God who is Righteous

God in the Psalms No.5 

Psa 4:1 Answer me when I call to you, O my righteous God

We have observed previously that righteousness can be otherwise described as rightness. David calls God here the God of rightness. Let’s consider that. Everything God does is right. He never does wrong. He never gets it wrong. Everything He does works out right, works out well. Every thought, every word, every act of God is right. He is the only one of whom that can be said. God cannot be faulted for He is perfect. He knows everything and He knows how He has designed things to work and therefore He interacts with His world in a way that perfectly fits that design. That design cannot be faulted and His actions within it cannot be faulted.

Now that is both scary and reassuring. It is scary in that it is unnerving to be in the presence of someone who is utterly perfect and always gets it right and knows what is right. But it is also reassuring because we can trust God to always act in a good and perfect way towards us. Everything He does is good.

Now these assertions are clearly statements of faith that we make in the light of the whole Bible. The Bible reveals God as having designed a perfect world. It only goes wrong because of man bringing Sin into it. We are imperfect in that we are sinners, but we have been made perfect in God’s sight by our response to the work of Christ and His working in us by His Spirit. That is amazing. Righteousness has all to do with relationship. God who does all things right, saw that we would fall to Sin and so provided a way for us to come back into a relationship with Him, through Jesus’ work on the Cross. God thus establishes a right relationship with all those who will respond to His call through Christ, and thereafter He is able to bring rightness into our lives by the work of His Holy Spirit.

But note something more about David’s words here. He refers to God as my righteous God. God has become personal to him; there is a real relationship here that David has entered into with God, whereby David now has a sense of intimacy with God and knows God as the one who always relates to Him rightly and well. Thus David can call to God and demand, Answer me when I call to you. Now that is amazing when you think about it, that little David can demand things of great God. On what grounds can he demand this? On the grounds that he knows that God always acts rightly and so when His child calls to Him, the Father will always answer the child, for that is the right, caring thing to do. So David is able to say, the LORD will hear when I call to him, (v.3) for that’s how it works. He know when he calls, God the Father hears His child.

David has come to know that God works (acts) in right ways always. However He will respond to David will be right, and He will respond because that is right. Do you want to know how to pray aright? Pray what you know to be true of God. Ask in line with what you know of God’s character. You know He always does right? Then what is right in this situation?   Not what you think is right because of your selfish desires, but what is right as seen in the light of the God who has designed this world to work in particular ways, right ways, and who always acts in conformity to His character and the way He has made things to be.  Have you caught this?  Do you see that God is righteous, that He always moves in rightness, He always does what is right; that is His will? Let that bring security into your life, this sense of order and rightness.