Well, well, this post will put us 2/3 of the way through the Psalms. Despite this passage containing a couple of the best-known of all the Psalms, Psalm 91 and Psalm 100, we have only a few verses containing words translated as 'Heart/ Hearts' by the NIV '84, which is the concordance I'm working from.
Our first scripture today is in the unattributed Psalm 94:
Judgment will again be founded on righteousness, and all the upright in heart will follow it. -- Ps. 94:15, 'Heart' is the often-seen Strong's 3820, Leb.
An interesting thing to found judgment on...righteousness. So many other things it could be founded on....favoritism, calculation, bribery, even pity. But, no, none of those things are to be the foundation of judgment. Righteousness is the foundation, and those who are upright (Strong's H3744, yasar - straight, upright, correct, right) at the core of who they are will follow along. It's a kind of ...hard...teaching. Where does mercy fit there? It has to, somewhere...mercy is a quality of an upright heart. But the line where mercy crosses over into enabling is rather shadowy and subjective, and there are those who would say that no such line exists. But...it has to, or there is no such thing as righteousness.
Something to ponder.
The next passage is a pretty familiar one; this Psalm is also anonymous:
Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me, though they had seen what I did. For forty years I was angry with that generation; I said, "They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my ways. -- Ps. 95:8-10. Both instances of 'heart' are our other most-often used word, Strong's H3824, Lebab.
Here we are looking at hearts that have been hardened by the choice of the people themselves, who have not known the ways of God and therefore went astray...their own way. But these were people who saw, first hand, what God did in delivering them from enslavement and providing for them in the harshest environment. How could they NOT have know his ways? Answer...they hardened their hearts and refused. They chose to not know God and his ways, despite the evidence they were living out every day. There is no deception so great as a deception that is chosen and embraced. With fingers in the ears, singing Lalalalalala...truth just can't penetrate. Knowledge is out of reach. And what did God say in response? "They shall never enter my rest." (Ps. 95:11)
Pretty serious.
By way of contrast, this is the last of the verses we'll look at today, also from an unaccredited psalm:
Light is shed upon the righteous and joy on the upright in heart. -- Ps. 97:11; 'Heart' is Strong's 3820 again.
It kind of makes the choice to follow or not follow a no-brainer. But deception is deceiving and we don't know what we choose to not know...
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