God Who Rewards According to My Righteousness

[Psalm 18:20–27]

Lately, as I spend time with my children, I see myself reflected in my third child, Yeeun. What I see in her is an attitude of the heart that says to God out of selfish desire, “God, it’s not fair!”

There was a time I gave each of my kids ten chocolate candies. My oldest, Dylan, and my second daughter, Yeri, seemed to savor them one at a time, but my youngest, Yeeun, ate all ten as she pleased and then came to me asking for more.
So I said, “I gave the same amount—ten pieces—to your brother, your sister, and you. Why are you asking for more?” And when I told her no, she said, “It’s not fair!”

Not only that time, but Yeeun has recently been complaining more often, especially when comparing herself to her older sister, saying she’s being treated unfairly.
Seeing this, my wife and I realized that although we try our best as parents to treat all three children fairly, Yeeun still felt things were unfair from her point of view.

Even though I gave each child ten chocolates equally, Yeeun still said it wasn’t fair. Reflecting on that, I began to wonder:
Aren’t we doing the same with our heavenly Father?
Even if we don’t say it out loud, perhaps we often think the same way.
Just like Yeeun, driven by desire, wanted more and felt things were unfair when I didn’t give it to her—
God our Father treats His children justly, but in our greed, we may be praying with a demanding heart, asking for more.

When God doesn’t give us what we ask for, we complain, saying, “God is not fair.”
We are children who don’t know how to be content.
We are God’s people who can’t be satisfied with God alone.
And so, we inevitably end up experiencing God’s justice.

In today’s Scripture—Psalm 18:20 and 24—the psalmist David confesses that our God is the one who rewards us according to our righteousness.
Our God is a righteous God, one who clearly rewards the good and punishes the wicked (Yoon-Sun Park).
To the merciful, He shows Himself merciful; to the blameless, He shows Himself blameless (v.25).
To the pure, He shows Himself pure, but to the crooked (perverse), He repays with justice (v.26).
To the afflicted—those who are humble—He brings salvation, but the proud He brings low (v.27, Yoon-Sun Park).

However, it seems that we are living with some misunderstanding and holding onto an unbalanced way of thinking.
We tend to believe in and rely on certain attributes of God's nature—His love, grace, mercy, and goodness—wanting to enjoy them,
but we often neglect to focus on His holiness and justice in our spiritual lives.

As a result, we may not take full obedience to God’s commandments seriously before the holy and just God.
We lightly say things like, “I’m doing well by God’s grace,” without true repentance for our sins, and live without taking sin seriously.
This is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace.”

We forget the seriousness of sin, repeatedly commit sins of disobedience,
and interpret God’s grace, love, and faithfulness to suit our own desires,
mistakenly believing that we’re still living a proper Christian life.
If we say we’re living by God’s grace while doing this, that is a grave misunderstanding.

The apostle Paul said that those who truly know the grace of God work harder than anyone else for the Lord because of that grace (1 Corinthians 15:10).
If we are truly believers living by God’s grace, we should all the more devote ourselves wholeheartedly to obeying His commandments before the holy and just God.

That is exactly what David did, as shown in today’s Scripture.
He was dedicated to keeping the ways of the Lord (verse 21).
He was not someone who just proclaimed cheap grace and lived carelessly.
He earnestly sought to obey the commandments revealed through God’s Word.

He is challenging us today, through the Word of God, to live out the righteous life that is our responsibility as those who have been declared righteous.
If “God’s righteousness” is the front side of the coin, then David lived out “my righteousness” on the reverse side—a life pursuing righteousness.

Right now, we are committing very serious sins against God.
Though we have been justified by the merit of Jesus’ cross,
we are not living righteous lives for the glory of God during our time in this world.
Instead, we overemphasize the fact that we’ve been justified by grace,
without living the righteous life that ought to follow.

We deceive ourselves into thinking we are living a life of faith,
even though we make no real effort to bear the fruit of righteousness.
We may be proud of how long we’ve been Christians,
but we can hardly see the fruit of righteousness in our own lives.

It’s like a fig tree without fruit.
It is a fig tree in name, but has no fruit—just as our faith lacks evidence.
This is the picture of an unbalanced believer.

Focusing only on the justification we received by grace from God,
and failing to follow it up with a life of righteousness lived in reverent fear of God,
is an unbalanced Christian life.

