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.

Psalm 111:10 – “More King Business”

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

¹⁰[The] beginning of wisdom [is] the fear of the LORD.

  Good understanding to the all of their doings.

  His praise [is] one standing forever.

Somewhat continuing my thoughts from the last post – As I look back over the entire Psalm, the over-riding point, it seems to me, is to acknowledge the Lord’s sovereign and good rule over all Creation. Especially in an ancient’s way of thinking, it’s no wonder the psalmist concludes with the statements of vv. 9 & 10, “Holy and fearsome is His name! The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom!” As discussed before, the ancients lived their lives under absolute despots and “fear” of those in authority was a significant and proper part of their lives. In the case of good kings, it could co-exist with love but even in love one could never lose sight of that king’s majesty. Even in love, he still held the power of life and death over you.

I guess what I’m trying to say is I think that is why I (we) struggle to really understand this concept of “the fear of the Lord.” We (Americans) just don’t live in a world where one fears those in authority. Add to that the fact that the NT seems more to emphasize God’s love and the whole “fear” thing becomes a somewhat vague or nebulous concept to us.

Even living in that ancient world, a good example of someone who had to learn the lesson taught here in Psalm 111 was Nebuchadnezzar. Even having been warned by Daniel, one day he stood atop his palace, surveyed the city of Babylon, and said to himself, “Is not this the great Babylon I have built … by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?” (Dan 4:30). Immediately a voice from Heaven spoke, “Seven times will pass over you until you acknowledge that the Most High rules over the kingdoms of man” (4:32) and suddenly the “great” king was eating grass like a cow. Of course, he did come to his senses and was restored but then, interestingly, his grandson Belshazzar did not. When, many years later, the hand appeared writing on the wall, Daniel told him, “You, Belshazzar, have not humbled yourself, though you knew all this (what had happened to your grandfather) … You did not honor the God who holds in His hand your life and all your ways” (5:22,23). That night Cyrus the Mede conquered Babylon and executed Belshazzar.

“The Most High rules over the kingdoms of man.” “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.”

It is easy to see the error of Nebuchadnezzar and his grandson, but can I see it in my own life? I’m certainly no great king but do I really acknowledge in my mundane everyday life that “the Most High rules over the kingdoms of man?” My “kingdom” may be small and seemingly insignificant but it is the world I live in. As I said earlier, I don’t think I’ve ever really understood this. In my mind, it’s been my world, my life, my work, my problems, and I need the Lord to step into my life and help me. It has never occurred to me before just how much it is true that this not my world, it is not my life. Even my assignments at work or the jobs I need to do around the house are not really my work. My “problems” are not even really my problems. This is God’s world, not mine. This life I live I only live because He has granted me this short window of time where I can be a part of what He, in fact, is doing.

I need to insert here that, at a point like this, typically American Christians start imagining some great “work” they need to run off and do “somewhere,” but I totally reject that mentality. As Paul told the Corinthians, “Let a man remain in the place of his calling.” I don’t need to run off “somewhere” to “serve the Lord.” In every epistle of the NT, God calls us to live our lives for Him right where we are. “Husbands love your wives.” “Children obey your parents.” “Whatever you do, do it heartily, as unto the Lord.” I fear this subtle error robs God’s people of ever really realizing exactly what I think we are all supposed to see in Psalm 111 – that “the Most High rules over the kingdoms of man” and therefore, in my life, in the mundane of my everyday existence, at my job, while I mow the grass, when I’m paying for my groceries – when I’m moving about in my “kingdom” I need to see it all as God’s world. I either serve Him in that world, or I simply do not serve Him at all.

But back to seeing it as God’s world. The big issue is not whether He will help me with my world. The big issue is whether I’m being a willing part of His. In His world, in the only real world, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. I still have trouble wrapping my mind around the “fear” motif but I can understand that all day, every day, I should be awed by His majesty, by all we’ve read in Psalm 111, that He rules over everything.

This is precisely why it says, “Good understanding to the all of their doings,” or, as smoothed out by the NIV, “All who follow His precepts have good understanding.” If reality is that this is His world, then it’s only going to make sense and “work” when I act accordingly. When I’m forgetting that fact, it is only logical that something isn’t going to “work.” Things won’t “fit” together. I’ll always be fighting the current. On the other hand, when I do get it figured out, when I stop saying, “Lord, help me with my world,” and start saying, “Lord, how do you want me to fit into Your world?” – then there is any hope I’ll really makes sense of anything.

Jesus’ words come to my mind: “My meat is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to finish it” (John 4:34).

I’m still figuring it all out. I’m still trying to understand how to think and act and pray differently in this new paradigm, with God at the center instead of me.

