Purity

Last week we talked about morality and instructions on the operation of the human machine. We discussed how with even the simplest of machines there is a truism in operating them…do it wrongly and you may ruin the machine, hurt yourself or hurt someone else.

There are lots of aspects to morality that Christians have stressed over the years. In the old days these aspects were displayed as “virtues” and they were called the Cardinal virtues, the word “cardinal” having nothing to do with Catholic church leaders or baseball players…but with the Latin word cardo meaning “hinge of the door”. They are justice, fortitude, prudence and temperance, and the Psalms are full of calls for us to put these virtues on display.

One very important aspect to being “virtuous” is the combination of prudence and temperance in the English word “purity”. The following are some of the myths the Christian establishment tends to believe about purity:

"I am a Christian because of the things I do not do." (1 Samuel 16:7, Isaiah 64:6)

"Purity and morality is only about what I do sexually." (1 Timothy 4:12, Hebrews 12:16, Acts 5:1-11)

"If I choose to do the purity thing, everything will be 'all good' all at once." (Galatians 6:7)

"God will give me whatever I want, if I just stay pure." (1 John 3:13, John 15:18)

Today we look at Psalm 101 and its call to purity. In Psalm 101 we see purity forms powerful results (1). Purity must flow out of a positive, passionate relationship with God (8), and purity flourishes when practiced rigorously (2). In fact, Psalm 101 calls us to put purity and morality in action and reminds us that practicing private purity precedes public performance.

Today we look at: Purity of the mind – Psalms 101:3

Purity of the heart – Psalms 101:4

Purity of words – Psalms 101:5

Mark

The Psalms and Morality

Recently on one of my trips to Africa I was talking to my roommate who was (and is) a terrific guy, but who does not confess to be a Christian. We were talking about morality, though I don’t think we ever used that term. Ever since Jerry Falwell launched the Moral Majority, non-Christians tend to get a little antsy about talking “morals” with Christians. None-the-less, we were talking about morals because we were talking about right and wrong. We were talking about how we as humans decide what it means to actually say something is right or wrong, and he offered his opinion that “wrong” actions can be defined as those that in some way harm another person.

I certainly did not disagree…I think that’s a pretty good benchmark for calling something bad… if it hurts another person. It is the social aspect to morality, and it helps us have good relationships with those around us. Indeed without it, there would be mayhem….which was my roommate’s explanation of why people do kind deeds and treat one another well. Yet, as CS Lewis reminds us in his writings, true morality does not allow us to stop there, at least not those of us who call ourselves Christians. As Christians there at least two more aspects or facets to our moral code we think are very important. In addition to “social” morality (how we treat others) there is an internal aspect to morality (how we deal with ourselves) as well as an eternal aspect (how we deal with God).

The Psalms are concerned with all three. The Psalms help us navigate the sea of life by offering wisdom, advice, encouragement and prayer for us to guide our ships. Some teach us how to keep our ships from ramming into others (social). Others tell us to tidy up inside our ships (internal) and others remind us that the life we live is not some random voyage in which we are carried by the wind…but that God built our ships, knows our course and cares where we end up (eternal).

It is interesting that most people in our culture are quite happy to leave the whole morality discussion at the social level. “As long as what I am doing does not hurt anyone, then it’s ok,” they say. Yet we believe that God is concerned about what goes on inside our ships, not because he is a busybody who likes to peek in our windows, but because he built the human machine, and he knows if we do whatever we want, our steering mechanisms will eventually get into such disrepair that we will hurt others and ourselves. He also longs for us to get on course and sail to the destination he desires. Today we look at how the Psalms can shape our morality.

Mark

Psalm 72

The Hebrew Bible uses a wide and varied vocabulary to talk about the poor. The various books of the Old Testament use at least nine terms, each with a slightly different meaning or connotation. The New Testament, using different languages, has a less extensive vocabulary.

So why is it that the language of ancient Hebrew, the language He chose for His people to speak to one another and to praise Him, is so well equipped to talk about the poor? Could it be because the poor are very important to God, and he did not want them dealt with in a broad-brush sort of way?

English has several ways of referring to the poor…at least it has lots of modifiers. We talk of the working class-poor, the poverty line, the dirt poor, the desperately poor… we have ways of differentiating exactly which class of the poor we are referring to. But at the end of the day it seems we fall into a similar trap that the people of Israel fell into…not noticing and caring for the poor.

The twenty verses of Psalm 72 mention the poor nine times. When we think of the poor, we tend to think of their deprivation, but Psalm 72 focuses on their powerlessness instead. Psalm 72 asks God to empower the chief politician of the day, the king, to defend the poor against those who tried to exploit them. Not unlike many places today, the people of means (the haves) corrupted the courts and judicial system through bribery. We see this in the many references to bribery in ancient Israel’s legal, prophetic, and wisdom traditions. The wealthy (the haves) were apparently able to preserve their interests at the expense of the rights of the poor (the have-nots), who (not unlike today) did not have the resources to protect themselves.

As scholar Leslie J. Hoppes says, “Psalm 72 presents the king as the instrument by which God’s justice and righteousness come to the people, especially the poor (vv. 1-2). There is no spiritualization of the poor here. When Psalm 72 speaks about the poor and needy, it is speaking about those people whose lack of material resources makes their exploitation a simple matter for the wealthy.”

Today we look at what the Psalms teach us about the poor and how doing something about it must be part of our faith.

Mark