Beginning Note - Please do not read this quickly or lightly, nor consider it unprayerfully. This is something deep the Lord has done in my heart, and pray that it would do a similar work in your own for His glory.

Psalm 27:1 -  The Lord is my light and my salvation - so why should I be afraid?

Meditating on the cross this morning, and Jesus on it. After all the wickedness perpetrated against Him, blasphemies spoken about Him, He is betrayed by a kiss and nailed to a cross.

Then, near His death - He cries “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34) Have you ever meditated on that verse, and on the heart of Christ there pictured? There are few greater revelations of the person and heart of Christ than in that sentence on the cross.
I confess I don’t fully understand this. My mindset would tend to think - Jesus is so jealous for the Father’s glory and perfect justice to be had, why would he not say -  “Father, you are Holy, Perfect, Wise, and Just! Let the wicked here be judged so that your perfect righteousness is upheld!” After all, who knows the heart of the Father more than He who has been with Him for all eternity. Who understands His Holiness like the One who was and is and is to come? But, to think Jesus would think or say this shows a major and basic misperception of the person of Christ.

Jesus said, I came not to condemn the world, but that through me the world might be saved (John 3:17). Jesus is the person and work that God has sent TO ACHIEVE God’s righteous justice in the earth. He is the one who pictures God’s perfect justice, for He is the judge. But, my misperception is this - God’s perfect justice (his perfect heart)  is not displayed in judgment at the expense of His mercy, but His judgment reveals the triumph of His mercy! For Mercy Triumphs over Judment! (James 2:13)

I would think God’s justice means that He must destroy the wicked, for He is the Holy one, too holy to even look upon sin, and that in order for His name to be upheld He must wipe out the wicked. But this is not primarily so! First, He wipes out SIN itself. Somehow, he doesn’t destroy the people that sin has infected and indwelt so powerfully, but squashes SIN itself and literally extracts it from the earth starting at the cross. Instead of proving His justice with great judgment on the earth by destroying people, He proves His great justice on the earth by destroying Sin through mercy, through mercy and justice personified, Jesus the Christ.

Jesus is the defeater of sin, the cure for the cancer, the light that dispels all darkness (John 1:2). He is the personification of the most powerful force in the universe, the embodiment of the Love of God. Love indeed CONQUERS all!(1 Cor. 13) Jesus given for the world IS God’s perfect justice displayed, and His perfect love displayed.

Therefore, when we have Jesus crying out “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” We don’t picture Jesus holding back the Father saying, “Wait! Don’t do that which is in your heart to do (mainly, to destroy them). Hold back! Let’s do something different!” No! Jesus isn’t saying that at all. Jesus, oh beautiful man that He is, is crying out for the Father to do EXACTLY what is in the Father’s heart to do, FORGIVE them.

And what is to “ForGive”? It is to to “Give For” - it is God giving His Gift For the World. It is God giving Himself for the World. It is God giving His justice for the world. It is God giving His character for the world. It is God giving His life for the world. It is God giving His love for the world. It is God giving His heart for the world.

It is God giving God for the world.

Selah!

The Lord IS my light and my salvation. It’s almost like David wrote this about himself, but so did God about Himself. The Lord Jesus is both our light and our salvation and God’s light and God’s salvation. Shouldn’t surprise us, the author of this text is the Holy Spirit after all!

I feel like if I think as I formerly thought, mainly that God was just begging to pour out His wrath and Jesus intervened and stopped Him through the cross and provided another way, than I have a major misunderstanding of the God I worship. I can not continue my relationship with Him until I get right about this. I feel that this morning’s revelation is the Lord correcting my perception of that event, and revealing Himself as He really is, and not as I had mistakenly thought Him to be.

I believe the reason behind my “completely missing the point” previous view, was that I figured Jesus was altogether like me. Oh, what sorrow! Because if I was on that cross, then I would probably say “Father, these people don’t deserve anything but your fiery judgments. Here they are killing your diving instrument of love!”. But that is not the heart of Christ.

