Like Admah and Zeboiim? Or the Mercy of God?

"Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy." (Matthew 5:7)

This post is written in response to a wonderful post by Paul Louis Metzger entitled, “Blessed are the merciful”—not those who look out for number 1. Much of what he said in that post, I too have said over the years. I love it when someone agrees with me… and hopefully, the feeling is mutual.

Dr. Metzger writes, “All too often, we look at God as easily provoked and lacking in mercy. We even think that the God of the Old Testament presents himself in this way.” I have to confess that this is one of my personal hot-button topics. At times I have actually gotten myself in trouble by passionately defending the mercy of YHWH in the Old Testament. I am encouraged to see that Dr. Metzger and Karl Kutz are kindred spirits in this pursuit. The more convinced we are of the merciful nature of God, and of our own need for that mercy, the more likely we are to be merciful to others.

I was also delighted to see Karl Kutz appealing to Hosea 11:8-9 as an example of God’s mercy as this has been a favorite passage of mine for years—a clear revelation of the Father-heart of God!

Wasteland near the Dead Sea
Photo: Greg Dueker

How can I give you up, O Ephraim?
    How can I hand you over, O Israel?
How can I make you like Admah?
    How can I treat you like Zeboiim?
My heart recoils within me;
    my compassion grows warm and tender.
I will not execute my burning anger;
    I will not again destroy Ephraim;
for I am God and not a man,
    the Holy One in your midst,
    and I will not come in wrath.

This is one of the most passionate cries of God in all of the Old Testament. It takes an obscure reference to a devastated and desolate place and changes it into an amazing revelation of the merciful disposition of our Heavenly Father.

Pardon me, but your Mercy is showing!
God’s message to Israel through Hosea was one of great love and great judgment upon their persistent wickedness. Yet, even in righteous judgment, he does not bring the utter destruction that befell Admah and Zeboiim. Perhaps you are asking what, or who, are they.

Sodom & Gomorrah,
by John Martin, 1852

To put it in modern terms, Admah and Zeboiim were part of the Sodom-Gomorrah Metroplex (“cities of the valley”) that was destroyed in Genesis 19:23-29. Interestingly, part of the covenant curse for disobedience was to be made like Admah & Zeboiim as an example for all to see (Deut. 29:23). While there would come discipline and even exile from the land, the Lord was not willing to consign them to hellfire. He showed mercy—a mercy that came at great cost to him, even death on the cross. We see Jesus confer this value of mercy to his disciples here in the beatitudes.

            "Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy." (Matthew 5:7)

This characteristic begins the set of beatitudes that are the external manifestation of internal attitudes. We can tie this verse to verse three, for if we are not poor in spirit then we will not be merciful to others. True disciples are merciful because they realize full well that they have received great mercy from God.

Perhaps it is helpful for us to look at mercy in light of four descriptive qualities:

Mercy as forgiveness that remembers something...

Dr. Metzger writes, “Those who come to terms with their spiritual state of extreme poverty (Matthew 5:3) and who mourn their spiritual condition (Matthew 5:4) are slow to pass judgment on others.” While he used the classic illustration of mercy from Les Miserable in his post I am also reminded of the mythic illustration from Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring, where Frodo and Gandalf are discussing the creature Gollum.

Frodo: It's a pity Bilbo didn't kill him when he had the chance.

Gandalf: Pity? It was pity that stayed Bilbo's hand. Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play yet, for good or ill before this is over. The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many. (You can view the scene here.)

That mercy shown to an utterly undeserving creature did indeed lead to Frodo’s own liberation from bondage to the ring of power. We, like Gollum, deserved death but God deals in mercy if we will have it.

Mercy as compassion that does something...

Jesus’ story that we call the “Good Samaritan” in Luke 10:25-37 answers the lawyer’s question, “Who was a neighbor?” The lawyer has to admit that the one who was a neighbor was, “The one who showed him mercy.” (v.37) Merciful people actively extend (1) forgiveness towards sinners; and (2) compassion towards the needy.  However the Kingdom characteristic of mercy goes beyond simply doing merciful things, it means actually having a merciful disposition. 

Mercy as a disposition of gratitude...

Because I have been forgiven, because God has shown great mercy to me, then my paying that mercy forward is an act of gratitude. If my default disposition is gratitude then I will be slow to anger and quick to show mercy—not patronizing sinners as one who is above temptation and error, but as one who is poor in spirit and knows only too well my own dependence on the mercy of God.

