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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