The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry. The face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth. When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken. Affliction will slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned. The LORD redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.
(Psa 34:15-22 ESV)
Boy, I could read this Psalm over and over again! I have begun the extremely lengthy process of memorizing.
Totally off subject tangent. I’m bad at memorization. I mean really bad. There are songs that I have been singing for years, and I still don’t know them. It took me most of Friday night at Bethlehem Revisited to learn verse 2 of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. That’s four hours of constant exposure to learn 4 lines of text. Sad, huh? The really sad thing is that if you were to ask me next week to sing it, I would have no clue. Which brings us to the subject of poor excuses. I was struck at Monday night’s Elder meeting as the Student Mobilization staff used verses to answer every question just how pitiful my learned knowledge of the Word is. My excuse? I don’t memorize well. So! Moses didn’t talk so well. God’s Word tells us that His Word is our sword and shield. I suppose it’s about time I arm myself for the battle.
Tangent finished, back to the Psalm. When I was a teacher, I was often accused of playing favorites. It used to bother me … a lot. I don’t know about you, but I never liked teachers who played favorites. Of course, looking back, those were the teachers that didn’t have me as a favorite. Anyway, I considered this for many years before I realized that as a teacher, I gravitated towards the kids who wanted to be taught. The indifferent kids (rightly or wrongly) were largely ignored in my interactions with the students that interacted pro-actively. The “bad” kids? My philosophy was to remove them from the classroom when they caused a distraction to the kids who wanted to learn. I’m sure you can see the connection here to the Psalm in my very imperfect example.
God looks towards the righteous and looks away from the wicked. It’s like He wants to spend His time on the people that want to grow. When they cry for help or are brokenhearted, He is right there, guiding and supporting every step of the way. To connect back to the teaching example, God is not like the Algebra teacher who explained the concept and then left the students to flounder on their own. He is like the teacher who would take whatever time it took (you know, the teacher available after class, who was willing to take precious class time to work through problems) to make sure their students understood the concepts at hand. God doesn’t leave His children to flounder! He is good to come alongside and guide us.
But! David says in Psalm 14, “The Lord has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt; There is no on who does good, not even one.”Doesn’t look so good huh? These two Psalms combined don’t say great things about our chances to be God’s “favorites.”
But! David points to our hope in both Psalms. In Psalm 14 he says, “Oh that the salvation of Israel would come out of Zion! When the Lord restores His captive people, Jacob will rejoice, Israel will be glad.” He’s a bit more subtle in Psalm 34, but verse 20 sticks out like a sore thumb. “He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.”Where else in the Bible does it talk about broken bones?
Talking about the sacrificial lamb in Exodus, the Lord commands, “… and you shall not break any of its bones.” We have a Lamb whose bones were never broken. John 19:32-33 says, “So the soldiers cam and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with Him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs.”
Crucifixion was a horrific means of punishment. You would think it would be the nails, or the exposure to the elements that would kill the person hanging there, but actually the person on the cross would die from suffocation. The way the Romans hung a person caused there to be terrible pressure on the chest and lungs, meaning the only way to get a breath was for the person to painfully straighten their legs. This meant putting pressure on the stacked feet with a nail through, scraping the back against the splintery wood, rubbing the skin raw. Often the person would hang for a long time, but the Jews were in a hurry because of the approaching Sabbath. To speed up the process of killing, the soldiers would break the legs of the victims so they could no longer stand. In other words, crucified people had their legs broken, but not the Lamb of God. This fulfilled the requirements set down in Exodus and alluded to in Psalm 34.
Also, as Christ took the sins of the world upon Himself on the cross, the Father had to turn away, as is His nature to turn away from sin. But, Jesus rose from the grave, gloriously conquering sin and death! What’s more, when we are in Christ, when the Father looks at us, He sees Christ. We can finally have God look at us! Psalm 34 then becomes the comfort and truth it was obviously intended by David to be! “The Lord redeems the life of His servants, none of those who take refuge in Him will be condemned.”
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