The true servant of God

Ps 143

1 O LORD, hear my prayer, listen to my cry for mercy; in your faithfulness and righteousness come to my relief.

2 Do not bring your servant into judgment, for no one living is righteous before you.

3 The enemy pursues me, he crushes me to the ground; he makes me dwell in darkness like those long dead.

4 So my spirit grows faint within me; my heart within me is dismayed.

5 I remember the days of long ago; I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done.

6 I spread out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land. "Selah"

7 Answer me quickly, O LORD; my spirit fails. Do not hide your face from me or I will be like those who go down to the pit.

8 Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.

9 Rescue me from my enemies, O LORD, for I hide myself in you.

10 Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground.

11 For your name's sake, O LORD, preserve my life; in your righteousness, bring me out of trouble.

12 In your unfailing love, silence my enemies; destroy all my foes, for I am your servant.

One of the problems we have with picking and choosing what teaching we accept is that the bible is written with a teaching that is in the context of the entire teaching of the bible. Its important for us to think through every teaching in light of all the other teachings. Because God has not only put the knowledge on the page but He has made it true by how it is applied as we are related to God. This is why us Calvinist warn about lowering God to our level because these terms like sin, righteousness, law , gospel can be interpreted based on the standards of human relationships. We can take a teaching about sin without thinking through the whole bible and put it in the context of how it is taught in the culture. This is exactly why God provided the boundaries of all of these teachings in the context of God saving us. When we leave something out we imagine that we can save ourselves. 

This is why as God is exalted above this earth so salvation is only give by revelation. You cant receive salvation by explanation but it is self revealed. Unless you are saved you cant understand anything that the scripture teaches about salvation. The point of it being self revealed is that it is necessary to have faith in order to be saved. Faith is not just accepting the facts about the Object that place our trust in but its also being able to accept those things about God that we cannot understand. The basis of our accepting the truths about God that we cannot understand is based upon the fact that we have been given enough information in order to understand that God has saved us. But unless we are taught that salvation is much bigger then our understand then its the same thing as looking at all these teachings on a horizontal level.

This is why when God gave us the comparison of being saved as being born again it is describing something that is created in us that is beyond our site or control. The point of giving us the teaching of salvation is not that God will agree with Himself that He is right. The revelation of God is for us. We can conclude that God has done this secret work in order to keep some men from receiving it. We can conclude that God gave us sin so that we would always be forced to accept salvation on His terms. But this is exactly why God stressed that salvation comes from a spoken word of God and not from the knowledge we get from revelation. To be saved in scripture is something that is too wonderful for us to understand. Its compared to being called from death unto life. But this call of salvation is described in the bible as ongoing. The voice of salvation is getting louder and louder as we are approaching our full salvation. 

And really this is the context by which we put all the other teachings of scripture in their proper context. This is why it is so easy for us to talk about all of these truths in the context of our own imaginations. Because we naturally think that salvation is something we can understand and by getting more knowledge we automatically grow. But the bible distinguishes false gods from the true God by teaching that all truth is revealed truth because it is spoken by an eternal God. Idols are things...they do not speak. 

We in this culture think that Gods law as written on tablets is how we apply them to our lives. We do not think that the law of God comes with a voice. The reason is that we have lowered Gods law so that we can control how it is applied. The reason that we do not see Gods law as alive is because we never here it speak the curse. We never hear the law pronounce death on those who rebel. We think the law is like a measuring stick that we use to see if we are better than we were. 

Just like the bible teaches that we are saved by grace through faith it is easy for us to add to this by not bringing salvation into the exalted view of God speaking. So we lower the teaching of sin, law , and death by not applying the voice of the law. Do you realize that if we actually kept our focus correct that because of Gods voice salvation is greater than we could ever imagine and by the curse much worse than any disaster we experience in this life that we would learn true freedom? We would not look at life as if everything must be measured against Gods law. We would not trust in every bodies claims that a method is what we can trust in to obtain greater righteousness. But because we do not hear the voice of death and we fail to hear the voice of life from death we lower all of these terms of salvation so that we can control them.  Im gonna go through this Psalm ..A petition from a servant of God.