Psalm 40:4

"Blessed is the man who makes the LORD his trust, who does not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after a lie!"

". . . who makes the LORD his trust"---I like the way he puts that. There is something deliberate and settled about it. It sounds as though he has thought about it a while and made up his mind. He is tired of a vicious cycle of falling in and out of pits. He is sick of the results of "limping between two different opinions" (1 Kings 18:21). He has been burned by other trusts---talent, people, youth, money, looks, his own strength. From now on he will plant himself firmly on the rock---and this time he is determined to do it for the rest of his life.

It is not Pelagianism or "decisionism" to speak like this. God is the one who puts us on the rock (verse 2). But man is the one who builds his house on a rock (Matthew 7:24). Both are true---God's initiative and man's resolve. I know personally that it is important for me to commit myself to loyalty to God in advance of the suffering that surely lies ahead. When disaster strikes suddenly there is no time to decide how I am going to act. It is now, when the seas are relatively calm, that I should plan and envision my response to God in the event of losing my job, my health, my friends.

A misguided view of grace holds us back. We think "effort" and "determination" are dirty words---even though 2 Peter 1:5 says to "make every effort. . . ." We think "grace" means passivity---even though Romans 6:12 commands "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body. . . ." We think that because the Holy Spirit works in us, we can ignore our cooperative role with Him to "walk by the Spirit" (Galatians 5:16). We are fond of repeating that God is the one who transforms us, but we hardly mention the command to "be transformed" (Romans 12:2). The present power of the blood of Christ is for "training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives" (Titus 2:11-12).

The grace of God is grace for making God our trust.

" . . . who does not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after a lie."

Respect of the proud is a strange habit we have. Yet we do it. The Corinthians did it. Why would anybody respect a person with a moral defect? And yet pride is a moral defect. Why would anybody adulate a person with a blind spot? And yet, what is pride but a blind spot? The proud are laughable in God's eyes. They cannot even create a molecule of matter; they are unable to keep themselves alive for even a minute; they are incapable of foreseeing even one day into the future.

I always assumed that this verse was a warning about the proud outside the Church. But it is evident from the New Testament that the people who angered the Apostle Paul to the point of his wishing their castration were inside the Church. They were teachers, in fact, teaching doctrine that was similar enough to the true gospel that many were persuaded. But what they had in common was a kind of pride that blinded them, in one way or another, from what God has given children to see---the simple truth of Jesus raised and full of power to act on our behalf.

A "lie" does not have to be outlandish. It can sound like advanced scholarship. It can be nothing more than a watered-down gospel. The subtlest of all demonic deceptions would be teaching that retains all the words of the Bible and has a zeal for orthodoxy but has lost faith in its power or is not lived with authenticity. The proud get entangled in their own great learning, word-smithing, and cleverness. Their talent is the rope they hang themselves with.

"Blessed is the man who makes the LORD his trust." The Lord and not man. The Lord and not scholarship. It's not as easy as it seems. I am constantly fighting to put the Word of God above the Word of man in my life.

To read Andrée Seu's series on Psalm 40, click here.

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.