Psalm 111:7,8 – “Faithful”

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

⁷The works of His hands [are] truth and justice;

   the all of His commands are trustworthy,

⁸Being established to forever to ages,

   being done in truth and uprightness.

There is one more thought I have from this passage which I’d like to record. Back to my post, “The Best King,” as we look at this Psalm and particularly at verses 7 and 8, we’re reminded how totally awesome the Lord is. He is so faithful, so trustworthy, so dependable. He always does what He said He would do. He always does exactly what He should do. You can totally count on Him.

And as we let our minds reel in all His wonderfulness, as we realize just how much His faithfulness means to us, our hearts hopefully take the same turn Paul’s did for him. Consider what he said in II Cor 1:18:

“But as surely as God is faithful, our message to you is not ‘Yes’ and ‘No.’”

I think it is enormously instructive that Paul does not simply say, “Our message to you is not ‘Yes’ and ‘No.’” There is a reason why he’s that way and it is “As surely as God is faithful …” Does anyone else see the profound but simple truth buried in this one little verse? Paul is saying exactly what I believe I’ve learned – that just knowing God, really truly knowing Him, pondering who He is, changes me. And here Paul is particularly thinking about God’s faithfulness, just like in our Psalm 111:7,8, and the result is that Paul himself cannot help but want to be faithful himself. “Because God is so faithful to me,” Paul says, “I am faithful to you.”

I actually ran across this truth when I was studying through II Corinthians some time way back in the Stone Age and here it is again in Psalm 111. Faithfulness is so important. We know how important it is to us that God is faithful. Of course there’s Jeremiah’s words, “It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not.

They are new every morning: great is Thy faithfulness” (Lam 3:22,23); and then there is: “Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the Lord thy God, He it is that doth go with thee; He will not fail thee, nor forsake thee” (Deut 31:6), which the Lord repeats in Heb 13:5, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.”

People of faith hang their very souls on God’s faithfulness. All of this led John Rippon to write the old familiar hymn, “How Firm a Foundation:”

Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed,
For I am thy God and will still give thee aid;
I’ll strengthen and help thee, and cause thee to stand
Upheld by My righteous, omnipotent hand.

When through the deep waters I call thee to go,
The rivers of woe shall not thee overflow;
For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,
And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.

When through fiery trials thy pathways shall lie,
My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply;
The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design
Thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine.

Even down to old age all My people shall prove
My sovereign, eternal, unchangeable love;
And when hoary hairs shall their temples adorn,
Like lambs they shall still in My bosom be borne.

The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to its foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.

We need God to be faithful. And He is.

But others need us to be faithful as well. It is amazing to stop and ponder how much we all depend on one another. As I sit here typing in the middle of the night, someone somewhere is working at a power plant, keeping the electricity flowing. Just a couple of blocks from my house is a police station, a fire station, and a hospital. There are people working there right now – people who were scheduled for this shift and they came to work and there they are, doing their jobs. And we need them to! What if they didn’t?? Also there is the post office right there. I often drive by and drop letters in the mailbox outside. As incompetent as the government may be, yet (nearly) without fail, my letter magically appears at the destination I intended. I go to a store that says it’s open from 8:00 to 5:00 and it is. I come home at lunch in a mad frenzy and my beautiful wife has lunch ready for me so I can gulp it down and catch a 15-minute nap before I have to be back at work. I go to work in the morning and the lights are already on, the coffee’s hot, and there are a whole host of other people I utterly depend on – and there they are, just like they’re supposed to be, at their desks, doing their jobs.

Throw into all of that the thought, “And what if they didn’t?” What happens when other people don’t do what they’re supposed to or when they don’t do what they said they would? What if none of these people I’m counting on did their job? What is it like when I go to the store at 10:00 AM and it’s not open? For no good reason? I rush up to the door assuming it will open and about kill myself running headlong into it. “Hey, what’s going on?” I ask myself. What would it be like if I suddenly realized at work the receptionist isn’t answering the phone? She’s there, but she doesn’t feel like answering it. So she just lets it ring. What if she did answer and was supposed to take a message and just doesn’t. “Oh, yeah, they called yesterday, but I didn’t feel like telling you.” What if my neighbor doesn’t mow his grass? What if someone isn’t doing their job and suddenly none of the stop lights in town are working? I find at work the most difficult people to deal with are the ones who tell us they’ll do something, then just don’t do it.

