Psalm 25 Devotional [3]:

The Prophet touched with the consideration of his sins, and also grieved with the cruel malice of his enemies.

1 Prayeth to God most fervently to have his sins forgiven.

2 Especially such as he had committed in his youth. He beginneth every verse according to the Hebrew letters, two or three except.

A Psalm of David.

1 Unto thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul.

2 O my God, I trust in thee: let me not be ashamed, let not mine enemies triumph over me.

3 Yea, let none that wait on thee be ashamed: let them be ashamed which transgress without cause.

4 Shew me thy ways, O Lord; teach me thy paths.

5 Lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the God of my salvation; on thee do I wait all the day.

6 Remember, O Lord, thy tender mercies and thy lovingkindnesses; for they have been ever of old.

7 Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions: according to thy mercy remember thou me for thy goodness’ sake, O Lord.

8 Gracious and righteous is the Lord: therefore will he teach sinners in the way.

9 The meek will he guide in judgment: and the meek will he teach his way.

10 All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies.

11 For thy name’s sake, O Lord, pardon mine iniquity; for it is great.

12 What man is he that feareth the Lord? him shall he teach in the way that he shall choose.

13 His soul shall dwell at ease; and his seed shall inherit the earth.

14 The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him; and he will shew them his covenant.

15 Mine eyes are ever toward the Lord; for he shall pluck my feet out of the net.

16 Turn thee unto me, and have mercy upon me; for I am desolate and afflicted.

17 The troubles of my heart are enlarged: O bring thou me out of my distresses.

18 Look upon mine affliction and my pain; and forgive all my sins.

19 Consider mine enemies; for they are many; and they hate me with cruel hatred.

20 O keep my soul, and deliver me: let me not be ashamed; for I trust in thee.

21 Let integrity and uprightness preserve me; for I wait on thee.

22 Redeem Israel, O God, out of all his troubles.

As we noted before the moral rectitude of the believer and the necessity of the clean conscience when pleading before the throne of God to judge our cause, (for it would be double iniquity to set yourself to do evil in the sight of the Lord, and then ask for him to maintain your cause, which is no doubt the prayer of the ignorant) so here David, by way of supplication shows us the first cause of it. Here he says, “Shew me thy ways, O Lord; teach me thy paths. Lead me in thy truth, and teach me…” showing that if we are to maintain uprightness before God and men it must be taught to us by His Holy Spirit. For we cannot know what is good if not from the word, and we can have no power to perform it, if not for God’s Spirit causing us to obey from the heart, operating upon us and moving us in the way of holiness. Therefore this is a chief principle here that must be remembered. God does not approve of those who merely appear righteous before others. Although He may suffer them for a time and leave to them many aspects of His goodness, yet His favor is ever with the righteous, that is the truly righteous, those who are touched with His Spirit and do show forth the graces of holiness. Therefore David sincerely asks for God to lead him in the right way, knowing he cannot move in the right way except by the hand of God, and this is a common prayer of the Christian, that acknowledging within ourselves that we are without strength and power to do that which is right, we pray for the guiding grace of the Spirit to go with us that we falter not. As David in Psalm 5: Lead me, O LORD, in thy righteousness because of mine enemies; make thy way straight before my face.” And Psalm 27, “Teach me thy way, O LORD, and lead me in a plain path, because of mine enemies.” and Psalm 31, “For thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for thy name’s sake lead me, and guide me.” Solomon also in Proverbs says, “Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; Then shalt thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God. For the LORD giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding.” and again, “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” and it saith in the prophets, “And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them.” showing plainly that the righteous ever cry out to God for guidance, that they might not be ashamed before their enemies, and that the Lord who is merciful does not forsake them. Bear this in mind, and do not forget the mercies of God. He is a shield and a guide to us all our days.

