stepped up, massacring hundreds of innocent people.[a] And instead of feeling remorse, he felt proud of his brutality. Like so many throughout history, he’d embraced the twin lies that material wealth and power are all that matter and we get ahead by ruthlessly looking out for “number one.”

David knows how laughable Strongman’s view of reality is, that he loves all the wrong things and his life will eventually be cut short. So he directly challenges his lies, insisting that Strongman’s evil hasn’t diminished God’s commitment to care for his own. Implicitly, David also challenges everyone vulnerable to Strongman not to follow him, relying on their own abilities, but to trust in God’s unfailing love instead. Like David, we truly flourish only by living in fellowship with God, within the community of his loyal servants, hoping in his goodness.

Trusting myself, not you, Lord, I end up stepping on others in my push to get on top. But when I trust you and obey, you make me strong. Help me to tap into your strength and grow like an olive tree in your house, as I hope in your unfailing mercy and goodness. Amen.

In your spare moments today, ponder these words:

I’m like an olive tree, flourishing in God’s house.

[a] See 1 Samuel 21-22.

Besides separating us from God, our selfish choices can have profound effects on the people and things entrusted to our care. Knowing that, David turns to the only one who can fully redeem him from his sins.

Sinner made new

A David psalm. When the prophet Nathan came to David over his affair with Bathsheba.

¹ Have mercy on me
O God, in your unfailing love.
Blot out my offenses
in the overflow of your mercy.
² Wash away all my guilt
and purify me from my evil
³ for I’m well aware of my offences—
they haunt me day and night.
⁴ Against you and you alone have I sinned
doing what you clearly marked out as evil.
So your charge against me is right
and your verdict is just.
⁵ I’m a born rebel
born to rebels as I was.

⁶ You desire truth in the heart
where no one else can see.
So teach me your wisdom in my heart of hearts.
⁷ Purify me with hyssop and I’ll be pure.
Wash me until I’m whiter than snow.
⁸ Fill me with such laughter and song
that the bones you’ve crushed will dance for joy.
⁹ Look past my sins and wipe away all my guilt.

¹⁰ Create a clean heart in me, O God
one that beats with pure and faithful love for you.
¹¹ Don’t banish me from your presence
or withdraw your holy spirit from me.
¹² Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and make my heart long to obey you again.
¹³ Then I’ll teach fellow rebels about your grace
and they’ll come running back to you.
¹⁴ Wash this monstrous blood off my hands
O God, my savior!
Save me and I’ll sing for joy
about your forgiveness.
¹⁵ Unstop my mouth, Lord
and I’ll tell everyone what you’ve done for me. 

¹⁶ Offering a sacrifice to mask my rebellion
doesn’t please you or I could easily give it.
Offering a whole-offering[1]
with just a sliver of my heart
is a scam you won’t accept.
¹⁷ The sacrifice God accepts
is a heart broken up over its sin.
A heart that’s broken and contrite, O God
you will never spurn.

¹⁸ Do all the good to Zion you long to do.
Rebuild Jerusalem’s walls.
¹⁹ Then you’ll be pleased
to receive true sacrifices—
burnt-offerings and whole-offerings.
And young bulls will be offered up on your altar.

Throughout his affair with Bathsheba, David offered ritual sacrifices to keep up religious appearances. But camouflaged or not, sinful self-indulgence brings no joy like that of knowing God. So when Nathan finally confronted him, David confessed his sin against Yahveh.[2] Since all sin is ultimately against God, he goes further here. He implies that his sins against everyone else—including Bathsheba’s supremely loyal husband, whose death he engineered—are nothing next to his sins against God.

Clinging to God’s unfailing love and mercy, David asks God to cleanse and restore him to fellowship with him. Rebel that he is, he also asks God miraculously to give him a pure heart, one that longs to obey.

Only thus remade will David’s joy overflow and God empower him to guide fellow rebels back home. David will tell them that sacrifice, devoid of the broken heart it’s meant to express, doesn’t please God, but also that God welcomes all who renounce their offences and look to him for mercy.