The heart of Christ is the heart of the Father, is the heart of the Holy Spirit - and is the heart that we must have, be given, and be “given for” the purpose of our heart being like His. For our transformation into the image of Christ means that we look at people that wrong us, people that are wicked in a whole new light. When we ask God to forgive them, we aren’t saying - God, disregard your holiness and forgive these wicked people for no good reason - we are saying “Father! Reveal unto them Christ, YOUR For-Giveness!”

God The Father’s forgiveness and justice is the person of Christ. So when we pray, and when Stephen prayed “Father forgive them…” We are in essence praying - “Father, reveal unto them the Lord Jesus.” Amazing that it was after that very prayer of Stephen as he was being stoned, that the hardest hearted sinner probably on the earth had this MASSIVE revelation of Jesus in the sky! Do you see that!? Do you catch that?

When Stephen exhibits the heart of the Father in such a way, when he GETS IT in that way, the Father’s heart (Jesus’ heart) is moved in such a wholehearted way that He moves into action to “Forgive them” by a widespread revelation of Jesus the Christ to Saul! And Saul goes around to all the people there and many, many others places, teaching forgiveness through the shed blood of Jesus! God Answers according to His heart!

Look at what happened when Jesus Himself prayed that prayer -

“Mat 27:54  When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!”

The heart of the Father, the justice of the Father, the mercy of the Father, all in perfect keeping - is to reveal Jesus the Christ.

Wow! That we would ask and ascertain the heart of Christ, the heart that was in Stephen, and cry out to God to forgive our families, friends, loved ones - much less nations of the earth that need a revelation of Christ - “God forgive them!”!! His forgiveness is His light, is His salvation, His “God saves”, His Jesus! Halelujah!

Jesus, reveal unto us this Holy, Loving, and perfectly Just heart that the Father has and that You have and that Stephen and many others have. Your heart is one of mercy to tens of thousands! Your love endures forever! Give us a right understanding of why and how you “forgive” man of their sins! By revealing light into darkness! You are our light and salvation! Amen.

post edit - A disclaimer simply saying that I absolutely believe God judges the wicked as is clearly seen throughout the Old and New Testaments. I simply believe His first act of justice is to reveal Christ, and if people persist in darkness (John 3:18-20), then the very scorning of His light and love instigates God’s fiery wrath from heaven as seen (for example) in the bowl, seal, and trumpet judgments of Revelation. However, even these very acts are in of themselves acts of perfect love designed to bring people to understand their need for Jesus and run to Him!

As A.W. Tozer says - God never downplays His mercy to act in judgment or His justice to act in mercy - but EVERY action He ever takes is in PERFECT KEEPING and perfectly consistent with EVERY attribute He possesses. God’s judgment is mercy, and His mercy is judgment. Makes sense, when you look at Jesus. He is both the lamb that takes away the sin of the world, and the King that will judge the earth and rule all nations with an iron sceptre. This is our God!!! Aleluia!

Psalm 25 -  “Of David. To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in you I trust; let me not be put to shame; let not my enemies exult over me.”

The soul is the deepest, most core part of a man’s being, the eternal part that will live forever. To lift up one’s soul to God is to lift up or lay down all one’s greatest desires, most inward thoughts, the very depth of who we are in our being. Surely there is only one being in heaven or on earth who is perfectly trustworthy to receive our soul and do what is best with it - “whom have I in heaven but you?” (Psalm 73) Interestingly, the regular practice of lifting up his soul in trust to God is the very thing that stirs him with the desire to know God!

Thinking about God as refuge, as protector, thinking of Him as the eternal savior who provides ultimate sanctuary for those who trust Him, does something deep in the heart of David, where he begins to yearn for the knowledge of God. Jesus said, “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the One true God, and Jesus the Christ whom you have sent.” (Joh_17:3) Jesus describes the “living water welling up from within us” (Joh_4:14), this eternal life, as the desire of and the fulness of the knowledge of God.

