Lifts

“He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap” Psalm 113:7

Lifts – Inauguration!  Celebration!  Honor and glory!  This word (rum) is the Hebrew word for “exalts”.  God is going to exalt, lift up and give honor to the garbage people of the world.  Yesterday we discovered these people are the ones society casts aside as useless.  They are trash.  But not to God.  Now we see that He holds them in such high regard that He intends to raise them up to the highest.  What was on the worthless scale of humanity will be the most precious in the sight of the Lord.

There is more than a charitable thought in this verse.  Yes, rich Christians who want to follow the behavior of their God must reconsider how they treat the garbage people.  But there is a deeper principle at work here.  God will exalt the humble and humble the exalted.  The word for “poor” in this verse is one of four Hebrew words.  This one means, “the oppressed, the helpless, the ones who are too weak to care for themselves through no fault of their own”.  This is a double universe word.  It describes a group of people like the ones who live in the City of the Sun.  But it also describes every true believer.  We are God’s garbage people.  We are the helpless in our unrighteousness, the oppressed by our sin and the weak in our obedience.  Without God, we will stay on the ash heap.

In this verse there is only one actor.  God.  He does the raising and the lifting.  But there are two attitudes.  One is the attitude of need.  The other (the one that is not spoken) is the attitude of self-sufficiency.  Garbage heap people know their need.  They do not let false pride stand in the way of cries for help.  And God hears the pleas of humble hearts.

Jesus understood that divine help begins with admission of helplessness.  Consider Matthew 5:3.  If you stand on anything except garbage, you are not in a place where God can lift you.

Next time you take out the trash put your self-sufficiency in the garbage can.  It is the only garbage that God can’t use.

Today’s Commitment:  Every time I see a garbage can today, I will remember that God lifted me from my own garbage because He loved what He made.