This morning I was reading from the Psalms and I read one of
those things that just stopped me in my tracks.
It was in Psalm
84, which my Bible titles, "My
Soul Longs for the Courts of the Lord." In it the psalmist talks about the blessings
that come to God's children and the great joy of being in the house of the Lord as
compared to being anywhere else.
It was in last part of verse 11, just before the psalm's end,
where I saw something other than a simple longing for the place where God dwells, where
the psalmist writes,
"No
good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly."
Those are just eleven words, and I believe the words are
true, that the Lord will not keep back His good gifts from those that walk
uprightly. But that is where things are
both much more complicated, and ultimately much more beautiful, than they seem at first
glance.
On my own I cannot "walk uprightly" in the eyes of
God, nor can anyone else, save for one person, Christ Jesus. He alone walked uprightly, from His first day to
His last. God the Son in complete obedience to God the Father, through the power
of the Holy Spirit.
That was a pretty easy sentence for me to type, but the cost
to Christ Jesus as He acted in complete obedience was very great. For Him, walking uprightly meant to
ultimately lay down His life to pay the debt of my sin. And so the promise of the psalm is true for
all believers, only because Jesus has traveled the path they could not. I "walk uprightly" not on my own efforts but only by faith in
Him.
I read a sermon last week by Charles Spurgeon
called "The Death of Christ for His
People." In it Spurgeon says,
"Our sins were
numbered on the Scapegoat's head, and there is not one sin that ever a believer
did commit that has any power to damn him, for Christ has taken the damning power
out of sin, by allowing it, to speak by a bold metaphor, to damn Himself, for
sin did condemn Him. Inasmuch as sin
condemned Him, sin cannot condemn us. O believer,
this is your security, that all your sin and guilt, all your transgressions and
your iniquities, have been atoned for."[1]
So I can go back and re-read the Psalm 84, and, like the
psalmist, look forward to seeing the promises of God fulfilled, the joy of one
day living in the courts of the Lord, because my place has been secured there
by the upright walk of Christ Jesus, my Savior and Lord.
May the joy of this promise also belong to you. Amen.
Scripture quotations
are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by
Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All
rights reserved.
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