A great key lies within here - for our hearts do not always flow with the desire for God to “make me to know your ways, teach me your paths!” in the pursuit of the knowledge of God. Perhaps the root is that we have not done the first thing, lifting up our soul unto God. In our hurriedness, we forget to entrust everything to Jesus. The cares of this life are said to “choke the seed” of the Word of God (Mar_4:19). If we don’t lift up to the Lord our burdens, lay down our anxieties, and cast our cares upon Him, they will surely “choke out” the desire to know the ways of the Lord and the knowledge of Him.

“Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long.” (vs. 5) As David lifts up His soul, He worships, but His worship isn’t merely words to God, but a desire to hear words from God Himself. His recognition and acknowledgement of God as savior provokes in Him desire for a Holy dialog with God.

God desires that the light of His countenance be that which draws us in to more of Him. He gives revelation of Himself to draw us nearer, to take us deeper into who He is. As an unraveling ball of yarn, one revelation can quickly lead to another and another and another.

This is why it is good to meditate on one aspect of God, say as Savior, for a period of time, thinking and going over scriptures about that aspect of God, until something breaks and the Holy Spirit illuminates that not only that aspect but another as well! Jesus said, don’t just read the scriptures to go over them, read them so that you may come to me and know me, for the scriptures are that which testifies of me! (Joh_5:39)

David desires this with God, and doesn’t want anything in the way. The guilt of His soul from the sins of His youth threaten to push Him away from the Lord, so He pleads the mercy of God over His soul! Of late I’ve experienced this to some degree, as I mentioned in the last study, that the closer I draw to Jesus, the more I feel the enemy accusing me of former sin, condemning me with guilt and keeping me weighed down with a distressed soul. This he does for the sole purpose of distracting me from Jesus.

This is partly the case because the closer we are to Jesus, the more His light shines into the deeper depths of our heart, indeed exposing hidden areas and perhaps sins we weren’t aware of previously. When this occurs, Jesus’ desire is always to redeem and Satan’s desire is always to condemn. We MUST recognize this and go onwards towards Jesus’ redemption of that area, not shrinking back in fear, condemnation, and the guilt that is thrown at us to keep us from getting free of it in Jesus’ name!

If we are able to go through this HUGE hurdle, which many never make it over, then we will go on to a deeper cleansing of heart and a greater knowledge of Jesus. David’s thirst in this passage is satisfied, His asking for instruction is almost immediately satisfied after he passes the hurdle of trusting Jesus for the redemption of His sinful heart in vs 7.

Look carefully in vs.4-6, David asks to understand God’s “ways” “paths” and “truth.” Then, after vs. 7, David receives revelation of God’s “truth” in vs. 8, His “ways” in vs. 9, and His “paths” in vs. 10. Amazing! God answers prayer!

“Good and upright is the Lord” - truth, and knowledge of God. “He instructs sinners in the way” - truth, and knowledge of God. “He leads the humble in what is right” - truth, and knowledge of God. “He teaches the humble His way” - a “way” of the Lord. “All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness - ” - the “paths” of the Lord.

So, in summary of vs.1-10 - we have David first lifting up His soul to God, all that He is trusting in all that God is as sufficient to protect and save Him. This action stirs in his soul a desire to know the Lord, to have that eternal life well up from within Him. He begins to cry out that God  would show Himself, His ways, and His paths to Him. In that moment, the Lord draws near to reveal Himself, and David is caught in a curious crossroads. He has the Lord approaching, His marvelous light exposing even greater depths of His heart, and he then has his own thoughts (and perhaps the enemy himself) accusing him, drawing back from the Lord as Peter did, thinking, I’m too unclean for the presence of Jesus!

However, instead of ending the psalm with a quick praise and then shrinking back, He acknowledges his feeling to the Lord and cries out for God to remember His steadfast love in dealing with him. Then, something great happens in between vs. 7 and 8, namely, God revealing Himself to David! 3 verses of answer specific to the very questions he asked in the first place! He wouldn’t have had this revelation if he has shrunk back, and neither will we!

