Double-minded. A divided heart. Conflicting interests. A double life. These are some of the worst accusations the Scriptures and our culture can make against us. Saying one thing and doing another is evidence of a flawed character.
Single-minded. Whole-hearted. Consistent. Integrity. These are the signs of true character. There’s health and wholeness and unity of purpose and soul here. There’s no guessing, no trickery, no deceit.
The Scriptures declare that God is one. Even though we’ve come to know him as the three-personed Trinity, there is an unbreakable unity to God, a singleness. And within that unity, there is another unity: a unity of mind, of purpose, of intent, of heart. There is no waffling with God. He doesn’t go back and forth on issues. He doesn’t make a commitment and then back out. When he says he’s there for us, he never lets us down.
The unity within God is to be reflected in us. We’re to be united externally in community with others, reflecting the unity of the Trinity. We’re to be united internally with one heart, one mind, one purpose, reflecting God’s integrity.
Psalm 86 calls us to that unity.
There are two collections of the psalms of the sons of Korah — 42-49 and 84-88 (although Psalm 43 doesn’t list itself as a Korah psalm, it’s really an extension of Psalm 42). Interestingly, Psalm 86, which sits in the middle of the second collection, refers to itself as a “David prayer,” breaking up the collection. There is no compelling explanation for this. I don’t believe it was done haphazardly, but it contributes to the casual reader’s feeling that the Psalter has no rhyme or reason to its ordering. As someone who approaches the Psalms first as a person of prayer and only secondly as a student, I’m good with that.
I like the haphazard feel of the book of Psalms because it matches the haphazard feel of my life.
If the Psalter were organized in the ways most books about these 150 poems are organized, they’d all be grouped according to kind — worship, prayer, wisdom — and subgrouped according to tone — lament, praise, royal, thanksgiving, confession, pilgrimage, etc. That’d leave them feeling more like a textbook than a prayerbook. None of our lives are so neatly organized and neither should our prayerbook be.
The Psalter is not a reference book. We don’t peruse the table of contents to find the correct psalm for the correct situation. No, it’s in the reading of psalms that have nothing to do with our current situations that we learn to pray in those situations. We do need psalms that will be good companions to our current situations, but even more than that we need psalms that train us to pray and praise in ways we don’t feel like praying and praising. When we eventually find ourselves in those situations, we’ve already learned the posture and language they require.
OK. Now to Psalm 86.
Hear me, LORD, and answer me,
for I am poor and needy.
Guard my life, for I am faithful to you;
save your servant who trusts in you.
You are my God; have mercy on me, Lord,
for I call to you all day long.
Bring joy to your servant, Lord,
for I put my trust in you (Ps. 86:1-4).
The poor and needy are forefront in God’s heart, as numerous psalms attest. He has a special affinity for them and a solid commitment to them. So David begins his prayer by associating himself with them, putting himself right in the middle of those God is most concerned with.
As a shepherd, David would have been part of the underclass and thereby among the poor and needy, though the Scriptures give no sense one way or the other about the financial status of the family of Jesse, his father. As a disgraced general of Saul’s army on the run with a ragtag militia of ne’er-do-well ruffians, he would again be among the poor and needy. As a wealthy, powerful king, not so much.
There’s a give-and-take relationship between David and God expressed from the very beginning of the psalm. This isn’t some so-called Old Testament earned favor that is nullified by grace in Jesus. This is covenant loyalty. David is showing himself to be a loyal covenant partner with God and is calling on God likewise to be a loyal covenant partner with him. This isn’t payment for services rendered. This is a loving relationship which includes mutuality just as all loving relationships do.
Our relationship with God is covenantal, with mutuality built into it.
The word “for” (Hebrew: ki) is used throughout the psalm (verses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7. 10, 13, and 17). It expresses the mutuality of the relationship.
Hear me and answer me for I am poor and needy.
Guard me life for I am faithful to you.
Have mercy on me for I call on you all day long.
Bring joy to your servant for I put my trust in you.
And so on in the rest of the psalm.
