Psalm 112:3 – “Righteousness”

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

³Wealth and riches [are] in his house,

    And his righteousness stands forever.

As I noted in my last post, both lines of this verse call for some serious pondering.

Isn’t it interesting that, in one line, the man has wealth and riches in his house, and in the next line, we’re talking about his righteousness? It is a shame that the two so seldom run together. It seems to me that, in this world, the “wealthy” are usually frankly wicked. And yet a righteous man can amass wealth because of his righteousness and then not lose it along the way. It is a shame that the two so seldom run together. It seems like a person with wealth could do so much good. But, as the old saying goes, “It takes a steady hand to carry a full cup.” Apparently, when it comes to material wealth, very few of us have that steady hand.

As I stated in my last post, I suspect the godly man’s “wealth and riches” aren’t material anyway. Rather they are the things money can’t buy. Then it really makes sense how he gained them through righteousness and, rather than undermining faith like material wealth seems to do, real wealth tends to secure it. What I mean is that, as I go about living my life and the Lord helps me to do a few things right and I enjoy the blessings He gives, the very blessings I’ve received only make me love Him more. When I see everywhere His kindnesses, it only makes me want to draw closer to Him. I guess that is one of the wonders of grace and why grace is so far, far better than law.

Speaking of grace, that leads me to the other thought I want to ponder particularly in light of the second line, “His righteousness stands forever.” Hmmmmm. If the statement were about the Lord (which it was in 111:3), we would all heartily agree. If it’s even about another person I know, I might heartily agree, “Yes. He’s just a good man.” But where my heart winces is if I think of it applying to me. It’s interesting to me how my heart doesn’t even like considering these words with me in the mirror.

I immediately run to the Cross and want to say, “It’s not my righteousness anyway. ‘My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.’” If the “righteousness” in view is actually Christ’s righteousness imputed to my account, then all I can say is “Hallelujah for the Cross! My (imputed) righteousness will stand forever!” That is all true and certainly worthy of praises to the Lord. Praise God that our imputed righteousness is eternal!

But I am inclined to think that the thought here at least includes one’s practical righteousness. I think the verse is considering the reality of the man’s life. Once again, I have no problem applying it to someone else. I have had the pleasure of knowing many people whose practical righteousness was exceptional. They really were just plain “good people.” But then there’s me.

Yikes.

The Lord has actually helped me do a few things right in my life and for those I am very thankful, but even as He was helping me I was failing Him. Whatever “righteousness” I may possess is entirely not me and certainly not mine. Even now, I’m keenly aware that I will only do “right,” I will only love well, I will only say the right things, if His Spirit works through me. Even as I type, I find in that truth a great hope, this power I have found in letting Him have my life, my mind, my mouth, and seeing the wonderful love and joy and peace He brings as it happens. But even as I say that, again, I am very aware, it is not my righteousness. It is not me. Leave me to myself and, God have mercy, I self-destruct every blessing He ever tried to give me.

Maybe therein lies the truth of this verse – that, for the godly man, his righteousness stands forever because even his practical righteousness is not his own?

Oh, wow. I feel another atom bomb bursting in my heart. (By the way, this is so much fun! This is so often true that I study a passage and pray over it and ponder it and then it’s only as I sit down and start typing that the Lord turns on the lights. Yes, yes, yes – in His light we see light!)

The godly man’s righteousness endures forever because, in fact, it isn’t his. We’re talking about grace godliness not legal righteousness. We’re not talking about the righteousness of “Here’s the law, here’s the rules, and I do a good job of following them.” We’re talking about the righteousness that comes through grace, the righteousness that comes from falling in love with the Lord, from sitting at His feet adoring Him and learning His heart, and getting up changed because “mine eyes have seen the Lord.” We’re talking about Mary’s righteousness, not Martha’s, the “doing right” because He has changed my heart.

Yes. That “righteousness” I don’t mind talking about. It is true. He has changed me. I myself am still completely rotten but it is true that grace has changed me. He taught me that love is what matters and I “see” it. He showed me His faithfulness and made me want to be faithful too. He showed me people’s brokenness and made me want to be kind. He showed me my rottenness and made me want to let His Spirit rule instead of mine. He showed me Jesus’ strength of character and made me want to be strong too. There is definitely a sense in which all of this is my righteousness. It is me. But it isn’t me. It’s Him … in me. And it does stand forever because He’s done it in me. When He changes me I am changed forever. I can never be the same.