To go on would find David again face to face with His guilt, His affliction and trouble once more, but He takes His stand on the promises of God and says “my eyes are ever toward the Lord” - and so should we! He recognizes that God ALWAYS acts in goodness and love towards Him, though it not be as he would expect, He ALWAYS acts in goodness, there for our eyes should ALWAYS look unto Him.

“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words,whose voice is not heard. Their measuring line goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.” - Psalm 19:1-4

Two primary means of revelation spoken of in this beautiful psalm - the creation and the Word of God. Revelation is not some mystical concept, it is the means by which we earthly beings can glimpse or understand that which is heavenly and eternal. Jesus told Peter “Blessed art thou - for flesh and blood has not REVEALED this unto you, but my Father which is in Heaven.” Matthew 16:17 It is the Father that reveals, through the Holy Spirit, of the Lord Jesus, His perfect and Holy Word sent down from Heaven. It is perfectly understandable that He is the source and the author of revelation, for He created all things, and all things are made for Him. We could say that God is in the business of revealing His Son in eternal glory to the entire universe, to His own Glory!

Therefore we have revelation of Him in the creation pictured here - the heavens, the sky, and the seasons with which the heavenly bodies (sun, moon) provide - namely, night and day.

Verse 1 says - The “heavens” declare the glory of God. Glory literally translates “weighty splendor” or “honorable brilliance”. Interesting that David remarks about the “heavens” plural. If you meditate on the concept of the heavens, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12 (most commentators believing that he was speaking of himself) - “I know a man in Christ … caught up the third heaven and shown marvelous things.” Third heaven? What does that mean? We have a clue from the latter part of verse 1 in Psalm 19.

“The sky” is also translated “the firmament” which means a divider or a partition. A partition is something that divides one thing from another. Since “the heavens” is plural, we know there is more than one, and since it is also translated to mean “the air”, we start to get a picture here of what Paul means by “third heaven”.

If the third heaven is the very throne room of God, where Paul heard “wonderful things not permitted to speak of” than the second heaven would be the space below it, or the place where the sun and moon are in orbit, the celestial bodies that dictate day and night on the earth. From here then, the first heaven would be below that, namely the sky above where the clouds roam about to and fro and where we fly our planes! Amazing how far our very prayer travels - above the clouds, above outer space, into the throne room of God, which no telescope can grasp a glimpse of!

We get confirmation of this in verse 6 when the Word talks about the sun, the correct translation is that the sun goes “from one end of the heaven (singular!) to the other”. The KJV has this correct - because although we can see the sun, it is not really “in the sky”, but more in outer space, the second “air” or second “heaven” that is above the earth. It is distinguished specifically.

This is important to realize because the different “heavens” each “declare the glory of God”, because each display different things, and I’d be willing to say that each is a different and higher degree of revelation. We know that Paul was revealed unutterable things in the very Throne Room of God, so much so that God sent him a thorn in his flesh to keep him from “being exalted beyond measure due to the exceeding revelation.” That’s intense! What incredible revelation of God’s glory and His splendor in the most Holy Place of Heaven did Paul receive when taken to the third heaven! Wow! Wow! Wow! Amazing!

If that was given Paul in the third heaven, the place of greatest revelation, where the Bible says we will “fully know even as we are fully known”. (1 Cor 13:12) If thats the case, then what is available in the first and second heavens that speak of the glory of God?

The second heaven below is where the sun and moon regulate day and night, which is mentioned next in verses 2-4. Day to day pours out speech, night to night reveals knowledge. Perhaps this speaks of the constancy that God wants to reveal His glory to us, both day and night, continually, forever! Notice that it isn’t merely one day that pours out speech, but in the sequence of days, day to day, and in the sequence of nights, night to night, that revelation comes. We should not therefore expect to “come to revelation” all at once, but progressively as time goes along.

Just as it would be silly for us to eat all of our food at once and expect it to last us for months or years, we must come into revelation gradually and continuously. The good news is, day and night its available to be had, through the person of the Holy Spirit bringing light to our minds and hearts!