A Plea For Guidance For Himself, and that YHWH Will Remember His Covenant Promises And Covenant Love, And That He Will Not Remember His Sins (4-7).
This is the first section in a three stage pattern, the first two stages of which can be illustrated as follows:
Show me Your ways, O YHWH.---------- Good and upright is YHWH. Teach me Your paths. ---------------------- Therefore will He instruct sinners in the way.' Guide me in Your truth, ------------------- The meek will He guide in justice, And teach me. ------------------------------- And the meek will He teach his way
For you are the God of my salvation, ---- All the paths of YHWH are For You do I wait all the day. Remember, O YHWH, Your tender mercies, -- lovingkindness and truth And Your lovingkindness, for they have been ever of old -- To such as keep His covenant and His testimonies.
Do not remember the sins of my youth, -- Pardon my iniquity, for it is great. Nor my transgressions (or ‘rebellions'). According to Your lovingkindness remember you me, For the sake of Your goodness, O YHWH.'---- For Your name's sake, O YHWH.
We will now consider it in detail.
D ‘Show me your ways, O YHWH.
Teach me your paths.'
The Psalmist knows that if his ‘waiting' is to result in a successful outcome it must be connected with living in accordance with God's ways, and walking in His paths, and so he asks that YHWH will show him His ways, and will teach him His paths. For this is his longing, to walk in the way of righteousness, the way of full obedience to YHWH. Compare Psalms 27:11, ‘teach me your way, O YHWH, and lead me in a plain path'; Psalms 143:8, ‘cause me to know the way in which I should walk'. It is the heart cry of all who truly know God.
‘Show me your ways' was the prayer of Moses when he was in perplexity and was not clear about the way ahead (Exodus 33:13). And God's final reply to him was to show him His glory. Once he had experienced His glory he knew that he could trust God in the way ahead, and he did not need to know any more. And for us that glory is revealed in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:4-6). It is from knowing Jesus more fully in His glory (by meditation on His word and through prayer) that we will know His ways. If we neglect Him, we will soon neglect His ways.
H ‘Guide me in your truth (or ‘trustworthiness'),
And teach me.
For you are the God of my salvation,
For you do I wait all the day.'
So he prays that YHWH will guide him in His truth and teach him. He wants to know the true way of God. This is important to him because while he knows that God is his saving God, his Saviour, and he is waiting on him for deliverance, he also knows that parallel with God saving him must be his own obedience to His truth. What God is working in him to will and to do of His good pleasure, he must work out with greatest care (Philippians 2:12-13). Total confidence in God must go along with full obedience to His truth. We cannot look to Christ as our Saviour if our desire is not to be guided into His truth.
But the word for ‘truth' ('emeth) can also mean ‘trustworthiness', and this translation provides a better parallel to the second line in the stanza.. So it may be that what the Palmist means is ‘let me become more aware of Your total trustworthiness', thus indicating his desire to have an increasing confidence in God. This would tie in with the fact that he has already prayed in the previous verse that he might be taught His paths, so that he does not need to pray it again. On the other hand we should note Psalms 25:9-10 where again the emphasis is on knowing and following God's ways. Both attitudes are of course necessary for the believer, that of trusting and having confidence in God, and that of obedience to His word. That is what this Psalm makes clear. Note Psalms 25:3, and Psalms 25:6 concerning having confidence in God, and Psalms 25:4 and Psalms 25:9-10 about walking in His ways.
Z ‘Remember, O YHWH, your tender mercies,
And your lovingkindness, for they have been ever of old (or ‘from everlasting').'
But in seeking God with his whole heart the Psalmist is reminded of how he has failed God in the past, and so now he calls on Him to remember that He is a God of tender mercies, a God Whose lovingkindness and ‘covenant love' has been manifested from of old, even from everlasting. He is the unchanging God (Malachi 3:6) who has drawn him, and has loved him with an everlasting love (Jeremiah 2:2; Jeremiah 31:3). He does not want God to look on whether he is worthy or not, for he knows that he is not. He wants Him to be loving and merciful towards him, in terms of the covenant of love that He had made towards him and towards His people. The word translated ‘lovingkindness' (chesed) basically means ‘covenant love'. He wants Him to remember that ‘the mercy of YHWH is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him' (Psalms 103:17), because He Himself is from everlasting (Psalms 90:2; Psalms 93:2). Then he will be caught up in that everlasting mercy. He will know that ‘the eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms' (Deuteronomy 33:27). In the same way we also must come to our Heavenly Father, and to Jesus Christ our Lord, pointing not to ourselves but to His covenant of mercy towards us established through the cross (Colossians 2:14; Hebrews 8:6-13). We come claiming no merit of our own, but openly admitting our sinfulness, as the Psalmist did, knowing that the blood of Jesus Christ His Son, cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7).
CH ‘Do not remember the sins of my youth,
Nor my transgressions (or ‘rebellions').
According to your lovingkindness remember you me,
For the sake of your goodness, O YHWH.'
So he prays that YHWH will not remember the sins of his youth, how he had failed God in the past, nor remember his recent transgressions, but will rather remember him in terms of His loving covenant towards His people, because He is truly good. He throws himself on the goodness and lovingkindness of God. He knows that if that is his hope and his confidence he has nothing to be afraid of. This is something that all of us must do. For this is the evidence of our genuine relationship with Him. Admitting and turning from our sin daily (compare Matthew 6:12), we must daily allow it to drive us to an awareness of the love and compassion of God, knowing that our sin has been wholly dealt with in the cross, and we are now walking in newness of life.
The word for ‘sins' indicates a missing of the mark, a losing of the way. It expresses an awareness of coming short, an awareness that ‘all have sinned and come short of the glory of God' (Romans 3:23), including ourselves. The word for ‘transgressions' contains within it the element of rebellion. It is an indication of the rebellious spirit. For in the end that is what our sin is, rebellion against God and His ways, rebellion against His love.