SUNDAY PSALMS PART 18 OF 48 - PSALM 85:13

 

Maumee Bay State Park, Oregon, OH

"Righteousness will go before Him,
        And shall make His footsteps our pathway."
                     Psalm 85:13, New King James Version

Psalm 85, like a lot of other Psalms is a blessing. But I want to focus on the final verse. 

Is righteousness making God's footsteps our pathway? Or are we prone to go to the right or the left?

There's an excellent book Turn Neither To The Right Nor To The Left by Eric Schansberg, focusing on politics. But we must not assume "right" and "left" deal solely with politics.

Going to far to the right can refer to a legalistic mindset. It also can refer to a reluctance to change but maintain the status quo. There's a book titled The Seven Last Words of the Church: "We've Never Done It This Way Before." (I once say a cartoon where there was a banner reading "Week Two of The Church Plant," and one person said, "We didn't do it this way last week.")

While the right side has the danger of not changing things that are at the minimum don't hurt being changed and at the maximum things that really should be changed, the left side is the opposite, changing things that should be left alone. (Pun unintentional). 

Some of the changes are to be seen as "being compassionate," accepting cultural norms instead of the truth of God's Word. Some of the changes are to be seen as "being intellectual," assuming scientific theory is more valid than Biblical fact. And sometimes it is us just being selfish, defending things we like and not wanting to be judged (sometimes that judgment is what Jesus is condemning in Matthew 7:1, sometimes it is an attempt to turn a sinner from the error of his way in James 5:19-20.

Are we asking God to make His footsteps our pathway?