Christ Beyond Compare
From Psalm 135 –"14 The Lord will vindicate His people and have compassion on His servants."
The sweeping wholeness of God's character might be encompassed in two ends of this short verse. Or, as Spurgeon stretches wide and wondrous his theology to include in According to the Promise, "Gracious things are as sure as terrible things in righteousness."
To our inspired text, the psalmist's sure hope that the Lord will, to use his verb, vindicate has a clean, hot, hard edge reminding us we can await His perfect and detailed justice. No wrong, no matter how gaping or how granular, has been done His honor or His people which He will not set right.
And meanwhile, in what state does the psalmist wait along with his justly aggrieved brothers and sisters in Abraham's faith? We don't finish with the perfect balance of Psalm 135:14 before he tells us. God Who uproots and exposes the shams which entrap His own will come to us with compassion, a balm as soothing as the astringent of vindication is bracing.
Both are aspects of His character, and His ministrations. Not just systems gone awry, but the abrasions they inflict will be made whole. Like the hand of Moses healed from leprosy, in fact, both systems and people will be restored by His lavish grace to a degree unknown before.
If these abiding ballasts to the character of Christ do not sufficiently entrance us to wait expectantly for His full revelation, the counseling ministry of the Holy Spirit is wise enough to show us the alternative to Christ as our restorative recourse. If we don't look to Him both for confrontation and conciliation, other options are altogether unworthy. They are exposed as idols, which the psalmist deprecated in scaling fashion.
He traces them back to their origins in verse 15, made by the same sorts of people who have so often disappointed us. "The idols of the nations are silver and gold, made by human hands." Expect at least encouragement from the God alternatives which are feckless to enforce justice? Think again. Perhaps with a mocking hand cupped to his ear, he proclaims in verse 16, "They have mouth but cannot speak," perhaps with a hand passing back and forth in front of unblinking idlecraft, he diagnoses human handiwork that has, "eyes but cannot see."
Nor, alas, does he find even the potential for meaningful action in any we wait for, save Christ and His sovereign purposes. In verse 17, he surveys the Idol shop and finds no reception for his authentic grief. "They have ears, but cannot hear, nor," in case we hush for reply, "is their breath in their mouths.
This section of Psalm 135 closes with a cautionary tale not to come away from the idle contemplation of idols. We will be changed, he sternly warns, by placing even temporary hope in them, ringing out with, "Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them."
Recognizing many of our outbursts as a symptom that we are beginning to succumb to the vehicle and contagion of idolatry, Tim Keller in Songs of Jesus prompts fresh pleas to Jesus as the real restorative when he describes, "Whenever you see your heart in the grip of some kind of temptation, anxiety, or fit of anger, ask: How are my feelings being caused by an inordinate hope for something to give me what only Jesus can?" He then prays candidly, moving us back to the renewal available only in Christ, "Lord, I will never be able to love you as I on until I discard competing loves."
The sweeping wholeness of God's character might be encompassed in two ends of this short verse. Or, as Spurgeon stretches wide and wondrous his theology to include in According to the Promise, "Gracious things are as sure as terrible things in righteousness."
To our inspired text, the psalmist's sure hope that the Lord will, to use his verb, vindicate has a clean, hot, hard edge reminding us we can await His perfect and detailed justice. No wrong, no matter how gaping or how granular, has been done His honor or His people which He will not set right.
And meanwhile, in what state does the psalmist wait along with his justly aggrieved brothers and sisters in Abraham's faith? We don't finish with the perfect balance of Psalm 135:14 before he tells us. God Who uproots and exposes the shams which entrap His own will come to us with compassion, a balm as soothing as the astringent of vindication is bracing.
Both are aspects of His character, and His ministrations. Not just systems gone awry, but the abrasions they inflict will be made whole. Like the hand of Moses healed from leprosy, in fact, both systems and people will be restored by His lavish grace to a degree unknown before.
If these abiding ballasts to the character of Christ do not sufficiently entrance us to wait expectantly for His full revelation, the counseling ministry of the Holy Spirit is wise enough to show us the alternative to Christ as our restorative recourse. If we don't look to Him both for confrontation and conciliation, other options are altogether unworthy. They are exposed as idols, which the psalmist deprecated in scaling fashion.
He traces them back to their origins in verse 15, made by the same sorts of people who have so often disappointed us. "The idols of the nations are silver and gold, made by human hands." Expect at least encouragement from the God alternatives which are feckless to enforce justice? Think again. Perhaps with a mocking hand cupped to his ear, he proclaims in verse 16, "They have mouth but cannot speak," perhaps with a hand passing back and forth in front of unblinking idlecraft, he diagnoses human handiwork that has, "eyes but cannot see."
Nor, alas, does he find even the potential for meaningful action in any we wait for, save Christ and His sovereign purposes. In verse 17, he surveys the Idol shop and finds no reception for his authentic grief. "They have ears, but cannot hear, nor," in case we hush for reply, "is their breath in their mouths.
This section of Psalm 135 closes with a cautionary tale not to come away from the idle contemplation of idols. We will be changed, he sternly warns, by placing even temporary hope in them, ringing out with, "Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them."
Recognizing many of our outbursts as a symptom that we are beginning to succumb to the vehicle and contagion of idolatry, Tim Keller in Songs of Jesus prompts fresh pleas to Jesus as the real restorative when he describes, "Whenever you see your heart in the grip of some kind of temptation, anxiety, or fit of anger, ask: How are my feelings being caused by an inordinate hope for something to give me what only Jesus can?" He then prays candidly, moving us back to the renewal available only in Christ, "Lord, I will never be able to love you as I on until I discard competing loves."
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