As covenant partners, God has certain claims on us, certain things he expects of us. (The New Testament doesn’t deviate from this into some actionless grace. That has been called quietism and labeled a heresy.) Likewise, we have certain claims on God, and David clearly expresses his. He expects God to listen to him and respond, to protect him, to maintain his covenantal mercy-love, and to ultimately bring joy in the place of the current sorrow.
You, Lord, are forgiving and good,
abounding in love to all who call to you.
Hear my prayer, LORD;
listen to my cry for mercy.
When I am in distress, I call to you,
because you answer me (Ps. 86:5-7).
Generally, when things are going wrong for me, I start by pointing my finger at others who have contributed to my distress. But that’s not where David starts. He’ll get there, but he starts by pointing the finger at himself. He starts with a need for forgiveness.
David isn’t specific about the sin(s) that require forgiveness from God and that’s appropriate for a psalm. If he’s too specific then it’s possible for me and other readers to brush it aside as irrelevant to our lives if we don’t share the same sin. But as I pray alongside him, I’m reminded of a variety of sins that need forgiving. His vagueness leads to my specificity.
David’s need is well-matched to God’s character. David needs God to be forgiving and good and that’s matched perfectly with God’s forgiving and good character. And along with unmeasurable love, we again come across God’s mercy (Hebrew: chesed). Chesed along with truth (Hebrew: emeth) are the two key elements in God’s character essential to his covenantal loyalty. Chesed is that inner feeling that locks on to another tenaciously. It’s a never-quitting love arising from the core of a person’s being. We’ll get to emeth in verse 11.
Because of God’s chesed, David knows God will answer his call of distress. The bond it has created is so tight that not answering isn’t an option.
Among the gods there is none like you, Lord;
no deeds can compare with yours.
All the nations you have made
will come and worship before you, Lord;
they will bring glory to your name.
For you are great and do marvelous deeds;
you alone are God (Ps. 86:8-10).
Living in a culture where monotheism defeated polytheism centuries ago, we think of the world as purely monotheistic. All other gods that people took seriously in previous eras seem so obviously fake and empty to us; Norse, Egyptian, Roman, Hindu, Greek, Babylonian, and other similar stories seem so plainly false that the word “myth” has come to mean “untrue story.” But all of the Scriptures were written during a robust polytheistic context. Gods were everywhere and they were all taken seriously.
Monotheistic goggles read the words “Among the gods there is none like you, Lord” as asserting monotheism, reading it as, “There are no other gods but you, Lord.” But that’s not what it says. What David is saying is: “The other gods out there lack your character.” The next line confirms this: “Their deeds don’t compare with yours, for you are faithful to your covenant with us.” This is what the holiness of God is all about. Holy simply means different.
Because our God is different in character than other gods, he is different in the deeds he does for us. He helps us instead of terrorizing us. He frees us instead of enslaving us.
David says that because of this holy difference, all nations will come and worship before him, bringing glory to him. And what has history shown? While all those other gods have fallen to the side, never to rise again, Yahweh is worshiped around the globe. People from every nation bow the knee before him, glorifying him. David’s prayer is a bold assertion that the test of time has proved true. It’s one we can add our voices to since there are still plenty more who don’t glorify our Lord.
And then we get to it. Yahweh’s great and marvelous deeds on our behalf are the proof of his character and his love for us. Therefore: “You alone are God.”
David started out with “among the gods” and ends this section with “you alone are God.” The holiness of God has left him alone. All other gods have vanished. None are left but Yahweh by himself.
Because of this, David wants to become like him.
We become like the one we worship.
Teach me your way, LORD,
that I may rely on your faithfulness;
give me an undivided heart,
that I may fear your name.
I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart;
I will glorify your name forever.
For great is your love toward me;
you have delivered me from the depths,
from the realm of the dead (Ps. 86:11-13).
The current version of the NIV here is so weak in comparison to the earlier version which had 86:11 as such — “Teach me your way, O LORD, and I will walk in your truth.”
Generally, we teach truth and we walk in a way. But here David asks to be taught God’s way so he can walk in God’s truth. This is an important difference. This is discipleship.
