The Prayer for social unity.

Ps 10

1 Why, O LORD, do you stand far off ? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?

2 In his arrogance the wicked man hunts down the weak, who are caught in the schemes he devises.

3 He boasts of the cravings of his heart; he blesses the greedy and reviles the LORD.

4 In his pride the wicked does not seek him; in all his thoughts there is no room for God.

5 His ways are always prosperous; he is haughty and your laws are far from him; he sneers at all his enemies.

6 He says to himself, "Nothing will shake me; I'll always be happy and never have trouble."

7 His mouth is full of curses and lies and threats; trouble and evil are under his tongue.

8 He lies in wait near the villages; from ambush he murders the innocent, watching in secret for his victims.

9 He lies in wait like a lion in cover; he lies in wait to catch the helpless; he catches the helpless and drags them off in his net.

10 His victims are crushed, they collapse; they fall under his strength.

11 He says to himself, "God has forgotten; he covers his face and never sees."

12 Arise, LORD! Lift up your hand, O God. Do not forget the helpless.

13 Why does the wicked man revile God? Why does he say to himself, "He won't call me to account"?

14 But you, O God, do see trouble and grief; you consider it to take it in hand. The victim commits himself to you; you are the helper of the fatherless.

15 Break the arm of the wicked and evil man; call him to account for his wickedness that would not be found out.

16 The LORD is King for ever and ever; the nations will perish from his land.

17 You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry,

18 defending the fatherless and the oppressed, in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more. 

This Psalm is addressing the breakdown down in society. God has ordered and established all societies by a definite communication. God rules through His spoken word by opposing evil and bringing all those who scheme against His government to judgement. When God created the earth He established a fellowship with man and gave man rule over the earth. Everything that man communicated was in perfect harmony with all that God had created. But when man fell into sin he became his own god and began to scheme against Gods order by scheming against God and his neighbor. 

God created the all things by the word of His mouth. He not only spoke creation into existence but He also explained how all things work in perfect harmony with His purposes. When man fell into sin God provided redemption. Now listen all men are born in sin and go astray. And because all men go astray they become guilty of scheming against the way that God creates harmony. But God has determined to save some men. When a man is saved even tho he is still a sinner and is guilty of leading other men astray by his sin, he is no longer on his own. Now the child of God is represented by God. This means that God views His children not as rebels scheming against His authority but He pities His children. When a person is saved he goes from the road of being cursed to the path of blessing in which God reorders all of the times when the saint strays, sins, and suffers wrongs. 

Gods perfect communication is His complete description of everything working in perfect harmony. Because of sin all men are guilty of attempting to change Gods word and explain a world that in which they are god. God views anything that does not measure up to His standard as a communication of destruction. Man seeks to destroy God and his neighbor. This is what the Psalms describe as" scheming. "This is why all men are hopeless without receiving Gods implanted word...a desire to think thoughts after God. 

God has established His word by opposing sin and the destruction as a result of sin. Every man born in sin is destined to be judged. This is the path of cursing. Every man who is saved is destined for eternal life. This is the path of blessing. God scrutinizes every thought of man. All men ..saved and unsaved cannot go back and create the unity that they destroyed by their false communication/ But God has established unity by doing the work necessary to redeem that unity that His people are guilty of opposing by their communication. God has done all the work to reestablish His kingdom on the earth through His people who enjoy His kingdom in them.  

But the wicked from the beginning of time have created a culture through their thoughts and words that hold men under their power. This psalm is a prayer for God to undue all of the schemes that have caused harm to His people bring them to account and reestablish order in His kingdom. We are responsible to speak Gods thoughts after Him through , mediation, prayer and public worship. This prayer by the Psalmist is that the kingdom that dwells in Gods people will be united with the reordering of this world. If all the saints spoke this Psalm in prayer we would see a return to the old days. This is the prayer to reorder the society and bring life back in place of what has been destroyed.

The powerlessness of the physical acts of worship 

A lot of teaching will describe the worship under the law as burdensome.But at the same time they will say that salvation has not changed. In describing the OT in this way you got to stand back and look at those people who under this system and put yourself in their shoes. In some ways we got to get out of the classroom , step back and see if we are not creating an illusion that the ot was filled with super heroes. lol

Its interesting that with all of these details of the law that the Psalms not only avoid them but David speaks as if they are a burden. If you really sit down and think it really is outside the church that the law becomes and instrument to oppose grace. In this way David stands at the door of the temple and unravels that terrible burden in men focusing on the ceremonial part of Israels history. I do not really believe that this problem with the legal parts of religion was confined to Israel. But it is a problem with the human heart in any part of the history of the world. We can compare our freedom with their ceremonial law and think we are not as primitive as those people or that they were not as human in reacting to the burdens that we placed upon them. But we are all trusting in the law to make us righteous in some ways. The ot saint was just as opposed to the burdens as we are . There wasnt enough time in the day nor were they superhuman. They needed to be released from the condemnation and the focus of the law as we do.

This is why Ive been saying for many years that the teaching in the Psalms concerning the physical aspects of the worship had no relation to the acceptability of God. Now I want you to listen to me. Our problem is not how much we know of doctrine. I mean what you dont know can harm you if not for Gods mercy. But the problem is our application in how we describe the works of God. Putting together all of these things in our world view is an art form. Its easy for us to know the boundaries of the doctrines of grace. Its another thing to be able to apply them correctly.

Ive been run off and opposed by people who do not like to hear that the sacrifices in the ot had no power. The physical parts of worship are not the primary or normal communication in applying the gospel. But the gospel addresses every man in every culture in all circumstances. The effects of the gospel are eternal not limited by time and space. I will show you through how David describes these physical parts of worship and the powerlessness they have. And in fact the Israelites went to the temple for the purpose of being successful in subduing the nations and not really for physical blessings. The cup is a grace that we take in order to oppose Satan and subdue the earth.

Gods defense of His children

Psalm 121

1 I lift up my eyes to the hills-- where does my help come from?

2 My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.

3 He will not let your foot slip-- he who watches over you will not slumber;

4 indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

5 The LORD watches over you-- the LORD is your shade at your right hand;

6 the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night.

7 The LORD will keep you from all harm-- he will watch over your life;

8 the LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.

The Psalmist is declaring in this Psalm that God creates reality according to His goodness and is proved by His sure defense of us. Here he uses the sun and the moon as metaphors for the size of the opposition and the time it takes God to defend us against all potential troubles. 

He uses this word "lift" as a metaphor for Gods representative on the earth who pronounces Gods law, covenants , decrees and promises in being the object of Gods sure defense. You see this term repeated throughout the Psalms like lift up my soul, hands, head, cup, and horns etc. All of these phrases are metaphors , showing that we have the ability to create this kingdom defense by using His spoken word in the context of His anthropomorphism to establish His power. 

He is lifting up His eyes in the sense that He is as secure as God is sovereign.  The Psalmist is also declaring that God protects Israel from all troubles. This term "slip" is describing the inevitable end that comes upon the wicked  whos life is like being on a slippery object and sliding down into hell .

When He pronounces God as maker of Heaven and earth its in the context of God speaking everything into reality from eternity past. The Psalmist uses Gods covenant , laws etc as the creative defense that are on his lips in waring against the nations. So the Psalmist is not saying that he gets these benefits in using the means of faith. Im talking about in our culture...going to church , observing days, etc. He is talking about using Gods spoken word in a wise way. And in this sense he not only is a warrior but a prophet and a king.

Since I moved to the mountains I have a better understanding of what the Psalmist is talking about here. You have this comparison to the sun and the moon and the incredible size of the mountains to block out this light that shines beyond the earth. We see that our trials are defined by God according to His understanding of eternity, His presence in which He has viewed all events on the earth from His eternal position. He has the wisdom of Someone who has been present from the beginning of time.

When we go into the mountains there are places where the sun has been blocked out to the point where it is dark. So you have the huge presence of the light that shines from the sun and it is blocked out by a single cliff. In this sense it is smaller than a pebble from Gods view. lol So the Psalmist never really describes grace unless it has this context where God lowers Himself so that we cannot slip. In fact the Psalmist describes Gods incarnation as going under our deepest trial and upholding us with His hand.

Why we cannot completely understand what troubles us.

Ok you got to put on your thinking caps here. God has spoken all things both physical and meta physical into existence. God has ordained from eternity past whatsoever comes to past in this world. Gods view is not limited to the sequence of time. God sees the beginning from the end in one snapshot. God does not follow people around to see what they are doing. God looks upon all mens hearts at one time. When God looks its not like our seeing with our eyes. God looks in a creative way. He is able to explain every thing that happens in reality. God makes His actions absolutely free by comparing His ability to create through big catastrophes of history. God exercises His power in volcano's, hurricanes, and any thing that we consider uncontrollable by man. But in Gods view the power of the volcano is exercised in one small cell. In Gods view the blessing and the cursing are absolute at all times. The worse that could happen never fails and the most unbelievable miracle that we can see always is successful at all times in all events.

This is what it means for God to be holy at all times. God acts according to His eternal power, in presence and knowledge. So God understands our problems in a relational way. He explains our problems perfectly for the purpose of working all things for our good and His glory. But what we need to see is that in order for us to understand ourselves in light of our problems we must get closer and closer to Gods view or His explanation in which we go beyond our explanation by speaking the simple language that He has given us that is in line with Gods detailed language. The language of the bible is not words but spirit.

God is relational in dealing with our problems. He has created us with the same expression that He has towards us when we face these problems. God has created all things and given us authority over the earth to also create. God does not explain His faithfulness by describing it in Himself but He explains it as it is interrelated to us. The problem is that we cannot completely justify Gods acts toward us in His faithfulness because we are not available to communicate with Him. In other words and in some ways we are too weak to hear the reasons that God does what He does and remain faithful in His promises. I do not believe this frustration is because of our sin.

Self understanding does not come from personal atonement but rather learning how to communicate to God according to His word so that we express love, anger, fear, joy, and sorrow in the way that He is successful in creating and recreating. In other words the bible tells us the best way to mirror Gods way of doing things. This is why Gods recreations are not just intellectual commands but they are also spiritual powers and in some ways emotional...in the sense that He lowers Himself to our level so that He can identify with us and bring us back to His mysterious perfect description of all things.

This is why the Psalmist expressed His understanding of himself in his meditations, praises and curses. We must understand that God in helping us understand ourselves has create our world as firm and fixed. God has made it so that we are secure and strong as we experience the kingdom pushing in on us. The more firm the world is around us the more we experience His covenant promises. He promises to always be kind, long suffering ,gentle, faithful, and loving. How do we go from the promise to the mysterious spiritual conversion?

We experience this by using the expressions that God has revealed...like ...praise, anger, hearing Him speak in the art of musing , questioning and pronouncing. When we become proficient in approaching God in this way we are in fellowship with a God who will listen to us. I mean not in the sense that He is pleased with our efforts but that the more we know the more we will know what He is saying and the more we will understand our problems. We are not all gifted with the same abilities so God has given us His word in which one word is the spirit of all the words. Once we understand one word it is enough to understand and experience deliverance as if we understood all the words.

Problems in teaching obedience in the wrong context.

The great secret war that is going on in this world is describing righteousness outside of the context of the bible as opposed to teaching it according to how it is applied in the bible. Out of all the problems that I find in peoples teaching this is the number one problem. The wrong way to apply righteousness has been the cause of all the problems in this world. The great war with Satan is successful by our being able to put everything in the context of grace. When we live in grace we live in a city in which God has erected walls that cannot be penetrated. All the battles on this earth between nations have been waged in how we describe grace. Because the doctrine of grace is the cause of spiritual and political freedom.

The Psalmist is interchanging Gods unfailing love with His righteousness in His description of Gods kingdom. Gods unfailing love cannot be communicated unless it is upheld by His righteousness. The Psalms describe our relationship to the Trinity in the ot description of the presence of God. Gods presence was in the Tabernacle , in the light and fire that led Israel out of Egypt and into the promise land.You will find that this relationship is expressed in the metaphors of how God deals with us according to righteousness. This is why I can identify false teaching because Ive meditated on the details of these relationships its the fail safe way from being put back under the law. It has been so engrained in my experience that I consider the teaching of obedience and righteousness as the first point of argument in being an over-comer.

