General, Psalms - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 0:52 - 0 Comments

Psalm 4:4

Psalms 4:4 Tremble, and do not sin; Meditate in your heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah.

How easy it is for us as finite beings to find satisfaction in the awe of something less than God and His glory. Our hearts are on a constant hunt for such objects of our affections. It is impossible for us as humans to remove the desire and impulse to stand in awe. We seek it in our labors. We desire it in our sexual satisfaction. We pursue it in our intellectual quests. Man wants to be his own god and yet he is inconsistent in living up to this high view of self because he is all too aware that he can not swell his own heart to find grandeur in his own image. He struggles in vain to amaze himself with himself much as a child struggles to tickle their own feet.

As Piper puts it “we were made to make much of something other than ourselves.” As marred image bearers of the living God, our image reminds us that we came from something, and to that something we want to return. The pursuit of sin should demonstrate the simple truth that man is ever seeking to fill what is lacking within himself. Man is ever contriving ways to either satisfy such urges or drown them in a sea of sin. It isn’t true that man seeks after the true God, but man does seek after a god. Worship is what we were made for, and worship is what we will do. We hopelessly cast our affections on things and people which we believe will bring us to awe- even for a moment. We want to tremble, but find nothing in this world to sustain this state. As we grown in years, our experience teaches us that we will find disappointment just around the corner. Our maturity erodes the intensity of our quest. The only option for us is to stop looking to self, stop looking to things, stop looking to people for that which only comes through the eternal God of the universe. The One who calls us to tremble is the only One who can give it by grace. This will keep us from sin- why?- because sin is what we do when we are not satisfied in God- sin is what we do when awe is what we lack. We are to meditate upon this truth. We are to hear its distant cry in the quiet of our mind. We will not be free from the fear of sin until we fear the One who frees us. Tremble, meditate, be still. Sin will be crowded out by the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ. May we be filled with holy awe increasing in measure for all eternity as we forever take into our finite vessels the glory of the infinite God.