Psalm 34:15-22

Psalm 34:15-22

B.

“The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry.  The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth.  When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.  The lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.  Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.  He keeps all his bones; not one of them are broken.  Affliction will slay that wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned.  The Lord redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.”

There are many evils in the world.  So much that it is impossible for a man to live his life without the afflictions that come from the conflict, selfishness, instability, and mischief of his own doing and that of others.  We are threatened to be tricked, cheated, oppressed, and misused everywhere we turn.  Affliction produces sorrow, and everywhere I go, I see men suffering from the sorrow that afflicts them from merely being a participant in this fallen state of affairs.  Every man, whether believer or not, has untold sorrow from the years of suffering that he has endured in this life.  The difference in Jesus Christ is that the righteous have the attention of the Lord in heaven, and His ear is always poised to hear their cries, waiting in anticipation to drench them in an abundance of love, mercy, and deliverance.  The face of the Lord, though, is against those who do evil, and they stand to be cut off by the one who has the power to cut them off—to be salted with fire.

            Now, the mistake I usually make—the manner in which I am most easily deceived—is concerning what differentiates a righteous man from a wicked man.  (Even in the interpretation and application of the word of God we must be diligently sober-minded and accountable to others.  For it is when the truth threatens evil by comforting the righteous that the righteous are most threatened by evil to be deceived in their endeavors to rightly divide the truth.)  The bible says that the ‘redeemed’ of the Lord, His servants, are those who take refuge in Him specifically because they are unrighteous, and God has said that all those who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.   Therefore, the righteous are not the strong and the wise but are the ones who look to God for their wisdom and strength.  Righteous men are only characterized by righteous deeds if they have made a habit of crying out to the Lord for their help in the midst of all the wickedness and affliction that causes them sorrow.  It is only the broken-hearted that God draws near to because it is only the broken-hearted who draw near to God.  God only saves the crushed in spirit because it is the crushed in spirit who have no faith in themselves.

            The wicked man, though, refuses God’s help, whether from stubbornness of pride or ignorance of evil, dismissing God’s authority to dictate what is good and His power to save from what is evil.  Either way, if affliction does not break him, it will consume him in the end.  Affliction serves as evidence that the existence of good is only the appearance of good, and where evil exists, no good can exist at all.  In other words, our heart desires what is good, but that desire is frustrated by the evil that exists because the good that has been abandoned.  To be righteous is only to acknowledge this reality and turn to God for help and salvation from a wicked world that will soon be cut off because it is full of evil.  Wicked men are the ones who pretend that the good they find is the only good that exists because it is what they think they want.  However, when they find it is fruitless to defeat evil or stand up to their sorrow, to continue to cling to such shadows prove that they do not love goodness at all, but darkness, because their deeds are evil. 

            The righteous who are ‘being’ saved are not saved from the presence of affliction, only that they will not be consumed by it, just as we are not saved from the presence of sin, but only its power to destroy us.  In all cases for the righteous, sorrow leads us to the Righteous Comforter—The Spirit of the Living God—who identifies us in our hearts, prevailing over our sorrow, to be alive in Christ.  Our joy is our hope, not our righteousness.  Do not mistake righteousness for being infallible.  For, anyone who believes this will not be led to sorrow but overtaken by despair, thinking that God has abandoned him.  We must believe that all our unrighteousness leads us to a righteous God, and we must be led to Him if we are to overcome, so that in our learned hatred for what is evil, we may be a source of refuge and light to those who still live with deep sorrow.