You will find that the Psalmist appeals to Gods righteousness as his protection the same way that he uses Gods law as his weapons to gain victory over Gods enemies. And in fact the fear of God is His success in the teaching of this relationship that He had with Israel as a fire by day and a light by night. He goes before us and consumes our foes on every side. You will also find that the Psalmist addresses the Holy Spirit not in the context of conviction but the agent who provides the level ground that Israel would take to get to the promise land. All of this miss understanding of the responsibilities of the Holy Spirit are introduced by legalist. The Holy Spirit is actually the person who goes out and establishes Gods righteousness by upholding Gods name in which we are successful by the Spirit being our go- between.

There is no one righteous...NO NOT ONE! But this Psalm is in the context of Gods position as the light and fire. And the purpose of the Psalm is not to describe us in a two line way. I mean as believers saved by grace we are separated unto God but as people who are being sanctified we are put in the universal teaching of NO NOT ONE. Actually the Psalm is written for the purpose of protecting Gods elect who are suffering the ravages of evil men. Men who eat my people like men eat bread. It is put not put in a private description of the christian life and the man who struggles with sin but its Gods description as a King who advances His people in His protection.

Let me give you the angle by which the Psalmist uses righteousness like the fire and light.

Ps 85 13 Righteousness goes before him and prepares the way for his steps.This is an analogy of Christ who is the light and fire going out in front of Gods elect people and establishing righteousness not for Israel per say but for His own glory and for the enjoyment of His elect. I will come back to this. 

Assurance through inability.

Assurance is practiced when we have described Gods kingdom so that we believe that God is in control. We gain assurance by pronouncing His covenants then petitioning Him according to His faithfulness , kindness, long suffering and salvation. We also approach Him with our human frailties and the sorrow we carry because of our propensity to experience the effects of the curse. It is easy for us to imagine that our assurance is described by how much we focus on Christ. Its very deceptive to approach God on what we are experiencing in the present and never address what is bothering us. Its easy for us to teach that focusing on Christ must be done with a lot of care. But to focus on Christ and get our focus off ourselves we must really believe that we are saved into a kingdom in which Gods law has established our boundaries and our safety. Focusing on Christ is going beyond the word to the Person. We must learn that God has established His righteousness so that He might show forth His glory and in this we need no other motivation for growing in the christian experience.

But we also go down side roads because we focus on ourselves being unable to do good. The truth is that even if we become proficient in describing His kingdom that dwells in our hearts and appealing to Him because we really believe that we live in this kingdom that its easy for us to make inability  our act to gain acceptance.  We are easily led astray by thinking and feeling that we are worse then He thinks we are. We really believe that if we could talk ourselves down that He would show pity to us and be more available to us. But at some point inability must be expressed in the lack of care we have for the things of this world. The only way that we will really accept total inability is when we experience the powerlessness of human achievements by tasting and seeing the works of God as if God came to us in a battle and pulled us out at the most dangerous time. Focusing on Christ is living in a kind of mysterious disposition in which the weight of the care of this world does not influence our experience in His kingdom. When the kingdom that is within us comes in unity with the kingdom that God has established through His covenants, laws, decrees, and promises then we have Christ in us the hope of glory.

We glory in our weakness , we do not shy away from it.  Our weakness is the gift of God to dull the pain. We can settle back into our secret meditations in any circumstance and seek to rest in Christ as if we have left the room. The truth is that rest is like a soldier who is entering a city at night and must go past the guard without awakening him. If the soldier makes one loud move then he puts his life in danger. And this is what true biblical rest is. We can be the agents of someones fear and sorrow by speaking with the wrong motives. If we are not at rest then we will wake the guards up in others. Inability is being able to touch the other persons experience. 

Assurance is gifted to us

Everyone of Gods children should have a settled assurance. When we are saved God reverses the way that we view morality. God must settle us in our assurance before we can grow in the christian experience. Before we were saved we believed that it was necessary to do good in order to be rewarded. We believed that our relationships with others was built on doing good to our neighbor. We lived by the laws of karma that what we do always comes back to us. But when we are saved all of our motivation comes from experiencing the love of God.

God has created everything for the purpose of being pleased with His creation. In the first temptation of man Satan wanted us to believe that God did not create everything for our good. Rather Satan presented the idea that God left something out with the intention to deceive us. When Satan convinced man to accept that if he disobeyed God, man would know this other gift that man could get upon eating the fruit, man became his own god and received the curse of death. But this did not thwart Gods original purpose to love mankind.

But when sin entered into the world everything that God created became corrupted. The problem is that if God loved all men as His children without showing that He gave man freedom then He would be seen as someone who created robots. God does not rule by forcing people to act. That would not be love but dictatorial control. Rather God shows His love by setting His children free from experiencing the curse of the second death. God does not just save a person from hell but He gives His children a gift that is different from all other gifts.

When we receive a gift from other men it is given so that we can enjoy it by using it for our personal benefit. We use it in some way to further our success by enjoying it. So in this way we add to the value of the gift by the amount of work we put into its use. So the value of the gift is according to our character that we share in enjoying it. But Gods gift is not like this. God has provided His gifts with a total experience of the highest performance and pleasure of the gift so that we can enjoy it in total freedom of our limitations but never getting to the experience that God has performed . The pleasure of the gift then is valued according to the Person who gifted it to us. The unfathomable knowledge of the gift is in God alone. When God gives us His gifts He gives us Himself because He wants to love us as He is free to make the gift and its enjoyment according to His eternal pleasure. So Im saying that our assurance of the gift of salvation is based upon Gods understanding of what He has gifted us. This is why the apostle compared receiving this assurance as a cry to a Father from a child.

 

Gods perfect recreation of us.

Ps 25

1 To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul;

2 in you I trust, O my God. Do not let me be put to shame, nor let my enemies triumph over me.

3 No one whose hope is in you will ever be put to shame, but they will be put to shame who are treacherous without excuse.

4 Show me your ways, O LORD, teach me your paths;

5 guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.

6 Remember, O LORD, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old.

7 Remember not the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you are good, O LORD.

8 Good and upright is the LORD; therefore he instructs sinners in his ways.

9 He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way.

10 All the ways of the LORD are loving and faithful for those who keep the demands of his covenant.

11 For the sake of your name, O LORD, forgive my iniquity, though it is great.

12 Who, then, is the man that fears the LORD? He will instruct him in the way chosen for him.

13 He will spend his days in prosperity, and his descendants will inherit the land.

14 The LORD confides in those who fear him; he makes his covenant known to them.

15 My eyes are ever on the LORD, for only he will release my feet from the snare.

16 Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted.

17 The troubles of my heart have multiplied; free me from my anguish.

18 Look upon my affliction and my distress and take away all my sins.

19 See how my enemies have increased and how fiercely they hate me!

20 Guard my life and rescue me; let me not be put to shame, for I take refuge in you.

21 May integrity and uprightness protect me, because my hope is in you.

22 Redeem Israel, O God, from all their troubles! 

If we study and meditate on this Psalm we will find that it is a holistic petition for God to form the Psalmist into a new man. Our tendency is divide our weaknesses and sins so that we can pinpoint the problem and then find the scripture that applies to it so that we reckon the sin dead through Christ death. In other words our purpose in dealing with sin is to try to stop sinning. 

I think this comes because we take a teaching in the NT that is describing the doctrine and the work that Christ has done in order to put the doctrine in its proper context and we assume that we can take that description and apply it to our particular problem. Most of our problems in the christian life do not come from understanding the teaching but miss applying the teaching. We find here that the Psalmist comes to God touching all of the points of what the bible describes as true faith in the form of a petition as if he is balancing himself so that he can walk straight. But the question is why does the Psalmist end the Psalm with such a desperate cry? 

The reason is because God is more than just a Person who helps us in our faith. No the Psalmist has a much more profound understanding of what is necessary for there to be real change. The Psalmist purpose is not to sin less. He is appealing to God who creates and recreates his total being. 

God sees every thing that is in creation as the most beautiful objects that are working in perfect unity for the purpose of bringing Himself glory. Our problem is that we only see our weaknesses and sins from our perspective and how they affect us. Our imperfect view keeps us from experiencing the unity that God has established in gifting us with His perfect acts that are described in His law. Because of our distance from enjoying Gods back bone as His expression of strength and comfort we experience loneliness...an inability to view the value of all things that God views. This is the desperation that the Psalmist finds himself with as cries out to God.  The Psalmist is praying to a God who can provide the successful foundation in which the Psalmist can experience a security that is outside of his small view as if God is allowing the Psalmist to be taken from the dungeon of his own finite experience to the eternal garden of the beauty and order of Gods perfect kingdom.  

 The sweetness of the presence of God.

Psalm 34

1 I will extol the LORD at all times; his praise will always be on my lips.

2 My soul will boast in the LORD; let the afflicted hear and rejoice.

3 Glorify the LORD with me; let us exalt his name together.

4 I sought the LORD, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears.

5 Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.

6 This poor man called, and the LORD heard him; he saved him out of all his troubles.

7 The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them.

8 Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.

9 Fear the LORD, you his saints, for those who fear him lack nothing.

10 The lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.

11 Come, my children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD.

12 Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days,

13 keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking lies.

14 Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.

15 The eyes of the LORD are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their cry;

16 the face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth.

17 The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles.

18 The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

19 A righteous man may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all;

20 he protects all his bones, not one of them will be broken.

21 Evil will slay the wicked; the foes of the righteous will be condemned.

22 The LORD redeems his servants; no one will be condemned who takes refuge in him. 

This is one of the sweetest Psalms to memorize and meditate upon.  The Psalmist is really describing the experience that transpires as he meditates upon the book of Psalms.  It is written to explain what happens when we seek God through the Psalms. Anytime the Psalmist talks about extolling God or praising God he is trying to describe the joy that he has in his heart as a result of speaking to God in the most pleasant way by having the Psalms on his lips. So we sort of walk around our house speaking the Psalms to God. 

This habit is of speaking the Psalms is described by David as skipping about the altar and praising God. This Psalm has been repeated over and over again in the process by which I seek God through the Psalms. Over the years Ive been on the edge of euphoria that breaks into my experience as I go through the day.When I begin to seek God through speaking the Psalms I begin to experience being in a beautiful garden where the air is fresh and through sight I  feel as if Ive been looking on the beauty of the flowers. Along with this i begin to experience a heightened sensitivity to my sight and my hearing. Its as if it is really happening in a physical way but its actually the sensations of the physical presence of being in that beautiful garden. And after many times that Ive sought God in this way it has become a normal experience in which my mind functions as its been trained by the habit. 

Along with this I begin to sense as if there is someone actually listening intently to me. I have come to believe after this experience that most of the communication that we have on a horizontal level is not really listening to people. When we speak to God through the Psalms His presence is manifested by this experience of Him listening to us. Its not like we are having a vision of someone who is there but its Him drawing us in to listening to us through our desires. Hes saying "I sought the Lord and He answered me." The experience is that we long for someone to listen to us. Its not something we actually think about unless we have sought God in the words of the Psalmist that are given to us so that as we speak them we experience God as if we our focus grew by experiencing the effects of how He has made us. When we have experienced the effects of how we feel when we have talked to someone who has really listened to us ...this is what I am talking about. 

This presence that we experience is powerful and glorious. And this is why the Psalmist says that he has a radiant face. Its like a time in our lives where we excelled in something and we became so impassioned about it that we experienced doing it under the influence of our endorphins. Its like being empowered like getting waves of tingles that we cannot stop.  The radiance is that there is nothing that is coming at us.... all the power is going from our inside out. In this sense we are acting in the proper context of doing the act with our whole being. We are experiencing the oneness of the pleasure of God in our created task. This is the radiance the Psalmist is talking about And so as we exercise in our meditation we begin to build this radiant image in us. 

But its not that we are experiencing God listening to us . We begin to taste and see the presence of God. And we begin to sense that we are being surrounded by angels. There is just something about this experience that I cannot explain. Its as if in this experience the Person is using the Psalms in imprinting in our minds a response to our speaking them to Him. This sense of God speaking back has been refined to me over the years. Sometimes I will be sitting and all of a sudden i will be hearing my thoughts speaking to me about something and its the same experience Ive had in this taste and see part of speaking the Psalms. Ill stop here.

Gods single purpose for us. 

Ive been living this christian life for a very long time. Most of the time I am frustrated because I hardly ever in complete agreement with the teaching. I get frustrated when someone teaches that salvation is by grace but then they teach a totally different option with different purposes. Im old enough to see that society is going in the direction according to what is allowed and not really how the person aligns themselves with the law of God. I ask myself how can a person who really reverences God go out and be genuine in the world? I think either they prevent themselves from getting dirtied by choosing their friends and avoiding other people. What I have described is exactly the two lines that they teach. This is the same kind of prejudice that is exhibited as someone who doesnt like a certain race.

If we have a category for redemption to be settled in the future than inevitably we have a cause not to act now. In my opinion this overshadows the communication of orthodoxy. I am so obsessed with creating disunity that Ive developed a shield around myself in private in which I cannot rest until I have cursed it. I have learned that grace is like a companion and when that person gets attacked I become restless. The only hope of rest is to understand the total teaching of grace and then to find the hole that was pierced in the grace boat through meditation on the Psalms so that it can be closed up and we can rest in Christ. If grace does not unify truth then we are hopeless to unify our body with our soul and live in unity with our culture.

Grace teaches us that we live in a kingdom in which God has provided our safety by speaking everything into existence in us and in our circumstances that are either for ordained as a gift for our good or reordered for our good. The Psalmist depicts the terrible circumstances that he was in prior to his deliverance in the worse terms. He calls them a miry pit. In other words it wasnt just a pit that was over his head but it had quick sand that would swallow him up. But he says that God lifted him out of the miry pit and set his feet on a Rock. Now listen the Rock is God violent and destructive work to prevent His elect from being mortally wounded in war. In other words the Rock provides the boundaries of safety within the walls of Gods kingdom. 

As a result of being delivered from the miry pit and put on a rock God also gave Him new shoes, clothes, and put a song in his mouth.This shows that in Gods kingdom we are provided for and set free as if we skip around singing songs. Later on the Psalmist adds to this depiction. He says that God will do many wonders on his behalf, the things that God has planned are to great for us to understand. What is this new promise? Is the Psalmist saying that in the future God will bring us all to heaven and then we will get what Christ has earned? Not really. We believe it is already gifted to us but its in the future it will be fully experienced.

This already part is where it becomes a matter of contention for me. Because Ive been saying that Gods promises to us have been legally binding. God has sworn to uphold His covenant to His own hurt. There is not wiggle room for an island of non action by God. A lot of Calvinist say that if we lower God then we are making it hard for ourselves in this life. But if there is a possibility that we must have hope because of something that is promised in the future then its the same thing as lowering God because we tie His hands to act on our behalf now. When we allow God to have His hands tied we exalt man. And so this is where cursing comes in.
 

 True self denial

Let me talk about the use of the curses in the Psalms. Ive been accused of a lot of things because I am teaching that the curses are important in understanding Gods purposes in saving men. Ive been accused of being unloving and selfish...even threatening me by saying that those curses will fall on me. lol And yet these same people at some point and time are shown to attach labels on people they disagree with or that are socially unacceptable to them.

And yet these same people teach that our lives should be lived in self denial. But the self denial they are speaking of is defined by their own causes. So I am amazed at how easy it is for us to ignore portions of scripture as we even refuse to sit down and put ourselves under the ideas the scripture presents and try to think about them in a deep way. I mean even if we cannot reconcile every idea the scripture presents we should be able to expand our understanding the complications that we have reasoned out so that we can better understand some of these areas that other people have experience in and accept that we could be wrong in judging them.

Our problem with self denial is not really trying to avoid certain situations or things that we are tempted by. Our problem with self denial is that we do not believe that honor is displayed in substitution. The reason is that we live on the level of seeing sin as an action rather than an evidence that we are unable. This is just common sense. If we use sin to divide the good from the bad then inevitably we will never get past the level of communicating some kind of label in order to define the christian experience. We will always wonder why our self denial is always anti social.

But the truth is that we cannot save ourselves by trying to control how much we avoid sin. If self denial means death to self then why is it that some people are always thinking it means avoiding certain people and sins? Is there any purpose if someone is substituting their lives for other people for us to be obsessed with avoiding that piece of pie? And if dieing to ourselves means that we are self destructive then self denial is really inter relating with something that is alive in us in which we feel the pain that we can define. We can label the pain. Your attempting to be on that level of self denial that is not Gods design. But the reason that self denial is death is because we are pleased to substitute ourselves because the connection to honor is more important then any label that we can see.

You cant live on this level unless you see that everything that we are opposed by must be cursed to death. You cant honestly say that you deny yourself if your still alive to label what you are opposing. If you cant trust that you have killed it by cursing it then your gonna label it. This is what the apostle saying that he sees no man according to the flesh.

 We rule the earth
 Psalms 8
1 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.

2 From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.

3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

4 what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?

5 You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.

6 You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet:

7 all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field,

8 the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.

9 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

The Psalms describe Gods order in creation. God is the supreme Judge and Governor over the earth. Before the fall of man into sin God gave man the responsibility to rule over His creation.  As God created all things from nothing by the word of His mouth so man with the glory of a creating authority in using Gods word to bring unity and symmetry to Gods order. When the Psalmist is talking about from the" lips of children and infants" he is using the word "praise" as a metaphor for mans ability to speak Gods commands, decrees, statutes, and covenants as the source of mans artistic ability to rule over the earth and act as an individual as distinct from all other men. 