Mercy as a cycle of appropriate response...

True disciples of Christ see needs and are committed to meeting them.  Merciful people live lives of service that follow the example left by our Lord Jesus Christ.  Merciful people are wise and actually benefit from being merciful.  This beatitude restates Psalm 18:24,

     "With the merciful             you show yourself merciful;
       with the blameless man you show yourself blameless;
       with the purified             you show yourself pure;

and with the crooked            you make yourself seem tortuous (shrewd).
                                      For you save a humble people,

          but the haughty eyes you bring down. (Psalm 18:24-27)

While mercy doesn’t seem to be the appropriate response to offense and injustice, which we receive at the hands of imperfect people, it is appropriate when we are responding to the mercy we have received from the Lord in forgiving our sins against him more than to the spectrum of the sins of others against us.

Those who have truly mourned their own sins, being poor in spirit will extend to others the mercy that they are so keenly aware that they have received. And the reality of such a practice is that God says that we are blessed…and will receive mercy ourselves. It is a two-way street. We have to extend the mercy we have received to experience the “even more” mercy that we need.

I will close with this perceptive quote,

“Suppose God tried to reward an unmerciful man with mercy. It simply couldn’t be done—not because God would withhold the gift, but because the hardened human heart would not receive it.”[1]

May our hearts like saints and disciples of old, be open to the Spirit’s traffic in the mercy of God! Hear our prayer!

Kyrie eleison     (Lord, have mercy)

Christe eleison  (Christ, have mercy)

Kyrie eleison     (Lord, have mercy)

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[1] Peter Kreeft, Back To Virtue (p. 115). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.

Daughters of the Leech, or Disciples of Christ?

This blog is a response to Paul Louis Metzger’s post, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”—not those who crave fast food justice. This is the fourth installment in this series on the beatitudes, as we take a look at Matthew 5:6,

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

                                                                     for they will be filled."

While fast-food metaphors, though appropriate, have become cliché, I would point out that the kingdom speech of Jesus is rarely heard in the "Take Out" lane. The theme song of our consumer spirituality is the classic Veggie Tales’ tongue-in-cheek love song, “My Cheeseburger”.

 

 

Our society of instant gratification conspires against Jesus’ powerful hunger and thirst metaphor. Our children complain, “I’m starving!” when they have gone two hours without a meal, without giving a thought to those who may have gone two days…or two weeks without a full stomach. We in the west have very little insight into what it really means to hunger and thirst. When discussing this in class a classmate pointed out that as Americans, “We don't know hunger...we know appetite.” To which the professor confessed, “I have never been hungry.” To which a prospective student visiting from Uganda could not help but laugh. In many parts of the world, it is inconceivable that someone could live half a century without ever knowing hunger.

In America, some people walk into fast-food restaurants and then walk out because it might take five minutes to order. In fact, my wife and I witnessed it at MOD pizza (a popular super-fast made-to-order pizza restaurant) yesterday. To think that it might take someone 15 minutes in the middle of the lunch rush to not only order but receive their pizza…what an injustice!
So besides being a rant about our appetite-manifested selfishness what is the point of this post? Simply that the quality of our righteousness determines the quality of our justice. Dr. Metzger writes, “Fast food righteousness includes self-righteousness that entails taking matters into our own hands or wishing that others would take matters into their hands on our behalf. It also entails the sense that we are the ultimate decision-makers on what is right and wrong.” Therefore the justice that it metes out, “involves hate and revenge rather than love and mercy. It fixates on getting even with others rather than making things right.” It is here that the voice of conviction reminds me of how we really do love our cheeseburgers! Do we cry out from the poverty of our spirit for the Father’s will to be done, or do we order up another combo plate of self-righteous posturing and blame with a side of denial?

The answer is found in that for which we genuinely hunger. Jesus suggests that the Kingdom disciple is hungry for “righteousness”, but what is that? It is not the proud legalism of the Pharisee that actually looks for what it can get away with. The righteousness the disciple seeks is greater than that, for it is not so much a standard to which we attempt to adhere, as a relationship to which we respond. The true disciple's hunger, their one controlling desire, their burning passion, is to be right with and pleasing to God their loving Savior and King. The cry of the psalmist echoes down through the millennia,

One thing have I asked of the Lord,
       that will I seek after:
       that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
    all the days of my life,
               to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord
        and to inquire    in his temple.