David’s balanced life of faith was marked by a deep reverence for God and a commitment to live according to His ways within the holy grace of God. He “did not wickedly depart from [his] God” (v. 21). From David’s life, we must learn some valuable lessons. If we divide these lessons into three parts, they would be:

First, we must long for the revelation of God.
Second, we must make a proper confession of faith based on that revelation.
Third, we must live a righteous life that follows that confession of faith.

However, Satan is attacking us. We are meant to receive God’s revelation through His Word, but Satan persistently tries to block that. Simply put, Satan is working to prevent God’s revelation from reaching us by creating a spiritual drought of the Word.

Look at the prophetic word in Amos 8:11:

“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord GOD, “when I will send a famine on the land— not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD.”

We are now facing a spiritual drought. In this famine of hearing God’s Word, countless spiritual deaf and blind people sit in worship services every Sunday. Though they have eyes, they cannot see God’s providence, His work, or His presence in their lives. Though they have ears, they cannot hear the Word of God that pours forth like a flood. Every Sunday, God’s people gather in churches and are exposed to His Word—yet they are not hearing or perceiving it.

Even the servants of God who proclaim the Word are often preaching messages they themselves have not heard from God. Just like deaf people talking to one another, absurd and tragic scenes unfold in churches each week from God’s perspective.

As in Isaiah 1, things that God can no longer endure—things He abhors—are being practiced in worship services every week.

It seems as though Satan is succeeding.
He has led us away from sound doctrine—from the truth—causing us to “gather teachers to suit our own passions” and to “turn aside to myths” (2 Timothy 4:3–4). He has made the people of God treat His commandments lightly. He has succeeded in rationalizing our responsibility to obey, and made the sin of disobedience seem as light as a feather.

He has also led us to exalt “cheap grace” as the highest value, drawing us further away from God’s holiness and righteousness.

As a result, we are living our lives during the week departing from God in wickedness, forsaking His truth.

But David was not like that.
He listened to God’s Word and lived in obedience even amid Satan’s attacks and temptations.
He did not live in a famine of the Word, but rather in an abundance of the Word.

That is why he could confidently confess that “all His ordinances were before [him], and [he] did not put away His statutes” (Psalm 18:22).

David not only dedicated himself to keeping the ways of God (verse 21), but he also committed himself to guarding himself from sin (verse 23). Because he feared God wholeheartedly, he kept himself from his own iniquity (Park Yoon-Sun, Delitzsch). Truly, David was a wise man. As the Bible says in Proverbs 16:6, the wise person turns away from evil because they fear God, and David was exactly such a person.

Pastor Park Yoon-Sun said this:
“…He always considered his own rebellious nature dangerous and strove to discipline and submit himself. A wise person first considers himself dangerous and keeps watch.”

Do we, in fact, consider ourselves the greatest danger and remain vigilant? I cannot help but doubt how many believers actually know that their number one threat is themselves. This is because few truly recognize and guard against their own rebellious nature.

One reason for this is that the thought “I am okay” is deeply rooted in our hearts.
If we genuinely understood our own rebellious nature, we could not help but be on guard.
If we are not vigilant, we know very well that we will sin against the holy and just God, and so we live in fear.
We fear committing sin and, even more, we fear tarnishing the holy name of God.
We fear obscuring God’s glory.

Therefore, we must always be awake and pray.
If we give Satan even the slightest opportunity, he will come like a roaring lion and cause us to sin, so we must never let down our guard.

This week, I visited a nursing home with a church member.
Though I met the deaconess for the first time, I visited her after praying because she was a relative of the member who accompanied me.
That deaconess has diabetes and has undergone heart surgery, and one of her legs was amputated at the knee.
However, she confessed that her condition, including the amputation, was a discipline from God.
When she confessed that “there is no one but the Lord,” I thanked God in my heart.
This was a precious confession indeed.
Even with her leg amputated, she recognized God’s just and loving discipline and confessed that there is no one but the Lord. What a precious confession!

God is a just God.
He is a fair God.
God rewards according to our righteousness.
When we keep God’s ways and fear Him with all our hearts, guarding ourselves from sin, God protects us and bestows upon us the grace of salvation (Park Yoon-Sun).

As those who have been justified by God’s grace, we must strive to live a righteous life.

We must put all our heart into pursuing a righteous life, looking forward to the reward.

Pastor James Kim
(Learning to live a balanced life of faith)