But as we see the gospel always has this legal side to it. This phrase "foe and avenger" is speaking of the nations who war against Gods order that He establishes in His counsel from all eternity and through His elect. So God does not only design the world but He governs all peoples and nations..He governs all of His creation. But we must also understand that God has placed this governing ability within each man. 

This is what is so hard for us to change . We have been taught that the world is run through social order.' All for one and one for all". In this day we take pleasure in being constrained by the force of other men. We really do not experience biblical freedom. But the Psalms teach that each man is his own ruler. This is why after God had made man, we could picture God as standing before His throne and raising the sword up to each shoulder as He ceremoniously honored man as a refection of His majesty by gifting him with these creative abilities. In the Psalms God is fully able to meet the desires of each man as distinct from all other men. And in honoring mans sovereignty which is in conflict with other men, God is fully able to reconcile these differences and establish the highest pleasure in uniting all these individual desires. We do not believe that by two lines we come to one purpose but we believe that God in His original work in saving man has gifted him with Gods desires that are united with Gods purposes so that the more personal the desires are the closer we grow to experience our full salvation. In other words there is no further work to be done in us in order for us to align our desires with Gods desires. I assure you that I am putting this in accurate context.

The wonder of it all 
Ps 46

1 God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.

2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,

3 though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. "Selah"

4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells.

5 God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day.

6 Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts.

7 The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. "Selah"

8 Come and see the works of the LORD, the desolations he has brought on the earth.

9 He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire.

10 "Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth."

11 The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. "Selah"

From our view we think that our safety in this world is secure because God is holding everything in His hand as so that He does not get Himself into a position so that He must rescue us. Because our natural view is very limited we just assume that God eliminates that danger that we do not see where there is a possibility that we might fall into the hands of evil men or be swallowed up by the corruption that is in us and in the world. This is why we grow to presume that because we have a big God who is in absolute control that we do not need to cultivate our relationship with Him. We are naturally comfortable remaining at a distance which gives us a sense of self sufficiency that perhaps God is better left alone or we would mess things up. lol 

In this Psalm we see Gods view of the world. lol The truth is that when we begin to walk the path that Christ has walked it is a path of the most resistant not a path were we avoid all the potential disasters. The bible says of Christ incarnation , and death that He descended into the abyss, which is comparing the wide gap that exist by coming from His glory to dwelling among sinners. Ive been saying this for ten years that Gods view of this world is much worse than we could ever imagine and it is much greater for us that we could ever imagine. This is why there is so much religious fanaticism in this world and not much experience of this mysterious presence of God. It is so easy for us to imagine a god of our own that we attach these dreadful responses that He has and to keep ourselves by our guilt and sorrow from experiencing the wonders of salvation. The truth is that we do not have the ability to balance Gods wrath with His grace. We cannot stand above scripture to view Gods side and our side and try to find that balance. lol 

Salvation is much grander than using the scripture and the means to find security for ourselves. Once we begin to describe Gods salvation in absolute terms thinking that we can apply the scripture so that everyone will be secure we have taken the heart and the passion out of our own lives and the lives of those we come in contact with. At some point we must begin to grow up from trusting in the word as a manual and be swallowed up in the wonder of being in union with the God Man. This is really an introduction to this Psalm but we must begin to see how God goes down to the lowest experience that can be found on this earth , that level that would crush us like a bridge falling on us, and He dwells in unapproachable light. He has revealed to us in baby talk that describes who He is in identifying with disaster in which we are drawn out into this mysterious destruction that burns up our sorrow and anger so that we feel secure in His protection. And He has promised us that if we look on the light of His glory that we will be swallowed up in the weight of the wonder that moves us beyond our understanding of the true value of all things. When we have experienced this mysterious presence of God we are fellowship with a Person. 

Gods unfailing love
Gods love is both an eternal love and a condescending love. God loves us eternally because His love is in Himself. God does not need any other love to complete His eternal love. When we are loved by God eternally we are foreseen from eternity past by God as being connected by Him in perfect dependence. Whatever separation we experience in this life is seen by God as our inability to apprehend this perfect love. When the Psalmist is praising God for His unfailing love, he is saying that God has gifted him with the laws, decrees, promises and covenants that he speaks in prayer as the basis of his appeal to God , in every situation and for everything. God erases the consequences of the Psalmist weak dependence and performs His acts according to His unfailing love which is displayed by this protective language. Gods communication of His unfailing love is the cause, means and ends in which all things are unified. God brings Himself glory by displaying His unfailing love.

God has decided to become a Man in order that He might display His eternal love to us mortals. Even tho the incarnation of Christ was a work that was perfected when He became flesh, He has always existed as the Son from before the world began. Gods condescending love has only one purpose. It is to deliver those He loves and bring them to Himself. No other created thing or people can save themselves. Salvation is in God alone.

Christ has not only come to identify with us so that He might provide us with a perfect salvation, but He has created every thing and has become the perfect reality that God has created and recreated through His spoken word. Gods word is yea and amen. His word cannot return to Him void. We live , breath, rest on His word and covenants. Christ has fulfilled all of Gods word and is seen as the only perfect work that is acceptable to God in obedience to His word. We depend upon God in this perfect defense that shields us from all opposition in possessing eternal weapons that cannot be thwarted. God describes our lives in His view of Christ perfect work on our behalf opposing all other descriptions, because He cannot fail in His covenants and promises to uphold His work that gives us a completed salvation experience. Gods love for us is unfailing in its defense of us and perfectly successful in fully delivering us.

The fear of God
Ps 93

1 The LORD reigns, he is robed in majesty; the LORD is robed in majesty and is armed with strength. The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.

2 Your throne was established long ago; you are from all eternity.

3 The seas have lifted up, O LORD, the seas have lifted up their voice; the seas have lifted up their pounding waves.

4 Mightier than the thunder of the great waters, mightier than the breakers of the sea-- the LORD on high is mighty.

5 Your statutes stand firm; holiness adorns your house for endless days, O LORD. 

This Psalm is describing the the holiness of God. God has established His holiness upon the earth in the created order. The Psalmist is describing Gods way of creating and recreating. He is looking at the establishment of the earth that was planned in the counsel of God in eternity past. But the Psalmist is saying that Gods counsel is His spoken word that has put His stamp on all things. The eternal existent God who has always been complete ,needing nothing to satisfy Himself has shown His self sufficiency in creating a world that does not need any other being to help him order or sustain His creation. Everything that exist now was ordered by God in eternity past as already established. 

