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Psalm 4:2 How long, O men, will you turn my glory into shame?  How long will you love delusions and seek false gods?  Selah

My copy of Tim & Kathy Keller’s ‘Year of Daily Devotionals in the Psalms’ is called “The Songs of Jesus” (also published as ‘My Rock, My Refuge’).  I prefer the former title because it is true in two senses: the Psalms are songs all ABOUT Jesus, and they are also the songs JESUS WOULD HAVE SUNG regularly in the Synagogue during the 33 years he lived here among us as ‘Immanuel’, ‘God WITH us’!

I can just picture my dear Saviour as a boy with Mary and Joseph, and later as an adult, sitting (or perhaps standing – it varies) among the gathered people and, while knowing what lay ahead for him, reflecting on the words as he sang, “How long, O men, will you turn my glory into shame?  How long will you love delusions and seek false gods?”.  I can also picture his ‘always interceding’ for me in heaven RIGHT NOW (Hebrews 7:25), and looking at me and the society in which I live, and asking of us, “How long, O men, will you turn my glory into shame?  How long will you love delusions and seek false gods?”.

How it must grieve our Triune God, who made us IN HIS IMAGE to ‘GLORIFY HIM and ENJOY HIM forever’ (Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q1), to see us as a society living out a delusion, putting our hope in false gods and failing to give him all the glory that is his by right.  It is interesting to see that he sees our failing to acknowledge the glory that belongs to him is tantamount to disdaining his holy Name with SHAME.

Psalm 4:2 encourages me to be more careful in the way I live and witness day by day, and to be more purposeful and diligent in fulfilling my ‘chief end’ as defined by the Shorter Catechism!

With God’s help, “I will glory in my Redeemer whose priceless blood has ransomed me; mine was the sin that drove the bitter nails and hung him on that judgment tree.  I will glory in my Redeemer, who crushed the power of sin and death; my only Saviour before the holy Judge – the Lamb who is my righteousness, the Lamb who is my righteousness. … …  I will glory in my Redeemer, who carries me on eagles’ wings; he crowns my life with lovingkindness, his triumph song I’ll ever sing. I will glory in my Redeemer, who waits for me at gates of gold; and when he calls me, it will be paradise his face forever to behold, his face forever to behold.” (Steve & Vicki Cook).