“Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, and trust in Yahweh. Many are saying, ‘Who will show us good?’ Lift up the light of Your face upon us, O Yahweh! You have put gladness in my heart, More than when their grain and new wine abound. In peace I will both lie down and sleep, for You alone, O Yahweh, make me to abide in safety.”
There is a perpetual search among human philosophers for good, for moral truth, or for true morality. Men seek for this, not because they are so obsessed with doing good, but because by doing good, they hope that good will come upon them. “Who will show us good?” They hope by their moral righteousness to be set free from fear of harm and evil, and that they will thereby know happiness and peace.
All of man’s attempts to find joy and peace apart from God have been met by failure. The present attempts will fare no better. Only God Himself is absolute good. Therefore, moral perfection can be found only by union with God. Anything less than that is less than moral, or immoral… sin. Union with God is possible through His Son, Jesus Christ. He is the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through Him.
The sacrifices, then, of righteousness consist of all it means to put your trust in the Lord. All that we do trusting in ourselves is apart from God, is unholy, and must be counted no more than sin. All that we do in dependence upon Him, His righteousness, mercy, grace, and power, is counted righteousness. It is His work in us.
Irreligious men who fear not God count themselves righteous when they prosper, when “their grain and new wine abound.” They make the error of the men of corrupt minds of whom the Apostle warned Timothy:
“If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with sound words—those of our Lord Jesus Christ—and with the doctrine conforming to godliness, he is conceited, understanding nothing but having a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strife, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain” (1 Tim. 6:3-5).
But this is the resting place of such men. Their hope of safety is in human power and the increase of worldly possessions. Yet when they lie down at night they cannot sleep. They reason that if they were able to take this power and wealth from others, will not others take it from them? They think that they have the blessing of the Lord, but have no assurance that He will protect them.
Not so with those who offer the sacrifice of the righteous and put their trust in the Lord. They have more joy and gladness than the man who just harvested a bumper crop or received a windfall from the stock market. What they have did not come from men, and man has no power to take it away. He will lie down in peace, and he will sleep. He has made a discovery worth more than all the gold and silver on earth. “You alone, O Yahweh, make me to abide in safety.”