Calvin,
By the ways of the Lord, David sometimes means, as we have seen in another place, the happy and prosperous issue of affairs, but more frequently he uses this expression to denote the rule of a holy and righteous life. As the term truth occurs in the immediately following verse, the prayer which he offers up in this place is, in my opinion, to this effect: Lord, keep thy servant in the firm persuasion of thy promises, and do not suffer him to turn aside to the right hand or to the left. When our minds are thus composed to patience, we undertake nothing rashly or by improper means, but depend wholly upon the providence of God. Accordingly, in this place David desires not merely to be directed by the Spirit of God, lest he should err from the right way, but also that God would clearly manifest to him his truth and faithfulness in the promises of his word, that he might live in peace before him, and be free from all impatience. If any one would rather take the words in a general sense, as if David committed himself wholly to God to be governed by him, I do not object to it. As, however, I think it probable, that, under the name of truth in the next verse, he explains what he means by the ways and paths of God, of which he here speaks, I have no hesitation in referring the prayer to this circumstance, namely, that David, afraid of yielding to the feeling of impatience, or the desire of revenge, or some extravagant and unlawful impulse, asks that the promises of God may be deeply impressed and engraven on his heart. For I have said before, that as long as this thought prevails in our minds, that God takes care of us, it is the best and most powerful means for resisting temptations. If, however, by the ways and paths of God, any would rather understand his doctrine, I, nevertheless, still hold this as a settled point, that in the language of the Psalmist there is an allusion to those sudden and irregular emotions which arise in our minds when we are tossed by adversity, and by which we are precipitated into the devious and deceitful paths of error, till they are in due time subdued or allayed by the word of God. Thus the meaning is, Whatever may happen, suffer me not, O Lord, to fall from thy ways, or to be carried away by a wilful disobedience to thy authority, or any other sinful desire; but rather let thy truth preserve me in a state of quiet repose and peace, by an humble submission to it. Moreover, although he frequently repeats the same thing, asking that God would make him to know his ways, and teach him in them, and lead him in his truth, there is no redundancy in these forms of speech. Our adversities are often like mists which darken the eyes; and every one knows from his own experience how difficult a thing it is, while these clouds of darkness continue, to discern in what way we ought to walk. But if David, so distinguished a prophet and endued with so much wisdom, stood in need of divine instruction, what shall become of us if, in our afflictions, God dispel not from our minds those clouds of darkness which prevent us from seeing his light? As often, then, as any temptation may assail us, we ought always to pray that God would make the light of his truth to shine upon us, lest, by having recourse to sinful devices, we should go astray, and wander into devious and forbidden paths.

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Opening Prayer.

Lesson 24. [1.2.2.] The Contents of Holy Scripture. Pt. 2 The Law: Genesis.

Westminster Confession of Faith 1.2

Under the name of holy Scripture, or the Word of God written, are now contained all the books of the Old and New Testaments, which are these:

Of the Old Testament:

• Genesis
• Exodus
• Leviticus
• Numbers
• Deuteronomy
• Joshua
• Judges
• Ruth
• I Samuel
• II Samuel
• I Kings
• II Kings
• I Chronicles
• II Chronicles
• Ezra
• Nehemiah
• Esther
• Job
• Psalms
• Proverbs
• Ecclesiastes
• The Song of Songs
• Isaiah
• Jeremiah
• Lamentations
• Ezekiel
• Daniel
• Hosea
• Joel
• Amos
• Obadiah
• Jonah
• Micah
• Nahum
• Habakkuk
• Zephaniah
• Haggai
• Zechariah
• Malachi

Of the New Testament:

• The Gospels according to
  • Matthew
  • Mark
  • Luke
  • John
• The Acts of the Apostles
• Paul’s Epistles to
  • the Romans
  • Corinthians I
  • Corinthians II
  • Galatians
  • Ephesians
  • Philippians
  • Colossians
  • Thessalonians I
  • Thessalonians II
  • To Timothy I
  • To Timothy II
  • To Titus
  • To Philemon
• The Epistle to the Hebrews
• The Epistle of James
• The First and Second Epistles of Peter
• The First, Second, and Third Epistles of John
• The Epistle of Jude
• The Revelation

All which are given by inspiration of God, to be the rule of faith and life.

Intro. CALVIN 2.10.9-14:

Moreover, God did not merely testify to them that He was their God, but also promised that He would be so forever, so that their hope would not rest content with present blessings but extend into eternity. That this reference to the future had weight with them is evident from many passages, where the faithful, seeking consolation not only in their present afflictions but for the time to come, are assured that God would never fail them.

Now, regarding the second part of this promise, He made even clearer confirmation that His blessing towards them would extend beyond the limits of this earthly life when He declared: I will be the God of your seed after you (Gen. 17:7). For if He was to show His goodwill towards them even after death by blessing their descendants, how much less would His favor fail them personally? God is not like men, who transfer their love to the children of their friends because death cuts off their ability to bestow kindness on those whom they love. Rather, since God’s beneficence is not hindered by death, He surely does not withhold the fruit of His mercy from the dead when, for their sake, He pours it out upon a thousand generations (Exod. 20:6).