David’s rebellion has ravaged the city he’s guardian of, the city which is God’s earthly home. So David concludes by asking God to right that wrong too, by healing the breach in Zion’s protective walls,[3] enabling his people to worship freely again.

On my own, Lord, I can clean only the outside of my “cup.” But you require purity and truth inside it too. Purify my heart so I can know the joy of unbroken fellowship with you. Only so renewed, can I offer worship that pleases you and represent your gracious rule on earth. Amen.

In your spare moments today, pray this profoundly simple prayer:

Create a clean heart in me, O God!

[1] Fellowship offerings and burnt-offerings (vv. 17, 19) were meant not to seek cleansing from sin, but to show one’s devotion to God. Goldingay (2007) p. 137.

[2] See 2 Samuel 11-12.

[3] Most scholars assume that verse 18 can plausibly refer only to Jerusalem’s post-exilic reconstruction and, hence, that verses 18-19 were added by the Psalms’ later compilers/editors. While that’s certainly possible, it overlooks David’s urgent need to address his sins’ national impact. For nowhere else does he ask for the restoration of Zion, earth’s divinely designated point of access to heaven. Rebuilding the city walls is a perfectly Davidic metaphor for that. Also, the verse has him addressing his sins’ national effects just where we’d expect him to: after addressing his sins’ personal effects. And since Zion’s sacrificial system functions as it should only if God restores the divine-human order David’s sins have disrupted, this prayer naturally leads him to conclude as he does in verse 19.

A Call to Covenant Faithfulness

Some fault God for making the Israelites his people. For having “favorites.” But to whom much is given, much is required, and God doesn’t hesitate to hold Israel to account, which is no less true of us today.

An Asaph psalm.

¹ Almighty God Yahveh speaks
summoning earth’s inhabitants
from where the sun rises to where it sets.
² From Zion, perfect in beauty
God appears in splendor.
³ Our God is coming, and he will not fail to speak.
With a fire devouring before him
and a windstorm raging around him
⁴ he summons the heavens above
and the earth below
to witness his people’s judgment.

⁵ “Summon all the believers who sealed
their covenant commitment by sacrifice!”
⁶ Then let the heavens
attest to the justice of his charges
for he is a just God.

⁷ “Listen, my people, as I speak.
I’ll state my charges against you, Israel:
I am God, your God.
⁸ I don’t fault you for your sacrifices.
or the burnt-offerings you constantly offer.
⁹ But I don’t need bulls from your barns
or rams from your pens.
¹⁰ Because all the beasts of the forest are mine
and the cattle on a thousand hills.
¹¹ I know every bird in the sky
and own everything that runs in the field too.

¹² “I wouldn’t tell you if I were hungry
since the world and everything in it is mine.
¹³ Do you think I eat the meat of bulls
or drink the blood of rams?
¹⁴ No, make thanksgiving your sacrifice to me
and keep your vows to the Most High.
¹⁵ Then call on me when you’re in trouble
and I’ll rescue you and you’ll honor me.”

¹⁶ As for the wicked, God says:
“What right have you to recite my laws
or mouth the words of my covenant?
¹⁷ For you spurn my discipline
and brush my words aside.
¹⁸ You run with every thief you meet
and team up with adulterers.
¹⁹ You let your mouth speak evil
and make your tongue speak lies.
²⁰ You sit around badmouthing your kin—
slandering your own siblings.
²¹ Since I kept quiet when you did these things
you thought that, like you
I had no problem with evil.
But now I indict you
and lay out my charges against you.

²² “Think well, all you who ignore me
lest I enact the covenant’s curses[a]
and there’s no one to rescue you!
²³ Everyone who gives me thanks
offers a sacrifice that truly honors me.
And to everyone who holds to my path
I’ll reveal my great power to save.”

The psalmist speaks here as prophet. While the theme of many other psalms is of God’s coming to rescue his people, he comes here to judge them on two accounts. He first rebukes them for their formalism. They think mere sacrifices—equivalent to our churchgoing—please him. That is, sacrifices without the grateful, trusting hearts the sacrifices are meant to picture.

