“To You, O LORD, I lift up my soul.
O my God, I trust in You;
Let me not be ashamed;
Let not my enemies triumph over me.
Indeed, let no one who waits on You be ashamed;
Let those be ashamed who deal treacherously without cause.
Show me Your ways, O LORD;
Teach me Your paths.
Lead me in Your truth and teach me,
For You are the God of my salvation;
On You I wait all the day.
Remember, O LORD, Your tender mercies and Your lovingkindnesses,
For they are from of old.
Do not remember the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions;
According to Your mercy remember me,
For Your goodness’ sake, O LORD.
Good and upright is the LORD;
Therefore He teaches sinners in the way.
The humble He guides in justice,
And the humble He teaches His way.
All the paths of the LORD are mercy and truth,
To such as keep His covenant and His testimonies.
For Your name’s sake, O LORD,
Pardon my iniquity, for it is great.
Who is the man that fears the LORD?
Him shall He teach in the way He chooses.
He himself shall dwell in prosperity,
And his descendants shall inherit the earth.
The secret of the LORD is with those who fear Him,
And He will show them His covenant.
My eyes are ever toward the LORD,
For He shall pluck my feet out of the net.
Turn Yourself to me, and have mercy on me,
For I am desolate and afflicted.
The troubles of my heart have enlarged;
Bring me out of my distresses!
Look on my affliction and my pain,
And forgive all my sins.
Consider my enemies, for they are many;
And they hate me with cruel hatred.
Keep my soul, and deliver me;
Let me not be ashamed, for I put my trust in You.
Let integrity and uprightness preserve me,
For I wait for You.
Redeem Israel, O God,
Out of all their troubles!” – Psalm 25:1-22
There is a cause for the evil we see in this world today. It’s called sin. Sin is the root of all woe, and it exists as a cancerous tumor, or a festering sore. It takes what is good and twists and mutilates it into that which is not good. Its fruit is death, and its destiny is everlasting destruction.
Sin does not come from God, and neither was it part of God’s work of creation. Way back in Genesis 1:31, the Lord “saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.” The universe was unstained and perfect. Mankind was perfect. Sin came about in our world when mankind took one of the Lord’s good gifts – our free will – and with it chose to misuse all His other good gifts. From that one act of rebellious disobedience was born the world and the people we see today. It has been a vicious descent. And it’s going to get worse.
Sin is why King David cried out to the Lord in this psalm. He was troubled from both within and without: within, because of his own sin; without, because of the sin of others. He was distressed and in need, and he knew where to go for help: the God who redeems.
Justly speaking, the Lord should have blotted His creation out of existence at the moment Adam sinned. It had been broken; ruined; infected. Even if the Lord did not destroy us Himself, He could have simply withdrawn and allowed sin to take its inevitable course: self-destruction. But He didn’t withdraw. He didn’t judge. He knew the choice Adam and Eve would make even before He created them, and He had already prepared His response: redemption. The promise of Messiah is found even as early as Genesis 3:15. Before the curse of mankind or creation was even uttered, the Lord said to the serpent (Satan), “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.”
Adam and Eve corrupted themselves. Their descendants would be, and were, born corrupted. Creation was subjected to futility.
But God! “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 2:4-7)
The Lord did not forsake us, not even when we turned against Him! Jesus Christ is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. The plan for our redemption was set in motion from the very moment the Lord spoke the universe into existence. The Lord knew what it was going to require; He knew it would cost the life of His spotless, beloved, uniquely begotten Son; He knew it would lead to that cross on Calvary. And He saved us anyway!
Is it any wonder that it was this same Lord to whom David cried out when he was distressed? David was struggling with his own sin, with the sin of others, and with the fallen creation around him. So he went to the God who was able to save him. The God whose tender mercies and lovingkindnesses were from of old. The God who was coming to redeem him out of his transgressions! It didn’t matter what David had done or how powerful the forces against him were. Our God is able to save to the uttermost. The only question is, will you let Him?
David let Him. The Lord does not desire that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance; however, He will not violate that free will He gave us. He won’t force Himself on us if we don’t want Him. It’s faith, and faith alone, that He requires of us to be saved, because it is by faith that we accept His grace and allow Him to become our Lord and Savior. We’ve all been given the capacity to choose and believe. We’re all given the opportunity – and opportunity after opportunity – to choose and believe. We’re all given the information we need to choose and believe. What our choice boils down to in the end is, which do you love more? The Light that has come into the world, or the works of darkness? Jesus says in John 3:16-21, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.”
