[277 words]
“The Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness; According to the cleanness of my hands He has recompensed me. For I have kept the ways of the Lord, And have not wickedly departed from my God. For all His ordinances were before me, And I did not put away His statutes from me. I was also blameless with Him, And I kept myself from my iniquity. Therefore the Lord has recompensed me according to my righteousness, According to the cleanness of my hands in His eyes” (Psalm 18:20-24).
David says, “For all His ordinances were before me, and I did not put away His statutes from me.” He has kept God’s commandments before him by thinking of them and obeying them. He has not engaged in willful and persistent rebellion.
He affirms still further, “I was also blameless with Him, and I kept myself from my iniquity.” He has remained free from the willful transgression of God’s law. He may be referring to a special sin, one to which he was especially vulnerable, a sin against which he constantly had to be on his guard.
Why has the Lord come to his aid? Why has the Lord blessed him? He says, “The Lord has recompensed me according to my righteousness.” God has seen that David has not engaged in violence and that his “hands [are clean] in His eyes.” “Clean hands” in Hebrew idiom, as we can see, refers to the deeds and actions of righteous character.
Key Thought: Our character is made up of the elements of our daily response to God. The true righteous character brings approval from and delight to God.
Eddie Cloer
via Ashdown Church of Christ
Ashdown, AR