Psalms 119:137 The Righteous Upright God

This is the Truth Network. 119 Psalm, we're going to be in verse 137. But before we jump into that verse, we want to do just a little bit of overview. We're coming from that idea of the presence of God or the face of God, as we've talked about all those verses where he's shining his face upon us. And then very, very cool, as he shines his face upon us, it makes us righteous. And so that is the letter Zadi, which has everything to do with righteousness.

It's got a lot to do with trees and right angles and things that look right. And so it's a really, really cool letter. And I really look forward to the exploration of all that it means and how important it is in our lives, way more than I would have said years ago. But the longer I live, the more I see the beauty of this letter and the idea of righteousness. So verse 137 starts out, of course, Zadi, and it says, righteous art thou, O Lord, and upright are thy judgments. And so here we would have the first anointing or the wisdom anointing from Isaiah 11, as we talked about, that Jesus had these seven anointings in Isaiah 11, and so he is the word, and every single letter has these anointings. And so what the Holy Spirit has kind of shown me is that these verses line up amazingly with these anointings.

And so here we would have the wisdom of the letter Zadi, and there's tremendous wisdom in this. And as a comparison verse, and there's no doubt in my mind that King David used this verse from Deuteronomy 32 as a basis for this, and it's so clear that when we think about our fathers, how wonderful if they were righteous, but our heavenly Father is the standard from which all this is measured. So if you take the verse that I think this verse is kind of based on in Deuteronomy, it's more than beautiful and one that I add to my collection of favorite verses. So here it is, Deuteronomy 32, verse four.

He is the rock, which by the way, that word starts with a Zadi as well. He is the rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are judgment, a God of truth, and without iniquity, just and right is he. And so as we see throughout the scripture, so often you see this idea of justice and righteousness together, and we see it again here. And so this has everything to do with the letter that we are studying. And so interestingly, it's so important, I think that when we look to God, we realize that everything he's doing, everything he's doing, every little smidgen of a detail in his word and in our lives is perfectly righteous and perfectly upright. And so this idea of upright is really a beautiful thing when it says upright are your judgments. That this idea that when you look down a straight line, it looks absolutely beautiful because it's perfect. But if there's a big crooked point in the line, it doesn't look so beautiful. And so the idea of upright is that not only is it right, but when you look at it, it's beautiful to the eye because it's exactly at a 90 degree angle, or it's perfectly in line, a straight line to where it is that's supposed to go.

So there's the idea of upright. And the idea of judgments, again, if we've talked about throughout this, and again, the psalmist brings this home so well, is that everything is being purified to get rid of the dross. In other words, everything is going to be made perfect without blemish. And he's getting rid of everything that's not righteous and highlighting that which is righteous. And so it's really, really cool that not only do we see here that our Father, our God in heaven is perfectly righteous, but that everything is upright as well, especially when it comes to his judgment, because what's happening in all the world all the time is his judgment.

And it's all being purified, just like your digestive system is getting the necessary nutrients to ourselves and getting rid of the dross and being passed out of the body so that it can be disposed of. And there's the idea that we talked about in that one verse in the Psalmic section where thou putst away the wicked of the earth like dross. And so that's what's happening, is the wickedness is getting gone by dross, but we're looking at this pure our righteousness. So the sad news is sometimes we can judge righteousness by what's not right, right? And the sad, really, really sad things, often this has to do with our parents, because when I was looking to my dad to be righteous, and certainly I had him on a pedestal when I was young, we had a beautiful family, we're probably like Father knows best in my view, the way I grew up. But then one day, unfortunately, and believe me, my father and I have talked at length about this, I've forgiven him and all that stuff, but how he got knocked off the pedestal is, one day, he introduced me to his lover, and literally broke my heart, tore out, took my dad off the pedestal, like what?

Like, oh my goodness. And that changed my whole moral compass, allowed me to make all sorts of bad judgments about my father, bad judgments in my own life based on now I had all sorts of excuses, because the line wasn't where it was supposed to be, and unfortunately, I didn't know God's word, and I didn't have a standard at that point in time that I should have had. But now when I look, and I go, oh my goodness, what I needed all along was what Deuteronomy 32, four, tells us, which is, by the way, this is Moses' swan song, to some speak.

He's fixing to pass on, and now he's telling these folks all that's gonna be, and interestingly, if you look at that Deuteronomy 32, four verse, he says that right before he talks about a wicked and adulterous generation, right? Not unlike what Jesus said when they were looking for a sign, and so this here is saying, look, look, look, look, if God is your father, this is the kind of righteousness he brings, and this is the kind of purity that he brings. And so as we look at our own lives, and we go, when was it that we decided that we could base things on, you know, the righteousness of our fathers or our own righteousness? You know, nothing could be further from God than self-righteousness, right?

I mean, the idea of that is beyond, like, crazy. The only way we're going to get right, and the only way that that could happen is through Jesus' righteousness, what he paid on the cross, which, by the way, you know, when you look at the idea of a tree, it starts with us at it because it is at a right angle, and that's exactly where Christ had to die, on that tree, to make us right. And the beauty of that is beyond understanding, and we are going to be looking at that. This is the wisdom. The wisdom is that, look, we want to know what the standard is for righteousness? Look at God. He's perfect. The lines are perfectly in line.

And that way, we can really have him in that position where we can worship him, because he is, right, he is completely righteous and upright are his judgments. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.