  For he will hide me in his shelter
                                 in the day of trouble;
        he will conceal me under the cover of his tent;
        he will lift me high upon a rock…

You have said, “Seek my face.”
My heart says to you,
    “Your face, Lord, do I seek.” (Psalm 27:4-5, 8)

This passage speaks not so much about living in a cool building as it does about desiring the abiding presence of God in their life. From this relational center, flows a fountain of divine compassion and advocacy that brings the disciple alongside those who bear the burden of a fallen world’s injustice to bring healing. Ezekiel used just such imagery in prophetically describing the effects of kingdom righteousness (47:1-12).

I love what D.A. Carson wrote on this beatitude,  

"These people hunger and thirst, not only that they may be righteous (i.e., that they may wholly do God's will from the heart), but that justice may be done everywhere.  All unrighteousness grieves them and makes them homesick for the new heaven and earth—the home of righteousness (2 Peter 3:13).  Satisfied with neither personal righteousness alone nor social justice alone, they cry for both: in short, they long for the advent of the messianic kingdom.  What they taste now whets their appetites for more."[1]

So what about our hunger? Does it drive us to shamelessly demand so that we might endlessly consume? Do we prove ourselves by our insatiable desires to be the daughters of the leech? I am referring to Proverbs 30:15-16, which says,

A leech on the skin

The leech has two daughters:
    Give and Give.
Three things are never satisfied;
    four never say, “Enough”:
Sheol, the barren womb,
    the land never satisfied with water,
    and the fire that never says, “Enough.”

Or as I would paraphrase it, "two-three-four, greed is never satisfied, it always wants a little more". It seems that Western culture has become very leech-like. In the face of the latest trending self-interest, the timeless and counter-cultural words of the Lord invite us to dwell in the paradox of contentment in what the Father provides for us and the discontentment over what we have provided to others. As weaned children of God (Psalm 131:2), we are learning to wait on him for our daily bread at the same time that he sends us to give others something to eat (Matthew 14:16; Mark 6:37, Luke 9:13). And perhaps, in doing so, we will eat the same food that sustained Jesus so long ago,

So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish

his work. (John 4:33-34)

Will we be seen to be the satisfied disciples of Christ who set their own needs aside in order to share what we have with others? If we, like the psalmist desire the presence of the Lord in our life more than any cheeseburger, we will find it…and then we will naturally share him with others.

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     [1] Frank E. Gaebelein, General Editor, The Expositor's Bible Commentary -- Vol. 8, Zondervan, 1984, p. 134.

“It’s Happy Slappy Time!”

Whose character do we reveal by what we do and say?

This post is an assigned response to “Blessed are the meek”—not those who are easily provoked”, by Paul Louis Metzger.

"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." (Matthew 5:5)

When thinking about an example of someone who doesn’t demonstrate the kingdom characteristic of meekness, I was reminded of Happy Slappy, the pathetic clown villain in the original Air Bud (1997) movie. Some people are nothing but bad clowns, oblivious to how pathetic their selfishness and their blaming others for their unhappiness look to those on the outside. In a movie, they usually get what is coming to them; in fact, it is expected. Yet we all know that life is more complicated than that. Very few people are as absurd as Happy Slappy, but there is a more subtle, more socially acceptable, and ironically more oppressive manifestation of anti-meekness found in the habitual demanding of our own rights. It is just as out of place in the kingdom of heaven as Happy Slappy at a birthday party.

Unfortunately, in the Western church,  instead of experiencing the blessing of meekness we too often substitute leadership, echoing the lament of ancient Israel, “No! But there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.” (1 Samuel 8:19-20)

In the context of the Beatitudes, we learn that the true disciple, being a citizen of Christ’s kingdom, is meek. But what does it mean to be meek? Are Christians supposed to be like mice, or perhaps like doormats?  No, that is not the meaning of "meek" at all. 

The Greek word (praus), translated as "meek," implies the aspect of control. It refers to living under God's control, as a well-trained horse might respond to its master.  Meekness is not being wimpy.  It is instead the gentleness of strength as seen in the spiritual fruit of self-control.

Church Steeple toppled in
Columbus Day Storm, 1962

I have heard this "power-under-control" aspect of meekness illustrated in several ways.  It has been said that medicine is valuable and has great healing potential, but uncontrolled, it can be deadly.  Similarly, animals such as horses, oxen, or even dogs can be quite helpful, yet they must be under control to prevent collateral damage.  Thirdly, during a hot summer afternoon, a cool breeze is refreshing, while a hurricane or a tornado can be devastating. In fact, we have governmental agencies dedicated to controlling or monitoring all of these areas.