Strictly speaking, the only sin that condemns a soul to hell is unbelief. The Spirit of God is in the world right now, convicting it of sin, and restraining sin’s devastating effects. His voice is to be in our conscience, in God’s word, in history, and in the testimony of His children. Rejecting that voice and hardening your heart against it is blaspheming the Spirit of God. Pharaoh hardened his heart, hardened his heart, hardened his heart; finally it was God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. Pharaoh made his choice. God confirmed it.
“Good and upright is the LORD; therefore He teaches sinners in the way. The humble He guides in justice, and the humble He teaches His way.” (Psalm 25:8-9) It takes humility to make the choice of David. It takes humility to bite the bullet, recognize your sinfulness, and cry out to the Lord to save you from it. Thanks to sin, personal humility is something we find repulsive. Like Pharaoh, and like the Pharisees, many of us prefer to die in our sins rather than sacrifice our hideous and unmerited pride. We refuse to believe God knows best and thus stubbornly plow straight into a pit. We spurn His precious, glorious, beautiful salvation for an eternity of self-inflicted torment.
But the “man of who fears the LORD”? David writes, “Him shall He teach in the way He chooses. He himself shall dwell in prosperity, and his descendants shall inherit the earth. The secret of the LORD is with those who fear Him, and He will show them His covenant. My eyes are ever toward the LORD, for He shall pluck my feet out of the net.” (Vs. 12-15)
The difference between belief and unbelief is literally as stark as eternity. Heaven versus hell. Life versus death. Salvation versus destruction. A deep, abiding, eternal relationship with the Sovereign Creator – from whom is all that is good – versus an equally deep, abiding, and eternal separation from Him. Could the right choice be any clearer? No one truly desires evil for themselves! Even if it is a dear love for the pleasures of sin that holds you back from God, you are selling yourself short. Pleasure is of God. It may give us passing “pleasure” to indulge in sinful behavior, such as fornication, but the actual pleasure is from the Lord. He created it. He gave us the guidelines to enjoy it in the fullest way possible. If you are not following those guidelines, you will find that simply by doing so you are driving the pleasure you pursued farther and farther out of your reach. The physical fruit of the tree in the midst of Eden was not evil; what made eating it evil was that God had said not to. Trying to have anything “good” without God is like trying to enjoy cake without the cake. It doesn’t work. Who is the man who desires life, and loves many days, that he may see good? (Psalm 34:11-12) The Redeeming God is his only answer. The secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him; that is, the closeness with Him that each and every soul yearns for – the realization of life and love and goodness and purpose – is only to be had when we acknowledge Him as Lord and Savior. We need Him. We need Him desperately. And oh, how He answered that need! He died to show us His covenant and make our redemption possible. He wants to give us life and save us from the fruit of our sin. He wants to adopt us as His beloved children. He wants to give us the unimaginable glorious and infinite reward of His own Self. How can you possibly say no?
Believer or unbeliever, cry out with King David! “To You, O LORD, I lift up my soul. O my God, I trust in You; let me not be ashamed; let not my enemies triumph over me. Indeed, let no one who waits on You be ashamed; let those be ashamed who deal treacherously without cause. Show me Your ways, O LORD; teach me Your paths. Lead me in Your truth and teach me, for You are the God of my salvation; on You I wait all the day.” (Vs. 1-5)
Jesus shed His very heart’s blood to redeem us. No one who trusts in the Lord will be ashamed. What is holding you back? What keeps you from the God who loves you? Cut it off! Get rid of it! It is worth nothing. What the apostle Paul once counted as gain he later counted as loss for Christ. Be it pride, deceptive pleasures, fear, control, or bitterness, lay it at the foot of the Cross. Even if it is your very life that may be required of you, lay it down. Whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for Christ’s sake will save it. Surrender to the Lord! Be one of the humble whom He can guide in His way. Be one of those who fears the Lord and can share His secrets. Be one of those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Be a child of God. Be one of those who have been released from the bondage of sin. Be one of the redeemed!
