Imperative Pleading

“Make me know Your ways, O Lord.” Psalm 25:4-8 [NASB]

The psalmist in these verses was brave. He issued imperative statements to God. Instead of thinking of verses 4-8 and 14-20 as commands to God, we should consider them as pleas from someone who feared his enemies and his own sinfulness.

Consider this idea from today’s point of view. When a child goes to his or her parent and demands ice cream or a new toy, often that demand is unfilled. If that child calls out, “Help me!” recognition is there of who the parent has been for that child in the past and what the strong connection is between them, then issues forth in a cry or plea to do what the parent does better than the child, help.

The psalmist did that. His seven imperative statements in these four verses are cries for help. Why did he cry for help? He recognized his inability to help himself. More importantly, he recognized God could help him. How did the psalmist realize God could help him? He understood this because he had life experience with God before or knew of people who did. Either way, the psalmist knew about God-His ways, truth, salvation, faithfulness, love, mercy, kindness, compassion, and forgiveness.

The psalmist recognized something else about himself besides his lack of power, wisdom, and might, and he openly admitted it. He acknowledged his sins and transgressions-his turning away from God and his rebellious life. The psalmist knew he had turned away from God. That realization means he knew God. The hymn writer had a relationship with Him but had turned his back on God and walked in his own rebellious ways. We each do that. Paul said in Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

These things established the basis for the psalmist’s plea. For what did he ask? Did he ask for a mansion or sports car? Did he ask for a big paycheck or huge inheritance? No, at that moment, and like most of us when our backs are against the wall, the psalmist recognized his departure from God and begged for God to restore him to a right relationship with Him.

In verse four, this sinful man, whose enemies chased him, begged God to help him recognize, acknowledge, consider, and confess God and His ways. This was the first step. It was a static request for the moment to help him see God, so he could return to a right relationship with Him. The psalmist did not ask God to help him only at that time. He asked God to “teach” him His paths. This teaching is not a static once-off event, but a dynamic event that God skillfully taught, and the psalmist practiced as he walked with Him daily in His ways and in the manner of life He led. The first thing the psalmist pleaded God for was to “know” His ways. Next, he asked God to “teach” him His paths. Many of us only want help to get unstuck from the hole we cannot escape. We are like the car with a tire bogged in the mud. We try everything to get the car out of the hole. We rev the engine so much in our attempt to get the car to move that we make the muddy hole deeper and we gain no traction. The psalmist understood in his heart he needed and wanted more than a band-aid to help him out for now. He recognized his need to walk with God and learn from him daily.

For what else did the psalmist plead to God? Consider he asked God to lead him in His paths in verse four. Recognizing the paths as God’s teaching him, he recognized the truths of God, true. God is faithful and truthful. The psalmist pleaded for God to bend, mold, and lead him in His truthfulness and faithfulness so he would become like Him. He recognized his sinfulness-his lack of faithfulness and integrity to God and other people. Once again, the psalmist pleaded for God to teach him-to walk with him daily teaching him and helping him put it into practice. This requires and creates a growing relationship with the Lord. The psalmist punctuated his desire for a relationship by the end of this verse when he said, “For You I wait all day long.” This hymn writer declared his desire to be with God and grow in his relationship with Him.

The psalmist recognized another thing so many people shutter themselves not to see. He recognized and admitted God is his salvation. This hymn writer said, God is his deliverance and rescue from sin and death. With this great “Ah Ha,” the desire of this hymn-singer’s heart echoed through history. “You, O God, are my salvation. You are my strength. Teach me Your ways. I desire to be with You daily.”

With verse six, the psalmist’s recognition of his sinfulness and God’s righteousness glared in his face. He begged God to remember His compassion and lovingkindness-His deep mercy and love, and His faithful kindness and favor. The psalmist realized He did not deserve God’s kindness and favor, but he begged God to remember who He has always been. God’s grace is written through the pages of history, from Adam until God’s kingdom comes. Many times, people deserved judgment for their hateful ways, but God had mercy on them, on us, and showed kindness instead of judgment. This kindness and mercy is of what the psalmist asked God to remember and apply it to himself and his own sinfulness.

Consider a child whose parent told her not to touch the vase from the time she could walk. As she grows and can reach the vase more easily, she keeps touching it. Each time, her parent said, “No.” Finally, she is big enough to pick it up, and then drop it. That is sin. Sin separates us from God and deserves punishment. All the times the parent said “No” when the child touched it is like when God gives mercy and kindness to the sinners. The psalmist pleaded for God to have mercy and kindness on him, the same mercy He showed to people from ages past-ancient days.

With verse seven, the psalmist begged God more. This verse is a negative reiteration of verse six. He stated it for emphasis. “Do not recall or consider the sins of my youth or the rebellious acts that broke Your trust in me,” he said. The psalmist knows he sinned. He recognized God’s righteousness and begged for His mercy and kindness. The hymn writer restated verse six with a twist. He did what every person and everything is supposed to do-bring glory to God. The psalmist said, “Remember and recall all your mercies and kindness from past generations and consider them with regard to me, not that I deserve Your mercy and kindness, but so that the nations may hear again how great, merciful, and kind You are.”

Consider this possibility. When you forgive your colleague at work repeatedly and the whole company knows the problem the colleague has given you, they consider you are justified to attack that person. Is it okay to attack or deride the person? You are justified according to humanly standards. Yet, you consider the person and what he or she did, and instead you forgive him/her again. What rings out from that action? Mercy. Kindness. Wonder. Who is the colleague who would forgive so many times? Does it have to do with his/her belief in God? This worker astounded his/her colleagues. What this worker did for the colleague who kept causing problems at work is what the psalmist asked God to do for him. Forgive him for his name’s sake. More importantly, he/she pointed toward God with his/her actions. The worker forgave his colleague for God’s name sake. God received the glory.

We don’t deserve help from God. We don’t deserve God’s forgiveness, mercy, compassion, love, salvation, or grace. It’s a good thing God doesn’t always give what we deserve. Paul said in Romans 10:13, “For whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.” The psalmist realized he was not strong enough to defeat his enemies. He understood one band-aid would not fix the problem every day. The hymn writer recognized he needed God to walk with him daily teaching him. More importantly, the psalmist recognized his sinfulness and his need for salvation that can only come from God. He begged for God’s mercy, not because he deserved it, but because of God’s fame from the past and His glory now and forever. The psalmist asked for salvation because of who God is not because of who he was. That is the basis of our salvation. We come to God knowing He is the Savior and we are sinners. We come to Him repenting and asking for His divine forgiveness and mercy. He says come.

Lord, I do not deserve Your love or mercy. I do not deserve forgiveness for all I have done wrong against You and other people. Still, I come to You anyway asking for Your forgiveness and for salvation from sin and death. Lord, You are the Savior. Please save me, remake me, and walk with me daily teaching me Your ways. Amen.

Intimate Assurance

“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.