There’s Hope for Me
The Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands He has recompensed me. Psalm 18:20 NASB
My righteousness – Want joy? Be obedient! Ah, sounds so easy, doesn’t it? But that’s not usually the way it works. The yetzer ha’ra has deep hooks in us and often manipulates us like puppets. We see the goal but we can’t seem to attain it. And then, of course, we have one thousand years or more of church theology telling us that we were born sinful and there really isn’t any hope for us apart from some supernatural act of God. We fight for awhile. Perhaps we progress. Then the yetzer ha’ra, feeling the pain of withdrawal, reasserts its power and we fall, convinced that we could never have made it in the first place. Might as well give up and just settle for the best that we can. Righteousness is a divine attribute. It can’t be found in the lives of ordinary men and women like you and me.
But then there’s David. Now, I wouldn’t consider David a model of righteousness. In fact, we probably know more about David’s sins than we do about his military and political victories. Adultery, depraved indifference, conspiring to commit murder, political corruption, deliberate disobedience to divine command—yes, David is not a man of great moral character and certainly not a model of righteousness. But look what he says.
“The Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness.” In Hebrew, tsidqi. The righteousness that belongs to me. My conformity to the ethical standard of YHVH. My actions along the straight path. My efforts to follow in His way. If David can say this, then I have hope. If David can say this, then so can I.
This is what we need. First, we need to know that no matter how we feel about our sins, God feels grace toward us. Second, we need to recognize that gratitude is an important first step toward changing our ways, but it isn’t enough to keep us going. Third, we need to realize that our best interests are served by conforming our lives to what delights Him. Fourth, we must affirm that what really drives our behavior is not our thinking but rather our feelings, and that this is not a bad thing. What we do with these emotions is the critical issue. Fifth, we must come to terms with the fact that we have trained ourselves to operate according to the solutions presented by the yetzer ha’ra for a very long time. Sixth, we must abandon these habitual patterns even though we will often not see any other route to take care of our emotional needs. But the only way we can have hope of doing this is to know that our efforts can succeed. And so, finally, we must trust that our righteousness, our efforts to conform our lives to His instructions, really do matter. They make a difference that YHVH honors. They change our world. And God will reward us for those efforts. Yes, He will continue to judge us in order to bring us into full alignment, but that only means that judgment is a form of blessing intended to lead us into even greater blessing.
With all this in mind, we are called upon to act. We are equipped to feel the pain and sorrow that will lead us to the experience of hope and joy. We can use all these powerful and crafted emotions to bring us into His presence. And that is what we really want. Day 17.
Topical Index: righteousness, tsadiq, hope, Psalm 18:20
Oh, how I love step-by-step, blow-by-blow instructions! Whoo hoo! Excellent walk out description. If salvation is precipitated by my repentance, sanctification (that neglected “S” word!) is a process that I participate in by virtue of my willingness. We want G-d to be willing to save us. He is. But then, we have to be willing to let Him gradually pull us all the way out of our mud. That’s the sanctification part. We get to worrying about ‘losing our salvation’; well, He isn’t going anywhere! I think we are the ones who keep insisting that salvation is not where we really wanted to be. We are trained to think that, because we are defective, salvation is not possible RIGHT NOW, so it must be something that happens after life in the here-and-now, but, if you actually go looking in that whole Book, nowhere does it say that salvation happens later. Instead, it tells me that NOW is the day of repentance: NOW is the day of salvation: IF we do not do what? harden our hearts to the sanctification process that salvation is the ticket TO. We are the ones who keep trying to throw ourselves back over the fence. It’s not Him; it’s me who can’t make up my mind if I really like to be free or not!
Chains are the things that attract and bind the yetzer ha-ra. Because I am used to them, they FEEL like security, even though what they are really securing me in is my own death. Agreement with hell is an agreement to NOT LIVE in this particular moment. Agreement with hell is hedge betting on the certainty that my yetzer ha-ra operates out of; the certainty that I am not going to make it out of here alive. The freedom and trust that the grace of salvation keeps trying to hand me instead are the scary things that keep throwing me back over the edge of my destruction and stupor into love and life, but they feel like free fall without a bungee cord! Not safe at all! Death is what is certain (well, in my world, there’s also taxes!): life is that unknown variable. Life is the thing I DO NOT KNOW up front. Life is, in fact, the thing I cannot know until it happens. Why? Why can’t I ‘control’ (predetermine) reality? I think that’s the wrong question. I think the question should be why do I want to? Well, I think I suffer from the illusion that I should be able to control my life because there is a part of me that remembers the Garden experience where every part of existence was slammed into full gear, and the pedal of my personal righteousness – which is the full power of being IN the love that righteousness affords me – was jammed on the floor, and all my lights were green. I remember that there was such a thing as nothing in opposition to me (hey, because I would not be operating in opposition to it, of course. Details!). Control, it turns out, is an extremely poor substitute for what we really long for, which is a totally frictionless, seamless, full-tilt-boogie into the future. Actually managing to be able to lose myself in love, which is what righteousness returns me to, is a thrill; a rush that no sin has ever been able to duplicate (even though we do keep trying!). ‘Controlling’ my own life turns out to be a very poor substitute for the experience of having love control me. ‘Controlling’ life, on closer examination, turns out to actually be all about hedge betting on my own death, which is the only certainty that the yetzer ha-ra really knows, and that is because my flesh knows nothing about eternity; but love is all about eternity.
