Jump Start # 3496

Psalms 11:7 “The Lord is righteous, He loves righteousness; the upright will behold His face.”

Out of the thirteen words in this sentence, three of them are about being right. Righteous, righteousness and the upright. God is that way. God loves that way. There is a benefit to being righteous, one will see the face of God.

There are some lessons we need to learn from this:

First, only God can declare what is right or righteous. What I think is right, may not be. What I want to be right, may not be. The qualities of God are light, righteousness, goodness and generosity. God is not mean. God does not do wicked things. God doesn’t pull the legs off of grasshoppers and watch them struggle. God doesn’t chop worms in half and see what happens next. Nor does God delight in death, disease or destruction. Those are the consequences of a broken world. A world that we helped break by our rebellion to God. Our wrongness is what helped bring the sorrow of this world.

Second, being right doesn’t put you in a position to be arrogant or look down upon others. Self-righteous is not the same as God’s righteousness. Thinking that I am better than someone else because I go to worship on Sunday is to forgot that there was times in my life when I wasn’t right. God has always been right, always. We haven’t. We should want all people to become right with God. The ills of our culture would quickly go away if every person sought to be righteous in the sight of God.

Those snug little, rolling the eyes at some in the church building only reveals that we are still in need of being right. God wouldn’t do that. Jesus never did that. So, why do we? Instead of welcoming prodigals, we want to lecture them and ask them 40 questions. Rather than calling for a celebration as the father did in Luke 15, we want to know the details of all the wrong that they have done. In many ways, if not in all ways, the prodigal was more righteous than his self-righteous brother.

Third, being right is a journey. It’s like driving the car down the road. One doesn’t hold the steering wheel straight and tight. There is a little to the left and a little to the right and a little here and a little there. We make adjustments to keep ourselves going straight. It’s that way with a car and it’s that way in our walk with the Lord. We get our toes stepped on during a sermon. We make an adjustment. We see something in the Scriptures about attitude. Another little adjustment. A little here and a little there. Constantly. Everyday. Every worship. Attitudes. Behaviors. Language. Habits. What we are doing at home. Our work ethic. The way we treat others. How we worship. Adjustments. Staying in the lanes of righteousness.

Like driving, there are times when the weather is great, the road is straight and the traffic is light, that we drive with one hand. It’s pretty easy to keep the car within the lanes. But there are other times, like this morning here in Indiana, snow on the roads, icy, that both hands are necessary. More careful attention is required. Driving on mountain roads is like that.

To be upright is a learning process. You are always striving to please the Lord. You are learning about better and being better. You are growing. You are getting stronger. Some things are obvious. Some things you have to think through and come to learn.

The righteous enjoy being around other righteous ones. They encourage one another. They learn from one another. They support one another.

God is righteous. God loves righteousness. The upright will see His face. One thing is sure. There is no way that wrong is right. There is no way that wrong pleases the Lord. When wrong, I need to get right. I do so by seeking the mercy of the Lord.

Roger