“Send out your light and your truth;
let them lead me;
let them bring me to your holy hill
and to your dwelling!”
(Psalm 43:3 ESV)
As I was reading in the Psalms this morning I came across this verse and it just struck me as to how awesome God’s light and truth are. I can always sense David’s strong desire and passion in many of the Psalms he wrote. There is always this sense of desperation and longing for God that we sometimes miss today. I don’t always understand the Psalms and there are probably more that I don’t get than I do, but one thing I can always learn from is David’s zealous, fervent passion and delight in and for God.
David seeks to just get away from the evil of man and ungodly people and he cries out for God to vindicate him. Where does David always turn to in trouble? He always sets His eyes on God and His holy hill. In a later Psalm David says, “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth” (Psalm 121:1-2). There is never any confusion as to where David finds his strength or to where he runs when he is in trouble or needs help.
I was watching a made-for-TV movie (“Keep Your Head Up Kid: The Don Cherry Story”) last winter about the life of Canadian hockey guru, Don Cherry from the well-known and beloved “Hockey Night in Canada” and former NHL head coach of the Boston Bruins in the 70’s. I enjoy listening to Don Cherry, some may beg to differ with many of his opinions, but I find him entertaining and he does know a lot when it comes to the game of hockey. During the film Don, his wife Rose and their duaghter Cindy get into some car troubles while on the way to a town where Don got traded to while he was playing professional hockey. The car won’t start so Don says to his daughter, “Cindy you know what we do when things get tough, we pray.” I like that, it’s a good thing to know where to turn to when we are in need, but to often we don’t look to God when things are going well for us.
It’s easy to look to God and pray in the hard times, but when everything is going smoothly it’s even easier to just forget about Him and live our lives on our own for ourselves. When tragedy strikes, many people look to the heavens, but how often do those same people seek God when they have it made in the shade?
David wasn’t one of these people, He was always about God and His glory. In the Book of Acts, Paul says of David, “And when he had removed him, he raised up David to be their king, of whom he testified and said, ‘I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will’ (Acts 13:22). David was a man that sought after God in the good times and the bad, he wasn’t perfect, he was a sinner, but he knew that his life existed to bring God glory.
Here is what Charles Haddon Spurgeon has to say about the third verse of the forty-third Psalm:
“We seek not light to sin sin by, nor truth to be exalted by it, but that they may become our practical guides to the nearest communion with God: only such light and truth as are sent us from God will do this, common light is not strong enough to show the road to heaven, nor will mere moral or physical truths assist to the holy hill, but the light of the Holy Spirit, and the truth as it is in Jesus, these are elevating, sanctifying, perfecting; and hence their virtue in leading us to be the glorious presence of God. It is beautiful to observe how David’s longing to be away from the oppression of man always leads him to sigh more intensely for communion with God” (The Treasury of David, p. 293).
We need God’s light, this light of the Holy Spirit and we need God’s truth, this truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ to lead us to God and nothing else. So often we think of God as our means to some other end. David asks for light and truth so he can be led to God’s holy hill and His dwelling! David longs for God. God is the treasure, he is the end!
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