“The
secret of the Lord is for those who fear Him, and He will make them know His
covenant.” Psalm 25:14 [NASB]
This verse, translated
from Hebrew, means the intimacy of the Lord or the friendship of the Lord is
for those who fear Him, who are in awe of and reverence Him, and He makes known
to them His covenant, His pledge to His people. David avowed to God he had an
intimate friendship with the Lord because of his awe of Him and their covenant
of faithfulness to each other. To David, what made a person intimate with the
Lord and in a covenant with Him? He recorded from verses four through twelve
who the person is that is a friend of God.
In verses four and
five, and expanded in verse eight and nine, God teaches His friend His ways and
paths. This assumes the friend of God yearns to have God in his or her life and
seeks Him to grow closer to Him. In
verses four and five, David desired to know God-His ways, paths, and truth. He
expressed his desire was so great he would wait for God all day. With verses
eight and nine, David proclaimed God is good and upright and so He willingly
and desirously wants to teach sinners, all people, His way. God desires to have
a relationship with all people, not just the ones who are good, or who think
they are good. David foreshadowed the Messiah’s coming for all people because
God wants to have a relationship, a covenant with everyone. With verse nine, he
said, “God leads the humble in justice and teaches the humble His way.” As a
person draws closer to God, that person becomes renewed in the image of God and
is humble. God continues to teach that person to transform him or her into
Himself-to make him or her humble. As the person learns more, he or she learns
to care for other people. Justice, like that of God’s, becomes what the person
seeks for every person.
David continued to
describe the person who desires to be in an intimate friendship of covenant
faithfulness with God in verse six and ten. In verse six, he recognized his
sinfulness and neediness, and remembered God’s everlasting compassion and
lovingkindness towards Him and throughout history. God’s lovingkindness (His goodness,
kindness, and faithfulness) David recognized and stood in awe of. Then, with
verse ten, he said these paths of God, of lovingkindness and truth, are
available for those people who keep His covenant and testimonies. To each
person who desires God and seeks to be in an intimate friendship with Him, God
leads in His ways, He teaches and instills in the person, His goodness,
kindness, faithfulness, and His truth (truth of His faithfulness, stability,
and continuance). To each person who comes to God, He leads them to know and
learn, and then to become like Him with His characteristics of truth,
compassion, faithfulness, goodness, and kindness. David desired an intimate
friendship with God. He desired that which God freely gave to him to become
part of his own being. David wanted to live out in the world what God gave to
him, these characteristics. He wanted to keep this covenant with God by sharing
with the world about God and what God put into him when He renewed him.
With verses seven and
eleven, David recognized he was a sinner. He understood God is the One who can
forgive and cleanse all people from their sins so they can be in a relationship
with Him, be made new in His image. He asked the Lord not to remember his sins,
but in His goodness, kindness, and faithfulness remember Him with love and
cleanse Him. David went further in verse eleven. He recognized he could not
save himself and pleaded with the Lord, because of His glorious name’s sake, to
pardon his great sin. David realized his sins were all against the Lord; they
separated him from God. He recognized God’s great love and wanted His glory
proclaimed continually so asked for forgiveness so the world would hear again
of His goodness and faithfulness.
David ended this
segment of Psalm 25 with a rhetorical question that pointed to his thematic
statement. He said, “Who is the man who fears and awes the Lord? He will
instruct him in the way he should choose.” The person who awes and reverences
the Lord is the one who seeks to be with God and is the one to whom God teaches
His paths and ways. This person is the one who chooses God’s ways out of
lovingkindness, that is goodness, kindness, and faithfulness, for Him.
The person who fears
the Lord in awe and reverence is the one in an intimate friendship with Him and
seeks to know and follow Him. That person chooses to be faithful to his or her
pledge/promise of love to God. That person chooses God above all others.
Are you one of those
people?
Have you
recognized your sinfulness and separation from God?
Are you humble
because of following the Lord, His ways, His teachings, and His paths?
Do you seek
justice and truth?
Are you good,
kind, and faithful because of God’s goodness, kindness, and faithfulness to
you?
Do you crave and
seek God in an intimate friendship?
Are you faithful
to God and His covenant faithfulness to you?
Are you this person who
fears the Lord? If you are, the intimate friendship with the Lord is yours and
you have no need other than to be in His presence. Your eyes will continually
be toward the Lord (vs 15). You will rest in assurance nothing can pluck you
from His hand, neither loneliness or affliction, troubles or distresses, nor
sins or enemies.
v You
know with assurance God is your Guard and Deliverer; He is your refuge.
v You
will wait with assurance that God’s integrity and uprightness will preserve
you.
You
will wait with assurance for your covenant God because of His goodness,
kindness, faithfulness, and compassion to you, and yours to Him. He redeems
His own.
God doesn’t only seek
the good and right. Jesus said He came for the sick. He came to call the
sinners (Mark 2:17). God wants to be in a relationship with each of us. He
makes sinners clean. God is intimate with the upright (Proverbs 3:32). He is
the one who makes each of us upright (Psalm 25:7 & 10). Just as the Lord
spoke to Moses as a friend, He sought Him out and Moses craved Him (Exodus
33:11), so today God desires to be in a covenant (a faithful, intimate
friendship) with you.
Lord,
God almighty, I do not deserve anything You offer to me. Yet, You keep calling
to me to come to You. Lord, I do not understand this great love and mercy of
Yours, still, I am drawn to You. I am sinful and should not be near You.
Cleanse me so I can come before You. Draw me into an intimate friendship with
You for which I can never be sated so that I continue to desire You. Don’t let
me go. Keep calling to my heart. Thank you for Your patient calling to me, that
you never gave up on me. Thank you for your unending love, mercy, and
faithfulness. I am Yours; draw me to You and never let me go. My heart I give
to You forevermore. Amen.
