Passage Read: Psalm 63-66
Meditation Verses: 66:1-4
Thought
In this call to praise God, there is this interesting revelation, that because of God's great power, His enemies will give "feigned obedience." The psalmist calls on all those who love the Lord to sing joyfully to Him, to sing of His glory, to declare how awesome are His works, and to sing that all the earth will worship and praise Him! And in the middle of all that, we are also to point out that even God's enemies will pretend to honor Him with obedience. We shouldn't fool ourselves. God is so awesome that even those who don't love Him will recognize the importance of appearing to honor Him, in order to curry His favor or avoid His wrath. In the end, they remain His enemy; they don't repent in truth, but only as suits their purpose of saving their lives. But they don't love to obey, and when they think God's not looking or listening, they do not honor or praise Him. They are certainly the unbelievers who will endure the reign of Christ and then rebel at the end. But they are also people today who hope to gain some favor from the Lord but don't truly love and adore Him so as to delight and desire to change their ways to align with His.
Application
I shouldn't be naive. Not everyone who seems obedient to the Lord actually loves Him. There are many who appear respectful and honoring of the Lord, but only to a point. They look good as long as you don't look too far or too deep. Even today there are those who are actually enemies of God who look obedient but not from the heart. Where else do all the false teachers come from? God has many "fair weather friends," and I should be able to recognize them by the extent of their obedience, by their private comments about His less popular commands, by their quiet doubts about God Himself. The true believer is in such awe of God that he cannot help but praise all of His character, nature and the wisdom in all His commands. So he changes his personal views about God and His ways so as to agree with the Lord in everything, rather than hold out against certain instructions or designs. There are grumblers and faultfinders, as Jude warns, and those are enemies clothed as friends. So I need to recognize that such people exist even today, and I need to make sure I'm not one of them!