The first four verses of Psalm 36 talk about the sinfulness of the wicked. I found v2 especially telling...
In their own eyes they flatter themselves too much to detect or hate their sin.
Eventually, our own sinfulness completely blinds us to our own sinfulness.
But then we see this huge contrast. David jumps from commenting on the utter depravity of man to worshiping our amazing, incomparable God.
Your love, LORD, reaches to the heavens,
your faithfulness to the skies.
Your righteousness is like the highest mountains,
your justice like the great deep.
You, LORD, preserve both people and animals.
How priceless is your unfailing love, O God!
People take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
They feast on the abundance of your house;
you give them drink from your river of delights.
For with you is the fountain of life;
in your light we see light.
I love those verses. The first several especially, are very well known, but all of it is just beautiful poetic words that we know don't even do justice to God's love, faithfulness, righteousness and justice. It's unfathomable!
Notice the last line - "in your light we see light". To me, this speaks once again of the need to bring everything to the Light. When we don't do that, our sinfulness begins to cloud our judgement and turns us into the depraved sinners from the beginning of the Psalm.
And I wonder if that was the difference between Martha/Mary and Judas. In his sermon, The Climax of Love and Hate, John MacArthur says...
we see the softening of the hearts of those who love them and the hardening of the hearts of those who hate Him until they have reached the extremities and we come to the climax of love and the climax of hate in this chapter.
Here in this little incident in Bethany in the first eleven verses we see it. We see love like we haven't seen before. We see love that is extravagant. We see love that is unbounded. We see love that knows no limits. We see love that's totally self-sacrificing. And at the same time that we see that, we see the hatred of those who were His enemies and it reaches its depths. It penetrates even the inner circle of the Twelve and one of His own spews out venom on Christ. So here in response to the miracle of the raising of Lazarus, love blooms and venom of hate brews its poison and the contrast is just as wide as two individuals...Mary, on the one hand, and Judas on the other hand. And that's a mystery. How you can take two people who lived with the same Christ, walk the same steps, heard the same message, experienced His same love and all of His miracles and out of that same experience have a Judas and a Mary is mystery. (emphasis mine)
Now admittedly, I didn't have time to finish reading the entire sermon, so maybe MacArthur has a better take on how this happened, but I wonder if it wasn't what we read about in Psalm 36 and the need to bring everything into the light in order to keep sin from taking that blinding hold on our lives. Sin is not something to flirt with. It's something to run from! Joseph ran from Potiphar's wife. James said to flee from the devil. They knew how dangerous sin is. How tempting and yet soul sucking the darkness can be.
Run away from the darkness.
But more than that - focus on the Light!
Tomorrow's passage: Psalm 39-41, John 12:27-50
2 comments:
I highlighted those same verses in my Bible that you quoted in your post. So powerful!
Another thing I thought of while reading was how easy it is sometimes to be envious of the people around us that we see prospering more than we while living without God, even though we know we are to be storing up our treasures in Heaven rather than on earth.
Great thoughts. Those verses stood out for me too. I do find it amazing that Judas could have walked so intimately with Jesus and yet had so much corruption in his thoughts and actions. I don't know if I remember reading the verses about Judas stealing from the money bag. Interesting that he could be so driven by money.
I love these verses too:
4 Take delight in the LORD,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
5 Commit your way to the LORD;
trust in him and he will do this:
I think when we are open to God's leading we will be satisfied beyond what we could have ever imagined.
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