Psalms 86:10,11

You alone are God. Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name.

I believe that God has sovereignty over my heart, yet I have prayed this prayer. I was happy to see this written. I enjoy finding my prayers because it is a signal to me that the desires of my heart are being fulfilled, delighting in the Lord (Psalms 37); that I am working out my salvation (Philippians 2:12); and by reading I am being made, I am being sanctified by the truth – his word (John 17:17)

If God waits for me to ask, I am asking. If not then I am glad to know he is confirming my desires in his word, letting me know at least I am asking for what I should be asking.

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Psalms 89

9 You rule the raging of the sea;    when its waves rise, you still them.

If you know the son you know the father. “You rule the raging sea… You still them.”

Here God is shown to have this kind of authority, which brings to mind something Jesus did, ‘And he got up and rebuked the wind… and the wind died down. (Mark 4)

Jesus our God, revealed!

And again!

48 What man can live and never see death?    Who can deliver his soul from the power of Sheol? 

What man can live through death, what man can deliver his soul from Sheol? Jesus!

52 Blessed be the Lord forever! Amen and Amen

Psalm 89 is a serious complaint and appeal.

Ethan the Ezrahite praises God for His unassailable character and incomparable works for eighteen verses. Then, from verses 19 through 37 he recounts God's promises to David, even to establish his throne forever. He recounts that even if David's sons forsake God's law, God would punish them but would not reject them because His covenant with David did not depend on their works but on God's promise.

Then, in verse 38 Ethan begins his complaint: "But you have cast off and rejected..." He accuses God of setting aside the covenant He made with David: 

You have spurned the covenant of Your servant (Psalm 89:39).

Where is Your former lovingkindnesses, O Lord,
Which You swore to David in Your faithfulness? (Psalm 89:49)

If this is only a temporary thing, Ethan complains, "How long, O Lord?" He reminds God of the shortness of his life. He will soon be dead, and he will count his life vain if he cannot testify of God's faithfulness in his lifetime (Psalm 89:47-48).

Yet, after all of this complaining, he ends his psalm with "Blessed the LORD forever! Amen and Amen" (Psalm 89:52).

There is a kind of Job-like confession here. After God brings inexplicable calamity into Job's life, he still cries out,

The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;
may the name of the Lord be praised (Job 1:21).

What Ethan saw was true. When Israel and then Judah went into exile, there was no Davidic king on the throne anymore. And this would be the case for hundreds of years. One might even say that it is still the case to this very day, as both other nations and non-Davidic rulers ruled over Jerusalem and Israel. Anyone might have concluded that God had failed to keep His covenant promise to give David a perpetual throne. 

What Ethan may not have understood was that God's promise to David would not be fulfilled in David's biological descendants but in His Spiritual descendant, even Jesus the Messiah. He would fulfill the perpetual kingship. He would establish the eternal throne. He would be the forever Davidic King. So, we read, "But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son" (Galatians 4:4). Also, we read,

The gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 1:2-4).

Even if Ethan could not give testimony to the fulfillment of this promise in his lifetime, he could hope for it. It would not be fulfilled in one lifetime or even in many lifetimes. It would be fulfilled according to God's timetable. Why? Because God is sovereign and does everything according to His good pleasure (cf. Ephesans 1:9). 

Friends, what does it mean to trust God? Do we trust Him only when we see some benefit in our lifetimes? One dangerous outcome of the Prosperity Movement is the notion that we can predict God's ways from the outcomes we experience. They say, if we obey Him, we will always prosper and if we disobey, we can expect to do poorly. Those under the Old Covenant may have had some claim to this notion in light of God's promises in keeping with their obedience to the Law of Moses; however, we can make no such claims today. God does not promise prosperity. In fact, quite the contrary, He does promise persecution and suffering to those who diligently follow Him:

In this world you will have trouble (John 16:33).

In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted (2 Timothy 3:12).

Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me (Luke 9:23).

In fact, Paul even goes so far as to say,

If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied (1 Corinthians 15:19).

Friends, our hope is NOT in this life. We ought to stop evaluating our spiritual progress on how "blessed" we feel in this life. Quite the contrary, if we want to use outcomes as a measure, it would be far more accurate to measure such progress by how much we are suffering. For, as the Scripture has said, 

But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you (1 Peter 4:13-14).

And as Jesus has clearly taught in the Sermon on the Mount,

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you (Matthew 5:11-12).

If you feel that you are living the "blessed" life, perhaps, just perhaps, you may not be doing as much as you ought for the Lord? Here's the warning from Jesus:

Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life (John 12:25).

Do you love your life in this world? Are things going really well for you? Are you feeling just so blessed? Perhaps it's time to get uncomfortable. Perhaps you need to be a little more outspoken for Christ. Perhaps you need to be more generous with what you have? I'm not encouraging a "martyr complex," but sometimes we need to be awakened from spiritual apathy and moral complacency that a "blessed life" can sometimes bring. 

King David once again is in some sort of trouble. "His arrogant foes are attacking" him and demanding his life. Instead of being fearful of his foes, he asks God to teach him His way so that he may rely on His faithfulness and that he may fear only the name of the Lord. The Lord truly is the one whom we must fear because everything in our lives is under His sovereignty including tragedy, failure, unfair treatment and even death itself. I ask for God's forgiveness for being afraid of my circumstances, uncertainty of my future, financial instability or losing my loved ones instead of trusting in His faithful love. God is so gracious that He comforts my wandering heart with His Word today. I am joining king David at this moment to say, " I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify your name forever." Our God is great!

Friends, it is good to rise early in the morning. In these summer months, sometimes that is the only time when it is cool outside. I took a walk around my neighborhood this morning to give praise to God and to pray. What a coincidence that I prayed much the same words as David, when he wrote in today's reading, "Teach me Your way, O LORD; I will walk in Your truth" (Psalm 86:11). I realize that the two prongs of Christian life is not Word and Spirit or Word and prayer but Word and obedience. The message of "fear God and keep His commandments," "Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with Your God," and "Teach me Your way, O LORD; I will walk in Your truth," as well as a plethora of New Testament commands, hinge on this principle of Word (God's truth) and obedience to it.

Even so, as I read this morning's reading, my attention is particularly drawn to the last part of Psalm 86:11, namely, "Unite my heart to fear Your name" (NKJV) The NIV translates this , "Give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name." I believe this is the chorus of a Christian song. However, I like the NKJV translation better (the NASB and ESV translate the same way as the NKJV). While both translations likely convey the same basic meaning, the NIV translation makes it sound like "an undivided heart" automatically produces fear of God. The goal is not to merely have an undivided heart but rather to focus all that our heart could desire and would desire on fearing God. The command "unite" conveys the idea of bringing together - bringing together the desires that once went toward our career, our personal interests, our families, etc. and redirecting them with laser-beam focus on fearing God.  As Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 10:5, "We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."

Therefore, dear friends, let us make this our prayer and our daily ambition: "Unite my heart to fear Your Name!" One way to do this is to begin every day in prayer and meditation on God's Word, and then throughout the day to ask yourself, "Is God most glorified in this? How can God be most glorified in this?"