Measured up

DEVOTION

PSALMS

MEASURED UP

Ps 101

101:1 Of David. A psalm.

I will sing of your love and justice; to you, O LORD, I will sing praise. 2 I will be careful to lead a blameless life — when will you come to me?

I will walk in my house with blameless heart. 3 I will set before my eyes no vile thing.

The deeds of faithless men I hate; they will not cling to me. 4 Men of perverse heart shall be far from me; I will have nothing to do with evil.

5 Whoever slanders his neighbor in secret, him will I put to silence; whoever has haughty eyes and a proud heart, him will I not endure.

6 My eyes will be on the faithful in the land, that they may dwell with me; he whose walk is blameless will minister to me.

7 No one who practices deceit will dwell in my house; no one who speaks falsely will stand in my presence.

8 Every morning I will put to silence all the wicked in the land; I will cut off every evildoer from the city of the LORD.

NIV

This seems to be more of a conversation between David and God than just a song of praise or of petition. The first four verses appear to be what David is vowing to God and the remaining verses are God’s response. So let us see how we measure up to the set of standards David believes God has set before him. First we do sing, even if off key, of the love and justice of the LORD. We sing praise to him. So far so good. We try to lead a blameless life, but it would appear David failed as do we. However, David did not have the covering of the blood of Jesus as we do, and he did not have the declaration of God we do, as God has declared us to be holy and blameless in his sight. This is all due to Jesus, and not of anything of us. Now we do have the choice whether to set a vile thing before our eyes or not. Perhaps it would be good to understand this word translated vile. The Hebrew word has the direct meaning of without profit, worthlessness, by extension destruction, wicked. But thinking about looking at that which is worthless or not profitable for our life could mean a whole lot of things. Much of what we watch on television is of little profit for our lives, comedies, horror, violence, immoral and then there is all the sports and news and whatever else. How about all the stuff we see on the internet, or in magazines? Then books, what kind of things do we read about? Anything profitable or are they vile? There is a lot to ponder on, when it comes to our forms of entertainment, or pastimes. We do, however dislike the deeds of faithless people, those who do not know Jesus, and we will not cling or become like them. That does not mean we do not associate with them for how will they hear about Jesus if we are not living life among them? But we chose not to do life as they do. It would seem David has more of an isolationist viewpoint, but that may not be how God views our life as he did insist that we are to go into all the world and preach the good news. How else will they hear if no one tells them, and how else will someone tell them if that someone is not sent? But, metaphorically, they are far off from our inner most being, we do not live like them, or want that kind of thinking to be at the center of our life. In our heart we desire to have nothing to do with evil, the things which are evil.  How do we measure up? God states that he will not endure people who have haughty eyes and a proud heart. That means a high look, or thinking more of oneself then we should. God will not endure a person like that. No, we are admonished to humble ourselves before the Lord, he will lift us up. He watches over us, because we are in Christ and therefor blameless and faithful and we do dwell in his house, in the kingdom of God. We are aliens here in this world, we do not speak their language, and we are not familiar with their customs or lifestyle. This is a foreign land to us for we dwell with God. This practicing deceit thing, has to do with pretending we are all good, all right, that we are a “Good Christian”. God knows the deepest secrets of our heart and mind. He knows we fail to live up to perfection, which is why Jesus took all our sin, past, present and future to the cross. When we think we are good is to be deceitful to God, and that just cannot stand. We have to speak the truth to God, who we are, are imperfections, our faults, and our sin. But that speaking false also applies to how we talk to others. God does not like all the false prophets or teachers out there. They will not dwell with him. They are not going to stand in his presence. We have to be careful to teach only his truth, speak truth into the lives of others and speak truth to God. How are we measuring up? Evil will be cut off from the land, evildoers will be cut off. They will not stand in the assembly of the righteous. Praise God we can say because we are in Christ and he is our righteousness, we will stand in the presence of our God, and we will dwell in his house forever. We have been weighed, we have been measured and instead of being found wanting, we have measured up because we are in Christ.