The fact is my life would collapse in one big frustrated heap if other people didn’t do what they’re supposed to. Faithfulness is very important. We are all deeply dependent on each other simply to do what we’re supposed to do when we’re supposed to do it. I depend on the Lord. I depend on other people. And here’s the kicker: and they depend on me.

If I stop and ponder for just a minute, there are a lot of people depending on me to do a lot of things. I’m not talking about the unreasonable expectations. There are always seemingly a million or two people who think I ought to do this or that for them to the point I find myself exclaiming, “There’s not enough of me! I run out of day long before I run out of do!” But I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the reasonable expectations others have of me. I’m supposed to be at work at 8:00. I’m supposed to keep my grass mowed. I’m supposed to pay my bills. I’m supposed to keep things around the house fixed. I’m supposed to be home at noon for lunch and again about 5:00 or 5:30 for supper. When I do my job at work, I’m supposed to do my best to solve people’s problems for the least cost and in the best way. Everywhere I look someone else is counting on me. I tell someone, “I’ll take care of that,” and they expect me to. I tell someone I’ll meet them at 2:30 and they expect me to be there.

If I don’t simply do what I’m supposed to, if I don’t do what I said I would, it upsets other people’s lives and schedules just the same as their unfaithfulness upsets mine. It’s important for me to be faithful.

And the good news is God is faithful. And if He is faithful and I see it and appreciate it, then I can be like Him. I want to, need to, make every possible effort to be dependable, to be faithful, to do what I said I’d do – because others need me to and because that’s the way my God is. Once again, may who He is rub off on me!

⁷The works of His hands [are] truth and justice;

the all of His commands are trustworthy,

⁸Being established to forever to ages,

being done in truth and uprightness.

Psalm 111:7,8 – “His Work”

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

⁷The works of His hands [are] truth and justice;

   the all of His commands are trustworthy,

⁸Being established to forever to ages,

   being done in truth and uprightness.

According to my records, I have been studying this delightful Psalm for just over a month. A couple of days ago, I had the most interesting epiphany and what I hope is a profound paradigm shift in my view of life.

I have been aware for years that I simply worry too much. That has bothered me particularly in light of Peter’s experience trying to walk on the water. As he sank, Jesus lifted Him out, looked him in the face, and asked, “Why did you doubt?” He’s constantly looking at me and asking the same question. As I’ve related many times, I know looking back that He has been utterly faithful to me. It is very clear that everything He put me through was for my good and He even used my sins (and in particular their consequences!) to make me better. Time after time after time I have worried myself sick only to find when it was over that He had done exceedingly abundantly above anything I could have asked or thought. So why do I doubt?

Recently I’ve become more aware that basically I live in fear. My very being is constantly and literally terrorized by all the uncertainties around me. I’ve mentioned before it seems like every assignment I’m given at work is impossible. I keep telling myself that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a well-ordered mind, that perfect love casts out fear. I try to keep my focus on love. Yet, nothing I seem to learn or do ever changes this awful underlying dread I feel … and still He looks me in the eye and asks me, “Why do you doubt?” “I don’t know!” I want to cry. “I don’t want to. I want to trust You. I should trust You. There is absolutely no reason on earth for me not to trust You. You have been absolutely faithful to me. You have always, always, always helped me. I don’t know why I can’t stop doubting.” And so, finally, I just pray and ask Him somehow to take away this spirit of fear.

From the beginning of this Psalm, I have been studying about God’s “works” or His “doings.” I can just take a quick read of the Psalm and I’m reminded again how everything He does is good. All of His works, all of His rule over us, all of it all is awesome, amazing, wonderful. He is “altogether lovely.”

What struck me is that all of life is His works. All of life is what He is doing. All of my life is His works. Here I am, all my life, asking Him to help me. In my mind, I have all these responsibilities and challenges and issues in my life and I need God to step into my life, into all the impossibility and help me. I’m seeing it as my life, my “works” and God helps me. But that isn’t true. It’s His life, His “works” and at best you could describe what I’m doing as helping Him! In other words, it’s all His world, His works, His plans, and what He has done is given me life and allowed me to be a part.

That is exactly why everything seems impossible. It is. What He is doing in this world, what He intends to accomplish, is so far beyond and above me, I couldn’t possibly make it all happen. That’s why time and again I afterward realized that actually what I did was a very small part and yet still God made the giants fall. It wasn’t my work at all. It was His. All He ever wanted me to do was “help,” “do my part,” contribute whatever little feeble effort I could toward the goal. It was Him all along who had every intention of making it happen. He just allowed me to be a part.

