PSALM 24, PT 2: PERFECTION AND SEEKING GOD

Psalm 24 reminds me that seeking God is the beginning of the perfection that God wants.

Overview: Ps 24 consists of three movements: 1) An opening reflection on the sovereignty of God (1-2), 2) A “catechism” about who is qualified to draw near to such a God (3-6), and 3) a processional litany, probably of the Ark of the Covenant being brought into Jerusalem (7-10).  (See my devotional, Psalm 24, Pt 1, 8/19/23, for some background.  Translation below.)

The second section, the heart of the psalm, has a clear thought structure:
Vs 3) Question: Who is worthy to draw near to the sovereign God, to enter such sacred space?”
Vs. 4) Answer: The one who is completely perfect.
Vs. 5)  The benefit: such one receives blessing and vindication.
Vs. 6) The identity: The seeker is (the true) Jacob/Israel.

The answer, vs. 4, is the focal point of this section, and the whole psalm, because it has the most complex thought structure, using parallelism, opposites, merisms (a merism uses opposites to express a whole, such as “he cried day and night” or “praise God from now until the end of the age”) and chiasm (inverted repetition, such as A B C C B A).  This beautiful and meaningful poetic structure is represented below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes on the brackets:
#1) The psalmists list the positive qualities one must have and the negative qualities one must not have, creating a portrait of perfection.
#2) Merism: One “clean” of hands is pure in one’s outward actions, and one pure in heart is righteous in one’s inward disposition = completely pure.
#3) Merism: One whose inner being is not set upon something false and ephemeral (an image used of false gods), and one whose transactions with others (oaths, bond) is without deceit = completely pure.
#4) Chiasm (inverted repetition): the outer actions enclose the inner dispositions, again give the sense of completeness = completely pure.

Reflection:   Verse 4 sets up an impossible qualification for drawing near to God, absolute perfection!  No one qualifies!  Verse 6 is the key.  It is not simplistically identifying Israelites (Jacob = Israel) as meeting such perfection.  Rabbis understood that “Jacob” here stands for the “true Israel.”  The true Israel are the ones who seek God.  “Seeking God” is a key expression throughout the OT literature.  Seekers are people who have learned that they cannot depend on themselves.  They are humbled people who turn to their Creator for help, the Creator who is there to be “found.”  Like Abraham (Gen 15:6), seekers are people who entrust themselves to God.  These are the people of faith.  For them, the impossible (approaching a holy God) become possible by the grace of God.
Jesus, too, teaches the need to seek: ask, seek, knock (Matt 7:7-8); seek first the kingdom of God (Matt 6:33).  Paul presents seeking as God’s design for people of all nations (Acts 17:26-28).
Main point: Spiritual “perfection” in God’s eyes is the disposition of the heart: turning to, seeking, depending on, entrusting oneself to God.  Those are the ones graciously received into God’s presence.  They will also continue to grow in the holiness that God desires.

Lord, thank you for your unfathomable grace that allows even me to draw near.  May I always seek you and invite others to join with me.  Amen.

Side notes:
1) The evangelistic call of the Church is to present an invitation for those outside the community of faith to join with us as seekers, with we who have found God him in the person of Jesus and who continue to live as seekers.  “Evangelistic” crusades often miss this opportunity by presenting two alternatives: either “accept everything about Jesus that we just told you” or “continue your path to hell.”
2) A good friend of mine has written a sweeping scholarly but understandable study of perfection in the Bible and how it often has been misunderstood: Kent L. Yinger, God and Human Wholeness: Perfection in Biblical and Theological Tradition.
3) Part of my work with psalms has been to point out that the sections/verses that have the greatest poetic complexity should be considered the focal points of a psalm.

Translation:

Psalm 24  Of David, A psalm.

Proclamation of Yahweh’s Ownership of the World (Sovereignty)
1)  To Yahweh belongs the earth and its fullness,

the world and all who dwell in it;

 2)  for He founded it upon the seas

and established it upon the rivers.

“Catechism” for Approaching Yahweh
3)  Who may ascend the mountain of Yahweh

and who may stand in His holy place?

 4)  One innocent of hands

and one pure of heart;

one who does not lift up his soul to falseness

and one who does not swear deceitfully.

 5)  He receives blessing from Yahweh

and vindication from the God of his salvation.

 6)  Such is the generation of those seeking Him;

those seeking Your face are Jacob.

Entrance Liturgy
7)  Lift up your heads, O gates,

and lift yourselves up, O ancient doors,

so that the glorious King may enter!

 8)  Who is the glorious King?