God’s second rebuke is for those whose formalism has grown into full-blown hypocrisy. They know how to talk the talk, but they’ve got their own priorities, which lead them to team up with others more lawless than themselves. The externals of their faith have thus become a cloak that hides their disregard for God’s moral demands. They want their own way, not to become holy—thankful, truthful, kind and fair—as he is holy. That’s why they’re so at home with moral deadbeats. So before a watching world, God charges them with violating his covenant. He urges them to change their ways before he enacts the covenant’s curses. They will encounter him, either way. But only truly holding to his path, only becoming like him, will they be embraced by his amazing grace.

It’s so easy to slide into formalism, Lord, worshipping without heart, blind to all I have to be grateful for, not truly trusting you. And from there, everything goes downhill fast. Keep me from so slippery a slope. Please make me holy as you are holy.

In your free moments today, meditate on God’s promise:

“To everyone who holds to my path, I’ll reveal my great power to save.”

[a] Literally, “tear you apart.” This refers to the sacrifice they offered to seal their covenant commitment (v. 5). The sacrifice’s destruction pictured the curses they accepted as their just deserts should they violate the covenant.

Escaping money’s cold embrace

When the rich and powerful do as they please to get what they want, we’re tempted to see money and power as life’s be-all and end-all. But idolizing any life apart from God is as foolish as it is false.

A descendants of Korah psalm.

¹ Listen to this, all you people!
Pay attention, everyone on earth
² high and low, rich and poor!
³ For my words distill wisdom
and my thoughts run deep.
⁴ I’ve tuned my ear to the use of proverbs
explaining life’s riddles to the lilt of the lyre.

⁵ Why should I fear when I’m in trouble
hemmed in by oppressors
⁶ who rely on their riches
and brag about their wealth?
⁷ No one has enough money to escape death
to pay God to exempt him.
⁸ The cost of ransom is far beyond our means—
so don’t even think of it.
⁹ The whole idea of living on forever
indefinitely dodging death, is preposterous.

¹⁰ Anyone can see that wise people die
the foolish and ignorant all pass away
and leave their fortunes to others.
¹¹ Even those who name countries after themselves
end up with the grave as their final residence
the cemetery their permanent address.
¹² The prestige of mortals doesn’t last—
they die just like animals.

¹³ This is how fools end up
even those whose every word we hold onto.
¹⁴ They’re herded off to the grave like sheep
with the Grim Reaper as shepherd.
And the next morning—
as their bodies decompose in the grave
far from their big, beautiful mansions—
you’ll find the godly ruling in their place.

¹⁵ As for me, God will redeem my life
and take me in his arms.
¹⁶ Don’t be rattled by those who get rich
and build themselves massive homes.
¹⁷ For when they die
they take nothing with them—
they leave all their prestige behind.
¹⁸ Though they congratulate themselves in life
and everyone else applauds their success
¹⁹ they’re laid out beside their ancestors
never to see the light of day again.
²⁰ One thing the rich and famous just don’t get
is that they die just like animals.

Most people view wealth as tangible proof that the rich have the inside track on life. And most rich people believe that lie themselves. So we hang on their words, honor and defer to them, as they think we should. And when they oppress the poor, we stand back. This terrifies the poor, who see the rich as invincible.

The psalmist seeks to correct our distortions about money and what it can buy. Most of the rich don’t deserve the honor we give them. Many are so foolishly obsessed with themselves they’re closed to correction and fail to see that death is the one reckoning they can’t buy their way out of. But their prestige has a short shelf-life, since their lives are as tenuous as everyone else’s. In fact, as tenuous as those of animals.

The psalmist believes God will reverse the power differential, that the egotistical rich will be shoved not just out of the limelight, but permanently offstage, leaving the godly poor standing in their place. He’s confident God will bring him back from the brink of destruction while death strips the rich of their honor, laying their bodies out like animal carcasses.

Help me see wealth and its prestige with clarity, as you see them, Lord. And even when those with wealth and power oppress me, help me to rely on you. Keep me from foolishly thinking my security lies anywhere else. Amen.

During your free moments today, meditate on these words:

As for me, God will redeem my life and take me in his arms.