What Matters Most
Blessed be the Lord, for He has made marvelous His lovingkindness to me in a besieged city. Psalm 31:21 NASB
To me– What matters most to you? When you have only one thing to hold on to, what makes the real difference between living or giving up? David’s poem provides us with his answer. What matters most is not just hipil’ ḥăsdo (the display of His ḥesed). God’s ḥesedis who He is, a matter of character, regardless of the reception or appreciation of the creation. ḥesed is a fact of existence, but it remains only a fact of existence until we attach the preposition and the pronoun—“to me.” Then everything changes. ḥesed, the marvel of God’s faithfulness, is extended personally to me. That’s what matters!
Step away from your theological textbooks for a moment. Take a good look at all those tomes on the bookshelf. Then ask yourself, “Do these really matter?” If you had all the books about God that you wanted, but you never experienced the character of God applied to you, would any of those books be worth keeping? Would they make any real difference? The gospel most people read is the life of a follower.[1] What good is it to have all the answers but none of the experience? Even Aquinas declared that all he had written was “straw” when he finally encountered God in some experience he never attempted to describe. Yes, ḥesed is marvelous. Every aspect of this multi-layered verb reveals the unparalleled love of the Creator. But ḥesed without “me” is just another book on the shelf. It isn’t real until it is mine.
For David, nothing matters more than the experience of ḥesed sweeping him up into God. It is the cause of his praise. It is the objective of his search. It is the hope of his life. And just like David, those of us who live in the besieged city need to experience the personal application of ḥesedif we are going to survive.
But you tell me, “Hey, I live in Ashville (or Dayton, or Evergreen, or wherever). My city isn’t besieged. It’s not like Damascus or Beirut.” Really? The Hebrew word here is māṣôr. It means, “to relentlessly attack an opponent’s stronghold.”
Every effort was made to shut off supplies (especially water, cf. II Sam 12:27) from the city and to prevent the people from escaping. The tactics included building a mound to reach the wall and using battering rams and towers to breach it (cf. II Sam 20:15; Ezk 26:8f.). The inhabitants of a besieged city were threatened by both sword and famine; therefore, some surrendered to the enemy in order to preserve their lives (Jer 21:9).[2]
Apply māṣôr metaphorically. Do you feel as if every effort is being made to relentlessly attack who you are, what you believe, what you stand for? Maybe you are also a besieged city, walking around Auburn, Davao, San Salvador or Padua. Maybe there aren’t any physical city walls and wooden gates, but the war hasn’t ended, has it? And what is there left to hang on to while the enemy builds siege ramps and battering rams?
ḥesed to me.
Topical Index: ḥesed, lovingkindness, māṣôr, siege, Psalm 31:21
[1]There is an interesting article invalidating the authenticity of the popular expression attributed to St. Francis (“Preach the gospel at all times and when necessary use words”). You can read it here. The interesting part is not that St. Francis probably never said this. The interesting part is the general bias of the article that “preaching” necessarily involves cognitive dissemination of words, that the gospel is “inherently verbal behavior.” So much for the Hebraic emphasis on doing. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/factchecker-misquoting-francis-of-assisi/
[2]Hartley, J. E. (1999). 1898 צוּר. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament.
Hesed vs. besieged , any plane comment. I am attacked on all sides. Doctor see my back is so crooked how can I even stand for 10 minutes , let alone live a normal life. I can’t give up resisting. Finances are so limited that I must continue to depend upon God. And so on and so on period on all sides I am besieged. But the Lord love me first before I love him, all I can do is love him in return by trusting him. My brother-in-law would always use the term ” one beggar showing another beggar how to get a cup of coffee.”
B.B., shalom
Thank you for the Francis clarity.
I am beginning to suspect that words ARE experience: the experience of the ears and cognition. Further, the speaker experiences the ears of the audience when they speak the words. What got me started on this was the discussion we had a while back about the mysterious experience at Sinai where the mixed multitude who heard the Ten Commands actually SPOKE them – EXPERIENCED them – during that presentation. The Speaker and the ears were one.
The Bible insists that “by beholding we become changed”. So much for horror movies! Research suggests that if we hear something or experience something about 6 times, we will assimilate it; we will believe it.
Experience provides the data – the raw material of information – for choices. Any information at all – any new or confirming awareness – brings us to a new decision point. Choice is how we respond to data. We choose either to conform or change our lives according to it, or we choose to resist it. The conformation grows stronger OR the resistance grows stronger each time we are confronted with the choice point.
Truth from God was never hidden by Him: He wants us to have ALL the data to make correct choices. We are the ones who close the ears to keep from repeating after Him. We are the ones who darken our understanding each time we resist reality, until we eventually stumble along in altered states of insanity – trances – brought on by our continued resistance to truth – to reality.
All of nature communicates with – loves – all else, as per its design and continued participation with its Creator. We are the only ones who harbor darkness – that inability to recognize life-changing truth which is the essence of our connection with the reality that acceptance of that truth returns us to.
Sin is the attempt to remove ourselves from the dance of life. To do that we have to avoid or ignore the decision-point information – truth – that requires us to choose. Sin weakens us because choice is power, but sin is the choice to choose our choices away because we don’t want to take the responsibility we were created to assume. That responsibility is to choose to agree with the choices of our Creator: to literally do His will by choice instead of by instinct.
Psalms 106 says “19 They made a calf in Horeb, and worshipped the molten image.
20 Thus they changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass”
If the gospel is going to become alive in me, then I am going to have to make a choice to return my ears to hearing the truth, and my eyes to seeing it, and my hands are going to have to be offered to be used to do my Creator’s will again. I am the one who chose to look at and put first and listen to the darkness, and thus be conformed to it. I am the one who has to make the choice to put myself back into the equation of life by changing what I choose to change me.
All sin is resistance to participation in creation. For the favor of God to rest on me, I have to stop resisting it!
Skip and community. The thought that comes to mind is what the “church is experiencing and being that besieged city, not on the personal level but for the church.
It’s not so much all the textbooks we have on the shelf but it’s the largeness, loudness and hype of the church worship experience. It’s emotional not spiritual. Even the basis of most worship music is to elicit an emotional response, because how does loud music, flashing strobe lights and fog machines elicit a spiritual experience? In truth, it seems as though the modern church experience is what Carl Marks referred to as the opioid of the masses. I know that sounds harsh, but I feel that it’s become the substitute for the real thing. Without the endorphins flowing through the worshipers bloodstream, they wouldn’t know the difference if God really showed up. Their already doped up with what isn’t hesed.
As Graham Cook once said as he sat in his car in the parking lot at a church that he was to speak at that morning, has the presence of the Holy Spirit that ever been here? The Lord spoke to him and said He wondered the same thing…..
We all know what it is like to go to a nice restaurant, open the menu and look at all the great things to eat. We look at the appetizers and our mouth starts the water. We look at the entrées and think about how we’re going to be filled to the brim with good tasting food. And then there’s the desserts. But sadly, that’s when most Christians get up from the table and leave the restaurant. We have a great experience reading the menu, but we never experience eating the food. They don’t even know that it really exists.
Jeff, that is simply too good! You described an altered state of reality perfectly. All altered states make you think you are connected when you actually haven’t even left the parking lot. The ones who are really looking for connection instead of time out eventually leave the (non) relationship in disgust. If this continues, we could eventually see a day when all those who are not actually living are inside whooping it up and all those who are looking for love for real are outside. “Come out of her, my people” would then sound like the right call for them. Or; us?