By this remarkable testimony, therefore, the Lord willed to commend to them the greatness and abundance of His goodness, which they would experience after death, describing it in such a way that it overflowed upon their entire family. And the truth of this promise was sealed and, as it were, brought to fulfillment when God long after the death of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob declared Himself to be their God (Exod. 3:6).

For what else could this mean? Would it not have been a ridiculous title if they had perished? It would have been no different from saying, I am the God of those who are no more. Thus, by this single argument, Christ silenced the Sadducees, as the Evangelists recount (Matt. 22:23; Luke 20:37-38), so that they could not deny that the resurrection of the dead was attested by Moses himself. For from Moses they had learned that all the saints are in His hand (Deut. 33:3). From this, it was easy to conclude that those whom God, the Lord of life and death, had taken into His guardianship, care, and protection were not extinguished by death.

10. Now, let us examine (for this is the chief hinge of the controversy) whether the faithful themselves were also so instructed by the Lord that they perceived a better life elsewhere, and, disregarding the earthly, meditated upon that life.

First, the condition of life divinely appointed to them was a continual exercise by which they were reminded that they would be the most miserable of all men if their happiness consisted in this life alone. Adam—rendered utterly wretched merely by the remembrance of his lost felicity—sustained his poverty with grievous toil, burdened not only by the labor of his hands but by the curse of God upon the ground (Gen. 3:17). And what solace remained to him was overshadowed by the ultimate sorrow: of his two sons, one was torn from him by his brother’s abominable fratricide (Gen. 4:8), while the other, whom he had as a survivor, was one whose very sight he had reason to abhor and detest. Abel, cruelly slaughtered in the very bloom of his youth, stands as a testimony to the calamity of mankind.

Noah, while the entire world rested securely in its pleasures, spent much of his life in wearisome labor constructing the ark (Gen. 6:22). And though he escaped death, he did so only to endure greater sufferings than if he had undergone a hundred deaths. For beyond the fact that the ark became to him as it were a tomb for ten months, what could be more unpleasant than to be confined for so long, nearly immersed in the filth of animals? After struggling through so many hardships, he encountered fresh sorrow: he saw himself mocked by his own son, and was compelled by his own lips to curse him whom he had received as a beneficiary of God’s great mercy, having been spared from the flood (Gen. 9:24).

11. Abraham, indeed, ought to stand before us as worth ten thousand men, if we consider his faith, which is set forth as the highest rule for our own belief. In this lineage of faith, we must be counted as his children, if we are to be sons of God (Gen. 12:4). But what could be more absurd than to call Abraham the father of all the faithful, and yet not even hold the least place among them? If he is cast out from the number of the faithful—or, rather, from his most honorable rank—then the entire Church is thereby abolished.

Now, as for the trials of his life: from the very moment he is called by the command of God, he is torn away from his country, his kindred, and his friends, among whom men believe that life’s chief sweetness is found—as if the Lord had deliberately willed to strip him of all the comforts of life. No sooner does he set foot in the land where he is commanded to dwell, than famine drives him from it (Gen. 12:10). Fleeing to Egypt in search of relief, he finds himself compelled, for the sake of preserving his life, to prostitute his own wife (Gen. 12:12)—a fate perhaps more bitter than many deaths. Returning to the land of his habitation, he is again forced out by famine. What kind of happiness is it to dwell in a land where one must so often hunger, or even perish from want, unless he flee from it? Once more, he is brought by necessity to the point where he must ransom his life by the dishonor of his wife before Abimelech (Gen. 20:2).

For many years he wandered uncertainly from place to place, driven by continual quarrels among his servants to part ways with his nephew, whom he regarded as a son (Gen. 13:8-9). Without doubt, this separation must have been as painful to him as if he had lost a limb. Soon after, he hears that his nephew has been taken captive by enemies (Gen. 14:12). Wherever he goes, he finds himself among savage and barbarous neighbors, who will not even permit him to drink from wells which he has dug with great labor. Even when he seeks to purchase their use from the king of Gerar, he is first forbidden (Gen. 21:25).