That is my whole life. It’s not my whole life. It’s His. He is doing amazing things. He is doing great works. He is accomplishing a grand and glorious plan. And He creates me, allows me to live for a short time, and while I’m alive, I get to actually be a part of what He’s doing. Not that He needs me, He’s just very kindly and lovingly allowing me to be a part of His great eternal plan. My mistake all along has been seeing it all as my life, my work, that I need His help to succeed at my work. No. It is His work and He only asks me to do my part. That is precisely why He told Gideon (in the face of a humanly impossible challenge), “Go in this thy strength.”

That is why it is true, “It’s not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord.” That’s how a boy could kill a giant with a slingshot, how a bunch of slaves could knock down city walls by blowing horns, how a bunch of impoverished exiles could rebuild a city wall in only 52 days, and how a silly, confused boy could have solved so many seemingly impossible challenges in his life. When I started at Staleys their waste treatment plant basically did not work. They were out of compliance 10 or 12 days every month and spending a fortune failing at it. By the time I left there, we’d gone probably two years without a bad day, cut a million dollars out of their annual operating costs, and what we did has since (I hear) become the industry standard for wastewater treatment.

I could go on and on and on about all the miracles I’ve watched happen. Again and again and again, it has been very obvious to me I didn’t do it and yet it happened. I’ve known all along it was the Lord.

But the problem all along has been that, in my mind, it was my work and I needed Him to help me. Studying Psalm 111 all about His work, I realize that’s what it’s always been – His work. Every one of those accomplishments were work He intended to do. The only reason I was even involved is because He was letting me be a part.

Of course it was all impossible. It was God-work.

And so, as I look ahead to today, it’s not my life. It’s not my work. The Lord is doing great things and I simply get to be a part of it all.

That for me is a complete paradigm shift.

All of a sudden the whole fear thing turned down about ten notches! Now, when He asks me, “Why did you doubt?” I know exactly why. I thought it was my job to walk on the water. It never was. It’s His.

I am actually hopeful that, once again, He has taught me something that changes my life. This is precisely why I study the Bible. I don’t want to be who I was. I want to learn. I want to change. I want to be better. And, once again, what changes me is not some effort on my part to implement some improvement plan. What changes me is seeing Him.

Praise the LORD.

¹I will praise the LORD with all of [my] heart,

in council of the upright and assembly.

²Great [are] the doings of the LORD,

being sought to/by all of delights of them.

³Glorious and majestic [is] His doing,

and His uprightness [is] standing forever.

…

⁷The works of His hands [are] truth and justice;

the all of His commands are trustworthy,

⁸Being established to forever to ages,

being done in truth and uprightness.

“Great are the doings of the Lord.” May I (and maybe you too!) find joy today in being part of His great eternal work!

Psalm 111:7,8 – “The Best King”

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

⁷The works of His hands [are] truth and justice;

   the all of His commands are trustworthy,

⁸Being established to forever to ages,

   being done in truth and uprightness.

Our world is filled with “kings” of all sorts – real “kings,” the presidents and dictators who rule over nations, and then various and sundry other “kings” who rule over every other aspect of our lives, the parents and teachers and policemen and bosses and regulators and all such. Also, in a sense, we are all kings over ourselves, deciding whether we will or won’t, always trying to rule over the little kingdom that is us.

What stands out to me in Psalm 111:7,8 is that the Lord is the best King. “Truth and justice,” “trustworthy commands,” “truth and uprightness” – in every possible way, God’s rule over us is a good rule. He is a good ruler.

This stands out to me particularly in contrast to all the other “rulers” I have to deal with. Our “government” is an almost constant grief to us precisely because they are “none of the above.” What Psalm 111:7,8 describes is precisely what we’re expecting from our elected officials – truth and justice, good laws, truth and uprightness – and yet all we see is corruption and utter incompetence. On the news last night I heard that some agency of the government had “accidentally” sent live anthrax virus to several laboratories. They are supposedly investigating it but assured the public that at no time was anyone exposed to any danger. I heard all of it and the words that filled my mind were, “lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies.” Something happened. Apparently. What it was we’ll never know. Are they really “investigating it?” Of course not. At most all they’re doing is some kind of diversionary damage control. Why did it happen? Was it really an accident? We’ll never know. Whether anyone was in any danger? Probably seriously. But the bottom line is I don’t believe anything they tell us. They have proven to me over a lifetime to be nothing but totally corrupt, utterly incompetent, and shameless liars who feed us what they want us to hear, tell us whatever they want us to think, and all of that with absolutely not the slightest concern whether what they do is right or whether what they say is true.

