All His Benefits, Part 3
The Benefit of Love and Mercy
Part of a short series on Psalm 103
In the next passage, Psalm 103 declares that it is God who “redeems your life from destruction” and “crowns you with steadfast love and mercy” and “satisfies you with good as long as you live.” These three benefits of Christ’s passion are interconnected. First, we need to understand the keyword in the first promise, which is “redeems.” The word “redeem” is used in modern English to describe the use of coupons in the marketplace. You redeem a coupon at the cash register for a small discount on the purchase price, which is far from its original use. In simplest terms, the word “redeem” means to buy something back.
In ancient cultures, when a businessman fell on hard times and could not pay his debts, he was brought before a magistrate, who would then arbitrate the claims. In many cases, the businessman would be required to settle his debt with household slaves if he had any. He could not give his debtor money, so giving him a slave provided the injured party with an ongoing cash flow that would eventually make up for the loss. If the businessman didn’t own slaves, the court would order his children or wife (or both) into servitude until the debt had been fully recovered.
Let’s assume this businessman in the ancient world finally got his business going again and had a growing savings account. He would then attempt to buy back his wife and children from the man who had won them as slaves in the court settlement. The courts would be involved in this matter, and the request was seldom denied. After all, the banker is less interested in enslaving the trader’s family and more interested in recovering his investment with interest. This act of buying someone back who was sold into slavery, which was a legal proceeding, was called redemption. The father “redeemed” his children from a life of slavery. The husband “redeemed” his wife from forced servitude. In short, he bought his family back from the one who had legally enslaved them.
If business was really bad, the court would order the businessman himself to also serve as a slave. This was usually seen as a permanent rupture for the family since there was no one left behind to run the business. Without the business, there was no cash flow, and without cash flow, there was no hope that the family could be redeemed. It would truly take the intervention of an outsider to break the chains of bondage that their financial obligations had brought upon them.
Let’s return to that line in Psalm 103 and drop in our new definition to see how it lights up the promise. Instead of saying it is God who “redeems your life from destruction,” let’s say it is God who “buys back your life from destruction.” We have reason to rejoice that Christ’s blood has paid the price for our sin. We have been bought back from the kingdom of darkness when sin had ensnared our souls. This reference to redemption goes beyond our salvation experience. This is where it gets good.
In an earlier post, I suggested that you should expect to live in divine health. I told you that you would be better served to believe the promises of God’s Word than to believe the reality of sickness and poor health that surrounds you. Despite this expectation, it would be biblically wrong to suggest that everything will always go well with you your entire life just because you are a Christian. Jesus told us, “You will have suffering in this world.” Jesus also said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” Here, Jesus is very clear in suggesting that we will have enemies who are intent upon harming us (persecution). He also told us to rise above the persecution and hatred by loving our enemies and praying for them, which befits the sons of the Father. This kind of response is generated by the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. It is literally the Fruit of the Spirit that the Apostle Paul talked about in Galatians:
“love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”
Jesus is also suggesting that the natural dangers of the planet impact people in general, not just evil people. So, if a storm floods your basement, you shouldn’t trouble yourself about the matter because these things happen to all of us, and God is fully aware of our needs and our frailty.
What a command. Did God really just tell us that we must be perfect like he is? Considering our sinful nature, that seems like a really tall order. How does that fit in with the Apostle’s command concerning sin? In his first epistle, John wrote, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” If we were perfect like God is perfect, we would have no sin. John tells us this is not possible. To make matters worse, some translations render this phrase as “you must be holy, as your heavenly Father is holy.”
What’s the answer? The concept here of being perfect is not about living without sin. Rather, it is about shalom. You recognize this Hebrew word, don’t you? In simplest terms, shalom means “peace.” Shalom is a concept that means things are as they should be, as God designed them to be. This is a reference to perfection. This calls up imagery from the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve, God, and all of creation lived together in harmony. This is shalom. Cornelius Plantinga gives us this definition:
“In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness and delight—a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes the creatures in whom he delights. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be.”
I really like his use of the word “flourishing.” When we are told to be perfect in the same way that God is perfect, it’s all about human flourishing, just like Adam and Eve flourished in the Garden. This also implies a number of things beyond mere well-being and productivity. This great salvation that Jesus purchased for us with his blood includes justice and righteousness and community. Christ wants us to be whole and complete. He wants us to be connected to his Church. He wants us to thrive in body and mind. As you might imagine, the power to flourish in such a rich manner does not come from us. It comes from the Holy Spirit who lives inside us. If we live in sin, we grieve the Holy Spirit, and our ability to flourish is lost. There can be no shalom apart from God’s indwelling presence in our lives.