Now, when he has come to the infirmity of old age, which in itself is a grievous burden, he finds himself childless—until, beyond all hope, he begets Ishmael. Yet even this son is obtained at great cost, as he is wearied by the reproaches of Sarah, as if by indulging the stubbornness of his handmaid, he had himself been the cause of domestic strife (Gen. 16:5-6). Finally, Isaac is born—but at the price of casting out his firstborn Ishmael, who is sent away as if a stranger, almost with hostility (Gen. 21:10). When Isaac alone remains, in whom the weary old man might rest, he is soon after commanded to slay him (Gen. 22:2).

What calamity could human thought conceive greater than for a father to become the executioner of his son? If the child had died from disease, who would not have pitied the wretched old man, whose son was taken from him, doubling the sorrow of his childlessness? If he had been slain by the hand of a stranger, the disgrace of such a death would have only added to the grief. But this surpasses all examples of misfortune—to be slaughtered by his own father’s hand.

Thus, throughout his entire life, he was tossed and afflicted in such a way that, if anyone were to paint a picture of a life wholly miserable, he could find no model more fitting. Nor should anyone object that he was not utterly wretched, since he was at last delivered from so many and great storms. For we would not call that a blessed life, in which a man barely escapes countless miseries through great toil over a long course of time, but rather, one in which a man enjoys his present blessings in peace, without the sense of suffering.

12. Isaac, though afflicted with fewer misfortunes, scarcely tastes even the smallest sweetness in life. He, too, undergoes trials that prevent a man from being blessed in this world. Famine drives him from the land of Canaan; his wife is torn from his bosom (Gen. 26:1, 7); his neighbors continually harass and oppress him in every way, so that he is even forced to strive over water (Gen. 26:19-21). At home, he suffers much grief from his daughters-in-law (Gen. 26:35); he is distressed by the discord between his sons (Gen. 27:41), and he can only remedy this great evil by sending away the very one whom he had blessed into exile (Gen. 28:1, 5).

But Jacob is nothing less than the very image of extreme wretchedness. He passes his youth in great unrest at home, beset by the threats and terrors of his elder brother, which at last compel him to flee (Gen. 27:42-45). To be exiled from his parents and his homeland is itself a bitter trial, yet when he comes as a fugitive to his uncle Laban, he is received no more kindly or humanely. It is no small burden to endure the hardest and most severe servitude for seven years (Gen. 29:20), yet he is deceived in marriage by malicious fraud. For the sake of another wife, he is forced to enter a second servitude, where he is scorched by the sun all day and frozen by night, as he himself laments (Gen. 31:40). For twenty years he bears such hardship, while daily suffering new wrongs from his father-in-law. Nor is he at peace in his own household, for it is torn apart by the hatred, quarrels, and jealousies of his wives.

When at last he is commanded to return to his homeland, he is forced to make his departure in such a manner that it seems like an ignoble flight. Yet even this does not allow him to escape the injustice of his father-in-law, who assails him with reproaches and insults in the midst of his journey (Gen. 31:23-30). Soon after, he faces a much more dreadful trial. As he approaches his brother, he sees before him as many deaths as the cruel and hostile Esau could prepare for him. He is thus tormented and torn apart by dreadful terrors, until he at last comes into his brother’s presence, falling at his feet as if half-dead, until he finds him more reconciled than he had dared to hope (Gen. 32:11; 33:3-4).

Soon after, at the very entrance into the land, he loses Rachel, the wife whom he most dearly loved (Gen. 35:16-19). Then, the son whom she bore him, and whom he loved above all others, he is told has been torn apart by a wild beast (Gen. 37:32-33). How deeply this grief pierced him is evident, for after long weeping, he obstinately refuses all comfort, declaring that he will go down to his son mourning into the grave (Gen. 37:35). Meanwhile, he suffers the abduction and defilement of his daughter (Gen. 34:2), and the reckless revenge of his sons, which not only made him odious to all the inhabitants of the land but brought him to the brink of extermination (Gen. 34:30). Then follows that monstrous crime of Reuben, his firstborn, than which nothing more grievous could happen (Gen. 35:22). For while the violation of a wife is among the greatest of misfortunes, what can be said when such a crime is committed by one’s own son? Not long after, his family is further stained with another incestuous deed (Gen. 38:18), so that even the strongest and most steadfast soul could hardly endure such dishonor without being utterly cast down.