The Psalmist is using the the word throne not as a physical place but as a metaphor for everything that has been created and everything that is recreated is spoken into existence. God has not simply spoken all things into existence but He has spoken it in a way that it is all united to work together to bring Him glory. When God looks from heaven upon all of His creation He is saying that this is a display of My holiness/ He is actually saying that all of His creation is His house. 

We may think we are strong because we have a certain control over our own lives and over His creation. He is saying that since we have been given a certain amount of control over His creation that we cannot fundamentally change or disrupt this house. In this sense His law has been gifted to us as an establishment of order that we cannot overturn. He uses the waves as a metaphor for showing that we do not have the ability to go in a way where we are out of control. If we could throw anything out of control in the universe then God would cease to be holy. 

The Psalmist is showing that God has made a covenant in creation in which He has held Himself to show that He is who He says He is. If we were able to help God then God would cease to be holy. Since His law has been established and the earth cannot be moved it doesnt matter if we believe this or not. Our view cannot change what God has established. We must conclude that even tho we are unholy we are loved by God because His holiness, which is stable and secure cannot be changed. This is fearing God. 

Shame is the curse 

 

Psalm 69

1 Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.

2 I sink in the miry depths, where there is no foothold. I have come into the deep waters; the floods engulf me.

3 I am worn out calling for help; my throat is parched. My eyes fail, looking for my God.

4 Those who hate me without reason outnumber the hairs of my head; many are my enemies without cause, those who seek to destroy me. I am forced to restore what I did not steal.

5 You know my folly, O God; my guilt is not hidden from you.

6 May those who hope in you not be disgraced because of me, O Lord, the LORD Almighty; may those who seek you not be put to shame because of me, O God of Israel.

7 For I endure scorn for your sake, and shame covers my face.

8 I am a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my own mother's sons;

9 for zeal for your house consumes me, and the insults of those who insult you fall on me.

10 When I weep and fast, I must endure scorn;

11 when I put on sackcloth, people make sport of me.

12 Those who sit at the gate mock me, and I am the song of the drunkards.

13 But I pray to you, O LORD, in the time of your favor; in your great love, O God, answer me with your sure salvation.

14 Rescue me from the mire, do not let me sink; deliver me from those who hate me, from the deep waters.

15 Do not let the floodwaters engulf me or the depths swallow me up or the pit close its mouth over me.

16 Answer me, O LORD, out of the goodness of your love; in your great mercy turn to me.

17 Do not hide your face from your servant; answer me quickly, for I am in trouble.

18 Come near and rescue me; redeem me because of my foes.

19 You know how I am scorned, disgraced and shamed; all my enemies are before you.

20 Scorn has broken my heart and has left me helpless; I looked for sympathy, but there was none, for comforters, but I found none.

21 They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst.

22 May the table set before them become a snare; may it become retribution and a trap.

23 May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see, and their backs be bent forever.

24 Pour out your wrath on them; let your fierce anger overtake them.

25 May their place be deserted; let there be no one to dwell in their tents.

26 For they persecute those you wound and talk about the pain of those you hurt.

27 Charge them with crime upon crime; do not let them share in your salvation.

28 May they be blotted out of the book of life and not be listed with the righteous.

29 I am in pain and distress; may your salvation, O God, protect me.

30 I will praise God's name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving.

31 This will please the LORD more than an ox, more than a bull with its horns and hoofs.

32 The poor will see and be glad-- you who seek God, may your hearts live!

33 The LORD hears the needy and does not despise his captive people.

34 Let heaven and earth praise him, the seas and all that move in them,

35 for God will save Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah. Then people will settle there and possess it;

36 the children of his servants will inherit it, and those who love his name will dwell there.

Shame is the tool that men use to climb the ladder of success. And yet shame is what motivates those same men to exercise their authority. Anyone who uses shame is in bed with shame. We must understand that shame is present in the world because of corruption. Shame is actually a companion of guilt. Anytime we fail to meet Gods standard of law keeping we experience guilt. The guilt is like a sword that is driven deep in our souls. When we do not recognize the intrusion of guilt ,  the guilt becomes self hatred. When we hold onto self hatred we are locked up in shame. As you can see shame is the personal enemy of freedom. Some people have lived so long with feeling shameful that they cant logically point to the people or situations in which they were talked down into shame and connect it to their depression. 

In this Psalm David is dealing with his self hatred because of being shamed by his accusers. In the Psalms God loves us because He created us and He sees us beyond our experience in his world .A world in which all men are motivated by shame. Gods love carries the weight of opposing shame because He is able to value us as He created us outside of our experience in this shame filled world. Gods view of the world has no shame because He orders and reorders every thing to work in perfect unity. This perfect unity is Gods perfect view of the value of everything and everyone that He has created. Shame is actually devaluing the things and the people that God orders to bring perfect unity to His kingdom. He pronounces Gods view of the world as if he as won over shame vs 34,35 36

But God cannot allow us to go through shame with the promise in the future that He will judge righteously. God is not like men who fall into a trap in which they experience shame. If shame surprised God then He would not be able to exercise His will over all other wills. God must act outside of time prior to the event that we face that shames us. If God claims that He loves us then He must act towards us without any opposition. Or Gods love would be untrustworthy. We do not need a defense after we have been shamed. We need a defense before we are shamed and as a result of being shamed other wise God would be very lax in communicating love to us. 

