God who is righteous
Psa
4:1
Answer me when I call to
you, O my righteous God
We
have observed previously that righteousness can be otherwise described
as rightness. David calls God here the God of rightness. Let's consider
that. Everything God does is right. He never does wrong. He never
gets it wrong. Everything He does works out right, works out well.
Every thought, every word, every act of God is right. He is the only
one of whom that can be said. God cannot be faulted for He is perfect.
He knows everything and He knows how He has designed things to work
and therefore He interacts with His world in a way that perfectly
fits that design. That design cannot be faulted and His actions within
it cannot be faulted.
Now
that is both scary and reassuring. It is scary in that it is unnerving
to be in the presence of someone who is utterly perfect and always
gets it right and knows what is right. But it is also reassuring because
we can trust God to always act in a good and perfect way towards us.
Everything He does is good.
Now
these assertions are clearly statements of faith that we make in the
light of the whole Bible. The Bible reveals God as having designed
a perfect world. It only goes wrong because of man bringing Sin into
it. We are imperfect in that we are sinners, but we have been made
perfect in God's sight by our response to the work of Christ and His
working in us by His Spirit. That is amazing. Righteousness has all
to do with relationship. God who does all things right, saw that we
would fall to Sin and so provided a way for us to come back into a
relationship with Him, through Jesus' work on the Cross. God thus
establishes a right relationship with all those who will respond to
His call through Christ, and thereafter He is able to bring rightness
into our lives by the work of His Holy Spirit.
But
note something more about David's words here. He refers to God as
my righteous God. God has become personal to him; there
is a real relationship here that David has entered into with God,
whereby David now has a sense of intimacy with God and knows God as
the one who always relates to Him rightly and well. Thus David can
call to God and demand, Answer me when I call to you. Now
that is amazing when you think about it, that little David can demand
things of great God. On what grounds can he demand this? On the grounds
that he knows that God always acts rightly and so when His child calls
to Him, the Father will always answer the child, for that is the right,
caring thing to do. So David is able to say, the
LORD will hear when I call to him,
(v.3) for that's how it works. He know when he calls, God the Father
hears His child.
David
has come to know that God works (acts) in right ways always. However
He will respond to David will be right, and He will respond because
that is right. Do you want to know how to pray aright? Pray what you
know to be true of God. Ask in line with what you know of God's character.
You know He always does right? Then what is right in this situation?
Not what you think is right because of your selfish desires,
but what is right as seen in the light of the God who has designed
this world to work in particular ways, right ways, and who always
acts in conformity to His character and the way He has made things
to be. Have you caught this? Do you see that God is righteous,
that He always moves in rightness, He always does what is right; that
is His will? Let that bring security into your life, this sense of
order and rightness.
Response?
Pause up and declare your trust in God's rightness today.
Ask Him to help you see your life clearly, and to show you areas of
thinking or action that are not yet right, and ask Him to help you
make them right.