"What is Truth?"

[[A Prayer of David.]] "Hear the right, O LORD, attend unto my cry, give ear unto my prayer, that goeth not out of feigned lips." (Psalms 17:1) As Matthew Henry puts it, regarding his introduction to this opening, "As there is a time to weep and a time to rejoice, so there is a time for praise and a time for prayer; this Psalm is a prayer." And as this introduction says, "A Prayer of David", this is a prayer of a man who is torn between two different worlds of understanding: one that is truth and one that is perceived as truth; the difference in these two worlds, is what God knows, and what we here on this earth think that we know; of which, the difference can literally be worlds apart. As I mentioned yesterday, the title written above this Psalm in my Bible reads, "An Innocent Man's Prayer"; to which, there is something that we must all come to understand, that none of us are truly innocent in God's eyes, for we all have fallen short of righteousness. The sooner we can come to realize this truth, the sooner we can become aware of what the truth is; because, before God can begin to fix us, we must first realize that we are broken. Granted, David definitely was being falsely persecuted by Saul; having done nothing to warrant Saul's fits of rage against him, he sought to only obey the Lord, and to serve his king. But there is another piece of the puzzle that David may not have realized; something that we ourselves fail to completely understand; which is that God can see us now, and He can see our future; He can even see us as we should or could be, if we would just listen and obey. For us to try and figure this out, it is enough to make our head spin; but for God, it is nothing more that His love for us, as a Father's love for a child, seeing what is best for us, and what is needed to make us grow up big and strong in Him. Another way to look at what I am talking about when it comes to two different worlds, is to imagine what it must have appeared like to see Jesus crucified upon that cross; not knowing what was going to take place from that, but watching it happen, and wondering, Why is this happening to someone such as this? You can begin to see that what we perceive as something wrong and evil, can actually have a completely different meaning, if we were only to know and understand the truth. As David starts this prayer, he comes to God from the vantage point of a man who is just, and who is asking God to hear his prayer because he has no deceitfulness in his prayer. In other words; he is seeking God's intervention, but is not asking to be unjustly favored, just to be protected and to be treated fairly, as a man that is only looking to do, or to have done, what is right. This is the character of a man that wants what is best for not only himself, but for those also that are causing him harm; which is unique among man, for we usually want revenge to be part of our deliverance; hoping that God will justify our innocence by taking action against those that have wrongly come against us, in hope that when we are vindicated, everyone will come to realize who was right and who was wrong. We can see this attribute displayed by Jesus, as He cried out, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do". This He said as He hung there on the cross, while they mocked Him, and spat on Him, and divided His things among themselves; He asked for their forgiveness, knowing full well, that what they did, they did out of ignorance, not knowing who He really was. We can only hope and pray for this same type of attitude when it comes to those that falsely accuse or persecute us; because we should hope that if they knew the truth, then they would not be doing what they do; or at least that is what we hope for in them. However; this is not how it is, because men who are driven by evil, will continue to pursue evil, even after the truth is revealed; for they are only vindicated by completing what they have begun in their own hearts; not seeking to right their wrong, but that their wrong should be right. Such was the case with Saul, who no sooner had he promised David that he would treat him as his very own son, he turned against him again, and sought to take his life. We can see this action played out in the religious leaders who had detained Peter and John, as we read in Acts 4:16-18, what they said after having come to understand the truth, and how it was, that in the name of Jesus was that lame man healed; yet they continued in their quest to stop His name from being made known any further... "Saying, What shall we do to these men? For that indeed a notable miracle hath been done by them is manifest to all them that dwell in Jerusalem; and we cannot deny it. But that it spread no further among the people, let us straitly threaten them, that they speak henceforth to no man in this name. And they called them, and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus."