By Martin Morison
This is one of our top devotions of 2020 published on the 20th of July 2020. Find the full article here
If I were to ask you, what are the marks of ungodliness, I wonder what you would say? I guess most of us would immediately think of moral sins like drunkenness, sexual immorality, racism, greed, the second half of the Ten Commandments.
Here in Psalm 27 David addresses three major marks of ungodliness, which we rarely think of. Autonomy, omniscience and control. We normally think of ungodliness in moral categories, not mental categories. These mental categories of ungodliness arise, when we fail to seek God’s face and merely contemplate our own.
Here in Psalm 27:9 – 14 David, corrects our mindset and reminds us of three marks of godliness. Dependence not independence, learners not masters, patience not impatience. In fact these three marks in some way reflects the first half of the Ten Commandments!
DEPENDENCE
In vs. 9 – 12, David, in five negatives, expresses his total dependence on God, by calling on God in prayer:
“Hide not your face”, “Turn not your servant away”, “Cast me not off”, “Forsake me not”, “Give me not up”. There is a clear note of anguished dependence. David feels alone, destitute and forsaken by God. He doesn’t respond in anger or wilful defiance against God, as we often do when we find ourselves up the creek. He doesn’t respond in withdrawal from God, which we also sometimes do, when we feel that God has abandoned us. No, he tells God exactly what he feels and calls on God in total dependence.
One of the tragic results of sin, is to cause us to buy into the delusion of independence. Independence is what the serpent sold Adam and Eve. It’s a lie and it goes like this. You can be whatever you want to be. You can do whatever you want to do. Tragically, the quest for independence never ends in independence. It ends in slavery. It ends in tears. It ends in some kind of addiction or worship disorder. We were not wired to be independent. We are wired to be dependent on God…Keep Reading