Discipleship is apprenticeship. It’s the teaching of a way to do life not just a list of true statements to be mentally acknowledged. It’s truth is to be lived not just thought.
We are to walk in this truth, to practice this truth, to enflesh this truth. If we don’t, our lives are lies.
The word “truth” here, which the current version of the NIV renders as “faithfulness,” is emeth, the companion of chesed. Where chesed is the high octane gas that fuels God’s love for us, emeth is the straight road ahead that he drives on. Emeth is both truth and faithfulness at the same time (which is why different versions of the NIV have used both English words and have been right to do so). It’s integrity, steadfast commitment, unbending loyalty, stick-to-it-iveness. It’s not so much a list of factual statements. When we encounter the word “truth” in the Scriptures, we should have the “true” of The Beach Boys song “Be True to Your School” in mind. There’s an unbreakable attachment and identification here that is hard to reduce to words.
When we walk in God’s emeth, we walk in the security of his eternal commitment to us. However rough the seas of life may get, we know his covenant loyalty to us is unsinkable.
And as we walk in it, we start to live it ourselves. We are schooled in his loyalty and reflect that loyalty back to him and to others around us. As we are apprenticed by our God in his emeth, we become skilled in faithfulness and this give us an undivided heart. Our loyalties aren’t split because we aren’t split. We become singleminded in our following of God just as he is singleminded in his loving care for us. And we live our lives with him always in our thoughts, always considering him in every aspect of our lives, which is what “fear your Name” is really all about.
We’ve seen his love in action by how he has “delivered me from the depths” and so we go all out in glorifying his name. This is the mutuality of our covenant life together.
We are so good at giving our hearts away in worship, be we have a tendency to give them away to the wrong things and the wrong people instead of to God. But as we are schooled in his great love for us, we are schooled in turning our worshiping hearts toward him.
But even as we are apprenticed in this way of covenant loyalty, we encounter those who act the opposite. They have no regard for God, sparing no thoughts for him, and therefore have no regard for us. They are neither loyal to God or to anyone else but themselves.
Arrogant foes are attacking me, O God;
ruthless people are trying to kill me —
they have no regard for you.
But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God,
slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness (Ps. 86:14-15).
The contrast couldn’t be more stark. There is a complete thoughtlessness among some. God doesn’t register and therefore others don’t register to them. But God himself is altogether different. Thoughtfulness is essential to his character and commitments.
God is “abounding in love and faithfulness.” This is the pairing of chesed and emeth.
Turn to me and have mercy on me;
show your strength in behalf of your servant;
save me, because I serve you
just as my mother did.
Give me a sign of your goodness,
that my enemies may see it and be put to shame,
for you, LORD, have helped me and comforted me (Ps. 86:16-17).
I love the reference to David’s mother as the psalm draws to an end. It seems to come out of left field, but it underscores the unity the psalm has been pointing toward. It points to the consistency within David’s life. His mother had served God before him and therefore he’s been serving God his entire life, his whole life. This service has been an ever-present and unifying theme for his life. In this, he’s matched God. (Yes, of course, David’s service to God has been patchy and flawed, with sins great and small marring it. But it has been continuous and unstopping. It’s in this that his service has integrity and mutuality with God.)
Because David has been a good covenant partner with God, he can ask God to be a good covenant partner with him as well. We see his call to covenant loyalty by God in the verbs he uses: turn to me, have mercy on me, show your strength on my behalf, save me.
He ends with a request for a sign of the salvation to come, a sign that it’s the crooked, divided-hearted haters who will end up shamed instead of him, a sign in the present that points to a good future and all of it based on a solid past: “for you, Yahweh, have helped me and comforted me” in the past.
David counts on God’s integrity of past, present, and future action on his behalf. And he hopes to be schooled in that integrity, becoming a person with a truly undivided heart himself.
This is essential to living a life of character which why this psalm became the source of the first name of my oldest son, Emett, a version of emeth, and of the middle name of my daughter, Grace, which comes from chesed. When these two come together in us, the unity at the heart of God is in us as well.