My goodness is nothing
By Ivan Ho
Written 12 July 2016
Preserve me, O God, for in You I put my trust. O my soul, you have said to the Lord , “You are my Lord, My goodness is nothing apart from You.” As for the saints who are on the earth, “They are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.” Their sorrows shall be multiplied who hasten after another god; Their drink offerings of blood I will not offer, Nor take up their names on my lips.
Psalms 16:1-4 NKJV
1. You are my Lord, my goodness is nothing apart from you.
God does not look at a person the way the world looks at people. The world is looking for goodness in people, their good behaviours, their achievements, their kindness of heart, their generosity, whatever it is that they see as “good”. However, in God’s eyes, a man’s goodness is nothing apart from God. In other words, a person is only good if God is in him or her. Apart from God, however good the person may look before man, he is nothing!
As it is written: “There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one.”
Romans 3:10-12 NKJV
2. As for the saints who are on the earth, “They are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.”
The saints are not the sacred ones who do good with their behaviours that are good and acceptable before men. In God’s eyes, “all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory”. When a person acknowledges that he is a sinner and accepts Jesus as his Lord and Saviour, then and only then does he become excellent before God, a saint in God’s eyes, not because of his own righteousness, but because of the righteousness of Christ in him!
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Romans 3:23-26 NKJV
The saints are not people who have been honoured as saints by Catholicism with halos over their heads. Usually these “saints” are dead and supposedly gone to heaven. Rather, the saints that David referred to are on the earth, “in whom is all my delight”.
The saints are those who have Christ nature in them because they have been born again in Christ, and they are walking on the earth. If we can see the Christ nature in another person, we will have delight in him or her also. But if we judge someone according to the flesh, we will see all their faults and shortcomings. David did not judge people according to someone’s goodness, but his delight is in the godliness of the saints.
The saints are not good people according to human standards which are usually based on how others measure up with our own criteria. The saints are regarded as “excellent” because they worship an excellent God.
3. Their sorrows shall be multiplied who hasten after another god; Their drink offerings of blood I will not offer, nor take up their names on my lips.
There is only one God that we worship: the Father, the Son (Jesus) and the Holy Spirit. Many religions worship other gods which are detestable before God. Some church goers entertain other spirits who gratify their sinful nature and fleshly behaviours. David would not even mention the names of idols on his lips, that’s how he hated other gods. He would have nothing to do with another god. Unlike Saul (a goodly man) who consulted familiar spirits, David (a godly man) would not have anything to do with evil spirits. We are spirit beings. If we entertain other spirits and allow them to influence us, we will end up like Saul who was once filled with God’s spirit, but the Spirit of God departed from him.
Wonder if you have the same attitude as David, or do you go to church on Sundays but flirt around with other gods the rest of the week?