Daily Readings and Thought for January 3rd. “ACCORDING TO THE INTEGRITY THAT IS IN ME”
What a challenging selection of chapters we have today! Our heading is taken from David’s Psalm 7: it is largely a prayer; can it be our prayer too!? “…judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me. Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end…”[v.8,9] Can we, dare we, pray as David did? “…judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me”
As we read on in the Psalms we see how David’s sense of his own righteousness changes. He desperately appeals to God. ”Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence” [Psa. 51 v.9-11]
That last phrase is tremendously significant – “Cast me not away from your presence”. We perceive David’s heart-felt sense of wonder of the “presence” of God. We marvel at the way Paul must have developed, through experience, that sense – so that he could tell the people of Athens (and us) “he is actually not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’ “ [Acts 17 v,27,28]
We also read today in Genesis ch. 6 of the days of Noah – the time when, “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”[v.5] and We note that it was corrupt “in God’s sight.” Have we developed “God’s sight” through our constant reading of his word? We should!
As we continue our reading in Matthew this month we will see the words of Jesus about “the days of Noah” [24 v.37} that – as it was in Noah’s days, “so will be the coming of the Son of Man. .For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until ….”
So our minds go back to the words of David – let us believe – and live in ways of“integrity” which show the reality of our belief in the reality of God – and the reality of what we read – every day – in His word.
