"Humility....................."

In Wednesday evening class, the teacher took us into the Book of Psalms, ending with a final note on the Fifteenth. That particular one is said to have been written by David, has only five verses, and puts a question to God as to who is able to abide in His presence. The list of ten requirements immediately presented afterwards may well have been “inspired”, breathed into the giant killer, the “bloody man” who was also said to be the “apple” of the Almighty’s eye; but those there in our room were agreed as to the human element also being present in the forming of those words. It is one of those “Sermon on the Mount” messages, no man completely above falling into at least one of the categories along the way that barred entrance. So when I read in Matthew, this morning, where Jesus accuses the scribes and Pharisees of having omitted the “weightier matters of the law”, specifically naming them to be “judgment, mercy, and faith”, it caught my attention. He was addressing the church of His day; but religion is religion wherever one finds it. Thus the question: Are we presently just as guilty of the same rebuke? The latter is part of our doctrinal message, but has evolved into a force which believers think they, themselves, create; the middle term we embrace in so much as it comes to us, yet often demand conditions to be met before we’re will to extend it unto others; and yet that first one finds us usually quick to pronounce “them” guilty and the reason why this world is in such sad shape. Surely judgment, though, “must begin at the house of God” and, if we are to examine the beam in our own eye before expounding on the mote in theirs, then I’m of the opinion that the omission referred to by Christ speaks of looking in the mirror. In seeing ourselves, we will find Him enabling us to see others as He does. Then, in experiencing that process, we are grounded even stronger in His reality within us and faith finds anchorage. Men are not redeemed through some self-formed transformation into holiness; but are saved via an internal connection bought for us at Calvary. If David came too soon to possess such Holy Ghost “hook-up”, it would seem he nonetheless knew “deep calleth unto deep” and often somehow went to that inner oasis……