Jesus’ power was always under control. Though he could confront the hypocrisy and social injustice in the legalism of the Pharisees, though he drove the abusive and dishonest “stock” traders from the temple on more than one occasion, he was also gentle and would not defend himself against detractors. The prophecy of Isaiah 42 is seen fulfilled by Jesus in Matthew 12:19-21,

He will not quarrel or cry aloud,
    nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets;
a bruised reed he will not break,
    and a smoldering wick he will not quench,
until he brings justice to victory;
    and in his name the Gentiles will hope.”

As followers of Jesus, we have been empowered to fulfill the mission of God, just as he was, and like our Lord, we need to use God's power meekly. To be meek means that while the true disciple is not defensive when harassed or attacked by others, he is willing to lay down his life in defense of others and the mission of the Lord, his King.  The meek disciple does not take back control from the Lord when their circumstances get tough but merely trusts more fully. As followers of Jesus, we should never be pretentious or haughty in relating to others. The prevailing wind of the Spirit Jesus has given us moves us to show gentleness, patience, and peacefulness, generously—even joyfully—in love. If we are meek, we will hold no hatred or malice in our hearts, no insults in our mouths, and no vengeance in our hands.

If the church is to be effective in addressing the great issues of our day, there needs to be a revival of meekness that issues forth in an overcoming love.  Dr. Metzger’s blog captured the power of meek love in a quote from one of Martin Luther King's sermons,

“To our most bitter opponents, we say: “We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half-dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.”[1]

While I don’t think I have lived up to this one very well, Dr. Metzger’s quote from Andrew Young, as portrayed in Selma, strikes a chord with me.

The movie Selma shows King’s colleague, Andrew Young, explaining to someone wishing to react violently to their oppressors that the people would not have stood a chance if they had resorted to guns and violence against the unjust authorities at Selma; their only chance to win rights was to operate in a non-violent manner. Above and beyond the strategic wisdom of this approach in contending against an overwhelming, unjust force, King grounded the movement and approach in Jesus’ love ethic.

I can relate to this train of thought because when I was in seventh grade, I witnessed a gang of boys stealing a fellow student’s bike and told them to stop. They warned me that if I reported it, they would beat me up. So I did what any boy who cut his teeth reading old Hardy Boys books would do… I reported them to Chief Collig (Okay, it was actually the school authorities). They also did what they said that they would do… every chance they got for the next year and a half; insulting, punching, and trying anything to provoke a violent response on my part. Outnumbered and overmatched, I knew well that the only way I could win was not to fight in the first place. Halfway through 8^th grade, the ringleader of my tormentors was expelled from the school, and my life got much easier. I saw him again about six years later and almost didn’t recognize him—he was thin and pale from wasting his life with drugs. He didn’t recognize me either since I had been lifting weights for a few years, and the time had come, and I knew I could finally get revenge. And just as quickly as I considered taking him down, two thoughts crossed my mind. The first thought was one of pity for this former tormentor that took me by surprise. The second thought was that after “winning” by not giving in to violence during those miserable months, I didn’t want to lose now by stooping to vengeance. Through that time of persecution, the Lord had been doing something in my heart, and I didn’t know it until that moment in the Plaid Pantry convenience store. I am glad that I didn’t short-circuit that process by taking matters into my own hands, though I wanted to do so at the time.

Will we be able to live with loving meekness, not merely so that we will survive like I did, but so that we might overcome evil with love like MLK espoused? Jesus said that the spiritual reality of those who are truly meek is that they will "inherit the earth."

“It is the meek who own the earth now, for when their life is free from the tyranny of 'just a little bit more,' when a gentle spirit caresses their approach to their rights, then they possess all.”[2]

What we inherit from God—now and in the future—is far better than anything we might grasp and claim to possess in the barns of our own building.

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[1] Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Christmas, 1957)

[2] R. Kent Hughes, The Sermon on the Mount, Crossway, 37.

"Mourning Has Broken": Living in the Blessed Sorrow and Joy of Jesus

This post is an assigned response to “Blessed are those who mourn”—not those who are spiritually comfortable by Paul Louis Metzger.

Comfy?