At the end of his life, while seeking relief from famine for himself and his family, he is struck with a fresh calamity—he learns that another son is held in chains, and to ransom him, he must entrust Benjamin, the only remaining object of his love, into the hands of others (Gen. 42:19-20, 36).

Who could imagine that, amid such an accumulation of misfortunes, he was ever given even a moment of peaceful repose? Indeed, he himself testifies to Pharaoh that his days on earth have been both short and full of sorrow (Gen. 47:9). If, after a life of continual affliction, he declares that he has lived in misery, surely he did not experience the prosperity promised to him by the Lord in an earthly sense. Therefore, either Jacob was an ungrateful and unjust estimator of God’s grace, or he truly had reason to call himself wretched upon the earth. If his declaration was true, then it follows that his hope was not set upon earthly things.

13. If these holy patriarchs (which is certainly beyond doubt) expected a blessed life from the hand of God, then they must have conceived of and looked for a happiness other than that of earthly life. This is most beautifully demonstrated by the Apostle, who says: By faith, Abraham sojourned in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise. For they were looking for a city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them from afar, and having believed, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. By this they declare that they seek a country; and if they had been mindful of that from which they had come, they had opportunity to return. But they desired a better, that is, a heavenly one. Wherefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared for them a city (Heb. 11:9-16).

Indeed, they would have been duller than stocks of wood to have so tenaciously pursued the promises, when there was no visible hope of their fulfillment on earth, unless they had looked for their completion elsewhere. The Apostle especially insists upon this for good reason, that they called this life a pilgrimage, just as Moses records: The days of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty years (Gen. 47:9). For if they were strangers and sojourners in the land of Canaan, where then was the fulfillment of the Lord’s promise, by which they were constituted as its heirs? It is manifest, therefore, that what the Lord had promised them concerning possession extended far beyond this present world.

This is why they gained no foothold in the land of Canaan, except in the form of a burial place, by which they bore witness that they expected to receive the fruit of the promise only after death. This, too, was the reason why Jacob so greatly esteemed being buried there that he bound his son Joseph by an oath to fulfill that promise (Gen. 47:29-30), and why Joseph, after many generations, desired that his bones—already long since reduced to dust—be carried there as well (Gen. 50:25).

14. Finally, it is plainly evident that in all their pursuits in life, they had set before themselves the blessedness of the life to come. For what purpose would Jacob have so greatly desired the birthright, and sought it at such peril—at the cost of exile and almost total rejection, bringing him no apparent benefit at all—unless he had looked to a higher blessing? That this was indeed his understanding is revealed in the words he uttered in his last breath: I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord (Gen. 49:18). What salvation could he have been expecting, when he knew he was about to expire, unless he perceived in death the beginning of a new life?

And why do we dispute about the saints and the sons of God in this matter, when even one who otherwise strove to resist the truth was not without some taste of this knowledge? For what did Balaam mean when he said, Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his (Num. 23:10), if not that he sensed the very thing which David later declared: Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints (Ps. 116:15), whereas the death of the wicked is evil (Ps. 34:22)?

For if the final boundary and goal of life were in death itself, there could be no distinction to be observed between the righteous and the wicked; but since their lot after death is vastly different, they are thereby distinguished from one another.

Lesson

1. Genesis

“Beginning, origin, generation.” Bereshit, “In the beginning”

Primeval History (1-11)

• In the beginning
• The fall
• Small religion
• The first age wiped out by the flood
• The following age built the tower of Babel

Patriarchal History (12-50)

• Abraham
• Isaac
• Jacob
• Joseph
• The rest of the world is ignored except so far as they deal with the church

i. Creation

• Gen. 1:1, 1:26-28, 2:3
• Neh. 9:6, Col. 1:16-17

ii. Fall

• Gen. 3:6-7, 3:17-19
• Rom. 5:12

iii. Promise

• Gen. 3:15, 12:2-3
• Gal. 3:16

iv. Covenant

• Gen. 17:7, 19; 26:2-5; 28:13-15; 32:28; 35:10-12

v. Providence

• Gen. 4:26, 6:8-9, 12:1-3, 35:2-3, 45:7-8

vi. Blessing

• Gen. 1:28, 5:24, 12:2-3, 15:1-6; Rev. 22:14

Conclusion

Luke 12:32

Closing Prayer

Youtube Audio: https://youtu.be/_t94FCGiHDc