God's strange pleasure

"But the LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love" (Psalm 147:11).

The NKJV puts it: "who hope in his mercy." Either way, what a wonderful confluence of desires! The thing that gives God pleasure is the very thing I want to do! I want to be able to hope in His mercy and in nothing else. And here I find in Scripture that not only is this not annoying or distasteful to God, but He loves it!

I must say up front that I desire and try wholeheartedly to obey God's commands. But my obedience is certainly not what I want to put my hope in. God's commands are my delight, perhaps all the more so because I have learned from hard experience that disaster eventually attends indifference to God's commands, and blessing attends obedience to them. But at the end of the day, I am so glad that I can hope in God's mercy and not in my faithfulness.

Psalm 119:1 reads:

"Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the LORD!"

On that verse, Charles Spurgeon wrote:

"He who walks in God's law walks in God's company, and he must be blessed; he has God's smile, God's strength, God's secret with him, and how can he be otherwise than blessed? . . . The law of the Lord is not irksome to them, its commandments are not grievous, and its restrictions not slavish in their esteem. It does not appear to them to be an impossible law, theoretically admirable but practically absurd. They walk by it and in it. They do not consult it now and then as a sort of rectifier of their wanderings, but they use it as a chart for their daily sailing. . . . Nor do they ever regret that they have entered upon the path of obedience. . . ."

So Spurgeon believes in obeying the law of God, and that God's commands are not merely convectors of sin but lamps to be walked by. And he believes that that obedience to God's commands is the way to blessing. But I am sure that even Spurgeon would not ever want to put his hope in his obedience.

There is a caution about hoping in God's mercy: to do so while not seeking to live a life by the plumb line of His expressed will is a scheme too clever by half. When the poet Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) lay on his deathbed and a friend was trying to convert him, the dying man said: "Dieu me pardonnera; c'est son métier" ("God will forgive me; it's his job"). That statement makes one shudder.

No, not like that. I will live before God with all my heart and soul and mind and strength (God esteems "those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus," Revelation 12:17). But if I fall ("the righteous man falls seven times," Proverbs 24:16) I have an Advocate with the Father. And at the close of each day, I want to know that God's mercy and steadfast love are there when I reach out in the dark. I delight that I do not have to seek it with my tail between my legs or wonder if it is shameful for me to hope in His mercy once again. For God is desirous as I am that I do so.

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.