Oh, my. What a wonderful Lord He is. As rotten as I am, even I can talk about my righteousness that stands forever – not for anything I’ve done but because His grace has conquered me. What a wonderful Savior Jesus is – to not only save us with His imputed righteousness but then to go on and fix us with a practical righteousness that’s still His!

Wow.

Psalm 112:3 – “The Best Kind”

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

³Wealth and riches [are] in his house,

    And his righteousness stands forever.

Here are a couple of interesting statements. Both lines of this verse need to be pondered.

The first line, “Wealth and riches are in his house,” would seem at first glance to be a straightforward statement of fact: When a person “fears the Lord” he will make far better decisions, order his life with more wisdom, maintain better relationships, and, in  general, do the kind of things which tend toward prosperity. As it says in Prov 10:4, “Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth.” I don’t think anyone would seriously debate the fact that much of the world’s poverty is first of all a character problem. It is almost shocking to me, over my lifetime, to think of how many people I have known who were very talented, very capable, very intelligent, who could literally have been mechanical engineers or nuclear physicists, but lived in relative ignorance and poverty simply because they had always made the “easy” decisions. Some simply never set about the hard work to develop their talents (like going to college) but others chose the party life and self-destructed on drugs and alcohol. It saddens me to see their faces parade through my mind and wonder what could have been if only they’d had “the fear of the Lord” in their hearts and sincerely sought to do what is best – not necessarily what was easy or appealing. The Lord only knows how many Einsteins and Beethovens have been born and died and never made good on the talents He had given them.

So, again, when a person has been godly, the statement, “Wealth and riches [are] in his house…”is not at all hard to understand. On the other hand, we have the undeniable Biblical reality that faith and poverty have more often than not gone hand in hand. “Hath not God chosen them that are poor in this world to be rich in faith?” (James 2:5). It would be callously unkind for us to assert that poverty is always the results of bad choices. James would imply that poverty may actually be a benefit to most of the human race as it tends to breed faith (James 1:9) while riches, more often than not, seem to diminish it. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Matt 19:24).

So, clearly (to me), while it is generally true that godliness inclines a person toward better decisions and hence material prosperity, when it comes to that material “wealth and riches,” this verse can only be generally true. What is invariably and undeniably true is that godliness leads to spiritual wealth and riches. When it comes to people of real faith, we all know you could ask the poorest of men about his “wealth and riches” and probably bring a smile to his face. We can all hear him say, “No, I’ve never seemed to have two nickels to rub together, but, yes, I am a very wealthy man.” He would tell us of the wonderful hope he has of Heaven, the joy of knowing the Lord all day every day even as he goes about his struggling existence, about his wonderful wife and children the Lord has given him, good friends, good memories, and on and on. “The sounds of joyful singing and salvation are in the tents of the righteous …” (Ps. 118:15). “The blessings of the Lord make one rich, and He adds no sorrow with it” (Prov. 10:22).

So, I would conclude that the first line, “Wealth and riches [are] in his house” is generally true of material blessings, but absolutely true of the “wealth and riches” money can’t buy. I know it is certainly true of my life. I have made a lot of bad decisions that very predictably brought material poverty into my family’s life and, on the other hand, when I’ve let the Word rule my decisions it has directly benefited me financially. On the other hand, knowing the Lord and following Him (though, on my part, doing a very, very poor job of it) has granted to me a fabulous and almost incomprehensible wealth. I honestly don’t know, in a fallen imperfect world, and being a fallen imperfect man, how I could hope to possibly be any more blessed.

The Lord stepped into my life nearly 40 years ago and I took His hand hoping somehow He would fix the mess I was. And what utterly amazes me is, on the one hand, what a miserable follower I have been all along, while on the other hand, He has been to me such a wonderful Lord. I could never have dreamed just how true it would be when He said to me, “And you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”