God has provided us with the remedy. Now listen the only remedy for shame is the pronouncement of death. This Psalm is kind of divided into two parts. The first part is the Psalmist description and complaint of pain as a result of people shaming him. The Psalmist makes a bold statement that he has not purposely shamed anyone. In fact he says that even when people were shamed because of his sin ,he prays that God will not bring them shame. But if you look at the second part of the Psalm you will see why the psalmist distances himself from being a person who shames. Because shame is cursing someone. It is actually pronouncing death to that person. So in the second part of the Psalm he is treating shame as a fatal attack upon not only his life but his posterity. The second part he is using the laws curses on those who shamed him as if he was in hand to hand combat for his life. He is addressing his anger and expressing it in a legitimate way. He is not satisfied until the law has worked to eliminate shame from the city.then the country. etc   There is so much in this Psalm to talk about and i havent even scratch the surface. 

Being free to leave your stamp on your work. 

Ive always tried to live my life without presuppositions that other people teach. Ive spent hours trying to live with a freedom that I believed I found. Ive spent years meditating on one verse at a time trying not only to understand how it was related to other parts of the scripture but to dissect what motivated me to the fullest happiness that I could experience. I felt that it was more important to understand my own happiness than to accept other peoples definitions of happiness. If I did not speak a word in company or work really hard with my hands to obtain my goal I wanted to be happy in my own skin.

This is why my interests in meditation grew into an obsession that turned my view of myself from the inside which worked itself to the outside. My experience in my own mind was mixed with divine imagination in which I lost interest in every body else reactions to events and people as if it defined what I would experience in reacting to the same things. After about 20 years of meditation over the same verses my quest for more knowledge was swallowed up by the inward experiences I had in all those years of my meditation. I realized that I was being overcome by feelings and memories that freed me from being defined by my work or by what I accomplished. Anything that I felt that was trapping me into being defined was in my mind an opposition to the divine influences that brought me into a world that freed me to enjoy my imagination. I have tried to experience this flow of divine life through freeing myself through hours of meditation.

I believed that if I was experiencing this freedom it would infect everyone around me. I mean not in trying to explain this freedom but finding it and living in it. And this is what I enjoyed about the people in my life. I believe my wife was a pioneer in how she accomplished so much with her ministries. In my secret meditations I was cursing the danger of her being thwarted in some way. I would use the Psalms to bring myself into an original experience in which i would get pleasure in trying to imagine how I could understand what it would be like if she was free to develop and be successful in implementing her ideas.  I experienced this freedom as I watched her be successful.

  Speaking the Psalms with understanding.

Ps 141

1 O LORD, I call to you; come quickly to me. Hear my voice when I call to you.

2 May my prayer be set before you like incense; may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice.

3 Set a guard over my mouth, O LORD; keep watch over the door of my lips.

4 Let not my heart be drawn to what is evil, to take part in wicked deeds with men who are evildoers; let me not eat of their delicacies.

5 Let a righteous man strike me--it is a kindness; let him rebuke me--it is oil on my head. My head will not refuse it. Yet my prayer is ever against the deeds of evildoers;

6 their rulers will be thrown down from the cliffs, and the wicked will learn that my words were well spoken.

7 [They will say,] "As one plows and breaks up the earth, so our bones have been scattered at the mouth of the grave. "

8 But my eyes are fixed on you, O Sovereign LORD; in you I take refuge--do not give me over to death.

9 Keep me from the snares they have laid for me, from the traps set by evildoers.

10 Let the wicked fall into their own nets, while I pass by in safety.

Let me address the two liners. This phrase 5 Let a righteous man strike me--it is a kindness; let him rebuke me--it is oil on my head. My head will not refuse it is actually the only time the Psalmist teaches us that we should say something that hurts. It is the only time i can think of. This is why I do not get my application from jumping from one part of the bible to another and getting my application from pulling out a verse that has a context. Ive been meditating on these Psalms for 30 years and inevitably there are certain verses that people pull out of the psalms and repeat them over and over again. Another verse which is another one that stands by itself is ...If I hold iniquity in my heart that Lord will not hear me.... 

The Psalms are written in many different forms of language. But they are written for a student to memorize them and speak them as if the speaking creates the life style. And you will see this if you really took the time to use them as they were designed and not draw conclusions because you seem to have enough knowledge of the NT doctrines that you can assume this is what the Psalmist meant when you havent even used them as they were designed. 

Its like taking a picture of a small boat floating around in the Atlantic and concluding that there was no need to examine the vast waters that the boat was floating on because the boat supports your position. But unless you jump in the vast waters and swim around then you wont have the perspective of the smallness of the boat. This is exactly how God describes grace to be. Its a vast ocean that over shadows the boat. And so we must speak these two verses as they are given in a passing way. In these two verses its as if the Psalmist is passing over them as if he has stumbled on something that is part of his argument that proves how powerful grace is. These two verses actually prove the opposite of how two liners teach them...in the original spoken form. 

When the Psalmist says the Lord will not hear his prayers if he has regard for iniquity in his heart ...first if you look at the verse its written with the other side. "But God has surely heard my prayer." Ive argued that the First John teaching on confessing of sin is teaching that our confessing sin is not seen as a work by God. I get my interpretation from these two concepts that are like a boat on the big ocean. In other words the focus is on Gods free acceptance of us as His children and not upon the confession as a count for forgiveness. And this is what the Psalmist is alluding to. That we are like the unsaved because we have iniquity in our hearts but its impossible for it to count against us because we are on the other side of grace. It showing the value of Gods acceptance here and not the counting of the confession to the forgiveness. Its really pointing to the ocean of grace that surrounds this verse. 

You see on this other verse that gets a lot of fan fare that the Psalmist that his words ...the curses, covenants, laws, decrees, statutes and promises are spoken as a warning to the nations. Its in this context that the Psalmist words will come true when he obtains victory in war so that it will be seen when another nation comes along and excavates the site where the Psalmist had victory so that the graves are not even respected. lol their bones are sort of dug up in disrespect. Its alluding to how nations come and go based upon the edicts of the Governor from heaven who has revealed His success in the Davidic rule. lol 

This is why I believe the Psalmist is alluding to a fellow soldier who saves the life of his companion...like being in the same bunker and preventing that other soldier from confronting the ravages of the enemy. And if this would not strike at the heart of the soldier who was saved i dont know what would be. But its a passing statement of "but my prayer is ever against the deeds of evil doers."