The second beatitude, “Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted” continues Jesus’ highly counter-cultural teaching about the values of the kingdom of heaven. Unfortunately this beatitude, according to Dr. Metzger, “often devolves in our present context to read, ‘Blessed are the comfortable, for they will never mourn.’ If we are honest, many of us—including me—are tempted to prize consumer comfort in the religious and secular domain over most anything.”

Cemetery on Mount of Olives
(Photo: Vikki Dueker)

It is true that in the world we don’t like to mourn. Rarely do people show up early for funerals (unless it is for a celebrity) where they are sure to be confronted with mourning. But as followers of Jesus, we are to be among those who mourn—joyful and settled in the hope we have in Christ—yet we do mourn. So what do we mourn as we follow Christ?

• Human suffering and loss are experienced personally and within our community.
• Sin—both our own sin and the sins of others. We are sorry to have been faithless in our relationship with God.
•  We also mourn over how our own sin has impacted the lives of others at every level.
• Societal and systemic injustices in the world grieve us as we enter into the suffering of others.

These kinds of mourning are woven into the life of a disciple of Jesus. In fact, we are used to going to our own funerals. It is not like we are trying to be Tom Sawyer and attend our own funeral in order to hear what people say about us, but rather in order to say something about our Savior. Let me explain…

We die once in baptism. Baptism is like a funeral service for our "old nature" which died with Christ on the cross and now in the sacrament of baptism, we are holding the funeral service as the "old nature" goes down into the water, symbolizing our burial with Christ (Romans 6:3-4; Colossians 2:11-15). In baptism, we are declaring that we are dead to sin and alive to Christ.  We are making public our decision to submit to Christ and to leave behind the sinful things of the past.  We are saying that we have determined that because of Christ's work on the cross; we will no longer allow sin to reign over us but instead will submit our lives to Christ, actively living for him.

We also die daily…as Jesus' followers in many different ways as we consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God (Romans 6:11; 1 Cor. 15:31). We overcome by living a crucified life not by living a comfortable life.

We enter into the heart of mourning, the emotional suffering, of Christ for lost and hurting people. Each time the world rejects the love of Christ offered through us, we mourn for their sake. They may even celebrate when our lives and ministries are ended [I am reminded of the passage in Revelation where the world celebrates the death of the two witnesses.] but even as we mourn their missed opportunities we trust the loving plan of God, and it is there that we find comfort (2 Cor. 1:5).

Jesus the Messiah was a man of sorrows (Isaiah 53:3), for he saw the human condition more completely than anyone else ever has. Yet, he is also described as one anointed with the oil of gladness more than all his brothers (Psalm 45:7; Hebrews 1:9). How can this be? It is possible because he was in perfect union with his Heavenly Father. Those early morning conversations alone with the Father and filled with the Holy Spirit charged him with joy unspeakable which spilled over into unmatched gladness.

Just as Jesus could reverse the normal flow of uncleanness, touching even the lepers and healing them, so too he could touch the world, dwelling in our midst, and mourn over our stubborn blindness, our pain, and even death itself, without becoming morose. His pervasive good humor and full humanity reverse the flow and bring healing and comfort to those who mourn—even today. His very message is one of gladness (Isaiah 61:3) to those who mourn. Our own comfort, true comfort, is not found in avoiding the suffering and grief-filled world, but in joining Jesus as he engages with it. As Dr. Metzger noted in his post, “The rest Jesus promises is the rest of sharing in his burden, carrying his yoke. It is indeed rest, for when Christ is Lord in their place he bears the brunt of the burden (See Matthew 11:28-30).”

Photo: Greg Dueker

 If I finish by borrowing a metaphor or two, there are times when mourning seems to break forth in overwhelming waves of sorrow that seem to turn our respective worlds upside-down, and yet in the very midst of grief when we come to the end of our own resources, we get a glimpse of eternity and see that in the suffering of Christ, mourning has broken. 

There is a morning after our mourning.

Hope for Tomorrow
Photo: Greg Dueker

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:3-4)

"Blessed are the poor in spirit" and Psalm 26 (King David vs. Jesus?)

This post is an assigned response to Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit—Not Those with Spiritual Bravado, by Paul Louis Metzger.

Let’s start by considering two very different passages of scripture, one from the Old Testament written by a king, and the other from the New Testament proclaimed as the message of the kingdom of heaven.

Psalm 26:1-3

¹ Vindicate me, O Lord,
    for I have walked in my integrity,
    and I have trusted in the Lord without wavering.
² Prove me, O Lord, and try me;
    test my heart and my mind.
³ For your steadfast love is before my eyes,
    and I walk in your faithfulness.

