Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Psalm 116: 5-6 – “Hearts that Look and Eyes that See”


As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

5Gracious [is] the Lord and just and our God [is] compassionate. 6The Lord is one guarding simple ones. I was low but He delivered me.

There is something here that I have noticed before but I think I had all but forgotten. Often in the Psalms, right in the middle of a prayer, the writer stops and inserts thoughts like verse 5, “Gracious [is] the Lord and just and our God [is] compassionate.” In essence, he is pausing to rehearse in his mind just who God is. And this is no sterile exercise in systematic theology or listing of the attributes of God for some doctrinal dissertation. As Spurgeon said, “Prayer itself derives from the nature of God.” Prayer is because God is. If He wasn’t who He is, prayer would not be. The strength of our prayers is not us but Him. What the Psalmist does here is something we all need to do often, and that is precisely to rehearse the nature of our God, to remind ourselves who He is. Part of it is simply praise, but here I am looking at the practical side even of praise.

What do I mean? I mean that it is of paramount importance that we see God, that our soul is realizing just who He is. And one of the very important ways we do this is by deliberately rehearsing His attributes in our mind. He is in fact gracious and just and compassionate. The very words are the soul of our prayers. As Sir Richard Baker said, “If He were not gracious I could not hope He would hear me; if He were not just I could not depend on His promise; if He were not merciful, I could not expect His pardon; but now that He is gracious and just and merciful too, how can I doubt of His will to help me?”

Peter could walk on the water as long as he saw Jesus’ face. When he looked instead at the wind and the waves (and lost sight of Jesus), it was then he began to sink. So it is with my heart. I just recently went through a desperate time. I was praying fervently through it but I told Him in the middle, “I can’t see Your face. Why can’t I see Your face?” I knew a lot of my anxiety and feeling overwhelmed by “the wind and the waves” would be soothed if only I could see Him, but I didn’t do a very good job. Fortunately for me, He is gracious and just and compassionate and delivered me in spite of my little faith (like lifting Peter from the sea). But I realize now, this verse is exactly what I needed to do. I needed to pause even in my pleadings and focus my mind on who He is. I needed to deliberately rehearse truths just like this verse. I already “know” that He is gracious and just and compassionate, but my soul easily loses its sense of the enormity of these things. I think this is what it means to be “looking unto Jesus,” perhaps even what it means to “abide in Him.” But it is something I must deliberately do – pause to focus my mind not on my troubles and not even on my duties but simply on who He is. Truly He is altogether lovely but the eyes of my heart are dim with sin and forgetfulness. Oh that I could keep my mind filled with His beauty.

Well, let us attempt it here by pausing to consider what these words mean. “The Lord is gracious.”  William Gauge said, “The first attribute, ‘gracious,’ hath especial respect to that goodness which is in God Himself. The root whence it comes signifies to do a thing gratis, freely, of one’s own mind and goodwill.” I almost feel we cannot ponder on this attribute too much – His grace. The word speaks of a superior granting kindness to an inferior, entirely of his own free will. There simply is no place in “grace” for whether something is deserved. The very word “deserve” is irrelevant to “grace” since, again, it is an act or quality which arises entirely in the giver – in our case, the Giver. We can count on God’s graciousness because it arises from Him and, in a sense, has nothing to do with what we do or don’t do. We are desperately needy creatures and fortunately He is a God of grace. He makes His sun to shine on the evil and the good – and that’s a good thing, since I’m one of the evil!

The second attribute I’ve translated “just” but it can also be translated “righteous.” The root word has to do with being “straight” or “according to a standard” as in weights and measures, or as in a good judge who rules “justly.” What is important here is that we can count on God. Shall the judge of all the earth do right? Yes, He will do right. He is the very standard of right in Himself. He is the Way and the Truth. This attribute of God is the very foundation of His “very great and precious promises.” As imperfect, stumbling sinners, even as we try to be gracious and merciful, we can fail to be just. We seem to usually practice either to a fault. But not so our God. He is gracious, just, and merciful, all together at the same time, in perfect balance. We can count on Him to always do us right.

The third attribute I’ve translated “compassionate” but probably its most traditional translation is “merciful.” I suppose I’m using “compassionate” out of fear that I’ve said the word “merciful” for so long I’ve lost its sense. The word itself speaks of deep feelings of love rooted in some natural bond, of inward emotions of compassion and pity, like a mother’s love for her nursing baby. These feelings are perhaps most easily prompted by things like small babies or other helpless people. I think I’ve mentioned before that, interestingly, in Hebrew, the same three consonants r-k-m, when given e’s for vowels, (hence “rekem”) means “womb.” One has to pause and get in a Hebrew kind of picture-painting frame of mind, think of a mother’s womb, of the helpless little baby inside, of the mother’s deep love for that baby, and if we ponder it long enough, then we begin to have a sense of the depth and color of this word “merciful.” Then pause to consider what the Psalmist is saying: the Lord is merciful. That’s how He is to us – tenderly compassionate.

So here I am, perhaps wrestling with my fears and struggles, pleading with Him to save me, while there He is, gracious and just and compassionate. Hmmmm. The two of us should get together!

Yes, we should.

And, again, herein is the reason and the value of pausing in our pleadings to simply ponder the attributes of God. “Prayer itself derives from the nature of God.” Our hope arises in Him. We need to see Him. We need to look past the wind and the waves and see Him in His beauty. But this is the very effort we must exert on our part – to pause and ponder. We can only see if we take the time to look.

God give us hearts that look that You might give us eyes that see.


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