Could we talk about eternity? C.S. Lewis’s book, The Great Divorce, really challenged me, because in it he proposed that heaven and hell are realities that can both backdate and postdate the past and the future. The gradual accumulation of the sum total of my choices can determine in retrospect what my whole life was – and is going to be – about. Now, if time is a linear river, that makes no sense. Up until right now, my whole life has just been sucky and that’s that. Nothing in the present and future can possibly change that part. BUT, salvation is the thing that returns me to some aspects of participation in the righteousness, the rightly-relating, of Yeshua, and that is a perfection of relationship that is outside of time. If I ultimately choose destruction, my past is going to prove to be an inevitable downward spiral of relationship fracture toward that end, but when I choose life, that choice does something curious with my past. Hosea records the promise that the years the locusts ate can be restored to us. What?! But, in my experience so far, I think I have seen how that could be so. The anguish of my heart, all those sucky years, had to do with breaks of relationship. It had nothing to do with the fortunes and vicissitudes of life. The flesh focuses on the temporal; the heart is about the spiritual, and the spirit knows no time or place. There is a space outside of time where the deepest longings of my heart can be fulfilled, and in that place eternity operates in full power. Love really can make all things possible. Eternity is something that I can plug into right now! Can G-d heal the fractures of my past? Yes! This is a marvelous part of the salvation package, and, to me, anyway, is one of its better perks. I have been finding that the best thing I have ever done for all the people in my life that I have loved and despaired about is to get myself saved! From that position, then, G-d can re-work all the disasters of my life – all the heartbreaks, into something new. And, He has been! Halleluah! Love is amazing stuff, folks.
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Laurita, you talked about “sanctification (that neglected “S” word)”. I have a bad tendency to take things literally so I took off (neglected) the “S” from sanctification and came up with anctification-which when pronounced in my Midwestern twang sounds like Angst-ification which is very much an accurate description my life…though, happily, through this series and your commentary
I am beginning to ‘wiggle’, which, as you noted the other day, is a necessary condition of rightousness. (I have formally added the term ‘wiggling’ to my theological dictionary and the practice to my devotional repertoire). As a final note, IMHO your daily comments on Skip’s insights have added value exponentially to this forum. Thank you so much. Really.
Michael
One of the most freeing moments is when I realized that “my righteousness being as filthy rags” was not talking about me obeying HIS instructions. It was about me trying to do MY best by obeying man’s instructions(and decades of church tradition/theology/doctrine).
I had a young lady of 20 years of age tell me the other day in our Bible study, “Since my heart has been turned to His commands its like a weight has been lifted off of me. All the pressure I felt to ‘perform’ is gone. Its so freeing”. Until you have experienced this joy; this freedom of the yoke of Torah/Yeshua you have not known freedom. The freedom and liberty that we walk in is perceived as bondage to the one who says, “grace alone”. And you cant MAKE someone understand this. It must be experienced! One has to experience the pain, the sorrow, joy, and the emotion of repenting to Yah’s ways in order for it to be understood. Thank you Skip (and Laurita and Michael C) for bringing all of this into an even greater perspective. These past 17 days have been incredible.
Today I truthfully can say that I feel like His commands ARE His grace and mercy. To invite us into this wonderful relationship, through Yeshua, receiving our life from being grafted into the common wealth of Israel, walking in His statutes…..oh grace, grace God’s grace! Grace that is greater then all my disobedience to His commandments!
David F – My thanks to you and the many others on here that contribute. We are all on this road together and I realized more each day how much I need those that fill the positions that Skip and others like him do. I am grateful for the study he does and especially that he is loving and considerate enough to share it with us. He does not reside in an ivory tower, but walks the trail with us. THAT has great value to me.
I also relish others input, opinions, and struggling efforts to decipher the elements of this new paradigm we have embarked upon. What an exciting adventure it has been. I am grateful to Skip and all who have helped me inch along the path of life in my daily challenges. I am ready and geared up to continue on. Thank you for participating along with us all. Onward.
**Vulnerability alert** Trying my hand at being vulnerable…
I was just praying yesterday to be emotionless, like a hand that needs cut off if it will keep me from entering the Kingdom. My emotions get me into so much trouble – habitual shame and guilt surrounds my countenance like a heavy security blanket retained from childhood. It causes a fountain of prideful, passionate emotion when tested. I can never seem to change, to “break” the habitual reaction.
It causes me great frustration and sorrow of heart because my defensive words affect others as well as myself. My life of seclusion is a merciful gift from Yah. I only wish I could get my act together so I can help others overcome as well!
Today’s message brought this verse to mind, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.” !!
Thank you for this message, Shabbat Shalom!
Prairiemae, Turns out that you are well ABLE to be vunerABLE. Thanks for risking yourself. I totally get the desire to kill all your emotions (akin to the idea of “destroying the village in order to save it”), but consider that we do need emotions to be human, otherwise we are robots or automatons. What we (OK, I) need to learn is how to regulate, control, master ALL my emotions (especially the shame and guilt) rather than allowing them to control and master me. I liked what Skip said above:”We are equipped to feel the pain and sorrow that will lead us to the experience of hope and joy. We can use all these powerful and crafted emotions to bring us into His presence.” Prairiemae, you aren’t alone in this journey or on this site. Hang in there. You are LOVED…the greatest of emotional connections, as Laurita compellingly reminded us. Shabbat shalom. Michael