One last thought before I quit on this first line of the verse – it particularly strikes me how the Bible must be read in active relationship with the Lord. What I mean is that it is easy to read it like any other book, like something that was written down and now lies there to be read over and considered. The Bible is the Word, the words, of the living God and is itself alive and powerful. Some wise man once said, “To open the Bible is to look into the face of God.” One can read it simply as words or one can read it looking into the face of God, knowing Him and being known. The verse before is case-in-point. If I read, “Wealth and riches are in his house,” I can assert it is a simple statement of truth which obviously is teaching that every person who genuinely “fears the Lord” will be rich. And I openly admit, if you read it that way, that is what it seems to be saying. However, I am a follower of the Most High God, I am His child and He is my Father. I love Him and He loves me. As I read those words looking into His face, I see that little curve of a smile and He and I both know that “wealth and riches” are something far better than dollars in a bank account or gold chandeliers. He and I share the wonderful thought of the real blessings, the real wealth and riches that I know I enjoy and that I am quite assured are enjoyed by all those who “fear the Lord.” At that same time, He and I both know that what material blessings I do enjoy came from Him.

I don’t know if this makes sense to anyone else but I think it is exactly what Peter was talking about when he said (of Paul’s writings in particular) that “therein are many things hard to be understood, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction” (II Peter 3:16). I have come to the conclusion that you can make the Bible mean anything you want it to mean. I suspect God even wrote it, in a sense, as a giant bobby-trap where, if you go to it for any reason other than knowing Him, you will find exactly what you’re looking for, be confirmed in your folly, and self-destruct, as Peter suggested.  The only way to actually read the Bible and know the Truth is to read it in an active relationship with God, to read it for the purpose of knowing Him, of having a relationship with Him – in a sense, reading it with Him … perhaps reading it as coming directly from His heart, reading it looking into His eyes. Then I don’t even care about all the other things it “can” mean. I only care what He means and I’m content with that.

Just a thought from this feeble mind pondering the wonder of our amazing Savior God.

Yes. My house is full of “wealth and riches.” And they’re all “wealth and riches” because they came from His hand. They’re the best kind!

Psalm 112:2 – “Targeted Kindness”

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

Praise the LORD.

¹Blessings of a man – he fears the LORD.

    In His commands he delights greatly.

²Mighty in the land his descendants will be.

    A generation of upright ones will be very blessed.

I’ve been pondering verse 2 for a while. I find it spawns a lot of seemingly random thoughts in my head. I’ll note of few of them in hopes they’ll gel into something useful.

To promise to bless my children (and grandchildren) I consider to be one of the Lord’s greatest kindnesses. I certainly enjoy His blessings of my sweet wife, my good job, beautiful house, reasonable health, etc., but, no matter all of that, when I think of blessing, my mind always goes to my children. I presume it is a normal parent thing, but, in a sense, it is like “blessing” is an empty thing if it doesn’t extend to them. I want to be blessed. I want to spend eternity in Heaven; but even as I am assured of those things for myself, my mind again wanders to them. I want to be assured they’ll be there too. Even as I enjoy knowing God, even as I live in awe of His goodness and kindness to me, I want to know they’ll get to enjoy all of this too. If it’s just for me, there is a sense in which it’s not enough. “Blessing” must include them.

I’ve thought before that if I could just be assured all my children and grandchildren would know the Lord, love Him, and spend eternity with Him, it’s like I could just lay down and die. I could say with old Simeon, “Lord, lettest now Thy servant depart in peace, for mines eyes have seen Thy salvation.” It’s like my work would be done.

And so, I run into passages like Psalm 112:2 and I think what a kindness it is. In verse 1, we are introduced to the man who “fears the Lord and delights greatly in His commands.” Beginning in verse 2, this psalm enumerates the blessings such a man enjoys and what do we find at the top of the list? His children.

Isn’t that an amazing kindness of the Lord? What He is basically saying to me is that, if I seek to follow Him, to make the choices I must make to live my life for Him, in one way or another He promises to bless my children! He promises to me the one thing that makes all other blessings complete.

I say all of this fully realizing this is a dangerous place to make 100% claims. Whenever the Lord makes seeming promises regarding our children, there is always the element of their own wills. And there is also the element of my own imperfect obedience. No matter what I choose, I certainly won’t do it perfectly, and no matter what I may do, my children and grandchildren will always have to make their own choices. So I’m painfully having to accept in my mind that this is not a 100% promise. Just because I love the Lord doesn’t automatically guarantee that all of my descendants will. I wish it could. I wish there was anything I could do to insure their blessing.

But I think we can enjoy this even as a general promise and I will take it that way – that, if I choose to love the Lord, then, in general, I can be assured it will benefit my descendants. My family will be blessed just for the sake of me.

