We may be doing all we know to do to walk uprightly, and yet it seems that God is withholding good from us. This can rigorously test our faith. Please turn to Psalm 34:
Similar to Psalm 84, God promises that those whom this describes won't lack any good thing. And yet we may feel like we are lacking something good, even though we are doing our part: We fear Him and we seek Him and we are trying to walk uprightly.
This challenge becomes even more difficult if we fall into the deadly snare of comparing our lives with the lives of others. We may see God blessing others in ways that we would like to be blessed. This can lead to jealousy and envy and thinking terrible thoughts about people whom God has given good things while withholding them from us. And those others might even be sinners, unlike us, we think. Next may come complaints about what we judge to be unfair, complaints that are spoken before the LORD, because He listens. If we are not careful, we may know better than God how to run His creation, just like Helel before he was cast out. Finding fault with God's management puts us on very thin ice.
Circumstances like this can drive us to the super-righteousness that Solomon warns of in Ecclesiastes 7. That is, if we just pray more and study more and become more righteous - maybe if we fast twice a week, and give a tithe and a half on all we possess - then we can earn our way into God's favor, and convince Him to give us that good thing that is lacking. But that isn't going to work, and there is a better way to understand this dilemma.
If we accept these verses as absolute truth - which we should - it means that if there is something lacking in our lives, it must not be good for us in the present circumstances, or else God would provide it. That means that the failure is not in God's providence - perish the thought - but in our own expectations. That can be hard to accept. It can be especially challenging if what we lack is something that God Himself says or indicates is good. It just may not be the best thing for us at this time or in this circumstance.
If God is withholding something, it does not mean that God hates us and is determined to make us miserable. As difficult as it is to believe at times, everything God does is an act of love. But sometimes that takes some deep evaluation to understand why and how what He does (or does not do) is an act of love.
When we experience a lack, that invites us to more deeply take stock of our life with God, and consider why something perfectly legitimate might not be the best for us. That can be uncomfortable because it may reveal something about us that we may not want to see - that there is something about us in our present state that could make a normally good thing not be good for us. It does not mean that we are a terrible person. Incomplete, yes, but not terrible. Probably.
But such an evaluation helps us to remember that it is God who is guiding us to the destination He has in mind for us, and only He knows the particulars of what it will take for us not to just get there, but to arrive with the right character and spiritual image. The lack we experience in this life is part of what God does to make us complete. That's the meaning of seven. Both of these seven-day feasts lack things to help make us perfect.
When we see a lack of something that would otherwise be good, we can and we should be grateful that Somebody is watching out for us, saving us from things that would not be good for us right now, and doing something even better than what we lack under the sun.
The fear of the Lord is not something that comes naturally. The fear of the Lord is something that must be learned. And indeed it must be learned because it is the essence of true religion. I used the word essence in last week's sermon. It is that which makes something what it is. It is the real nature of a thing. And the fear of the Lord is the real nature of the religion, the way of life, of God.
Why did the psalmist (as we just read in Psalm 119:79 and also in Psalm 34:11) want those who feared God to turn to him? Because he wanted those who feared God to learn to fear Him even more! Wise living, godly living does not remove fear entirely, but consists of fearing the right things. Adam and Eve feared the wrong things.