I don’t know if I’ll ever really be comfortable with the “fear of the Lord” being prominent in my mind. I don’t know if it is a NT thing but when I think of Him, it is first of all His love and grace and kindness that leave me utterly awed. But I think, having studied Psalm 111, the “fear” thing makes a lot more sense. Most of all, it does make sense to me that I have long needed this total paradigm shift.

God help me live out the rest of my days as Your days – whatever that means.

Thank you for Psalm 111. What an eye-opener! Now on to Psalm 112 which I believe will be about exactly what I’m currently wrestling with – how does a man live who believes Psalm 111? The Lord says, “I’m glad you asked. Keep reading. I’ve included Psalm 112 just for this purpose.”

Psalm 111:10 – “King Business”

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

¹⁰[The] beginning of wisdom [is] the fear of the LORD.

  Good understanding to the all of their doings.

  His praise [is] one standing forever.

I’ve been pondering over v9 a lot and praying for understanding of its last line, “Holy and fearsome is His name.” As I asked in an earlier post, what does it really mean? Can I actually say those words with understanding, or are they just a religious cliché, easily spoken utterly without the slightest idea what the words mean? “Holy and fearsome is His name.” That holiness moves Seraphim to endless praise. Do I even know what it means?

Since I couldn’t seem to come to any conclusion, I had to just move on to verse 10. I think in a perhaps small way verse 10 helps me understand verse 9. I hope by gathering my thoughts here they will coalesce into something helpful.

Here’s the deal: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Pretty much my whole life I’ve listened to people trying to put their finger on what that means. On the one hand, the Pharisees have loved to threaten people with God’s harshness – “You’d better not sin, or God will send down lightning bolts to utterly destroy you! You’d better fear the Lord!” On the other hand (and perhaps in reaction to that), people rush to say, “No, no, no! It doesn’t mean to be afraid of God! He is a God of love!” The one loves to warn of hell, the other can’t bear to talk about it. So which is it? Is it most important to be afraid of God or to love Him?

I would suggest that our inability to answer that simple question, to even define “the fear of the Lord,” is at the root of our inability to comprehend holiness.

Here is what I mean: We live in America. The very foundation of our nation was built to protect us from tyranny. Our forefathers suffered under the cruel oppression of a king who cared nothing for us and used us mercilessly. That’s why they dumped the tea in the harbor. And that is specifically why they wrote the Declaration of Independence. The whole idea goes all the way back to the Magna Carta and the idea that kings rule by the permission of their people. Our forefathers established a nation built to protect our freedoms.

In so doing, we created a world where rulers have limited power. That is the point of the three branches of government, the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. No one of them has absolute rule. No one of them can be a tyrant because everything he does is subject to the others.

Rewind to 1000 BC. As with pretty much all of human history, the people of the ancient world lived under absolute tyrants. A king, by definition in their minds, not only made the laws, he also enforced them. He could grant your request or have your head cut off. He could send an army to protect your village or send another one to wipe you out. He could enrich you or destroy you – and all at his own whim. I’ve heard the story that a Shah was visiting an English king and while there, someone brought a case to him in the Shah’s hearing. The Shah said to the king, “Why don’t you just kill him?” The English king responded, “We don’t do things that way.” The Shah responded, “What’s the point of being king if you can’t kill people?

The Shah’s world is still run where rulers have absolute power and hence are greatly to be feared. Here is where I think we struggle. In that Shah’s world, as it has been throughout human history, even the very best of kings obviously is someone to be feared. Even if you are assured he is a good king and loves his people, still he bears that absolute power and is someone to be feared.

My point is that our Constitution has created for us a world where we don’t have to “fear” the king. Everyone who rules over us is themselves limited.

And that is, in itself, a good thing.

People cannot be trusted with power.

But.

That doesn’t change the fact that God does rule in absolute power. He can take you to Heaven or throw you in hell, bless you or curse you. He absolutely rules in the lives of men and nations. He is in fact greatly to be feared.

But that doesn’t change the fact that He is a very good King who absolutely loves His people and is constantly doing us good. He is a God who can be both feared and loved at the same time. If I let myself wander back into that ancient world, let myself see “the king” through their eyes, I can see how the most basic thing with any king was to fear him. All kings were to be feared. That was a given. Whether or not you could also love him depended on who he was. And so it is with the Lord. The first thing we’d better understand is that He is THE KING and only after that are we free to also embrace His love and grace and mercy, His tenderness and kindness, His Fatherhood and friendship.

I’ve said for years, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom … but it is only the beginning. The end of wisdom is to “love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our mind and with all our strength.” I think the key here in Psalm 111 is perhaps that you can’t have the end without the beginning. In the OT, they were big on “the fear of the Lord” while the NT seems to camp more on loving Him. But both are present in both Testaments. And both should be present in our hearts today.  Either without the other becomes a monstrosity. But together they make our world everything it ought to be.

Our God does rule.

And He rules in love.

“His praise endures forever!”