The Old Testament recounts an interesting story about King David and the Ark of the Covenant. Moses received a command from God during Israel’s forty-year journey through the wilderness to build a Tent of Tabernacle where God would meet with Israel. They crafted dozens of specially designed artifacts for use in the Tabernacle, to include the Ark, which was the holiest object of them all. The lid to this box-like artifact was called the mercy seat, and God’s presence was manifested there. The tablets of stone upon which God wrote the ten commandments were kept inside this box, as was Aaron’s rod that budded and a golden pot of manna.
Many generations after Moses, King David decided to move the Ark of the Covenant from its historical location to Jerusalem. David had erected a Tent of Tabernacle there to house the Ark, and he planned to have worship in the Tabernacle every hour of every day. All he needed was the Ark to make it complete. So, they assembled a team of priests and went to fetch the Ark from the house of Abinadab in the city of Baalah. They set the Ark upon a new cart and set out in a parade of sorts with David and his followers dancing before the Ark as it traveled. This is where the story gets interesting. Somewhere along the way, “the oxen stumbled,” and it appeared that the Ark might fall off the cart. So, Uzzah, one of the sons of Abinadab, reached up and touched the Ark, supposedly to steady it. The scriptures tell us that God’s anger burned against Uzzah for his “irreverent act,” and that God then “struck him down, and he died there beside the ark of God.”
David grew afraid after seeing the Lord’s anger. He realized that he had acted impulsively. Just to be clear, the Ark had apparently never been moved in this fashion. The original instructions about moving the Ark included four men carrying the Ark by inserting two poles through rings attached to the body of the Ark. There was no mention of a cart and oxen. So, David was apparently on thin ice with some of his choices here. Had they transported the Ark with the two poles, there would have been no stumbling oxen.
What did David decide to do? He was already halfway home, so turning around didn’t sound like a good idea, and bringing this “death machine” into the city was really quite frightening to David. The King decided he would just leave it where it was. More specifically, there was a house nearby, which belonged to Obed-Edom the Gittite. So, David, using his authority as King, commanded Obed-Edom to keep the Ark of the Covenant in his house. Once the Ark was securely deposited in the living room of this unsuspecting citizen, David and his team returned to Jerusalem to nurse their wounds and consider their actions.
What’s really amazing about this story is that Obed-Edom was not a Jew. He was a Philistine, a Gentile. David dropped off the Ark of the Covenant—the holiest artifact in all of history—at a Gentile’s home. What happened? Did they all die? Did a curse come upon the house and destroy them all? Just the opposite. After three months, David received word that Obed-Edom’s entire household (people, livestock, gardens, finances, and investments) was thriving. The scriptures tell us, “The Lord has blessed the household of Obed-Edom and everything he has, because of the Ark of God.” As you can imagine, this made David quite jealous. So, David returned to claim the Ark of the Covenant and bring it up to the City of David, where it was placed in the Tent of Tabernacle.
Can you see the parallel I am making here? When you are perfect as the Lord is perfect, when you are living according to the Spirit, when you are experiencing shalom as the Lord would have you to do, then his presence resides in your life as the Ark resided in the home of Obed-Edom. His presence will bring a blessing to your life, to your household, even to all you possess and all you choose to do. This is the river of life that flows out of your innermost parts, and it flows to everyone who interacts with you. Your friends and family should be blessed by this flow. Your neighbors should be blessed by this flow. Your employer or your business should be blessed by this flow. Stoke the fire so that it glows even hotter, and your whole neighborhood, even your whole city, will be blessed by the presence of God in your life.
We see a similar blessing upon the Jewish patriarch, Joseph. He was sold into slavery and sent to Egypt. There, he served an Egyptian master named Potiphar. Despite slavery, God blessed everything that Joseph touched. Just imagine. Potiphar gave ten servants control of ten small gardens. Joseph’s garden grows more vegetables than all the other gardens combined. Or imagine this scenario: Potiphar gives Joseph a small amount of money to invest. Four weeks later, Joseph’s investment is worth far more than what he started with. This is the kind of blessing that rested on Joseph’s life. Indeed, the scriptures tell us that Potiphar saw what was happening and thus chose to put his entire household in Joseph’s care. By doing so, Potiphar became one of the richest men in Egypt. The presence of God on Joseph became a river of life for the household he served. If you read the passages in Genesis about Joseph, you will see that this happened several more times. When he was thrown into prison, the warden saw what was happening and put Joseph in charge of the prison. The result? Prison reform of the highest magnitude. When Joseph was released from prison, he became the second-highest official in the land, second only to Pharaoh. The result? The nation was saved from a terrible famine because Joseph was in charge of preparing for it. This is the power of God’s glory when it resides upon a person, a family, a community, or a nation. This is what it means to be crowned “with steadfast love and mercy.” This is how God pours out his love and mercy to satisfy you “with good as long as you live.”
Next: All His Benefits, Part 4 - The Benefit of Renewed Strength
About this series: Drawing from Psalm 103, these posts explore the rich benefits Christ’s passion has secured for his people. We’re discovering what belongs to us in the Inner Room.