Devotion: Divine intervention in our lives - Psalm 25

Exhortation from Psalm 25:8-14.

May God's name be glorified.

This psalm belongs probably to the time of the Exile. Its prevailing thought is that

God is the Teacher of the afflicted and the Guide of the erring; and this is constantly repeated, either in the way of statement or of prayer. The psalm consists of a number of prayers, reflections, not drawn up in any systematic order, and not very clearly connected by any single line of thought.

Importance of Interposition – Story of a person guiding in a strange land. – We also expect someone like that in this world.

V8-14 - The main subject of these verses is the Divine teaching, help, and guidance.

Men are ignorant and erring, and the supreme importance of Divine interposition is here recognized and unfolded.

V8-14 – God’s divine intervention in our lives

Many times we don’t realize its God’s intervention. But this passage clearly talks about how God intervenes in our lives.

1.  v8 - He instructs sinners. Many times we think that God doesn’t intervene in a sinner’s life. Shows them the right way, and helps them to walk in it. He helps his people, though they are sinners and in spite of it (ver. 8).

The ground of this conduct is given — because he is good and righteous,

or upright. It becomes his nature to act thus.

2. v9 - He leads the lowly or meek; or those who are lowly because of oppression. He leads them in righteousness; i.e. he gives to them, who do not oppose might with might, justice against their oppressors. The right is sure to triumph in the end.

3. He teaches them that fear him. (Verse 12-14) Only those who fear God are anxious to know the right path, and even God can teach only those who are anxious to find the way of life.

Characteristic of Gods intervention

V10 – His ways are of mercy and truth.

Mercy - You show goodness, large-hearted bounty if you set up a public fountain where one is needed. But if you are journeying through the desert, and share your own scanty supply with a traveler ready to die of thirst, that is mercy, loving-kindness.

Truth is the other great feature of God’s character here set forth. These two are inseparable (Psalm 85:10). Neither apart from the other would furnish a gospel. God’s mercy is the matter and motive of our faith; his truth its warrant and assurance (1 John 5:9-11). Among men, one would rather trust a hard-hearted but incorruptibly truthful man, than one full of kind feeling but faithless. In God, the two are as inseparable as the form and the color which make to our view one image.