It would be interesting to know if the blessings I enjoy are flowing from some ancestor’s lives and prayers. Maybe some godly old great-great grandfather or grandmother read this same verse and had the same thoughts as I sit having today. I remember reading a book written in the 15 or 1600’s and it started with a prayer where the author said something like, “Lord, if years from now, someone finds this book …” and I thought to myself, “Here I sit, an answer to that man’s prayer! He prayed the Lord’s blessing on me over 400 years ago and now I sit with that very book in my hands!”

And what particular blessings are mentioned in this psalm? It says “His descendants will be mighty in the land.” It is literally “his seed,” so it can be translated “his children” or “his descendants.” It can specifically refer to his immediate descendants, his children and grandchildren, or it can include his descendants in general for many generations. And it says they will be “mighty.” The word itself is a warrior word and, I suppose today it could be translated something like “they will be heroes in the land.” I think the basic idea is that they’ll be people who do a lot of good. They won’t be the criminals and low-lifes who make everyone else miserable; but they also won’t just be survivors. They won’t just “occupy air space.” They’ll be people who make a difference. That again is a cool promise to me. I want to make a difference. I don’t want to be just a survivor. I want the world to be a better place because I was here. But, again, I want that blessing to extend to my children and their children after them. I want them all to be blessed. I want them to be happy. But I want them to be people who make other people’s lives better too. And I believe that is what the Lord is here saying -- The children of the godly will go on being a blessing to others for many generations.

I don’t know if the second half of the verse is referring to the godly man or to his descendants. It says, “A generation of upright ones will be very blessed.” Either way, the same truth is being expressed. The fact is that truly godly people are a blessing to their world. They will be the people who can be trusted, people who are gracious and forgiving and kind, people who work hard and who work hard to care for others. I personally strongly suspect that many of the scientific discoveries and advances that have blessed the human race were made by godly people. We’ll only know the truth of that in Heaven, but I suspect it’s true. And this psalm is assuring me that, if I really fear the Lord, I will be a blessing in my generation, and then that blessing will extend to my children and my descendants. They too will be a blessing.

I’ve always liked Psalm 84:5,6, “Blessed are those whose strength is in You … As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs …” The Valley of Baca is literally “the valley of tears,” which is a fitting name for this world. But that psalm assures us, as godly people pass through this troubled world, they make it a better place. They don’t just survive. They make it a better place for others passing through. They leave it a little better, perhaps a little softer. That is what I want to be and that is what I hope will be true of my descendants. Of Jesus Himself it is said, “He was a man ordained by God who went about doing good.” That’s what I want to be and that is what I want my descendants to be.

Once again, the Lord in His great kindness assures me those very wishes will be fulfilled.

His kindness is not only bountiful; it is also very targeted – at the very things our hearts want most.

Psalm 112:1 – “Relationship”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of this verse:

Praise the LORD.

¹Blessings of a man – he fears the LORD.

In His commands he delights greatly.

Along with a lot of other writers, it seems patently obvious to me that Psalm 112 and 111 were written together. Psalm 111 was all about the Lord while 112 already is zooming in on the person who walks with God, the god-ly, if you will. Someone suggested 111 is like the sun and 112 the moon, the latter simply a reflection of the former. So it is, of course, in life – in a way the whole point of our faith in God is to make us like Him.

Psalm 111 just ended with the statement, “Holy and fearsome is His name” and then “Blessed is the man who fears the Lord.” Now Psalm 112 picks up at the same point – “Blessings of a man – he fears the Lord.” As I wade into the Hebrew of Psalm 112, one of the things I want to see is whether there appears to be a very deliberate effort on the psalmist’s part to make 112 reflect 111. That won’t surprise me at all. The two are identical in style, acrostic psalms with 10 verses of 2 lines each, except the last two verses which are three lines each – in both psalms. While I’m looking ahead, I also notice that Psalm 113 begins with the same “Praise the LORD.” I’m curious whether it is also intended to be read with 111 and 112. Why wouldn’t a unit of “three” surprise me??