Very few of the other “rulers” in my life have ever been as bad as our government but the sad fact is that few have been people of “truth and uprightness.” I have had some really good bosses but then I’ve had some very bad ones. Anywhere in any business, I’ve seen very few people who were good managers. So many people, it seems to me, get into leadership positions and then basically just want to sit at their desk and hope no one bothers them. Very few people, it would appear, actually work at their jobs. There just simply are very few people you really could say you thoroughly trust.

And then there’s myself. I sadly find I just don’t seem to do a very good job ruling over me. To paraphrase Paul: “I have the desire to do what is good, but rarely seem to carry it out. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. What I do is not the good I want to, no, the evil I don’t want to do – this I keep on doing.” The fact is I just don’t do a very good job ruling over me.

Yikes. What a hopeless, cheerless botched up mess!

Enter the Lord.

⁷The works of His hands [are] truth and justice;

   the all of His commands are trustworthy,

⁸Being established to forever to ages,

   being done in truth and uprightness.

That’s our God. He is everything we could ever hope for in a King to rule over us.

Notice that the grammatical structure of verse 7 is actually kind of odd, yet the very oddity is instructive. It says, “The works of His hands [are] truth and justice.” You would think it would be expressed with predicate adjectives: “The works of His hands are true and just;” instead they are nouns, “truth and justice.” I think the Lord’s point is similar to when Jesus said, “I am the truth” in John 14:6. Same odd construction. And yet, when it is the Lord, it makes perfect sense. He not only speaks truth and acts truly, He is truth itself. He is the very fountain of truth. He cannot be or do otherwise because that is simply who He is. Satan is a liar and the father of lies. The lusts of our father we do. But God cannot be like us. He is truth. In the folly and blindness of our sins, we wonder if God can be trusted. The “gods” we create are invariably capricious and we imagine the God of the Bible to be like them. But verse 7 would remind us the very nature of our God, the very fabric of who He is and what He’s like, is truth. He cannot be otherwise. Dogs bark because they’re dogs. Lions roar because they’re lions. God speaks and acts truly because He is Truth.

This leads to the statement His works are justice. Same odd construction, yet same point. The Hebrew word for justice is much larger (as usual) than our English word and encompasses all of God’s rule over us. He is right rule. As He governs over us, as He rules sovereignly over the lives of men and nations, He not only rules rightly and rules well, He is right rule. When Jesus rules over us, Isaiah proclaims, “His name shall be called Amazing, Counselor, the Mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of peace. Of the increase of His government and peace, there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever” (9:6,7).

The second half of verse 7 is also odd: “All His commands are trustworthy.” Commands are either good or bad. We would normally think of promises as either trustworthy or not. Yet here God’s commands themselves are called trustworthy. I don’t think in English we’d ever describe our boss’s orders as “trustworthy.” And yet, in the very oddity, once again, I think we see the point. Even God’s commands – that which He expects us to do – derive from the very truth that is Him. We can utterly trust that, if we do as He says, it will in fact be best. He is justice. He can only rule well because that is who He is. When the government or a boss tells us something we must do, we have every reason to wonder, “Is this a good idea?” and too often it is not. Yet that will never ever be the case with God. We can rest assured all He commands is good and we can trust Him to rule us wisely and well.

Verse 8 only reiterates these truths, which is an oddity in itself. In the entire rest of this Psalm, each thought is contained in two lines (which we have divided up into single verses). In this case, the thought is expressed over four lines and our two verses. Verse 8 is actually expressed in participles, “-ing” verbals, pointing us back to verse 7 and, in effect, reiterating its teaching, which is a different structure from the rest of the Psalm. All His works are in fact firmly established and immovable, and all He’s doing is truth and uprightness. The word translated “uprightness” means literally “to go or be straight.” We say an honest man is a “straight-shooter.” We ask someone to “tell it to us straight.” When we do right, we walk a “straight path.” Same idea. It has been said of some men, “He was so crooked, when they buried him, they had to screw him into the ground.” Never so with God. There is no possible “crooked” with Him. All He does is absolutely “straight.”

It is an inestimable blessing to have this great and good God to rule over us. The government is corrupt and incompetent. So many people are unfortunately very poor rulers. And we are utterly incapable of ruling over ourselves. But our God is truth and justice. His rule is absolutely trustworthy. He’s always completely “straight” with us.