Matthew 5:1-3

“Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain,

and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.

And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:

‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’”

How can we walk as King David claimed “in our integrity” and still be blessed as the “poor in spirit” or the “spiritually bankrupt” at the same time? Is it even possible for both to be true in us, or are these attitudes mutually exclusive? Or perhaps we just chalk it up to the differences due to progressive revelation from the mid-Old Testament to the early New Testament as is so often done and walk on by such issues.

Let’s be honest, sometimes King David’s claims in the Psalms seem almost arrogant and self-righteous at first glance…especially given our knowledge of his own personal and public failures. Certainly, he was gifted with a completely honest approach to communicating with God, and thus some of his statements may offend our more nuanced religious sensibilities. But before we are too hard on David, we need to get the log of self-promotion out of at least one of our own eyes. How often do we mentally make the same argument as David…that we deserve better? That we are not like “them”? That we have integrity in ourselves?

Let me say, in a stage-whisper aside, that it is in our corrupted nature to compare ourselves favorably with others. [Even those who despise themselves and compare themselves unfavorably to others do so with the thought that they should be better or have better in a kind of backward pride—for if they really despised themselves then they would be happy that their life is miserable.]

We often don’t really feel the deep need for God to vindicate and redeem us because we either see no need for vindication and redemption, or we are committed to vindicating ourselves. We think we are Superman rescuing our own lives from the gutters of both personal failures and religious superstitions. If God exists, then he must certainly accept us…but more often than not the spiritually confident live as though God answered to them rather than the other way around.

David’s request for God to “vindicate” him was actually a statement of humility. It demonstrates that he knew that he needed to be vindicated (to justify, maintain, support, defend, uphold, prove correct or right) and couldn't deliver himself.

In the Expositors’ Bible Commentary Vol. 5, Willem A. VanGemeren writes, “Vindication is where the act of God whereby he declares his servant to be innocent and avenges himself of the wicked (false accusers, enemies).”[1] Note that vindication here is “the act of God” not the act of self-righteous humanity.

The integrity, to which David clung, was faithfully dependent upon the steadfast love and mercy of God (v.3). His integrity is seen in the coherence between his inner life of faith and his outward walk of faithfulness. He shunned everything that smacked of a lie or deceitfulness. He chooses not to enjoy the temporal benefits of those who oppress others. He has weighed the cost of following the Lord and does so with equal parts enthusiastic abandon and steadfast endurance. So we see that to “walk in integrity” demands not perfection, but requires the honesty and humility to admit that we desperately need a gracious redeemer!

It has been said that “a life of faith” serves a dream/mission so big that it requires God to miraculously bring it to pass or it is not a life of faith. If, in our integrity, we know that we need God to vindicate and redeem us and we put our whole-hearted hope in his doing so, then perhaps we are living by faith indeed as the “poor in spirit”.

Psalm 26, from which these verses are taken, is described as a psalm of entrance…that might have been used by the worshipper entering into the temple complex seeking both the clean hands and pure heart necessary to come before the presence of the Lord. The psalmist asked God to search and test him, not because of an elevated sense of self-righteousness, but from the response of a heart captured by the steadfast love of the Lord! He wanted to be able to stand in the presence of God.

He consciously distanced himself from the oppressor and drew near to God in whom true freedom was found. For, as Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” (Matthew 6:24)  This psalm testifies that the psalmist was a “one master” kind of guy. To quote VanGemeren again, “The psalmist's concern with integrity, acts of devotion, and words of praise flows out of a heart filled with love for the Lord and for God's house. It is motivated by a zeal for the Lord.”[2] 

So can I say the same thing about myself? A couple of years ago, in commenting on this same passage, I wrote,

I hope that one day I will be able to look back and say with the psalmist that “I have trusted the Lord without wavering.” Yet I am not so sure that I want to ask the questions of God that David asked in verse two. But I wonder if it is possible to experience unwavering trust (v.1) without asking God to test us (v.2). Maybe the key is in verse 3…where I keep God’s steadfast love before my eyes (which makes it a lot easier to trust) and I live in his perfect faithfulness (not my own).

So we see that David’s integrity caused him to cry out to the Lord for redemption, vindication, and relational access to the Lord. Perhaps David is actually a pretty good case study in the blessedness of being poor in spirit.

What do you think?

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[1] Expositors Bible Commentary Vol. 8

[2] Ibid.