Wading into this first verse – To begin with, I have to refer back to my posts on 111 as regards “fearing” the Lord. As I said there, I don’t think we Americans have the slightest idea what that means, which is exactly why the subject is endlessly debated between those who are anxious to scare everyone into holiness and those who can’t bear the thought. We don’t understand “the fear of the Lord” because we’ve never lived under a government we feared. We have no regard for majesty, because we’ve never had one. As I pondered in 111, in the ancient world (and probably much of the present world) rulers held absolute authority. They could grant you a rich endowment or have your head cut off. And that was true even if that person was a very good king or queen. Even if they were the best of kings, they still held your life in their hand. My point is that, in the ancient world, you could both love and fear a king at the same time. You always feared them. You might also be able to love them. And that is precisely what we almost cannot comprehend.

For them to talk about “the fear of the Lord” did not immediately digress into some heated debate over what it even means. I would like to suggest that, for them, and for our psalmist here, the “fear of the Lord” simply refers to an acknowledgment of His rule over us. He is the King. He holds our very breath in His hand. He holds the keys of life and death, Heaven and hell. He can bless and you’ll be blessed or He can curse and leave you wishing you weren’t so stupid! He is the King. In His case, He is a VERY GOOD king. His rule is the very wisest, the most beneficent, the best of all, so we can deeply love Him. But He’s still the King. His majesty is still awe-inspiring. In His presence, in Heaven itself, the doorposts and thresholds shake and temple fills with smoke!

That is our God.

And so, the first line of our psalm would have us to know “Blessings of a man – he fears the Lord.” Blessings to the man who is smart enough to willingly embrace the Lord’s rule over him, to willingly count himself one of the Lord’s subjects, to enlist himself a citizen of His kingdom.

The second line of this verse, in my mind, not only confirms what I’ve been thinking but amplifies it as well: “In His commands, he delights greatly.”

What I’m saying is that I think, in a sense, this second line helps us understand the first. The “fear of the Lord” here considered is not the servile fear of a cringing slave but rather the willing and happy subjection of oneself to God. We’re talking about people who “delight greatly” in His commands. In the Parable of the talents, we find three possible responses to God’s rule – the servant who “feared” the king and hid his talent in the ground, the two who invested their talents and gained only more, and then that other group who said, “We will not have this man to rule over us.” Interestingly the choice before us is not simply whether we’ll serve the Lord or not. That last group said, “We will not (and got their heads cut off), but notice there were two options for those who were his “servants” – the one who chafed under that rule and the others who prospered under it.

Hopefully, anyone who has even stumbled across these feeble scratchings of mine has figured out we do need to get under God’s rule. We’re not part of the bunch who simply says, “We will not have this man to rule over us.” But the second half of the verse before us should cause us all to stop and ponder, “What kind of servant am I?” The blessings of the first line are not simply to those who “fear” but to those who “delight greatly” in His commands.

What the Lord desires (and the only “fear” He intends to bless) is not our grudging acquiescence but rather a relationship of delight. He wants to know us, for us to know Him, for us to share a love relationship with our beneficent King who is greatly to be feared.

And notice the intensity. The word “delight” is inherently intense. It is not just “prefer” or “like.” It is delight. I basically “like” all little children – but my children and my grandchildren – they are a delight to me. I’ll never forget once being with a whole group of cute little children and enjoying them all, when suddenly my little daughter Esther looked up in my face and my heart was filled with the thought, “You are altogether lovely!” (Cant. 4:7). But notice in this verse, the psalmist adds “greatly.” He’s talking about a man who not only delights in God’s commands but in them he delights greatly. Greatly. “Delight” is already an intense word, then it turns out he delights greatly!

What occurs to me is how this is all relationship stuff. What I mean is that the grudging submission specifically is lacking relationship. What utterly redefines the playing field with God is that, when it comes to Him, He is my King, my Father, my Savior, my Shield and Defender, my Friend. Like elderly old Jacob, I can call Him, “the God before whom my fathers walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day, the Angel who has delivered me from all harm” (Gen 48:15,16).

As Psalm 111 so eloquently presented, He is a wonderful King. To know Him is to love Him. The more I consciously acknowledge His rule over me, the more I want to. The older I get, the more my greatest regret is that I don’t trust Him more. “Commands?” The very word is almost unnecessary. “Bidding” would perhaps be more appropriate. He needn’t command me … just help me understand His bidding and my heart wants to cry out, “Here am I, Lord. Send me!” My deepest regret is that I don’t do it more, that I still so foolishly give way to my lusts and fears.

I guess all I can say is,

Praise the LORD.

¹Blessings of a man – he fears the LORD.

In His commands he delights greatly.