I’m so glad in this world of disappointment to have my God who is such a source of joy and confidence. May I trust Him more and may the truth and justice and uprightness of who He is rub off on me!

Psalm 111:6 – “Impossibleness”

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

⁶The power of His works He declares to His people;

   to give to them [the] inheritance of nations.

As with every other verse in this Psalm, the one before us is on the one hand a simple statement of truth while on the other hand infinitely profound.

The Lord certainly showed His power to the people of Israel by giving to them the land of Canaan. They were no doubt very aware that a bunch of former slaves could not possibly displace entire nations of settled warrior peoples. In our familiarity with that story, I fear we lose our sense of the utter absurdity of it all. And yet it did happen. It came to pass. They blew their horns and Jericho’s walls crumbed before them.

There are several thoughts which occur to me. I will try to record the ones that strike me the most.

First of all, the verse says that the Lord’s power is declared “to His people.” What happened to Israel still happens today. Other people may observe what happens in our lives and offer a thousand different explanations. But a true believer knows in their heart, whatever it was, it was impossible. A true believer of course is aware that anyone can get lucky and sink a basketball from full-court. But when the Lord does it for us, He allows us to see just how impossible it was or He might do several impossible things in a row or at the same time to the point where to us there is no question it was Him. It was just simply impossible. It was simply impossible that Israel should conquer Canaan and today the Lord fills our lives with the impossible as well – all to show to His people the power of His works.

I find Him doing such things almost constantly in my own life and I’m guessing that is true of anyone else who loves Him. I think I mentioned in an earlier blog on this Psalm that much of my life just seems impossible; and yet day after day after day He comes through and brings about those impossible things. He did it for Israel and for David and for Gideon and so many others and He’s still doing it today. He is showing His people the power of His works by constantly bringing about that which they are all too aware was simply impossible.

Along with that, something else to note is how Israel responded to the impossible task the Lord put in front of them. At the border of Canaan, looking full into the face of the utterly impossible, they completely lost it and said, “…the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large … we can’t attack those people, they are stronger than we are … We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them … If only we had died in Egypt! … Why is the Lord bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword?” (Numb 13:28-14:3).

First of all, just note that in fact they could see the challenge before them was impossible. That is precisely why they’re freaked out. “We can’t attack those people, they are stronger than we are!” It is impossible and they know it! Second of all, even in that statement we can see the problem. “We can’t attack those people, they are stronger than we are!” Who’s being left out of this equation? The Lord, of course. The One for whom “nothing shall be impossible!” And thirdly, who can’t see their own face in this picture? They are me. I am them. That is precisely how I respond to the impossibilities in my life. Freak out.

Hmmmmm. My God is the God of the Impossible. He likes to “declare the power of His works to His people” by making the impossible happen. I can see that. He’s been doing exactly that my whole life. As I sit here pondering, it strikes me that I would be totally good with it if I could sit off to the side and just watch it happen, like sitting in my armchair watching the Olympics. Go, God! You can do it! You’re awesome! I think my problem is that He involves me in it. He won’t usually let me sit in the stands and watch. He pulls me out on the field, hands me a bat, and says, “Play ball!” Unfortunately for me, all the other players are thirty feet tall and my bat is a toothpick. When I say, “But Lord! I can’t do this! This is impossible!” He just smiles and nudges me up to the plate. Then usually after three balls, two strikes, and about twelve rain delays, I suddenly realize I just hit a home run (not sure how or when it happened) and I’m rounding the bases. As I do so, I am always keenly aware it wasn’t me. It was Him. He did the impossible. Again. In my life. ^“The power of His works He declares to His people …” by doing the impossible in their life.

I want Him to do the impossible in my life. I am surrounded by the impossible. There are so many things I wish could happen, so many things I even think He wants to happen, but I don’t see how it’s possible. I certainly don’t see anything I could do to make them happen. “We can’t attack those people, they are stronger than we are!” I’m not smart enough. I don’t have the energy. Nobody listens to me anyway. I don’t have the time or the money. I don’t have a clue. I’m just one man. Hmmmm. What’s missing from all those statements? The Lord, of course. The God of the Impossible.

Well. So I pray for help and go out into my impossible world. God help me to actually enjoy all the impossibleness and actually know it’s all there so You can use me and amaze me and show me (and Your people) Your greatness. Thank you for letting me be a part of what You’re doing. Help me be a more willing part. Soli Deo Gloria.