Yahweh, powerful and mighty;

Yahweh, mighty in battle!

 9)  Lift up your heads, O gates,

and lift up, O ancient doors,

so that the glorious King may enter!

10)  Who is this glorious King?     

Yahweh of hosts;

He is the glorious King!

 

FAITH AND THE MOST REAL*

 The most real is that which is not seen or touched.  The reality beyond my phenomenal world is filtered by my physical, sensory apprehension system and the cumulative syntheses of my experiential interactions.  Even time and space are relative to me as an observer.  (A photon can travel a million light years and yet from “its perspective” not a second has passed!)  My propensity, then, is to ground myself in my subjective, ephemeral constructions of life.  But what is Most Real?  That which lies behind my reality.  The One who does not “exist” as I exist, but is Tillich’s “Ground of Being” - if I understand him.  Einstein said, “Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible, and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion.”# These thoughts led me Hebrews 11:1, a much misunderstood verse.

I have heard cynics wrongly refer to this verse as the “blind faith” verse, the “leap-of-faith” verse.  A modern translation of Hebrews 11:1 is:

“Now faith (πίστις, pistis) is confidence (ὑπόστασις, hypostasis) in what we hope for and assurance (ἔλεγχος. elengchos) about what we do not see.” (NIV).

The second and third key terms (in Greek) are being rendered above in a personal and subjective sense, which makes sense in the context of faith and hope; however, these words project something more foundational than a person's psychological state.  The word hypostasis expresses “essence,” “real being,” and elengchos expresses “evidence of truth,” “the proving,” “verification.”  So, a wordier rendering would be:

"Faith of what we look forward to is what's real; [faith] of things not see-able is verification."

When we understand that “faith” (pistis) is the commitment of entrusting oneself in relationship with God, then we see that this verse is stating that a faith commitment entangles one to what is Most Real.  By such faith one is grounded on the Reality that has promised things to come and on the Reality that is not visible to the eye.

I cannot explain the reality of this faith relationship to someone who does not know it.  I freely admit to agnostic friends that logically my theistic and Christian beliefs could be wrong – something which my Christian friends find close to blasphemy.  However, just like our material brain’s processing of our sensory perceptions can never be proven as giving us the correct apprehension of reality, so too I must admit that logically my beliefs fall into the same category.

What I know, just like Hebrews 11:1 states, is that the commitment of myself to my Creator satisfies me with a peaceful assurance of the reality of my Creator in relationship with me.

For this I give thanks, Amen.

*A devotional reading by John Baillie yesterday started me on this train of thought.
#Quoted at: https://religiousnaturalism.org/god-as-ground-of-being-paul-tillich/

OBEDIENT ONE UNTO DEATH

My devotional reading today quoted Phil 2:5-8.

        Have the same mindset toward one another that Christ Jesus had:
            Who existing in the form/essence of God,
                    did not regard equality with God to be grasped,
                    but he emptied himself,
            having taken the form/essence of a slave,

            having become in the likeness of humans,
                    and having been found in the state of a human,
                    he humbled himself,
            having become an obedient one unto death – death of a cross!*

What caught my attention was “having become an obedient one unto death" (v 8).  (The death of loved ones is always a horror, bringing shock and fear of living with the loss.  So, that is another topic.)  But one’s own death, that is different.  Of course, none but Jesus follow his path of divine humiliation and incarnation carried through to obedience to death.  However, as God’s creature, I, too, am called to be an obedience one unto death.  "Obedience unto death" does not proclaim or rest upon resurrection faith.  I think it is a "deeper" faith -- if that makes sense.  Obedience to death has its grounding in a right relationship with God today; that is, we trust God unto death.  ("My flesh and my heart fail, but my heart's rock and my portion is God, forever!" Psa 73:26.)  That is “righteousness,” the right relationship.  That is faith sufficient for today.

Lord, you are my Creator to whom I belong.  In you I trust.  May I walk in obedience to you today and tomorrow and unto death.  Amen.

*My tentative translation.  Notes: 1) I awkwardly use “form/essence” for morphe, because the better choices, "quintessence" or "quiddity," are not used much.  2) Most translations render the aorist participles as present participles, possibly because this is poetry or out of conformity to older translations, but I have tried to capture the “pastness” of the actions (e.g. “having taken the form” rather than “taking the form”).  3)  In the last line, the phrase is often translated, “being obedient,” but since the phrase is parallel to “having become in the likeness of humans,” I think the adjective is being used nominally, “obedient one,” a rendering which to me emphasizes Jesus’ obedience as a human.  4) I have also tried to capture the poetic, balanced, thought-structure.